In Some Other World, Maybe: A Novel

by Shari Goldhagen

  “I may have called my dad,” Phoebe admits when Adam raises questioning eyebrows.

  Three hours and a giant blue fiberglass cast later, she’s helping him back into the passenger seat of her car, and he’s thanking her again and again.

  “Do you maybe wanna come over for lunch?” she asks without any of the confidence she’d exhibited in the doctor’s office. “You could meet Cassie and see Kraken?”

  Caught off guard, Adam doesn’t respond. Phoebe waves her words away, tells him that he should go home and rest.

  “No.” He shakes his head. “I’d love to come.”

  It’s a half-hour drive to Los Feliz, and they talk about still-shared things, such as Evie Saperstein and the weather. She parks in front of a modest bungalow and helps him out. When Phoebe opens the front door, Kraken almost knocks her down trying to get to Adam.

  Hunched over on his crutches, he’s trying to maintain balance while patting the dog’s head when a man, presumably Phoebe’s husband, appears with baby in arms. All Adam knows of Cole has been garnered from snippets Evie rarely lets slip. He’s young, a chef, Phoebe seems happy. And Adam feels strangely hollow watching this wavy-haired guy’s quick, tense exchange with Phoebe.

  “Babe, I’m so late.” The child passed.

  Then Cole notices Adam and solidifies to concrete.

  Bouncing Cassie, Phoebe does a quick intro. Adam manages to shake the dude’s hand while keeping his right crutch secure under his armpit. Unfreezing, Cole offers a half smile that makes no attempt to reach green eyes. A self-conscious kiss on Phoebe’s cheek, a nervous wave toward Adam, and Cole is gone. For a severed second, Phoebe looks after him, something hard to read on her face.

  She turns to Adam. “We need to get your leg up.”

  The house is small but cozy, with unique built-in storage spaces and wood trim, and there’s a postage-stamp backyard with a deck and a huge old tree. Baby still in arms, Phoebe helps Adam get situated on one patio chair, his ankle elevated on another.

  “Can you take her for a sec?” she says, handing him her daughter.

  Adam knows nothing about babies (Cecily literally had to demonstrate how to hold one during the second season of E&E: Rising, when they were filming some World 7 scene where they had an infant), but Phoebe’s child feels karmically sound in his grasp, as if she would have found her way there one way or the other.

  “Hey there.” He smiles. Of course she’s beautiful.

  Cassie has Phoebe’s deep blue eyes and heart-shaped mouth; Adam knows instantly that he could love her, that it doesn’t matter he’s not her father.

  Phoebe brings out a pitcher of flavored iced tea and some ridiculously delicious chowder he assumes Cole made, since he’d never seen Phoebe cook anything in all the time they lived together. She puts Cassie in an elaborate activity chair while they eat and discuss more safe topics. He suspects she’s heard about the Howard Stern incident, but she doesn’t mention it, only asks if he’s working on anything new. So he tells her about the HBO Civil War series, about how everyone thinks he’s too young to play Grant, but he can’t stop thinking about the early version of the script he’d read.

  “I’d love to look at it,” she says.

  “I’d like that.”

  And then they just look at each other.

  “It’s really good to see you.” She sets her weirdly chubby fingers on his cast. “I’m glad you called.”

  With the chairs and his gargantuan cast between them, it’s an awkward lunge, but he makes it.

  Kissing Phoebe is home.

  His tongue knows the crown on her right molar, his teeth know how hard he can bite before it hurts. Anais Anais perfume and vanilla lotion all around him.

  Even as he’s doing it, Adam is vaguely aware this isn’t what she wants, that this will be one more time he fails her.

  But:

  She’s the one who invited him over.

  She’s the one who wants to read scripts like she used to do.

  She’s the one kissing him back.

  Finally, her hands on his chest, pushing him away. “Adam, stop. I’m married.”

  “In some forties shotgun fantasy,” he says quickly, hurtfully.

  “You think I’m with him because of Cassie?” Phoebe’s face is flushed; of the long list of women he’s angered, she’s the only one who becomes lovelier. “That’s really what you think?”

  It might be what he’d like, but, no, it isn’t what Adam thinks. No matter how pregnant Phoebe was when she married Cole, Adam is painfully aware she made her choice well before any of that.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just…” He gestures to the baby, the backyard, the dog, hits his hand on the back of the chair. “I wanted this.”

  “A Target patio set?”

  “A life with you.”

  He studies his toes peeking out from his cast, furious at himself for saying what he had vowed not to say two years ago when she told him she was engaged, when he tried to be a better man.

  “I guess I knew that.” Her voice breaks into something bordering a sob. “I shouldn’t have brought you here. That was unfair.”

  Now her head is bowed.

  “But I missed you so, so much,” she’s saying. “It’s really selfish, I’m sorry.”

  Thirty-five and she’s still so beautiful.

  “No, Pheebs.” Fast as he can manage, he’s on his feet (foot), a hand on her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He thinks of his bizarre conversation with Sharon Gallaher, whom he called because he couldn’t admit he needed to call Phoebe.

  “It’s all okay,” he says. “We’re gonna be all right.”

  * * *

  Two days after returning from Detroit and not writing any sort of article on the “Thirty Years of E&E” convention, Sharon is at her desk at The Enquiring Sun when she gets a call on her cell from a Chicago number: Oliver Ryan.

  She steps into the hall to answer.

  “Did you get back from Detroit without incident?” he asks.

  “Yeah.” She pauses, trying to remember how to do this, how it works.

  “Good. So I know that we talked about going out sometime this week … well, I talked about it,” he says, and even though Sharon’s only met Oliver twice, she can completely envision him, with a hesitant smile, one hand in his pocket.

  “Yeah,” she says again.

  “Well, I can’t do this week. I got sent to Chicago for a bit.”

  “Oh, no worries.” Bite of disappointment.

  “But I do want to make this happen. I mean, if you still want to.”

  “I’d like that,” she says, asks about what he’s doing in Illinois, and he tells her how sometimes he has to return to Advantage Electric’s headquarters.

  “How was Detroit?” he asks.

  “It was kind of a bust.” She’s surprised at her own honesty. “I was hoping to interview someone at this Eons & Empires convention, but a couple of the players didn’t show.”

  He asks if she’s a fan of E&E.

  “I guess you could call me sort of a closet fan,” she says.

  And they talk about the comics and the TV show for a while. Until she remembers she’s still at her office, still has stories to write.

  * * *

  Phoebe feels drugged and exhausted and weirdly optimistic by the time she pulls in front of the Winston Tower (where she used to live) to drop Adam off. He says he’ll bring her down the Divided script, but he’s so awkward on his crutches that she takes Cassie from her car seat and follows him in.

  Her favorite of the middle-aged doormen in navy suits is at the desk. “Good evening, Ms. Fisher, Mr. Zoellner,” he says, as if she hadn’t been absent for years.

  Up the elevator, through the foyer, and into the den, where Adam leads her to a weird table that looks like it might be a tree stump. As he’s shuffling through a stack of papers, she notices a blue book with the Chicago skyline on the cover and catches the author’s name—Gallaher with one G
.

  “Oh my God.” Setting Cassie on the couch, she picks up the book, opens the back cover, and stares into Sharon Gallaher’s enormous eyes. “I know her.”

  “So do I—” Adam says, and then his face contorts slightly. “Sort of.”

  “From NYU?” Phoebe asks, assuming what she worried about all those years ago is the case, that Adam had slept with her in college.

  “Not very well, friend of a friend. You?”

  “She was my brother’s girlfriend, the one who didn’t come to the funeral.” And Phoebe realizes she might never have told Adam that. All those phone calls to her brother’s apartment were something she never shared with him—all taking place in that brief part of their relationship when he was fully committed and she was the one holding back.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.” She flips the book over, looks at the cover again. “Can I borrow this?”

  “Keep it.” He pauses. “If you borrow it, does that mean we hang out again?”

  There may be too many buckets of history between them for that to work. Arguably, they were never really friends in the years they shared the apartment in Studio City, before they were an official couple. Always there were glowing embers between them. Perhaps there’ll always be too much electricity for them to ever be the kind of pals that Cole (or any woman Adam might love) would be comfortable with. But maybe it’s possible that they can stay in each other’s lives.

  “I’d like to try,” she says.

  * * *

  Oliver calls Sharon a few days later, as she’s straightening her apartment—washing crusty bowls from cereal suppers and throwing out half-drunk cans of Diet Coke, old newspapers, and magazines.

  “I tried to find a totally fantastic reason to call, but really, I just wanted to say hey,” Oliver begins apologetically.

  “That seems totally fantastic enough.” Sharon feels herself smiling, sits on the couch, and turns off her TV.

  “I also wanted to tell you about this great book I read,” he says. “The Atheist in the Foxhole. I think you may have heard of the author.”

  “Oh.” A ripple of the floor-swallowing, sucking-her-to-China sensation. All that time that Sharon was letting her relationship with Chase Fisher wilt because of her writing woes, she’d never let Chase read her work. Would shield her computer screen with her palm when she caught him looking over her shoulder, dismissed all of his offers to help.

  “I’m sorry, is that weird?” he asks. “I Internet-stalked you a bit.”

  “No.” She is pretty sure she means this. “It’s actually really nice.”

  * * *

  Setting The Atheist in the Foxhole on the end table, Phoebe wipes her eyes, remembers what it was like to have her brother in her life.

  All the minute details that she sometimes forgets: how Chase used to rub his forehead and communicate whole worlds using only his eyebrows; the blissful look he had while running; and the way he was protective over those he loved, even if they didn’t fully understand his motivations.

  And the truly wonderful, miraculous, spectacular thing is that, in this book, he lives. He breaks up with the girl he’s dating, but his story doesn’t end there. He gets married and has kids and all the things that Phoebe’s real brother didn’t get. Not a life free of conflict or challenges—that would hardly make a good story—but a life nonetheless.

  And Phoebe isn’t quite sure exactly why she is so grateful, but she is. Wants to track Sharon Gallaher down and thank her, can’t wait to share this with her stepmother.

  “You cool, Chicago?” Cole asks, and Phoebe realizes that she didn’t hear him come home from the restaurant, glances at the digital clock on the cable box. It’s nearly two in the morning.

  Phoebe nods.

  “You sure?” Cole asks nervously. Sitting down beside her, he puts a hand on her thigh, and she leans against his shoulder.

  “I know I’ve been a little weird lately,” she says.

  He rubs her leg, warmth seeping through her yoga pants. “I just want to make sure you’re peachy keen.”

  “I am.”

  “And not going to run off with your movie star ex-boyfriend.”

  “He can’t run for at least eight weeks.”

  “So you’re saying I’ve got time?” He smiles.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she says. “I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”

  * * *

  Five weeks and Adam is no closer to mastering crutches. In Phoebe’s driveway he’s about to drop a sack of Bosc pears while trying to shut his car door and remain upright. Luckily Evie, top down on her M3, pulls up behind him.

  “If it isn’t the hobbling embodiment of my ulcer,” she says, on her way to help. “Tarnish my reputation any further on the ride over?”

  Kissing his cheek, Evie whispers, “If her Donna Reed shtick gets to be too much, give me a sign, and I’ll have you outta here pronto.”

  “Thanks,” Adam says, extremely touched. “I’ll give you the finger as the signal.”

  “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Cole is the one who answers the door, gives Evie a hug, and extends a hand to Adam.

  “Hey, man, how’s it going?” he asks, looking all of twelve—younger than the new crop of CW and QT stars Adam had to kill in Murder Island 3. Adam could have seen Phoebe with someone older, maybe one of her professors or the doctors she works with, but this kid?

  “Can’t complain.” Adam remembers the pears, hands them over. “These are for you.”

  “Awesome, they’re Pheebs’s favorite.” Cole shakes his head. “Which, I guess, you knew.”

  But then he does smile, gets endearingly excited explaining how they can tuck a pear slice under Gruyère cheese on the burgers he’s making. And Adam can see a hint of what Phoebe must.

  The three of them head to the deck, where Kraken barks enthusiastically seeing Adam through the sliding door. Cassie in arms, Phoebe’s parents hurry to greet him. And even though he hasn’t thought about them in at least a year, he’s overwhelmed by how much he has missed them.

  “Honey, it’s so nice you could come.” Gennifer’s golden hair tickles his nose when she tries to embrace him around the crutches.

  Phoebe’s father claps him lightly on the shoulder.

  “Dr. Fisher,” Adam says, pleased when Phoebe’s father grins wide. Adam’s refusal to call him by his first name had at first been ingrained politeness but had become an ongoing joke between them during all the holidays and weekends and dinners they’d shared.

  “Seriously, son, you’re almost forty years old,” Larry Fisher says, and asks about the doctor who set Adam’s ankle and the prognosis, tells him he’s extremely lucky he didn’t need surgery.

  Coming through the screen door with a glass of wine for Evie, Phoebe offers Adam a drink, raises her eyebrows when he says he’ll stick with water. He raises his eyebrows back.

  Doing magical things on the grill, Cole’s brown hair is long and everywhere. Adam wonders if he wears it like that at the restaurant; that’s definitely got to be some sort of health code violation. Kraken stays at Adam’s side despite Cole’s proximity to raw meat. Periodically Evie checks in to make sure she doesn’t need to instigate the great escape.

  Salmon, burgers, grilled vegetables, and salads on the table, the adults take to the patio chairs while Cassie chubbles enthusiastically in the activity center.

  Gennifer assures Adam there’s no shame falling over one’s feet and claims to have broken three toes tripping on her college roommate’s cat.

  Evie tells everyone how Adam wanted the role in Divided so badly he insisted they let him do a screen test on crutches.

  “That’s going to be the big story when the show starts,” she says.

  Adam shrugs, though he’s acutely aware no one has mentioned the Howard Stern incident since the HBO execs offered him the role. “You don’t need to sell me to these people, E. They’re our friends.”

  Everyone laughs.

&nb
sp; Adam wonders if it’s true.

  And it’s awkward, but not.

  While Cole goes inside to do something indecent with fruit and balsamic vinegar and everyone else is distracted by the baby, Phoebe puts a hand on Adam’s forearm—enough chemistry remaining between them that it tingles.

  “So I was thinking, if you’re going to stay in town, maybe you’d want to take Kraken for a while?” she says. “Once you get your cast off?”

  Flashback to the first day he saw her at Theta Tunney’s workshop more than a decade ago. How he’d thought he wouldn’t like her, still wanted to sleep with her. Figured she’d be just one more wannabe actress who floated in and out of his life as he plowed his way into the industry.

  “That would be great,” he says, swallowing over something lumpy and emotional in his throat. “Thank you.”

  “No, thank you for…” She gestures toward the kitchen.

  He nods.

  It hurts and it doesn’t. That’s not really right; it feels more like his ankle does now—active pain gone but itchy as the bones knit back together.

  And Cole makes the best fucking cheeseburger he’s ever had.

  * * *

  By the time Oliver shows up for their first date the day he gets back to New York, Sharon has talked to him on the phone two dozen times and feels as though she’s known him much longer than five weeks. Thinks that she felt that way when she first met Chase, but it isn’t agonizing, just interesting.

  In honor of the thirtieth anniversary of Ed Munn’s first Eons & Empires comic book, an indie theater by her apartment is showing the film version from 1992 starring Michael Douglas and Jake James. She’s not entirely sure if it had been her idea or Oliver’s that they see it, but he was the one who suggested they meet beforehand at the coffee shop where they’d had their sort-of date when he returned her notebooks. She arrives first this time, sits at the same little table they shared before, and takes the liberty of ordering a tiramisu to split. It arrives as he’s walking through the door.