“Well, yeah,” he says. “We don’t have an apartment here, your family is a mess…why not leave? Why not make a break for it? Start over. It wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world. We’d still be us. We’d still be together. I guess, like you just said, we could ‘rewrite our master plan’ together.”
“We could,” I say. And at that exact moment, though I’m not sure why, I think of Theo.
“I made a list,” Shawn states, reaching for his laptop on the coffee table. “Of all the reasons you should come.”
In the movies, you sometimes see the heroine press pause, freeze everyone around her, and break the third wall. This is what I do now in my mind. I press pause on Shawn and try to be still, try to talk to the camera and break my own third wall. I consider Vanessa’s theory of opposites. That sometimes, you need to run in the other direction of what you think is meant to be. That running — jumping — flying — can change everything.
I slow my mental electricity, and I try to listen to what my inner heroine would tell me, but I can’t resolve anything conclusive.
“It’s okay,” I say to Shawn, unpressing my pause button. “You don’t have to read it to me. You don’t need to give me a list.”
He furrows his forehead. The old me, the old Shilla, would have very much preferred a list.
“I just wanted to be prepared. Do the research. Convince you if you needed convincing.”
Convince me to follow him. The opposite of Theo.
—
We fall asleep fully clothed in the king-sized bed with the 600-count Egyptian cotton sheets. He kisses my cheek goodnight, and I shift to the other side of the bed, already heavy, already dreaming.
When I wake the next morning, the sun is streaming through the slivers of the blackout shades, and it takes me a few seconds to orient myself, to remember that suddenly, Shawn is here, and maybe I’ll still get everything I wanted.
I rise and splash water on my face and find him pacing in the living room of the suite. He holds up a finger and gestures to his earpiece, then mouths, “Conference call.”
I nod, and he waves toward the cart of room service that he’s ordered. He whispers, “Eat!”
I pull off the silver lid of the serving dish to discover eggs. Shawn has ordered me scrambled eggs while I was sleeping.
He covers the mouthpiece of his Bluetooth and kisses the top of my head.
“It’s Sunday. We always have eggs on Sunday.”
30
Text from: Vanessa Pines
To: Willa Chandler-Golden
Hey. Call me tmrw. Finishing up draft of early chaps. Ready 4 final dare. R u?
Email from: Shawn Golden
To: Willa Chandler-Golden
Subject: List
W — I know you didn’t need to see this, but just in case. I’ve attached the list of reasons. I don’t want you to think I’m not serious about this. Working all night but talk tomorrow?
(1 attachment)
Voicemail from: Minnie Golden
Willa, sweetheart, I must have missed you at Raina’s earlier. Nancy and I are heading back to Palm Beach today. Please check in on your father. I believe that his “nurse” may be “on vacation.” I am concerned for his well-being but am done checking in on him. Raina is so busy, and Ollie can’t leave the house — ooh, did I tell you that I met Jennifer Aniston this morning, and now she is following me on Tweeter? — oh, that was exciting. Anyway. I love you, sweetheart. I know this is a growing period for you. I understand more than you know. You have such a full heart. Just make sure that it’s shining brightly.
—
My father is smoking a cigarette on his balcony when I arrive. The doorman has buzzed me up, but I use my key anyway, the same one I’ve had since childhood, to let myself in.
“If your mother sent you to ensure that I haven’t keeled over just yet, you can go home,” he says, without even turning around, the smoke billowing around him on an exhale.
“Smoking will kill you.”
He flails his arm rather than state the obvious:
everyone dies. Get with the program, Willa.
I coax the sliding glass door over a few inches and join him on his post.
“Mom did send me,” I say, batting my hand in front of my face, diffusing the smoke, suddenly feeling queasy at the thought of more confrontation. I swallow hard on my gag reflex, and mostly, it passes for now. “Can you put that out?”
A muscle in his jaw flickers, but he stubs out the remaining nub and tosses it over the ledge, which I believe is technically littering, but you have to pick your battles.
“Your mother has a new life now. With her lesbian friend. What’s her name, Nanette?”
“Nancy. I’m pretty sure you know that her name is Nancy.” And then, because I’m my father’s daughter and feel just a twinge of pity for him, I add: “I think it’s just a phase.”
“It’s
her
life.” He crams his hands into the pockets of his robe and shuffles back inside the apartment. “I just thought she could give me the common courtesy that forty years of marriage bring, that one expects when
one’s heart fails!
That she would
show up.
And
help.”
He lifts a bottle of Scotch from the bar, but struggles to open it, so just plunks it back down.
“You told her to go.”
“Well, taking a lover and ending a marriage are two different things!” he says. Then: “I am not sure you should be here. With the papers I have served.”
“We should talk about those. I’m not sure the papers have much legal merit. Also, Dad, we’re family.” I am trying to be kind now, though I don’t know why. But he is so frail and so pathetic, and he is my
father.
“Well, how about the merit that I deserve?” he says. “Can you imagine what people are saying? That Richard Chandler’s own middle child is making a mockery of his life’s work? You don’t have a life’s work yet, William! You can’t know how it feels!” He wrestles with the Scotch bottle again and this time, comes out victorious. “Did I do something wrong with you, William? Did I not love you enough? Is this about that ridiculous skateboard that you always held against me?”
I didn’t even realize he remembered the skateboard. I don’t say anything in response, and instead, focus on my breath, focus on not puking.
“Well, William? What is it? Do you have no answer? What could possibly have gone so wrong in your terrible childhood with two parents who loved you, and two siblings who loved you, and the finest education and books and toys and everything else?”
My tears come before anything else.
Then quickly after that: “
Why wasn’t I your life’s work?”
Finally, posing the question that needs to be asked.
He looks at me like he’s never considered this before, like of all his theories and philosophies and musings, this one somehow slipped through. Or maybe he just thinks I’m insane, to hold such expectations of a parent to his child.
He sits now, slowly, as if sudden movements might literally stop his heart.
“You think that I failed you. I’m not so thick-headed that I can’t see that you think I’ve failed you.”
“You would say you didn’t?”
“I would say that it doesn’t matter,” he says flatly. “But you already know that. What I would say. So what I don’t understand is this: if you are so intent on humiliating me…”
“That is not my…”
He flashes his hand —
don’t —
and I fall silent.
“I will rephrase, because you are. You
are
humiliating me. If this is your path, then stop seeking my approval. You’re not going to get it. You will never have my blessing on this. In fact, just the opposite.”
Now it’s my own heart that’s shattered. I understand the weight of his words, what they really mean to say, even if he — just like his daughter — isn’t so good at saying them. After so many years, I should be furious, not crushed, at how easily he caves, how quickly he abandons unconditional love. I consider my own parenting instincts and wonder how I can ever be sure that I won’t do the same. But rage doesn’t come at the realization of the extent of his selfishness. Only devastation. I stand there in my childhood home, and I’m gutted all the way through. Heartbroken. I read about it way back when, back at the
Bodies
exhibit. The human heart. There are so many ways to destroy it.
After what feels like an eternity, I stutter: “So if I do the book…you and I…am I understanding correctly that writing this book will mean…”
I cannot even manage the words. To have spent a lifetime in his shadow, only to be proven disposable when I’m finally trying to step into the sun.
He eases back in his armchair and gazes, unblinking, at the ceiling for so long that I start to worry that he’s gone into cardiac arrest again. But then he says,“I don’t know what will become of you and me, William. You’re my daughter, and that’s blood. But this is something different. This is fate. And that’s not up to me.”
—
I linger in my father’s vestibule until I have no more tears to shed. Until I’ve thrown up all of my guts right there in the hallway. And then, I take one step away from him, then another, because it’s not like I have any other choice. If the map you’ve been given suddenly proves unreliable, you have to write you own. Even if you’re lost in the nothingness of dead space, even if you’re sure there’s not really a way out.
Shawn is lurking in the lobby when the elevator delivers me to the bottom floor.
“Hey,” I croak. “What are you doing here?”
“Raina said you’d be here.”
“Oh,” I say. Then: “Is everything okay?” Then, “I really need some fresh air.” I walk through the revolving door and out into the night without looking back to see if he’s following.
He is there though, right by me.
“I…well…I guess the thing is…”
“What?” I snap, exhausted.
“I don’t really know how to say this…”
“Oh my God!” I bark. “Are you here to break up with me after already breaking up with me? Will it never end?”
A woman strides by walking her poodle and meets my eyes, and then, as she passes, says over her shoulder: “Asshole. Don’t let him give you shit! Men are pricks!”
Shawn watches her head down the street and round the corner, then turns back to me and says:
“Anyhoo…”
“Anyhoo?”
He drops his chin. “Sorry. Nicky taught me that. I’m just nervous.”
“Look,” I say. “I’m having a pretty terrible evening, so if you’re here to tell me that you’re, like, getting back together with Erica Stoppard because she’s, like, way more spontaneous than I am or, like, does triathlons on Sundays, then please, just….just do it. I can’t take another incoming disaster.”
He tilts his head and furrows his brow, like he didn’t know I had that in me. Then he says: “Wow, I didn’t know you had that in you.”
And I exhale because I guess it’s nice to know that I can still read my husband, even if he’s about to massacre me right outside my father’s Park Avenue apartment building.
His face softens. “I broke up with Erica, for the record. She was too…I don’t know. Like, we always had to be doing something — golfing, happy hour, fricking bowling. Bowling happy hour. It was exhausting. Like, what’s wrong with a Saturday night on the couch watching Starz?”
In my old life, a Saturday night on the couch watching Starz was my idea of heaven. Now, I wasn’t so sure. I’d caught a ball at Safeco Field. I’d leapt off the Brooklyn Bridge and felt a little bit like I could fly. But still, I purse my lips and say: “I guess nothing. Nothing is wrong with Starz on Saturday. Though I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what you went looking for, isn’t it? All excitement and fireworks and jazz hands?”
“I don’t really know what jazz hands are. But anyway. I actually came here to ask you out on a date.”
“A date?”
“Yes…the type of thing that two people go on when they like each other and maybe have a few drinks and if they mutually agree upon their attraction, they might hook up at the end of the night.”
“Oh,” I say, forgetting all about my dad. I burp into the back of my hand. “Sorry. It’s my stomach.”
He shrugs like he’s seen it before. Which, of course, he has.
I mull it over. “Okay. I guess we can go on a date.”
“I was hoping for a little more enthusiasm,” he says.
“Well, Shawn. That’s life. Sometimes, you take what you can get.”
He squints. “Is that, like, a quote from your dad’s book?”
“No,” I say, already on my way. “But it might be one from mine.”
31
In yesterday’s text, Vanessa said to call, but it’s 94 degrees out now, and I might actually die of heat stroke if I don’t seek shelter after a four-mile run.
“Are you kidding me? What’s with that?” She gestures to the taupe ribbon pinned to my tank top when I let myself in. “You’re doing that now too?”
I situate myself in front of her air conditioner, my shirt billowing in the artificial breeze.
“It’s a thing. About responsibility. Or conviction. Whatever,” I mutter. “Besides, Ollie’s helping me get in shape…you’re the one who told me to do it in the first place.”
“I did. Because you’re going to need it.”
“If it’s a marathon, I’m out.”
“It’s not a marathon.” She opens a box of chocolate chip cookies and offers me one, which turns out to be more of a bribe. Or maybe a peace offering for what comes next. “The producers want you for
Dare You!
.
”
I emit sharp staccato laughter until I realize she’s not kidding.
“No way.”
“It’s part of the contract.”
“I can’t do it.”
“You won’t do it.”
And I think of a million reasons why this is true: death, public embarrassment, broken limbs, further humiliation (a reality show!) of my father.
“I think my dad will cut me out if I do it,” I say quietly, shifting from the air conditioner to her couch.
“Out of his will?”
“Out of his life.”
“Oh please.” Vanessa rolls her eyes.
“Stop belittling me!”
“Stop belittling yourself!” she snaps.