“Hannah?” I say. “Oh my God. Hi!” It’s my old boss, Hannah. The cocaine-addicted, recently rehabbed Hannah.
“Willa Chandler-Golden! Get out.”
“You look amazing,” I say, “I heard…”
“Oh, you can say it. You heard I went to rehab.”
“Yes,” I concede because there’s no less awkward way to come out with it. “I heard you went to rehab.”
“And I heard your husband left you, your brother got arrested, and your dad almost died.” She pauses. “I read
the
Post.
”
“When you put it that way, you got the better end of our unemployment tenure.”
She laughs, and I muster something close to a laugh, too. I wonder if she ever replaced her Live Free or Die poster, and lose myself for a moment in the memory of that last day, when she unceremoniously fired me, when my life tipped off its balance.
“I’m here getting some tests, picking up some meds.” She falters for a breath. “Trying to pick up the pieces.”
“Good for you,” I say.
“It’s not like I had much of a choice,” she says. “Are you keeping busy?”
I shrug. “I’m working on this book project. It’s kind of fun.”
“That’s cool,” she replies. “What’s the book?”
“You know that show
Dare You!
?
My friend and I are writing their book. And it’s sort of about my dad’s book. I don’t know.”
“I love that show!” she squeals. “That show totally kicks ass!”
“Yeah,” I say, wondering why I never knew that about her before. “It’s okay.”
“Oh, Willa Chandler-Golden. That’s the thing about you. You’re always, ‘
I don’t know’
and ‘
it’s okay’
when you should fucking know and it’s pretty fucking awesome! That’s what you should be dared to do: accept that your life is so goddamn great!”
“Besides my brother and my husband and my dad,” I say, but I’m in on the joke, and she laughs so hard her face turns tomato-red and she shouts, “Oh em gee, I’m gonna pee in my pants!”
Then we hug goodbye like she never balled up her Live Free or Die poster and chucked it at my head.
“Well, don’t be a stranger. Email me. Maybe you’ll be a contestant! How fricking cool would that be?”
“Oh,” I deflect, before meandering down the hall. “I doubt it. It’s not that kind of book. And even if it were, it’s not for me.”
She shakes her head and chuckles.
“I get it,” she says. “Some people watch, some people do. At least you know you’ll never be eaten by a bear.”
—
Shawn meets me on the 96th Street entrance to Central Park. He’s waiting when I get there, though his downtown commute was much further than my walk across the street from the hospital. He’s on a bench, eating an ice cream sandwich, and I stare while the light changes from red to green, wondering if he thought to buy me one too. When we first started dating, back when we went to Hop Lee and made out for free egg rolls, he always would have thought to buy me one too.
He looks up, so I wave and take an awkward quick step as if to feign that I was in motion the whole time and not just standing there spying.
“Hey.” He kisses my cheek, as I sit. “I actually happened to be in the neighborhood, so I was right around the corner.”
“Oh. Aren’t you working downtown?”
He bounces his head up and down. “Yup. But I had a thing.”
I want to ask:
what sort of thing? A thing with Erica Stoppard? The old Shilla wouldn’t have a “thing” without the other. Any sort of “thing” would be programmed in our
Together To-Do!
app, for God’s sake.
Instead I manage, “Thanks for coming. I know it’s breaking the rules. Or whatever. But…I don’t know if I can do this alone.”
“Is your dad worse?”
“No. He’s better.”
His brow wrinkles and he seems a little confused by this, that I need him now, when maybe everything is going to be okay.
Finally he says: “So that’s good news, right?”
And I say: “It seems that way, but it’s really not.”
His phone beeps a double-beep, and he tries not to look at the incoming text, holding his eyes to mine, but eventually, he gives in to his weakness and holds up a quick finger to me and types quickly with his other hand. Before I can think it through, I fold my good hand over his Blackberry and say:
“Please. Don’t. Just give me you for ten minutes.”
And he looks sad, weary really. “Willa, we can’t figure this out in ten minutes.”
So I plead: “I get why you were bored. I get golf and
Grape!
and the mousse and the leather jacket.” He looks perplexed, so I clarify: “Like that ridiculous Varvatos leather jacket that’s meant for an Italian male model?”
And he says: “You don’t like the jacket?”
And I exhale: “I think we’re not communicating.”
And he nods: “That was sort of the point. Of the break. To start fresh.”
“Well, my dad almost died, Shawn!” I’m on my feet, angry now, that I can’t rely on him like I used to be able to, that he has the audacity to make this about him when it is about a million other things, not just him.
“Willa…” he starts, then drifts off because he doesn’t know what to interject to change anything. He squeezes his eyes shut like he has a migraine.
I sit back next to him. Then I say:
“Open your eyes, Shawn. Look at me.”
He doesn’t. So I say it again.
“Open your eyes, Shawn.
Look at me.
”
He complies this time, and I can see that they are lost, so much like mine.
Neither of us has a map.
23
I am drowning my sorrows in one of Raina’s Xanax when the doorman buzzes up. Raina and Jeremy have one of those massive, winding, jealousy-inducing apartments that you see in Architectural Digest thanks to one very wise investment that Jeremy made in a company that created the GPS in the iPhone. (These days, Jeremy is a “documentary filmmaker,” though I’ve never been totally clear on what this means exactly. Raina demurs whenever I ask.) Vera Wang lives two floors up; Donald Trump is rumored to have the penthouse for his mistress.
Tonight I’ve taken to her fainting couch in her living room, though the room is only for show and not for the children under any circumstances. (Raina to the kids: “
DO NOT PLAY IN THE LIVING ROOM UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES! UNDERSTOOD
?”)
Nicky walks in reading the current issue of
Jewish Living
and says, “Doorman called up. Some guy is here for you.”
I sit up suddenly, and the walls morph to and fro before they steady themselves, the wonderful, glorious side effect of this mind-numbing pill.
“Is it Shawn?”
“Uncle Shawn?” he asks.
“Do you know any other Shawn?” I say.
“Actually, I do. A kid in my grade whose dad is like, the CEO of the Yankees, and he always has this really cool autographed shit that he brings in and sells under the table. I tried to pinch a Jeter ball off of him…”
“Well, obviously, it’s not
that
Shawn,” I interrupt.
“
Obviously.
But you asked. Hey, speaking of nothing of the sort, do you think you could take me to Jerusalem?”
“In Israel?”
“You and I really aren’t in sync today.” He walks off.
To his back, I yell: “Hey, that is not the behavior of a good Jew!”
He doesn’t answer, and I hear a door slam somewhere down the hall. I remind myself that I should really write Amanda, because I’m a poor substitute for a mother, but then I hear the doorbell and forget everything.
Theo offers me gardenias when I let him in.
“You remembered,” I say.
“Why wouldn’t I?” he answers.
When Theo and I first met, I was earning $22,000 at my crappy assistant to the assistant executive job. In New York City, this basically rents you a bathtub to sleep in and pizza slices for sustenance. My parents helped, but not much. My dad, no surprise, thought that I’d find a way to work it out, to work myself up, and actually, I did.
I couldn’t afford that much back then, for the first year that we were dating. But my one indulgence was gardenias. I bought a bouquet once a month, even when I should have been more prudent. But they were so luscious, and their scent reminded me of my mother. I’d keep them in their vase for three days after they’d wilted, unwilling to toss something that had such beauty in the garbage, until Theo would inevitably do it for me.
Tonight, I take the gardenias from him and set them on the coffee table.
“Raina invited me for the fireworks,” he explains, like he needs an excuse to be here. Then, gesturing to the flowers: “They need water.”
“I know.” I rest back on the couch.
He fiddles with his hands until he shoves them in his pockets and sits too.
Ollie wanders out, barefoot and wearing a hemp tank top and shorts.
“Oh hey, Theo! Wow, man. Hey.”
They clasp wrists, like some sort of man-shake, and then pull into a hug. Ollie looks at me, and then looks at Theo, then back at me.
“So hey. I was just wandering through. Off to the kitchen for a smoothie.”
“Good seeing you, Ollie. Let me know…if I can help in any way.”
“No worries, man. No worries. But I’d love for you to have a taupe ribbon. I’ll get one for you from my room.”
Theo narrows his eyes at him as Ollie walks off, then shakes his head and chuckles.
“Some things never change. Remember when he visited from Wesleyan? Talking about…what was it back then?”
I think about it, try to conjure it back up in my mind. Either it’s been too long or things are too fuzzy from the Xanax. Then it comes to me:
“Chinese medicine. He wanted to major in Chinese medicine.”
Theo laughs out loud now. “Right. And I couldn’t believe that Wesleyan actually offered that as a major.”
“Kids these days,” I laugh, but then run out of things to say. I glance at him, then away.
He’s better looking now than eight years ago. He was always cute, attractive in a way that made you look twice, with cheekbones that thrilled the
Time
editors. But now, the years have sunk in, the fine lines around his eyes have lent him a gravitas. He wasn’t just boyishly cute anymore in a way that you didn’t have to necessarily take seriously. I wish I didn’t notice the shift.
“I can’t remember the last time I was nervous,” he says.
“Why are you nervous?” I’m sure I’m nervous too but the Xanax doesn’t let it register.
“Well, for one, I’ve texted you. Twice.”
I sigh. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to write him back, it’s that I had no idea what I should say. There’s too much. Or maybe not enough. I don’t know. For the same reasons I didn’t write him back on Facebook.
Accept.
Deny.
Ignore.
(Damn you, Mark Zuckerberg! How have you discovered the meaning of life??)
“Look, Willa, you turned me down once way back when, and if you don’t want me in your life, just turn me down again. Put me out to pasture.”
“I…” I start to say something but either my senses are too dulled to put together a coherent sentence or I just don’t know what to say.
“I came here to find out something…I have something I need to ask. And if after telling me the answer, you want me out of your life, then I will be. Forever.”
“No one knows what forever is.” I lean back and shutter my eyes. “Forever is just a thing my dad says.”
“Is something else wrong with your dad?”
I wave my broken hand and accidentally swipe my eyebrow with the back of my cast. “Ow! No. The surgery went well yesterday. Practically as good as new. If you consider ‘new’ to mean that he doesn’t give one respectable turd about dying and leaving us all behind.”
“Sorry? I don’t follow.”
“Open your eyes and write your map, Theo!”
“Are you okay?”
I roll my head up and meet his concerned gaze.
“Sorry,” I say. “I took a Xanax. I didn’t know you were coming. It’s been a bad couple of days.”
“Oh,” he says, with a friendly smirk. “Well, let’s talk later. When you’re…less stoned.”
“Why would anyone ever be less stoned?” I say, as I press back against the sofa pillows and let the warmth of the Xanax envelop me. “Life is so much better when nothing matters.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Okay.”
“Everything matters,” he insists. “I thought that was what you were trying to prove.”
—
The fireworks begin their dance around nine o’clock. Raina lets the kids stay up late, even though they’ll be disasters tomorrow. Theo lingers, thanks to Jeremy, who trespassed through the living room, didn’t pick up on the enormous bubble of awkward tension, and instead poured Theo a Scotch and invited him to stay. And also because he wanted to “pick Theo’s brain on this new film investment he’s considering.”
We gather on Raina’s building’s rooftop deck. It’s a perfect Manhattan evening: warm enough to feel it under your skin, not hot enough to make you curdle. The sky is clear, a few stars poking their way through despite the bright lights of the NYC skyline. Raina and Jeremy mingle with their neighbors, who have popped champagne and are passing stuffed olives and prosciutto melon skewers and other Upper East Side-ish finger foods. I lean against the balcony and feel the breeze against my cheeks, and I gape at the big bad world, wondering how everything ever became such a mess. I was always sort of a mess, even at five when I became Willa, not William; even at twelve, when my dad bought me a skateboard. I’m thirty-two now. How much longer could I go?
I feel Theo’s hand against the small of my back, and then he’s next to me, staring out, waiting for the spectacle of explosions to begin.
And then they do.
BOOM.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
There are yellows and pinks and purples. And stars and flowers and at the end, an American flag up in lights.
“I’ve never quite understood how they do that,” Theo says, his neck craned up at the sky. “Those shapes, the images.”
“I stopped trying to figure it out,” I answer.