How to Walk Away

by Katherine Center

  “Did you know,” I’d say, “that octopuses have three hearts?” And when that got no response, I’d move on to “Did you know there’s an underwater postal box in Japan?” And when that got silence, I’d plunge ahead with “Did you hear about the guy who had to be fed intravenously for a year, and he lost all of his taste buds after going so long without using them? They disappeared. His tongue just got all smooth, like a porpoise.”

  It was the only time all day when I felt anything like my old self. It was the only time when the fog lifted. The game of it was so engaging that I’d forget myself—to the extent anyone ever could when trying, and failing, to walk the parallel bars from one end to the other.

  It should have been my worst time of day, as I fell short on challenge after challenge. But somehow it was my best.

  That same week, I got my bandages off the donor sites under my collarbones, and now I had two meaty red scabs like fat strips of bacon adding to the horror show that was my body. But my face was better, at least. A few penny-sized blisters on my jaw had scabbed over. Scabs are far more noticeable than blisters, but I was moving in the right direction, certainly, and the rest of my face barely looked burned anymore. It did, as the doc had promised, itch like hell—but I never scratched it.

  Kitty continued to show up at night with a wide array of meals from both our favorite restaurants and ones I’d never heard of, leaving no cuisine undigested: Indian, Thai, Tex-Mex, Italian, Cajun, Japanese, Vietnamese. She made it a goal to surprise and delight me.

  She’d also jumped on Priya’s knitting bandwagon, insisting I knit a scarf while we watched all her favorite musicals: South Pacific, Singin’ in the Rain, Meet Me in St. Louis. I didn’t even fight her on the singing anymore. I jumped into every song without protest, quietly at first, but going full Judy Garland by the end.

  The scarf they were making me knit was terrible. I thought I’d picked a stormy-sky blue, but it turned out to be just plain gray. It looked like a mutant slug with tumors.

  “We’ll make some pom-poms for it,” Kit said. “No problem.”

  The truth is, some parts of my personality came back to me fairly quickly. I still found human beings—and conversation—to be the best possible distraction. When I had somebody to talk to, I focused on the talking, and compulsively joked around, bantered, and chatted. Those moments felt—if not good, at least better than usual.

  But there were lots and lots of quiet, lost, nebulous moments when I felt the opposite of good. I don’t want to leave them out. Most were like that, in fact. Everything that happened—every PT session, or sponge bath, or viewing of Auntie Mame—was set against a background of just trying to keep my head up. The minute I was alone, or the second I saw something on TV that reminded me of the life I’d left behind, or the moment I came awake each morning and remembered where I was, the grayness would rush back in. The rule, not the exception.

  * * *

  ONE AFTERNOON, DURING the lull between PT and dinner that I had come to regard as a sacred napping period, I had an unexpected visitor. Chip’s mom, Evelyn.

  She arrived while I was sleeping, and noisily scooted the visitor chair around until I opened my eyes.

  “Oh,” she said, “were you sleeping?”

  She knew I was. “Yes.”

  “You seem surprised to see me.”

  I was. I hadn’t seen anyone outside a very small inner circle since I’d been in here. On purpose. “I have a no-visitors policy.”

  “I told them I was your mother-in-law. To-be.”

  “Guess that worked.”

  She hadn’t seen me since the ER. “You look much better.” Her words were kind, but her eyes were critical as she took me in. The way she was studying me made my face start itching. She went on, “Except for those scabs on your neck, and—oh, God!” She’d caught a glimpse of my skin grafts. She looked away and tried to regroup.

  “Did they have to shave your head?” she asked after a while, like of course the answer would be yes.

  “No,” I said. “It’s just a pixie cut.”

  “I’m sure it’ll grow out again soon.”

  “I’m going to keep it this way. I like it.”

  “Oh, don’t!” she said. Then, “It’s a little masculine.”

  “I think it’s cool.”

  “I’m sure you’ll change your mind once you’re back to your old self.”

  Chip’s mother was a lot like my mother. Overly put-together. Overly focused on how things looked instead of how things felt. Overly hard on both herself and others, but too gracious to say it in polite conversation.

  Still, sometimes it leaked out in funny ways.

  I’d known her long enough to know what she was thinking. She and my mother played tennis together, and got pedicures together, and had a genuine friendship that they each treasured. They’d lived next door to each other for ten years, and in that time I don’t think they’d ever had a disagreement. It was a remarkable coincidence that two such women should wind up neighbors. They shared the same thoughts on almost everything, and the principal gist of every conversation was to validate each other’s worldview. What are the odds?

  Of course they were rooting for Chip and me. Of course they wanted us all to be just one big, happy family.

  Which is why I didn’t see it coming when she frowned, pulled her chair a little closer, and said, “I want to talk to you about Chip.”

  It was funny to hear his name. He had started showering again, I noticed at his last visit, which felt like progress. He’d also sent several flower arrangements, and even though I’d left instructions for all flowers to be sent down to the children’s wing, the ones from him managed to make it through.

  My mother liked to arrange and rearrange them on the windowsill.

  He was making an effort. I had to give him that.

  “He seems better,” I said to Evelyn. “He’s showering again, I think.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “And he’s not out all night at bars anymore.”

  “Progress,” I said.

  “But,” she said then, taking my hand and squeezing it, “I don’t think he’s happy.”

  Happy? Was that an option? I was just shooting for “conscious.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” she went on. “I’m worried about him.”

  “I’m worried about all of us,” I said.

  But she had something to say, and she was going to say it. “He’s been so crushed by what happened. It really has torn him to shreds. He has to force himself to come here every time he visits. Every time he looks at your poor face, the guilt is just overwhelming.”

  “Are you asking me to feel sorry for Chip?”

  Her voice took an indignant turn. “It’s been hard on him, too, Margaret.”

  “I’m sure it has. Hard on his liver, at the very least.”

  “Not everyone is as strong as you are.”

  “I’m not strong. I’m just trapped. My body keeps breathing against my will.”

  She wasn’t having it. “Don’t be dramatic.”

  I leaned back against my pillow and squeezed my eyes shut. I was giving up my nap for this.

  Evelyn took that moment to get herself back on track. “Chip’s father and I have talked about it, and we’d like to ask a favor of you.”

  I opened my eyes. “A favor?”

  “You know how loyal Chip is. You know how important it is to him to do the right thing. You know he would never, ever let himself call off your engagement.”

  “I’m not even sure that we are technically engaged,” I said. Had we settled that?

  “You’re wearing my mother’s two-carat diamond. I think that counts.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I’m just not sure what your expectations are—given your situation.”

  Where was this headed? “My situation that Chip caused?”

  “You wouldn’t want him to marry you out of guilt, would you?”

  “What are you saying?”


  She sat back a bit. “He’s in a very strange predicament.”

  “Aren’t we fucking all?”

  “Please watch your language.”

  “Are you kidding me right now?”

  She blinked at me for a second. “We’re all coping the best we can.”

  “Some of us better than others.” My thoughts started spinning. “Hold on—did he send you here? Did he send his mother to break up with me?”

  “He doesn’t know I’m here.”

  “So you just decided this was any of your business?”

  “My child is my business.”

  “He’s not a child!”

  She sat up a little straighter. “A marriage—starting a lifetime together—needs a strong foundation of…” She seemed to cast around for the word. “Desire.”

  Desire? Were we talking about sex now? “Desire?”

  “Among other things.”

  A strange, acid anger started burning in my chest. She did not just walk into this room and creepily tell me her son no longer wanted to screw me. “Oh, he’s got plenty of desire,” I said. She really wanted to get into this? This was where she wanted to go? Fine. We’d go there. I could go there all day.

  “He’s got desire in the golf house at the club,” I said. “And in his childhood bedroom. And on the garden bench beside your weird little cherub statues. And in your master-bath Jacuzzi when you’re on vacation. And even in the kitchen pantry during Christmas dinner. Your ‘child’ is a tenth-degree horn-dog. He’s got more than enough desire. I think he’ll find a way to manage.”

  I wanted it to feel good to attack her like that, but it didn’t.

  Evelyn stayed still as stone. “That was before,” she said at last. “Things have changed.”

  “Yes they fucking have.”

  She turned her face away at that word—again. “Chip’s father and I feel that he’s looking for something else now. Something he can’t find in you.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “Do you?”

  Her face was solemn. “He says he wants to be with you, but we can plainly see his actions.”

  “What actions?”

  She closed her mouth as if I’d asked some wildly inappropriate question. As if she wasn’t the person who had brought the whole thing up in the first place.

  “You’re not going to tell me?” I demanded. “What actions are you talking about?”

  I could see that she realized she’d said too much.

  I leaned forward. “Tell me,” I said, my voice menacing.

  She turned away.

  As she did, we both caught sight of a figure in the doorway.

  Chip.

  If I could have slapped him across the face right then, I would have. “Did you send your mother to break up with me?”

  Chip looked at his mother. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m trying to help you.” Her voice suddenly got wobbly. “Your father and I are very worried.” She lifted her hand to her face, and I realized she was wiping away tears. All at once, she looked very fragile—and I regretted, a little, how many times I’d just said “fuck.”

  A son can’t be angry with his crying mother. His voice got tender. “Mom,” he said. “You can’t help me. Don’t help me, okay?”

  He came over, helped her stand, and steered her out of the room. As he did, he held up his hand at me to say five minutes. I guessed he was going to walk her back to the hospital valet and send her home.

  Once they were gone, I noticed my breathing was ragged, and my chest stung a little, as if the imaginary acid had burned some kind of sad, hollow hole. I spent several minutes trying to tell myself that it was good to feel something, at least, before deciding that was bullshit. Why was it that the only emotions that seemed able to penetrate my fog were the worst of the worst?

  When Chip made it back, I noticed then that he looked—for the first time since the accident—just exactly like his old self. Here was the Chip I’d fallen in love with. Here was the Chip who had it all together, ready to confidently stand at the helm of anything and everything. He looked picture-perfect. He’d gotten a haircut. He was wearing a crisp polo and pressed khakis. He’d brushed his teeth—and even possibly flossed.

  It was a powerful thing to see him again. It was like the real Chip had been gone all this time, but now he’d finally come back, and all that toughness and resistance I felt about the new Chip disintegrated as soon as I saw the old one again.

  “Are we engaged?” I asked him then, my voice soft. “Did we ever settle that?”

  He gave me his famous Chip Dunbar smile. “You know we are, on my end at least.” He was flirting with me! “Your position’s a little less clear. But you’re still wearing the ring.”

  “Your mother thinks,” I said, making air quotes, “that you don’t ‘desire’ me anymore.”

  He let out a honk of a laugh and then sat in the chair his mother had just vacated, grabbing my hand in a very similar way. “I do. Oh, my God, I still do—so much—”

  I felt myself release a breath I didn’t even realize I’d been holding. I felt a pinch of hope that things might turn out okay for us, after all.

  Until he went on. “The old you.”

  What?

  “I think about her all the time.” Chip pressed his forehead down against my hand, and his shoulders started to shake. “I miss her so much,” he said, all muffled.

  “You miss her? She’s not gone,” I said, not even trying to disguise my astonishment. “She’s literally right here.”

  Was Chip crying? Again? “I miss her hair,” he went on. “And how she walked in heels. And the way her jeans hugged her hips.”

  That was just mean. “You realize you’re talking about me in the third person,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Your mother thinks you’re going ahead with the engagement out of guilt,” I said next. “She thinks you don’t want to marry me anymore, but now that you’ve, you know, paralyzed me, you feel like you have to.”

  “No.” He shook his head as he lifted it. “I still want to marry you. I want that more than anything.”

  “Her? The girl you miss? Or me?” As if we weren’t the same person. “The old me or the current me?”

  “Any you I can get my hands on.”

  That made me smile—a little. I wanted that sunshiny feeling back again. “So you do still want to marry me?”

  “More than I can possibly say.”

  It felt good to hear it. I won’t lie.

  Chip sat up straight then and let go of my hand to wipe his face. He took a deep breath, as if he might be about to shout something, and then he held it a second. When the words came out at last, they just seeped out in a whisper. “I want to marry you, Margaret. But I think I can’t.”

  I held still.

  He lowered his eyes. “I think,” he went on, “in the end, you’re not going to let me.”

  Then, like a premonition, I knew what he was about to say. I knew exactly what “actions” his mother had been talking about. Yet again, I found myself several mental steps ahead of Chip.

  Now I had a decision to make.

  I could end this conversation right now, and let him off the hook, and never hear for certain what he was about to say. If I did that, we could continue on. We could keep muddling through, trying to patch things up. I could chalk everything we’d said or done up to “the tragedy” and forgive it all and stay focused on my impossible odds.

  I could so easily take that route. It was wildly tempting.

  But I didn’t. “Chip. What happened?”

  He kept his eyes on the bedspread and shook his head.

  “Chip,” I said, more pressure in my voice. “Tell me.”

  He held very still.

  “Tell me!”

  Then he did tell me. But he closed his eyes first. “I slept with someone.”

  * * *

  I HADN’T BEEN wrong. I knew that’s where he was headed. But the words
, once they were spoken, meant the end. They severed us. That was it. He’d made a choice, but I’d made a choice, too. I’m sure I felt many things at that moment, but the only one I remember is loneliness.

  “Who?” I said.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does fucking matter.”

  Chip stood up then—too fast—and knocked his chair over. It clattered to the floor. He didn’t pick it up, just paced around the foot of the bed. “Tara,” he admitted at last.

  “Your old girlfriend, Tara? The one you call the Whiner?”

  He nodded.

  “You don’t even like her!”

  “I know.”

  I didn’t even know where to start. “Chip.” It was more of a sigh than a word.

  “She saw my post about you on Facebook, and she got in touch. She started coming by to check on me. She brought soup.”

  “She brought soup?”

  He shrugged. “I wasn’t eating. She was concerned. And then one thing led to another.”

  “Don’t tell me.” I felt it like a gasp: I didn’t want to know.

  But now I’d gotten him going. “She came by one night and found me crying—”

  “Am I supposed to pity you?”

  “—and I just couldn’t pull it together. And so she just kind of put her arms around me—”

  “Stop.”

  “—and kind of cradled me—“

  “Chip. Shut it down.”

  “—and the next thing I knew, we were kissing—”

  “Stop! I’m fucking serious! Stop!” I didn’t realize how loud I was shouting.

  Right then, the door to my room pushed open, and Ian walked in.

  He eyed Chip for a second before turning to me. “Everything all right?”

  “Get the hell out, man,” Chip said. “We’re talking.”

  Ian kept his eyes on me. “I wasn’t asking you, prick.”

  I looked up at Ian. He was motionless with suppressed tension. I knew in an instant my dad had been right, that the acoustics between my room and the hallway went both ways. I could hear them out there perfectly—and they could hear me just as well in here.