The Cast

by Amy Blumenfeld

  These physical therapy sessions, and the friendship they spawned, were undoubtedly the silver lining to my klutziness. My newfound bromance with Seth was certainly the upside to falling off my bicycle and breaking my collarbone during my third triathlon. Whether we discussed politics or Star Wars trivia, Seth’s flavor-of-the-month girlfriend, or Emma’s dance recital, our bond deepened with each appointment. For years I had viewed him as Becca’s friend, but now he was mine, too.

  “It’s a new relationship with Pilates Girl, but I figured I’d bring her to Jordana’s. I didn’t want to be the extra wheel, given that the rest of you guys are couples.”

  The moment he mentioned couples, I felt compelled to tell him what had happened. I suddenly wanted it out in the open, out of my head. Here’s my entrée, I thought. “Well, if I don’t meet her this weekend,” I puffed, “I can always meet her here in the city.”

  “She’s gonna show up, dude,” he insisted, and rested his meaty hands on the indent of his waistline. “She likes me. She’s not gonna flake. I even got her a ticket to the concert Saturday night.”

  “No, I meant if for some reason I’m not at the reunion this weekend, I can meet her another time.”

  Seth laughed. “You’re funny. Keep your back straight and tighten your core.”

  “No, I’m serious,” I said, panting between repetitions.

  “Oh, please! I know Bec doesn’t like being the center of attention, but come on, she’s the guest of honor. You know sometimes she needs a little push to get out of her shell, and then she’s fine,” Seth said, as if he knew my wife better than I.

  Maybe he does know her better, I thought. Maybe I don’t really know her.

  I sat up and wiped my face with a towel. “Hey, can you keep something between us?”

  “Sure,” he replied, as he laid out a floor mat and elastic bands in preparation for my next strength-training exercise. I was glad he wasn’t looking at me.

  “No joke. You can’t tell anyone,” I said.

  He stood up from the mat and focused his attention on my face, instead of the equipment. I squirmed.

  “I promise,” he said. “What’s up?”

  I took a deep breath. Maybe we didn’t see the right doctor yesterday, I thought. Maybe another surgeon would put her at ease about the reconstruction. “I think I need another surgical referral from you. For a second opinion.”

  “I thought you liked the guy who fixed your shoulder,” Seth said. “What’s wrong with Dr. Schwartz?”

  “Oh, no, no, Schwartz was great, my shoulder’s great,” I said. “I’m not talking about orthopedic surgeons.”

  “Then what kind of surgeon? What’s wrong?” he asked, his tone shifting.

  Should I tell him about the fight Becca and I had at the doctor’s office? I wondered. Should I mention how, at 2:00 a.m., I stood in the doorway of Emma’s bedroom, crying as I watched her snuggle her teddy bear, because the happy family I thought we had cemented in place was cracking? I grabbed my water bottle and took a swig.

  “I don’t know,” I finally said, my voice trembling. “I was just curious if you have any general or, uh, plastic surgeons you like.” I took another sip from the water bottle.

  “Plastic?” Seth asked, clearly surprised.

  I nodded.

  He smiled. “Hey hey, so you’re finally getting that enlargement!”

  I offered only a partial grin in response. I wasn’t in the mood for our typical sophomoric ribbing.

  “Sorry, I couldn’t resist,” Seth apologized, his hands in the air. “Bad joke. Listen, plastic surgeons tend to specialize in parts of the body. Do you want a general surgeon or someone with a specialty?”

  I stared at him blankly, mute for several seconds. To publicly utter the answer to his question would make this all too real.

  “No problem—I don’t need to know,” he said kindly, surely sensing my discomfort. “I’m going to do a little research, and I’ll text you by the end of the day. And if you need more or want to talk, I’m here. Okay?”

  I nodded appreciatively. I knew a second opinion was a long shot, but figured it couldn’t hurt to call for an appointment after the weekend.

  As I stood on the floor mat and began performing another set of exercises, I could hear Seth counting the repetitions and felt my body respond appropriately to his instructions, but my thoughts had drifted. Lifting the weights reminded me of the way I scooped Becca’s ballerina-like body into the air the day we met. I wondered if I would always be able to do that—just pick her up and carry her away, no matter what the situation, like Superman rescuing Lois Lane. If only it were that easy, I thought. I wanted to be her hero, to fix this and make it all go away, but I didn’t know how. For the first time in my life, my purple crayon was missing.

  After my workout, I dressed and went to the office. I sat at my desk on the forty-first floor, overlooking the Chrysler Building, ignoring all communication from my wife, who had left five voice mails, two emails, and innumerable text messages regarding my whereabouts and intentions for the weekend. There were also a few calls from Sal, asking if I was still planning to meet him at Penn Station for the two o’clock train. I never responded. Instead, I spent forty-five minutes sitting on the windowsill, nursing an iced coffee and dreaming up elaborate stories about the people I saw in the windows across from my own on Lexington Avenue, just like Emma did every time she visited my office. When that got stale, I logged on to Facebook and squandered two consecutive hours examining other people’s photographs. I learned that my childhood neighbor’s son had an Elmo cake for his first birthday, that my college roommate celebrated his tenth wedding anniversary on a Caribbean cruise, and that my cousin got a new puppy—a Labradoodle named Poozie.

  The law firm, with its carpeted, wood-paneled hallways, felt like a ghost town before the holiday weekend. I was utterly sapped of motivation, so, in a sense, it was not wholly unfortunate that my workload had been temporarily reassigned. Just days before Becca’s diagnosis, I had been called into the managing partner’s office for a meeting—something that had happened countless times throughout my career at Gordon, Michaelson & Stewart, LLP. This time, however, the head of risk management and the firm’s general counsel were present and awaiting my arrival.

  “Take a seat, son,” Mr. Gordon said kindly, gesturing to the leather couch by the corner windows. “I’ll get right to the point. I received a call from a fact-checker at a magazine asking to verify some information in one of their upcoming articles. It’s a trade publication, one of the most widely circulated in the beverage industry. A freelance business reporter somehow obtained information about the Thibault deal—information to which only the top brass at the Thibault Corporation and our firm are privy. And, as you know, we are still in active negotiations. The deal is far from done.”

  “How’d that happen?” I asked, exasperated.

  Ilene Weston, the head of risk management, took a sip of ice water and glared at me over the rim as she drank.

  “Well,” Mr. Gordon continued, “naturally, the magazine would not reveal its source. And, needless to say, Thibault is ballistic. They blame us for the leak. Of course, I denied any involvement and explained that integrity, trust, and the privacy of our clients are the utmost priority of our firm. And then . . .” He looked at Ilene and seemed to pass an invisible baton to her with his eyes.

  “And then,” she said, picking up where he’d left off, “we Googled the reporter’s name. One click led to another, and we saw this posted on Facebook.” She opened up her laptop and turned the screen toward me.

  I squinted at a picture of me at a bar about a month earlier, grabbing drinks with some old high school buddies.

  “Do you know this man?” she asked, pointing to a guy tagged as Tennessee Morse.

  “No. I met him for the first time that night. He knew one of my friends, but we didn’t speak, other than a brief introduction. Why do you ask?”

  “Tennessee Morse is the reporter. Is it possi
ble, while you were socializing that evening, that you could have discussed the Thibault deal?”

  My mind raced to recall the events of that night: A dive bar. Midtown. Thursday night in late May. Two beers, at most. Drunk? No. Buzzed? Perhaps. We were throwing darts and shooting the breeze. Did I talk about my job? We all did. These were old friends. No one was a lawyer. No one was in the beverage industry. The fact that I was working on a deal that would nominally change the ingredients and packaging of a soft-drink line hardly qualified as juicy gossip. Though my friends respectfully feigned interest in how I spent the majority of my waking hours, none of them actually gave a shit that a popular soda company had decided to go green and use naturally sourced materials.

  Unfortunately, I never considered the ears or occupation of Tennessee Morse, the quiet guy nursing a gin and tonic on a nearby barstool.

  My jaw dropped and the blood drained from my face when I realized the potential consequences of my loose lips. Not only had I put my firm’s stellar reputation and long-standing relationship with this client at risk, but the financial repercussions for all parties were significant. Everyone in the room was waiting, I assumed, for an admission.

  Mr. Gordon put his hand on my shoulder. “Listen, son,” he interjected, usurping the lull like a good lawyer so I wouldn’t confess or perjure myself, “I’ve reshuffled case assignments until we get this all sorted out. You’re off the deal, for the time being.”

  This soft-spoken six-foot-five man had been my mentor since we’d met at a Columbia Law networking event when I was still a student. We had stayed in touch, and he had offered me a job after graduation. He was the gentle giant for whom I had endured countless all-nighters double-checking my work so that I’d never let him down. Disappointing him with such a careless, stupid gaffe triggered a stabbing sensation inside my gut. It was as if I had let down my own father.

  I walked out of his office, and for the first time in my life, I worried about the stability of my employment.

  I never told Becca about any of it. I’d been planning to, of course, but when her diagnosis piggybacked on my news, I decided to keep the work drama to myself. She didn’t need another stressor. I could handle it all. This will blow over, I told myself. And yet, despite being in the best shape of my life, I’d never felt heavier.

  Leaning back on my ergonomic desk chair, I stared at Emma’s crayon drawings Scotch-taped to the wall beside my computer screen. I would have given anything to be home with her, snuggling on the couch and watching reruns of Cake Boss, our favorite television program. Both Emma and I marveled at the elaborate designs the decorators could create—cakes with flashing lights, hydraulics, moveable cranes, running water, even fire. But what we appreciated as much as the edible art was watching the antics and personalities of the host’s big New Jersey Italian family. It reminded me of my own big New Jersey Italian family—a boisterous group whose constant chaos mesmerized Emma because it was a wholly different family dynamic than her own. Sitting in my parents’ kitchen was like having a front-row seat at the circus. And at this moment, all I wanted was to sit beneath the big top and enjoy the show.

  Though Becca and I were close with both sides of our family, my side was more of an occasional treat, while hers was a daily fixture. Becca’s parents knew when she had a dentist appointment, and that Fridays were my physical therapy mornings with Seth. They posted Emma’s after-school activities on their wall calendar and remembered the names and hobbies of her friends. If they had extra produce from their CSA share, they would let themselves into our apartment and stuff a bag of organic vegetables into our fridge as a surprise gift.

  It’s not that my mom wouldn’t do the same—she was equally loving and ignorant of boundaries. It was simply a matter of geography and circumstance. The Millers lived three blocks away and didn’t want to miss a moment with the grandchild they’d never expected to have. Emma was the grand prize after the hell they went through when Becca was sick, and they’d be damned if anything got in the way of their silver lining. My parents, on the other hand, lived an hour away, had a packed social calendar, and didn’t like to drive in the city. The onus fell on us to visit, which we gladly did on birthdays and holidays.

  I leaned back in my leather desk chair and looked at a photograph on my bookshelf. It was of the three of us from a trip to the Jersey Shore boardwalk the previous summer. Emma was sitting on my shoulders, her little legs dangling over my chest and her chin resting atop my bald spot, making our heads look like a double-scoop ice cream cone. Becca stood beside me, natural and relaxed with her beachy hair and aviator sunglasses, wearing the baby-blue halter sundress that made her look like a petite supermodel. I grabbed the picture and held it inches from my face, as if the close proximity to my thoughts would make it possible to telepathically fix things.

  I wished I could pick up Emma but knew that was a terrible idea. She was staying with Becca’s folks, and I could already hear my mother-in-law’s voice: What do you mean, you’re not upstate with Becca? Don’t you know Jordy made this whole spiel for her? Are you feeling okay? Where are you taking my Emma?”

  As much as I resented the inability to gain access to my daughter without creating a tsunami of panic and confusion, it wasn’t worth the drama. I also realized that I couldn’t stay home. With in-laws practically around the corner, I could run into them and Emma in the neighborhood. Plus, the fact that they occasionally used the key to our apartment if they wanted to borrow something or if they were babysitting and Emma left a beloved toy at home meant that holing up as a prisoner wasn’t an option, either. I had no choice—I needed to leave the city. I didn’t know if it was the back-to-back iced coffees I’d consumed throughout the day, or the realization that it was lunchtime on the Friday of July Fourth weekend and I was sitting in my office with nothing to do, but suddenly I had an urge to flee.

  I grabbed my cell phone, swung my gym bag over my shoulder, and speed-walked across town to Penn Station. I tried to hail a cab, but all were either off-duty or occupied. There was no way I had the patience to wait for a crosstown bus, and a sweltering subway platform was the last place I wanted to be in the July heat. Tackling the one-mile distance on foot was the only way to go.

  When I arrived at Penn Station, I shifted my weight from leg to leg as I studied the train schedules on the wall. It was as if my body were telling me I had to be in a perpetual state of motion. I had ants in my pants, as Becca often said. But unlike my usual ants, which motivated and directed me, these ants needed a GPS. I didn’t know where to go.

  As I stood amid swarms of people shoving past on their way to escape the city, I closed my eyes and channeled my old friend Harold. I tuned out the sound of the muffled voice on the Penn Station loudspeaker, ignored the malodorous combination of stale doughnuts and urine, and visualized Harold holding his purple crayon before a blank easel. It took a moment, but soon I saw a stick-figure version of myself standing beside two rectangular roadside signs with little wooden stakes in the ground—each on a divergent path. Both signs read HOME.

  “What the hell, Harold?” I said aloud, my eyes still shut. I had been hoping for a clearer directive: Amtrak to Becca upstate, or New Jersey Transit to my parents. Which one is home?

  I thought for a moment, and then it clicked: there was no doubt I should go “home” to my wife, even if it wasn’t our own home. I should be with Becca at the reunion, despite all that had transpired between us over the last twenty-four hours. We committed to Jordana’s reunion, and that’s where I should be. My wife is my home.

  The electronic ticket machines were down, so the lines at the counters were lengthy. I glanced nervously at my watch and wondered if I would miss the train. The next one to Jordana’s house wouldn’t be for another two hours. As I inched closer to the counter, I overheard a young family talking excitedly about their trip to the Jersey Shore. It reminded me of the picture on my office bookshelf. Although it was only in my mind’s eye, the beautiful image of Becca on the boardwalk in t
hat form-fitting blue dress once again made my chest tighten and my muscles tense in anger and resentment. If she has her way and forgoes this surgery, she’ll never look that beautiful again.

  “Sir, did you hear me?” the woman behind the ticket counter asked.

  “Excuse me?” I replied. My mind was still clinging to that blue dress.

  “Sir, how may I help you?”

  “I’d like a one-way ticket, please.”

  “To where?” the woman sneered.

  All I could think about was that happy family en route to the beach, and how my own family was a mess.

  “Sir,” the cashier growled, “if you don’t know where you want to go, please step aside.”

  “New Jersey transit,” I spit out. “Montclair–Boonton line.”

  Ninety minutes later, I arrived at Holiday Lane just in time for dinner. As I walked up the circular driveway to the sprawling beige stucco split-level ranch, the aroma of fresh tomatoes and garlic from the kitchen greeted me. I could hear my nieces and nephews splashing in the pool, their vociferous squeals emanating from the backyard like a top-of-the-line stereo system. As I opened the double wooden doors, adult voices bellowed from the kitchen, one thick New Jersey accent booming over another in an effort to be heard.

  I dropped my bag on the foyer’s tiled floor and kicked off my work shoes, the same way I used to remove my backpack and sneakers upon returning home from elementary school. I casually sauntered into the kitchen, pulled the cell phone out of my back pocket, and placed it on the counter, before hopping up onto the flecked granite. I sat there smiling for a good thirty seconds until my mother looked up from her cutting board and screamed, “Dio mio! Oh my God!” and continued in warp-speed Italian as she quickly untied her apron and flung herself upon me. Anyone watching this might have presumed she hadn’t seen me in years, when in truth we had gotten together for dinner just a few weeks earlier to celebrate her seventy-fifth birthday.

  “Hey, hey!” my two older brothers said in unison as they walked over to greet me.