“What happened, sweetie?” Theo asks.
Her chin quivers, so her mom states:
“We’ve told her a million times not to climb on the bookshelf to get the remote. This time, the entire thing fell on top of her.”
Silent tears tumble out of the girl’s eyes.
“It’s okay, honey,” I say. “I’m a terrible listener too.”
“Really?” Her voice is so very small.
“Really. You wouldn’t believe how many times someone has to tell me something before I finally believe it.”
I feel Theo’s hand against my shoulder, and he gives me a squeeze.
“I’m getting a rainbow cast,” the little girl says. “They said they could give me a rainbow.”
“Then I’ll get a rainbow cast too. That sounds nice. I will take the rainbow.” I close my eyes and the room sways. I open them again and don’t dare turn to look back toward Theo, though I know he’s there, right behind me, holding me up.
“Do you believe in pots of gold?” she asks. “And leprechauns?”
“I believe in everything.”
Though I also believe that when the Vicodin wears off, this will no longer be true.
—
Vanessa insists that I accept a date with Theo.
“I dare you,” she says, as we stroll through the Pike Place Market, sampling fresh nectarines.
“I’m starting to find that annoying,” I say back. “You only dare me to do things that I don’t want to do.”
“Precisely. And it’s not as if I’ve been wrong. It’s not as if you’re having the worst time of your life.”
“Well, the hike up the mountain was the worst time of my life. But I’ll concede that the baseball game was not horrid.” I wave my rainbow cast in her face. “Of course, this happened.”
“Hmmm,” she demurs. “I guess perhaps we’ve tweaked your master plan.”
“I’m not moving here. I’m not, like, getting dreadlocks and joining a drum circle.”
“That’s not a bad idea.” She types “drum circle” into her phone. “No one said you had to move here, but you’ve had a glimpse of what your life could have been. What else your life could be. You open up your landscape.”
“With Theo. You want me to open up my landscape with Theo.”
“Not with Theo! Or maybe with Theo! Theo isn’t the point here. Finding out what else is out there for you is! Stop being scared of the unknown.”
“You’re forgetting that Theo didn’t want to marry me. And I’ve resolved to fight for Shawn.”
“Hmmm,” she says in reply.
“Hmmm,” I mock her back.
“Just go,” she finally sighs. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
—
Theo is waiting for me when I meet him on The University of Washington campus the next evening. I didn’t agree to dinner. He asked for dinner, he wanted me to say Y.E.S. to dinner — but dinner felt too risky. Risky because though I have told Vanessa that my version of resisting inertia is to try to win Shawn back, the other version is me resisting thinking about Theo every last second. Because since the emergency room visit, I have spent an awful lot of time thinking about Theo, about the squeeze of his hand on my shoulder, about his easy laugh at my lack of lucidness, about the way he comes to my rescue when I don’t realize that I need saving. I don’t want to think about Theo — resist inertia and think about Shawn! — and certainly, with my current state of affairs, there are plenty of things to consider other than Theo.
THINGS TO THINK OF OTHER THAN THEO:
1. My mom is a late-in-life lesbian.
2. Raina’s reaction to mom’s self-discovery. (That we should fly to Palm Beach immediately and bring her home.)
3. Oliver’s headline news on Access Hollywood: celebrity yogi-types have started wearing taupe ribbons (“Because taupe is the color of peace,” Halle Berry explained to Billy Bush last night) as a public display of Ollie’s defense.
4. Shawn’s Facebook page, which I checked again last night after taking half a Vicodin for my broken hand. I am 99% certain that he must be unaware that JDate posts a live update every time Shawn logs in (which is strange for several reasons — one, that Shawn isn’t aware because he is nothing if not tech-savvy, and two, that JDate would think that this is a good idea because it’s sort of embarrassing to have this in your feed but maybe they think that it lets single people know that there are other normal single people out there, and they are on JDate. Which raises the whole question of if Shawn is single, and surely, that is something I should be contemplating more than my ex-boyfriend. I do give it some thought, but not as much as you’d think.) I bet Cilla Zuckerberg would never check Mark’s page if he dumped her. I bet she would basically implode Facebook at its very core, like, literally go in and set their server on fire. I thought of this last night and eventually logged off, but not before trying to break into Erica Stoppard’s profile and see all of her pictures. (She has hers set to private, which really sucked.)
5. Nicky, who took a right turn two days ago while in Palo Alto, likely in response to what he calls Shallow Alto, has definitely discovered God. Or his Jewish roots. He starts and ends his emails with “Shalom,” and I don’t think he’s being ironic. I should devote more time assessing the mental health of 12-year-olds and if this sort of thing is normal. (Also, I should email his mom, but I’m hoping Shawn has already done so. But of course, I can’t ask Shawn and don’t want to be an alarmist. What do I email Amanda? “Dear Amanda, your son has found God. Should we stage an intervention?” No. That seems odd.)
—
Theo is standing in front of the library checking his phone when I see him. He’s in skinny khakis and a blue button-down, because he was giving a guest lecture called The Art of Persuasion to a grad-school summer class, but he’s rolled the sleeves up to the elbows and looks more like a student than a professor.
Early July in Seattle is perfection. The sky is crisp and clear and blue and makes you forget that summer doesn’t go on forever. It is not too hot, not too cold, and the air is clean and optimistic. The trees are cut from a storybook, and on campus, they burst with life, towering over you, ahead of you, offering insulation from the world outside.
I watch him for a moment as he pounds something into his phone, solving some sort of crisis for someone much more important than me, and I try to consider what would have happened if I’d just said “yes,” back in the car when he asked me. At the time, I spoke impulsively, but once I did, I couldn’t take it back. And when he didn’t try to convince me — I had expected him to convince me, and then of course I would change my mind and go with him — I couldn’t exactly beg.
He sees me now and smiles. “I was sure you were going to bail.”
I walk toward him. “I’ll be honest, I considered it.”
Though I hadn’t. I hadn’t considered bailing for a moment. That was the unfiltered truth, the one I’d share with him if I had the guts to. But I never had the guts, so I just step closer and then kiss him on the cheek.
He pulls me in for a hug. “You look nice.”
“You’ve only seen me hiking up a mountain and in a bathrobe the next day. Oh, and doped up at the ER.”
“True.”
“So I could only go up from there.”
“You looked great before.” He grins and nudges up his glasses.
“You are such a bullshit artist,” I reply, and he grins bigger.
“Nice cast.”
“It’s rainbow!” I wiggle my hand in front of his nose.
“Come on,” he says. “Let’s walk.”
“Where to?” I say. “I’ve never been here.”
“Let’s go anywhere.” He loops his elbow in mine. “Let’s get lost.”
—
There’s a secret passage on the UW campus, or so Theo tells me. This might just be how he woos me, how he charms me, and leads me down the figurative path again so quickly. Because it’s not really a passage, not really all that secret. We wind through the deserted back roads of the campus, past the administration buildings, past the intricate gothic halls of learning, until it is just the two of us, everyone else having faded away. Occasionally, a student or a TA walks by and nods, but mostly, it’s just us. He tells me how he discovered his cancer (“one morning while washing myself in the shower”), and I tell him about how I don’t really know what I’m doing with my life (“I don’t really know what I’m doing with my life”). How much has changed for him, and how little has actually changed for me.
We don’t speak of Shawn, and I don’t dare ask him how he came to propose to his now ex-fiancée when he wasn’t supposed to ever believe in marriage.
I want to ask:
Is it because you loved her so much more than you loved me?
Is it because it wasn’t marriage that you didn’t want — it was me?
Is it because you didn’t think you could love someone forever but it turned out that if it were someone less needy, less uncertain, you could?
But I say none of this because for now, it’s so much easier not to. I’m still married, after all, and we’re only taking a walk. We wander until we find ourselves down on the waters of Lake Washington.
It’s dusk now, the sun illuminating the water in ways that transcend the imagination: pinks and reds and blues and greens, all blended together, all magic. Two scullers row past, and then behind them, the UW crew. The coxswain’s voice booms out, too large for her body, the oars and arms synchronized following suit. We linger on the railing overlooking the water, not saying much, just taking in the perfect moment of bright air and sunny heat and optimistic uncertainty.
A motorboat cruises in through the passageway leading to the open channel that lies ahead — three guys drinking beers, enjoying the evening. One of them looks up, spies us and shouts:
“Hey dude! Don’t just stand there! Kiss her.”
“Naw,” Theo yells.
“Definitely!” he hollers.
“You think?” Theo responds.
“Go for it!” another one of them bellows.
“I’m okay!” I shout. “I’m fine!”
“But you could be better!” the second one roars as they cruise by.
“No, really, I’m good!” I yell. But I can feel my cheeks redden, my heart race ahead.
“Do it, do it, do it!” the three of them chant in unison.
And so Theo leans in and shrugs. And then he grins. And then he kisses me. And because he does so, and because I am resisting inertia, and because if I’m really being honest with myself, I want him to — I let him.
—
Later, he takes me to Husky stadium, to which he has private entry (“I worked with the football team on a situation,” he says) and we sit on the fifty-yard line just because we can. The lights are on and the sky is dark, and I feel like I’m back in high school, though in high school, no one ever did this for me. I stare up at the sky and think of Shawn every once in a while, but then I remember the rules of our break: that there are no rules, and that I’m free to act on impulse, to act on whatever I damn please. Then I think of Vanessa’s theory of opposites, and how impulse is exactly what we’re aiming for, that our instincts — my father’s philosophies be damned — are really all that we have to change our fate.
So I sit on the fifty-yard line, and I try not to do anything to ruin it.
Eventually, we run out of small talk, so Theo examines his hands, and I examine his hands too, which are slim and somehow beautiful. Then he takes my chin in his palm and says:
“I don’t know if I’ve ever been happier.”
And I deflect: “Don’t say that. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
He drops his palm. “Who does?”
“You. You always know what you’re doing, which is why you’re so good at it.”
“Good at what?”
And I say: “Life. You’re good at life.”
And he says: “I wasn’t always good at life.”
I know him well enough to know that he means his complicated childhood with his miserable parents and their frigid home and the endless afternoons he was left to closed doors and quiet space. Eventually, he filled that space himself, by helping his elderly neighbor with her errands, by single-handedly implementing a neighborhood ice cream truck. By now, Theodore’s left his childhood so far behind that it’s not even a glimpse in his rearview mirror anymore. It’s another time, he’s another person. I’m surprised he even remembers it, much less references it. But I suppose our childhoods are seeds inside of us that plant roots forever, even when we’re certain their life cycles have long since been extinguished. How long will it take for my own roots to loosen their grip?
“Besides,” Theo continues, “I’m better at life with you in it.”
And I can’t think of anything to say to that, so I just sort of crunch up my shoulders, but he doesn’t accept that because he’s Theo. Instead, he weaves his fingers into mine, pulls me up, and says: “Follow me.”
And because it is what I do best, I do.
—
Theo lives on a houseboat on Lake Union. It takes a moment to adjust to the ever-so-slight sense of motion, the rocking back and forth, like you’re ready to set sail. He brings us both beers, and we sit on his deck and watch the motorboats lazily glide across the water, moving onward to wherever they call home.
I try not to look at him because if I look at him, I’ll betray myself. I’ll spit out everything that I am thinking, things like:
This is where I would have lived with you?
This could have been our home?
I can see how much I could have liked it here.
So this is the road not taken.
Why didn’t I say Y.E.S.?
Eventually, he sets his beer down on the patio table, and he reaches for my good hand. So I take one more swig of my bottle, and clasp his hand and let him lead me wherever he wants to. That’s what Theo always did. He stood in front of me, so I never had to face the wind. Shawn does that too, I presume, though not as well and not really any longer. Or maybe Shawn and I together turned our backs on the wind and walked in the opposite direction. We spent so much time moving away from whatever challenged us that life, for him at least, grew dim, too calm to be a life worth taking interest in.
Theo kisses me in the living room and my knees hinge just a little bit. I’d forgotten how he kisses. How slowly, how intimately, like he could read your mind and move to wherever you wanted him to move next.
“Is this okay?” he asks.
“It’s okay,” I say. Then worry that he’s misunderstood. “I mean, it’s better than o-kay.”
He laughs and kisses me again. “Willa, you don’t have to keep explaining yourself to me. I know you. I get it.”
“You don’t know the new me.” I’m not sure why I say this.
He pulls back and studies me, then smile lines appear around his eyes, then his grin catches up to them.
“God, I’d love to meet her though. The new you. Rainbow cast and all.”
We sink into his sofa and he kisses me for the third time, and I’m so lost in the moment that I think I’m imagining the buzzing in the background. It’s endless, continual, like a hive of angry bees swarming his kitchen. Finally, he stops and says:
“Your phone has rung about twenty times. Maybe you should get it?”
His lips are swollen from moving against mine, and I can feel the stubble burn on my cheeks. I don’t want to stop. Resisting inertia means that I shouldn’t stop.
But then the angry hive buzzes again, so I reluctantly
push myself up from the couch and dig into my purse.
Yes indeed. I reach right into the hornets’ nest.
Family.
20
Missed calls: 27
Texts: 23
Voicemails: 8
I steady myself against the counter in Theo’s kitchen and dare myself to listen to my messages though I don’t know if I have the stomach to. Something is wrong. Something has gone cataclysmically wrong. Good news never comes like this, in a wave. Maybe, I guess, if you got an Oscar nomination or something. But not for lay folk. Not for me.
No, this rush to find me could only mean one thing: disaster.
I inhale and find my guts and click on my voicemail as steadily as my shaking hands will allow. I think of so many people whom I love, so many people who could be felled in a quick swoop. No one is immune after all to life’s unpredictable and dangerous whimsy.
Shawn. Nicky. Vanessa. Raina. Ollie. Grey. Bobby. My mom.
It’s none of the first few who spring to mind, however. But it’s the one I should have thought right off the bat. Because he would have told me as much. He practically predicted it.
My dad. It’s my dad. The one who has succumbed to the very thing he always predicted he would: inevitability.
—
Voicemail from Raina Chandler-Farley
Willa! Where the eff are you??? Honestly, this is getting ridiculous! You’re in goddamn Seattle! Not on the fricking moon! Have you not seen any of our texts? Jeremy and I have been trying to reach you for the past three goddamn hours! What time is it there now? It’s, like, nine o’clock at night! Are you out clubbing or something? Is this part of your experiment to find the new you? Please call me. (Rustling of something and then a large boom.) Jesus, Grey! I told you not to throw the football in the apartment! Where is Gloria? GO GET HER. Willa? Are you there? Anyway, please call me as soon as you get this! It’s about dad. (Silence.) Well, I may as well just come out and say it since by the time you actually decide to pick up the phone and get this, he might be dead. But…shit...Jesus…(quieter now), dad’s had a heart attack. A bad one. Something about a ventricle failure…blocked arteries. I don’t know. I don’t really understand it. Please. Just…come home.
The Theory of Opposites Page 15
