“Nancy!” I say, clapping my hands together.
“Fancy Nancy!” Oliver says.
“Hello, Nancy,” Raina offers, then says to our mom: “I didn’t know if you were coming up. It was hard to reach you.”
“I’ve been living a life that doesn’t revolve around your father.” Mom sets down her bag on a console table and fluffs her hair. She looks healthy, vibrant, pink and shiny. “Forgive me if I wasn’t on speed dial.”
“Mom,” Raina says. “It’s complicated. We know. But…he almost died.”
“Your dad is well aware that death is part of life. He wouldn’t want us to make a big to-do. It’s part of ‘God’s plan’.” Now she’s the one to hold up air quotes, and in that moment, she looks so very much like Raina.
“Did someone mention God?” Nicky says, wandering in eating a Go-Gurt.
“Are you wearing a yarmulke?” Nancy asks, speaking for the first time.
“I am, ma’am.”
She lifts her eyebrows like she’s impressed, and since no one has anything much more to say, we head to the kitchen where Gloria is preparing pork chops, which Nicky has renounced eating because they are trayf.
“I heard about your marital troubles,” Nancy says to me later as we gather around the kitchen island and fill our plates. Raina leans over and slices my pork chop since I can’t maneuver a knife and a fork.
I check the clock on the microwave and wonder when the doctors will call to implore us to come back, to tell us that he is awake. They shooed us out tonight, saying he was resting, saying nothing more could be done until the surgery to repair the damage, but…it didn’t feel right not to be there. I look around the kitchen. Why am I the only one who thinks it doesn’t feel right not to be there?
“Shawn’s having a bit of an early mid-life crisis,” I say to Nancy. “It’s complicated.”
“Marriage always is,” she replies.
Raina snorts but then says, “Sorry. You’re right. Marriage is.”
I eye Jeremy to see if he’s giving her some sort of look, but he’s not. He just sips his wine and accepts the fact that it’s public knowledge that marriage is complicated, even if he should be offended that his wife is the one announcing it.
“Well, you’re not married,” I say to Nancy. I mean, obviously. You’re a single, gorgeous lesbian!
“I was once. A great, great man. Not like your dad.” She catches herself. “That came out wrong. I only know about your dad through your mom.”
“He can be a real a-hole,” my mom offers, still nibbling on her pork chop bone.
“Mom! He’s at death’s door!” I bark. “Can you stop?” I glance to Oliver for backup, but he just gives me this weird look like whaddya gonna do, or namaste! Or something. Who the hell knows? No one in my family was ever good at backup, I realize, and spear the meat with my fork.
“I was widowed at fifty-seven,” Nancy says. “Pancreatic cancer.”
“That’s terrible,” I say.
“We loved each other well for a very long time. That he died was terrible. But when he was alive, it was wonderful. So I have that.”
“I admire that attitude so very much.” Ollie’s speaking in this weird, soothing tone. “It’s what my students are searching for. Perhaps you’ll speak at one of my classes.”
“Mom,” Raina interrupts. “You know I’m the first one in the family to come down hard on Dad, but...I mean…he’s…”
“He’s fine!” my mom states succinctly. “He is going to be fine. Do you really think that a little ventricle trouble will take out your father?”
“I don’t think that ventricle trouble is something that you can really control,” Raina says.
“Well, if anyone can, it’s your dad. And the doctors said that he’s stable! And besides, you know what he says: everybody dies sometime.”
And Nicky chimes in: “Does this mean I can stop researching how to properly sit shiva?”
And we all say: “Yes.”
So he says: “Okay.” And then, “L’chaim.” And then excuses himself from the table.
“Frankly, nobody’s stable in this family,” Raina says, and everyone laughs a little to diffuse the tension, but we also take deep gulps of our wine. I can’t help but look at the clock again and wonder when they will call with good news.
“Stability is where you choose to plant your roots, where you find your foundation,” Ollie says.
Nancy looks at him sideways but says nothing. The rest of us just ignore him.
“I think it’s lovely that you loved your husband so much,” I say to her. “In light of…the complications.”
“Oh, you mean that I’m with your mom now?” She laughs and reaches for my mom’s hand. Raina pales. “Listen, life is short. Be happy. That’s all I know.”
Ollie exhales like this is the most brilliant thing he has ever heard.
Raina refills her glass, and Jeremy rubs the back of his neck.
I lean back and think: Life is short. Be happy.
That shouldn’t be so hard.
—
Text from: Theodore Brackton
To: Willa Chandler-Golden
I’m sticking around for a while. Can we grab a drink?
Text from: Willa Chandler-Golden
To: Shawn Golden
Know I’m not supposed to text u, but I thought mayB we cld get a drink? Or take in a game? Yankees? They’re baseball, right? (Har, har, har.)
Text from: Vanessa Pines
To: Willa Chandler-Golden
I know you r mid-family crisis. Need a drink?
Text from: Shawn Golden
To: Willa Chandler-Golden
Jammed 4 the next day or so, working l8t. Talk Tues?
Text from: Theodore Brackton
To: Vanessa Pines
Really want to pursue this but I want to give her space. WDYT?
Text from: Vanessa Pines
To: Theodore Brackton
Since when do u ever need advice from any1? U founded Y.E.S. for God’s sake. Here’s advice frm r nxt book chapter: open ur eyes & life follows.
Text from: Theodore Brackton
To: Vanessa Pines
So you say Y.E.S.?
Text from: Vanessa Pines
To: Theodore Brackton
Honey, I say Y.E.S. to everything. I’m not the 1 u shld be asking.
22
Daring Yourself to a Better Life!
By Vanessa Pines and Willa Chandler
PART THREE: OPEN YOUR EYES AND WRITE YOUR OWN MAP
Summary: It sounds so easy, doesn’t it? Open your eyes, look all around you, breathe it in and follow that breath toward wherever it takes you! Richard Chandler advises you to do the opposite. To close your eyes. When has anything good ever come from closing yourself off to anything? (Well, sure, there was that lousy ex-boyfriend who kept texting you for sex, but readers, we know that you’re smart enough to deduce the difference between closing yourself off to a douche bag and closing yourself off to life.) Try it. Try it now. (After you’ve read this paragraph.) Close your eyes. Focus on your other senses. You hear more, yes. You might smell more. You might be more aware of the goings-on around you. But then pop open your eyes and see, really see, the beauty and the colors and the brightness and the contrast and the faces and the smiles and the triumph and the grief and the wisdom that is all around you. See it all and learn from it and then be big and brave and chart your course. Write your own map. Get lost. Then get found. Closing your eyes really just means closing a door. Never close a door when you have the chance to leave it open.
—
My dad wakes up two days later, on Tuesday. Vanessa is taking the day to write, and since I don’t have anything better to do, I tell he
r I’ll just peek over her shoulder and won’t bother her at all. But she says, “Seriously, go to the hospital, Willa, even if you don’t want to. Don’t close yourself off because you’re scared. Open your eyes. Write your map.”
I didn’t want to go, it’s true. Hospitals remind me of Theo, and I don’t want to think of Theo, and also, all I do now is weep when I think of my dad and what life would mean without him.
Raina has gone into the office for the day to prepare for Ollie’s arraignment, and my mom and Nancy are taking a Skyline Harbor Cruise (“It’s a lesbian thing,” she says to me before kissing me on the way out the door), so I’m the only one sitting at his bedside today. I’m passing the time figuring out how to join Twitter when he comes to; he must watch me for a good minute before he makes re-entry into the world of the conscious.
Finally, he clears his throat, and I shriek and bolt upward, dropping my phone as I do.
“William,” he says weakly. “I’m so thirsty. What happened?”
I surge to be next to him and clutch his hand, but it’s limp against mine, flaccid, near dead.
“You had a heart attack, Dad,” I say, my cheeks already damp, my nose so quickly running down my chin. “But you’re going to be okay. We thought we might have lost you. But we didn’t.”
He bobs his head almost imperceptibly, as if any movement at all is asking too much of him. His skin is waxy and wan, his hair looks thinner, his lips like sandpaper.
“I’m so glad you’re awake,” I say. Maybe I should have resented him more, for my lost childhood, for my wandering ambition, for my incomplete sense of self. But here, on his near-literal deathbed, I can’t be angry. Anger would be the hard choice, the one that requires more effort, and this time, I don’t have the guts for it.
The doctor rushes in with his team of nurses, and as quickly as my dad was awake, I am ushered out of the room, like I’m disposable, like I can so easily be cast off. I know that I’m taking it too personally, that they’re just trying to do their job, but I wish that my dad had asked them to let me stay. I peer through the tiny window in the door and wonder why he didn’t ask to let me stay.
The nurses move all sorts of tubes around, and the doctor speaks to my father with words that I cannot hear. But then one of the nurses exits, and for a sliver of space and time, the air between my dad and me is connected. I press myself forward to hear: I want to hear them telling him that everything is going to be okay. That they will perform his surgery now, and he’ll be as good as new. And then maybe my dad will reply that he has to be good as new because he doesn’t want to leave us, to leave me, because he and I have so much unfinished business to muddle through.
Instead what I hear is the most crushing blow of all.
My dad says weakly, “You know that I signed a DNR, right? I don’t want to be resuscitated if I go. I’m not afraid to die. Everybody dies, after all.”
The doctor answers, “Everyone does, sir. But not today.”
—
My eyes are swollen and achy from crying, but I have been locked inside a stall in the ladies room in my dad’s ward for over an hour, and I know that if I stay much longer, one of the nurses will suspect I have, like, Ebola and take me away on a gurney. I want to text Theo and ask him to come find me. To lead me out of here like he used to lead me out of everything. But I can’t make this about Theo, and though I shouldn’t make this about Shawn, I text him instead. Through better or worse. Sickness and health.
This is sickness. And he should be here.
I press send and sigh a deep sigh and push myself out of the bathroom stall onto my wobbly legs and go in search of daylight.
On my way past the gift shop that’s stuffed with cutesy teddy bears and withered flowers, I do a double-take. She does too. She looks so different now. Skinnier. Healthier, but pale. Still though, shinier, with clean hair and a decent night’s sleep. She almost looks pretty.
“Hannah?” I say. “Oh my God. Hi!” It’s my old boss, Hannah. The cocaine-addicted, recently rehabbed Hannah.
“Willa Chandler-Golden! Get out.”
“You look amazing,” I say, “I heard…”
“Oh, you can say it. You heard I went to rehab.”
“Yes,” I concede because there’s no less awkward way to come out with it. “I heard you went to rehab.”
“And I heard your husband left you, your brother got arrested, and your dad almost died.” She pauses. “I read the Post.”
“When you put it that way, you got the better end of our unemployment tenure.”
She laughs, and I muster something close to a laugh, too. I wonder if she ever replaced her Live Free or Die poster, and lose myself for a moment in the memory of that last day, when she unceremoniously fired me, when my life tipped off its balance.
“I’m here getting some tests, picking up some meds.” She falters for a breath. “Trying to pick up the pieces.”
“Good for you,” I say.
“It’s not like I had much of a choice,” she says. “Are you keeping busy?”
I shrug. “I’m working on this book project. It’s kind of fun.”
“That’s cool,” she replies. “What’s the book?”
“You know that show Dare You!? My friend and I are writing their book. And it’s sort of about my dad’s book. I don’t know.”
“I love that show!” she squeals. “That show totally kicks ass!”
“Yeah,” I say, wondering why I never knew that about her before. “It’s okay.”
“Oh, Willa Chandler-Golden. That’s the thing about you. You’re always, ‘I don’t know’ and ‘it’s okay’ when you should fucking know and it’s pretty fucking awesome! That’s what you should be dared to do: accept that your life is so goddamn great!”
“Besides my brother and my husband and my dad,” I say, but I’m in on the joke, and she laughs so hard her face turns tomato-red and she shouts, “Oh em gee, I’m gonna pee in my pants!”
Then we hug goodbye like she never balled up her Live Free or Die poster and chucked it at my head.
“Well, don’t be a stranger. Email me. Maybe you’ll be a contestant! How fricking cool would that be?”
“Oh,” I deflect, before meandering down the hall. “I doubt it. It’s not that kind of book. And even if it were, it’s not for me.”
She shakes her head and chuckles.
“I get it,” she says. “Some people watch, some people do. At least you know you’ll never be eaten by a bear.”
—
Shawn meets me on the 96th Street entrance to Central Park. He’s waiting when I get there, though his downtown commute was much further than my walk across the street from the hospital. He’s on a bench, eating an ice cream sandwich, and I stare while the light changes from red to green, wondering if he thought to buy me one too. When we first started dating, back when we went to Hop Lee and made out for free egg rolls, he always would have thought to buy me one too.
He looks up, so I wave and take an awkward quick step as if to feign that I was in motion the whole time and not just standing there spying.
“Hey.” He kisses my cheek, as I sit. “I actually happened to be in the neighborhood, so I was right around the corner.”
“Oh. Aren’t you working downtown?”
He bounces his head up and down. “Yup. But I had a thing.”
I want to ask: what sort of thing? A thing with Erica Stoppard? The old Shilla wouldn’t have a “thing” without the other. Any sort of “thing” would be programmed in our Together To-Do! app, for God’s sake.
Instead I manage, “Thanks for coming. I know it’s breaking the rules. Or whatever. But…I don’t know if I can do this alone.”
“Is your dad worse?”
“No. He’s better.”
His brow wrinkles and he see
ms a little confused by this, that I need him now, when maybe everything is going to be okay.
Finally he says: “So that’s good news, right?”
And I say: “It seems that way, but it’s really not.”
His phone beeps a double-beep, and he tries not to look at the incoming text, holding his eyes to mine, but eventually, he gives in to his weakness and holds up a quick finger to me and types quickly with his other hand. Before I can think it through, I fold my good hand over his Blackberry and say:
“Please. Don’t. Just give me you for ten minutes.”
And he looks sad, weary really. “Willa, we can’t figure this out in ten minutes.”
So I plead: “I get why you were bored. I get golf and Grape! and the mousse and the leather jacket.” He looks perplexed, so I clarify: “Like that ridiculous Varvatos leather jacket that’s meant for an Italian male model?”
And he says: “You don’t like the jacket?”
And I exhale: “I think we’re not communicating.”
And he nods: “That was sort of the point. Of the break. To start fresh.”
“Well, my dad almost died, Shawn!” I’m on my feet, angry now, that I can’t rely on him like I used to be able to, that he has the audacity to make this about him when it is about a million other things, not just him.
“Willa…” he starts, then drifts off because he doesn’t know what to interject to change anything. He squeezes his eyes shut like he has a migraine.
The Theory of Opposites Page 17
