“Well, a pocket full of aces to him,” she says. “Maybe he’s trying to reclaim some good karma after the world of pain he caused you a few years ago.”
“Or he’s trying to do something of merit with his life before he dies,” I say seriously. “He just found out he has ALS.”
She pauses, her fork halfway to her mouth, and then lowers it. “What do you mean, ALS?”
“You know.” I try to keep my voice from breaking. “Lou Gehrig’s disease. Like Stephen Hawking . . .” I can’t find additional words.
“Shit,” she says, just like Aaron did.
Oh, crap—Aaron. He was conducting an experimental surgery on a preemie with sagittal craniosynostosis today. He and his team spent so many days preparing to help this child, and I just realized that I forgot to call and wish him luck this morning—I’ve been too preoccupied thinking about Wesley. I glance at my watch. Aaron said it would be a ten-hour surgery. There’s no point in calling now.
“But there’s no cure for that,” Daphne says about Wesley, like I might not have already been all over the Internet, learning about the disease.
“Yeah.”
“Shit, Mer,” she says again. “That’s just . . . My God. And he doesn’t even have family around to take care of him at the end.”
Wesley always hated being an only child.
“That’s got to be some kind of serious torment.” She looks at me searchingly. “I mean for you. To see him after so long and then find out that he’s got this fatal disease.”
I recognize her psych training pushing to get through, but she knows I don’t want to be shrinked. I went through enough hours of that when my mom was sick.
“So, what are you going to do?” she asks.
“What do you mean, what am I going to do? What can I do?” Our waiter walks by with dishes for another table, and the smell of garlic overwhelms me. “He’s not my guy anymore. I think I have to just stand back and let it happen, right? I can’t be all about Wesley when I’m supposed to marry Aaron at the end of the year. Aaron’s a patient guy, but he has his limits.”
“Aaron is a patient guy,” she repeats, “but I know you, and you will never forgive yourself if you don’t try to help Wesley in some way, or just hang out with him a little before he gets too sick to be with people. You should think hard on this because it’s not like you’ll be able to change your mind later.” She pauses. “And there’s a limit to how jealous Aaron can get over it since he knows Wesley won’t be around forever. The ‘dying man’ exemption or whatever.”
I flinch at her words, at the thought that Wesley’s time is limited, but I know she’s right.
“You’re not thinking of going to him, are you? Giving up on Aaron, risking everything to nurse Wesley through his dying days?”
Only now that she’s put the thought into words do I realize that yes, that is exactly what I’ve been thinking about. Would a few more months with Wesley be worth sacrificing the many promises of my future? I wonder what exactly I owe Wesley and what I owe myself.
“Well, you better not. You have too much to lose. You know I’ve got no love lost for Wesley after the way he treated you. Even so,” she continues, “I know you, Miss Meredith, and you will not be comfortable with yourself if you don’t reach out to him in some way. I’m still not sure he deserves your time and effort, but there’s something between all and nothing, isn’t there?”
And that’s the conversation that leads me immediately back to Google when I return to my office after lunch, and straight onto the website for Thunder Chicken. Nicola has disappeared somewhere, and I take advantage of the privacy her absence is affording me. I dial the number for the restaurant, and when the perky receptionist picks up, I ask to speak with Wesley.
The woman seems surprised by the request, as though I’ve asked to step behind the curtain and see the Grand Wizard.
“Oh. Okay.” She pauses. “I’ll see if Chef is available. And who shall I say is calling?”
“Just tell him it’s Meredith. He’ll know.”
“I can do no such thing. I will need your last name, Meredith.”
Really? This is the world that Wesley has chosen for himself? I would have imagined him as being above all this fanfare, the pomposity. But I suppose if a person wants to succeed in the restaurant world in this city, the city of all cities, he’s got to sell out a little.
The woman places me on hold, and after a brief moment of being assailed by the new-agey music piping through the phone, I hear the rasp of Wesley’s voice. “Meredith?”
“Yeah, hi.”
“Hi.”
He waits for whatever I’m going to say, but I falter.
“Is everything okay?” he asks, filling the silence.
“Yeah, I just was . . . I just wanted to follow up on our conversation from the other day.”
“Yeah, I kind of figured I’d be hearing from you. Listen, give me your number and I’ll call you when I get out of here. It should be a little after ten tonight. That okay?”
“Sure. Okay.” I rattle off my cell number, wondering whether I am getting the brush-off or if he is actually going to call me back. After we hang up, I start brainstorming excuses about why I won’t be able to see Aaron tonight for a movie date, as we planned. If Wesley does actually return my call, I want to be available to speak to him without Aaron nearby when the call comes in.
I decide to tell Aaron that I am bringing some work home with me tonight, that I am overloaded with unfinished asylum business, and that we should just postpone the movie until tomorrow. I usually avoid bringing work home. In fact, my main goal each day at the office is to finish enough work during business hours to ensure that my evenings are my own. Even so, Aaron knows how invested I am in Moe’s case for refugee status, so if I make my conflict about that, I am pretty sure he’ll buy what I’m selling.
I check my watch and calculate that, based on Aaron’s estimates, this morning’s surgery should still be far from complete. I send him a quick email, which I figure he will see as soon as he checks his phone following surgery. I tap out the news that I need to move our plans to tomorrow evening, my heart pounding its misgivings as I add the false excuse that I will be too busy working my way through certain issues on the asylum case.
Two minutes later, my phone rings, Aaron’s number on the screen.
“Hey,” I say as I bring the phone cautiously to my ear. “You’re finished already?” I wonder if I somehow tipped my hand, alerted him to my fraudulent behavior, my questionable intentions.
“In and out in less than an hour, and everything went off without a hitch, like it was no sweat.” I can hear the enthusiasm in his voice, his joy at a job well done, a baby’s life improved.
“I thought this was supposed to be a long one,” I say.
“Nope. It was endoscopic. That’s what made the whole thing so amazing—minimally invasive,” he prods. “Remember?”
But I don’t remember. Not even a little. Maybe this wasn’t even the experimental surgery, except it’s way too late for me to ask. I wonder how I’ve allowed myself to tune him out, to lose myself so completely to the distraction of Wesley’s condition.
“Did you see my email?” I want to take it back, my subterfuge, my disloyalty.
“I have an idea,” he answers easily. “Meet me for a quick dinner near your office so I get to see your face today, and then I’ll drive you home to do your work.”
“But then you just have to drive all the way back downtown,” I protest, feeling even worse as he continues to be kind, chivalrous.
Nicola walks back into the office with three large folders and dumps them loudly on her desk.
“No worries,” he says. “I want to see you, and I can use the drive uptown to call my folks, maybe talk through the pros and cons of buying that house.”
Aaron’s parents recently decided they want to sell their home on Long Island and move to the Berkshires, where they had a summer home when he was a kid. If they don’t
buy the country house, their other idea is to relocate to Manhattan, and that is Aaron’s preference. He likes getting to spend time with them, doesn’t feel suffocated by their presence like I so often do near my own parents.
“Okay, fine,” I say, thinking that I could actually use a little time with Aaron to remind myself why he is important me. A couple of months ago, he was my whole world, and now two run-ins with Wesley have made me loosen my grip on everything I thought I wanted. I cannot allow myself to undermine the life I am building just because I’m upset about Wesley’s health.
“Come get me at seven,” I suggest. “I’ll make us a reservation at the Thai place.”
After I hang up, I close my eyes, like I’m trying to disengage my brain, prevent it from running all the possible scenarios in my head about the mess that I am creating. I let out a breath and turn back to the country conditions report I was working on for Moe’s case. It occurs to me as I’m rereading the report that I don’t know enough yet about Moe’s personal family history. There might be more details that could help his case. I’m thinking that we should set up another in-person meeting before I file the I-589 so I can review the details with him, confirm I have everything right, and make sure I haven’t left out anything that could help him. I reach for the folder that has his phone number written on the outside just as my office phone rings, an in-house number flashing on the screen.
“This is Meredith,” I say, as Nicola huffs into the brief she’s been paging through, likely annoyed by the continued nuisance I am making of myself by existing in her space.
“Hey. It’s Ilana,” says the administrative assistant to Ellen Short, one of the firm’s senior partners. “Ellen asked me to call. She has a copy of the Dole brief almost ready, and she wanted you to cite check it.”
“The Dole case?” I ask, and Nicola glances at me, now interested. “I’m not on that case.” I don’t add that cite checking is a job for first-years, or even paralegals.
“She knows, but Noah and Arnie are both at depositions today and she said she wants someone competent to do it. It’s a big case, Meredith.” The woman tells me this like I should feel pleased, puffed up, even, that I’ve been selected to do the grunt work on this case. “I’m emailing over the document now.”
I hang up with Ilana on a sigh. Canceling the movie with Aaron seems to have been the right call, as I’m not going to have a moment for the pro bono case before the end of the day anyway. Having time to do work at home tonight will actually be a plus. That said, I don’t feel any less guilty. In my heart, I still know I am doing something contemptible. It’s low and staggeringly reckless, but I am charging onward toward Wesley just the same.
Chapter Fourteen
March 2017
It’s 10:12 p.m., and Wesley hasn’t called yet. I try to stop looking at my phone every five seconds, to focus more on the stack of articles about Myanmar that I finally, finally have an opportunity to review. The instructions for the I-598 form include a lengthy list of documentation that an applicant is permitted to submit, in addition to a country conditions report, to bolster his petition, from affidavits of witnesses to photos, periodicals, and medical or psychological reports. I begin highlighting and underlining, jotting down notes as thoughts occur to me, but my eyes keep straying disobediently back toward the phone, which is pointedly silent beside my laptop. I guess it makes sense that Wesley still doesn’t want me in his life. If he made that decision when were so close to getting married, why would he change his position now, when we are basically strangers? Any thoughts I entertained about his attitude toward me having evolved with time were clearly delusional.
When Aaron and I were out for dinner earlier, each disentangling noodles from plates full of pad Thai, I tried to curb the preoccupation, the sense of urgency, that has become a constant since I learned of Wesley’s illness. I patted myself on the back for noticing how handsome Aaron looked in his white button-down with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. He told me more about the endoscopic procedure he performed earlier today, about how the baby will barely have a scar, how the child’s skull had expanded almost immediately, and how his head is now round rather than elongated and deformed like it was yesterday and all the days before. I’m fairly certain that Aaron could tell I was distracted, not acting quite like myself. Now that I’ve woken up to the thought, I realize he’s got to know something is going on in my head, and I imagine he’s going to connect the dots to Wesley in short order. If he hasn’t already.
Aaron told me he was going to hit the sheets early tonight and not pass up this opportunity to recoup the sleep that he misses so frequently. As I picture his large frame sprawled across his bed, without me, I pick up my phone and wonder if I should just power down the whole thing for the night. I can’t make myself do it, though. I have fallen right into the same pattern, ending up back in that place that I crawled out of years ago. Here I sit, staring at my phone, waiting to hear from Wesley, who isn’t calling.
Except that now the phone suddenly rings in my hand, showing a number I’ve not seen before. I let it ring a second time before I answer so I don’t pick up sounding desperate, definitely not like I’ve been holding the phone, waiting for him to call.
“Hello?”
“Hey, it’s Wesley. I’m just leaving the restaurant.” If that’s supposed to be an apology for calling later than he said he would, I guess it will do.
“Thanks for calling,” I start, leaning back in my swivel chair and hating how stilted I sound. “I just wanted to touch base, to see . . . I don’t know,” I stumble. “You kind of dropped a bomb at the soup kitchen the other day, and I just wanted to talk a little more . . . if you don’t mind.”
“No, I know,” he says, sounding ever so slightly out of breath, like he’s walking as we talk. “I’m glad we’re getting to talk. I’ve missed having you as a sounding board.”
At his words, I feel as if a million tiny rock doves have been released from my heart at once and are now flying forth in celebration. Knowing he’s missed me relieves me of a pressure I didn’t realize I still felt. It also pisses me off.
“Yeah, well.” I stop, reminding myself that I didn’t call to fight about the way he abandoned me years ago.
Apparently, he still wants to discuss it, though.
“Look, there is so much to say about what went down before the wedding. Let’s not go there. It was a really shitty time for me, and I’ve been working my way out of it ever since, digging and clawing my way back, and now there’s this.”
I notice he doesn’t even say “the disease” or its name. I also notice that he doesn’t apologize for anything that happened between us.
“So we’re calling a truce to focus on the health stuff. Okay, I can deal with that,” I say, looking toward the lone window in my apartment, out into the dark of the Manhattan night.
“Of course, you can,” he says, his voice suddenly lighter. “You’re Meredith Altman, savior of widows, orphans, and now dying men.” Wesley always took note of my desire to help the downtrodden, commended me for it. “Speaking of which, what’s your job now?”
“Ugh, don’t get me started,” I say, picking up the Harrison, Whittaker ID card that’s sitting on my desk and running my fingers idly over the grainy picture of myself on the front.
“Did you go corporate?” I can hear the incredulity in his voice. “You did, didn’t you? You sold out to the man?” He says it like he’s just teasing, but I know better—he’s disappointed in me.
“For now,” I hedge, and then change the subject back to his situation. “Can you tell me a little more about your prognosis?”
“What are you doing right now?”
My eyes wander over the ID card still in my hand, the papers strewn about the dilapidated wooden desk that I’ve had for nearly a decade.
“Um, just finishing up a little work. Nothing. Why?”
“Meet me for a drink? Just to catch up a little. Your beefy fiancé won’t mind, right? Not when I’m a
dying man and all.”
I look down at the sweats I’m wearing and the ratty T-shirt, which, embarrassingly, is actually one of Wesley’s that I’ve saved. I’ve worn it so many times that I don’t even think of it as his anymore, despite the fact that the name of his high school baseball team, the Irvington Bulldogs, is plastered across the front. Before I can stop myself, I begin contemplating how to turn his suggestion into a reality. I put my hand up to my hair, which still feels smooth, acceptably neat. I decide that if I change quickly, throw on some real clothes, a little mascara and gloss, I can be solidly presentable in time to meet him somewhere.
“Um, sure,” I say, thinking that yes, actually, Aaron probably would mind—he would probably mind a lot—but maybe I don’t have to mention that.
“The piano bar on Seventy-sixth Street?”
It’s a place we used to go every now and then, and it’s also so utterly uncool, full of lonely senior citizens, I don’t have to worry about bumping into anyone we know.
“Perfect. I can be there in twenty minutes.”
We hang up, and I’m suddenly running around the apartment like I’m on fast-forward. I throw on a pair of skinny jeans—ripped ones, so it looks like I’m keeping things casual, not trying too hard. Never mind that it’s a great pair of ass-lifting pants and definitely a strategic decision in an eat-your-heart-out kind of way. I pick out a long-sleeved, V-neck sweater to go with them. Conservative, but it shows off my collarbone, an attribute of which Wesley was always particularly fond.
As I race about, brushing my hair again, picking out a pair of small crystal earrings just to brighten up my face, I try to decide whether to tell Aaron about this development. Ever. I want to be honest, to treat him and our relationship with the respect they deserve, the respect he has earned. But I’m not sure how I can explain the fact that I blew off my date with him tonight using the excuse of too much work yet somehow had time to get out with Wesley. At least I know Aaron is already sleeping, so I can wait until the morning to figure out what to share with him. I add a little blush, a spritz of perfume, a booster of deodorant under my arms. I throw my keys into my purse, pick up my phone, and head out.
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