The Last Birthday Party

by Gary Goldstein

  “Never heard of it,” Hockstein replied, turning away from his laptop. He gazed at Jeremy as if awaiting more movie recommendations. Jeremy fidgeted, his shoulder throbbing again, as if on cue.

  “Do you read the Times?” asked Jeremy, stalling whatever Hockstein had to say about his rotator cuff, which, from the grim look on his face, was not going to be “Go home, you’re fine.”

  “I used to, but who has the time? I read it online now and then, but not the movie reviews—no offense.”

  Jeremy shrugged: none taken.

  “We still get the Sunday paper delivered, though. Force of habit.”

  “Do you read that?” asked Jeremy.

  “No, not really.” Chitchat over, Hockstein broke back into a buoyant grin, gave a “play ball” clap and delivered his verdict: “My friend, you need surgery. Pronto.”

  Jeremy sank. At some level he was hoping the doctor would say the ER staff misread the CAT scan—hey, it happens—and not only had he not injured himself but that he was a perfect physical specimen and the pain he was feeling was all in his head, not his shoulder. Dream on. “How … ‘pronto?’” Jeremy asked.

  “Sooner we reattach that bad boy, the better. Looks like you really did a number on it.” He checked his laptop again. “How’s tomorrow morning?”

  “Tomorrow morning?” Jeremy asked, incredulous.

  “Or nine weeks from tomorrow morning. That’s all I’ve got. You lucked out, bubby.”

  “Doesn’t feel that way.” Jeremy forced out a smile to match Hockstein’s self-satisfied beam, but it didn’t take. He tried to recall his schedule. That took about a nanosecond. Right now he had no schedule unless his wife should suddenly return to take up residency on her side of the bed, which seemed as unlikely as Jeremy getting his job back.

  “Is it that bad?” Jeremy had to ask, finally identifying one of the actors smiling down on him from the wall: David Hasselhoff, maybe from his Baywatch days.

  “Looks that way, though I won’t know for sure till I go in there,” said Hockstein, apparently reading from the same horror movie script as the ER doctor.

  “What happens if I wait nine weeks?”

  “Could go from bad to worse. If I can’t do it arthroscopically, it could be a big freakin’ megillah. You don’t want that, do you, young man?”

  What kind of doctor says “big freakin’ megillah?” The same kind who calls a fifty-year-old guy “young man.” This was all feeling kind of nightmarish.

  “Can I think about it?”

  “Sure, think all you want,” Hockstein said, rising from his swivel stool. “I’ll be back in five minutes.” He went to clap Jeremy on his bad shoulder, then stopped midway, broke into another broad grin. “Sorry, kid, orthopedist humor.”

  Lucien called Jeremy soon after he returned from Hockstein’s office. Bottom line: Jeremy was still fired. Geneva was pissed, didn’t care that Jeremy was a well-respected reviewer (by folks other than Joyce’s friends, it should be noted), that he’d been a diligent employee for a dozen years and, not a small thing, that he really needed the gig.

  “When she gets this way, there’s just no fighting it,” said Lucien with an audible sigh. “But look, anything I can do to help you—uh, elsewhere—you know I will.” The editor lowered his voice: “Don’t tell anyone, but I think you’re our best freelancer.”

  Jeremy said nothing. What did it matter? Lucien, aware of the awkward silence, added, “Did you know that I edit your reviews last because they always need the least work? Trust me, that’s not nothing.”

  “And I’m assuming I’m boxed out of feature pieces, too?”

  “Sorry, man. I know it’s the shits,” said Lucien, again sounding more like Matty than the intellect Jeremy always considered him to be. Lucien shifted gears: “Okay, look, I’ve just got a minute here but … are you and Cassie still … I mean, what the hell happened? Was it, like, mutual, or …?” Lucien trailed off, likely checking an email, or maybe he didn’t know what to say. Neither did Jeremy.

  “Hey, thanks for trying with Geneva,” said Jeremy finally. “Sorry I fucked up. You’ve been a good boss.”

  “I appreciate that, Jeremy, really, because, y’know, I’ve always felt that—”

  But Jeremy hung up. If he was going to cry, it wasn’t going to be in front of that spineless twerp. It wasn’t going to be in front of anyone. In fact, you know what, he thought, it wasn’t going to be at all. He had surgery to prepare for and had to figure out how he would navigate things if, as Hockstein told him, he’d have to keep his arm immobilized to help the healing process.

  “Don’t be surprised if you wake up with your arm in a sling,” the doc had advised. “Though, I won’t know till I go in there.” Again with the horror-show talk. The calls are coming from inside the house!

  “Any chance I won’t need one?” Jeremy asked, wondering if it was too late to back out of the procedure.

  “It happens. Mario Lopez didn’t need one,” boasted Hockstein, pointing to a photo of the TV celeb on the wall.

  Ah, thought Jeremy, that’s who that was.

  “Though he’s fit as a rock, so that helped,” added the doctor, the emphasis on “he” connoting that Jeremy was no A. C. Slater in the musculature department.

  “Your wife will need to drop you off and pick you up after the surgery,” Dr. Hockstein’s scheduler, Lorena, cheerfully reminded Jeremy as she handed him a printed sheet with a long list of pre-procedure instructions.

  How did Lorena know he had a wife? He didn’t even know if he had a wife. “I’ll just take an Uber,” he said.

  “Oh, no, it has to be an actual person,” said Lorena, with a little “tsk-tsk” in her voice. “They should also be there when you wake up from the surgery. You probably won’t remember a lot of what Dr. Hockstein tells you until the anesthesia completely wears off, so you’ll need your wife to take notes.”

  Jeremy wanted to say that his wife had obviously been “taking notes” a lot these last few years, which may be why she was no longer in his life. “I’ll have an actual person with me, promise,” Jeremy told Lorena, who smiled back, satisfied she’d done her job.

  Matty was shocked to hear Jeremy was having the surgery so soon and, without skipping a beat, agreed to be his “actual person” at the hospital the next day. Jeremy hated asking him, knowing it would interfere with his son’s work schedule. But Matty wouldn’t hear of it.

  “As long as I have my phone with me, I’m cool,” Matty said. “I’m happy to represent.”

  “Thanks, honey,” said Jeremy. “I really, really appreciate it.” He glanced at his office bookshelf and caught sight of his favorite photo of them. It had been taken at some local film festival Jeremy had dragged him to as a teenager: Matty looked so casually handsome and adult, access badge hanging from his neck; Jeremy remembered being so proud of him that day.

  “No biggie, you’d do it for me, right?” Matty responded, realizing: “Duh, you have done it for me about a million times. Uh, you and Mom, so …”

  That was Matty, remembering to be an equal opportunity supporter, and why not? Cassie was exiting Jeremy’s life, not their son’s; Jeremy wanted them to be close no matter what and he hoped—no, this he knew—Cassie felt the same.

  Matty even offered to sleep over in his childhood home that night so he could drive Jeremy to the hospital in the morning.

  “Are you scared, Dad?” Matty asked.

  “Not scared, exactly. Maybe a little apprehensive. The doctor wasn’t real specific about what to expect.”

  “I meant scared about doing this without Mom around.”

  Jeremy considered that a moment. He and Cassie had gone through every big and little thing together for so long that doing something this major without her—her strength, her insistence, her protectiveness—seemed vast in ways he couldn’t have predicted. He still hadn’t gra
sped the extent of the entire situation, kept seesawing between acceptance and disbelief, was operating on automatic pilot. He didn’t know what he wanted, but it wasn’t this.

  “Yes,” Jeremy admitted, “I wish your mother were here. I wish she hadn’t left. I wish I had more answers. But I’m glad I have you.”

  Lying in bed that night, trying but failing to fall asleep (counting backward from one hundred only kept getting him to zero, not zzzs), the minutes inexorably ticking down to his 6 a.m. wake-up alarm, 7 a.m. hospital arrival, and 9 a.m. surgery, Jeremy found himself again trying to resurrect the argument with Cassie that followed his birthday party. More came back to him now, individual words adding up to phrases, then sentences, full thoughts and reactions, the more of which he remembered, the worse he felt. And the less he could sleep.

  It may not have been a fair fight per se, Jeremy unnerved and spent and still a bit drunk, Cassie out on a limb and ready to pounce, her mind maybe made up before the night even began. They both said things they had to be sorry for: Jeremy accused Cassie of having no interest anymore in anything but herself, Cassie railed at Jeremy for caring more about his “beloved movies” than their relationship.Each condemned the other for giving up on what they once had together, neither accepting any blame for how they got there.

  Had they fought instead in the light of day, cooler heads prevailing and all that, could they have worked through the anger and disappointment and recriminations, found a path forward together? Did they even want to?

  That was the question that haunted Jeremy as he finally drifted off to sleep, remembering what it had been like to fall in love with Cassie, to be in love with her, to be a part of her—then to lose the part that had made it all work.

  CHAPTER

  9

  Jeremy heard a familiar female voice in muffled conversation with a less familiar but not unrecognizable male voice. It sounded like they were talking from miles away, but it was Jeremy who was not quite there. At least not yet. Their voices were slowly becoming louder and clearer.

  She: “How could you not know this?”

  He: “The CAT scans only show so much. There are always surprises. Trust me, young lady, he’ll be fine.”

  Young lady. And a Brooklyn or … yes, Queens accent. Dr. Holstein—no, Hockstein. (Holstein’s the cow, right?) Jeremy sensed his thoughts gelling as he swam to the surface of a watery pool, his right arm resting on something that felt both dependably firm and soothingly soft.

  She: “I understand, but was there no way to prepare him?”

  He: “Who’s ever really prepared for anything? Am I right?” A warm chuckle followed his words.

  Yep, definitely Hockstein, but who was he talking to?

  She: “Well, he’s gonna shit a brick when he wakes up. I know I would.”

  Jeremy, unsettled by words he still didn’t comprehend, opened his eyes to nearly shit that brick. But not because he was strapped into this giant pillow contraption that immobilized his right arm at a 90-degree angle—Jesus, what the fuck?—but because his previously vanished wife sat next to a beatific Dr. Hockstein. And where was Matty? He was definitely there before the surgery, said he’d be there afterward. Jeremy figured he must not have woken up yet from the anesthesia and was still in dreamland, even though things were beginning to seem pretty damn real.

  “There he is!” announced Hockstein, as if he’d been looking for Jeremy all along. “How are you feeling, bubby?”

  “Uh … I don’t know. A little …” Jeremy’s gaze drifted back to Cassie who, he finally decided, was real—as real as whatever the hell the top half of his body was currently attached to. “Where’s Matty?” Jeremy asked Cassie, his mouth sandpapery, his back sore. He tried to sit up, but the strap-and-pillow thing weighed him down.

  Hockstein jumped in before Cassie could answer: “So, Jeremy, as I was telling your lovely wife, Casey—”

  “Cassie,” corrected not-Casey.

  “Cassie, the procedure went perfectly. You’ll be like new in no time. But yours was the biggest rotator cuff tear I ever repaired arthroscopically. We both deserve medals!” Dr. H chuckled again, then sobered. “Frankly, my friend, you were in worse shape than I thought. The upside: We avoided open surgery. I told you that you were lucky!”

  “The downside?” asked Jeremy, glancing at the massive pillow brace.

  “You’re going to be in that monster for six weeks,” answered Cassie. “And Matty had a work emergency. So you got me.”

  Jeremy stared at her, still couldn’t believe his eyes. She looked more beautiful than he even remembered. Her hair, only slightly less honey-blonde these days, was pulled back in the same lush ponytail as that first night they met; her makeup-free face still radiating the flush of youth, her eyes crinkling with wry detachment. He wanted to hold her, feel protected by her once again. But he couldn’t move.

  Then it hit Jeremy: “Six weeks?” He gazed at his outstretched, strap-and-Velcro-bound arm and the massive pillow it rested on. “In this thing?”

  Hockstein looked antsy, ready to roll off to his next joint repair or bone fusion. “It’s called an abduction pillow sling. But don’t you worry, Jeremy,” he assured his patient, with another wide-eyed smile, “the time will go by like a shot.”

  “Maybe for you,” jabbed Cassie.

  “Sadly, for all of us,” said the doc, with sudden gravity. “Seems like yesterday I graduated from med school.” A pause, then: “And that was forty freakin’ years ago!”

  “Wait, so you’re saying I have to keep this thing on, like, what, every day for six weeks?” Jeremy asked. The diagonal torso strap was already digging into his neck; the brace felt like it weighed a ton.

  “Every day, all day,” said Hockstein, with a bit of Joyce’s musicality (which was far more annoying coming from a medical professional). “You’ve gotta keep that arm in place 24/7 if you want to heal like the champ that I know you are!” Those last four words were accompanied by jaunty index-finger stabs at Jeremy. If Jeremy was supposed to smile in response, he didn’t.

  Cassie piped up: “Jeremy, you have to work in it, eat in it, sleep in it.” Indicating a printed page of directives she’d apparently been given before Jeremy woke up, she added, “Says here you can take the brace off to shower, though frankly I have no idea how you do that, much less get it back on.” Reading on she noted, “Oh, and when you do shower, you have to keep your arm level at the same 90-degree angle, so good luck with that.”

  “So,” Hockstein clapped his hands again. “Any questions before I go?”

  “Did Mario Lopez have to wear this ridiculous thing?” asked Jeremy. He couldn’t resist. Cassie looked utterly confused.

  The doc belly laughed. “Okay, wise guy. Anything else you need, do not hesitate to call Lorena in my office. She’s my right arm—no pun intended!” A salute to Jeremy and Cassie and he was gone.

  Jeremy rolled his eyes. “He’s a better surgeon than comedian, though I’ll admit the lines blur.”

  “Mario Lopez?”

  Jeremy’s mood shifted. “Where were you?” he asked Cassie. “And when did you get back?”

  Cassie hesitated as if she’d made no plan on how to proceed, what to say, how to act. Maybe she hadn’t. “Sorry to hear about your job. That really sucks.”

  Jeremy looked at her: How did she know?

  “Matty filled me in on the … well, the last few days.”

  “Yes, it does suck,” said Jeremy, about to remind Cassie that if it wasn’t for her he would still have his job, but he hoped that was already evident. He indicated the abduction pillow. “Almost as much as this.”

  She folded the instruction sheet in half, and then in half once more. Jeremy studied her. He knew every square inch of this woman yet also knew nothing. He could tell Cassie felt his eyes on her as she unfolded the instruction sheet—once, twice—smoothed it out and then passed
it to Jeremy.

  “You’ll need this,” she said, avoiding his gaze.

  Jeremy took the page with his free hand. “What are we doing, Cassie?”

  “You know what we’re doing. We’re separating.”

  Jeremy was silent.

  “And for the record, I drove out to Palm Springs, stayed with a friend.”

  “Yeah? What was his name?” Jeremy didn’t mean to ask that, but too late. Maybe he hadn’t really dismissed the possibility after all.

  “I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.” Cassie held herself back, stood. “Look, I don’t know exactly how you’re going to handle your life for the next six weeks stuck in that thing, but I can’t move back in to help you. It’s shitty timing, I know, and I’m sorry, but … I can’t.”

  “Did I ask you to move back in? Or help me in any way whatsoever?” Then again, thought Jeremy, how was he going to manage by himself in that mammoth brace? He didn’t even know how he was going to get off the hospital bed. Cassie stayed remarkably composed.

  “If you’re ready to go, I’ll drive you back to the house,” she said. “Your mother’s going to meet us there.”

  “My mother? When did you talk to her?” Jeremy went to swing his legs over the side of the bed but tipped backward from the weight of the unwieldy abduction pillow. Cassie jumped in to help him up.

  “Matty spoke to her. He took care of everything. He said to tell you he’ll come by after work,” she explained as she used both hands to get Jeremy upright and balanced. His hospital gown—that joke of sartorial indignity—became untied from the back, a breeze swooping up over his jockey-shorted ass. Cassie went to cover him up but Jeremy pulled away.

  “Let me help you get dressed, and then I’ll bring the car around,” she offered evenly, seemingly trying to move through this with the least amount of drama. It was unlike her and, for Jeremy, made this awkward reunion even more unnerving. It’s not that he didn’t want to see her, he just didn’t want her to see him. Not like this.