The Cast

by Amy Blumenfeld

  MC flipped the sign on the door so CLOSED faced out, and directed us to a narrow hallway. “Why don’t you two get settled in there?” she said, pointing to a burgundy batik tapestry. Between the single metal folding chair and a stack of plastic storage boxes piled high on the floor, the dressing room could barely fit one person, let alone two. “I’ll go grab some bras and breast forms for you to try. Size-wise, hmm, I’m guessing you’re probably about a thirty-two around? Maybe thirty-three? Am I right?”

  I nodded.

  “And what did you have in mind for the cup, dear? Same as you were? Different?”

  “Nothing crazy. Just natural. On the smaller side, I guess.”

  “Aw, come on Bec. Don’t be boring.” Nolan nudged me; a mischievous grin spread across his face, and he danced his eyebrows up and down. MC noticed. I blushed.

  “I’ll wait in the hall, and when you’re ready, come out and show me what you’ve got. Okay?” He stepped outside the curtain and leaned his back against the wall. Above him was a shelf of wigged Styrofoam heads.

  For the next two hours, I slid a smorgasbord of triangular-shaped silicone breast forms into the pockets of different bras. I tested large cups and small cups in strapless, demi, and full-coverage styles. I compared how each permutation looked beneath crew necks, V-necks, turtlenecks, tank tops, and halters. By the end, I was drained and Nolan appeared so turned-off and bored, I doubted if he would ever look at women the same way again.

  “Okay, so, what’ll it be?” MC asked, clipboard in hand. “Have you two made a decision? Remember, insurance covers some of this stuff, but not everything.”

  “I think we’re ready. Right, Bec?” Nolan yawned.

  “Yes. I’ll take one set of the A forms and a few of those bras; I guess a couple of black, a neutral, and—”

  “Wait, what about the C’s?” Nolan interjected. “Didn’t we like those?”

  We? I thought. I saw MC look away. “No,” I said softly. “I think I just want the A’s. They were the most comfortable.”

  Nolan adjusted his posture and muttered, “Yeah, because they’re practically nonexistent.”

  My stomach flipped. “It’s more than I have now, and I thought you didn’t care.”

  Nolan shook his head in disbelief.

  “What?” I asked, pretzelling my arms across my chest.

  “Nothing.” He snickered.

  “What?” I was getting annoyed.

  “I’ll just let you two chat for a moment,” MC said, turning to walk away. “I’m gonna go check on something in the stock room.” She couldn’t disappear fast enough.

  Nolan took a moment to gather himself. “You wanted me here for my opinion—as long as I agreed with you. You know, Bec, I thought you’d come through with this part. I got excited when you wanted me to come to this appointment because I assumed you were going to surprise me. I figured you’d give in on this because you won on the surgery.”

  Fire shot through me. “I won?” I whisper-screamed. “Are you kidding? The surgery wasn’t a negotiation. It wasn’t a game. This is my body. My life. Don’t you get that?”

  He raised his palms in the air like he was surrendering and forced a smile. “Okay, okay, it’s fine. Calm down. I still love you. Get the stupid A cups. It doesn’t matter.”

  Calm down? Fuck you. You started this. “It does matter, because you really do care.”

  “Forget it, Bec. I’m over it!” He sounded like a drug addict avowing cleanliness while a dime bag protruded visibly from his pocket.

  I stared at him skeptically. Surely he was just a moment away from reaching out his arms, pulling me close, and offering some sort of heartfelt mea culpa. Instead, we stood beside that batik curtain in an unnaturally long John Wayne showdown, until finally, a tear busted loose out of the corner of my eye.

  “You know,” I said softly, wiping the tear and trying to control the lump that had formed in my throat, “last summer, after you were so amazing with my recovery, I decided to write off your initial freak-out as a case of referred pain. I told myself that your insensitivity was just masking your real fear that I would die. I gave you the benefit of the doubt. But now I see I was wrong. You really do give a shit how I look, don’t you?”

  Nolan opened his mouth to speak, but right then, MC returned and informed us that her next appointment would be arriving shortly. She was all smiles and feigned obliviousness, but there was no way she hadn’t overheard us even in the farthest corner of that store. We left with the A cups and a handful of bras, and even though I believed I looked better than I ever had with my natural anatomy, I feared every time I wore those silicone forms I’d feel disappointment and resentment—my own toward Nolan, and his toward me. Maybe the real prosthetic is Nolan, I thought, not the artificial boobs.

  In the days and weeks that followed, I lay in bed at night with a single phrase looping in my head: First time, shame on him; second time, shame on me. After his stint as Florence Nightingale, I thought we’d moved on to a stronger, better place, but apparently the tension had merely been lying dormant. Soon, I grew increasingly irritated by the most mundane things: his inability to correctly sort garbage into the proper recycling bins; buying moldy produce; I even threw an empty cardboard toilet paper tube at his head because he neglected to replenish the dispenser with a new roll. He thought I was being playful. I wasn’t. He was bringing out the worst in me, and I hated it.

  On New Year’s Eve, Emma slept at my parents’ so Nolan and I could have a date night, but neither of us had put any advance thought into the evening. So, since every restaurant was booked and the movie we wanted to see was sold out, we stayed home. I made grilled cheese sandwiches and heated up a can of tomato soup for dinner. He ate on a snack table beside his computer; I dined alone in the kitchen. Happy New Year!

  By nine o’clock I was in bed, and by ten I was fast asleep. When I woke at 1:00 a.m. to pee, I found Nolan zonked on the couch beside a burgeoning laundry basket. I stood in the hallway for several minutes staring at my husband, his left limbs hanging off the cushions, TIME magazine’s Person of the Year issue spread across his belly. I couldn’t help but grin. I loved that he still mailed in the little postcard to renew his annual subscription.

  The ebullient voices of drunken revelers carried up fourteen flights from the street, and I walked over to my bedroom window to watch. I loved New York at night—dark yet illuminated, anonymous but visible. There were couples holding hands, teenagers walking in packs, two guys making out on a bench, and a gaggle of twentysomething women smoking outside a corner bar. Life was moving. Time was passing.

  Had it not been January 1, I wouldn’t have cared that the night was a dud. I wouldn’t have cared that he was working late, or that he’d fallen asleep without kissing me at midnight, or that a pile of his underwear was still sitting on the coffee table three days after he’d promised to put it away. But this was the holiday of resolutions—of forgiveness, new chapters, and clean slates. It had been a tough year, and if this was how we were going to start anew, the future didn’t look promising.

  I was willing to try, though. I was willing to convince myself, again, that there was a legitimate reason for our friction. Surely, it was a numbers game; two people who saw eye to eye 99 percent of the time were bound to go to war at some point in their relationship. But what do you do when that 1 percent issue is weighty enough to balance (or possibly tip) the scales? Marriages undoubtedly ebbed and flowed. Ours still had plenty of love, but the chemistry had been altered. Irrevocably damaged? I couldn’t say for sure. All I knew was that we had reached a bifurcation; a crossroads we would one day point to as either the dissolution, or cementing, of our union. I stared out that window for hours, seeking inspiration and answers, until finally, around 5:00 a.m., I crawled back into bed and fell asleep.

  “So, I’m assuming brunch at Holly’s today is canceled, huh?” Nolan said, lying on the living room floor beside Ezra, who was attempting to eat his fist. “You think he’s hungry?”<
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  “Maybe. I’ll check the diaper bag.” I sifted through the various storage compartments and found plenty of toys and an empty bottle but no food. “I’m going to call Holly and ask if I should run to Duane Reade and pick up some formula.”

  I dialed Holly’s number; Jordana picked up on the first ring.

  “Hey,” she whispered.

  “Hey. What’s the latest?” I reflexively breathed back.

  “Nothing yet. He’s still in surgery.”

  “Okay. Listen, I think the baby’s getting hungry. I’m happy to buy stuff, just don’t know what brand of formula she uses.” The truth was, I didn’t even know if she used formula. I had been so determined not to whine about my marriage during the most joyous time in her life that I’d recently withdrawn and resorted to texts more than phone calls.

  I heard Jordana repeat my question to Holly. “Can you bring him here? She’d prefer to breastfeed and doesn’t want to leave the waiting room. Sorry to make you schlep back.”

  Another cab ride and twenty minutes later, Ezra was snacking comfortably beneath an ikat-patterned nursing shawl while Holly, Jordana, and I passed the time gossiping about Seth and Lex’s relationship. We called it Slex Talk, and in that moment, our under-over predictions about the longevity of their relationship—all doubtful, all still repulsed, all fearful it was just a matter of time before Seth got crushed, but all in agreement to remain supportive—provided the perfect distraction.

  Just as Holly transferred Ezra to her shoulder to pat out a burp, two men in green surgical scrubs entered the room, masks still covering their noses and mouths so that only their eyes were exposed. Jordana and Holly sat up, hopeful and eager, but I didn’t. I knew. Right away, I knew. I could read the doctors’ eyes as ably as I interpreted the eyes of every masked visitor who entered my hospital room when I was a kid. Pity, I learned early on, isn’t tough to spot.

  Chapter 22: Holly

  So strong. So stoic. That’s how everyone described me. “It’s okay to cry” was a frequent refrain, and “you’re allowed to S be angry” was fairly popular, too. I knew I was supposed to feel something, anything, but I was numb. Come on, people! He’ll be back in a few hours, I wanted to tell the throngs of relatives and friends crowding my new house. He’s just making a delivery! Why is everyone so sad?

  One of the few clear memories I have from the shiva week is all the whispering. Thanks to the acoustics of the open space in our unfurnished home, I spent seven days overhearing hushed comments about how “bizarrely” I was coping and what “tremendous shock” I must be in. I loved how everyone I knew had suddenly become an expert on grief.

  Whatever I lacked in demonstrable sorrow, however, Jordana made up for tenfold. Her frequent disappearances during the shiva to cry in one of our empty bedrooms were perfectly understandable; other than medical personnel, she’d been the last to see Adam alive. But as the weeks passed and the mere mention of his name continued to break her, I grew annoyed. Our relationship had changed drastically for the better since the Berkshires, and she was now a cherished, central part of my life, but still, I was the widow here. This was my husband we’d buried, not hers.

  A month after the funeral, when my official mourning period had ended, things quieted at home. The deli platter deliveries grew more sporadic, my parents and in-laws returned to their snow-bird routines, and my new neighbors settled back into life before we’d become that family on their block. The only two people who refused to loosen their grip were Becca and Jordana. They continued to be my wake-up call every morning and my good-night kiss on FaceTime each night.

  At their suggestion, I made some promotions at the bakery to ease my responsibilities. There was no way I could juggle a store, a baby, and all the meshugas that come in the aftermath of burying your forty-year-old husband. But the more time I spent in the house, the more I felt Adam’s absence. There were double sinks in the master bathroom, his-and-hers closets in our bedroom. Every time I looked at the things we had planned to share, the lonelier I became. I’d imagined so many birthday parties in the backyard, Passover seders in the dining room, Shabbos meals cooked in the kitchen. The loss of our unfulfilled dreams stung as deeply as if I were reminiscing about our past.

  And then, exactly two months after Adam died, Ezra began to crawl. We were playing on the floor of the basement when, out of nowhere, he began to slither on his belly toward Adam’s drum set. He worked those chubby little arms and legs until he reached the bass and then smacked his open palm against the face of the drum, starting this new chapter of our lives with a literal bang. As he repeated the motion and left saliva polka dots all over the membrane, an exuberant smile expanded across his face, exactly the way Adam’s would have. Except for his auburn hair, this kid was his father’s clone.

  For a minute or two, I shared in his joy. I knew this milestone marked the beginning of his independence and, who knew, maybe even a genuine interest in music. But as he continued to pound, the repeated thump-thump-thump drowned out my sentimentality, and the deep, rhythmic sound reminded me of soil thudding against Adam’s coffin. I closed my eyes and returned to that frigid afternoon at the cemetery, where a rotation of men with large metal shovels silently heaved piles of earth atop my husband. I shuddered each time dirt hit the wood, but I refused to look away until every inch of that six-foot ditch was filled, as if it were my job to ensure he was cozily packed in for eternity. And yet, despite everything my senses communicated—the feel of rending my garments, the sight of my husband being lowered into the ground, the sound of my voice reciting the mourner’s Kaddish prayer beside his grave—the moment somehow lacked finality. Adam was gone and buried so quickly, it occurred to me that I’d missed him less at his funeral than I did every year when he went out of town to visit his brother.

  But two months in, as I sat on the basement floor, beholding Ezra’s development in Adam’s absence, it hit. I began to hyperventilate. My hands grew clammy, my mouth parched; pins and needles prickled all over my face. I scanned the room for a phone to call for help, but both the cordless and the cell were upstairs.

  Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Ezra’s cacophonous beats incited a torrent of emotion that twisted and whirled inside me until finally it emerged from my body in the form of a wail. I curled up on the carpet and cupped my hands over my mouth to muffle the cries. He was only eight months old, but I hated for him to see me this way.

  These are the moments Adam should have experienced! These are the milestones we were supposed to share! Why him, God? Of all people, why a pious man like him, who wasn’t born into observance but chose it? Snot and tears coated my fingers. I noticed the sticks Adam had left neatly on the drum stool and contemplated hurling them across the room but commanded myself to get a grip. You’re the only adult here. You have no backup.

  Drained and sleepy, I willed myself awake and watched as Ezra began to teethe on the shell on the drum. Something about him trying to lick the champagne sparkle finish made me smile.

  “You like that, hmm?” I asked, lightly stroking his fuzzy scalp. “Guess you’re your daddy’s boy; he loved that, too.” The past tense stung. I placed my hands a few inches from his back, poised and ready to swoop in with the save in case he lost his balance. And then I wondered, Who would do the same for me?

  Becca and Jordana must have intuited a change in my tone, because they insisted on coming out the following Sunday. Both had visited regularly since the accident, but, given our decades of tension, Jordana’s unyielding, martyr-like support had gone so above and beyond the call of duty that a cynical voice inside me wondered if she had something to hide. I hated myself for doubting her intentions, but I couldn’t help it.

  When they arrived, Ezra was napping and I was flipping channels in bed. They joined me upstairs and crawled under my covers, and the three of us lay beside one another like sardines. I turned off the TV, and we were all quiet for a moment.

  “I was wondering when it would sink in,” Becca said, breaking the silence.r />
  “It’s a process,” Jordana added solemnly, staring at the ceiling, her fingers laced neatly over her abdomen. “You know, I was sort of thinking—and, Hol, if you’re not ready for this, just say the word—but maybe we could help you get organized.”

  I could feel their peripheral vision on me. Clearly, this was not a spur-of-the-moment idea.

  “You don’t think I’m organized?”

  “No, no, of course you are,” Becca said. “What I think Jordy’s trying to say is that maybe it’s time to, you know, clean out some of his things or get your stuff in order.”

  “Oy, I don’t know if I’m ready.” I sighed, rubbing my temples.

  Jordana rose from the bed and entered Adam’s walk-in closet. “Let’s just start and see how it goes. We’ll do the work. You just relax. Don’t move a muscle. Come on, Bec.”

  I pulled the duvet cover up over my nose so that only my eyes poked out.

  “Okay, here we go,” Becca said. Jordana grabbed a white button-down shirt off a closet rod and handed it to Becca to present to me.

  “Keep, donate, or chuck?” Becca asked gently.

  I waved her closer so I could sniff the collar. “Smells like his hair products. Keep.”

  “Okay. No problem at all. How ’bout this one?” Jordana handed Becca a black blazer. I had no sentimental attachment to the dry cleaner’s chemical smell, but when I noticed a dark, paisley-shaped mark on the sleeve, I shook my head. “Can’t. Sorry. That’s the wine he spilled the night we learned I was pregnant. Keep.”

  Jordana stepped out of the closet and sat beside me on the bed. “I totally get it,” she said, caressing my shoulder. “Maybe we should start with the sock drawer?”

  It took four entire Sundays, but by the time April rolled around, his dresser was clear, the closet was bare, and all the miscellaneous items I wanted to keep were neatly organized and labeled in color-coded cartons from the Container Store, courtesy of Jordana. The empty spaces seemed cavernous, and I knew for certain that if this house could not be ours together, I didn’t want it as mine alone.