The Theory of Opposites (6 page)

“Really?”

“Why are you so surprised?”

“I’m not surprised.” I refocus on the bottom shelf of the fridge, where I find no wine but do find a beer that was likely abandoned two Super Bowls ago, but what the hell.

“I’ve never seen you drink a beer.” Nicky smiles. “I mean, you are such a white wine sort of person.”

“Are you twelve or are you thirty-seven? Because you’re very weird.”

“Birds of a feather flock together.” He laughs.

“Are you suggesting that I’m weird? I’m a lot of things, but I don’t think I’m weird. I’m Switzerland.”

“People who are really weird never realize what weirdos they are,” he says. “Like, ignorance is bliss, you know?”

“Well, that’s true. It is. So cheers.” And I clink my bottle against his Coke.

—

Theodore Brackton

321 friends

Hometown: Seattle, WA

Relationship Status: It’s complicated

Message header: Feel free to ignore me

Dear W,

I can’t decide if I should write or not. I’m writing. But I can’t decide if I should send it or not. Funny, right? No, it’s not funny. I guess it’s ironic. But still. I find myself in a quagmire, and even I don’t know how to get myself out of it. Who’d have thunk? (Did I really just type ‘thunk’? I guess so. Forgive me. I really don’t know quite what to say. Also, I’m nervous. And terrified.)

Anyway, I know it is weird that I’m writing. I mean, the last time we saw each other wasn’t exactly ideal and you probably hate me. I understand why you would.

So, the thing is, I was recently diagnosed with testicular cancer. I know, can you believe it? I guess my balls got sick of me using them so often and decided to pay me back. (Okay, you know I’m joking right? I am really bad at this.) I’m going to be fine — minus a nut, but otherwise fine — but this type of thing makes you think. Makes you reconsider choices you’ve made in your life and choices that maybe you thought you were going to make in your life. Does that make sense? I know that I’m the last person who ever would have found myself stuck, but when they took me into the OR a few months ago, all I could think of is, “Why did I screw it up with Willa, and what can I do about it now?”

So anyway. Wow. That’s a lot of information for a Facebook message. This isn’t like a “please leave your husband” email or “please feel sorry for me” email. I just…wanted to let you know.

xo

T

—

I knew I shouldn’t have opened it.

I tell myself this as I lie on the bathroom floor, my abdomen in cramps brought on by nerves, by adrenaline, by Theodore, by the Pandora’s box of Facebook.

Why did you open it?

I need to call Vanessa, who will tell me to write him back. Or maybe Raina, who will tell me that I’m a total idiot regardless.

Oliver once showed me how to breathe when I felt a panic attack coming on, so I crawl my way into a sitting position and force my diaphragm outward, then inward, then outward again, the air through my nose whistling and mocking me.

I think of Theodore and regret, and how my dad says that regret is just misplaced nostalgia. That you can look back fondly or even wistfully on pieces of your life and hound yourself with endless what-ifs, but nothing will change. The present will still be the present. The future will still unfold as it’s meant to.

My stomach clenches again, and I attempt to spurn my own nostalgia…that maybe I should have told Theo “yes,” that maybe he was my own Switzerland, that maybe I should have taken a closer look at the map. I know it’s silly, I know that it can’t be undone, I know that Shawn is my meant-to-be. But regret and nostalgia and what-ifs have a way of taking on a life of their own, even when you know better.

I grab the top of the toilet and throw up.

Then I shuffle to the sink, splash my face, and resolve to my reflection in the mirror to tuck this part of my life as far away from my current life as possible.

I flush the toilet twice to be sure that everything has washed away. It appears to have, but then again, and I should know this by now: nothing is ever as it seems.

—

“You’ve been working late a lot,” I say to Shawn later that night, when he is finally home but checking email on his phone, and while Nicky flips through the pay-per-view channels, even though it’s probably past his bedtime.

“Uh-huh. Getting slammed.”

“Is it the new project?”

He leans against the refrigerator, only half-listening.

“What?” He looks up. “Oh, no. I mean, yes, but tonight the guys and I went down to the driving range.”

“The driving range? You don’t golf.”

“I’m trying to learn.” He glances toward the TV, his eyes suddenly wider. “Oh, oh, oh stop,” he says to Nicky. “
Die Hard
is on!”

Grape! Golf!

Shawn jumps over the back of the couch and bounces into a seat. He’s not a man who jumps over couches. Though he is naturally lean, he still adheres to coding-geek mantras that “typing burns calories,” and “exercise your brain, not your body, dude!” (One of his friends actually has a bumper sticker with this quote.) I watch him watching Bruce Willis and wonder if he’s been working out without me (jogging three miles used to be part of our weekend routine together until we decided that jogging zero miles was actually a lot more relaxing, and weekends are meant for relaxing), and if so, why. Or for whom.

“This guy is now like, a hundred,” Nicky says. “And he’s bald.”

“You need more male role models,” Shawn answers. “John McClane rules.”

“Speaking of male role models,” I say. “Don’t forget, we have dinner with my parents tomorrow night. Nicky, you’re invited.”

“I thought we agreed to cancel that?” He doesn’t turn around.

“It was too late, the restaurant would have charged their card.”

Shawn says nothing for a breath, and then: “Oh. I kind of bought tickets to take Nicky to the Yankees game.”

“You kind of bought them or you actually bought them?”

Now he looks my way. “I actually bought them.” He gives me this pseudo-cute apologetic smile, and if not for
Grape!
or golf or couch-jumping or Switzerland-defecting, I might have smiled back and let it go.

Instead, I grab a carton of ice cream from the freezer and slam the carton on the counter. The plastic seal refuses to tear away, so I stick the pint between my thighs and wrestle it open. Shawn never makes plans like this without first flagging me; we are the couple who uses the
Together To-Do!
app, so we’re always in sync. (FYI, it is a very handy app that allows you to drop in to-do items for your partner, and they simply pop up on said partner’s own list. And I’m not just saying this because I worked on their ad campaign.)

I wedge the scooper into the rock-solid ice cream (reminder: put “adjust the goddamn freezer temperature” on Shawn’s to-do list) and grunt, my bicep and forearm pulsing with effort. Baby sweat beads announce themselves on my forehead, and I push harder, then harder still into the chocolate chocolate-chip goodness. I manage to carve out a tiny wedge, a little turd of a piece of ice cream, and I should really drop it into the bowl I’m making for Shawn, but instead, I pinch it up and place it right in my mouth.

Ah yes. A perfect blend of sugar and vindictiveness.

I plunge the scooper back in, losing myself to the task, trying to ignore my irritation, trying also to ignore Theodore’s Facebook email, because I am very good at ignoring things.

This one, however — Theodore — proves too wormy and keeps creeping its way in.

I exhale after I manage to grind out a particularly healthy-sized scoop.

Why did I screw it up with Willa?

I remind myself to google testicular cancer later, once Shawn is asleep.

6

Raina agrees to accompany me to dinner the next night. She picks me up in her Escalade at exactly 6 p.m., ushers me in the backseat, then waves her driver on. Then she leans back and assesses me.

“Before you say anything or suggest ways that I should improve my hair or make my skin more glowy, just know that I lost my job yesterday,” I say as we stop, start, stop, start, stop, start our way down Fifth Avenue.

“Cliff, I’d really take Park,” she offers.

“Don’t tell Mom and Dad,” I say.

Cliff brakes too abruptly, and the seatbelt digs into my collarbone.

“I’d never say anything about your hair.” She smiles, then frowns. “You got fired?” She tries to look concerned but her eyebrows don’t move enough to express it.

I stare.

“Yes,” she says. “I caved and got Botox…Don’t tell Mom and Dad.”

“I don’t think I’m going to have to. It’s kind of obv...”

“Shut up, Willa,” she interrupts. “It will wear off.”

“Sorry.”

“Do you want me to ask around at the firm?”

“About your Botox?”

“About a
job,
Willa. And please. I have four kids under the age of seven. And I’m one of three female partners. And I’m not getting any younger. The Botox was my gift to me.”

“I thought that was your trainer.”

“He is my gift to me too.”

“Hmmm,” I say. “That doesn’t sound right at all. Does Jeremy know?”

“Oh
shut up.”
The SUV finally lurches forward and we cruise two blocks without stopping. Then she says, as if she’s given this a fair amount of thought: “Besides,
I’m pretty sure that Nicholi is gay.” She sighs. “But what happened at work? And do you need my help?”

“Adult Diapers happened, that’s what happened.”

“What?”

I start to explain adult diapers and sexiness and how I was texting Vanessa because she could have actually saved the day in the way that Vanessa tends to, but it all feels pointless, and besides, her own phone beeps right then anyway. She glances at it quickly, then shuts it off.

“Jeremy swore he could handle all four tonight. What he meant by that was handle them while texting me constantly with questions.
Dear husband: I’m pretty sure that if you look in her underwear drawer, you will find Eloisa’s underwear
.”

“Where’s Gloria?”

“I’m giving her Saturday nights off two times a month.”

“That’s generous.”

“Jesus, Willa! I know, I know. I am a pampered working mom with full-time help, and I’m spoiled and gross and all of those things to you. Seriously. I get it! But you asked me to rearrange my night to come to this dinner with you because your husband has broken the sacred rules of Shilla…”

Cliff glances in the rear view mirror, then quickly averts his eyes.

“What’s Shilla?”

“You’ve never heard that? It’s what we call you guys — Shawn and Willa. You know, your celebrity name. Because you guys never do anything apart.” She smiles because she knows that it’s a little mean but it’s also a little true.

“Shilla?” I ask. “It sounds like…an Eskimo town in Alaska or something.”

“Well, you’re not Brangelina.”

“We could be Brangelina.”

“You’re not Angie,” she says, and then wavers. “Sorry. That was said out of jealousy. I take it back. You could be Angie.”

We both know I could never be Angie, but it’s nice of her to say all the same.

“I don’t get it. What are you jealous of?”

“You guys do everything together. Remember that time a year or so ago when we went to get a manicure, and Shawn actually came along just because he didn’t have anything to do that Sunday?”

“When you put it that way, it sounds really pathetic.” Did he really come along because he just didn’t have anything better to do that day?

“No, it’s sweet, actually. Of course, it’s also little sickening,” Raina laughs, then examines her own manicure, lost in a tail end of a thought. “Do you know the last time Jeremy voluntarily spent time with me?”

“Don’t say that,” I say. “He loves you. And besides, Shawn’s not here tonight, so we can’t do
everything
together.”
Because he’s too busy at
Grape!
? Because he’s too tired to run down to Hop Lee and French kiss me for free egg rolls!

We stop again at a light, the rush-hour traffic at a standstill, the taxis honking their horns, the pedestrians rushing through the streets, weaving through the cars, paying no mind to the sidewalks or the crosswalks or any of the rules set in place.

I roll the window down and yell, “There are rules set in place, you know!” An angry-looking twenty-something woman likely on the way home from her lousy magazine job gives me the finger. My cheeks feel hot, and I immediately press the window button back up.

“I don’t know why I did that,” I mutter.

“Anyway,” Raina sighs, “please don’t give me crap today. I have enough. And you have Shilla.”

“I’m sorry about the Botox comment,” I say, both because I am and because I also don’t like arguing. “I’m being a bitch. I got fired, and I think that Shawn is having some sort of early mid-life crisis-slash-possible-affair, and I’m having weird fantasies about Theodore Brackton…”

I drift silent. Cliff turns up the radio to fill the space, and some mind-numbing hip-hop artist comes on, the bass blaring, his words unintelligible. Raina bobs her head — she probably knows this song from Soul Cycle or something — and fishes in her purse.

“Here.” She holds out a pill.

“What’s this?”

“Xanax.” She shoves one in her mouth.

“You’re on Xanax?”

“Oh William, everyone’s on Xanax.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “You always were the last to know.”

—

My parents are waiting for us at the Four Seasons when we arrive. I see them before they see us, my mom dabbing the sides of her mouth with her napkin, my dad perusing the menu as if he’s reading it for the first time. The Xanax has blunted me, dulled the edges, and though there’s normally a slight beat of — of what? anxiety? tension? desire to please my dad? — tonight, I just let that flow over me, as if immune to them all.

My mom waves, then registers Raina beside me, and her face shifts, from pleasant to overjoyed. The firstborn. The prodigal daughter. And then there’s me. The kid who was supposed to be a son.