The Opposite of Me

by Sarah Pekkanen

“I don’t think I can start over again in New York,” I finally said. “I need to go somewhere else. I need to go home.”

  And with those words, deep within me, I could feel the faintest flickering of my old determination.

  Home, where everyone still thought I was successful. Home, where my parents depended on me to negotiate the best deal when they were buying a new car and pick the right stocks for their retirement plans, and where the neighbors always asked about my latest business trips and promotions. Home, where Bradley used to love me and might again still.

  I wasn’t going to curl up in bed forever. I’d never been a failure, and I wasn’t going to start now, damn it.

  I’d figure out a way to explain my return, and I’d put my life back together. Maybe I wouldn’t be a vice president anytime soon, but I’d get a good job. I’d work my way up again. I’d still have everything I’d ever dreamed of, everything I’d ever wanted. No matter what it took.

  Seven

  IN THE END, ALL it took to erase any sign that I’d lived in New York was a rental truck, a trip to an upscale consignment store, another one to Goodwill, and a half day on the phone canceling utilities and negotiating an early end to my lease and arranging for my painting and plasma TV to be put in storage.

  And suddenly I was standing in my bare apartment with dust motes floating in the sunlight and two suitcases at my feet. Just the way I’d begun my life here seven years ago.

  “I can’t believe you don’t have more stuff,” Matt said, picking up one of my suitcases. I was spending tonight, my last night in the city, on the couch in his apartment before catching the 9:00 A.M. train home to Maryland tomorrow. I hadn’t asked how Pammy felt about this.

  “Aren’t girls supposed to have more stuff?” Matt asked.

  “I’ve got stuff,” I protested. “I took a truckload to Goodwill.”

  “A quarter truckload,” Matt corrected me. “Where are all your scrunchies? Where are all your clothes? Where are your stacks of magazines that tell you how to drive your man wild with an ice cube and Saran Wrap?”

  “First of all, I stopped reading Penthouse when I was ten,” I said. “And scrunchies? Do you know how disturbing it is that you even know that word?”

  “We’re talking about your inadequacies, not mine,” Matt said.

  God, it felt good to banter with him again, to act like everything was normal, even if underneath the surface I felt like brittle glass, ready to splinter under the slightest tap.

  “So what’s the plan for tonight?” I asked. “Mexican and a movie?”

  “Hell, no,” Matt said. “It’s your last night in New York. We’re going out.”

  He picked up my other suitcase and I locked my door and we walked to the elevator. I didn’t look back, not even once. I had to keep my eyes forward. I had to keep moving.

  When we got to the lobby, I walked up to the perpetually smiling doorman and handed over my keys. Don’t think about it, I instructed myself. Just do it. Put the keys in his outstretched hand. Now let go of the keys. That’s it, baby steps.

  “Here you go, Hector,” I said.

  I reached into my purse for the little envelope containing his early Christmas tip. Hector was in his late forties, one of the steady, stalwart people New York couldn’t run without. He shows up every day wearing a crisp white shirt and the same blue suit, and he keeps a vigil on the door so he can jump up and open it every time someone approaches. I was about to say something else—to thank him for the times he’d kept my deliveries behind his desk, or hailed cabs for me in the rain—but a young couple I vaguely recognized from the floor below me burst out of the elevator and rushed over.

  Suddenly the three of them were tossing around words like chemo and daughter and prayers, and Hector was unashamedly wiping a tear from his eye as he said, “Remission. Yes, the doctor said it is a remission.”

  Then they were hugging him, first the wife and then the husband, who initially stuck out his hand but at the last second changed his mind and pulled Hector in for a big, back-thumping hug. Hector was smiling and bowing his head and saying, “Thank you, God bless you,” over and over again.

  “Does his kid have cancer?” Matt whispered to me.

  “I guess so,” I said slowly.

  I looked down at my plain white business-size envelope while Hector thanked the couple for the lasagna they’d cooked for him while his daughter was in the hospital. Inside my envelope was a hundred dollars. I hadn’t included a card. I hadn’t baked him lasagna. I hadn’t even known his daughter was ill. All I’d done was smile at Hector as I rushed by on my way to work, and absently thank him for opening the door as I zoomed in again at night, my arms laden with my briefcase and take-out Chinese, my mind full of taglines and dialogue and storyboards. Hector had been as much a part of the background to me as the fake tree in the corner of the lobby. Now I wondered: How old was his daughter? What was her name? Was the cancer going to come back? How had he come to work every day and smiled and opened the door for me like it was the best thing he’d get to do all day, while his whole world was shaking and crumbling around him?

  “Ready?” Matt said.

  “Sure,” I said.

  But first I reached into my wallet, grabbed all the twenties in it, and stuffed them in the envelope. I left it on Hector’s desk and slipped away while he was still talking to the young couple.

  I’m sorry, I whispered as the door closed behind me, so softly no one could hear.

  “What’s the plan?” I asked Matt once we were settled in a yellow cab.

  “First we’re dropping your insane amounts of stuff at my apartment,” he said. “I hope we can squeeze in all the scrunchies. Then—”

  “I have a request,” I interrupted. “I want to see the Naked Cowboy.”

  Matt looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

  “Seriously?” he said.

  I nodded vigorously.

  “And I want to buy a knockoff Prada bag on Canal Street,” I blurted, the words tumbling out of me faster and faster. “I want to take a horse-drawn carriage ride in Central Park. I want to see a celebrity, a real one, not the B-listers we usually get stuck working with. I want to window-shop in Soho. I want to eat sushi at Ruby Foo’s and get a drink at Tavern on the Green.”

  “Good God,” Matt said in mock horror. “You’re a . . . a tourist.”

  “I’ve never done any of those things,” I said, feeling a twinge of sadness.

  And it was true: I’d lived in New York for more than half a decade, but I might as well have been standing behind a glass wall the entire time, watching other people get kissed on street corners and dance to bucket-thumping drummers and head out to bars with rowdy groups of friends. I’d lived in New York, but I hadn’t really lived in it.

  And to Matt’s eternal credit, he didn’t laugh at me or threaten to kick me out of the cab. He just leaned forward and told the cabbie to step on it, because we had a lot to do that day.

  Ten hours later, every single one of my wishes had been granted, as if a fairy godmother had waved a magic wand over my head. Trust me to get the fairy godmother with the world’s worst timing. I could’ve used her that night in the conference room; instead, she’d shown up a few weeks late, shaking the wrinkles out of her gown and straightening her tiara and muttering about traffic and broken alarm clocks and the dog eating her schedule. Still, at least she’d given me today.

  “You’d never guess it was a knockoff, would you?” I said for the tenth time, admiring my Prada bag while we sat in a corner booth at Ruby Foo’s.

  “I swear on my mother’s life that, if you put it next to a real Prada bag, I couldn’t tell the difference,” Matt said solemnly, putting a hand over his heart.

  “Oh, shut up,” I said. “You’re just jealous.”

  “That’s definitely it,” he agreed.

  “Is the stitching crooked?” I wondered, peering more closely at my bag.

  “You got it for twenty dollars,” Matt said. “You�
�re lucky it has stitching instead of superglue.”

  “I was good at haggling, wasn’t I?” I asked smugly.

  “Brilliant,” Matt said. “You wore him down.”

  “He wanted twenty-five,” I reminded Matt.

  “You broke him,” Matt said. “He’s a broken, bitter man. Now can we get something to eat?”

  “I want a California roll,” I said. “And a tuna roll. Ooh, and scallion pancakes and shrimp dumplings.”

  “Perfect,” Matt said as the waitress scribbled down our order. “I’ll have the same.”

  Matt leaned forward and looked at me closely.

  “So, I know this has got to be hard for you—” he began, his teddy bear—brown eyes all soft and sympathetic.

  “Reese Witherspoon is even prettier in person,” I interrupted. “And I’ve got her lip gloss!”

  “You mean you stole her lip gloss,” Matt said.

  “Finders keepers,” I said, gulping my dainty little cup of sake. It was hot and vaguely medicinal and exactly what I needed.

  “That was a brilliant idea, though, to stand outside Letterman’s studio right before the taping,” I said, tilting my cup at Matt. “And an added bonus that she dropped her purse! That woman next to me only got one of her dirty pennies.”

  “You got the better end of that deal,” Matt said. “I think the penny was there all along. Anyway, I was going to say it must be really tough for you—”

  “Do you think the Naked Cowboy stuffs his underpants with a sock?” I cut him off. “I mean, nothing else about him is natural. He stands there in Times Square in boots and underwear and a spray-on tan, strumming that guitar and posing for pictures. God, the girls love him, though. I thought that blonde was going to punch me when he put his arm around me for a picture.”

  “Definitely a sock,” Matt agreed, a bit too eagerly. I didn’t blame him; the Naked Cowboy could make any man feel inadequate.

  “I really love this lip gloss,” I said, pulling it out of my purse. “Isn’t the color perfect? I like it almost as much as my bag.”

  “Okay,” Matt said, leaning closer to me. “What’s going on?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “You’re being relentlessly cheerful,” he said.

  “I had a good day,” I protested.

  Matt gave me one of his dog-covered-with-Crisco looks.

  “I’m glad you had fun,” he said slowly. “So did I.”

  “So let’s not ruin it by getting all serious,” I begged him.

  I opened the menu again. “Look, they have tutti-frutti ice cream!”

  “Lindsey,” Matt said, then he sighed. “Look, I’ve gotta say it. Sometimes I worry that you don’t deal with stuff all that well. You’re so busy and gung-ho and frantic all the time that you don’t ever sit back and think about what you really want and how you feel. I mean, you’ve got to be upset, but you’re babbling on about your bag and lip gloss like they’re the most important things in the world. You’re not dealing with your emotions.”

  “I hate it when you hang out your shingle,” I said, punching his arm lightly. “You’re just like Lucy from Peanuts.”

  “I get it,” Matt said tightly. “You don’t want to talk about it. Fine. But tell me this: What are you going to do in D.C.?”

  “Get a job,” I said. Wasn’t it obvious? “Start working again.”

  “And in another six months, it’ll be like nothing ever happened,” Matt said.

  I blinked in surprise.

  “Are you kidding?” I said. “There’s no way I’ll be that high up in another six months. It’s going to take three years.”

  “And that’s what you want?” Matt said. He leaned closer to me and put his hand on the table between us. His hands were like the rest of him—comfortable and warm and solid. “That’s all you want?”

  His voice was low and gentle. Somehow that frightened me more than if he’d shouted.

  “That’s exactly what I want,” I said.

  “Fine,” Matt said, sounding like it was anything but.

  “Fine,” I echoed, feeling vaguely pissed off but not sure why.

  He folded his arms across his chest and looked down at his napkin. I twirled my lip gloss around in my fingers like it was the world’s smallest baton. This was just what I needed, for Matt to turn all serious and grumpy. What did he want, for me to curl up again and sob about the disaster my life had become? I’d done that, and it still terrified me to think about how fuzzy and distant those lost three days had felt. I couldn’t go to that place again, not ever.

  Didn’t Matt see that the only way I knew how to survive this was by putting everything behind me, starting right now? I was moving on, and I’d have to do it at warp speed to accomplish everything I wanted to accomplish. I didn’t have time for regrets and psychoanalysis and Bikram Yoga or whatever he thought I needed. Didn’t Matt know me well enough to know the only way I could get through this was to keep moving and working and not thinking?

  I glared up at him and discovered he was glaring down at me. I couldn’t help it; I smiled. I’ve never been able to stay mad at him.

  “You’ve got Reese Witherspoon’s lip gloss on your tooth,” Matt said. Then he smiled, too.

  “Share a tutti-frutti for dessert?” I asked. It was the closest I could come to an apology. An apology for what, I wasn’t sure.

  “Sure,” Matt said, and he unfolded his arms.

  “We’ll definitely need another bottle of sake, please,” he told the waitress when she came over with our platters of food.

  I looked up and met Matt’s brown eyes.

  “Thanks,” I mouthed.

  Matt stood on the platform, his hands in his pockets, watching as my train rumbled out of Penn Station. People bustled past him, nearly swallowing him up in their mad morning rush, but he stood his ground in his jeans and red fleece jacket. I’d argued that I could take a cab on my own to the station, but he’d insisted on seeing me off.

  He’d put a note in my hand as I’d boarded the train. I looked down at it now.

  “Psychiatric help, five cents,” he’d written next to a sketch of himself in Lucy’s booth. In the sketch he was wearing a beret and smoking a cigarillo.

  “Call anytime,” he’d written. “I’m going to miss you, kiddo.”

  I’m not going to cry, I told myself fiercely. I took a last look back at Matt. He looked smaller now that there was distance between us. I wished he’d smile. His face looked so sad without that big smile of his.

  A year from now, I’d come back to visit Matt, I vowed. Or maybe I’d invite him to visit me. By then I’d be back to my old self. I’d show him around my office and my new apartment—because I definitely wouldn’t be living with my parents then—and he’d see how quickly I’d put my life back together.

  One year, I promised myself. Twelve months. Three hundred and sixty-five days. I’d fill every second with work, and I’d be too busy to miss Matt and my old life.

  A year wasn’t so long to wait, was it?

  Part Two

  Home

  Eight

  I HADN’T BEEN HOME in more than a year and a half, and I felt like Alice right after she shot through the rabbit hole to Wonderland. I could swear my parents had gotten smaller—either that, or I’d gotten bigger, which was a distinct and troubling possibility I refused to dwell on. I’d nearly walked right by Mom and Dad at Union Station, partly because I didn’t recognize them beneath the matching puffy down jackets that engulfed them from chin to knee.

  “Fifty percent off at the Lands’ End outlet!” Mom crowed triumphantly, before she even hugged me hello. It was like being assaulted by an overly amorous marshmallow.

  Dad, clad in the more manly brown version of the coat, was clutching a luggage cart in a death grip and shooting “Go ahead, make my day” looks at anyone who dared to venture within ten feet of it.

  “Good to see you,” he said to me.

  He reluctantly released one hand from the
cart, but only after shooting a warning glance at a thieving granny who’d tottered dangerously close to it. Dad and I embraced in our usual tender way, with him patting my back as vigorously as if I were choking and he was trying to dislodge a chunk of bread from my windpipe.

  “You look wonderful,” Mom said, peering at my face once Dad had released me from his Heimlich and I’d gulped some air. “Tired, but wonderful. Are those circles under your eyes?”

  “Got a luggage cart,” Dad announced. “I’ll load up your bags.”

  “You must be hungry,” Mom said. “Is that coat warm enough?” She shivered theatrically. “Ooh, it’s so chilly out. Aren’t you chilled?”

  “Did you have a good trip?” Dad asked. “Any delays?”

  “I’m a little tired, not too hungry,” I said. Amazing how quickly I adapted to the parental volley of questions. It was like leaping aboard a bicycle after years at sea and taking off down the street without a wobble. Some things you never forget.

  “My coat’s definitely warm enough,” I continued. “No delays. The trip was wonderful.” If your idea of a rollicking good time was trying in vain to read the latest journalistic investigation by the good folks at People magazine (“Are Hers Real? Stars Inflate Their Top Lines!”), then browsing the food car three times, half-finishing a crossword puzzle, and finally just staring out the window at the scenery rushing by, wishing you could jump out of the train and race along with it. I’d never been good at sitting still, and today it had been harder than usual.

  “It’s so good to see you,” I said, interrupting a fresh assault of questioning.

  “You too, honey,” Mom said, reaching out to tuck my hair behind my ears, like she’s been doing ever since I was three years old. I instinctively shook my hair back out, just like I’ve been doing ever since I was three years old. Dad, always more comfortable with action than words, made a production out of loading up the luggage cart.

  “Knew this would come in handy,” he said, thumping the cart like it was a melon and puffing out his thin chest. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the three of us could easily manage my two medium-size suitcases.