“Well, sometimes he was right.”
Cooper nods. “Yes.” He pauses. “Let’s do that again.”
“What, lie to hotel staff?”
“Let’s go somewhere and pretend we’re the only two people who exist. Well, the two of us and the horny bellhop.” Our laughter eases the strain on my heart. He’s the only one I’ve ever been able to count on, even when it’s him I’m fighting against.
“Cooper,” I say softly, afraid of shattering the moment, “neither of us has the time to go on a vacation. We can barely find time to eat a meal at the same table.”
“That’s exactly my point. Do you know that trip is the last time we spent any real time together without being interrupted by calls from the hospital or kids with the flu? That was four years ago.”
“Coop,” I say and reach out to take his hand. “I miss you, too...but I don’t see how that’s possible. I need to figure out what I’m doing with my career. I need to find another way to make this grant happen. Plus, you know how much my patients depend on me.”
“So let’s start planning now. I’m sure if you talked to your coworkers, they could spare you for a week.”
“A week?” Anxiety sticks in my throat, like a pill without water. I feel like he’s testing me—pushing me to see if I’m listening to him. I am. I hear him. But how do I leave when everything is up in the air? When I’m balanced at the top of a pole with nowhere to step without plummeting down?
He clasps my hands and holds them tight. “Dylan, I’m asking you, please. Please, do this for us. I know your job is important to you and you have people who need you, but I need you. I miss you. I miss the woman who used to drop everything to see a movie with me just so we could share a box of Red Vines, even though we both knew you were going to give me one and eat the rest yourself.”
I smile. Those times during medical school were the best times of my life. Falling in love with Cooper, I learned to open up and trust in a way I thought I never would again. I found my first true friends in Stephen and Megan. And the responsibility I bear felt so far away. I knew I was on the right path, but I was only a student. Back then, that was the most I could do for my family and families who had suffered like ours.
But not now.
“Cooper—”
“It doesn’t have to be Hawaii. You’ve been saying you want to go to Thailand since I first met you. Just think—real Thai food. I don’t care where we go. I just want to be with you.”
I exhale and lean back on the couch. Doesn’t he know I want to be that carefree, sun-bathing, licorice-eating woman again, too?
“You know we need this.”
I purse my lips. I’m failing at everything, and it’s coming at me so fast, I can’t keep up.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I say.
* * *
I spend Friday afternoon catching up on my charts, giving myself a chance to regroup on my application. Around five thirty, I run home, slip through the front door and peel off my tennis shoes. I have time to grab a bite of dinner before I head back to the hospital for a delivery. Normally I would work straight through dinner, but I’m trying to make the effort. For Cooper. He hasn’t brought up the vacation again, and I’m hoping that if I can give him more time here at home, we can put it off for another year—just until I get my grant.
Cooper calls to me from the kitchen where I hear the everyday sounds of the man I love closing the refrigerator, opening a cabinet. Without the tension behind all the words we’re saying and not saying lately, it’s comforting. I soak in the warmth of home, add it to the collection of memories I carry with me as a reminder of why I love to bring families together and why I work so hard to keep them from falling apart. It’s the simple things, like the sounds of the people you love, that end up meaning the most when they’re gone. Like the way Abby used to loudly flick each page of her magazine as she turned it, and the buzz of her curling iron on the counter in our shared bathroom.
“You’re home early,” he says.
“Well...kind of.”
I follow Cooper’s voice toward the kitchen, but he appears in front of me as I round the corner, catching me off guard. He takes a strong hold of my arms before either one of us topples over.
“Hi,” he says with a shy smile. He’s still in the crisply pressed deep blue shirt and tie he wore to work this morning—the combination that makes the blue of his eyes ethereal. He kisses me, deeply, all of his body pressed against all of mine until I’m out of breath. I try to enjoy it, but anticipating the reason behind it sets butterflies loose in my stomach.
“Hi,” I say against his lips once he’s released me. “What’s got you so worked up?”
“Follow me,” he says.
“Okay, but I have to—”
“Follow me,” he urges.
He turns toward the kitchen and drags me along. I shuffle my feet in an attempt to stay upright in my socks on the hardwood floors. He places me in front of the kitchen counter, then moves to the side, revealing a bottle of very expensive champagne—the kind my dad used to buy for special occasions, when he would let my brother, my sister and me each have half a glass—and two champagne flutes I’m sure we didn’t own before. We haven’t had much reason for champagne over the last few years.
“Are we celebrating something?” I ask.
“We are,” he says.
I raise my eyebrows, waiting for him to elaborate.
“I did it, babe. I made partner.”
I open my mouth in surprise and something that resembles excitement, but nothing comes out. I knew this was coming. I did. I just didn’t expect it so soon, or that he’d reach his goal before I’ve even really started on mine. The air thickens around me, tense with his anticipation of my response.
I am happy for him. I know I am because his news stirs something in my chest. I just imagined we’d share the day, when my grant came through at least. It’s illogical to think we’d reach our goals at the same time, but still, I’ve held a picture in my head of us celebrating together. A re-creation of the day we graduated med school. Both of us moving forward as one. Now Cooper’s moving forward. I’m not.
“Dylan?” he asks, when I say nothing.
“Wow,” I whisper.
His grin reveals the only evidence of his true age in the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
“Oh, Cooper. Wow.”
I fold myself into him and he laughs.
“Can you believe it?” he asks. “Two years. They never ask doctors to become partners so soon. Didn’t I say this was going to be the right place for me?”
He did, the day he started there. We’d been lying next to each other in bed that night, our legs and fingers intertwined. We said a lot of things that night, drunk on possibilities and each other, talking like reality couldn’t touch us. Was that only two years ago?
I swallow hard. “I remember,” I say.
“C’mon, let’s have a drink,” he says. I make a noncommittal noise against his warm shoulder. He places a kiss on my forehead and walks to the counter in his black-socked feet, the hem of his slacks dusting the floor. With his back turned to me, I take a deep breath to compose myself. Surely he doesn’t remember everything we talked about that night. Surely he doesn’t expect me to make good on those promises so soon, before I’ve reached my own goals.
After I make partner, he’d said, there’s nothing else I want but you...and a couple of little yous. By then, I’ll finally be making enough money to give you the kind of life you’re used to.
Cooper, we could move back into that studio apartment forever, and I’d still spend the rest of my life with you.
You mean it?
I mean it.
I still do, but in the heat of the moment I didn’t want to add that before I settled down with him, I needed to m
ake some things right. Back then, I thought we had so much time to work out the details. The future stretched out like a long expanse of open road in front of us. But suddenly, it’s here and I’m not there.
“You’re not drinking,” Cooper says. I hadn’t noticed Cooper place the full glass in my hand. His brow is furrowed. I watch every emotion cross his face as realization sinks in—confusion, comprehension, frustration. Then, disappointment. “You have to go back to work, don’t you?”
I look away, nod. “I’m sorry, Cooper. I didn’t know this was going to happen. I have a delivery. I’m expecting the page any second.”
“I thought you weren’t on call tonight.”
“But she’s my patient, Cooper.”
He sets his champagne on the counter. “And I’m the one who always comes last.”
His words echo through the room and through my mind, tearing my heart further in half. He scrubs his hands through his hair in anger.
“It’s fine,” he says, but his voice is detached. “I understand.”
“Cooper...” I open my mouth to apologize, but the words are meaningless.
He busies himself with trying to force the cork back into the bottle. It’s useless, but it keeps him from having to look at me.
“It’s okay, Dylan. Really.”
I take a step toward him, but then my pager buzzes on my waistband, and that low hum, in the silence of our kitchen, is deafening.
“Go ahead,” he says. He looks up at me, doing his best to reassure me, because he knows I can’t leave for a delivery with my mind still here, wondering if he’s okay. If we’re okay.
I nod and leave the kitchen, slip my tennis shoes back on and walk out into the fading light.
Behind the wheel, I stop to look at our house. The light from the kitchen filters through the living room to the front windows, and for a moment, I see the shadow of Cooper standing in the middle of the living room, motionless, and I don’t have to wonder if we’re okay because I know we’re not.
Cooper is following our dreams without me.
5
I wake on Saturday morning to a note from Cooper letting me know he went on a hike with Stephen. His absence jars me—with a rare weekend off, I expected we’d make plans together—and I spend the day meandering around the house. Finally, I walk down to the creek, sit on the bench and watch the water hopscotch over the rocks to pass the time until Cooper and I are supposed to go to his parents’ house for dinner. At five thirty, though, he texts me to say that since I’m on call, he went straight over. Oftentimes, when I’m on call, I like to stay home, so I don’t have to bail on anyone. But I’m not on call tonight. I told him that. When I crawl into bed after ten, he still isn’t home.
The next morning, Cooper is as far away from me in bed as possible, so, disheartened, I sneak out of the house with the plan to visit my dad. Other than Abby, he’s the only one I’ve ever been able to really talk to.
When I get to my parents’ house, though, his car isn’t in the garage. I use my key, and I find no one in the kitchen. Dad isn’t in his study, and Mom isn’t in her garden. Dad often spends Sunday mornings at the office, but to be sure, I slip upstairs to his bedroom. Before I get to the door, I can already smell the scent of his aftershave, taking me back to when I was a little girl and I would curl up on his comforter and watch him get ready for work. He would make his bed with me inside it and pretend to lose me under the covers. When I peek my head inside now, though, the sheets are tucked tightly into place, and his electric shaver and comb are lined up neatly on his dresser. Dad himself is nowhere to be found.
As I pass Mom’s bedroom on my way out, I hear a thump come from the other side of her door. It stops me in my tracks. A quick debate fires in my mind, the louder voice urging me to leave before she sees me, before the feelings of guilt and inadequacy overtake me. Against my better judgment, I step closer and peek in through the sliver of the open door. I see Mom sit up on her bed, having scooped something off the floor. She sets the large, purple book on her lap, pushes her lifeless gray hair behind her ears and opens the cover. I recognize it as a photo album I haven’t seen in years.
I nudge the door open farther and catch sight of the storage tub we packed Abby’s most prized possessions into a few months after her death. Mom had fought Dad about sorting through Abby’s things to the point I thought she might actually hit him when he demanded we get rid of most of it. Left up to her, she would have turned Abby’s room into a shrine, but Dad insisted it was an important step in moving forward. He thought it would give us closure. Most important, he thought it would give Mom closure. His plan backfired on him, though, because she just moved her penance to another room.
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t buried my tear-streaked face into Abby’s bed many nights after her death until one Saturday it was gone without explanation. I never asked Dad about it—I was too embarrassed. It would have meant admitting that I wasn’t ready to let go yet either, that I was no stronger than Mom.
Today Mom looks smaller and more fragile than ever—two words that, as a young girl, I never would have thought I’d one day use to describe my mother. Her movements are weary, lethargic. Every year it takes her weeks to recover from the anniversary of Abby’s death.
The picture the photo album is open to is one I chose, selected from the dozens Abby and I had stuck to our dresser mirrors in each of our bedrooms, where there were pictures of us on family vacations at the beach, or at Disneyland, and photo booth strips showcasing her array of silly faces and my poor attempts at playfulness. With her perfect features, she could afford to be silly. She looked beautiful no matter what. The one beneath Mom’s fingers is a picture she took of Abby and me before the homecoming dance the year before Abby’s death. We had our hair in identical updos, curls falling down from our temples, my dark features a photo negative of her fair ones. She smiled straight at the camera, all teeth, but I was looking at her with a close-lipped grin that captured exactly how I always felt about her: awestruck.
In her last year, she had drifted further away from me as she drew closer to Christian and her cheerleader friends. Prom night, though, we got ready for the dance together, just the two of us. I let her choose my dress, one that showed off my “basketball calves,” as she’d said it. Then we went to the salon, and she didn’t balk when I wanted the same hairstyle as her. She’d always hated my copycatting when we were younger, but not that night. That night was ours.
Mom flips another page of the photo album, a timeline of Abby’s life from birth to death. She must have every picture memorized. I don’t understand what she could still need to see there, in those seventy-five four-by-sixes. But then again, maybe I do. I try to tell myself Mom’s loss was no greater than the rest of ours, that her grief is overindulgent and selfish, but the truth is, we all knew there was a special connection between Mom and Abby. Everyone knew it. Everywhere we went, people commented on how much they looked alike—both of them short and petite, both with green eyes that shone like summer all year round, both with straw-blond hair. But there was more—in the way they loved to bake together, the way they could flash their smiles and talk anyone into anything, their earthiness, their impulsiveness.
I bump the bedroom door, and it creaks open another inch. Mom looks up from the photo album at me as I stand there watching her. I wait for her to get angry for invading her time with Abby’s memory, to insist I leave, but her shoulders are slumped, and she looks heavy under the weight of her losses. It’s been a while since I’ve really looked at her, and the skin around her eyes and mouth is more deeply wrinkled. She looks a decade older than her sixty years, and her eyes are vulnerable in a way I haven’t seen them in a while.
“I found this in your dresser,” she says. She leans over to grab another picture from the bin and holds it up. It’s the one picture I’d hidden in my room—the only picture of Abby
I had that was truly mine.
I move farther into the room, but not too close for fear of getting sucked back into it all.
“You didn’t put it with the rest of her stuff,” she said.
I shake my head. I don’t apologize, though I sense she wants me to.
“Huh,” she says, and tosses the picture back into the tub. She rubs at the knees of her slacks. I say nothing, afraid of being lectured, like I’m a fourteen-year-old girl all over again. With my mom, I’ll always feel like a child.
She surprises me by asking, “Why that picture?”
It used to be in one of the collages Mom has hung in the living room before it got replaced by more updated pictures, posed shots of the family in matching outfits. I’d sneaked that one into my room even before Abby’s death because it wasn’t Abby I was looking for in that memory.
The photo was taken at our old house, in the backyard. Mom, Abby and I stood in front of the vegetable garden Mom had kept back then, before she focused all her talents into keeping up with the women in her gardening club. Abby must have been about eight years old then. I would have been six. The picture was full of color, from the vegetables themselves, to the mural of the sky Mom had allowed Abby, Charlie and I to sloppily paint on the wooden fence behind us, to Mom’s flowing skirt and the delicate headband wrapped loosely around her forehead. Dad had taken the picture to capture the size of Mom’s vegetables before we did our first harvest and only had us jump into the frame on a last-minute whim. But there was something about that picture that had always stirred something inside my heart when I looked at it, especially after we moved and Mom began to change into someone I didn’t recognize. The picture was a reminder of who our mom used to be and who I hoped she could be again one day.
“I always thought you looked beautiful in it,” I say honestly. Sure, fashion had changed since then and the picture quality wasn’t great, but the look in her eyes was real. It was happy.
Mom snorts a laugh. “My hair was a disaster.” She rests her elbows on her knees and runs her fingers through her hair now as if she could fix it in the past.
Perfectly Undone: A Novel Page 5