Page 36 of The Takeaway

"What?" Marigold sets her drink down harder than necessary and drops her chin. "He left you? Why?"

Marigold's husband, Cobb Hartley, is sitting on a stool on one side of the bar, a guitar resting on his knee. He begins to strum and leans into the microphone that's mostly unnecessary, given the small size of both the crowd and the physical space. "I'd like to play a couple of things I'm working on, so let me know what you think."

This gets Ruby's attention and she forgets about Dexter momentarily. "Cobb is playing at The Frog's Grog?" she asks with a frown.

Marigold waves this off. "He was getting bored just playing for me, so he asked Bev if he could try out some new stuff here. Ignore him."

Ruby smiles as the world famous musician launches into a song she's never heard. There are about twenty people in the bar aside from the four of them, and everyone turns their attentionto the Grammy-winning artist as his voice croons into the microphone.

"Wow," Ruby says. "I'm actually kind of awed that we're listening to Cobb play his music in a tiny bar on Shipwreck Key. If only the rest of the world knew."

"Here," Marigold says, taking out her phone and snapping a few photos of her husband as he closes his eyes and starts to feel the music. "I'll post these on my Instagram, and then the rest of the worldwillknow.” Her Instagram, with several million followers, tells the story of her life to anyone who is interested in the comings and goings and musings of a former supermodel. "Okay, now back to the situation at hand.” Marigold sets her phone on the table.

Ruby blinks as she gets pulled back to her own drama. "Oh. Right. Dexter."

Under the table, Sunday puts a hand on her knee and squeezes for support. "What did he say before he left?"

Ruby runs through the conversation in her mind in bits and pieces. "He said that he thought our relationship was negatively affecting his work, and that, in essence, so did his editor. He'd gotten an email saying that the chapters weren't working, and he thought if he left to work on it without me around, it might come out better. Something like that."

Molly purses her lips and makes a face. "That was how he put it?"

Ruby is now second-guessing her own ability to remember the way Dexter had posed the issue. "He felt that he and I were coming between him and his work. And also that it was too difficult for him to sit and listen to Jack's diary entries about our life together."

Molly exhales loudly and lifts her whiskey sour to her lips as her eyes burn. She makes an indistinguishable noise from behind her glass.

"He said that there were things that were hard to handle, like us being married and raising kids together, because it made him realize and think about the things that he and I could never have together."

"Like what?" Marigold frowns. "You two could have the big white wedding and all the joy in the world if you want to."

"Like kids," Ruby says simply.

The other three women sigh and make little sounds of understanding.

"Oh, right," Sunday says, nodding. "We're well past babies and kids now. I always forget. Don't you guys?"

Marigold nods sadly. "I kind of do. I think that most of the time, I feel like I'm about--I don't know--thirty? I forget that decades have passed since I considered getting pregnant and raising a human, and that I'm several years beyond even having toworryabout pregnancy at all. And then I glance in the mirror or read someone's comment on Instagram reminding me that I'm old, and it's like running into a brick wall every single time."

Sunday nods emphatically. “Right? Inside I'm young. I feel vital. I don't hurt when I get out of bed in the morning," she knocks on the wooden table for luck here, "and when Banks is looking at me, I feel beautiful. And then...I don't know. Like you said, Goldie, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and see gray in my hair, or my daughters call me and I remember that I'm the mother to grown women, and that I'm someone's grandmother, and it's like a bucket of cold water over my head."

Ruby feels a sadness spread through her chest. "All of those are wonderful things," she says, "so why do they also feel so bad?"

"Because it means we're on the other side of the mountain," Molly says. "The years of dreaming about a family and a future are mostly behind us. We've crested the hill, and we're slippingdown the other side of it, trying to find something to hang onto so that it won't go so fast."

"It does go fast," Sunday agrees, elbow on the table, whiskey sour in hand. She looks at Cobb thoughtfully as he strums his guitar. "And the people your own age suddenly seem old to you, even though you swear you aren’t like them."

Marigold cackles. "I love that you're looking at my husband as you say that." She slaps the table with mirth. "I'll be sure to tell him."

"No!" Sunday says, snapping back from her moment of reverie. "It's not him--I just mean in general."

Marigold's laughter dies down. "Oh, I know. I'm just giving you a hard time, Sun. It happens to all of us: we see someone on Facebook who we've known for years, and we think, 'Nahhhh. That can't be her. That's some old lady!' Only itisher, which makes us wonder if other people look at photos of us and think the same thing."

"I'm sure they do," Ruby says glumly.

"Oh, I know they do for me." Marigold puts a hand to her chest. "And they're not afraid to tell me about it. Do you know how many messages I get from people who think I'm unaware that I'm not the same girl I was in 1991?” She rolls her eyes in annoyance. "But the beautiful thing is, ladies, that we're here to complain about it. We have the great privilege of getting older, and not everyone gets that."

There is a hushed silence that falls over them as Bev goes behind the bar and flips a switch; Christmas lights that he's strung around the wooden beams of the bar spring to life, giving the whole place a more festive feel. Just then, Cobb strums the opening chords to a new song, and they all take a moment to think quietly and sip their drinks.

"I would do it all again if I could," Ruby admits, her words falling over the table. "I would get married again, have babiesagain, do the late nights and the diaper changes--it's not that I wouldn't," she says. Her eyes fill with tears and she touches the corners of them with her fingers, willing her tear ducts to just dry up already. "So it feels like a knife in the heart to know that something Ican'tdo is the one thing that might drive away a man I really care about."

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