“How strange?” I say, once we’re moving again. My hands are tucked into my pockets, Zoe’s wrapped in leather gloves that match her camel-colored coat, belted tight at her waist. I wonder what it’d feel like to walk with her hand in mine, and then make a fist in my pockets instead of grimacing at how ridiculous this thought is. It must be the hiking boots; they’re scrambling my brain. This isn’t camp, this isn’t my truck, and this isn’t my house. It’s none of the places we do this thing between us.
She makes humming noise in the back of her throat, and Jesus, I have to remind myself that this isn’t bed, either. “I did one callback yesterday, my first one. It was a client whose father just got diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.”
“Ah.” We’ve got a few regulars at Sunset Terrace with Alzheimer’s. Even with good care they’re sometimes a liability to themselves, with us getting called in for self-inflicted injuries that require our help.
“Anyways, I had to do some work before I called back. I had to refresh myself on a few things, durable versus springing power of attorney, how you name more than one agent, that kind of thing. That was a branch of the law I hadn’t done much of when—well, you know.”
“Sure,” I say, and wait for some answering plane of distance to open up between us at the mention of her last job. But it doesn’t come. That plane doesn’t even exist anymore most days. I’m still thinking about holding her hand, after all.
“But I did well, or at least according to Marisela I did well—she runs the place—and I think I really helped this woman. When we got off the phone, she sounded like she knew what she wanted to do.”
“That sounds good. Doesn’t sound strange at all.”
We split, steering around a woman walking a small white dog that’s barking persistently at a leaf skittering across the sidewalk. She waits until the sound won’t drown her out to speak again. “But then when I looked down at the log list, where all the calls are waiting, there was—there was a ton of stuff. Debt relief, foreclosure assistance, two more power of attorney requests, an identity theft case. And you know what I felt, looking at all that?”
I look over at her and she breaks stride for a few seconds, looking up at the sky and taking a deep breath before breathing out: “I felt excited.” Then she marches forward, and I hustle to catch up to her. This time, I ignore every reasonable cell in my brain and take her hand in mine, keeping my head down and my eyes on our feet, which move hypnotically in step.
“Seems like it’s been good for you, starting this,” I say, to cover the strangeness of this moment, of us walking down the city street as if we’re a couple, as if it’s Take Your Boyfriend to Work Day.
“But—I just wonder, is it that way for you?” she asks, and I think my hand may jerk in hers, because now I know where she’s going with this. “It’s weird, knowing that every single thing on that log list is causing someone on the other end a lot of stress and hardship, while I’m—I don’t know. I’m almost grateful to have them to call back. I’m glad to have the chance to solve a problem. I ought to make another—” she cuts herself off, shakes her head before continuing. “Do you feel that way? You see people at their worst moments, you know? Do you ever feel glad to be there, glad you can fix them?”
I swallow back what feels a whole fucking lot like tears, and I’m glad it’s so cold out here, in case I need some weather event to pass my stinging eyes off on. “I can’t always,” I say, and she stops. A woman behind her clucks in annoyance, brushing past us with a murmured, “People are trying to walk here.”
She tugs my hand, pulling me so we’re tight against one of the granite pillars that flanks a bank entrance, out of the way of pedestrians. She takes her hand from mine and pushes up her sunglasses, looking up at me. “Is that what happened, then?”
I offer a quick nod. “Overdose.”
I wait for her to say something soft, pitying—maybe an Oh, Aiden, with breathy sympathy and sad eyes. Maybe she’ll do like Ahmed, a gentler version of his shoulder pat. I’m braced for it, I guess, knowing that when she does, it’ll break the spell of this morning. I didn’t want her pity. I only wanted her, only wanted to be around her.
But she doesn’t say anything, not for maybe a full minute. She just watches me, her eyes searching back and forth between mine, her lips set in a firm line, that strong set of her jaw slightly upturned. “Who was it?” she asks, finally, and it’s not at all what I expected, but it’s the right thing, the exact right thing.
I look away, look at the sun gleaming off one of the windows of an office building across the way. We must be pretty close to wherever her new office is, I figure. “I can’t say much,” I tell her, knowing it won’t hurt her feelings. Zoe knows all about HIPAA, patient privacy, my legal obligations as a provider. But I can tell her the things that are sticking with me: how young the patient looked to me. How her face looked pained, no matter what drugs she was taking to manage pain in the first place. How narrow her wrists had been. How she’d reminded me of my brother, and how I’d fucked up and said so, in the rig.
It only takes me a couple of minutes to say what I can say, but it still feels like I’ve set down some of the weight I’ve been carrying. I watch Zoe’s gloved hand while I talk, the one clutched around her bag. When I’m finished, she doesn’t say anything at all, and that’s the right thing too. It’s like the two of us have agreed to a moment of silence for what’s happened. We’ve agreed that there’s nothing at all to say.
But when we start walking again, it’s Zoe who talks first. “What’s the status of your story?”
“Uh. What?”
Her glasses are down over her eyes again, her posture still straight and elegant as we walk.
“Your story,” she repeats. “The presentation. Basically it’s three days away,” she says, and she obviously doesn’t have one shred of regret for busting my balls about it; that’s clear as day. What’s more surprising is that I’m pretty sure I’m enjoying it.
“Right, three days.” I clear my throat. “It’s rough,” I tell her, because that’s the truth. I’ve been working on it every day since that party Kit threw, and it’s gotten easier since I’ve made one major change that’s required a good deal more logistics but a lot less staring at the computer with a sick feeling in my stomach. But it’s not all that polished, not yet. It’s going to need a lot of work to look as refined as what Val had done, or as authentic as what Sheree and Tom had put up.
“Aiden,” she says, stopping again, and this time, when another irritated pedestrian clucks in displeasure, she offers a curt, “Oh, cut the shit,” at his back. I’ll bet he feels that verbal slap all day. Then she looks at me again, lifting a hand to further block the sun that’s shining right on her. “Do you still, really, want to do this? The camp?”
I take a deep breath, look down the street, wait until the noise of a city bus passes. “This is for my brother.”
“It’s going to be every day, Aiden. Every day, you’ll have people at that camp who are suffering. Who you may not be able to save. You’ve got to be prepared for that.”
I swallow, thick and uncomfortable. I don’t know if you ever get prepared for that. I think I must understand that better than she does. “I’m all in,” I tell her. “I’ve got to be all in.” I look back at her, wish she’d lift those glasses up again, so I could look in her eyes and see what she’s telling me with them. But she doesn’t make a move. She stays still, those tiny parentheses at the corners of her mouth.
“Okay,” she says, finally. “Tonight we’re going to get drunk and do a puzzle.”
I blink after her, confused, as she starts walking again. “That sounds…” I trail off, not knowing how to finish that sentence. It sounds fucking weird; that’s how it sounds.
“Here’s the thing, Aiden,” she says, her voice in that bossy, no-bullshit register she’s got. “One way or another, you’re giving that tour on Saturday, and you’ll hate yourself from here to eternity if you don’t get it right. You know i
t, and I know it.”
“Right,” I say, oddly buoyed again. I feel like I’m a boxer on the ropes, getting shouted out by my cornerman while he slathers Vaseline all over my fresh cuts.
“So you’ve had a lousy morning, and you need some sleep and a night off thinking about everything that’s horrible.” She stops, and one building ahead I see the sign for Legal Aid. She turns to me, putting her sunglasses up again and looking me straight in the eye. “So go home, get some sleep, and come back here at four to pick me up, because”—she breaks off and gives a dramatic sniffle—“because I’m not doing this walk again. And we’re going to go get sandwiches or burritos or a pizza and some beer, and then we’re going to do this ‘doors of the world’ puzzle I have, which will be nearly impossible even if we’re sober. And then tomorrow morning, you and me, we’re driving to Stanton Valley a day early, and we’re going to do the presentation there. We’re going to walk the tour, figure out the story. Okay?”
I don’t miss that she’s said we’re, and I know she doesn’t miss the smile that’s tugging at the corner of my mouth, a smile that would’ve felt impossible a few hours ago. Even now I shouldn’t want to smile, thinking of taking that walk, figuring out the presentation, smoothing out the rough edges that are all over it right now, despite the work I’ve been doing. “All right,” I say.
“Fine,” she answers, and it’s a little funny, how clipped she’s said it, like she’s won an argument we weren’t even having. “I’m going now.” She turns to walk away, but stops and rushes back, shoving her bag at me before she leans down and starts undoing the laces of her boots. “Holy shit, I almost went in there in these boots!” she says, more to herself than to me, and I smile, watching her balance on one foot while she tugs a heel out of the bag. When she’s done, she grabs her bag back and gives me the boots. “Don’t lose these,” she says, as if I’m planning to just casually drop one between here and my car. Her cheeks are even pinker now, the cold plus bending over, and probably the lecture she just gave me.
And I think, despite what she said before, she might be a little nervous about going in there, about this leap she’s still taking.
“Zo,” I call to her, when she’s started to walk away again. I must look like an idiot, standing here holding a woman’s hiking boots in the middle of the sidewalk, but I find I don’t really care. When she turns around I tell her, “It does feel like that for me, a lot of the time. To solve someone’s problem. I don’t think that’s anything to feel bad about at all.”
When she smiles at me, I hold those damned boots a little tighter, and then turn to make the long walk back to her building, already counting the hours until 4:00 p.m.
Chapter 15
Zoe
In the end, we don’t get drunk and do a puzzle. Aiden falls asleep on my couch after one beer and I sit next to him, resisting what feels like a perverted urge to curl myself against him, all his warm heat and solid strength, even when he started this day so defeated. From where I am, I can see the guilt vase, which I’d tucked onto a windowsill when Aiden had been showering this morning. Somewhere in there is the slip for Aiden’s parents, the slip that would’ve included him too, if I’d known about him then.
But there may be something you can do, he’d said to me, back on that first day, when I’d been ready to walk away from him and concede that the entire guilt vase project had been a vanity project that I hadn’t thought through, a half-drunk, all-weak attempt at getting unstuck. Now it’s not even two months later and I’m on my couch again, not alone this time, just starting to feel alive and like myself. It’s the first time I’ve felt I had a way forward since I walked out of Willis-Hanawalt on that last day, all my lottery promises swimming, indistinct, in my mind. It’s not the guilt vase that’s done it, though of course there’s been good to come out of my new friendship with Janet, my mentorship of Dan, and my way, way better manners in coffee shops and parking lots.
It’s been Aiden. No, it’s been me and Aiden, something about me and him together.
So how can I not help him with this, with his story, with this presentation, with everything he says he wants for the camp? How can I not give him the one thing he’s asked me for?
I’ll be adding slips, I guess, slips for Paul and Lorraine, for telling them this lie that gets to be less of a lie with each passing day, since I don’t fake anything with Aiden lately. And I’ll be adding a slip for Aiden too, though I don’t think he’d see it that way. But I don’t think it’s right for him, the camp—not this way, not in the way that means he uproots his life and starts all over again. I think he’ll miss his work, which even on bad days gives him a sense of purpose and control. I think he’ll miss Charlie and Ahmed, who he talks about with indulgent, grateful affection, more so now than when I first met him. I think he doesn’t really want to manage a campground as a full-time job. I think he’s doing it because it’s what it takes to win, because it’s what he’s promised himself and his family he’ll do.
And I think—I know—that promises like that can wear on you, especially when you’re grieving. It’s the same way my job wore on me—living out my father’s hopes for me, being the person I thought he’d want me to be. Becoming that person so much that I hardly knew who I was without my job.
But how, how can I not help him? How can I not give him what he’s asked me for? How can I not give his family that?
I must fall asleep eventually, but when I wake up in the morning I’m in my bed, under the covers, and Aiden’s beside me, lying on top of them—flat on his back, hands clasped loosely over his middle. It’s the closest we’ve ever come to sleeping next to each other, and I wish, with an almost physical ache, that I hadn’t slept through the feeling of him carrying me in here and laying me down.
I slip out of bed, move as quietly as I can into the bathroom, and when I come back, Aiden’s sitting up, feet on the floor, scraping a hand through his messy hair. “All right that I stayed?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say, watching the little notch at the corner of his mouth that tells me he’s on the verge of a smile. I did that for him, have done that for him, and I—I want to keep doing it, no matter the seed of doubt I have. I tell myself that this isn’t the same as it was with Christopher, me jamming myself into someone else’s problems to avoid my own. I’m dealing with my own. I’m moving on, and it’s okay for me to help him too, so long as I keep hold of myself.
“I got coverage for my shift today,” he says, his voice still gravelly with sleep, the first time I’ve heard it that way outside of camp. He lifts his phone in the air, waving it a little. “Ahmed emailed.”
“Good. You need a day off.”
“Off of one thing, at least. You still want to go today?”
I take a deep breath through my nose, slow enough, I hope, so he doesn’t see my chest rise. “I’m in,” I say, and turn away to pack my bag.
“Sixty-eight minutes.” I tap my thumb against my phone screen to stop the timer from turning. When I look up at Aiden, he’s got his hands set low on his hips, an expression of frustration in his eyes.
“Goddammit,” he says, on a gusty sigh. “Where am I going to take eight fucking minutes off?”
“Relax. Let’s think about this.” I sit down on one of the benches of the outdoor classroom, Aiden’s copy of the presentation binder spread open in my lap. It feels better than expected to sit down, like all the muscles in my legs are doing a hallelujah chorus, and I’m pretty sure I make a small groan of relief.
It’s Friday afternoon, only a couple of hours before we expect Hammond and Val and Sheree and Tom to show up for the weekend. This is probably our last run-through of it, Aiden’s presentation, and I can’t say it’s been an easy go of it. Aiden and I are both tired, and the presentation itself isn’t easy to do over and over, no matter how much we’ve focused on not making it too heavy.
I look down at the tour map, at the typed notes Aiden handed me yesterday when we’d arrived. I’d been surprised, I
guess, to see what he’d done for the presentation. For the last couple of weeks, he’d told me, since Ben’s party, he’s been collecting testimonials from patients who’ve been through the programs elsewhere, the ones in Colorado, New Mexico, California, Maine. Some by email, some by phone, one—on Tuesday, right about when I was doing my first call at Legal Aid—by video chat. They’d been easy to get, he’d said, because the program owners already know about Aiden, already know he’s looking to bring a facility here. They’re ready to get moving on a lease, so they give him what he needs, and what he needs—what I told him he needs—is a story. Or, in this case, stories.
It’s not that it isn’t good. It is good. It’s moving, it’s painful, it’s hopeful. Lorraine will definitely cry, and I won’t be surprised if others do too. Over the last day and a half I’ve helped him smooth it out, tie the stories he’s got more strongly to whatever location we’re at on the tour—how equine therapy worked for one of the patients when we’re at the stables site, how shared living spaces function for patients coming to rehab out of methadone clinics while we’re at one of the cabin sites. I do what I can do, to give him what he says he wants.
It’s just that it’s got nothing to do with Aaron. Aiden doesn’t even say his name, not once.
I shift on the benches, tap my finger against my lip while I think. “Cut the second stop at the cabins?” I suggest, and look up at him.
“Maybe. But I’ve got to explain how the population would be separated, how we could use the different cabin groupings for—”
“You can do that all at one stop,” I tell him, holding out the binder and pen, gesturing for him to change the route so we can shave off the time. He takes a seat next to me, but before he sets to work on the map, he puts an hand on my knee, squeezes gently. “Let’s quit after this,” he says. “You’re tired.”
“I’m fine.”
He shakes my knee, a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “I’ll check you for ticks.”
Luck of the Draw Page 21
