But circumstances have not been normal for some time now. Circumstances have, in point of fact, been fucked-up beyond all recognition. Still, it occurs to me that there’s probably more to getting back out there than watching Claire hunt down random single women that I will never date, and this is one area where just saying yes won’t seem like a betrayal of Hailey. And maybe at some future point in time, I’ll feel like having a friend to go to the movies with again, instead of going alone, like I do now. Of course, by then Mike will be married and Debbie will have him instantly whipped and won’t let him go. But we could in theory.
So we sit down and Mike drinks his coffee—skim milk, decaf, like that makes a bit of difference—and I sip at my two-and-a-half-dollar bottle of water. The reason men almost never hold long-term grudges against each other is that we’re so damn bad at making up. We don’t offer heartfelt apologies, and then hug each other tightly the way women do, laughing and crying into each other’s hair until the last remnants of hostility and resentment are gone. We just sit around, nodding inelegantly without making eye contact, shrugging and saying things like “Forget about it” or “Let’s just call it even” or other meaningless clichés that save us from actually having to speak directly to each other about hurt feelings and anger. In most cases, we’d just as soon find a new friend as submit to the awkward process of reclaiming an existing one. But in this case, Mike’s going to be family, and all the dinners and holidays headed our way leave us no choice. At least we’re united in wanting the conversation to be over before it begins, so while it never gets quite comfortable, it doesn’t take very long, and ten minutes later, I’ve agreed, against all my better instincts, to be one of his groomsmen. There will be a tuxedo fitting followed by a bachelor party in a few days. His younger brother Max will call me with all the details.
Mike has to get back to the office, so he gives me a warm handshake, happily punching my shoulder, and I head across the shop to Claire, who is actually taking notes on a napkin as she interrogates Mandy. “How many kids?”
“Two.”
“What does she weigh?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ballpark it.”
Mandy closes her eyes for a moment. “One thirty-five, maybe? One forty?”
“How tall?”
“Five foot three or so.”
“Who is she kidding? She doesn’t need a date, she needs Weight Watchers. Next.”
“Are you done?” I say.
“No. Go away.” She turns back to Mandy. “Tell me more about the dancer.”
“You mean the aerobics instructor?”
“Whatever.”
Starbucks has filled up by now, and I can feel the dread growing inside me, being heated to a quick boil. I still can’t handle crowds, familiar faces nodding and smiling at me, aiming their good intentions and sympathy like darts at my head. I don’t want their pity; don’t want to once again put my sorrow on display for them. But I don’t want to seem too fine, either, because in my mind that would somehow be a slight to Hailey’s memory, belittling all that she was to me, and that leaves me no way to be at all, which makes me feel claustrophobic and panicked, and I want to throw down a pellet and disappear like a magician under the cover of a thick smoke cloud. I wonder where they get those pellets, and make a mental note to search online when I get home. There are definitely applications for the grief industry.
“I need to leave,” I tell Claire.
“So leave. I’m sure Mandy can drive me home.”
“Certainly,” says Mandy, beaming like a Stepford Wife at her new best friend.
I flee Starbucks like a vampire caught out at sunrise, running like hell toward the safety of a hidden coffin in a windowless basement. In my case, the local multiplex will have to do.
22
SITTING IN A DARKENED MOVIE THEATER SMACK in the middle of the workday makes you feel like life is a class that you’re cutting. The sea of empty seats reminds you that all the normal, responsible people are not here but out doing normal, responsible things, which by implication means you are neither responsible nor normal. Usually it’s just you and the odd assortment of senior citizens: helmet-haired ladies in their wrinkled, flesh-tone knee-highs and snub-nosed orthopedic shoes, walking in little stooped clusters of two and three, their enormous handbags crinkling and weighed down with snacks and soda cans bought at the drugstore to avoid squandering their fixed incomes on overpriced theater snacks; the lone, bowlegged men sitting next to their worn overcoats with large tubs of popcorn on their laps, looking decrepit and sad, making you wonder if you look decrepit and sad too. When Hailey was alive I would occasionally sneak off to the movies by myself in the middle of the day, but after she died it became something of an addiction, a weekly craving for the soothing, air-conditioned oblivion of the multiplex.
Today I choose an action film involving stolen nuclear warheads and the embittered commando, dishonored for questionable crimes, now reinstated and charged with shaving his beard and re-forming his elite unit to track and thwart the terrorists before they blow up Chicago. I’m early, and the theater is almost empty when I walk in, except for one woman sitting in the center toward the back. As I come up the aisle, I see that it’s Brooke Hayes, Russ’s guidance counselor, and she sees me before I can retreat. “Oh my God,” she says, flustered. “Doug.”
“Hey, Brooke.”
Sheepish grins all around. Going to the movies alone only works in the insular company of strangers. Knowing someone, however peripherally, exposes you, like running into a friend in your shrink’s waiting room. Now what am I supposed to do, sit with her? Like me, she undoubtedly came to sit alone in the dark and escape. But she might be insulted if I move to the other side of the theater, might think me rude, and then neither of us would enjoy ourselves anyway, knowing the other was sitting there. Our anonymity has been lost, and there’s no graceful way in or out of the situation.
“This is so embarrassing,” Brooke says, blushing.
“I know,” I say. “But I think we can handle it.”
“You found me alone at the movies. You busted me for being pathetic.”
“If you’re pathetic, what does that make me?” I say. “I do this once a week.”
“Once a week? Really?”
“I’m on a first-name basis with the snack girl.”
“What’s her name?”
“Carmen.”
“You made that up.”
“I did. But she looks like a Carmen.” I shuffle my feet. “Shouldn’t you be over at the school right now, tending to our troubled youth?”
“Today I’m the troubled youth,” she says breezily, throwing her legs over the seat in front of her. Her flared sweatpants ride up, exposing the curves of her smooth, pale calves. Hailey had nice calves too. I’ve always been a leg man. “I hope you won’t rat me out.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
“Thanks. And you don’t even know my secret.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
“That depends. Are you going to sit down? You’re making me nervous, standing there like that.”
“I thought maybe you wanted to be alone.”
“I did.” The light flecks of glitter on her eyelids sparkle in the dim lighting as she pats the seat next to her. “Now I don’t.” Then she looks up at me, instantly chagrined. “Unless you wanted to be alone. I mean, that’s why you came, right? I would totally understand.”
“I did,” I say, moving into her row. “Now I don’t.”
Up close, she’s somehow smaller, petite almost, and her skin is flawless, her eyes wide and unyielding. The fear of saying something stupid is a palpable tremor in my chest.
She indicates my tub of popcorn. “Buttered?”
“Yup.”
“Excellent.”
We sit in the soft, weighted silence unique to large empty spaces while on the screen they flash ads and the scrambled names of movie stars. “So,” Brooke says, munching on some pop
corn.
“So.”
“So, after we met at the school that day, I kind of thought you were going to ask me out.”
I don’t actually spit out my mouthful of soda, or even choke on it, the way they do in the movies, but it’s definitely a spit-your-soda kind of moment. “Did you?” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“I shouldn’t have said that,” she says, mortified. “I always do that, say what I’m thinking, as if the pure shock value will excuse my saying it. I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer me.”
“You didn’t ask a question.”
“You’re right.” She nods thoughtfully, reaching for some more popcorn. “Fill in the blank,” she says, after a minute. “When I first met you … ”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a prompt, something I do to get the kids to talk about their feelings. Sometimes answering a question is hard, but finishing a sentence works for them.”
“So you’re treating me like a screwed-up kid?”
She smiles, keeping her eyes on the screen. “Should I not?”
“Fair enough. What was the question again?”
“It wasn’t a question, it was a prompt.”
“Right. Can you please repeat the prompt?”
“When I first met you … ”
“When I first met you I thought about asking you out.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“It’s complicated.”
“People always say that, but it never really is.”
“That’s probably true.”
“So,” she says with a smile. “Fill in the blank. I did not ask you out because … ”
Turns out that Brooke has little or no conversational filter, but neither do I these days, and the combination is kind of like bare-knuckle boxing. “I’ve never been very adept at approaching women,” I say. “I’m a great responder. If you show up crying in my office, I’m golden. But starting has always been harder for me. Because no matter what I’m saying, you know I’m just saying it to break the ice, so that I can ask you out, so that we can go out, and if that goes well, so that we can have sex. So basically, I go from being this nice guy with no agenda to the sleazy asshole who’s trying to sleep with you before he even knows you.”
“You think maybe you’re over-thinking the whole thing a little?”
“That’s what I do,” I say. “And the sad irony is that I thought I was done with all of that. I thought I had broken the ice for the last time and had earned myself a lifetime of never having to feel like that anymore. So then I resent the hell out of my dead wife for reneging on her part of the deal and stranding me here to fend for myself again, and then, of course, I feel guilty for resenting her, because it’s not like she died on purpose.”
“Okay,” Brooke says. “You’re still messed up about your wife’s death. It’s all very understandable. Textbook, even. But to be honest, not very complicated.”
“I’m just getting warmed up,” I say. “Then there’s the whole mindfuck of Hailey’s death being this great enabler.”
“What do you mean?”
“My little sister is about to marry a friend of mine that she met at my shiva. So her husband, her unborn children, basically her entire future, comes courtesy of Hailey dying, and I just can’t get my brain wrapped around that. That column I write is making a name for me, opening doors. I used to pitch books nobody wanted, now publishers are coming after me. My professional dreams can start to come true, and all because Hailey died. I’m famous for being sad. And then there’s the airline settlement. I’m going to be paid handsomely for being sad too. So I’m going to be rich and successful, but if I could go back in time and somehow save her, stop her from getting on that flight, I would. In a heartbeat.”
“Of course you would,” Brooke says.
“But someday I’ll fall in love again, right? I’ll start over with someone, and maybe we’ll buy a big old house with all this new money I have, and we’ll have kids, and I’ll be a professional writer, maybe even write some books. I’ll have this whole great life, and it will all be thanks to Hailey dying in a plane crash. And I don’t know exactly at what point it will happen, but the time will come when I’ll have crossed this line to where maybe I wouldn’t go back to save her, because I’ll know that if it weren’t for her dying, I wouldn’t have this family I love, and this life I’m living. And the thought of that, of becoming this person who wouldn’t go back to save her … ”
I mean to say more, but there seems to be a malfunction with my voice, and even though my lips keep moving for a bit, no sound comes out, and goddamn if I don’t feel tears running down my cheeks. Brooke nods and puts her hand on my arm.
“So,” she says, “you’re having a problem with causality.”
“I’m obsessed with it,” I say, wiping my damp face with my hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t usually cry until much later in the movie.”
She squeezes my arm softly, looking ahead as I get myself back under control. “In a way, it’s actually kind of appropriate, don’t you think?” she says. “I mean, look at it this way: that’s how she stays with you forever, by making sure you’re okay after she’s gone. It’s like emotional life insurance.”
“Emotional life insurance,” I repeat, mulling it over. “They teach you that in psych school?”
“I just made it up on the spot,” she says with a grin. “You’ve just borne witness to my twisted brilliance.”
“It’s pretty good,” I say. “I’ll have to think about that for a while. Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” She gives me a friendly pat before removing her hand, and I can still feel the warm spot on my arm where it had been. “Well, you were right,” she says.
“That it’s complicated?”
“No,” she says with a warm smile. “You’re a great responder.”
I nod. “So, what about you? What’s your sad story?”
“What makes you think mine is sad?”
“You’ve already hinted at it more than once. And you have sad eyes.”
“My fiancé always said they were beautiful.”
“Your fiancé.”
“Yup.”
“And what happened to him?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Come on. Fill in the blank. I once had a fiancé but … ”
But then the lights go down and the previews start, and I can see her gleefully triumphant smile in the glow of the screen. “But we’re out of time,” she says. “I have a strict no-talking policy during the feature. Ask me next week.”
“How do you know I’ll see you next week?”
She plucks a single kernel of popcorn from my tub. “Call it a hunch.”
And we sit there, in an empty movie theater smack in the middle of the workday, elbows bumping lightly on our shared armrest, two people temporarily missing from the world, bathed in the flickering glow of the screen, lost in our own private sorrows as we watch Nicolas Cage save the world.
23
WHEN I GET HOME, STEPHEN IVES IS ON THE PORCH, trying like hell to break down my front door. He backs up all the way to the porch steps and then charges forward, hitting the door with his shoulder. Judging from his labored breathing and the dark pit stains on his Egyptian cotton dress shirt, he’s been at if for a while already. “Claire!” he yells. “You’re going to talk to me!”
“Go home, Stephen,” Claire calls from an upstairs window. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
I look up to see Claire and Russ perched comfortably on the window ledge outside Russ’s old room.
“Hey, Doug,” Russ says, grinning at me. He’s drinking a Coke and clearly enjoying the show.
Claire waves tiredly, raising her eyebrows apologetically at me. “He won’t leave.”
I turn back to Stephen, who is now trying to kick down the door like a cop, but cops don’t wear flimsy three-hundred-dollar dress shoes, which leave nasty crescent-shaped skid marks on my door, but don’t really give much in the
way of tactical support.
“Hey, Stephen,” I say. “What’s new and exciting?”
“Stay out of this, Doug. I’m warning you,” he snarls, flashing me a menacing frown before throwing another running kick at the door. The usually immaculate Stephen, who dresses like a Hugo Boss ad and generally perspires only in the quilted tennis bubbles and steam rooms of his country club, is a sight to behold. His sweaty hair, thick with gel, hangs in descending spikes over his forehead, making him look like Elvis, not fat Vegas Elvis but skinny movie Elvis after he beats up the bullies in the diner who forced him to sing along to the jukebox.
“You’re going to hurt yourself,” I say.
“I’m going to hurt you if you take one step onto this porch.”
“It’s my house, Stephen.”
He turns to face me, his handsome jaw trembling with rage, eyes wide and crazed. “Do I look like I give a shit?”
He does not, and I know he doesn’t need a particularly compelling excuse to kick my ass. Stephen has hated me for pretty much as long as he’s known me, and not just because I trashed him in his wedding toast. At Claire’s prodding, he gave me a job at his company, which I could have told him would end badly. I screwed it up in a matter of months, by sleeping with one of the administrative assistants. As it turned out, he’d been planning to fire her, but now that I’d slept with her, he was scared of the legal ramifications, although he had no such concerns when it came to firing me. I used to fuck stuff up like that all the time. I didn’t see the big deal. I do now, but you don’t go and apologize to someone five years after the events in question. And even if I did, the fact would still be etched into my permanent record as far as he’s concerned. He reached out to me and I crapped on his hand. A short while after that I got drunk at Thanksgiving dinner and punched him in the nose. They broke it up before he could hit me back, and nothing festers in a man more than an unanswered sucker punch. So I owe him an apology and he owes me a punch in the face and it’s just not a good recipe for a friendly conversation. So I stay where I am at the foot of the porch stairs and say, “Knock yourself out,” and Stephen goes back to hurling himself at my door and calling out to Claire.
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