0451471075 (N) (22 page)

“So, sure you’re okay?”

I exhale loudly. “Yeah, I’m Kool and the Gang,” I say, even though my mind’s still turning. This letter isn’t of any more significance than that of a lonely person seeking Fletch’s attention. And who wouldn’t want to know him? He’s funny, he’s considerate, and he has exactly the right kind of glue for any task.

But when this letter’s coupled with all the other events of the past month—the doctor’s visit, the social media snafu, the surprising ease with which we were both able to leave the house—the message I receive is clear: I need to double down on my bucket list, lest I regret it. That which went wrong, and that which went right, would have been made easier if I were more focused on my goals.

And now I know exactly where to begin.

“All righty, I’m going to go reglue the new rolltop secretary. Gimme a shout if you need something.” He rises to leave and comes over to give me a hug.

Right before he descends the stairs, I call after him.

“Hey, Fletch, what do you think of the name Yardapple Vintage?” I ask.

“For what?”

“For the furniture business I’m starting. I’m calling it Yardapple because remember last fall when I wanted to cut down those trees, but I discovered that the horrible, spotty, misshapen little apples were actually tart, juicy, and totally worm-free? Then I used them to make our Thanksgiving pies, and we were all amazed at how something that originally looked so ugly could be repurposed into utter perfection? I feel like ‘Yardapple Vintage’ tells the story about discovering the magnificent in that which seems like a lost cause.”

“I like it.” Smiling, he leans against my doorjamb, arms crossed against his flannel-clad chest. “So, you’re finally turning pro.”

I say, “Starting a new business has been on my list, and this furniture stuff happened so organically that it seems like a good fit.”

As soon as I declare my intention, I’m overcome with self-doubt. I believe I have a decent skill set in regard to finding great pieces and giving them interesting finishes, but do I really?

Or am I just fooling myself?

As a kid, I remember bringing home a picture of a bird I’d colored because I was so proud of it. Mine was no typical second-grade scrawl, oh, no. I hated to throw around the word “prodigy” and yet, there I was. As I walked home on that windy day, I imagined the bidding wars the local Boston museums would wage over my masterpiece. Having my genius recognized was enough, of course, yet if a curator or a discerning collector chose to write me the kind of check that would buy Barbie a vacation Dreamhouse, well, that was okay, too.

While stopped on a gusty corner, I noticed a bunch of paper
on the ground. I saw the same bird drawing my class had been doing, but this one was terrible! The artist clearly had no concept of staying within the lines and his color choices were simply abysmal. Pedestrian. What kind of savage would choose Burnt Sienna for the beak? News flash—Burnt Orange is the new black. And what kind of lunatic would opt for Periwinkle over Cornflower for the sky? No one was going to put this rank amateur’s work on the fridge, let alone in a museum.

Then I noticed that
my
name was on the upper right-hand corner of the page. These were my dropped papers, caught by the wind.

I realized I’d accidentally judged the drawings based on actual merit, rather than filtering the page through my eight-year-old, narcissistic haze. What a kick in the Toughskins.

What if I’m only talented with the furniture because I’ve decided I’m talented?

What if all those nice people on Facebook have given me an inflated sense of self? As treacherous as social networking can be with all the negativity, there’s an equal danger of receiving undeserved head-pats.

“Is this the worst idea I ever had?” I ask.

“No, that was the day you tried to cut your own hair,” Fletch replies.

(Sidebar: If you’re not someone who revels in wearing hats for two straight months, don’t trim your own bangs.)

“Then am I delusional for believing my stuff’s good enough to sell?”

With great confidence, he replies, “Of course not.”

“Are you humoring me? How can I tell this isn’t The Bird Picture, Part II?”

He frowns at me. “The what?”

I wave him off. “Long story. But how can I be sure that I
won’t humiliate myself trying to sell my work, and that people aren’t going to post photos of my Charlie Brown dressers on snark sites with the caption, ‘Oh, honey’?”

“Simple,” he replies. “Because I say so. And you
know
I never engage The Crazy.”

14.

S
PRING
F
EVER

“I said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not giving up my underpants. I know that I’m supposed to, but I refuse and you can’t make me.’”

“You fought with the nurse?”

“I wouldn’t say I fought. It was more of . . . okay, yes, I fought.”

Joanna and I are at a sushi joint together as there’s been a small break in the weather and I’m finally comfortable driving thirty miles south to see her. (Am not nearly as much of a weather god as Fletch.) Although we don’t normally meet up often enough, we’ve managed a few outings lately. Last month, we saw
The Barber of Seville
and a couple of weeks ago, we hit a concert with one of her daughters, which was a rare school night treat.

(Sidebar: Why am I so insane about staying home on school nights? I’m not in school, I don’t have children in school, I have a DVR to not miss any Important Television, and I work for myself so I can sleep/rise any damn time I want. School nights
shouldn’t
be an issue, and yet.)

(Additional sidebar: Sometimes I don’t understand my own
stupid motivations and proclivities, like why I refuse to turn on the air conditioner before May first or the heat before November first. What do I win by freezing or sweltering completely by choice, save for not violating one of my long-standing, nonsensical rules? Fletch ignores these rubrics, of course, as we all know how he feels about The Crazy. He’s completely bypassed my odd prejudices by installing a few Nest thermostats, which I haven’t learned to operate.)

(Third and final sidebar: If in an impotent rage you try to smash a Nest thermostat with the heel of a loafer, you’ll be unpleasantly surprised at how sturdy it is. Also, I find these thermostats overeager, always springing to attention whenever I pass by their sensors, like they’re somehow looking to engage me. Recently, one of the sensors kept reminding me to change my furnace filters every time I walked into the dining room. Listen, when I want an appliance’s advice, I will ask for it. Until then, STFU, Nest.)

I’ve been telling Joanna about my “photo session,” which turned out to include minor surgery. After seeing my squatters up close and personal, the doctor excised them in order to have the pathology run. Thankfully, all came back clear. However, prior to the event, I was waiting in pre-op and I was told to change into a surgical gown long before they were supposed to wheel me away, meaning I’d be lying there for an hour without benefit of underwear, which, no.

Not happening.

I continue. “Turns out being a jerk was the right thing to do—they improvised with a pair of these stretchy hospital boy shorts and said they’d cut them off when I was under in the OR so I didn’t have to be commando while I waited. I also kept my pearls on.”

“Everything’s okay? I’m so sorry. I feel like a bad friend that I didn’t even know any of this was happening,” Joanna apologizes.

“That’s because I didn’t announce it on social media. Privacy’s still an option, even in the digital age.” Here’s yet another issue I have with social media: Vaguebooking, in which a poster alludes to something being amiss, but won’t actually spill said beans. For example, posting a hospital selfie, and when everyone responds with, “OMG, are you okay? What’s going on?” replying, “I’d rather not talk about it.”

THEN WHY START THE CONVERSATION?

Or how about when a person publishes something along the lines of, “This has been the worst day EVAH,” but then gets all closed-lipped about why it’s been so bad. This is attention-seeking at its worst. At least with oversharing, followers have the satisfaction of learning what happened. Alluding to, and then not doling out, the gossip is simply annoying. No one wants to begin a book, only to have it snatched away right at the climax of the plot.

I explain, “When I saw you for the concert, I didn’t want to mention it. I figured there was no reason to worry you over what was routine. See? All’s well and no one had to stress.”

“You could have told me,” she insists.

“Yeah, but I’d have to use proper medical terminology and neither one of us likes to say those words.”

“That is true.” Joanna and I both graduated
summa cum modest
from Uptight University.

“Anyway, the worst part was when the anesthesiologist came in to say hello before it all happened, and I’m telling you, she was fifteen years old. She could have been in Anna’s grade. No lie. I
wanted to ask her if her mommy knew she was skipping Driver’s Ed that day.”

Joanna scoops up a bite of the tuna and avocado tartare appetizer. “Don’t you hate that? When’d we get older than our doctors?”

“Seriously! But I kept my yap shut, thinking maybe I shouldn’t inadvertently insult the person who’s responsible for keeping me alive.”

“Smart. Ever been under a general before?”

“No, that’s why I was worried. You hear all these horror stories about simple stuff going awry, like when one of my favorite authors died during a routine chin tuck. I still feel terrible every time I think about poor Olivia Goldsmith—ever read
The First Wives Club
? There she was, looking forward to a new life with her twenty-year-old jawline, and within four minutes, that’s it. Game over. She’d have never written such a tragic ending for one of her characters because no one would have believed it.”

“I loved her books. What a heartbreak.”

“Agreed. If only she held out a little longer, there’d have been a world of lower-impact cosmeceuticals she could have used instead of going under the knife. Awful, all the way around.”

Personally, I’m fortunate to have handled the anesthesia well, even though I’d been cautioned it might take me hours to get my bearings. My only real experience with anesthesia was when sweet little Maisy had her surgeries and each time, it was a nightmare. The poor thing would pace around for hours in an agitated haze while I trailed behind her, making sure nothing happened to her stitches. But I guess my constitution differs from that of a pit bull because I woke up shortly after they’d finished with me and felt so good for the rest of the day that I wanted to finish painting the trim in my office.

(Sidebar: Big veto from Fletch on doing any work the rest of the day. He parked me on the couch, cued up
Frozen
, and demanded I rest. He also confiscated my paintbrushes.)

Right before the anesthesia was administered, Fletch and I had been watching CNN, which had the missing Malaysian plane story on a constant loop. To this day I’m absolutely obsessed with this mystery, because planes are not supposed to go missing. For years, Fletch had been promising me that airplanes don’t just fall out of the sky or disappear, that there was no way my routine flight to New York would somehow divert to the Bermuda Triangle and vanish into thin air. (His business cards should read:
J. B. Fletcher, Not Engaging The Crazy Since 1994.
) But now that a massive 777 is gone without a trace? All bets are off, and suddenly,
Lost
seems so much more plausible.

Flight 370 must have been at the top of my mind during the surgery because the moment I came to, I asked the doctor if perhaps they’d located the plane
up there
. No one thought that was funny, save for me, who was braying like a jackass. Then the doctor explained how while I was under, she’d also removed the weird little cyst on my West Virginia that had formed after the World’s Most Unfortunate Tick Bite two summers ago. She said I’d notice a few stitches and I’d likely have a scar. I replied, “Oh, no! That’s going to ruin my porn career.” Again, no one laughed.