In Five Years

by Rebecca Serle

  The dress I wear is silk and lace. It has a string of buttons down the back. The bodice fits poorly. I don’t fill it out properly. I shake my arms, and the saleswoman races into frame. She pinches the back of the dress with a giant clothespin.

  “We can fix that,” she says. She looks at me in the mirror. Her face betrays sympathy. Who comes here alone and buys the first dress they try on? “We’ll have to rush it, but we can do that.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  I feel like I might cry, and I do not want these tears being misinterpreted as nuptial joy. I do not want to hear her delighted squeals, or see her knowing glance: so in love. I turn swiftly to the side. “I’ll take it.”

  Her face registers confusion, and then brightens. She’s just made a sale. Three thousand dollars in thirteen minutes. Must be some kind of record. Maybe I’m pregnant. She probably thinks I’m pregnant.

  “Wonderful,” she says. “I love this neckline on you, it’s so flattering. Let’s just take some measurements.”

  She pins me. The curve of my waist and the length of the hem. The lay of the shoulders.

  When she leaves, I look at myself in the mirror. The neckline is high. She is wrong, of course. It does not flatter me at all. It does nothing to show off my collarbones, the slope of my neck. For a brief, wondrous moment I think about calling David. Telling him we need to postpone the wedding. We’ll get married next year, at The Plaza, or in Massachusetts at The Wheatleigh. I’ll get a ridiculous dress you have to custom order, the Oscar de la Renta one with the brocade flowers. We’ll have the top florist, the best band. We’ll dance to “The Way You Look Tonight” under the most delicate strands of white-and-gold twinkle lights. The entire ceiling will be made of roses. We’ll plan a honeymoon in Tahiti or Bora Bora. We’ll leave our cell phones in the bungalow and swim out to the edge of the earth. We’ll drink champagne under the stars, and I’ll wear white, only white, for ten days straight.

  We’ll make all the right decisions.

  But then I hear the clock on the wall. The tick tick ticking of the second hand, bringing us closer and closer to December 15.

  I take off the dress. I pay for it.

  On my walk home, Aaron calls me. “We got the test results back from the last round,” he says. “It’s not good.”

  I should feel surprised, shouldn’t I? I should feel like I’m stopped dead in my tracks. The world now, in light of this news, should slow down, stop spinning. The taxis should sputter still, the music on the street should stretch until silent.

  But I’m not. I’ve been waiting.

  “Ask her if she wants me there,” I tell him.

  He pauses. I hear a lapse in breathing, the white noise sounds of apartment motion, somewhere a few rooms over. I wait. After about two minutes—an eternity—he comes back to the phone.

  “She says yes.”

  I run.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  To my relief, and also grief, she looks like she did three weeks ago. No worse, no better. She still has her hair, and her eyes still have that sunken, hollow quality.

  She isn’t crying. She isn’t smiling. Her face looks blank, and it is this that terrifies me the most. Seeing her cry is not, out of context, a cause for alarm. She has always worn her emotions inside out, the soft, nubile vicissitudes subject to every change in wind. But her stoicism, her unreadability, I am not used to. I’ve always been able to look at Bella and read it all there, see exactly what she needed. Now, I cannot.

  “Bella—” I start. “I heard—”

  She shakes her head. “Let’s deal with us first.”

  I nod. I come to stand next to the bed, but I do not sit on it.

  “I’m scared,” she says.

  “I know,” I say, gently.

  “No,” she says. Her voice gets stronger. “I’m scared of leaving you with this.”

  I don’t say anything. Because all at once I’m twelve. I’m standing in the doorway of my room as my mother screams. I’m listening to my father—my strong, brave, good father—trying to make sense, asking the questions: “But who was driving?” “But was he going the speed limit?” As if it mattered, as if reason could bring him back.

  I’ve always been waiting, haven’t I? For tragedy to show up once again on my doorstep. Evil that blindsides. And what is cancer if not that? If not the manifestation of everything I’ve spent my life trying to ward off. But Bella. It should have been me. If this is my story, then it should have been mine.

  “Don’t talk like that,” I say. But if I know Bella’s tells, she, of course, knows mine. She is no less equipped than I am at reading the impressions of my moods and thoughts as they saunter and sprint across my face.

  It works both ways.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” I tell her. “We’re going to fight this just as we always have.”

  And in that moment it’s true. It’s true because it has to be. It’s true because there are no other options. Despite that chemo hasn’t kept it at bay. Despite that it’s spread to her abdomen. Despite. Despite. Despite.

  “Look,” she says. She holds up her hand. On it is an engagement ring, perched daintily on her finger.

  “You’re getting married?” I ask her.

  “When I’m better,” she says.

  I get in bed next to her. “You got engaged and you didn’t call me?”

  “It happened at home last night,” she tells me. “He was bringing me dinner.”

  “What?”

  She looks at me, her eyebrows knit. “Pasta from Wild.”

  I make a face. “I still can’t believe you like it there.”

  “It’s gluten free,” she says. “Not poison. They have good spaghetti.”

  “So anyway.”

  “So anyway,” she says. “He brought me the pasta, and on top of the Parmesan was the ring.”

  “What did he say?”

  She looks at me and she’s right there—Bella, my Bella. Her face bright and her eyes lit. “You’ll think it’s corny.”

  “I won’t,” I whisper. “I promise.”

  “He told me that he’s been looking for me forever and, even though the situation is less than ideal, he knows that I’m his soul mate, and that he was always fated to end up with me.” She blushes pink.

  Fated.

  I swallow. “He’s right,” I say. “You always wanted someone who would just know it was you. You always wanted your soul mate. And you found him.”

  Bella turns to me. She takes her hand and places it on the duvet between us.

  “I’m going to ask you something,” she says. “And if I’m wrong, you don’t have to answer.”

  I feel my heart rate accelerate. What if…? She couldn’t…

  “I know you think we’re really different, and we are, I get that. I’ll never be someone who checks my weather app before I go outside or knows the number of days eggs can last in the fridge. I haven’t strategically built my life the way you have. But you’re wrong in thinking…” She wets her lips. “I think you’re capable of this kind of love, too. And I don’t think you have it.”

  I let that sit between us for a moment. “What’s making you say that?” I ask her.

  “Don’t you think there’s a reason you never got married? Don’t you think there’s a reason you’ve been engaged for almost five years? A five-year engagement was never in your plan.”

  “We’re getting married now,” I say.

  “Because,” Bella says. Her voice gets small. She seems to fold into herself next to me. “You think you’re on a clock.”

  December 15.

  “That’s not true. I love David.”

  “I know you do,” she says. “But you’re not in love with him. You may have been at first, but if you were I never really saw it, and I don’t have the luxury of pretending anymore. And what I realized is that you don’t, either. If there’s a clock ticking toward anything, it should be your happiness.”

  “Bella…” I feel something rise i
n my chest. And then it’s tumbling out onto the duvet between us. “I’m not sure I’m capable of it,” I tell her. “Not the kind you mean.”

  “But you are,” she says. “I wish you knew that. I wish you understood that you could have love beyond your wildest dreams. Stuff movies are made of. You’re meant for that, too.”

  “I don’t think I am.”

  “You are. You know how I know?”

  I shake my head.

  “Because that’s the way you love me.”

  “Bella,” I say. “Listen to me. You’re going to be fine. People do this all the time. They defy the odds. Every damn day.”

  She holds her arms out to me. I give her a careful hug.

  “Who would have thought?” she says.

  “I know.”

  I feel her shake her head against me. “No,” she says. “That you’d end up being someone who believed.”

  And that’s the thing I know more than anything, as I hold Bella’s shrunken form in my arms. She is extraordinary. For once in my life, the numbers don’t apply.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Intraperitoneal chemotherapy and gardenias bring us into late November. The former is a more invasive form of chemo, where a port through which drugs are administered is essentially sewn into the abdominal cavity. It’s more direct than previous rounds, and it requires Bella to lie flat on her back during the procedure. She’s nauseous constantly, and throws up violently. The gardenias have somehow become our wedding flower—even though their life span is approximately five and a half minutes.

  I’m dealing with the flowers on the phone at work when Aldridge stops by my office. I hang up on the florist with no explanation.

  “I just got off an interesting phone call with Anya and Jordi,” he tells me. He sits in one of my round gray chairs.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I imagine you know what I’m going to say,” he says.

  “I don’t.”

  “Think about it.”

  I rearrange a notepad and a paperweight on my desk. “They don’t want to go public.”

  “Bingo. They’ve changed their minds.” He clasps his hands and sets them on my desk. “I need to know if you’ve had any further contact with them.”

  “I haven’t,” I say. Just that one dinner, in which I could feel Anya’s resistance. “But to tell you the truth, I’m not altogether convinced going public right now is the right move.”

  “For who?” Aldridge asks.

  “All of us,” I say. “I think the company, under their guidance, will grow increasingly profitable. I think they will employ us now, because they trust us, and I think when they eventually do go public, everyone will make a lot more money.”

  Aldridge takes his hands back. His face is unreadable. I keep mine steady.

  “I’m surprised.”

  I feel my stomach tighten into familiar knots. I’ve spoken out of turn.

  “And impressed,” he says. “I didn’t think you were a gut lawyer.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  Aldridge sits back. “I hired you because I could tell no one would ever get a mistake by you. Your work is meticulous. You read every single line of every single paragraph and you know the law backward and forward.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But even that, as we know, is not enough. All the preparedness in the world cannot stop the unexpected from happening. Truly great lawyers know every inch of their deal, but often they make decisions based on something else—the presence of an unknown force that, if listened to, will betray exactly the way the tide is turning. That’s what you did with Jordi and Anya, and you were right.”

  “I was?”

  Aldridge nods. “They’re hiring us to replace in-house counsel, and they’d like you to head up the team.”

  My eyes widen. I know what this means. This is the case, the client. This is the thing I need before I make junior partner.

  “One thing at a time,” Aldridge says, reading me. “But congratulations.”

  He stands, so do I. He shakes my hand. “And yes,” he says. “If this goes well, yes.”

  I check the clock: 2:35 p.m. I want to call Bella, but she had a session this morning and I know she’ll be asleep.

  I try David.

  “Hey,” he says. “What’s wrong?”

  I realize I’ve never called him during the day before. If I have something to tell him, I always email, or I just wait.

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “Oh—” he starts, but I cut him off.

  “Aldridge just gave me my junior partner case.”

  “You’re kidding!” David says. “That’s great.”

  “It’s the women who run QuTe. They don’t want to sell right now, but they want me to head up legal.”

  “I’m so proud of you,” David says. “Will it still involve being in California?”

  “Probably a little bit, but we haven’t gotten there yet. I’m just excited because it’s the right thing, you know? Like, I felt it. I knew it was the right thing.”

  I hear background talking. David doesn’t answer immediately. “Yeah,” he says. “Good.” Then: “Hang on.”

  “Me?”

  “No,” he says. “No. Listen, I have to go. Let’s celebrate tonight. Whenever you want. Email Lydia, and she’ll make a reservation.” He hangs up.

  I feel lonely then, the sensation of which spreads out like a fever, until the whole of my body is afflicted. I shouldn’t. David is supportive. He’s encouraging and understanding. He wants me to succeed. He cares about my career. He’ll sacrifice for me to have what I want. I know this is the covenant we made: that we will not get in each other’s way.

  But, sitting here at my desk, I realize something else. We’ve been on these parallel tracks, David and I. Moving constantly forward in space but never actually touching, for fear of throwing each other off course. Like if we were aligned in the same direction, we’d never have to compromise. But the thing about parallel tracks is you can be inches apart, or miles. And lately it feels like the width between David and me is extraordinary. We just didn’t notice because we were still looking at the same horizon. But it dawns on me that I want someone in my way. I want us to collide.

  I call Lydia. I ask her to make a reservation at Dante, an Italian café in the West Village we both love. 7:30 p.m.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  I arrive at the restaurant—a corner one, tiny and candlelit, with old-fashioned red-checkered tablecloths—and David is already there, bent over his phone. He has on a blue sweater and jeans. The hedge fund is a less dressy environment than the bank he worked at before, and he can get away with jeans much of the time.

  “Hi,” I say.

  He looks up and smiles. “Hey. Traffic was a nightmare, right? I’m trying to figure out why they closed down Seventh Avenue. We haven’t been here in a long time. Since we first started dating,” he says.

  David and I were introduced through my old colleague Adam. We both worked as clerks at the same time in the DA’s office. The hours were long and the pay was shitty and neither one of us was particularly suited for that kind of environment.

  For about six months, I remember having a crush on Adam. He was from New Jersey, liked sitcoms from the seventies, and knew how to get the temperamental coffee maker to deliver a cappuccino. We spent a lot of time together at work, bent over our desks eating five-dollar ramen from the food truck downstairs. He threw a party for his birthday at this bar I’d never been to—Ten Bells on the Lower East Side. It was dark and candlelit. With wood tables and barstools. We ate cheese and drank wine and split bills we could not afford on credit cards we hoped we could one day pay off.

  David was there—cute and a little bit quiet—and he asked to buy me a drink. He worked at a bank, and had gone to school with Adam. They had even been roommates their first year in New York.

  We talked about the insane prices of rent, how it was impossible to find good Mexican food in New Yo
rk, and our mutual love of Die Hard.

  But I was still focused on Adam. I had hoped that his birthday might be the night. I had on tight jeans and a black top. I thought we’d flirt—scratch that, I thought we had been flirting—and that maybe we’d go home together.

  Before closing, Adam sauntered over to us and slung an arm over David’s shoulders. “You guys should get each other’s numbers,” he said. “Could be a match here.”

  I remember feeling devastated. That stabbing sensation you feel when the curtain is pulled back and what stands before you on the stage is the wide expanse of nothing. Adam was not into me. He had just made that very, very clear.

  David laughed nervously. He stuck his hands in his pockets. Then he said: “How about it?”

  I gave him my number. He called the next day, and we went out the following week. Our relationship built slowly, bit by bit. We went for a drink, then a dinner, then a lunch, then a Broadway show he had been gifted tickets to. We slept together on that date, the fourth. We dated for two years before we moved in together. When we did, we kept all of my bedroom furniture and half of his living room furniture and opened a joint bank account for household expenses. He went to Trader Joe’s because I thought—and think—the lines are too long, and I bought the paper goods off Amazon. We RSVP’d to weddings, threw dinner parties with catered spreads, and climbed the ladders of our careers an arm’s length away from each other. We were, weren’t we? An arm’s length away? If you can reach out and hold the other person’s hand, does the distance matter? Is simply being able to see someone valuable?

  “A pipe burst on the corner of Twelfth Street,” I say. I take off my coat and sit down, letting the warmth of the restaurant begin to thaw out my bones. We’re well into November now. And the weather has turned with us.

  “I ordered a bottle of Brunello,” he says. “We liked it the last time we were here.”