Dr. Eugene Gaskell, Family Therapist, had his work cut out for him. Meanwhile, I’d prepared a speech about focusing on the two of us, getting back to our roots, taking up new hobbies together like meditation and kayaking, and, eventually, trying to once again start a family. I went so far as to write the thing out, wordsmithing it to death, softening parts, infusing it with levity here and there. Then, as though I’d be auditioning any day, I set to memorizing the thing, practicing it in the car on my way to work, or as I tramped up and down the grocery store aisles, or while I drifted off to sleep every night, somehow hopeful that my words, in all their spanking glory and precision, could restore the ruins that only seemed to be piling up.
Bringing up the topic of trying again seemed perverse to me. For a lot of reasons. It meant that Laura and I would have to talk about being intimate with one another. Aside from that one evening in bed, as well as seeing each other in the nude on occasion, we hadn’t so much as shared a meaningful kiss for the months since she had returned from the hospital. We had reached an impasse that seemed so firm, so unrelenting, that I told myself, despite how foreign and grotesque it appeared, it truly must’ve been our destiny.
There was also the issue of whether I still wanted a family. Searching for those elusive moments of sudden introspection, I waited to be told this by some higher power. I waited. And like a goddamn fool, I listened. All in vain. If it was this simple - and it might’ve been - I was not to be the heir of such conveniences.
So I revised my speech again - I kept the part about children - and psyched myself up to deliver it. I chose Halloween for some absurd reason. But the holiday came and went without so much as a word on the subjects of family and future. So I tweaked the speech once more and picked Thanksgiving. That too passed. First snowfall. When the Bears win three in a row. There was no opportune time. My words, muted by their own inertia, were destined to die a slow, silent death until someday they flaked off the page entirely and were swept away to that long lost place of all that is unspoken and unanswered.
I was grateful for the few certainties that did grace my thoughts. They might’ve been sparse in number, but they were rock solid, and as devoted to me as my confusion. One was that I still loved Laura. This was true. I knew it. I felt it. But I suspected restlessness in that love, some remote hint of wanderlust and anxiety. Like it had gotten a glimpse of an approaching conspirator ready to change its form and function forever. The other was that I knew I couldn’t live the rest of my life playing the role of a villain. Some men are better equipped for that than others. Martyrdom only goes so far. It begins to lose whatever flair it has around the time the leaves change. I’m not an animal; like the song goes: a time to dance, a time to mourn. I suppose I was just aching for some guarantee that the mourning would not blight all that could be beautiful between the two of us.
Since I could only prevaricate on the matter, I thought some research might counter the inactivity. So I investigated the chances of me and Laura having another child with the same condition. Everything I came up with told me it would be next to impossible. The most current study indicated that the issue is due to a random event. That’s how it put it: a random event. It said that it occurs during the formation of the sex cells, something I already came across in my initial research months earlier, and that there’s no evidence to suggest parental behaviors or environmental factors play into it. All evidence showed we’d be safe. It said that it having happened even once was a fluke.
Someone especially as young as Laura was in the lower risk category. At only twenty-nine, she was years away from the at-risk age of thirty-five. This was all good news. I should’ve been relieved. I should’ve been sharing my findings with my wife and dusting off my speech. Whatever energy I had, though, was directed at trying to dismember a thought that suddenly entered my mind: What Laura and I had made with our love for one another was something that horrified me.
I tried to repress this. But it kept at me. Was it some kind of sign? Or was it, like my research told me, a fluke? All I knew was that I’d begun to think of all Laura and I had together, all we were capable of, in very different terms.
I threw myself headfirst into work. Work meant routine. It meant stability. And it meant Andrea. As the year was ending, so was her internship. With a few weeks to go before the end of her college semester, and all of her requirements fulfilled, she spent most of her time loitering at my desk, or texting me short, clever quips about topics as diverse as the Johnstown Flood to the chief differences between certain Cajun and Creole dishes. I always contemplated whether I wished to play along. And I always ended up doing so.
Then there were our lunches at the deli. These were always threesomes, with me and Ben holding court, each of us trying to be droll and self-deprecating, all the while vying for the girl’s attention. It gave me little pleasure that I was winning. It was clear that she respected Ben - she bought nearly every book on journalism he recommended - but it was impossible to miss the way she gazed at me from across the table, or how she smoothed her hair in slow motion whenever I said something even halfway witty. Ben was fine with this. He must’ve thought it all harmless and even restorative to my brutalized ego. Or maybe I was hoping for as much.
There was one day, a couple of weeks before Christmas, when I didn’t see Andrea all morning. I found myself thinking about her - the clever comments she’d fire off, and even her scent, which seemed as much a part of her identity as her intellect. Half tempted to ask Ben her whereabouts, I resisted, refocused myself, and got back to work. Then, at about 11:00 a.m., I received a text from her that read, “I know something’s wrong.” Maybe I was over-analyzing those four words too closely, but I found them fascinating. With the “I” in her message, she’d entered herself into an equation that had me as its center. Her message could’ve said, “Are you all right?” or “How’re you doing?” Her way seemed intent on getting me to think about the “I,” which was her. It appeared to me to be as brilliant as it was egocentric.
Not to mention she proved adept at reading my moods. The signs had to have been discreet. Never one for public moping, I knew I’d been successful in maintaining my professionalism. Only Ben was subject to the spectacle of watching me ramble through my sorrow, and that was during stolen moments throughout the day. Yet Andrea was somehow on to me and my troubles. I liked guessing how this came about. Maybe she had studied me from afar and discerned that something didn’t seem quite right, something so subtle and apparent only to the most skilled watcher. Or maybe she had been observing my lunchtime banter and mannerisms and was told by some womanly instinct that I seemed to be going through the motions, and probably had been for a while.
For too long, I sat there, deciding how to respond, or if I even should. I typed and deleted a series of replies; some were elusive, some sarcastic, some serious. None of them made it past my own eyes. I did, though, eventually settle on “I’m fine,” before getting back to work. Which meant pretending to look busy as I awaited her response to my laconic text. Nothing was sent.
Then, thirty minutes after her initial text, she made an appearance at my desk.
“It’s freezing out,” she said, “so grab your coat and meet me by the elevators.”
All I could do was stare at her with a puzzled half-smile. When I started to say something, she leaned into me, her hair brushing against the side of my face.
“You’re not fine,” she said, hitting that last word with enough forcefulness to suggest maternal concern.
Then she reminded me of the temperature outside and walked away. Before allowing that dangerous lull to settle - the kind that brings with it the inconvenience of contemplation - I sprang into action, dug up my jacket, and met her by the elevators. Aside from a black felted wool peacoat, she was bundled in maroon gloves and a scarf that draped her breast in a purely decorative sense. She
looked five years younger than her actual age.
“What’s the plan?” I asked.
The elevator doors opened and we got in. We were alone. I recall wondering at that moment whether anyone in the office was watching us. Yet I never took the time to look. Even now I wonder whether it was fear or apathy that stopped me from doing so.
“The plan,” Andrea said, as the doors slid shut, “is to stage my one woman intervention and see if it’s a success. God knows you need it.”
When we stepped outside, I felt like my lungs were going to collapse. The air felt colder than it had just a few hours earlier. The sun was out, but hung uselessly in the sky, like a mirage, warming nothing, signifying some blurry, burnt-out distant planet. Andrea hailed a cab and we climbed into the backseat. She told the driver to head towards East Grand Avenue. Staring out the window, I played it as cool as I could by refusing to ask where we were headed. This is what she would be expecting. Or maybe she knew I’d be thinking this way and had anticipated my taciturn cooperation. Either way, I said nothing until after the driver, a lean, bearded man probably in his sixties, looked in the rearview and asked Andrea to specify her destination.
“Good question,” I said.
“Take us to where the vast slate of possibility looms like the fine arc of the bluebird’s flight,” she said, looking at me with a recklessness I hadn’t yet seen in her.
I couldn’t help but laugh aloud over her abstruseness.
“Who talks like that?”
She laughed, too, asking what I thought of the line. The driver cussed under his breath at a fellow motorist, who darted out too quickly from a side street.
“Very nice,” I said.
“Very nice? That’s all?”
“Is it yours?”
She was saved for a moment by the driver, who asked again for a destination. Still looking at me, she told him the Four Seasons Hotel on East Delaware. I knew she was waiting for me to say something. So I didn’t. I’m not sure I could’ve if I had even wanted to. My throat felt swollen and my voice suffocated. All of my insides felt like they’d been scalded with hot water. After a few moments, Andrea told me that the line about the bluebird’s flight was hers; she said it was from a poem that had recently been accepted by some underground publication.
“Very nice,” I managed to mutter again, not thinking at the time that it was either cocky or romantic that she was quoting herself.
Though it felt much longer, the drive lasted only a few minutes. My thoughts were pure one moment and then impure the next. Andrea sat beside me, looking out her window, quietly humming along with whatever melody was playing inside her head. When we pulled up to the hotel, I paid the cabbie with a twenty dollar bill and didn’t ask for change.
Andrea was already at the front desk when I entered the lobby. Even though it was nothing more than a reprieve, a slight stay of execution, I fell into a sofa and sank into it as much as my body would allow me to. After a few moments, Andrea called for me. She didn’t use my name, which I thought might’ve been deliberate. We took the elevator to the thirty-seventh floor, neither of us speaking the entire time. A new melody must’ve replaced the previous one in her head, the new one more mischievous, filling the elevator with a manic energy.
As I followed her down the hall, I suddenly remembered Ben. I’d forgotten about our lunch. He’d be looking for me - and probably Andrea - come noon. This seemed like a possible out. It might not have been the strongest excuse - and I don’t imagine that even at the time I thought it would work - but I tried it anyway. Andrea, unlocking the door with the keycard she was given, took hold of my chin in her gloved hand and told me Ben was taken care of. He was meeting with her professor, she told me, to discuss her internship and submit his evaluations.
The room was a suite overlooking the lake. It had a large sitting area and a separate bedroom, all tastefully decked out in a modern French style.
“What do you think?” she asked, closing the door after she ushered me past her.
“Very nice.”
She rolled her eyes and told me I was being trite. Then she removed her scarf and gloves and threw them in my direction. Picking them up from the floor, I asked her if this hotel was where she hosted all of her one woman interventions. Tossing her coat on a garish purple sofa, she smirked a little before walking around and inspecting the room. She said it was perfect. I asked my question again, not sure what I expected or even wanted her to say. Walking over to me, she asked why I thought she’d brought me to this hotel, to this room. My hesitancy made her sit down and get comfortable.
“What do you think my intentions are? I’m curious.”
Whatever she was willing me to say sounded good in my head, but was nothing I could bring myself to voice. I settled on quoting her - something she was apparently fond of - when I mentioned her intervention.
“And is it working? Do you feel better just by being in this wonderful suite? I think it’s perfect, the perfect place to celebrate the new year.”
Andrea explained how she and some of her friends had rented out a room for a New Year’s party they’d be hosting. And this was why she’d brought me this morning: to inspect the room. I sat down next to her.
“Right now, yes, it’s just a room,” she said. “A beautiful, empty space. But come New Year’s, it will be awash in toasts and kissing and resolutions. I’ve always loved New Year’s. It’s a rejuvenation, isn’t it? A starting over. It can be thrilling. What do you think?”
The humiliation I was feeling was tempered with relief. A New Year’s party. She was planning a fucking New Year’s party. There was no doubt she must’ve known the assumptions I had. And it must’ve empowered her. After all, I blindly followed her to a luxury hotel, asking too few questions.
New Year’s, I told her, was absurd. I was smiling when I said this. Being a smartass was my way of celebrating a little; I was off the hook, so I figured I could have some fun with her. Not to mention, I did feel the need to retaliate and reclaim some of my dignity.
“In that case,” she said, “I hope your invitation goes straight to spam.”
“That’d be a real shame,” I said, probably more sharply than I had intended, “missing out on all the keg stands and college pranks.”
Her mouth went agape in a playful manner as she re-crossed her legs. Her tone, while she assured me how the party would not be a sorority bash, was coy and sophisticated. She added that many attendees would actually be friends she’d recently met at the paper during her internship. Her expression sobered a little when she told me that my wife was also invited.
After a moment of half-hearted sniggers, I rose from my seat and said I had to be going. Handing her the scarf and gloves I’d been holding, I told her the room was lovely and that it would be a fine party. As I made my way to the door, Andrea called out to me that we hadn’t yet inspected the bedroom. The concierge, she mentioned, told her she could take her time. She asked if I was interested. The momentum I had achieved in rediscovering my pride couldn’t be compromised. I knew this. So I paused a moment before saying what I said next:
“I know you’ve learned a lot during your time at the paper. Ben, no doubt, has taught you well these past several months. He’s a wonderful mentor. And even though the internship is essentially over, here’s one more lesson, from me to you, writer to aspiring writer: Avoid, at any and all costs, no matter how tempting it may be, quoting yourself. It’s in bad taste.”
This was said with some temperance so as to buffer the blow I was hoping it would cause. This girl, I thought, needed to be put in her place. But rather than being defensive, she responded with a confident answer:
“I don’t agree, Mr. Loveland,” she said, her tone playfully mocking her ro
le as the dutiful pupil. “In fact, in many cases, in most cases, quoting yourself, though certainly brash, might be the only time you’ll ever hear the sound of your own words in a conversation. It can be thrilling, especially when you sneak them in there just so and watch the reaction of the person you’re talking to. Try it sometime.”
With the ringing condescension of these last few remarks tolling in my mind, I turned and walked out of the room, and the hotel. Two days later, Andrea finished her internship. I saw very little of her during her last day. She sent me a text that read, simply, “Take care and good luck.” There was also a BTW that had her address, which I stared at for a long time before taking a screenshot and then deleting the original message.
. . .
Christmas came and went without even a trace of joie de vivre between me and Laura. We went to her parents’ and opened presents and ate and drank and went through the motions of being a family who had something worth celebrating together. I was on the periphery of every tender moment that occurred, which seemed fair penance, and one I could endure with at least some stoicism. My presence was enough of an affront for Laura to tell me, the day after the holiday, that I would not be accompanying her to her family’s on New Year’s Eve.
“I’d like to be with my parents,” she said, “and I’d like to avoid putting them through what we just put them through on Christmas.”
“I understand.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that.”
Everybody’s Out There Page 25