She let him start on his second sentence and then said, “Dad’s been writing an essay that he thinks he can submit to JAMA. I think it’s called ‘The Wisdom of the Not-So-Old Doctor.’ ” She called into the distance, “Did I get that right?”
He heard his dad say, “Oh, David won’t be interested in that,” and he thought of course he was interested, but before he could say anything, she asked about the boys. He obediently reminded her where Dylan worked and the exact title of the degree he was going for, and then she said they were “lovely boys—just wonderful.” Poor Jack didn’t even get his own mention.
He took another risk and said, “They say they don’t hear from you.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s true. When is Jack’s birthday? He’ll hear from us then.”
“Two weeks ago.”
“Oh, good.” She had sounded pleased. “We’re not too late.”
Dylan and Jack rode in silence. After a while, Dylan said, “You want to talk about it?”
“I’m good. You?”
“Same. What’s that horrible phrase that’s going around? ‘It is what it is.’ ”
“Yeah, really bad thing to say, but basically true. I had to explain to one of my roommates about Mom—Ricky, the one you’ve never seen when he’s conscious—and that was his response. I wanted to say, ‘Yes, I know it is what it is, but that doesn’t mean I can’t punch you in the face and then that will be what it is.’ ”
Dylan laughed. “Have you ever punched anyone in the face?’
“Besides you?”
“God! I forgot about that. What were you grounded for, five years?”
“Mom kept yelling, ‘Do you know how expensive teeth are?’ and I almost thought Dad was going to punch me. No one ever asked why I was so mad at you.”
“Yeah, that worked out well for me.” Dylan glanced at Jack and then back to the road again. “They never thought I could be the problem child. But anything is possible when two brothers fight over a girl.”
“Maggie Mahoney,” they said in unison.
“Sometimes I think I still love her,” Jack said, in a not entirely insincere way.
“You know she’s still married to that math teacher, right?” Dylan said. “She got her teaching certificate too. She went through all of college married.”
“You’ve kind of followed her progress, dude.”
“Yes, I have.” Dylan said. “Not proud of it, but I have.” They continued in silence until he dropped Jack off at the ramshackle house.
“No lights on,” Jack observed. “Hope they haven’t all OD’d.”
Dylan had once told Lily she was beautiful and she’d frowned, as if he’d made a gaffe. At work, she didn’t tailor her lab coats like the other women did, and she wore them over baggy pants, which (he’d guessed correctly) were from Land’s End. Now, as she turned her unmade-up face to him, he reached behind her to free her hair, brown or dark red, depending on the light, from a loose ponytail.
“You love to reenact that, don’t you, movie guy?”
“If you cut your hair short, I’ll leave you immediately.”
“What if it’s cancer? What then, Mr. Romance?”
“You and I will have cured cancer.”
She stepped back so they could shut the door. “How did it go? Did you end up telling him about me?”
“Things got complicated. He’s met someone. And now we’ve met her. That’s what the weekend was about.”
“Wow. I mean, wow. I know you weren’t expecting that.”
“I wasn’t. But, you know, why should he have a life sentence too?”
She held his hands tightly.
“So anyway there didn’t seem to be a good time to announce that I’ve met someone great. Plus, I didn’t want it to seem like he and I are double dating.”
She laughed, but he was sure she knew what he meant.
“And maybe he should have some time to just think about himself. He’s happy. It was so strange to see him happy.”
Dylan said this without crying. He was completely sick of crying.
“And Jane,” he said. “I liked Jane. I didn’t want to. I wanted her to be wrong, someone totally wrong for him. But I think he got it right. I think the idea of Jane is wrong, but she seems…”
Jane had already done him a favor. The fact of her had disrupted his careful but not very healthy arrangement of not thinking about his mother, or at least not discussing her. He and Lily were having the longest conversation they’d ever had about his family.
“Seems good for him?”
He nodded. “This is going to sound childish, but I really trust the guy. So I figure if he’s doing it, it must be right, even if it doesn’t feel right. I sound like I’m eight, don’t I?”
“Or it’s actually kind of scientific. You know him well, so you have a lot of data.”
“Do you always know the right thing to say?”
“Get used to it, Mister.” Then, more tentatively, she said, “Did he say anything about a divorce?”
Dylan lost the rhythm of his breathing. He inhaled deeply and said, “No. I didn’t even think to ask about it. It didn’t even occur to me.”
“Anyway, he probably doesn’t know what he’s going to do,” Lily said quickly. “And Jane might or might not care.”
“More research is needed,” he said as he lifted her silky hair and kissed her neck.
CHAPTER NINE
“I ran into Dylan and Jack at the gas station,” Martha said. She had seen David on his front steps and waved him over. “And we had a nice chat. They’re so handsome. So grown-up.”
David walked the few yards to her sidewalk. He clutched at the mail in his hand. “It was good that they visited,” he said. “It gave me the chance to tell them something that I need to tell you.”
“What? Is Kate worse?”
Worse than what? he thought.
“No, no,” he said. “She’s the same. And she’s healthy physically.”
“What then?”
He told her. The sound Jane seemed to hover in the air. After a moment, Martha said softly, “I guess I pictured you would eventually start to date in some platonic way. I mean, for companionship.”
He remembered Don’s heart attack years ago. Kate had told him how frustrated Martha was at Don’s fear of sex, even long after his surgery. Kate gave her a book for men who are phobic about sex after a heart attack.
“It’s not that I think you deserve to be punished,” she said. “I just don’t want you to stop being Kate’s husband. Or stop taking care of her.” She closed her eyes. “Every time I see her, I lose a day crying. I don’t go very often now. Weeks go by sometimes, and Don wants me to stop even that.”
“You can stop.”
She shook her head.
“Well, neither can I.”
She brushed away a tear and then in a rush said, “Can I ask if you were ever unfaithful to Kate?”
“Never.”
“She worried some, you know.”
“That surprises me. She acted so oblivious. Which sometimes made me wonder if I should be insulted.”
“Well, she was smart that way.”
David took her hand. “We were okay. Very okay.”
She tried to smile as they said goodbye. He knew she would cry as soon as she was in her house, and he was glad to be spared.
As he walked home, David noticed he had two texts from Kate’s sister Claire. The first announced she was coming to town for twenty-six hours. The second said she hoped he could pick her up at the airport Tuesday morning. He texted her back that the timing was fine, though he made it sound more welcoming than that. He didn’t know Claire well. Kate’s only sibling, she was an unmarried journalist who traveled from one global assignment to another. He had looked for signs that Kate envied her sister’s exotic life and never saw any. Perhaps he was the one who envied Claire.
During her few recent trips to visit Kate, she’d been gentle and imaginative, using music o
r books on their favorite artists—Hopper, Burchfield, and Vuillard—to keep Kate focused, sobbing only after she’d made it out to the parking lot.
Kate was sitting on the bed petting a cat while Claire sat in a chair, watching. David walked over to Kate and, when she didn’t startle at his greeting, he touched her shoulder. He sat next to her and petted the cat, who immediately stood and left. He and Claire shared a laugh. Kate got up and walked to the door and back a few times, on the last lap almost running into the aide who had come to walk with her to dinner.
“We can’t stay,” David said to the offer of dinner. He and Claire said their goodbyes and walked out to his car. She was quiet and pale and seemed too exhausted to speak. She’d spent eight hours at the L.
He asked her anyway, “Does she seem worse to you?”
“Yes.”
They drove home, silent for the first five minutes until she asked him about his work and about the boys. He asked about her job and she described her last three assignments, which were overseas, except for her ongoing piece covering makeshift healthcare centers for underinsured Americans “at fairgrounds, high school gyms, or wherever volunteer providers could cram into inadequate space and deliver whatever care they could to citizens of the once richest country in the world.”
“Do I sound cynical?” She waited for his answer.
“A little.”
“It’s hard, reporting awful things and always having to sound unbiased when what you want to do is scream, ‘What do you mean you don’t believe in man-made climate change, you moron!’ ”
“And then you come here for your R&R. Not very healing, though I’m very glad you took the time.”
He parked on the street so they could go in the front door. Kate always wanted visitors to have a proper entrance through the front and not past shoes and umbrellas and jackets at the side door.
Claire stood on the steps admiring the porch. “She was so good at this kind of thing. Even the porch is a lovely room. ‘It has to look a certain way to feel a certain way.’ I can hear her now.”
“Well, it isn’t what it would be if she still lived here, but come in.”
They walked through the front entryway into the living room. Claire said, “It looks fine. It’s the same. I really think it looks the same.”
She started to cry, and he walked towards her to offer a hug, but she said, “No. I’ll be okay.” She gave a small sob. “It’s just the contrast.”
Yes, David thought. The contrast is hard to take. And always there.
“Just let me walk around,” Claire murmured. “I’ll be okay.”
David parked in an unloading area and carried Claire’s bag into the hotel lobby. They hugged once quickly, then again as if to make sure. “I couldn’t fit Mom and Dad in on this trip,” Claire said, “but in two weeks I’m going to. I’ll call you before I go. You have to decide whether there’s anything you don’t want me to say. Like about divorce. I didn’t ask you about it, but they will. You’ll have to tell me what to say.”
“I’ll figure something out. Even if it’s inconclusive, I’ll have a statement.”
She smiled. “I’m sort of happy for you, even if it doesn’t seem that way. It will take some getting used to, but I already get the part that you being sad doesn’t help anybody.”
“I’ll owe you. Breaking the news about Jane to them—I’m going to owe you big time.”
“We’re even. We’ve always been even.” She started to pull up the handle on her rolling bag.
“Hey,” he said, “I forgot to ask where you’re going next.”
“Tunisia.” She said this with a big grin as she walked backwards to the elevators. “It’ll be a breeze. Tell the boys I love them.”
“Whoa,” Jane said after he hugged her too hard. “Are you okay? Did something bad happen with Kate’s sister?”
They sat on the porch steps. He gathered himself enough to answer. “ ‘She’s finally missing,’ is what Claire said. Always before, she felt she still saw Kate there.” He stood and helped her up, and they went inside to sit on the couch together.
“At dinner, I told her about you. She was so sad already, but I don’t think the idea of you made her any sadder. She offered to tell their parents.”
Jane inhaled sharply.
“You’ll like her.”
“Definitely.”
Most of the lights were off, he realized, and the shades were down. She was ready to go to bed.
“If I were twenty-five, I’d bully you into letting me stay the night even though it’s late.”
“If I were twenty-five, you wouldn’t have to bully me, but then we’ve already established that I was kind of an idiot back then. Let’s be twenty-five tomorrow.”
CHAPTER TEN
Claire was kind enough to call David as soon as Bill and Eve dropped her at the airport.
“I think Dad was more shocked than Mom. He wasn’t angry, but I could tell he hadn’t let his imagination go there. Mom probably had. Maybe that’s why she’s been angry with you. She’s been anticipating this. They were reasonable, though. ‘It’s like being caught in the rain,’ Mom said. ‘Once you’re wet, you can’t get more wet.’ The next day they asked me about divorce and about money, and then I asked them, ‘What do you think? Do you think David will treat Kate badly?’ They were quiet and then Dad said, no, he knew you would take care of her.”
David said, “You are a good friend and a good sister.”
“When we said our goodbyes, Mom looked at me funny and said, ‘Do you think Kate knows?”
“And?”
“I said no.”
“Thank you.”
“But can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Is this Jane your transitional relationship? Or rebound? Or practice? Or whatever? There’s a word, I think. God, I can’t remember the word. I probably have it now too.”
“After forty-something, everyone forgets nouns,” David said firmly, as if he didn’t spend too much time thinking about his own brain and about whether he’d be around for the long haul to look after Kate. “You have to refuse to worry about it. Anyway, I don’t think that Jane is transitional. I think Jane is the kind of thing that happens only twice in a lifetime.”
He waited for her to say something, and when she didn’t, he continued, “Have you had that happen?”
“Several times. And they were always, always married.”
“Kate thought you disqualified single men because they weren’t married.”
“I probably did. Once I knew that a guy was married, I would instantly see everything good about him. I’m working on it, though. I have to snag someone before my neck turns on me. Or my eyes droop.”
He laughed.
“Actually, there is someone.” She sounded as if she were betraying a secret. “And when I’m in New York, I see a therapist, who’s helping me not turn against him.”
“Who—”
“No. I can’t talk about it yet. It feels kind of too new and fragile. That sounds so stupid, but I can’t talk casually about it yet.”
“That’s not stupid, more like respectful.”
“I like that.”
“What are the chances you could come here for Thanksgiving? The boys would like it. I’d like it. You wouldn’t need to spend eight hours at a time with Kate.
“Do you see her anymore, David?”
“Of course I do. Not every day like at first, but regularly. I make unpredictable visits. Not that I don’t trust the staff, but still.”
“I don’t know how you do it.”
“It’s what people do for each other.”
“It’s good to know. I think I knew, but it’s still good to hear you say it.”
“You could have stayed,” Dylan said, as they pulled away from Jane’s house.
“Or you can drop us off and go back,” Jack offered.
“No, it’s my birthday and I want to hang out with you guys.”
‘Okay,
but we’re going to the bars later,” Dylan said. “Without you.”
But they didn’t go out. The three of them gathered in the kitchen and didn’t leave for several hours. They each nursed a beer and the boys went through the cupboards, ridiculing his out-of-date food items.
“Jane’s a really good cook but her portions are kind of…”
“Small,” Dylan finished.
Jack found some dried mushrooms, limp scallions, and the remaining ten eggs for a late-night omelet.
After David left, Jane forced herself to just sit in the kitchen, not scurrying around, only thinking. She couldn’t pretend to know what the right pace was for this odd romance with a man both married and not married. “Will you think about us living together?” David had asked while helping her with the dishes. She had yelped a little when he spoke—the question was that unexpected.
“I didn’t mean to actually scare you,” he said, but she could tell he was amused and not offended. Now, alone, she did feel frightened, along with an equal part thrilled, which did nothing to guide her towards a decision.
She reminded herself to think kindly about the fiasco that was her first marriage. She had stopped being a teenager only months before Charlie showed up to claim her, the conquest that had once been denied him. She would have been so much better off if she’d let him humiliate her and break her heart in high school, when nobody—nobody—got married. He was smart enough to wait until marriage was plausible. She should have played the field in high school instead of losing at the big-stakes game later. But mostly and finally, she needed to forgive herself for having once been twenty.
PART II
WAKING
David actually cringed when Mrs. Nowicki stopped him and asked that they meet. He hadn’t seen Kate for more than two weeks because of travel and then the flu. Or was it three? He’d wanted to come sooner, but when the director heard him cough into the phone, he was forbidden. Was she now going to examine his throat? They walked to her office, where a solemn young man was waiting. She introduced him as “Dr. Tsang, the primary investigator for the study.”
The Half-Life of Everything Page 8