The Hole in the Middle (23 page)

“Do you like it?”

“Sometimes,” I say. “I like working with other people who are good at what they do—and the Baxter is full of people like that, which is unusual. I like being part of something that matters in a larger way in the world. Most people aren't like Dr. Waldron. We don't save lives at work. But it's nice to feel that your work makes it easier for people like Dr. Waldron to save lives, if you follow me.”

“So why do you only like it sometimes?” Taylor asks.

“I've been doing it for a while,” I say. “Some days I think I'd like to do something new. And sometimes I worry that I spend too much time on my work and not enough with my kids. Or I worry that when I'm with them, they aren't getting me at my best.” Taylor doesn't say anything but she isn't taking notes. It's a bad sign. I try for a better answer.

“Have you heard of work-life balance?” I ask her.

“Sure,” she says. “Do you have it?”

“I don't think anyone has it. I don't think it exists.” Taylor starts typing as I warm to my subject. “In lots of ways we're lucky,” I say. “Women don't have to choose between having a family and having a career. We can have it all, right? That's the promise. But the reality? It's hard, every single day. So you have to
want
it. And when I have a bad day at work, I wonder if I want it badly enough.” I am very grateful that there is no one else in the room to hear me unburden myself on a fifteen-year-old cancer survivor. It feels like yet another new low.

“So what about you?” I ask. “What's the reason for your research project?”

“For years, people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up,” she says. “And then I got cancer. I knew it was serious when I realized that it had been months since anyone had asked me that question. But now I'm supposed to be cured, so maybe people will start asking me again. And I wanted to have a good answer this time.”

“What's your answer?”

She smiles. “I'm still doing my research, but I think I want to be a kindergarten teacher.”

“Really?” I say. “I mean, that's a great job, but . . .”

“But I'm so bright that I could do anything I want?”

“Yes.”

“I bet you thought I'd want to be a doctor so that I could help people the way I've been helped?”

“No,” I say, although this is exactly what I was thinking.

“I've spent the last two years in hospitals. I don't want to work in one. But I've been doing an art program with the kids in the oncology ward every week when I'm not too sick to do it, and I like being around them. Also you get the summers off.”

“You can always have kids,” I say, and then regret it as soon as my brain catches up with my mouth.

But Taylor is made of tough stuff. “Probably not,” she says. “I've had a lot of chemo.”

Kara appears in the doorway. “You're up, Taylor,” she says.

“Do you mind if I come and watch you?” I ask.

“That would be great,” she says. “You can tell me how my hair looks.” She grins. “That was a joke.”

Back on the set, Claudio is fluttering around Carolyn, who looks embarrassed and delighted at the same time. “Brilliant!” he effuses. “Spectacular! You should get an agent. Your bone structure is sublime.”

“Claudio, this is Taylor,” I say.

“You aren't going to wear that bandanna, are you?” Claudio wrinkles his nose.

“No, I'm going commando,” she says. “But you probably have to do something about the shine.”

“Omar!” shouts Claudio, and Omar scuttles over with his makeup cart and settles Taylor under the lights.

“The shoot's going well so far?”

“Couldn't be better,” says Claudio. “That doctor gave us a dozen perfect clips. No tics, no spitting, no ums—she'll be a dream to edit. And Geoff is a genius. Here he comes now.”

“Hi there,” I say. “Claudio was just singing your praises.”

Geoff can't meet my eye. “Thanks,” he says.

“I really appreciate everything you've done to make this happen,” I say. “I know it hasn't been easy.” And I'm saved from having to say anything else, as Claudio calls for quiet, and Geoff takes his seat facing Taylor.

It's strangely restful watching the shoot. Everything is out of my hands now, and still unfolding as it should. And Claudio is right; Geoff is terrific. I trust him so completely that I don't often watch him work, and it's obvious that he's too seasoned to be my right-hand man any longer. I'm ashamed to realize how much has escaped my notice lately.

The interview wraps up, and Claudio issues orders to the crew for the second stage of the shoot on the ward. Taylor comes over to say good-bye.

“You were great,” I say. “It's been a pleasure to meet you.”

“You too,” she says. “Thanks for being so honest.”

I wince a little, feeling some residual shame at my oversharing. “No problem,” I say.

Taylor shakes my hand. “I appreciated it, honestly,” she says. “You'd be surprised how often adults lie to kids.”

“Don't take it personally,” I say. “They lie to themselves all the time too.”

march 1995

I wake up on a beautiful spring morning, weeping. I've been crying every morning without fail for the past three weeks. There is something almost religious about it, like saying morning prayers. And I don't mind it, really, because the tears remind me that I haven't died as a result of Will's rejection. I'll only allow myself fifteen minutes, and then I'll force myself to get out of bed, eat, go to class or the library or the paper, and interact with the world in the way that other normal, living people do. I don't smile much, or laugh these days, but exams are coming up, so there's not a lot of levity in the library stacks; and red, swollen eyes are practically a fashion accessory at the newspaper office, evidence of the general pain of life. So no one notices that I've become a hollowed-out husk of my former self—other than A.J., that is, who keeps asking if I'm sick. I tell him I'm not, but I wonder if I'm right. The condition of my heart, broken as it is, won't be fatal, but it seems likely that it could be debilitating, chronic, and lifelong.

My tear-soaked letters to Paris have prompted more than one late-night call from a concerned Zoe, whose furious rants against Will do little to raise my spirits. Why should they? I have only myself to blame. After a glorious week in which Will and I got out of bed only to eat,
watch movies, and visit his grandmother in the hospital, I was lulled into an insane belief that our relationship lacked permanence and stability only because we had failed to give words to it; whereas I can now see, too late, that it was nothing more than a hopelessly fragile bubble of sexual satisfaction that would vanish the second we tried to define it as something more. Which is, of course, exactly what I did.

It's a conversation that I have on an endless loop as I work my way through box after box of tissues: my head on his shoulder in this very bed, his arm curved around my back. I can tell by his breathing that he is about to fall asleep. I've restrained myself all week, but A.J. will be back tomorrow, and we need to agree on a common strategy. If it were up to me, I'd have Will take A.J. aside, as I imagine men do, and explain that we can no longer deny our attraction to each other, and that we hope he won't be uncomfortable with our new bedtime arrangements. But Will may have his own ideas on how to tell A.J., and I don't want to make things awkward for him.

So I say, “We need to tell A.J.”

To which Will replies, “Tell him what?”

“About us, obviously. About this.”

“What about this?”

I push myself up on my elbow so that I'm looking down at him. “He may not be the most observant guy in the world, but I think he's going to notice if his two roommates are sleeping together.”

“I'm sure he would,” says Will.

“So are you going to talk to him about it?”

Will sits up, swings his feet over the side of the bed, and starts to pull on the clothes that are scattered on the floor next to it. With his back to me, he says, “No. I'm not.”

“You want me to do it?” I cringe at the thought.

“No.”

“I don't understand,” I say. “If we're seeing each other, I think we should tell him.”

“We're not.”

“We're not telling him?”

Will stands, dressed now, and looks down at me with an expression that I can't interpret, but that makes me want to cover myself with the sheet. “We're not seeing each other,” he says. “Sophie, we've had a lot of fun this week, but we can't be . . .” He seems to search for a word, shrugs, and then says, “We need to stop now. We live together. We aren't going to tell A.J. because there won't be anything to tell him. We need to go back to the way things were.”

There are tears streaming down my face and I don't trust myself to speak, so I just shake my head. There is nothing in Will's declaration that I accept. What he is suggesting violates everything that I believe about the nature of love. I've read my way through the literary pantheon devoted to unrequited love but, fundamentally, I've never truly believed that love can catch fire without an answering spark from its object. Can he really think that we could go back to the way things were before? Is it possible that I could have been altered so completely in the past week, reinvented as a person whose deepest purpose is to love and be loved by Will, while he has emerged unsullied, able to slip back into his life as if returning from vacation? Based on the way he's looking at me now, a soul-shriveling combination of pity and horror without a visible scrap of inner torment or regret, it appears that the answer is yes.

“Will,” I croak, “I—”

He holds up a hand to ward me off. “Don't, Sophie.” And he crosses the room in a few short steps and is out the door before I can say, “I love you.”

I've said it since, many times. Whispered it in the dark, sobbed it into my pillow, but never to him. A.J. is confused about our relationship after all, but not because of any inappropriate affection; he can't understand why our necessary interactions are fraught with strained civility. Our family dinners are all business now, with either Will or me leaving the table at the earliest polite opportunity. It's desperately uncomfortable, and all of us are finding excuses to study later at the library in the evenings. Every day brings a new, searing wave of loss; Will has clearly decided, perhaps with good reason, that I will interpret even the most innocent gesture of friendship as evidence of deeper
emotions, and so he keeps his distance. He pours himself a coffee without offering one to me, I have to ask him to pass the arts section of the paper, and he leaves the house without checking to see if I want to walk to campus with him. Each omission is a fresh rejection.

The telephone is ringing, but I don't answer it. It's a long-distance ring, so it's either my parents or A.J.'s parents, and I'm in no state to speak to mine. Someone else in the house picks it up eventually, and after a long while I hear footsteps padding along the hall and a knock at the door.

My adrenaline spikes: is it Will? But I hear A.J.'s voice instead. “Sophie? Can I come in?”

“Just a sec,” I say, wiping my face and blowing my nose, sliding out of bed and wrapping myself in a bathrobe in a few economical movements. “Come on in.”

A.J. opens the door slowly. He's still dressed for bed, too, in a college T-shirt and loose cotton pants, but there's nothing sleepy about him. His jaw is tight, his brow furrowed, and he stands in the doorway as if he would give anything to be somewhere else.

He clears his throat. “You need to call your mom,” he says. “There's been an accident.”

“What kind of accident?”

“It's your dad,” he says. “You need to go home. I'll drive you.”

“What happened?” I say.

“Just call your mom, Sophie.”

I find that I can see everything in the room very clearly. There's dust swirling in the shafts of light from the gap in the curtains, and I think that it's been too long since I vacuumed in here. The specks whirl around me as I take four steps toward the door, until I'm standing right in front of A.J., and I say, “Tell me.”

He straightens his shoulders, steeling himself, and says, “There was a car accident. He hit a patch of ice.”

“Is he going to be OK?” I know the answer already but I want to hear A.J. say it. With his rumpled pajamas and messy brown hair, he is reassuringly solid. I know that whatever he says will be true.

“No,” he says, and I feel the cold wash through me. A.J. steps in, reaches out; he's afraid I'll fall.

“I need to tell Will,” I say.

“I'll tell him,” says A.J. “I'm going to borrow his car. You get dressed and pack, OK? I'll be back in a few minutes.”

“I want to see Will.” I've held myself back for weeks, crushed myself into a tiny box of good behavior, and now my whole life has exploded, shattering all of my self-imposed boundaries. I don't care if I embarrass myself or Will now, and it's almost liberating.

“That's not a good idea, Sophie.”

“You don't know anything!” The scream surprises both of us, but I can't seem to stop once I've started. “Get out of my way!”

He swallows hard, and then moves back so he's blocking the door completely. “Sophie,” he says, “You don't want to see him right now.” He closes his eyes briefly. “He's not alone.”

“Oh,” I say, and then I begin sobbing, great racking sobs that relieve the need to look at A.J. or think about Will, because all I can do is concentrate on gasping for air so that I don't die. I'm vaguely aware of voices in the hallway, and then my door closes and Lil appears next to me, wraps her arms around me, and sits me down on my bed.

“That's it,” she says, stroking my hair. “Let it all go.” And I do. I cry for all of the dreams that Will has disappointed—proposals and weddings and babies and a whole future together—and for all of the dreams that my mother realized and has now lost. I cry for all of the conversations that I never had with my dad, for the week that I should have spent with him and spent with Will instead, and for the knowledge that my memory of our time together, the pinnacle of my romantic life, is now fatally tainted with regret. I cry for all the ways in which my selfishness disgusts me: that I can even think about Will when my father is dead, that I haven't yet picked up the phone to call my devastated mother, that I screamed at A.J., who has been nothing but generous and dutiful, and that I'm channeling even a tiny fraction of my distress into the fact that Will has another girl in his room right now. I cry until I'm too tired to cry anymore, and then I say, “What will I do now?”

“Now you'll take a shower, which will prove to you that you are capable of feeling better than this.” The certainty in her voice reminds me how much Lil has lost in her long life. “And while you're in the shower, I'll lay out some clothes for you, and then we'll pack them together, and then A.J. will drive you home in my car.”

“That's not what I meant.”

“I know,” says Lil. “But it's the best advice I can give you. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other and, at some point, you'll realize that you feel less awful. That's the goal.”

On the morning of my father's funeral, I sit in the front pew next to my mother, listening to the rustling and creaking of people filling the seats behind me. I keep my head down in an attitude of prayer to deter anyone from speaking to me. My legs feel thin under my black skirt, which I'm grateful to Lil for packing. Through my lashes I watch the blocks of colored light from the stained glass stretching across the stone floor, and I grip the folded papers in my lap. I've agreed to give the eulogy. My mother is a mess, my brother has never been much for verbal communication, and my dad's friends are all strong, silent types. The minister could do it, but we all know that my father didn't have a religious bone in his body. I'm not sure I can get through it.

The minister calls the congregation to order and we all stand for a hymn. I close my eyes. My mother shakes with silent sobs next to me. The music stops and I'm called up to the pulpit. I've asked to speak first. I settle my papers in front of me and adjust the microphone. I can't bear the sight of my mother's grief, so I pitch my gaze out toward the back of the church and catch my breath. The room is full, so full that people are standing up in the aisles near the exit. So many of my parents' friends and neighbors are here, of course, not just from Port Alice but from the city, and so are Mike's friends, and mine; for some reason this is unexpected, and painfully moving. It makes the whole experience achingly real: if all of these people have come to mourn, my father must really be dead.

I fight the choking tears in my throat and remember Lil's advice—one foot in front of the other—and I begin. “On behalf of my mother, Mary, and my brother, Mike, I want to thank all of you for being with us today. My father was taken from us much too young, and all of us feel robbed of the many years of his advice, companionship, and love that we assumed we would have. I want to thank everyone who has supported us since the accident. Many of you have come by the house to see us or bring us food, or have sent beautiful letters telling us what Dad meant to you, and we are grateful for all of these acts of kindness.” So far, so good: the church is quiet. I brace myself to depart from the safe formality of the first paragraph. I stick to my text and don't look up.