Kim Magowan: FAVOR • Cleaver Magazine

Kim Magowan
FAVOR

Liam,

Emailing because I just heard that you and Genevieve split up, so I wanted to reach out and say—well, I was going to say how sorry I am. But that isn’t entirely truthful. At any rate, I’m here if you need me. Divorce, ugh: been there, done that.

And I will also say that personally, I didn’t find it helpful when people would say mean things about Jim, thinking that in so doing they were being supportive. But all that did was make me feel shitty and question my own judgement. Like, was I supposed to thank them for saying they had always thought Jim was an asshole, or boring, or bragged too much?

Anyway, all this is to say: I truly understand what you’re going through, and by no means do I want to add to your suffering by participating in that well-intentioned but misguided pile-on upon a former spouse.

So maybe you should stop reading here, since I am violating my own experience of what is helpful or appropriate to offer at such junctures. And I truly don’t intend this email as a slam on Genevieve—just some perspective on why it might not be the worst thing in the world that you two split up, even if now things feel really grim.

So feel free to stop reading at this point. If this were a review, I would now write, SPOILER ALERT.

But should you keep reading, make of my experience what you will.

When I was leaving your wedding five years ago, Genevieve’s mother or aunt (I assume a relative because she had a certain family resemblance to Genevieve, a square jaw) was standing by the double doors and handing people, as they exited the hotel, the wedding favors: five-by-seven inch ornate picture frames. People accepted them in a kind of startled way and said “Oh thanks!” I am assuming you had no hand in these picture frames? If you did, please forgive me. Please stop reading now and delete this email.

But if my supposition is correct and this was all Genevieve’s brainwave, as I have always assumed, well—what kind of wedding favors are five-by-seven picture frames?

Women at a fancy evening wedding, like yours was, generally bring tiny clutch purses that carry, at most, one’s cell phone, lipstick, and compact. I couldn’t even fit my wallet into my clutch bag, so I just had a credit card and some cash. Of course men are not going to be carrying purses. Men, if they have female partners, will expect these partners to carry the five-by-seven picture frames, which, as explained, will not fit.

This problem could have been averted if Genevieve’s mother (or whoever that square-jawed woman was) had given us, as we exited the hotel, bags in which to tote our picture frames, but she did not. I have wondered why not. I know Genevieve is very worried about climate change; I have heard her (more than once) pontificate about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. But paper bags are recyclable.

I’ve thought about your wedding favor quite a bit over the past five years, and I am relaying this story to you now in hopes that it will make you see something askew about Genevieve. For many reasons, a picture frame is a terrible wedding favor. It’s ostentatious: picture frames are expensive. It’s, as already explained, cumbersome and impractical. It’s also narcissistic. What were people supposed to do with these picture frames? I assume her concept was that we should put a picture of you and Genevieve inside one, but is this realistic? Do you, for instance, have a framed picture of me in your house? I doubt it!

Perhaps Genevieve would say, of course she does not expect that, it’s a gift, put whatever picture we choose within our frames. Indeed, when you and Genevieve came over for dinner last year—this was a few weeks before Jim moved out, when I thought everything was fine, though you might have detected something brewing that I was oblivious to—Genevieve looked around our living room in an investigative way, casting her eyes over the table-tops in particular. This made me think she was looking for, and not detecting, that picture frame. At any rate, she wore a cross, chilly expression.

But seriously, what was I supposed to do with a five-by-seven metal picture frame? When our car was parked at least fifteen blocks away, because Jim always grabs the first parking space he sees, and was never mindful of the fact that I was wearing heels?

Anyway, my hope is that this anecdote might illuminate for you some features of Genevieve’s (to recap: ostentation, impracticality, inconsideration, narcissism) that might, over time, have a leveling effect on the pain I have no doubt you are currently experiencing. Seriously, reach out if you need me.

With love,

Amy

Kim Magowan is the author of the short story collection How Far I’ve Come (2022), published by Gold Wake Press; the novel The Light Source (2019), published by 7.13 Books; and the short story collection Undoing (2018), which won the 2017 Moon City Press Fiction Award. Her fiction has been published in Booth, Craft Literary, The Gettysburg Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, and many other journals. Her stories have been selected for Best Small Fictions and Wigleaf’s Top 50. She is the Editor-in-Chief and Fiction Editor of Pithead Chapel. www.kimmagowan.com