“Whatever,” Nicky says.
“Whatever,” I say.
“Whatever,” Shawn replies in return, which is not the white flag I was hoping for.
I grab my purse and turn into the foyer, then out the front door. The door slams behind me, and then the latch clicks, and as I wait for the elevator to come and take me away from this mess, I try to muster the courage to go back in and apologize. I count to twenty in my head.
If the elevator dings before I reach twenty, I’ll get in and go meet Vanessa. If it doesn’t, I’ll go back.
I don’t even get to eleven.
The door opens, and I step forward. The universe gave me a sign. I’m just listening.
—
The taxi drops me right at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, from which an enormous banner hangs. DARE YOURSELF TO A BETTER LIFE! It’s red and bold and unavoidable, and all around me, pedestrians stop to gape and wonder, perhaps, if they can indeed dare themselves to a better life. Maybe it’s that easy, the girl to my left considers — dare yourself! — and she can finally meet a guy who calls her after sex. Maybe that’s the answer, the chubby guy next to the girl thinks — dare yourself! — and he can finally stop inhaling éclairs at midnight and lose the twenty pounds he’s convinced are keeping his life, his entire life, in a rut.
I peer toward the bridge, right in time to see Vanessa catch air. She hesitates just before jumping, and I know it’s to swallow down her fear, but then she closes her eyes, counts to three, and throws herself forward. I can hear her shriek all the way from where I am on the sidewalk, but then I also hear her scream, “Holy shit! This is amazing!” And I watch her fly, soar, float through the air on her way down. The gathered crowd erupts in spontaneous applause, and Vanessa pumps her fist in reply. She bounces twice at the bottom, and then starts to hyena-laugh at what she has done.
I stand there watching, my heart in my throat, my breath quick and measured, and I start to weep. For her bravery, for her leap. For something that I could never do.
And then, as they pull her up, she must spy me, even from her upside-down angle, and she yells, “Willa Chandler-Golden! I dare you: you’re next!”
And we both laugh because we know that I’m not.
—
Vanessa insists that we walk home, though it’s over five miles and the June heat wave has continued, and I’m already feeling damp. I wrap my hair up in a bun and tug my tank top away from my chest, but I’m too late: already, tiny pock marks of sweat have seeped through.
“You should tell Hannah to get into bungee jumping. It will goddamn blow her mind!”
We’re weaving our way through Chinatown, which is vibrant, too awake on a Sunday morning. Chickens hang in windows, knock-off handbags spill from corner vendors, tourists push and elbow their way through. Vanessa’s practically levitating, amped on high from the adrenaline of the leap. A guy tries to sell me a fake Rolex but I contort my face no and say to Vanessa:
“Why would I try to get Hannah into bungee jumping? Also, I’ll probably never speak to her again.”
“Because this is probably exactly how coke feels, but it’s better for you. And you never know. Don’t burn a bridge.”
“Just jump off one instead?”
“Hardy-har,” she says.
We point ourselves north through Little Italy toward Soho, the demographics shifting with each passing block.
There’s a hot new yoga studio on the corner of Broadway and Houston — Yogiholics! — and throngs of skinny women in black capris and Lululemon tanks emerge. They slide on their sunglasses and make plans for brunch. Vanessa and I stop on the corner alongside their pack, as the skinniest, tallest one of them says:
“God, is Oliver not the best teacher in the world? I swear, his pranayama breathing turns me on.”
The light changes and they charge forward, giggling, gossiping, mostly happy, though also probably with a secret Xanax habit just like Raina.
“That’s weird,” I say. “Her yoga instructor is named Oliver. How many hot yoga instructors are named ‘Oliver?’”
“Isn’t yours in India? I checked his Twitter feed last week.”
“World’s most famous yoga guru is addicted to Twitter. How ridiculous,” I say, a little too spitefully.
Vanessa’s eyebrows skewer inward. “Oliver isn’t hurting anyone, even if he is a little ridiculous.”
“You’re right,” I concede. The blood moves over my cheeks. “I’m just having a bit of a shit life moment.” I explain Nicky, and my dad’s lover, and Shawn’s disgusting eggs and coffee and “dude.” Not to mention our argument this morning, to which she was witness. “Shawn and I don’t argue. I mean, we don’t have shit moments.”
“I guess you do though.”
I want to slug her for being right, but instead, I mutter: “Well, I don’t know.”
And she says: “It’s the not knowing that will kill you.”
And I retort: “I’m pretty sure there are other ways to die.”
And she answers: “Of course there are. But at this rate, I wouldn’t count on it.”
—
OLIVER CHANDLER
Yogi, life-lover, naturalist, vegan, student, teacher, wanderer, admirer of beauty. Namaste!
Following: 121
Followers: 104,531
Amazeballs power vinyasa class today at Yogiholics! Thanks ladies for getting your om on! (1 hr)
@RainaChandlerFarley Are you serious? You’re in NYC, and this is how I find out? (3 hrs)
Best cure for jet-lag? A green smoothie from Juiceriffic. Thanks, Juiceriffic! Twitterphoto.com/oc1842 (1 day)
@savvylady A little birdie tells me you’re coming to town. Buzz me. (2 days)
@alliebaby Yay! Can’t wait! Like old times. Balthazar this week? (2 days)
We are all only one with the universe when we let the universe be one with us. (3 days)
Sometimes bad news is actually good news. You just have to dig deeper. (Shout-out to my pops.) (5 days)
Absorb what is being said to you. Listen, and you will hear. (1 week)
—
“Well, he’s evidently in New York,” Vanessa says, clicking onto her home screen on her phone.
“And evidently, still as full of shit as before.”
“You should join Twitter,” she urges.
“Why?” I reply. “I never have anything interesting to say.”
—
Two hours and five miles later, I am back at my apartment, though no more ready to go inside. I know that it will likely make no difference, my entry, my refusal to say Grape!. That whatever will be, will be — we will fight (we never fight), we will say things (though we never say things), we will dance around this and then we’ll move on to wherever we’re supposed to move on to. The thing about half-believing in my father’s philosophies is that they lend themselves to passivity: why bother fighting, why bother speaking in truths when maybe those truths don’t matter. Can’t we just fast-forward to when we’re happy again? Because if we’re going to be happy again, none of that in-between stuff matters.
I insert my key and rotate the doorknob. None of this in-between stuff matters. Apologize.
Shawn is on the couch, a sweat ring around his neck, his workout clothes soaked. He flips off the television when he hears the door open, then swing shut.
“Nicky went to a friend’s for a few hours,” he says, not turning around.
“You went running?” I linger in the foyer, unsure about stepping forward.
“I did go running, Willa. Is that okay with you?”
“What? I was just asking.”
Shawn sighs like this is the most exasperating statement in the world and finally looks toward me. “I don’t want to fight with you.”
“I don’t want to fight with you.” I feel the bubble of tension ebb from my body. My stomach unknots, my adrenaline slows. None of this in-between stuff matters. We’ll go back to where we left off. Of course we can do that. I was silly to think that we couldn’t.
“But…” he starts, then stops. “But…” he starts again.
Shawn, for all of his strengths — and he has many — is no better at this than I am, and my resolve crumbles all over again. Something is wrong here, very, very wrong, and whether or not I should listen to my instincts (and my father has taught me not to), I can’t help but sense that we are about to make a very abrupt, very hard turn into the unknown.
He glances at his hands, shakes his head, and then, quickly, like he’s about to lose his nerve, says:
“Wired2Go wants me to come spend the summer at their corporate office in Palo Alto.”
I exhale. This isn’t devastating. This isn’t an abrupt, hard turn. I mean, it’s not in the diagram that we drew up three years ago, but I can manage Palo Alto for a summer.
“I’m sorry about before. I should have told you about my job.”
The apology bounces off him, barely registering, like he just needs to say what he has rehearsed, to get it out while he has the will to.
I continue: “Anyway, I guess that sort of sucks, but you can fly back for weekends. Or I could come visit. I don’t have a job or anything. I guess I could go with you.” I squint and try to imagine myself in Palo Alto.
“No, that’s not what I mean. I suspected you wouldn’t be excited.”
He sighs again. Then looks at me, really, really looks at me, like it’s the last time he might see me, might take me in. I take a step closer but then stop when he offers: “Willa, don’t you ever feel like…like…like you’re stuck?”
“Stuck? Not really. I mean, no.”
“Well, I guess I do.”
“You feel stuck?” I ask. “With…me?”
“Yes,” he answers, then covers himself with: “No. No. No, that’s not what I meant.”
The room spins, and I press a palm against the wall to steady myself.
“Is this about Grape!?” I whisper when I feel like I might not pass out.
“Grape?”
“Grape!, yes, GRAPE!. The club you went to when you were supposed to be at basketball with your brainiac squad who worship you because you happen to have been blessed with better cheekbones but are still a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” I pray that he doesn’t mock my stupid metaphors. Why did I choose such a stupid metaphor?
“How do you…” He doesn’t finish his sentence, and I realize that he thinks it doesn’t even matter.
“Are you cheating on me? Seriously? Are you fucking having an affair with some girl from Grape! who has, like, a fertile uterus and better boobs?”
“What? No!” He stands now, but doesn’t move nearer. “I’m just…what?”
I ask him again, more quietly now, because I have finally said it, and I need to hear the honest answer, not the first denial.
“Shawn. Just tell me. Are you cheating on me? Am I not enough?”
“No!” he snaps, too loudly, setting me off again. “I’m just…ugh. Listen, Willa, this is hard.”
“What’s so hard? Your affair? Your stupid leather jacket? Your discovery of golf…or…or running on Sundays without me? What?”
He sits back down.
“Shit. I don’t know.”
We stay on pause for a few minutes, him staring at his hands, me pressed against the foyer wall, unable to find a way to say whatever it is to mend this. His phone buzzes — I can hear it in his pants pocket — but he doesn’t pick it up. When I can no longer bear it, I say:
“So…what? I don’t get what you’re saying.”
“I guess what I’m saying…” He cracks his knuckles. “Is that I’m trying to make life more interesting. I’m not cheating.” His voice breaks here, and I can’t help but feel something splinter inside of me too. “I went to Grape! because it was different, because, well…it was fun. The guys wanted to, and Jesus, I wanted to. Go out, do something new, try something new. I mean, I love you. I do. But I kind of feel like my life is one fucking Together To-Do! app.” He sighs. “I’m in a rut.”
“So get out of it.”
“I’m trying! Don’t you think that’s what I’m doing?”
A rut. It’s only that he’s in a rut.
“So what does Palo Alto have to do with this?”
He doesn’t answer right away. His phone beeps twice again in the silence. Then he says:
“I was just thinking, you know, maybe I could go by myself. Or take Nicky for a while.”
“Maybe you could go by yourself?” Bile rises up from my stomach, my easy gag reflex announcing itself at the first sign of trouble. I swallow deeply, but the wave of nausea doesn’t pass.
“You know…like…a break or something?”
“Like…a break or something? From…me?”
“From us. Not, like, anything legal. I mean, I love you.”
“I don’t…where is this coming from?” I slide to the floor and cross my legs, tucking my head down so the room stops spinning. Xanax. That’s what I need. I remind myself to call Raina, to start seeing her more regularly. “I can learn to play golf! I can, like, go to a Yankees game!”
I hear his footsteps, and then he’s above me.
“Do you really want to be Shilla forever?”
I look up at him.
“You know about Shilla?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I?”
“I hate baseball, but I mean, I’d go with you,” I start to cry now. I remember that he bought me a gift certificate to golf lessons a few months ago, but I tucked it into a drawer at work and promptly lost it. “I’ll learn how to golf.”
“But you don’t need to go with me; you don’t have to learn if you don’t want to,” he says. “That’s kind of the point. That I need to go without you, but that you don’t want me to go.”
I feel the snot running down my upper lip. “What the hell is wrong with Shilla anyway?”
“Nothing’s wrong with Shilla.” He’s quiet. “But maybe we need a little distance to start being Shawn and Willa again. I kind of liked us from before.”
I don’t reply, so he says:
“I reread your dad’s book, and the tenets of it make a lot of sense.” He rattles off the table of contents. “Embrace the Master Universe Way. Accept inertia. Close your eyes and follow the map. Be what you already are. Set yourself free.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Those are words that wrap up his philosophies in neat little packages. They’re words. They don’t mean anything.” I’m surprised to give voice to this notion. “And you’re not, like, accepting inertia. You’re changing it! You’re screwing up our plan!”
“It’s like the epigraph in the book says,” Shawn continues as if he hasn’t even heard me. “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours forever. If it doesn’t, it was never meant to be.’”
I say nothing, so he suggests:
“Maybe it’s something like that. Maybe you and I are something like that.”
“So you’re setting me free?”
“Maybe not for forever.”
“Forever doesn’t matter. Now is the only thing that does.”
“Well, then for now,” he says.
And he sets me free.
8
The Rules of Shawn and Willa’s Pseudo-Separation
*as agreed to on June 12 and to dissolve on agreed-upon date in August
1. Shawn and Willa will have no contact — barring an emergency such as death — during the designated time period.
2. If one party does contact the other, the contact
ee is under no obligation to return the engaging party’s email/phone call/text/Facebook message, etc.
3. Within the designated time period, the named parties can behave as if they are single.
3a. This means that should anything physical happen with a new party, there will be no repercussions in the union should the named parties decide to remain married.
3b. It is also understood that should sexual relations occur, the sexually active party must use protection.
4. While neither party can be prevented from googling/Facebook-ing the other party, this is highly discouraged.
4a. However, both parties agree not to change their Facebook status to “it’s complicated” without consulting the other party.
5. Should the need for communication arise but is non-urgent, for example, about Nicky’s whereabouts, each party can check a mutually agreed upon email account: [email protected].
6. Have fun!
9
Shawn leaves on a Wednesday. An average Wednesday by anyone else’s standard but anything but average for me. We said our awkward goodbyes (“Speak to you in August!” “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do — ha ha ha!”), and then he goes to kiss me, but I turn my head, so we sort of bump noses while our lips pass over each other.
Nicky stands in the living room and makes an explosion noise with his cheeks, then his hands follow — his fingers mimicking a grenade, and Shawn says:
“Come on, dude, don’t be like that. I’ll see you next week in Palo Alto. Wired2Go has the coolest office ever. You can zipline from one floor to the next. You’ll love it.”
“Sounds cool,” Nicky says, then heads to the guest room and locks himself inside.
“They also have Pac-Man and Donkey Kong in the common room!” Shawn calls after him. He rubs his forehead and says, “Shit. Like this is one more thing he needs.”
“Another child of divorce,” I say flatly.
“We’re not getting divorced, Willa. And I feel terrible for him.” He pauses and I wonder if maybe he won’t change his mind, if maybe Nicky is the one he’ll stay for, but I can be the one he discovers he needs. I should say this — I should scream please don’t go!! but my old habits get the best of me: why fight it when whatever will happen will happen? In this moment, I hate myself for my passivity, so I offer:
The Theory of Opposites Page 7
