5. Nicky, who took a right turn two days ago while in Palo Alto, likely in response to what he calls Shallow Alto, has definitely discovered God. Or his Jewish roots. He starts and ends his emails with “Shalom,” and I don’t think he’s being ironic. I should devote more time assessing the mental health of 12-year-olds and if this sort of thing is normal. (Also, I should email his mom, but I’m hoping Shawn has already done so. But of course, I can’t ask Shawn and don’t want to be an alarmist. What do I email Amanda? “Dear Amanda, your son has found God. Should we stage an intervention?” No. That seems odd.)
—
Theo is standing in front of the library checking his phone when I see him. He’s in skinny khakis and a blue button-down, because he was giving a guest lecture called
The Art of Persuasion
to a grad-school summer class, but he’s rolled the sleeves up to the elbows and looks more like a student than a professor.
Early July in Seattle is perfection. The sky is crisp and clear and blue and makes you forget that summer doesn’t go on forever. It is not too hot, not too cold, and the air is clean and optimistic. The trees are cut from a storybook, and on campus, they burst with life, towering over you, ahead of you, offering insulation from the world outside.
I watch him for a moment as he pounds something into his phone, solving some sort of crisis for someone much more important than me, and I try to consider what would have happened if I’d just said “yes,” back in the car when he asked me. At the time, I spoke impulsively, but once I did, I couldn’t take it back. And when he didn’t try to convince me — I had expected him to convince me, and then of course I would change my mind and go with him — I couldn’t exactly beg.
He sees me now and smiles. “I was sure you were going to bail.”
I walk toward him. “I’ll be honest, I considered it.”
Though I hadn’t. I hadn’t considered bailing for a moment. That was the unfiltered truth, the one I’d share with him if I had the guts to. But I never had the guts, so I just step closer and then kiss him on the cheek.
He pulls me in for a hug. “You look nice.”
“You’ve only seen me hiking up a mountain and in a bathrobe the next day. Oh, and doped up at the ER.”
“True.”
“So I could only go up from there.”
“You looked great before.” He grins and nudges up his glasses.
“You are such a bullshit artist,” I reply, and he grins bigger.
“Nice cast.”
“It’s rainbow!” I wiggle my hand in front of his nose.
“Come on,” he says. “Let’s walk.”
“Where to?” I say. “I’ve never been here.”
“Let’s go anywhere.” He loops his elbow in mine. “Let’s get lost.”
—
There’s a secret passage on the UW campus, or so Theo tells me. This might just be how he woos me, how he charms me, and leads me down the figurative path again so quickly. Because it’s not really a passage, not really all that secret. We wind through the deserted back roads of the campus, past the administration buildings, past the intricate gothic halls of learning, until it is just the two of us, everyone else having faded away. Occasionally, a student or a TA walks by and nods, but mostly, it’s just us. He tells me how he discovered his cancer (“one morning while washing myself in the shower”), and I tell him about how I don’t really know what I’m doing with my life (“I don’t really know what I’m doing with my life”). How much has changed for him, and how little has actually changed for me.
We don’t speak of Shawn, and I don’t dare ask him how he came to propose to his now ex-fiancée when he wasn’t supposed to ever believe in marriage.
I want to ask:
Is it because you loved her so much more than you loved me?
Is it because it wasn’t marriage that you didn’t want — it was me?
Is it because you didn’t think you could love someone forever but it turned out that if it were someone less needy, less uncertain, you could?
But I say none of this because for now, it’s so much easier not to. I’m still married, after all, and we’re only taking a walk. We wander until we find ourselves down on the waters of Lake Washington.
It’s dusk now, the sun illuminating the water in ways that transcend the imagination: pinks and reds and blues and greens, all blended together, all magic. Two scullers row past, and then behind them, the UW crew. The coxswain’s voice booms out, too large for her body, the oars and arms synchronized following suit. We linger on the railing overlooking the water, not saying much, just taking in the perfect moment of bright air and sunny heat and optimistic uncertainty.
A motorboat cruises in through the passageway leading to the open channel that lies ahead — three guys drinking beers, enjoying the evening. One of them looks up, spies us and shouts:
“Hey dude! Don’t just stand there! Kiss her.”
“Naw,” Theo yells.
“Definitely!” he hollers.
“You think?” Theo responds.
“Go for it!” another one of them bellows.
“I’m okay!” I shout. “I’m fine!”
“But you could be better!” the second one roars as they cruise by.
“No, really, I’m good!” I yell. But I can feel my cheeks redden, my heart race ahead.
“Do it, do it, do it!” the three of them chant in unison.
And so Theo leans in and shrugs. And then he grins. And then he kisses me. And because he does so, and because I am resisting inertia, and because if I’m really being honest with myself, I want him to — I let him.
—
Later, he takes me to Husky stadium, to which he has private entry (“I worked with the football team on a situation,” he says) and we sit on the fifty-yard line just because we can. The lights are on and the sky is dark, and I feel like I’m back in high school, though in high school, no one ever did this for me. I stare up at the sky and think of Shawn every once in a while, but then I remember the rules of our break: that there
are
no rules, and that I’m free to act on impulse, to act on whatever I damn please. Then I think of Vanessa’s theory of opposites, and how impulse is exactly what we’re aiming for, that our instincts — my father’s philosophies be damned — are really all that we have to change our fate.
So I sit on the fifty-yard line, and I try not to do anything to ruin it.
Eventually, we run out of small talk, so Theo examines his hands, and I examine his hands too, which are slim and somehow beautiful. Then he takes my chin in his palm and says:
“I don’t know if I’ve ever been happier.”
And I deflect: “Don’t say that. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
He drops his palm. “Who does?”
“You. You always know what you’re doing, which is why you’re so good at it.”
“Good at what?”
And I say: “Life. You’re good at life.”
And he says: “I wasn’t always good at life.”
I know him well enough to know that he means his complicated childhood with his miserable parents and their frigid home and the endless afternoons he was left to closed doors and quiet space. Eventually, he filled that space himself, by helping his elderly neighbor with her errands, by single-handedly implementing a neighborhood ice cream truck. By now, Theodore’s left his childhood so far behind that it’s not even a glimpse in his rearview mirror anymore. It’s another time, he’s another person. I’m surprised he even remembers it, much less references it. But I suppose our childhoods are seeds inside of us that plant roots forever, even when we’re certain their life cycles have long since been extinguished. How long will it take for my own roots to loosen their grip?
“Besides,” Theo continues, “I’m better at life with you in it.”
And I can’t think of anything to say to that, so I just sort of crunch up my shoulders, but he doesn’t accept that because he’s Theo. Instead, he weaves his fingers into mine, pulls me up, and says: “Follow me.”
And because it is what I do best, I do.
—
Theo lives on a houseboat on Lake Union. It takes a moment to adjust to the ever-so-slight sense of motion, the rocking back and forth, like you’re ready to set sail. He brings us both beers, and we sit on his deck and watch the motorboats lazily glide across the water, moving onward to wherever they call home.
I try not to look at him because if I look at him, I’ll betray myself. I’ll spit out everything that I am thinking, things like:
This is where I would have lived with you?
This could have been our home?
I can see how much I could have liked it here.
So this is the road not taken.
Why didn’t I say Y.E.S.?
Eventually, he sets his beer down on the patio table, and he reaches for my good hand. So I take one more swig of my bottle, and clasp his hand and let him lead me wherever he wants to. That’s what Theo always did. He stood in front of me, so I never had to face the wind. Shawn does that too, I presume, though not as well and not really any longer. Or maybe Shawn and I together turned our backs on the wind and walked in the opposite direction. We spent so much time moving away from whatever challenged us that life, for him at least, grew dim, too calm to be a life worth taking interest in.
Theo kisses me in the living room and my knees hinge just a little bit. I’d forgotten how he kisses. How slowly, how intimately, like he could read your mind and move to wherever you wanted him to move next.
“Is this okay?” he asks.
“It’s okay,” I say. Then worry that he’s misunderstood. “I mean, it’s better than
o-kay.
”
He laughs and kisses me again. “Willa, you don’t have to keep explaining yourself to me. I know you. I get it.”
“You don’t know the new me.” I’m not sure why I say this.
He pulls back and studies me, then smile lines appear around his eyes, then his grin catches up to them.
“God, I’d love to meet her though. The new you. Rainbow cast and all.”
We sink into his sofa and he kisses me for the third time, and I’m so lost in the moment that I think I’m imagining the buzzing in the background. It’s endless, continual, like a hive of angry bees swarming his kitchen. Finally, he stops and says:
“Your phone has rung about twenty times. Maybe you should get it?”
His lips are swollen from moving against mine, and I can feel the stubble burn on my cheeks. I don’t want to stop. Resisting inertia means that I shouldn’t stop.
But then the angry hive buzzes again, so I reluctantly push myself up from the couch and dig into my purse.
Yes indeed. I reach right into the hornets’ nest.
Family.
20
Missed calls: 27
Texts: 23
Voicemails: 8
I steady myself against the counter in Theo’s kitchen and dare myself to listen to my messages though I don’t know if I have the stomach to. Something is wrong. Something has gone cataclysmically wrong. Good news never comes like this, in a wave. Maybe, I guess, if you got an Oscar nomination or something. But not for lay folk. Not for me.
No, this rush to find me could only mean one thing: disaster.
I inhale and find my guts and click on my voicemail as steadily as my shaking hands will allow. I think of so many people whom I love, so many people who could be felled in a quick swoop. No one is immune after all to life’s unpredictable and dangerous whimsy.
Shawn. Nicky. Vanessa. Raina. Ollie. Grey. Bobby. My mom.
It’s none of the first few who spring to mind, however. But it’s the one I should have thought right off the bat. Because he would have told me as much. He practically predicted it.
My dad. It’s my dad. The one who has succumbed to the very thing he always predicted he would: inevitability.
—
Voicemail from Raina Chandler-Farley
Willa! Where the eff are you??? Honestly, this is getting ridiculous! You’re in goddamn Seattle! Not on the fricking moon! Have you not seen any of our texts? Jeremy and I have been trying to reach you for the past three goddamn hours! What time is it there now? It’s, like, nine o’clock at night! Are you out clubbing or something? Is this part of your experiment to find the new you? Please call me.
(Rustling of something and then a large boom.)
Jesus, Grey! I told you not to throw the football in the apartment! Where is Gloria? GO GET HER. Willa? Are you there? Anyway, please call me as soon as you get this! It’s about dad.
(Silence.)
Well, I may as well just come out and say it since by the time you actually decide to pick up the phone and get this, he might be dead. But…shit...Jesus…
(quieter now),
dad’s had a heart attack. A bad one. Something about a ventricle failure…blocked arteries. I don’t know. I don’t really understand it. Please. Just…come home.
—
Vanessa meets us at Boeing Field. Y.E.S. has a corporate jet, so Theo makes some calls and within an hour, the three of us are waiting to board.
“This isn’t resisting inertia,” I say to Vanessa. “Please don’t be disappointed.” My voice breaks. “I have to go.”
“Sweetie, you’re my best friend. I’m never disappointed.” She hugs me. “Besides, this is the hard stuff. This is life. This isn’t about a self-help book.”
I hold her tighter and feel my tears fall. I didn’t expect to mourn him like this. Not that he’s died, but he might. I didn’t anticipate the agony or the empty pit or the blank moments of wondering what life means when your parents start to die. I bat my hand in front of my face and try to compose myself. My dad is okay with dying! It’s part of his life’s plan! Why am I not okay with it too?
Vanessa hands me a Kleenex. “Theo’s coming with us?”
“Only because it’s his plane. He has clients he needs to see in New York.”
“Uh-huh,” she says.
“It’s not really anything.” I’m already diminishing whatever it was because it’s too difficult to consider what it really could be. It was just one night. On a football field. With some kissing. High schoolers have nights like that every weekend. I blow my nose and hand the Kleenex back to Vanessa, who pops her eyes and says: