Plan B (29 page)

We were still sitting on the rock a while later when Chuck came storming down, with Alison trailing him angrily. They were still going at it fiercely. “I can’t believe you’re bailing on us,” Alison said, hurrying to keep up with him.

“I’m not the one bailing,” Chuck yelled over his shoulder. “Jack’s the one who cut out.” He strode purposefully over to us and said, “We have to talk.”

“We can’t just leave,” Alison protested. “We have to do something.”

“There’s nothing we can do,” Chuck retorted.

Alison’s face was flushed with anger as she approached us. “Is that what you all think?” she asked, slightly out of breath from following Chuck down to the lake. “You think we should just go home?”

Chuck gave me an intense look, and I knew I couldn’t leave him hanging. “He’s gone, Alison,” I said slowly. “Wherever he might be, it’s out of our hands now. He didn’t want our help
before. Even if we could find him, what makes you think he wants it now?”

“What are you talking about?” Alison said. “He needs us.” She looked at Lindsey and me, her eyes accusing and pleading at the same time.

“I think we need to lay out the options, Alison,” Lindsey said softly. “I mean, none of us is thinking very clearly right now.”

“My thinking is perfectly clear,” Chuck said, raising his voice. “And I don’t need to decide this on committee. I’m going home. Jack’s gone. He’s either found his way to a phone and called Seward to come get him, or he got high, or. . .” his voice trailed off.

“Or what?” Alison said, daring him.

“Or he’s dead,” Lindsey said, letting Chuck off the hook.

“I called the local hospital this morning,” Chuck said. “No one’s been admitted since last night, and there have been no DOAs either. Beyond that, I don’t see what else any of us can do.”

“We can talk to the police,” Alison said. “Once we tell them what happened, they’ll help us look for him.”

“Who? That jerk-off deputy? Yeah, I can see where he might be a big help.”

“We can speak to the sheriff or the State Police.”

Chuck made a face. “Great! Screw your life up some more over Jack. It’s like some sick joke already! But I’m not going to join you. I was set to leave two days ago, but then Ben got hurt so I stuck around. For him, not for Jack. I’ve taken off a week during a crucial surgery rotation. If I miss anymore, I can’t fulfill my requirement and I’ll have to wait until spring to start it over again. I’ll lose at least six months, and for what? It’s one thing to stick your neck out for someone when it might actually do them some good. But now we’re just hurting ourselves pointlessly. Ben could have been killed, for Christ’s sake.” He stopped and looked over at me before turning back to Alison. “Jack also damn near
burned the house down with all of us in it, in case you’ve forgotten. And at no point through any of that did I think about quitting because I still thought we could help him. But now the police are sniffing around, and I think that’s our cue to get the hell out of here. . . . Jack walked out of his own free will, and that’s it. It’s time to let him take responsibility for his actions. We’re done here, Alison. It was a noble effort and it didn’t work. It was over the minute he walked out that door, and you’re the only one who doesn’t know it.”

Alison was looking straight at him now, her eyes narrowed into contemptuous slits. “So go home, Chuck. Take care of yourself. That’s what you’re best at anyway.” Her invective was almost verbatim what Luke said to Han Solo just before the Rebellion’s attack on the Death Star, but I didn’t see any advantage to pointing that out just then.

“You deluded bitch,” Chuck said softly.

“Chuck!” Lindsey shouted in surprise.

“No!” he yelled back. “We’re all tiptoeing around her, and I’m not going to do it anymore! I care about you, Alison. I know you don’t think that’s true, but it is. And that’s why I’m telling you this. You don’t love Jack, you’re addicted to him. Or to being a martyr for him, I don’t know, but it’s not healthy. You can’t even see the damage this is doing to you. To all of us.”

“Don’t you dare try to tell me how I feel!” Alison spat at him. “What the hell do you know about it? You’ve never loved anyone but yourself.”

He started to say something, shook his head and then waved his hand in a dismissive gesture as he turned away and headed back toward the house. “Fuck it,” he said. “I’m out of here.”

I stood up, panic churning in my stomach. Something was happening between all of us, bending under all the tension and hostility and I had an ominous feeling that when it snapped it would
shatter irreparably. The lines were being drawn, and the sides we fell on would divide us permanently. “Chuck!” I called to him. “Wait a minute.” He frowned, but he stopped where he was.

“Let him go,” Alison said. “He’s made his priorities clear.”

“Alison,” I said turning to her, trying to keep my voice low and steady. “That’s not fair. He came for better reasons than the rest of us.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Alison said, still staring at Chuck, who was standing stock still on the lawn.

“It was harder for him to come than any of us. He had the most to lose, and unlike the rest of us, he had nothing else to gain.”

Alison turned to face me, her expression a question. “Look,” I said. “It’s no secret that things haven’t been so great for me lately. The divorce, my job, et cetera. This was a welcome break for me. Also, I also knew Lindsey would be here.”

“I understand,” Alison said bitterly. “So now you’re together, you both got what you want, and Jack doesn’t matter anymore. Is that it?”

“Jesus Christ!” Lindsey said, smacking the rock in frustration. “No one is saying that. Will you grow up already?”

“Please, Alison,” I said. “The point is, unlike Lindsey and me, Chuck has a major career going, and he had put it at risk because he had a friend who needed help. He came out here to help Jack, and to help us. End of sentence. No other reason. So if you want to argue about whether or not we should call it quits you can argue, but be fair about it. Jack goes postal and tries to burn the house down, and you get pissed at Lindsey for using her stun gun. Chuck brings up the possibility of going home and you bite his head off. We’re your friends, Alison. Don’t push us away.”

“I’ll tell you something else,” Lindsey said, getting up and walking over to face Alison, who was now standing on the far side of
the rock. “I came here for you too, more than for Jack. Because you’re my closest friend and I love you. You’ve always been there for me and I can’t stand—” She swallowed hard and continued. “I can’t stand to watch you get hurt over and over again by him.” She punctuated her sentence with a stiff nod and turned away, wiping a tear out of the corner of her eye.

“When we set out to do this we said that there was a risk that we would lose him,” I said to Alison as Lindsey sat back down at the edge of the rock. “But now it feels like we’re losing you, too.”

Alison turned around and looked out over the lake, her arms wrapped across her chest, hands hugging her shoulders. I could see her back contracting and expanding as she breathed deeply. Chuck took a few halting steps forward to the foot of the rock, sensing a change in the atmosphere. “I had another reason, too,” Alison finally said. “For coming up here, I mean. I told myself it was all to help Jack, but that’s not completely true. I guess I thought that if I was the one who helped him, if I pulled him through, he’d see how much I loved him, and he’d realize how much he loved me. I just—I don’t know. . . . I’ve spent the last ten years holding out for someone who doesn’t even want me. Life’s moving ahead without me, and half the time I don’t even realize it’s happening. It’s like every so often I look at the calender and I’m shocked to see that years have gone by and I’m still in the same spot. It’s lost time, and I have no idea where it went. And I look up one day and I’m thirty years old and no closer to having a husband and a family than I was when I was in college.” She sighed, absently digging her toe into a crevice of the rock. She dislodged a small pebble and kicked it into the lake. I listened for the
ploop
.

“I don’t know,” she continued, staring into the concentric ripples her pebble had created in the water. “I just know I was supposed to be somewhere else by now. And I guess I thought if I
could get him up here, away from all the craziness in his life, we’d have a chance. It was stupid and selfish, but I did it anyway.” She turned to face us, her eyes downcast. “It’s insane, really. I’m like a stalker, like Kathy Bates in
Misery
or something. I kidnapped Jack to make him love me. I brought you all into it under the guise of saving him from himself, when I was thinking about myself as much as him. And now if he’s hurt, or sick or worse, it’s my fault. Because I was stupid enough to think I could change him, to make him what I wanted him to be so that my life could get to where it was supposed to be by now.”

We all stared at her, stunned by what she had said. I’d always known that Alison was hopelessly hung up on Jack, but it had never occurred to me that she could be experiencing the same combination of disconnection and emptiness closing in on her that I’d been feeling. The sense that time was switching from a jog to a sprint and we weren’t even in the race. My heart went out to her, even while my petty misery retroactively welcomed her company. Until you found your way out of the woods, it was reassuring to find other people lost in them with you.

“It’s not insane,” Lindsey said to her gently. “We’re all going through the same things. When you’re younger you just take it as a given that certain things will fall into place on their own. Relationships, family, careers, the whole deal. They might not come exactly as you picture them, but they’ll come in some form.” She smiled ruefully. “You just never figure that they might not come at all. And then you hit thirty and . . . shit! You suddenly realize that they’re not necessarily coming and you panic. Or at least, I did.”

“It’s funny,” I said. “I know I was depressed, feeling like my life was nowhere and everything, but I was completely convinced that you guys were all happy with your lives, and I was the only loser. It’s somewhat comforting to see that you’re all screwed up, too.”

“I’m so glad the tragicomic opera that is my life could be a source of comfort to you,” Alison said with a quick smirk, and you could feel the pressure around us dissolving.

“And don’t think I don’t appreciate it,” I said.

“Excuse me,” Chuck said, stepping fully back onto the rock now. “But is there going to be a bathroom break here? I mean, I enjoy all this sharing and introspection as much as the next whimpering, pathetic loser, but really. There are limits.”

“Chuck,” Alison said shaking her head sadly. “I’m so sorry about what I said before. Please forgive me, I was totally out of line.”

Chuck considered her for a moment and then flashed a mischievous grin. “You weren’t out of line,” he said. “This is out of line.” He stepped forward and without any hesitation pushed her into the lake.

“Chuck!” Lindsey and I shouted in unison.

Alison came up sputtering as she treaded water, but I saw with relief that she was also laughing. “You had that coming,” Chuck called to her with a smile. “Just a little something to ease the tension.”

“The tension was already eased,” Lindsey said, still staring incredulously at Alison who was now doing the side stroke in a little circle, still laughing.

“Don’t fuck me up with details,” Chuck said and then stepped off the rock, landing with a splash in the water near Alison. “Hey,” he shouted up to us. “The water’s really warm. You guys should come in.”

I looked at Lindsey, who looked back at me with a smile and shrugged. “Let’s go.”

Lindsey took a running jump, looking like one of those girls in the Mountain Dew commercials, and I gingerly eased myself over the edge of the rock, taking great pains not to stretch or bump
my bruised ribs. The water was surprisingly warm, almost room temperature, and we swam in it for a while, joking around and splashing each other. The fall air was much colder than the water, so none of us felt very inclined to get out.

I’ve got something to say,” Chuck said, while we treaded water lazily in the shadow of the rock. We all looked at him expectantly. “This isn’t easy.”

“It’s easier when you’re not wearing shoes,” I said.

“Not swimming, you putz,” he said, splashing me halfheartedly. “You guys were all talking about how you had these secondary reasons for wanting to do this intervention, and I just wanted to tell you all that I had another reason, too.” He paused, but no one said a word. Chuck rarely expressed himself, and we didn’t want to do anything to shake his confidence. He grabbed onto the edge of the rock to stabilize himself before continuing. “You see, I’ve always kind of been the comic relief in our little group here, you know? My love life, my attitude, my language.”

“Come on, Chuck,” Lindsey said. “You know it’s just friendly teasing.”

“I know,” Chuck said. “And on a daily basis I never minded it. Hey, I bring it upon myself. But over the years it’s had the cumulative effect of making me feel like none of you takes me too seriously as a person, which pisses me off. It makes me feel that maybe I’m not such a serious person, but I am. I’ve devoted my life to healing people, and I’m good at it, I really am. It’s ironic, because you guys talk about how you haven’t made anything of your lives yet, while I’ve become a surgeon, and yet somehow I’m still the class clown.”

“Chuck,” Alison said. “It’s not like that.”

“It is,” he said. “But I don’t blame you guys for it. I’m not blind to my own behavior. If anything, I’m upset with myself. I
was the fat kid in high school, and I worked my ass off so that in college I’d be taken seriously. Now here I am, years later, and I still have this uncanny knack for making myself seem comical.”

“Jesus, Chuck,” I said. “I had no idea you felt this way.”

“Hey,” he said with a smile. “I’m not crying over it. I know none of you mean any harm by it and like I said, it’s my own doing. I mean hey, look at this right here.” He splashed the water and swam a little backstroke. “I’m asking you to take me seriously while I’m swimming in my clothing.”