I might not have known how I would talk to Christian about this, but now that I’ve started, I can’t seem to stop. “I could have a baby with you and know that it was created out of love, and damn it, I still want to. But—and there’s a huge but—I’d want you to be a family with us. I’d want more than your promise. And I don’t want you to feel guilty or tricked. You have a plan, and I respect that plan. I saw what you did for my mom, and I can’t even begin to explain how much admiration and respect I have for your brilliant mind. Yet here I stand, knowing what you want and telling you that it wouldn’t be enough. It’s so messed up, and I’m sorry. That’s why I can’t do this; it’s not the right thing to do.”
His head is bowed a touch as he listens. With the purse of his lips, he seeks clarification. “Let me get this straight. You’re in love with me, and because you love me, you don’t want to have a baby with me?”
“No. Wait. Yes. Everything you just said is right.”
“Why?”
I close my eyes and sigh. I can’t look at him anymore because, every time I do, I see my future, everything I want … everything I’ve dreamed of … wished for.
Everything I can’t have.
“I want it all. I want you and marriage and kids and the house Upstate and the baseball games and bad pop music and flowers at work and quiet reading on the sofa and coming home to you fixing the sink and me making you lasagna and … I want it all. Watching my parents, seeing how they love each other … God, how much he cherishes her … it makes me selfish for wanting that, too. I want to have a family with someone who loves me as much as I love him. I want you to love me as much as I love you.”
“Meadow—”
I cut him off. “Please don’t tell me you love me or that you think you could grow to love me. That’s just insulting, and it would hurt.”
“What do you want me to say?”
Everything.
“Nothing.” I swallow.
He nods in understanding, his eyes looking down as he rubs his jaw.
“Then, I guess that’s the end of our friendship,” he says.
I swear, my stomach just dropped to the center of the earth.
My heart? Shattered into a million pieces.
“Oh,” is all I say.
Of all the scenarios I played in my head, this gut-wrenching feeling of loss and abandonment wasn’t a part of them.
With my eyes heavy with unshed tears, I rush out of the break room and dash through the office, passing Angela without a wave good-bye as I storm out of Park Avenue Cardiology.
I have things I have to do and a mother I need to see, but my broken heart has me crossing the street and running into Central Park. As fast as I can, I run to the center of the park to the place that has always been my spot of peace and solace.
When I get to the edge of my fountain and look up into the angel of the water and her bronzed cherubs, I curse her for the first time ever.
“You can have your stupid wishes,” I tell her as I rip the wishbone off my neck and hold it up in my fist. “You can have your stupid wishes and your fucked up dreams. I don’t believe in them anymore. I don’t believe in you.”
The hot tears come bursting down my cheeks as I declare to her, “This is now yours.”
I throw the wishbone into the water and fall to the basin as I cry for my wish that never came true.
Christian
Everyone has a best friend.
For some, it’s the person you’ve known the longest, the childhood playmate who’s been there for every bad decision … and was probably the one egging you on. For me, that’s my friend Mike. He now lives in Delray Beach where he owns a restaurant off the intercoastal. If it wasn’t for his wife and kids, he’d still be making some questionable choices in late-night debauchery.
Others look to that person from college, the one who was there when no one else was. Those were the coming into your own days. My roommate, Zach, was the guy I partied with, yet he also kept me focused on getting into a good medical school. He’s now an oncologist in Baltimore and kicking ass in his field.
Then, there’s the group who states a sibling, parent, or loved one is their best friend because blood is thicker than water.
That’s me.
Both Mike and Zach are great friends, but they’re not my best friends.
For me, a best friend is the person you can talk to about anything and not worry about being judged or criticized. A person you can shoot the breeze with and leave the conversation, feeling better than before. The one who helps you when you’re down, not hands you a shot and tells you to go home with the brunette at the bar.
Thanks, Mike.
That person, that would be my father.
When I lost my virginity at seventeen, I told him because I didn’t know who else to talk to. My friends weren’t much help. They were full of high fives and story exchanges, something I knew early on I wasn’t into. It only took a week for my dad to see something was off with me. I wasn’t down. In fact, I felt good about myself. I just felt different. He knew it.
He took me for a drive to the shore. We went to the beach and sat on a wooden bench overlooking the ocean. He brought two beers—one for him, one for me. Yes, I was way too young to drink, but he said, if I was old enough to have sex, I was old enough to have a beer.
Just one.
He was adamant about that.
“There are three keys to a good life. Success, love, and happiness,” he explained as we stared out into the rolling waves of the Atlantic. “You can have success in spades, love in bounty, and fun with the wicked in the best ways. Life is a balance of abundance and control. If you don’t share in your success, you’ll never prosper. If you treat those you love with disrespect, you’ll live in great misery. And, if you overindulge in the vices, you will lose the success and the love.”
Dr. Thomas Gallagher is a wise man.
I have always looked to him as a role model. He’s the consummate gentleman, kind to his friends and a scratch golfer. My mother often says he’s a great husband, although she wishes he’d stop leaving newspaper sections all over the house. He’s like a child leaving a trail of crumbs, except it’s the business section in the kitchen, technology in the living room, and sports in the study.
He’s the reason I became a surgeon. I marveled at his ability to cure people and found the heart both challenging and simplistic. We’d spend hours discussing the human anatomy, and he’d let me shadow him in his office.
I’ve come to my father for advice many times throughout my life. As a kid, it was school advice, friendship dilemmas, and health tips. As I got older, it was career advice, dating dilemmas, and more health tips. Not much has changed.
He’s guided me through my medical training. When I had to choose between the University of California, San Francisco or School of Medicine at Temple University, he helped me with the decision to leave my family, saying, “Follow your dreams. You can always come home.”
As I struggled with the training for a new procedure, one many in the medical community deemed impossible with my experience, my father flew out west to help perfect my technique.
His advice was, “To master a skill, you need to have patience, heart, and a fuck you attitude.”
That was the first time I’d heard my father curse in years.
And, when I told my father, at twenty-five, I was in love with Meadow Duvane, he told me, “Let her go.”
I know it sounds foolish, but let me tell you a little story.
It doesn’t start when we were thirteen, and she convinced me Sally Romano had herpes. I knew she was lying, and to be honest, I didn’t mind. I hadn’t wanted to hang out with Sally, and Meadow was way more fun. At least, that was what I thought. Believe me when I say, I had no idea she was only pretending to like roller coasters.
No, this story starts when we were fifteen. And the girl’s name was Amanda Rackshaw. She was my first serious girlfriend, who I was madly in love with. Well, as in love as
a teenage boy with raging hormones could be.
She sat behind me in Algebra II and rolled her school skirt up three times. I know this because I used to watch her hands as they skimmed her waistband, exposing extra inches of thigh. It was against school rules, which made it even hotter. Pervy, I know, but I was fifteen, so bear with me.
Amanda was my first girlfriend. I took her to the movies three times, bought her a bracelet for our one-month anniversary, and wrote a love letter. I asked her to go with me to the school play where Meadow was starring as Annie Oakley. My parents told me I had to support her because our families were friends, and it was the right thing to do. Meadow was cool, but Annie Get Your Gun wasn’t my idea of a fun Friday night. Amanda agreed to go, so we went.
Meadow was okay from what I remember. Actually, I don’t remember most of it because I was too busy being dumped during intermission. I was heartbroken. I felt like my chest had turned to stone, and this lead weight was now sitting inside my ribs, waiting to drop. I wanted to hit something, so I did. I punched a tree and hurt my knuckles. And I cried. A lot. Again, I was only fifteen, so cut me some slack.
After the show, I did what they’d sent me to do and waited for Meadow to come offstage, so I could congratulate her, and like any sullen teenager, I kept my head down and looked off into the distance. I thought no one noticed or cared that my heart was shattered.
I was wrong.
Meadow noticed.
“Where’s Amanda?” she asked, looking past my shoulder for my girlfriend.
“Gone,” was all I said.
Meadow took the hint.
By the time I got to the sidewalk in front of our school, Meadow was jogging behind me.
“Wait up!” she called out, huffing from trying to keep up with my long steps.
Man, she was out of shape.
I looked at her with her hot-pink sweatshirt and hair still in barrel curls from playing a sharpshooter from the Wild West. “Aren’t you supposed to be hanging out with the cast? I thought there was an after-party.”
She shrugged. “Yeah. They’re headed over to Umberto’s for pizza, but I can hang with them after tomorrow’s performance.”
I looked at her like she was an idiot. “Why would you ditch your friends like that?”
“I’m not.” She raised her brows at me as she dug her thumbs through the straps of her backpack and gave a smug look. “You’re my friend, too, and something tells me you need me more than they do.”
Until that point, I never considered Meadow more than someone I hung out with sometimes—at our parents’ country club, tennis camp, and on the occasional school trip. She was all about the arts, and I was a sports guy. She hung out at the library, and I went to the mall.
She stopped walking and bent to look at an old penny on the ground. “Find a penny, pick it up, and all day long, you’ll have good luck.” Instead of picking it up, she flipped it over.
“What did you do that for?” I asked.
“This way, someone else will find it heads up, and they’ll have a good day.”
Since I was alone and down, I let Meadow walk with me. I was thankful she didn’t mention Amanda again. Instead, she asked if I had seen Saturday Night Live last weekend. I had, and we laughed for ten blocks about our favorite Will Ferrell skits.
We didn’t live too far away from each other, so I walked her home. Her parents were already back from the performance and were surprised to see Meadow hadn’t gone out with her friends. I was young but wise enough to see the mischievous way Mrs. Duvane looked at us together, her wheels turning with how exciting it would be if we dated.
My first thought was, No way.
I mean, Meadow was cool, but she wasn’t someone I was attracted to.
She asked if I wanted to come in and play video games.
Since I had nothing else going on, I said, “Sure.”
I stayed until midnight when my dad picked me up. After he found out what had happened with Amanda, he approved with how my night had turned out.
“Great friendships are the best cure for a broken heart.”
He was right. Meadow had turned my glum night into a bearable one.
After that, we hung out more. Mostly playing video games in her basement. She came to my basketball games, and I’d see her in the school plays. She didn’t hesitate to tell me when she thought my next girlfriend was a bitch. I took her out for pizza when the bitchy girlfriend and I broke up. Meadow seemed pleased.
Then, junior year happened.
It was the year Meadow came into her own.
Before then, Meadow was dorky. She was scrawny and always reading her Eloise books or The Baby-Sitters Club. She then moved on to Judy Blume and pretty much anything she could get her hands on. Her favorite music was NSYNC and Backstreet Boys, and she had Britney Spears posters all over her room. She didn’t wear makeup, she had a rabbit’s foot keychain on her backpack, she let her mom dress her in ruffles, and she always wore her hair in a ponytail.
Now, she was reading her mom’s Doubleday Book Club romances, listening to Maroon 5, and doodling boys’ names in her notebook. Her hair was down, and her face looked … different. It could have been the makeup she wore or the fact that her eyebrows were thicker. Perhaps her face was just changing, but she was getting pretty.
Really pretty.
Too pretty.
And then she turned seventeen.
If my hormones weren’t already raging, Meadow’s teenage metamorphosis had me going crazy. Her boobs had grown overnight, she had an ass, and that gawky figure was filling out all over. By the time the winter formal came around, I was having a hard time not staring at her when I should have been focusing on the PlayStation. It was as if she were channeling her own Britney Spears with the small tank tops and super-short shorts. One time, when we were supposed to be studying, I spent twenty minutes watching her suck on a Blow Pop.
That was when I decided I would ask her to the winter formal. I was a nervous wreck. I didn’t know why. She was a friend. We’d have fun together. I would not tell her I was lusting after her like the out-of-control teenager I was.
I waited until our drive home from school—something I’d started doing. When we got in my car, her door wasn’t even closed when she danced in the seat, screaming in excitement.
“Garret Kent asked me to the winter formal!” She was glowing. Ecstatic to be going to the dance with the biggest douche bag in school.
“When did you start liking Garret?” I wasn’t hiding my disgust. She was just too into her own celebration to notice. “You didn’t say yes … did you?”
“Are you serious? He’s the cutest boy in school, and he asked me. I mean, I know my value is more than some silly boy asking me to a dance, but can we first revel in the fact that, one, this is the first time I have ever, ever been asked to a dance, and two, I was asked by the boy that every girl in school wants to go with? This. Is. So. Exciting!”
Damn. How could I compete with that?
Not only did she think Garret was hot, but she also felt good about herself.
So, I did what any other guy in my position would do. I asked someone else.
And, when Meadow and Garret left the dance to go to a hotel, I did the same with my date, except I lost my virginity that night.
Meadow puked on Garret’s Nikes.
So, there I was, having a beer in Long Branch, New Jersey, with my dad in celebration of becoming a man.
“Not as exciting as you thought it would be?” he asked as I took my first sip.
“Sorry to break it to you, but this isn’t my first drink, Dad.”
“I’m not talking about the beer.”
“Oh.” I squinted my eyes into the sun and wrapped my hands around the cold beer. “No. Not really. Is that normal?”
“Only when you do it with someone you don’t care about.”
It was a powerful lesson. One that has sat with me over the years. As did another that my father imparted on me that day.
I rolled the bottle back and forth in my hands. “I was going to ask Meadow to the dance. You know, toss her a bone, so she didn’t have to go alone.” I tried to act unaffected because I didn’t need my dad knowing I liked her in that way. “She went with someone else.”
With an understanding nod, my father sat there and absorbed my admission. “Meadow doesn’t need your favors anymore. What she needs is a friend.”
As always, he was right. Meadow had been a good friend, and all I did was think of ways to get in her pants.
I was no better than Garret.
I deserved to have her puke on my Nikes, too.
That was why, a few weeks later, I said something to her. I told her she was my best friend. Was she? She was the best of all my friends, sure. The person who I wasn’t worried about being the coolest or best around. I wasn’t concerned about what she thought if I wanted to stay in on the weekend to study or watch SNL. She liked me for me, and that felt good.
Meadow was someone who, if I dated and we broke up, our relationship would never be the same.
I was also hoping I wouldn’t always have this attraction to her. I was wrong. It lasted past graduation and into the college years.
We went to different universities, but we spoke often. Mostly online. Our text chains were long and always up our computer screens. If I needed to talk to her, she was a click away.
Thanksgiving Eve was always the top party night for us. We’d get together with our old high school friends. Over the summers, we’d spend time with our parents at the club, play tennis, and swim. We dated other people, and as always, she liked none of my girlfriends. It was surprising because she always dated losers. More than once, I had a heart-to-heart with some guy in a parking lot. It was the classic you hurt her, and I hurt you speech.
A Really Bad Idea Page 27
