The Girl I Didn't Marry

by Annabelle Costa

  Seth grins. “Awesome, isn’t it?”

  “Pretty good,” I admit.

  I realize that it’s a metaphor for our entire date. It’s pretty good. Seth is cute, he’s funny, and he seems nice enough. But he’s not…

  Well, you know.

  For some reason, my mind drifts to my afternoon with Chrissy yesterday. It was the first time I’d seen her in a few months. Chrissy is dating this guy who is twenty-one, so we all went to the Aqueduct Racetrack and the guy placed bets for us. Chrissy was really into it, and actually managed to make like twenty bucks. She had money to bet, because she’s working instead of going to college—she’s got a temp job and is trying out for roles in commercials.

  “I almost got this Applebee’s commercial,” she tells me. “This blond bitch beat me out. They told me I was too ethnic. Too ethnic? I’m white!”

  Chrissy’s technically Caucasian, but she has the same olive skin and dark eyes that Nick has, which give her a Southern European look. When she tans in the summer, she could easily pass for being Hispanic.

  I was with Chrissy for less than an hour when I finally cracked and asked her about Nick. She just shrugged. “I don’t ever see him,” she told me. “I heard he never leaves the house. Ever.”

  The D train goes straight from campus to Bensonhurst. I could have visited him any time. But I never did.

  Seth and I continue on our “pretty good” date. I end up eating at least a third of his moussaka, although I use my own fork. He doesn’t seem to mind, which is a point in his favor. Seth’s got lots of points in his favor.

  He picks up the check, even though his family in Queens doesn’t have much more money than mine does—so I pay the tip. It’s a beautiful night on the lower east side. The air is still cool—that oppressive humidity that sets in over New York during the summer is still months away. I could walk around all night.

  “So I’m just wondering,” Seth says, just after we cross Second Avenue, “are you the kind of girl who kisses on a first date or… should I not bother getting my hopes up?”

  I stop walking. Seth’s got his hands shoved into his jean pockets and he’s smiling nervously. I know that if I tell him no, he’ll be disappointed, but he won’t be a dick about it. But I don’t want to tell him no. He’s cute. Not as handsome as Nick, but there’s something about him I like.

  “Technically, it’s our second date,” I point out.

  “Oh really?” Seth says, edging closer to me.

  “And you’re pretty cute…”

  “Oh really?”

  And then Seth is kissing me. He’s pressing his lips against mine, and he puts his hands gingerly on my shoulders when he does it. I feel the heat of his body close to mine, and it’s been so long since I’ve felt that, it makes me ache. And this kiss is pretty good. So pretty good that it’s almost really good. Almost.

  When Seth pulls away, he’s grinning at me. He looks so happy. I don’t know what compels me to suddenly blurt out, “There’s something I should tell you.”

  He frowns. “Are you a lesbian?”

  I stare at him. “What?”

  “Sorry, no, I…” His face colors. “I shouldn’t have said that. I just… the last time I… look, never mind. Sorry.”

  I lower my eyes. “No, I’m sorry.”

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” he asks.

  “Not exactly,” I say. “But… there’s this guy I dated in high school and… well, we’re not together anymore, but… the truth is, I’m not sure I’m over him.”

  There. I said it. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I felt like I had to be honest with Seth.

  “So…” Seth looks thoughtful. “You’re not with this guy anymore?”

  I shake my head no.

  “Do you see him at all anymore?” he presses me.

  Another no.

  “Look, Jess,” Seth says as he brushes a few strands of hair from my face. “I know I’m not supposed to say this, but I like you. A lot. And this other guy… well, if he liked you as much as I do, he’d be here right now. You know what I’m saying?”

  I do. Except he doesn’t know all the circumstances.

  “If you want me to walk away, I will,” he says. “But if you’re willing to go out with me again, I think I can make you forget all about this guy who was dumb enough to let you go.”

  I don’t know if anyone can make me forget about Nick Moretti. But I’d like to let him try.

  Chapter 36

  Nick

  I come to my session with Patty feeling more determined than ever. It’s been ten months since my injury, and although I’ve made progress, it’s not enough. I need to prove to my family that I shouldn’t just give up. I need to prove to them that the wheelchair by my bed doesn’t need to be there.

  There are no injections today, which is good. The injections are always so painful that it makes it hard to push myself during therapy. And I need to push myself. I’m going to show everyone. Only Patty and Dr. Duncan believe in me now, but that’s going to change.

  Ma wheels me into the gym, where Patty is doing squats as she waits for me. She tightens her ponytail and strides over to me. “You ready?” she asks me.

  “Hell yeah,” I say.

  Ma pats me on the shoulder before she takes off. I asked her to watch a few of my sessions in the past, but she didn’t have anything positive to say, so I decided it was better for her to leave.

  “I was wondering,” I say to Patty, “if maybe I could extend my sessions with you an extra half hour. I’m feeling really motivated to make progress… you know, faster.”

  Patty cocks her head. “Sure. But it’s double the price then.”

  “Just bill my father,” I tell her. He won’t be thrilled, but he’ll pay it.

  I’ve already got the braces on my legs and lower trunk. They gave me a set to keep, and Ma put them on me before we left. I feel stronger and more able-bodied when I have them on.

  Patty brings me the walker and I grip the cold metal in my hands. She takes my feet out of the footrests for me and pushes the metal plates out of the way. In the last month, I’ve gotten better at standing up on my own, but it’s a tremendous effort. I take a deep breath, pulling myself to my feet. For a second, I nearly lose my balance though, and Patty reaches out to steady me.

  “I can do it on my own,” I say testily. I reach down and quickly lock the braces with my right hand while clinging to the walker with my left.

  She smiles at me. “I know. Just an instinct.”

  I wait for the dizzy feeling to pass. It’s never better. If anything, it’s gotten worse. I swallow hard and have to release the walker to wipe sweat from my face.

  “Nick?” Patty’s brow is furrowed and her voice sounds far away. “You okay, kid?”

  “Fine,” I manage.

  It will pass. I’m not sitting down again. No way.

  I don’t feel great, but I’m good enough to try walking. Patty and I have tried it a few ways, and we figured out the best thing is to move the walker forward, then pull my legs along together behind me. It’s not a quick process. But I’ve gotten much better at it. When I first started, I’d nearly fall a dozen times, but now I can do it with good balance.

  “How far have I gone, you think?” I ask Patty after twenty minutes have passed.

  She looks back at my wheelchair, where I started. “Fifteen feet maybe.”

  Fifteen feet? That’s not better than usual. That’s worse. I feel like I’m going to collapse from exhaustion and my face is soaked with sweat, yet somehow I’ve only gone fifteen feet?

  “I’m going to go thirty today,” I tell Patty.

  Patty steps back and looks me up and down. “No. You’re not.”

  “Yeah, I am,” I say.

  “Look at you,” she says. “You’re sweating and shaking. It’s time to stop.”

  “I’m not stopping,” I say through my teeth. “I’ve been doing this for nine months and I can’t even walk more than twenty feet yet!”

&n
bsp; “Well, what do you expect?” Patty snaps at me. “You’re paralyzed from the chest down.”

  I stare at her, shaken by her words. It’s the first time Patty’s ever been anything but completely optimistic about my chances for getting rid of the wheelchair. But now when I look at her face, I see her for what she is: a liar. She’s been lying to me all along about what she thought I was capable of.

  She knew from the first day that I’d never be able to walk. Not really—not the way I wanted. She and Dr. Duncan both knew. They were preying on my disability to make money.

  I look up at the mirror across the room. I see the braces strapped to my legs, going up to my armpits. Patty’s right—I’m shaking and sweating and it doesn’t look like I can go another foot. I feel stupid for thinking I could. For ever thinking I could do this.

  “Get me my wheelchair,” I say to Patty.

  “Nick…” Patty’s face has paled as she realizes what she said to me. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just going to take time…”

  “The fuck it will,” I practically spit at her. “I said get me my chair. I’m done here. For good.”

  “Please, Nick,” she says. “Don’t give up on yourself. You’re barely nineteen. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life relying on a wheelchair, do you?”

  When I speak, my voice is slow with barely controlled anger. “Patty,” I say, “I swear to fucking God, you better bring me my goddamn wheelchair. I’m not going to ask again.”

  She gets it this time. She scurries over to my chair and wheels it to where I’m barely managing to stay on my feet. I reach down to unlock my braces, then collapse into the chair. I’m never going to try to walk again. I’m done.

  When I get home, I’m going to tell my father I want to go to Rusk and do the inpatient rehab program.

  Chapter 37: 2007

  Jessie

  Our neighborhood is getting overrun with bums.

  They’re everywhere. They’re pushing shopping carts. They’re living in cardboard boxes. They’re thrusting their hands in my face, begging for spare change. Seth says not to give them any money because it’ll just encourage them, but I’m not heartless. Some days it takes me five bucks just to make it past the two blocks leading to my apartment.

  And I don’t have five bucks to spare. That’s why we’re living in a bum-adjacent neighborhood. I’m making a barely adequate salary, Seth is barely breaking even at his law practice, and both of us have crushing student loans. Seth’s loans by themselves are in the mid six figures. I pack bagged lunches for both of us, because eating out meals is not reasonable anymore.

  That said, at least neither of us are to the point of begging for spare change.

  As I make my way down the block, I sidestep an obese woman who I gave a dollar to yesterday, but now am avoiding eye contact with because I’m broke till my next paycheck. This lady has been living in a nook on the side of a building for at least the last year. Seth often comments on how he doesn’t understand how a woman can be both obese and begging for money for food—he says she probably comes here to beg during the day, then goes home to an apartment bigger than ours. I’m not going to judge though. Maybe she has a glandular problem. It’s clear from the dirt ground into her skin that she doesn’t have a place to shower, at the very least.

  At the end of the block, I see a homeless man that I’ve never seen before. At this point, I recognize most of the people who beg regularly in the blocks leading to my building from the subway, but it doesn’t particularly surprise me to see a new face. But there’s one thing that does surprise me:

  This man is in a wheelchair.

  He’s sitting in a dirty old wheelchair, slumped in the seat, his dark hair unkempt. I notice a cardboard sign on his lap that says in black block letters: “I AM DISABLED AND CAN’T WORK. NEED MONEY FOR FOOD.”

  As I get closer to the man, I get this unsettling sense of familiarity. He’s younger than most of the bums around here—maybe in his thirties, although I suspect he’s even younger than he appears. He’s skinny to the point of being gaunt, with large hollows in his cheeks, but from his features, he looks like he might have once been handsome. His clothing is filthy, although it’s hard to say if the stench I detect comes from him or someone else who had once occupied this space. The whole damn block reeks of human urine. His dark hair is long and disheveled, and his beard is matted. But his dark eyes are unmistakable.

  Oh my God, it’s Nick.

  I haven’t laid eyes on Nick Moretti in ten years. I can’t even imagine what must have happened during those ten years to turn him into the shell of a man sitting in this broken down wheelchair in a (let’s face it) terrible neighborhood, begging for money for food. I thought that no matter what happened, Nick’s parents would have taken care of him. How could this have happened?

  The boy that I fell in love with in high school never would have let himself turn into this.

  But at the same time, I feel an overpowering urge to help him. Everyone has a bad period in their lives. I loved Nick, once upon a time. I can’t let him starve to death in the gutter.

  I approach him in his wheelchair with timid steps. The stench grows even stronger. Oh God. I want to help him, but I’m going to have to breathe through my mouth while I do it.

  “Nick…” I say.

  He looks up at me, his dark eyes bleary. I wonder if he got into drugs—that’s the only thing I can think of. Maybe he had a lot of pain from his injury and got hooked on pain meds. I wonder if he’s high right now. I see no recognition in his eyes.

  “It’s me, Nick,” I tell him. “It’s Jessie.”

  “You…” He barely gets out the word, his voice unfamiliar and raspy. “You have really pretty hair, lady.”

  Okay.

  Now I’m thinking this might not be Nick.

  “Um, thank you,” I say. “But, um, are you… I mean, is your name…?”

  “I wanna touch it.” The man holds out a shaky hand and swipes at me. I barely manage to sidestep him. He gives me an angry look, grabs the armrest of his wheelchair, and gets to his feet shakily.

  So I was wrong. Definitely not Nick. This is a random bum with dark hair and eyes, who is pretending to be disabled to get handouts.

  Who is now walking towards me.

  “Lemme touch your hair!” the guy yells at me, spittle flying out of his mouth with each word. Well, I might have been wrong about him being Nick, but I wasn’t wrong about him being on drugs. One out of two ain’t bad.

  Clutching my purse to my chest, I hurry down the street, the bum lurching after me. He might not be disabled, but thank God he’s not very fast. Still, I decide to duck into a store so that he doesn’t follow me home and stalk me outside my building.

  The clerk at the mini mart I ducked into gives me a look when he sees me hovering by the door, checking for signs of my would-be assailant, so I decide to buy a pack of gum to appease him. I can just barely afford it.

  I feel like an idiot. I can’t believe I thought that man was Nick. What is wrong with me? I haven’t thought about Nick in… well, years. I swear. Maybe his name had crossed my thoughts in a general sort of way. But I haven’t thought or wondered about him in a very long time.

  I haven’t loved him in even longer.

  I never tried Googling him to find out what he’s been up to. I never asked the one or two friends from high school I kept in touch with if they’d seen him. I didn’t want to think about him. If I found out he was a mess, that would make me feel awful. If I found out he was doing great and never bothered to contact me, that would make me feel even worse.

  Nick Moretti hasn’t been a part of my life in a very long time. And I’m better off for it.

  At least, I think I am.

  Chapter 39

  Nick

  Every Sunday, I got dinner with my parents. It’s one of those things that’s non-negotiable. No matter what else is going on, no matter what I’m doing, I drop it and head out to Bensonhurst for a night of h
ome cooking, courtesy of my mother. All other nights, I eat out or get takeout.

  Tonight Ma is making lasagna and I can already taste it as I’m speeding across the Brooklyn Bridge. I’m going much too fast, like usual, but I almost never get pulled over. The cops don’t pull you over much if you’re in a BMW, and they never pull you over if you got handicapped plates. I got both.

  I’m alone in the car. In the years since I moved out, I never had any desire to bring home any woman to my parents. Not to say there haven’t been women in my life. There have been women. Plenty of women. I got a girlfriend right now, as a matter of fact.

  Anybody special? No. Never. Nobody who can live up to the girl I blew it with in high school.

  I pull up in front of my parents’ house, having made the journey from my apartment in Manhattan to their driveway in record time. I throw the car into park, then I grab the frame of my wheelchair out of the passenger seat. I straighten out the collapsible backrest, then I reattach the wheels one by one. Once my chair is in one piece again, I lock the wheels, pull my legs out of the car, and shift my body into the chair in one practiced motion. All told, it takes me sixty seconds for the whole thing. When I first learned, I’d be getting out of the car for half the day.

  Over the better part of the last decade, I’ve gotten very comfortable adjusting to life as a paraplegic. I spent four months in rehab, and I came out feeling confident that I could do everything without my parents’ help, although for the first few months, the real world was scary. I finally started college at Columbia during what would have been the second semester of my sophomore year. I lived at home for a while, but then pointed out the commute was killing me, and my parents let me move into an accessible dorm room. I think Ma somehow expected me to move back in after graduation, but there was no chance in hell that was happening. Instead I went up north to business school at Harvard.

  There hasn’t been one week when I made it to the front door without Ma coming out of the house to greet me. She stops me in my tracks with a hug, saying, “I missed you, Nico. Why you gotta live all the way out in Manhattan?”