Testing Kate

by Whitney Gaskell

  Lexi.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  It was Lexi who came upstairs to find me. I knew one of them would, of course, so when she rapped on the back door, I was curled up on the sofa in my darkened living room, waiting for her. Holmes was ensconced in my lap, and I took solace in the comfortable heat radiating from his small body while I plotted what glittering barb I’d toss into the air, waiting for its hooked ends to draw blood.

  But when Lexi came in—I opened the door for her and wordlessly returned to my seat—she wasn’t apologetic. She followed me into the living room and stood in front of me, her eyes dark and angry, her entire being bristling with righteous indignation, as though I were the one at fault.

  “What the hell was that about?” Lexi asked.

  “I was looking for Nick,” I said. “Although now I wish I hadn’t found him.”

  “You should have knocked.”

  This rebuke caused my rage to shift into an even higher stratosphere, one that drained the blood from my cheeks and made everything around me come sharply into focus.

  “Obviously I didn’t think I’d be walking in on my friend fucking the guy she knew I was not only interested in but had slept with barely two weeks ago.” I shook my head with disgust. “All that we need now is to find out that we’re both pregnant, and we can all get on The Jerry Springer Show.”

  “What right do you have to be angry at me? Or at Nick?” Lexi asked coolly, crossing her arms in front of her and staring at me. Her hair fell in perfectly straight, glossy sheets around her face.

  “You and Nick weren’t in a relationship. And how was I supposed to know that you had feelings for him?” Lexi continued.

  “Wasn’t that obvious? You knew that he and I had just slept together!”

  “You’re engaged. To someone else. Do you think that you get to call dibs on Nick forever? Or do you just expect him to sit around on the sidelines for a year, like the first runner-up in the Miss America pageant, waiting to fill in if Graham has to drop out?”

  Ha fucking ha, I thought.

  “As a matter of fact, Graham and I broke up. That was after I got back from the Tulane University Hospital, where Dana is currently a patient. She tried to commit suicide, incidentally. Slashed her wrists with a razor,” I said.

  I bit my lip, instantly regretting using Dana’s hospitalization to lash out at Lexi. It was a shitty thing to do. For the first time that night, Lexi seemed thrown off balance. Shock flitted across her face, softening her sharp features.

  “Dana tried to…commit…suicide?” Lexi asked. She sat on the edge of my ottoman, staring down at the ground in front of her. I noticed that she wasn’t wearing a bra under her black tank top, and the sharp bones of her clavicle were visible. “What happened?”

  “She cut her wrists.”

  “And, is she…Jesus, do her parents know?”

  “She’s going to be okay, and, yes, they’ll be here in the morning.”

  “I would never in a million years have thought she would do something like that. She always seemed so…together. So goal-oriented,” Lexi said softly.

  “Well, that’s part of it. She didn’t do as well on her finals as she expected.” I glanced at Lexi, who was still staring down, her hands clasped together. A crushingly heavy weariness settled on me. “Look, Lexi, I’ve had a long day. I’d like to be alone.”

  “You’re mad at me,” Lexi said flatly.

  “You think? I mean, God, Lex…why? Why Nick? Of all of the guys you could hook up with, why him? Was it just because you knew he was interested in me?” I asked.

  “That’s what you think of me?”

  “I think you’re the kind of woman who flirts with every man in the room,” I said. “You have to be at the center of all male attention, all the time.”

  “And you’re the kind of woman who always has to have a boyfriend. You no sooner dump your fiancé then you’re already knocking on Nick’s door—no, excuse me, breaking into his apartment,” Lexi said. Her eyes were glittering, and her mouth had thinned into a mean, narrow line.

  Her words felt like a slap. Was it true? I’d never really thought of myself that way. Sure, I’d had a string of monogamous relationships, and yes, I liked the safety of that. But it wasn’t like I planned it out, any more than I’d planned to stay at my postgrad Cornell job for seven years. It was just the course my life had taken.

  “That’s not what happened—well, okay, maybe that’s what technically happened, but I didn’t go to Nick’s because I have to have a boyfriend…. I went to see him, because…because…” I trailed off.

  “Because what?”

  “Because I wanted to talk to him,” I said lamely.

  “About what?”

  “Nothing. Never mind.”

  “Let me guess: You were rushing in to declare your undying love for him?” Lexi asked sarcastically.

  I swallowed and looked away. Lexi’s words swelled within the small room, gaining meaning in the silence. She stared at me.

  “That was what you were coming to tell him?” she asked incredulously. “That you’re in love with him? Wait—is that why you and Graham broke up?”

  “Just forget it, okay?”

  “You’re in love with Nick,” Lexi repeated.

  I didn’t answer. I just looked down at Holmes, who was letting out little grunts of pleasure as I rubbed the edge of his ears between my thumb and index finger.

  “What about you?” I finally asked.

  “What about me?”

  “You and Nick…”

  “I’m not in love with him, if that’s what you’re asking,” Lexi said frankly. “And I didn’t come over here tonight planning to sleep with him. But…I’d be lying if I told you I hadn’t thought about it. Nick’s an amazing guy,” Lexi said.

  I nodded. “I know he is,” I said. The words felt thick in my throat.

  The morning sun was already cutting into my room, filtered through the fitted muslin drapes on my French windows, when the phone rang. I ignored it for a few rings, but then, worried that it might be Dana calling from the hospital, I grabbed the portable handset from my bedside table. I’d burned a lavender candle the night before while I tried to relax into sleep, and the melted wax had dripped down the sides and pooled in the crevices of the wicker tabletop.

  “Hello,” I said into the phone.

  “It’s me,” Jen said. “Can I come over?”

  “This really isn’t a good time,” I started to say, but when Jen cut me off, I could hear tears breaking in her voice.

  “Please,” she said. “I need to talk.”

  Jen knocked on my door a half hour later. I’d had just enough time to let Holmes out and get halfway through my first cup of coffee when she arrived.

  “Thanks for letting me come over. Would it be okay…would you mind if I slept on your couch tonight? Please?” Jen said. She was carrying a canvas tote bag with pink handles and her name embroidered in matching pink thread. It was stuffed with clothes and a cosmetics bag, and a black bra was spilling out of one side. It looked like she’d packed enough to stay for a week or more. I found this disconcerting.

  “Of course. What’s going on? Have you been crying?” I asked.

  Jen’s eyes were red, as was the tip of her snub nose, but the rest of her face was pale. She walked into the apartment and dropped her bag on my desk.

  “Why is Dana’s dog here?”

  “Long story,” I said.

  “Do I smell coffee?” she asked.

  “It’s in the kitchen. Help yourself,” I said.

  I followed Jen back to the kitchen and waited while she poured her coffee and then added milk and sweetener to the mug. She sat down heavily in one of my ladder-back kitchen chairs and sighed deeply.

  “Sean and I had a fight,” she finally said.

  “About Addison?”

  Jen’s head swiveled toward me. “You know about that? How?” she whispered. Her round eyes were wide with shock.

  “I
walked right past you two on the sidewalk,” I said. “I probably should have figured it out a while ago. How long has it been going on?”

  “Since October,” Jen said.

  “October? That long? But…how? I mean, how did it start?”

  “I gave him a ride home from study group one night, and we ended up sitting in my car for a long time, talking, and then kissing. It just sort of happened.” Her face was sheepish; she didn’t look me in the eye.

  “And Sean found out,” I said, jumping to the logical conclusion.

  “God, no. He has no idea. That wasn’t what we fought about.”

  “So, what happened?”

  “Toast.”

  “What?”

  “Toast. We fought about toast.”

  “You mean, like, ‘Leggo my Eggo’?” I asked.

  “Not even. I was making toast for breakfast this morning, and I had a wee bit of a hangover and so I wasn’t paying attention, and the toast burned and set off the smoke alarm,” Jen explained.

  “Uh-huh. And how exactly did this lead to your moving out?”

  “I didn’t move out. I just want to get away from him for a day or two. Anyway, the alarm woke Sean up, and he was furious because he worked last night and didn’t get to sleep until four in the morning. So he came charging downstairs like a bull and starting yelling at me for waking him up. Like I burned the fucking toast on purpose,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “And…?”

  “And we exchanged some harsh words—I told him once and for all that there was no fucking way I was getting pregnant while I’m still in school, and he told me that was just as well, because someone who can’t even toast a piece of bread isn’t responsible enough to be anyone’s mother. So I threw the toast at him, and it hit him right in the face.” Jen sounded gleeful at this. “And that felt so good, I threw the toaster at him. But I missed that time. It just hit the ground and broke apart, the cheap piece of shit. Sean’s sister gave it to us as a wedding present—I bet she picked it up at Wal-Mart for twelve bucks.”

  “You threw a toaster at him?”

  “It didn’t hit him,” Jen reminded me. “Anyway, we both said some ugly things, and then I said, ‘I’m leaving,’ and he said, ‘Good,’ and that’s when I called you. This is really good coffee, by the way.”

  “Um, thanks,” I said. “What happens now?”

  “Nothing. I’ll hang out here, and we’ll both cool off, and by tomorrow everything should be fine. Do you have anything to eat? Bagels or doughnuts or anything like that? Fighting always makes me crave carbs.”

  “No. The cupboards are bare,” I said.

  “Then let’s go out. My treat,” Jen said.

  We waited in line for a half hour outside the Camilla Grill until two vinyl-covered stools at the counter opened up. A harried waitress handed us sticky laminated menus.

  “I’m starving,” Jen said. “I’m going to have pancakes and eggs and a pile of greasy bacon. You?”

  My stomach felt shrunken and tight, and I realized that I hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours. Even so, the idea of food wasn’t at all appealing to me. “French toast, I guess,” I said, and handed the waitress the menu.

  I hadn’t yet told Jen about Dana, or Graham, or Lexi and Nick. It was hard to believe that so much had happened in such a short period of time. Some days just tumble into the next, completely unremarkable. You brush your teeth, talk on the phone, buy a carton of milk at the grocery store. And then a day comes along where life seems intent on wringing every last second out of it.

  “Where were you last night? Did you end up going to the Bar Review?”

  “No. I had…stuff to do.”

  “Like what?” Jen dumped some sugar into her coffee and swirled it around with a spoon.

  I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to get into all of it, but she was going to find out anyway.

  “Graham and I broke up.”

  “You broke up?” Jen yelped, loudly enough that people sitting around us looked over.

  “And now the whole restaurant knows.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, it’s sort of a long story,” I said. And then I told her everything—going to the hospital, seeing Dana lying there, looking so small and vulnerable, realizing that I’d agreed to marry Graham for all the wrong reasons, going to see Nick and finding him in bed with Lexi. Our food arrived while I was running down the day’s events, but neither of us touched our plates. Jen sat staring at me, absentmindedly twisting a lock of burnished red hair around her finger.

  “I can’t take it all in…Is Dana going to be okay?” Jen asked when I’d finished.

  “I think so. I’m going to go over to the hospital to see her after breakfast.”

  “Can I come?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Her parents will probably be in sometime today.”

  “Well, that’s good, I guess. They must be devastated. Do you think she’s coming back to school?” Jen asked.

  “I hope not. Not if it makes her so miserable,” I said.

  “And you and Graham…,” Jen said.

  “We’re through.”

  Jen was quiet for a few minutes. “And what about you and Nick?”

  I hesitated but then shook my head. “Also through.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “I saw him in bed with someone else. And even if I don’t have the right to be angry about that, I am. I don’t think I can get past it,” I said.

  “And Nick and Lexi?”

  “God, this is starting to sound incestuous,” I muttered. “I don’t know what’s going on with them. Lexi says they’re not together, but who knows, really.”

  “I had no idea they hooked up last night.” Jen was incredulous.

  “What happened? I thought Nick was having people over last night. That’s why I just walked in. I didn’t expect…you know,” I said.

  “He invited a few people over, but everyone else—everyone but Add, Lexi, and me—left when the Bar Review started. Lexi and Nick were flirting, but when Addison and I took off, Lexi said she was going to leave right after us. I had no idea they were going to sleep together,” Jen said. “And you saw them? Actually in the act? Naked?”

  “Yeah. They were certainly…naked. And I really wish I hadn’t seen it,” I said.

  “I bet,” Jen said.

  We were quiet for a few minutes. Jen cut a piece of her pancake off and popped it into her mouth.

  “So. You and Addison, huh?” I said.

  “That was smooth,” Jen said.

  “I’m too tired to be subtle.”

  “Addison and I are…look, I know it’s not going anywhere. We both know that. It’s mostly been a physical thing. I was lonely,” Jen said. She picked up a piece of rubbery-looking bacon off her plate and nibbled at it. My French toast, still untouched, was starting to bloat with maple syrup. I pushed the plate away.

  “Are you going to keep seeing him?”

  “I don’t think so. My marriage isn’t going so hot right now as it is…and I don’t want to lose my husband,” Jen said, and I could see that her eyes were wet.

  “Are you going to tell Sean about Addison?”

  “No. What good would that do? It would just hurt him.” Jen sighed, and pushed away her plate too. “I’ve really fucked everything up, haven’t I?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, you really have,” I said. I reached out and squeezed her hand. “But it happens to the best of us.”

  “Are you going to finish your French toast?”

  “No, I’m not hungry.”

  “Me neither. Let’s go see Dana.”

  Dana’s parents were at the hospital when Jen and I got there. They’d flown in from Ohio the night before and looked as though they hadn’t slept. Their eyes were ringed with dark circles, and their faces were creased with fear. Dana had her mother’s wild curls and her father’s round brown eyes, and when she introduced us, they seemed to know who we were.

  “You’re i
n Dana’s study group,” Alice Mallick said.

  Jen and I nodded, and I handed Dana a bouquet of sunflowers and daffodils wrapped in cellophane that we’d purchased in the hospital gift shop.

  “Thanks,” Dana said. The smile on her face was strained. “They’re beautiful. How’s Holmes?”

  “He’s fine. He misses you,” I said.

  “I miss him too.”

  Jen and I didn’t stay long. We didn’t want to intrude on the family, and the conversation kept taking awkward turns, like when Mr. Mallick asked Jen if she enjoyed law school more than Dana did, and when Mrs. Mallick asked what my father did for a living. And the entire time we were there, Mrs. Mallick was perched on her daughter’s bedside, holding Dana’s small hand in her own and stroking it with her thumb.

  “Mom, please stop,” Dana finally said in a small, pleading voice, and Mrs. Mallick stood up abruptly, walked over to the window, and burst into ragged, hiccuping tears. Mr. Mallick stood to the side, not moving to comfort either daughter or wife, just rocking back and forth on his sensible brown lace-ups and staring at a sign bolted to the wall that laid out the emergency exit route, should the hospital be evacuated.

  “We should go,” Jen whispered in my ear, and I nodded.

  “Dana, we’ll come by tomorrow,” I said, and I leaned forward to squeeze her ankle, while Jen planted a kiss on Dana’s forehead.

  “You girls should call before you make the trip,” Mrs. Mallick said, still staring out the window. She sounded stuffy. “We’re hoping that we’ll be able to take her home in the morning.”

  “I can’t, Mom. They have a rule that when someone attempts suicide, they admit them for a mandatory psych evaluation,” Dana said matter-of-factly. At the word “suicide,” Mrs. Mallick recoiled, as though Dana had slapped her. “They’ve already told me. I have to stay for at least seventy-two hours.”

  “Well, we’ll see about that,” Mrs. Mallick said briskly, turning back around. She must have wiped her eyes when her back was still to us, because her cheeks were dry, if a little red. “Arthur, you go talk to them. Tell them we don’t consent to a psychiatric evaluation.”