As soon as I thought that, I wondered if he thought the same thing about me. Now that I was unfuckable—according to my mom.
“Hey,” he said then. “You got a haircut.”
I touched the spiky back. “Yeah.”
Chip shrugged. “Don’t worry. It’ll grow back.”
“Chip,” I said then. “What are you doing here?”
He shrugged. “Bringing you your ring.”
I watched in shock as he bent down on one knee, losing his balance for a second before getting situated, and then lifted the ring up to me like a kid playing King Arthur.
“Margaret—” he began in a thespian-like voice, but then interrupted himself: “Oh, shit! What’s your middle name?”
“Rosemary,” my dad offered from the wings.
Chip began again. “Margaret Rosemary Jacobsen, we’ve had a rough month. I have let you down in more ways than I can count. But I think this ring can be a symbol of a new beginning for us. I vow to be a better man. I know I can be a better man. So now I ask you, in front of your dad and your crazy sister, despite everything we’ve been through—will you marry me?”
I knew my line. But I didn’t say it.
I took in the sight of this very different Chip for a good while. True, my mom had succeeded in stoking some of my insecurities and semiconvinced me that I might never get a better offer than this one, right here, from a disappointing, wrinkled, slightly soused version of the man of my dreams. If my mom were here, she’d be hissing at me to say yes and just lock it down right now before he sobered up.
But I couldn’t.
Did I want to marry him?
I’d wanted to marry him for years—so long, I almost didn’t know how to not want to. Part of me still did, as bad as ever—maybe worse. But another part was having massive second thoughts.
He was looking at me. Waiting. Well?
The answer could have been easy. But easy didn’t exist anymore. If it ever had. “I don’t think so, Chip.”
His Shakespearean expression fell away, and he stood up. “No?”
“You said yourself it’s been a rough month.”
“I’m trying to make it better.”
“I get that, but I’m not sure this is the way.”
Chip’s face crumpled. There was no other word for it. “I’m so indescribably sorry about that night. I never meant for this to happen. I would give anything—anything—to change places with you.”
“This isn’t about the accident,” I said.
“What is it about?”
“How many times have you been to visit me here?” I asked. I genuinely didn’t know.
He looked fuzzy, too. “I’m not sure.”
“Three,” my dad offered, “if you count right now.”
I looked at Chip. “Three times in two weeks. Do you think that’s enough?”
“It’s just—” Chip’s voice caught. “It’s that every time I see you—all burned and messed up—I feel so guilty, knowing it was all because of me, knowing that I ruined your life. It’s like I’m suffocating.”
Really? I thought.
“Okay,” I said. “One: The jury is still out on whether or not my life is ruined. And two: Fuck you. You should have come anyway. I don’t care if you feel guilty. You should have been here every minute of every day. You should have been sleeping here and waking up here and buying me stuffed animals in the gift shop and bringing me Chinese takeout. Kitty has been a better friend to me in here than you have.”
Kitty shot a glance over at my dad.
Chip looked down. “I’m sorry.”
“So you can see why the idea of marrying you, the idea of ‘in sickness and in health,’ doesn’t make a lot of sense to me right now.”
Chip looked down and nodded.
“It’s not the accident,” I said. “It’s everything since the accident.”
“But it’s not off?” he asked then, looking up. “The engagement’s not off?”
“Well, it’s not frigging on.”
“Can it just be, like, on hold, then?”
I felt all six eyes in the room on me. I wanted to punish him. I wanted to tell him it was off—one hundred percent. I wanted to make it clear, to everybody, that insult to injury would not be tolerated.
Instead, I sighed. “It can be on hold.”
Chip broke into a smile. “That’s something. I can work with that.”
He did not deserve to be smiling right now. But I couldn’t have said no, and we both knew it. I wasn’t ready to give up on Chip. He’d just failed a test of love, yes. But I couldn’t—wouldn’t—decide it was the only test that would ever matter.
“And will you wear the ring?” Chip pushed.
Did I want to wear that charred, bent ring? Not really. It was a bit too close to forgiveness. But I let him slide it on my finger anyway. I was too tired to be strong about this. And, more than that: Letting go of my past and my future at the same time felt like more than I could bear.
As he nudged the ring into place on my finger, Chip gave a relieved burst of laughing and crying at the same time, and at this range I got a sour whiff of alcohol. “It’s a little bent,” he said.
“It fits better now, though.”
“Can I kiss you?” Chip asked.
I nodded, but I couldn’t meet his eyes. I felt, more than saw, him lean in. I held still and braced for impact. When his lips touched mine, I tried like hell to feel something. And I did, in a way, but it was not something any kiss had ever made me feel before. It felt like a reminder of exactly how life used to be—followed by an ache of sorrow that it might be gone for good.
Thirteen
AT THE KISS, Kitty and my dad took off, assuming, as you might, that Chip and I wanted to be alone.
In truth, what I really wanted was time to talk to Kitty. And to give my dad a little hug for wounds he didn’t even know he had. And to figure out where the heck my mom had disappeared to.
But Chip did not remove his face from mine for a good while.
Something about him kissing me made the burns on my face itch. I tucked my hands under my blankets to remind myself not to scratch.
While I was waiting for him to finish, Ian walked in.
“Smooching hour is over, folks,” Ian said.
Chip pulled away, and we both turned toward Ian.
Ian always looked annoyed, but now he looked extra annoyed. “Time for your therapy, Maggie Jacobsen. Maybe your man can help with your transfer while I grab a coffee.”
I shook my head, like, Definitely not. “He hasn’t had any practice.”
Ian raised his eyebrows. “Well, there’s nothing to it.”
Chip turned to me. “What did he say?”
“He’s Scottish,” I said. “He wants you to help me transfer to my chair. He says there’s nothing to it.”
Chip frowned, like this was another test he was bound to fail. “Maybe you could show me,” he said to Ian.
Ian frowned. “You want me to show you?”
Chip nodded, and, as ever, I read his face so well. He thought getting a lesson would get him out of having to do it himself.
Ian shrugged. “It’s not rocket science, man, but if you want a lesson, let’s go. For Maggie’s sake, if nothing else.”
Chip looked at me. “Did he just call you Maggie?”
I shrugged. “He can’t pronounce Margaret.” I turned back to Ian. “I don’t need help.”
Ian shook his head. “You do.”
“That’s not what you said before.”
“Before, I was teaching you a lesson.”
“What?” I said. “That you’re kind of an asshole?”
Ian blinked, and I could not read his expression. “A lesson that you can do it yourself,” he said. He looked over at Chip. “But that doesn’t mean you should have to.”
Chip looked at me. “I can’t understand him at all. It’s like a speech impediment.”
Ian didn’t take his eyes off me. “Watch yourself,
little man.”
There was a knock at the door, and then my dad’s voice. “Is everybody done kissing?”
“Yes,” Chip and I called flatly, at the same time.
My dad stepped in—with my mom trailing behind him, looking dazed. “Look who I found! At the candy machine!”
“Where’s Kit?” I asked.
“She had to go,” my dad said. Then, in a stage whisper, “She’s got a date with Fat Benjamin.”
My mother, a few feet behind my dad, held an unopened Hershey bar and looked shaken and pale. I made a stab at mental telepathy, trying to promise I’ll never tell him from my brain to hers. But I don’t think it worked.
My dad was as jolly and unaware as could be, and that just made it sadder all around. He put his arm around my mom and gave her a little squeeze. Then he said to Ian, “I’d like to see how to do a transfer, too.”
“You heard that conversation?” I asked.
“Sure,” my dad said. “You can hear everything out in the hallway. That’s how we knew you and Loverboy were done making out.”
“Then why did you ask?”
He lifted his eyebrows like, Duh. “To embarrass you.”
Ian coughed. Then he reached behind me to grab the transfer board and lower the bed.
I regarded Chip for a second. Next to Ian, he suddenly did look like a little man. I’d always thought of him as “trim” or “sporty,” but standing next to Ian gave him a slightly shrimpy vibe.
“The trick to the transfer,” Ian told us all then, “is letting Maggie do as much for herself as she can. But stay close by. There’s a temptation,” he added, “when someone you love is struggling, to want to help too much. Keep in mind that the struggle makes her stronger.”
I gave Ian a look. I might be in danger of many things, but “getting too much help” was not one of them.
Ian wasn’t looking at me. He was looking right at Chip. “The most important thing,” he said, “is being there.”
When he’d finished staring Chip down, he patted the board and crooked his finger at me, like, Come here.
I pulled back my covers, and then we all beheld—because I was wearing a gown for the whole using-the-potty project—my bare legs.
Chip had seen those legs a thousand times, and caressed them, and kissed them—even shaved them once, in an exercise in erotic suspense that worked much better in theory than in practice. But these weren’t the legs that he knew. They’d atrophied so much even in the short time I’d been here, they were like a newborn calf’s legs—spindly and soft and splayed.
The sight of them made me feel deeply ashamed. I hated them. I wanted to beat them with my fists. I wanted to pummel them into bloody bruises on the mattress.
Ian was unfazed. “You’re going to need some pants for the therapy gym, lass.”
I pointed my mother toward the cabinet, and she found a pair in a gym bag, along with my last clean bra—hot pink with tiger stripes. She also grabbed one of the several T-shirts we’d cut at the shoulder.
Ian gently helped me into the sweatpants, edging them up, and when it was time to pull them under my butt and around my hips, he leaned down so I could circle my arms around his neck. I pulled up just enough that I inhaled the most delicious scent of him. Kind of gingery. Sweet, cookie-ish spices mixed with a microscopic hint of salty manliness.
I can’t even put it into words, but you know when they bring the dessert tray around at a restaurant and you immediately just know what you want—like, That one. Right there! I had that reaction to the smell of him. That one.
But we were on to the dressing-the-top-half phase, and so my mother asked the men to leave the room.
“Even me?” Chip asked.
“Especially you,” I said.
Minutes later, when the men got the all-clear, I was all decked out in my Flashdance look with the bra strap on the burned side tucked down under my armpit. On a normal person, this outfit might have been provocative. On me, it was just sad. My mother promised to bring me something normal tomorrow.
Ian began his lesson, but I didn’t even listen. I was too busy trying to catch another whiff of him.
* * *
LATER, IN THE gym, on the mat, as Ian worked my legs, I said, “I’m sorry I called you an asshole.”
Ian didn’t meet my eyes. “You called me ‘kind of an asshole.’ That’s different.”
“Not really.”
With a normal person, that might have been the start of some kind of conversation, but Ian just let it die. As we continued to work, first on one side, then on the other, then doing some actual sit-ups, I watched the other therapists talking to, encouraging, and playing around with their patients, and I couldn’t help it: I felt a little shortchanged.
Every attempt at talking fizzled out like a spark going dark.
“Are you married?” I tried.
“No.”
I waited for more.
Nothing.
Uncomfortable pause.
Me again: “Any kids?”
His jaw went tight. “No.”
Pause.
Me: “Hobbies? Things you do for fun?”
Another pause so long I thought he wasn’t going to even answer at all. About as conversationally agonizing as I could imagine. Finally: “Triathlons.”
“You do triathlons. For fun.”
“For a challenge.”
“Is there anything you do for fun?”
“Challenges are fun.”
I’d say, on the whole, he seemed about as excited to talk to me as he’d been to talk to Myles. But, dammit, I wasn’t Myles. I wasn’t taunting him like that. Or provoking him. Or out to get him.
But maybe I was, in a way.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but the fact that Ian was so reticent might have been good for me. With some people—not all, but some—when they run away, it makes you want to chase them. That was Ian: so withdrawn, it coaxed me out.
I tried again. “Thanks for the transfer lesson, by the way.”
Nothing.
“My family’s all a little freaked out right now,” I attempted.
Not even a nod for that one. He was working my ankles and just kept his head down.
Finally, I tried this: “Did you know you can drink your own pee?”
His head popped up, and he was all surprise, and he flashed a shocked smile for half a second before dropping his head back down. “I didn’t know that, no,” he said, getting back to work.
But now I knew that smile existed. I wanted another one.
“Some tweed coats are dyed with it.”
Nothing.
“Romans used to brush their teeth with it to whiten them.”
When that didn’t get a response, I peeked around at the side of his face to see if he was stifling a smile. He was.
He was hooking giant rubber bands around my ankles now, for resistance. Then he rolled me over onto my stomach and told me pull against them until I could touch my heels to my butt. Apparently, it would strengthen my hamstrings, which were still working.
“You want me to touch my heels to my butt?”
“Just try.”
“Do I have to actually touch?”
“No.”
“Are you saying trying is more important than succeeding?”
“Always.”
Another long silence while I tried, and failed, to touch my butt with my feet.
“Not a big talker, are you?” I said.
“Not when I’m working.”
“Other people seem to be able to do both.”
“I’m not other people.”
“Apparently not.”
“We’re here to get you stronger. Not joke around.”
Just then, a group of other PTs burst out laughing at something one of the patients had said.
I met his eyes. “Okay.”
But I couldn’t leave it alone. I have never, ever, been comfortable with silence. I can’t get a massage, or a manicure, or even a
pelvic without making constant chitchat the entire time. I cannot be in the presence of another human being, especially one I don’t know very well, and not talk—whether they want to or not. I surveyed the other PTs, chatting away so solicitously with their patients. If I’d had one of them, I might’ve stayed more passive and let the conversation come and go—but being stuck with the king of quiet stirred up all the compulsive-need-to-talk chemicals in my body, and I just started yammering on like a nut-job.
Anything, I had apparently decided, was better than nothing.
Hence this monologue, delivered on my back, to the ceiling, as Ian made me push against various objects with my legs:
“Did you know I got engaged on the same day this injury happened? You probably do. Everybody seems to. The nurses keep talking about it. I hear them in the hallway. They feel very sorry for me. They can’t imagine what it must be like to be me. Which is funny, because I can’t either. The best day of your life and the worst day are the same day. How does that bode for a marriage? If it even happens. If your once-charming prince doesn’t turn into a seedy alcoholic and die in some gutter somewhere. And now I’m wearing this ring—and I don’t even want to. Or maybe I do. I don’t know who I am. I used to be a runner. I ran three different marathons. I didn’t place or anything, but I knew how to push myself, and I knew how to be dedicated. When things got tough, I went for a run. I ran in the rain. I ran at night sometimes—or at four in the morning. What am I going to do now? Go for a roll? I can’t move. I can barely breathe. But then I think, who am I to complain? There are girls who’ve been sold into slavery. There are children being beaten. Half the world is worse off than me—probably more. Half the time I feel petulant and whiny, and the other half, I think I’ve suffered something beyond human imagining. And I can’t find an in-between. All I know is that my life as I knew it is gone. Nothing is the same. Food doesn’t even taste the same. Voices don’t sound the same. Things I used to love, I hate. Things I used to hate, I hate. I don’t want to see anyone, I don’t want to talk to anyone. My cell phone has like fifty messages. I hate myself, and I hate everybody else. I think about dying. It seems like it would be easier. But then I don’t want to die. I just don’t want to live either. My mom says the only way I can get better is to believe I will get better—to be such a determined maniac that even the laws of nature can’t stop me—but then I look at these noodles I have for legs and I can’t believe it. It’s like asking me to believe the sky is green. The sky is just not green—you know?—and I can’t pretend that it is. All I know is, I don’t feel anything at all—not even hope.”
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