“I took one look at you and knew you were the one,” he confessed to me six months later. By then, his ever-so-slightly hairy back and propensity to talk at length about tax code had dispelled my initial belief that he was perfect. But he acted like he had just won the lottery when he found me standing next to a pitcher of mint juleps, and he was, and is, the best man I have ever met.
Which is why I feel horrible that while Dave is animatedly telling me about the latest saga with his lazy boss, I find myself thinking about Nathan.
Seven
I didn’t respond to Julia’s e-mail for a full week. Nathan and I were in bliss mode, and I wasn’t ready for reality to crash our party. We spent our days meeting between classes and staring at each other over books while pretending to study in the library stacks; nights were filled with frantic attempts to make up for all the time we’d lost being just friends. Dating Nathan was a dramatic shift from what I’d experienced with my wishy-washy high school boyfriends, who practically ignored me in public only to be aggressively affectionate in private, and who seemed to revel in feeding me a steady stream of half-truths. With Nathan, there were no mind games. He immediately told all of his friends as well as our coworkers that we were dating and paraded me around town like I was Julia Roberts, rather than a chunky, frazzled-looking collegiate. He spent hours cooking me elaborate meals that, while not always culinary masterpieces, often left me in tears simply because they were so generous.
“I love you, Marissa,” Nathan told me on our fourth night together. “You are absolutely perfect.”
“No, you don’t. It’s too early for you to know that,” I scoffed, even though I was completely in love with him myself.
“I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life,” he said so sincerely that I couldn’t help but believe him.
Blissed out as I may have been, I could only ignore the blinking message light of my phone for so long. After finally listening to some of Julia’s frantic voice mails—“Where are you? Have you been abducted? I’m worried!”—I realized I had to get in touch with her before she started pasting my face on milk cartons. So, at long last, I picked up the phone and called her.
“Finally!” she scolded.
“Yeah, sorry I haven’t been in touch,” I mumbled. “I’ve been completely swamped with that lit paper I was telling you about.”
“That’s okay. I’m just glad you’re not facedown in a gutter somewhere. It’s not like you to be incommunicado for so long.”
“I’m not lying in a gutter,” I reassured her. “But can we catch up next week? I really have to put my nose to the grindstone if I’m going to get this assignment finished in time.”
“Not a problem!” she responded. “But listen, before you go, I have a teeny, tiny favor to ask.”
Of course you do, I thought. And the answer is no.
“I’m going to be in town in two weeks. Will you set up a gettogether with that hottie from your work?”
Hottie from my work? That’s what you say about the guy you’re supposedly in love with? “You mean Nathan? I think he’s dating someone, Jules,” I told her, unable to disguise the wariness in my voice.
She pressed on. “I don’t think so, Mar. He really seemed like he was into me. Of course, it could have been the vodka messing with me!” She giggled. “Anyway, guess we’ll find out soon enough!”
“Jules—” I began.
“You’ll be there, right? And I can crash with you?”
“Y—”
“Perfect! Can’t wait to see you—and Nathan!” And with that, she hung up.
Even though Nathan had sworn up and down that he had no interest in Julia, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about our conversation and the fact that she thought she was interested in him. At the same time, I didn’t ask Julia not to come to Ann Arbor, nor did I tell her that Nathan and I had started dating. As if ignoring the situation could somehow change what had already been set in motion.
“So when are we going to go by your work?” Julia asked. She was splayed out on my bed, moving her leg—newly free of the walking cast—in small circles, which, she explained, would help rebuild her muscle tone.
“I’m not sure if Nathan’s working this weekend.”
“Then why don’t we call him? Here, tell me his number, I’ll call,” she said, swinging her legs to the ground and grabbing the phone off my nightstand.
“I don’t know it.”
She looked me with a cocked eyebrow. “Are you deliberately trying to torture me?”
“No!” I said, too loudly.
“Seriously, Mar, what’s the deal? I asked you about this weeks ago! Plenty of warning. And you know I don’t ask for much,” she said, giving me her best sad-sack face.
“Nothing,” I responded, this time more evenly. “We’ll go to the café. Let’s just have dinner first, okay? I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages and I want to catch up.”
“Okay,” she said, pouting. Then, quick as a light switch, she gave me an enormous smile. “I know you miss me. I don’t want you to feel neglected!”
After dinner, Julia and I walked over to World Cup, where I knew Nathan was indeed working that night. I was relieved to see that unlike the last time I brought Julia there, it was bustling, giving me a good excuse to get in and out as quickly as possible.
“Hey! Look what the cat dragged in!” Nathan called out to us from behind the industrial-size espresso maker.
“Hi,” I said meekly.
“Hey, you,” Julia said to Nathan. Spotting two empty stools at the bar, she plopped down on one and patted the seat of the other so that I would come sit next to her.
By this point, my stomach was doing somersaults. I wanted to tell Julia at dinner, but the words sat in the back of my throat so long that I eventually gave up and swallowed them. Besides, I could barely get a word in edgewise, with her yammering on about what a perfect match she and Nathan were. (“We both love baking, exercise, and you!” she said, having no way of knowing how ironic this statement really was.)
“Hi, sweetie,” Nathan said, walking toward us.
Assuming he was talking to her, Julia’s face lit up. At that split second, I saw what an enormous mistake I’d made.
Nathan barely glanced at her as he leaned over the bar and kissed me firmly on the lips. Then he grinned and, finally, turned to Julia. “I’m guessing Tiny told you the good news?”
“Good news?” she asked sharply, drawing the stares of the customers seated closest to us.
“Marissa?” Nathan asked, looking at me quizzically. “You didn’t tell Julia about us?”
“Oh,” said Julia, quickly recovering. She smoothed an invisible wrinkle in the front of her cream cashmere V-neck. “Of course she told me. I was just confused, because you made it sound like she was knocked up or something.”
I had a feeling that I’d thrown myself in a very deep hole, and it had yet to be determined if Julia was going to hoist me out or shovel dirt on me. I looked at her, my eyes pleading for mercy, but she just shook her head as if to say, Not now.
The two of us tried to act normal, but the minute Nathan stepped away to help a customer, she grabbed my arm, hard.
“When were you planning on telling me?” she hissed. “And how could you let me keep talking about him like that? You made me look like a total fool. Which,” she said, grabbing her bag, “may have been the point.” She hopped down off the stool. “I’m going back to the dorm.”
“Of course,” I said, my face burning. I watched her strut toward the door, head held high.
“Julia’s not feeling well,” I called to Nathan from over the bar, and to my relief, he didn’t seem to notice that anything was amiss. “I’ll call you later.”
Julia barely acknowledged me when I joined her outside, and we walked home in silence.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly as I slid my keycard through the slot to get into the dorm.
“It’s fine,” she muttered, then said it again, maki
ng it sound like she was trying to convince herself, rather than me.
I assumed she’d call her parents from my room to pick her up. Instead, she announced that she wanted to go to bed, and quickly changed and lay facedown on my bed. I put my pajamas on, got on the flimsy cot on the other side of the room, and pretended to doze off. But it was hours before I finally fell asleep.
The next morning, Julia was gone, although I was relieved to see that her bag was still in my room. I went down the hall to shower, and when I came back, she was sitting at my small table with coffee and bagels.
“A peace offering,” she said, holding a Styrofoam cup out to me.
“Thanks.”
“I was thinking . . .”
“I’m really sorry,” I said, cutting her off.
“I know. Me, too. I realize that was really self-centered of me to not even think that Nathan might go for you.” Her words stung, but I let the pain sink in because I knew I deserved it. “I mean, I obviously get why you couldn’t resist him,” she told me, picking a speck of lint off her spandex workout pants. “I knew the minute I saw him that he was amazing, and here you get to spend every day with him.”
“I know,” I admitted. Then, unable to help myself, I added, “But, Julia, you can have anyone. Why Nathan? Why can’t you just be happy for me? You know I’ve never been in love before.”
“Mar, I think you need to look at the situation from a different angle,” she told me earnestly. “When I was thinking about it this morning, I realized that no man is as amazing as our friendship. That’s what’s important.” She walked over to me and put her hands on my shoulders, bringing her face so close to mine that I could smell the coffee on her breath. “That’s why I think we should both forget about Nathan. It’s not fair to either of us, and it’s not fair to him, if you think about it.”
“Okay,” I said, not really getting what she was saying.
“I mean, first of all, this guy has driven a wedge between us. You never kept a secret from me before he came on the scene,” she said gravely. “Second, what are the chances of the two of you being together forever? Nil! But you and I—we’re going to be friends until the end. Just think about it. What will happen after we move to New York? You heard what Nathan said when we all had dinner last time I was in town. He wants to stay here after graduation.” She made a face as though he had informed us he wanted to live in a junkyard, rather than Ann Arbor.
She paused, then added, “In the interest of full disclosure, I will say that I don’t trust myself to not be jealous if the two of you are together. Who knows what that could do to our relationship.”
The picture, out of focus for the past two weeks, was suddenly crisp and clear. It didn’t matter if Julia was actually in love with him—which I highly doubted, given her history of commitment issues. What mattered was the fact that Julia couldn’t stand the thought of being left behind. Or worse: being ignored.
She gave me a kiss on the forehead.
“You understand, don’t you, Marissa?”
“Of course,” I said.
But I didn’t. Not at all.
Eight
The odds of dying in a plane crash are roughly one in ten million—practically nonexistent compared with the odds of dying in a car accident (one in seven thousand in any given year)—and yet people get in their vehicles every day without so much as blinking. I remind myself of this factoid each time I fly. Sadly, it’s never as reassuring as I’d like. After all, I don’t have a car, and while I’m no mathematician, I can’t help but believe that this pushes my plane crash odds in the wrong direction. Plus, Julia never drove, and look what happened to her.
Relax, relax, relax, I chant in my head, breathing slowly like I learned in the yoga class I was forced to attend during Svelte’s team-building week last year. As the 757 rises slowly over the city, I try to concentrate on the vast gray and brown expanse of Queens, the sun’s silver reflection on the Chrysler Building—anything but the fact that sitting in a massive piece of metal that will soon be 35,000 feet in the air, I have absolutely no control over the next two hours of my life.
Making good on my promise to Naomi, I am taking time off. Only instead of going somewhere that actually qualifies as vacation, I am heading to Michigan, where I will spend Thanksgiving and the following week visiting my family and the Ferrars.
It is the first time I’ll see Julia since she left New York in early October, and frankly, I’m dreading it. Despite my best efforts, I haven’t been able to douse the anger that’s been simmering on low since I came across Julia’s e-mails from Nathan. Why, I keep asking myself, would they be speaking after all this time? After stumbling across Julia’s messages to Nathan, I felt so sneaky and horrible that I couldn’t bring myself to search the rest of her e-mail. And yet a tiny part of me wishes I’d dug deeper before boxing up the computer so I could find out exactly why she’d reached out to Nathan—and when. I want to believe that her interest in him is “just her brain injury talking,” as Dr. Bauer describes the odd behaviors that she’s exhibited since the accident. But I can’t shake the feeling that this is something she has been contemplating for a while. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that they’d been in touch long before her accident.
As my mind wanders in this direction for the hundredth time since I packed up Julia’s apartment, I feel a familiar pang of guilt. In the face of the biggest crisis that’s ever happened to either of us, shouldn’t I just let it go?
Statistics save the day, and the plane touches down without incident. I make my way through the Detroit Metro Airport—so sleek and modern and removed from the crumbling city it serves—and to the baggage claim. After a few minutes, I spot the hideous red duffel I’ve been meaning to replace since college. The overpacked bag, which causes me to huff and puff as I navigate my way through the crowd, is a cruel reminder that it wouldn’t be the worst idea for me to set foot inside a gym sometime this century.
Sarah’s waiting at the curb in the Death Star, as I have nicknamed her enormous black Suburban. Though her hair is highlighted blond and she is far closer to her fighting weight than I am, we are clearly sisters: Like our father, we have deep-set brown eyes and noses that are a little bit too long; like our mother, we are proof that careful grooming can take a woman from plain to passably pretty.
“Gosh, it is so good to see you,” she says, leaning over the armrest to give me a big, lingering hug.
“Hey, sis,” I say, patting her back awkwardly. We spent twentysome-odd years doing our best to avoid each other, but since my sister got involved with an evangelical mega church a few years ago, she’s become very touchy-feely, and I’m not always sure how to respond.
“How are you?” she asks, in that way people do when they’ve spent more than a little time telling others they’re worried about you. I wonder how many of her fellow Bible studiers have prayed for me this week.
“Fine. Happy to be here.” Seeing Sarah glance at me out of the corner of her eye as she weaves through traffic, I feel compelled to add, “Really,” which only serves to make me feel like a big fat liar. I spend the next twenty minutes babbling about how busy work has been in order to save face.
We arrive at Sarah’s Craftsman bungalow, which is nestled in the cozy, inconspicuously upscale Ann Arbor neighborhood of Burns Park. As her SUV’s name implies, my sister is living the dream: perfect house, great figure, nuclear family. Staying at her place is not unlike one of those occupation vacations, where you spend a week apprenticing with a wine maker or carpenter or pastry chef to find out if you really want that job. I always come away a little envious, but with a renewed appreciation for how much work goes into the whole deal.
“Auntie M!” yells Ella, flying out the front door and down the stairs. “I’ve been waiting for you all day!”
“Hey, sweetheart,” I say, scooping her up in my arms. “How is my favorite niece in the whole world?” I would do anything for this kid. On top of being ridiculously adorable
, she has been something of a living, breathing olive branch between Sarah and me since she was born six years ago. The more time I spend around Ella, the more I look forward to becoming a mother one day, even though I am on record as having negligible interest in spawning.
She looks up at me. “Auntie M, Mommy says Auntie Julia is very sick. Are you sad?”
“Yes, cutie. I’m sad sometimes,” I tell her. “But the good news is, Auntie Julia is getting better every day. In fact, you might even get a chance to see her soon.”
“Yay! I’ll draw her a picture!” yells Ella, jumping up and down. “Of a ballerina! Like Auntie Julia!”
“Ella, I guarantee that she would love that.”
“So, I’m kind of afraid to ask, but how’s Mom?”
Sarah and I are sitting in her kitchen after dinner drinking wine, and as per usual, we are discussing our mother. She’s a favorite topic of conversation because one of the few things Sarah and I agree on entirely is that Mom is off-the-reservation nuts.
“Worse than usual,” says Sarah. “She called two days ago to tell me that she’s thinking of divorcing Phil because she can’t stand his snoring.” Phil is my mother’s husband; they married the year after I graduated from college. He considers watching golf a hobby and finds weather to be a fascinating topic of conversation, but is, for all intents and purposes, a nice guy. Truth be told, neither Sarah nor I can figure out what he’s doing with our mother.
“I give it a week.”
“If not less,” retorts Sarah. “She’ll be at Target with two hundred dollars worth of stuff in her cart and realize that her days of carefree shopping for underarm wrinkle cream and lawn gnomes are numbered without Phil. Suddenly his snoring will sound like angels singing.”
The Art of Forgetting Page 5
