Forever is the Worst Long Time: A Novel

by Camille Pagán

  As I stood in my driveway and watched her drive away, I was as alone as I had ever been in my life.

  Lou called just before dinnertime. I was in the kitchen, staring at the chicken breast I had just cooked and could not bring myself to eat.

  “Is Rob okay?” I asked, sounding a little hysterical because, well, I was. I had spent the day pacing my house, asphyxiating on anxiety. “Are you?”

  “Yes,” she said quietly.

  “Thank God,” I said, pushing my plate away. “I’ve been trying to call you. Why did you wait so long to tell me what was going on?”

  “I was helping him.”

  “Did you tell him about . . . the baby?”

  “I did.”

  I had to remind myself to breathe. “And?”

  “He didn’t seem all that surprised. It was almost like he knew.”

  “So did he take it okay?”

  She let out a bitter laugh. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Safe to say he took it very badly. But I think it’ll work out.”

  Were Rob only dealing with a professional catastrophe, I might have been inclined to believe her. But I had just obliterated his personal life, too. “And how’s that?”

  “It just will,” she said.

  I opened the trash and threw the chicken in it; what was the point? “Well, what did you say? How did you calm him down?”

  “When you have spent a third of your life with another person, you tend to figure out the best way to deal with them in any given situation.”

  I had spent more than half of my life with Rob and had not managed a single reassuring word. “Right,” I said.

  “I have to go back to New York, Jim,” Lou said softly.

  I slammed the trash lid shut. “What do you mean, you have to go back to New York? What about our baby?”

  “I’m not going to cut you out of her life. I just need some time to figure out what’s right for us. What’s right for me.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know. This past month, it’s been like a vacation. A fugue, even,” she said. “We’ve both been in denial about what we’ve done to Rob. We shouldn’t be together.”

  “We are not together,” I said sharply.

  She ignored this comment. “I’m going to go back to Brooklyn for a bit. I still have the apartment, and I have a doctor there. Maybe I’ll come back at some point, but . . .”

  “Maybe?” I said. The kitchen was starting to fade on me, and my heartbeat was deafening in my ears. “Maybe? You can’t do this, Lou.”

  “Do what, exactly?”

  “Leave!” I exploded. “We may have wrecked almost everything, but at least we have us!”

  “I don’t know why you’re yelling at me like that. It’s not like you, Jim.”

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered. “But you can’t expect me to be okay with you going back to Rob.”

  “I’m not going back to anyone, Jim. My focus is entirely on our baby.”

  Our baby: these two words managed to calm me. “Okay . . . so now what?”

  “I’m going to fly back to New York as soon as I’m sure Rob is okay. Would it be all right if I left your car at the Logans’? Maybe your father could come get you, or you could take a cab here?”

  “What do you mean about Rob being okay?” I asked.

  “Just trust me,” she said vaguely.

  “And your stuff?” I argued. She had been wearing her purse when she left, but what about her clothing, her laptop, the various creams and lotions she had littered the bathroom counter with?

  “I’ll come back for the computer at some point, or maybe you can FedEx it to me.” She paused. “Everything I really need is already with me.”

  Right, because you’re with Rob, I thought. My mouth was dry. “Keep me posted,” I finally managed to say.

  “Of course.” She sounded relieved. “Don’t despair, Jim. I’m trying my best, and I know you are, too. I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”

  Beneath my feet, the floor appeared to sway. “Okay,” I said.

  I waited until morning to call my father. He picked up on the first ring. “Hello?” he said, sounding awfully sprightly for that hour of the day.

  “Pops?” When I was a kid, he had asked Victoria and me to call him Papi, which was what he had called his own father, a man he had both respected and loathed. I must have called him that when I was very young, but by elementary school I realized none of the other kids—who were white or Lebanese or Iraqi or even Vietnamese, but not Latino, not a single one of them—addressed their fathers as “Papi.” So I started calling him Pops, which I had heard on television, and Victoria did, too, and that was that.

  “What’s wrong, son?” he asked.

  I furrowed my brow. “Nothing. I was wondering if you might have some time today to come get me.”

  “Come get you? What’s going on?”

  “My car is at the Logans’. It’s a long story.”

  I was grateful that he didn’t ask for the short version. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  It was a forty-minute trip, longer if traffic was bad. But he was at my door thirty minutes later, just as he said he would be.

  “You need anything?” he asked, looking me up and down. I hadn’t showered and was wearing track pants, a t-shirt, and a hooded sweatshirt that looked as though it had recently fed an eclipse of moths.

  I grabbed my wallet and keys from the table in the entryway. “I’m good,” I said.

  He didn’t say anything for most of the drive, but for my father, that wasn’t so strange. And just as well; my mind was elsewhere.

  “This about the woman?” he finally asked as we were pulling off the exit ramp to Oakwood.

  “What woman?”

  “Rob’s wife.”

  “How—”

  “I called your house a few weeks ago. She picked up. I’ve been alive long enough to know how these things work.” He shook his head, still staring at the road.

  “They’re getting a divorce.”

  “And?”

  “And Lou is going to have my child. Our child,” I said.

  He whistled.

  “I’m pretty sure this is the part where you tell me congratulations.”

  “Congratulations, then. Whooo boy,” he said, shaking his head again.

  “You said you wanted to have more grandkids.”

  “Still true.”

  I slumped in my seat, instantly regressing to my teenage self. “I thought you’d be happy for me.”

  “I will be, just as soon as you’re happy about it.”

  “I am happy about it.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  We rode the rest of the way in silence, my grief muddled with the anger I was feeling toward my father. When we pulled into the subdivision where my father and the Logans lived, he glanced my way. “Why don’t you come over to my place first? I’ll make you a cup of coffee.”

  “Thanks, but I should get going.”

  “The woman? Where is she now?”

  “Lou,” I said tersely. “And she’s in New York.” Or at the Logans’; I wasn’t really sure.

  “All right.” He drove past his street and continued on toward Rob’s parents’ house. “Here you go,” he said as he pulled into their driveway.

  What a mess it was, to have and maintain a family. I stepped out of the truck and shut the door behind me.

  As I was walking away, my father rolled down the passenger-side window. “James,” he called.

  “What is it, Pops?”

  “Life breaks everyone.”

  The sun was shining bright, and I squinted at him. “Is that Hemingway?”

  “No, it’s Hernandez,” he said, pushing his index finger into his chest. “You might be broken now, but you’ll put yourself back together.”

  A sudden chill came over me. Part of me wanted to shout, “Screw you, old man, you don’t know anything about my life!” But another part wanted to cry out, “Ho
w?”

  “You call me if you need anything,” my father said, then rolled up the window and drove off.

  I was hoping Lou would greet me, but instead, Nancy met me at the side door. “Come in, come in!” she said. Her hair was a shade of yellow not found in nature, and she looked like she had aged half a decade since I’d seen her the year before. She added in a whisper, “Lou left for New York this morning, and Rob’s in a bad way. Maybe you can help him feel better.”

  Oh, I highly doubt that, I thought. “Where is he?”

  “In the basement.”

  We’ll face this like men, I told myself as I walked down the stairs. No, I corrected myself, we’ll face this like two men who have been friends for the better part of their lives. People work through difficult things all the time, and I can’t not say anything. Talking to Rob about it is the right thing to do. It’s the only thing to do.

  He hit me before I even saw him, shoving me with his full weight and sending my backbone into the edge of the stairs. Pain shot up my spine, setting off fireworks behind my retinas, and I moaned.

  “I suggest you get out of this house before I put you in a wheelchair,” he growled.

  My back hurt so much I could barely speak. “Can’t. We—”

  “Talk about this?” His face came into focus. “What is there to say? You’re sorry you ruined my life?”

  “Don’t you think that’s a bit harsh?” I croaked.

  He stood over me, glowering, and I’ll admit I was about as afraid then as I had ever been. “You’re about to find out what harsh feels like,” he spat.

  As the stabbing feeling in my back gave way to a warm, throbbing sensation, I started to get angry. I had screwed up. More than a little. But how dare he act like this was all my fault? “You were the one who let Lou go!” I yelled.

  “I was in the middle of a breakdown, you asshole! And just when I was starting to put myself back together so I could get her back, I find out that you got there before me!”

  “Is that why you were begging her to sign the divorce papers?”

  “She is still my wife!” he roared. “And you! You—” He stumbled backward, like I had struck him. When he finally spoke, his voice was garbled. “You were my friend.”

  SIXTEEN

  Late 2008–Early 2009

  What had I been expecting, exactly? For Lou to stay forever? For Rob to forgive me on the spot? For the three (soon to be four) of us, and maybe even Andrea, to laugh over dinner and stay in each other’s lives after subtracting and then adding and multiplying ourselves in a way that bore little resemblance to the figures in which we began?

  No, Lou was right. The two of us had been living in a fugue—a daydream state free of consequences. Now we had been thrust back into real life, and it was simply not possible to get back to where we had been before.

  The only other thing Rob said to me before I left his house was that we would never speak again. I wanted to believe it was his anger talking, but his were the words of a man as stubborn as he was smart. They were intended not only as a warning for me, but as a resolution for himself.

  Yet I was almost surprised when Rob refused to pick up when I called, and even more so when a robotic voice informed me that his number had been disconnected. So I sent him an email:

  Rob,

  There are no words that can adequately express how incredibly sorry I am. As Lou told you, we’re not together—we never will be. It was a onetime thing, a terrible mistake. Please, Rob. I know it’s going to take time, but at least try to forgive me.

  James

  The next morning, he responded:

  NO.

  No signature. No nuance. No possibility of reconciliation.

  Just—no.

  As I awoke to a hollow house each morning, I was again reminded that my fool’s math had left me at net zero. I was without my oldest friend. I was without Lou, whom I still loved, even though I knew I shouldn’t. I was without my child. And this was all my own doing.

  I told no one but Pascal about Lou’s pregnancy. (“Oh, you’ve done it now!” he said. “You’ve done it now!”) His reaction, like my father’s, solidified my shame. I spent most days with a deep, aching pain radiating in my stomach, as though my actions were a cancer spreading from my core.

  As she had promised, Lou emailed updates about her pregnancy and sent me ultrasounds, and we spoke on the phone a few times a week. When I asked how she was feeling, she was vague; when I asked if she had seen Rob and if he was in the city, she changed the subject. The only thing she wanted to talk about was you.

  You were often awake at night, she told me, and would surface below her taut skin like a whale rising for air. Sometimes you would dive deep after pressing your foot or hand against her belly, sending pain shooting down her back. Other times you would hiccup, she said, making her abdomen bounce for the better part of an hour.

  When Lou told me that her twenty-week ultrasound scans revealed that you were a girl, just as she predicted, I cheered on the phone, overcome with the joy of you being you. Then I hung up and cried, overcome with the sorrow of both of you being so very far away.

  Lou and I had discussed the possibility of my coming to visit. She wanted to give me a chance to experience part of her pregnancy, while what I wanted—though I did not come out and admit this—was to not feel so damn alone. I flew to New York at the beginning of December, two months before you were due to be born.

  When Lou opened the door to her apartment, I was relieved to see she was no longer gray-tinged, but instead pink all over, and swollen in places where she had once been gaunt. She greeted me as though I had been away by choice and she had been waiting to welcome me back.

  Yet things between us were awkward. Tense, truly, as though my physical presence reminded her of how we had hurt Rob. “I’ve only talked to him twice since I left Michigan, and that was to finalize our divorce,” she said when I brought it up the first night.

  So again we focused on her pregnancy. I felt like a prying friend, requesting information that was perhaps not mine to know: Was she still tired all the time? (No, she had a newfound energy until nine at night, at which point she passed out no matter what the setting, only to be awoken a few hours later by you breaststroking through her womb.) What was she craving? (Thai food and Swedish fish.) Was she nervous about the birth? (No, she had been taking classes with one of the Jennifers and felt prepared to deal with multiple birthing scenarios and drop-kick any doctor who pushed her into having a C-section.)

  And what, what—what?!—would happen after the baby was born?

  On this last question, Lou remained vague. When I reminded her what she had said about coming to Ann Arbor, she sighed and said it was no longer that simple. “My life is here,” she explained, one hand roving over her belly.

  No, I thought, Rob is here. She wasn’t working, after all, and she didn’t even like her rental. “Won’t you need help with the baby?” I asked.

  “I’ll be fine,” she insisted. Her eyes widened. “She’s kicking. Do you want to feel?”

  I nodded and put my hand gingerly on her stomach, afraid to hurt her. But Lou put her hand on top of my own, so that it was spread across her flesh, and directed me toward a lump that she said was your foot. You pressed into my palm, then retreated, and I thought of how interesting this was without fully registering that I was feeling my own child.

  On my last day in town, we took a walk through Lou’s neighborhood. People nodded and smiled at Lou. One man shouted, “Any day now!” to which Lou replied, “Only if I want a baby in an incubator!” An elderly woman congratulated us, and I thanked her on behalf of the three of us.

  We had just stopped at a children’s shop when I mentioned Ann Arbor again.

  “I don’t know, Jim. I have a network here,” Lou said, running her fingers across a large egg-shaped contraption with wheels, which looked like some sort of incubator-stroller hybrid. “I don’t know anyone there.”

  “You know me, and I’m
her father,” I said as we continued through the store.

  “Yes, you are, and that won’t change.” She held up a tiny sleeping bag with a hood, frowned, and put it back on the table where she had found it. “But I’m finding it hard to imagine me and the baby forging a life in Michigan, and you’re not going to come here.”

  “I could,” I said as we stepped back out onto the street.

  We had just started across an intersection when a sedan came speeding toward us. I held my hand out like a school crossing guard, as Lou, unfazed, continued to walk at the same pace she always had; even pregnancy couldn’t slow her down.

  “And give up your home and a good job?” she said as we reached the other side. “Even if you found a position here, you’d never make enough money. It’s not like it used to be in New York. You have to sell a kidney to afford even a cockroach-infested hole-in-the-wall.”

  Or be an investment banker like Rob, I thought. “I only need one kidney, and you’re going to need help.”

  “I promise you’ll know the minute I do,” she said.

  She was equally elusive about the birth and whether I would or should be present for it. As she pointed out, there was at least a monthlong period in which she could go into labor. “What are you going to do, take an indefinite leave from work?” she asked. “I think it’s better for you to plan on being here to spend time with the baby after she’s born.”

  Lou and I had no romantic future together—we had agreed on that. But why should we not try to build some sort of life out of the wreckage? Why not start over in a way that would at least salvage what we had left? Divorce or no divorce, I could not help but wonder if she was holding out hope that she and Rob would reunite. And if they did, did that mean I could not be a part of her life, which would in turn cut me out of your life, too? I left New York feeling deeply despondent.

  Since I was back to being alone, I had gotten into the habit of grocery shopping at night. I went frequently, buying only what I intended to eat over the course of the next day or two. There were other things I could have done with my evenings, sure. I considered writing a new novel, or even returning to the last one, which was still only half completed. But the truth was, my eyes glazed over when I tried to even read a book; writing was out of the question. Shopping served as a nonwork activity that put me in contact with people but did not require extended interaction.