“That’s you?” I asked incredulously, looking at May’s unruly curls, her Birkenstock sandals, her unpolished fingernails.
“My husband was a state senator,” May said, smiling wryly, as she started up the car and headed down the street. “And I was the perfect society wife. I was secretary of the Junior League. I gave teas like you wouldn’t believe. I can still make a killer watercress sandwich with the crusts cut off at ninety-degree angles. I’ve got a black belt in flower arranging.”
I took another look at the photo. The eyes were the same, but that was the only resemblance. I knew May was telling the truth, but it seemed impossible to believe.
“I thought I had everything I wanted,” May said. “But then, I never thought about what other options were available to me. I never had time to think about what else might be out there; I was too busy starching my husband’s shirts.”
I sensed May had kept this bottled up for a long time, and she needed to get it out of her system. I stayed quiet and kept my eyes fixed on her.
“I’d probably still be living that way, except that my husband lost one of his reelections,” she said. “That’s when he went from being arrogant to being truly mean. The more he drank, the more it became my fault that he’d lost the election. I didn’t smile up at him enough during debates, or I hadn’t dressed in patriotic colors. And he said it was my fault we hadn’t been able to have kids—if he’d had a baby to hold up for photo ops, voters would’ve liked him more. Can you believe that?” Her voice changed; grew rougher. “He turned my infertility, the most painful thing in my life, into a political flaw.”
May paused for a moment, lost in the sad memories.
I reached over and put my hand on hers and squeezed. “That must have been so awful,” I said softly.
“I knew I had to leave, then and there, or my life would be over,” she said. “And it did end, in a way. In the best possible way. My old existence was over. And now it’s seven years later, and we’ve only just finished hashing out the divorce agreement. Can you believe it? He thought a divorce would be a political liability, so he fought it as long as he could.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling like the words were inadequate.
“Me too,” May said. “Sorry I wasted twelve years on that guy.”
Then she laughed, but there wasn’t any bitterness in it.
“Most of the time I don’t let it bother me,” she said. “It took me years of therapy to not let it bother me. But when he calls, I get flashbacks to that time—that sad waste of a life—and I can’t help but feel down.”
“Was it hard to change?” I asked. “From the person you were then, to the person you are now?”
May chewed on her lower lip while she thought about it. “Yes and no,” she finally said. “When I was nine, I was terrified of the high diving board at my pool. One day I got to the pool right when it opened. I was the only one there except for a couple of lifeguards, who were flirting with each other and not paying me any attention. I still remember how it felt when my toes gripped those cold metal stairs as I climbed that ladder. I must’ve stood there for fifteen minutes, just staring down at the water that seemed impossibly far away. And then I took one step forward. One tiny step into the air.”
“Was it scary?” I asked her.
“It was the easiest thing in the world,” May said. “All I had to do was let gravity take over. Nature knew exactly what to do, once I got out of its way and let things unfold as they were meant to. The fear was almost impossible to bear, but actually doing it was easy.”
“So you reinvented yourself,” I said. “That’s incredible. To think that you changed everything.”
“But I don’t think it’s extraordinary,” she said. She leaned her head back against her seat’s headrest and smiled. “I think we’re all constantly reinventing ourselves. First we change from babies into little kids, and then teenagers, which are a whole separate species that probably belong in a zoo. We barely have a chance to try out being young adults before there’s pressure on us to find a partner and a new identity as a couple, and then most of us turn into parents. The next thing you know time is moving faster and faster and middle age is upon us. Those of us who have kids are dropping them off at college, and the rest of us are looking at strangers in the mirror with crow’s-feet and gray hair, and wondering how we’ve managed to morph overnight into our parents. But I think if we don’t fight it too hard—if we don’t cling to the person we used to be and instead let go of the paralyzing fear and turn into who we’re meant to be next—it’s easier.”
The light changed, and May turned left, onto a street lined with restaurants and shops. A red muscle car squealed past us; in the driver’s seat was a man with an award-winning comb-over.
“See?” May said. “Clinging isn’t attractive.”
I smiled but didn’t say anything; I was too busy thinking about the wisdom in May’s words.
“Do you have any sisters?” I asked.
“I’m an only child,” she said.
“Sometimes I wonder if I’m the person I am because of my sister,” I said, forcing the words out. My throat felt tight. I’d never talked about this to anyone before. “It’s like Alex is in the beautiful role, and I’m in the smart one. And I wonder if my family will ever let me change into someone else. They’re so invested in me being smart and successful. That’s my identity in the family. I don’t know if they’ll ever be able to see me any other way.”
May nodded. “Families are like that,” she said. “If you change, it means everyone else has to shift to make room for the new you. And change can be scary.”
“How did you do it?” I asked. “When you changed?”
“It was easier for me,” she said. “I left it all behind and moved away from Annapolis. Geography can help give you a fresh start. But when I go up to New Jersey to see my parents every year, I swear I get sucked into the same old patterns I’ve been fighting my entire life. My mother always finds a way to criticize what I’m wearing. That’s a real talent, considering I’ve gone from Talbots to tie-dye in the last decade.”
“So how do you deal with it?” I asked, grinning.
“I run back to Maryland with my tail between my legs as fast as I can.” May snorted. “Can you imagine a fifty-year-old woman cowering on the train while her eighty-year-old mother hobbles alongside it with a walker and shouts through the open window not to eat the train food because God knows it’ll make you sick?”
“I thought it was just my crazy family.” I giggled.
“Ha,” May said. “You know the definition of a dysfunctional family, don’t you? It’s any family with more than one member in it.”
May pulled into a parking spot and turned off the ignition, but neither of us reached for the door handles.
“I have to tell my parents about my job,” I said. I could feel the smile fade away from my face. “I’ve been putting it off for too long. But I don’t think I can tell them I was fired.”
“Why not?” May asked. “Why would it be so awful for them to know you’re human?”
“Being successful is all I have,” I said. “And now I’ve lost that.” I cringed, thinking of how that sounded. “I don’t mean working for you isn’t something to be proud of—” I started.
“But it’s not jetting to Tokyo and overseeing photo shoots and doing all that other stuff you told me about,” May said understandingly.
“I’m living with my parents,” I said. “My mom buttered my toast this morning, for God’s sakes. I feel like I’m trapped in a bad sitcom or something. Maybe it wouldn’t be so awful if everyone hadn’t expected great things of me. I thought I’d be running a company someday. I thought I’d be able to send my parents on fabulous trips, and fly everyone out to my place in the Hamptons for the holidays.” I gave a half laugh. “The irony is that Alex is getting all that. She’s getting everything I wanted by marrying a rich guy. She doesn’t have to work for anything. It all comes so easily to he
r.”
“That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have problems, too,” May said.
“Yeah.” I snorted. “I’m sure it’s real tough figuring out if she should see her manicurist first or go to the tanning bed.”
“You don’t think there’s anything that worries Alex?” May said. “Anything that causes her pain?”
I thought about my sense that things with her and Gary weren’t as perfect as they looked on the surface. She never mentioned him. She hadn’t brought up the wedding lately, either.
“Have you ever talked to Alex?” May asked. “I mean really talked.”
“Sure,” I said. “Back when we were six. We don’t have anything in common, other than our parents. It’s like a genetic joke that we’re twins, but the joke’s on me.”
“Why do you put yourself down like that?” May asked. “You’re beautiful.”
I shook my head.
“Yes, you are,” May insisted. “That night we met, you were dazzling in that bar. You had this glow about you. But when you talk about your sister, your whole essence changes. It’s like the light goes out of you.”
I looked down at my hands. “I guess I feel like no one looks at me when she’s around,” I said softly. “Like I don’t matter.”
“What would happen if you tried to get past all that stuff and talk to your sister?” May asked. “What if you told her you’d been fired?”
I shook my head. “She’d be the last person I’d confide in.”
“Because you’re so competitive with her?” May asked.
That one stung a bit, even though May’s tone was gentle.
“She’s competitive with me, too,” I said. “God, listen to me. I sound like I’m two. I should have someone buttering my toast for me.”
“I’m just saying she might surprise you,” May said. “And if she doesn’t, what’s the worst thing that could happen? You’re still smart. You’re still capable. You’re still you.”
“Okay,” I said. I knew I didn’t sound convinced. “Maybe.”
“And now that’s enough of that,” May said. “You sat through my lecture, so you get a reward. Pie or ice cream?”
“You mean I have to choose?” I asked as we got out of the car.
“That’s my girl,” May said, linking her arm through mine.
Part Three
Jump
Twenty-one
IT SEEMED LIKE SUNDAY night would never arrive. Bradley’s face kept floating into my mind at the oddest moments: during my morning shower, while I was waiting in line at the dry cleaner’s, while I munched on an afternoon snack. (Since I’m not a Freudian, there’s no significance to my selection of snack food and any associated imagery. Besides, bananas are high in potassium.) I considered different plans for Sunday night, rejecting and tweaking and refining, until finally, every last detail was just right.
I pulled up to his house at a few minutes before six, after circling the neighborhood for fifteen minutes. I would’ve been fashionably late, but a woman who was out power walking kept shooting me suspicious looks as I passed by in my parents’ old rattletrap of a car. I was probably one more loop away from being Maced, which wouldn’t get tonight off to a rip-roaring romantic start.
Bradley lived in the Woodley Park neighborhood, right behind the National Zoo. His block was filled with older but well-maintained homes. I could see lots of front porches with Adirondack chairs and folded-up baby strollers, and a shaggy golden retriever gnawing on a tennis ball on his front lawn, and kids playing tag in the soft evening light as a dad kept one eye on them and one on the newspaper in his hands.
It was just the kind of neighborhood I’d pick for Bradley. He wouldn’t fit in to the glitz of Georgetown or the hyperimportant bustle of Capitol Hill. This was a neighborhood where people held block parties and knocked on each other’s doors when they ran out of sugar. It had real homes, and real people inside of them.
“Hi,” I said simply when Bradley came to the door. He looked so good it made me ache. He wore faded jeans and a black pullover, and his hair was kind of rumpled. I could still see traces of the teenage Bradley in the way his eyebrows tilted up when he smiled at me, and the way his Adam’s apple still stuck out the tiniest bit. Time had softened his sharp teenage edges, but Bradley hadn’t changed all that much. It was me who saw him through new eyes now.
“Lindsey?” Bradley sounded incredulous. I just stood there, letting his eyes rove over me. Just like Bradley had long ago, I’d gone for the Hail Mary tonight.
I’d worn my new jeans and Marilyn boots and my tight, nude lace camisole and dusty pink suede jacket. My hair was loose and wavy, and I’d spent half an hour on my makeup. Bradley was the first person who’d known the old me to see me this way. I pleaded with him with my eyes to like me.
“You look beautiful!” he said, opening the door so I could come inside.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Did you do something with your hair?” he said.
“I probably need a haircut.” I laughed. “I’ve just been so busy.”
“I like it like this,” he said.
“Yeah?” I asked. His compliment felt loaded with significance. He liked it. He liked me.
“Yeah,” he said, giving me the once-over again. His look warmed me like sunshine as it traveled over me. A giddy happiness welled up inside me. “Definitely.”
We smiled at each other, then Bradley said, “Let me give you the five-second tour.”
“I believe I paid for the ten-second tour,” I mock-
complained.
“Okay, then we’ll walk through the place twice,” he said. “Living room, obviously, and back there is the eat-in kitchen—”
“Oh, Bradley,” I said, cutting him off as I walked into his living room. It was filled with photographs, dozens and dozens of photographs. My eyes flitted around the room, soaking in the beauty of Bradley’s work. There was a picture of an old man clutching his metal lunch box at the bus stop, his face a weary road map of wrinkles and lines but his posture straight and proud. There was a little girl chasing a firefly through a field, her eyes big and smile bigger as she came close to capturing magic in her hands. There was a black-and-white photo of a pair of entwined hands—a man’s and a woman’s, and I knew instantly that they’d been married for decades, and that they were still in love. Bradley’s photographs were more than fleeting snapshots of moments in time. They told entire stories.
There was also a picture of me.
I was about sixteen, and I was studying at Bradley’s parents’ kitchen table. I’d been puzzling over an English essay, chewing the end of a pencil. Squares of sunlight filtered in from the paned window behind me and fell on my dark hair.
“I don’t even remember you taking this one,” I said. I couldn’t help smiling; Bradley had a picture of me in his living room. He’d kept it for all these years.
Bradley came up and stood behind me.
“God, we were so young,” I said, turning around to look at him.
“I know,” he said. “Sometimes I feel like so much has changed, but other times it seems like everything’s the same.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” I said. I kept my eyes on his for an extra beat, hoping he’d know what had stayed the same for me and what had changed. My feelings for him had done both.
Bradley was the first to break the moment.
“Let me show you the upstairs,” he said, leading the way. The old wooden stairs creaked comfortably as we stepped on them.
“Bedroom—whoops, forgot to make the bed—bathroom, guest room,” he said.
“It’s perfect,” I said, and it was. On one wall, instead of paintings, Bradley had hung a trio of antique cameras. His old guitar was propped in a corner. Dark wood bookshelves lined the walls of his bedroom, and they were filled with history books and biographies. I saw a pair of ten-pound hand weights in a corner and hid my smile, remembering Bradley’s single-minded devotion to Wheaties.
“How long
have you been living here?” I asked.
“I bought it last year,” Bradley said. “I love the neighborhood. There was a ton of work to do on it at first, but it’s getting there. And it’s only twenty minutes to Dad’s, so we get together once a week or so.”
“I’d love to see him again,” I said.
“I’ll call you next time I go over,” he said. “He’s dating this new woman, and I think it’s getting pretty serious. She’s an environmental lawyer.”
“Do you like her?” I asked.
“I do,” he said. “She’s perfect for Dad; you’ll see when you meet her.”
I clung to that promise: He wanted me to meet the woman his father was dating. Our lives were weaving together again.
“So am I dressed okay for wherever we’re going? Or should I change into something nicer?” Bradley asked.
“You look perfect,” I said. I cleared my throat and looked away; I hadn’t meant to sound quite so fervent.
I led the way to my vehicle of seduction—the battered old station wagon with Dad’s bifocals and Tums littering the front seat—and headed north, toward Maryland.
“You’re not even going to give me a hint?” Bradley said, flicking on the radio and leaning back in his seat. Bruce Springsteen started singing about girls in summer clothes, and I rolled down the window. Summer would be here soon, just like Springsteen was promising; the air was warm and moist and filled with promise. What would it be like to spend the summer with Bradley? To drive down to the beach for the weekend on a whim, or to spend the evening on his front porch, leaning over to give him a kiss as we shared a cold beer?
“No hints,” I said. I’d been so nervous about tonight, but now I felt nothing but exhilaration. Bradley was sneaking little looks at me, as if he couldn’t quite believe his eyes. It was a gorgeous night. Everything was perfect.
The Opposite of Me Page 23