The Space Between (34 page)

I stared at my plate and remembered the lunches spent with Andy. My stomach jolted with the realization I wasn’t simply in love with her. Andy was for me, and I was for her. I could go on living without Andy, but I was going to be one miserable son of a bitch.

Just like my father.

*

Andy’s head was
bent over her laptop. The whir of nail guns obscured my footsteps and she didn’t notice me in the doorway. I set the iced green tea beside her notebook and said, “I’m sorry. I’ll do anything.”

She edged the cup away with the back of her hand, and kept her eyes on the screen. Minutes passed without response while I stared at her, waiting. I couldn’t access the memory of her skin against mine, and as I saw my Andy-less life unfolding before my eyes, an agitated, screaming howl formed in my chest.

I ran to the attic, ducked under the low, exposed beam ceiling, and burst through the door. With my hands braced on the roof deck railing, I gasped for breath. It was sunny and warm, and lilacs perfumed the air, but it might as well have been rain clouds. I was that miserable.

The door squealed behind me, and Matt appeared at my side, his knuckles white around his phone. “What are you doing up here?” he asked.

I crossed my arms over my chest. “What are
you
doing up here?”

He leaned forward and studied my face. “Your eye is twitching. If I had to guess, I’d say that’s a problem.”

A bitter laugh rumbled up from my chest. “Eye twitching isn’t my biggest problem. I’m in the middle of some kind of mental collapse, and it’s all I can do to not punch holes in walls.”

“Oh, me too, that’s great,” he said dryly. “We can lose our shit together. I can’t think of a better plan.”

Matt was the calm one. If there was a bomb to diffuse, I wanted Matt doing it. He mediated the worst of Shannon and Erin’s disputes, and every time Angus went balls to the wall asshat, Matt was our man. Seeing his head jerking in a spastic bob and his eyes erratic, I squinted in concern. His shit was long lost. “What’s your problem?”

“Lauren’s brothers are flying in Thursday night. The Navy SEALs. They’ve been off the grid for a few months. Top secret missions. Naturally.” He gestured to his phone. “They’re going to show up, and they’re going to take one look at me, and they’re going to know their baby sister is my little fuck doll, and they’re going to make my body disappear after the greatest hits of black site torture.”

That did sound bad. “Can’t we just get them some hookers?”

“We do that kind of shit now?” Matt croaked, his hands running through his hair and tugging it until he looked freshly electrocuted. “When did we become the kind of guys who hire
hookers
? I don’t even know where to
find
a hooker.”

“I don’t know, I figured Nick knew something about that,” I said. “It was a bad idea.”

“You think? And that’s not the end of my problems. Erin’s definitely coming. She’s taking a red-eye flight from Rome, and arriving here Friday. I’ve been asking her for months, and I haven’t seen her in so long, and I’m so happy that she’s coming but the idea of Erin and Shannon under a tent at my wedding makes me throw up in my mouth. Shannon doesn’t know yet, and when she finds out, she’ll probably kill me, or ditch the wedding altogether.”

I wish I could remember the argument that precipitated the schism between Erin and Shannon, but it was going on five years and the details were blurry. Shannon definitely had a point-by-point inventory of Erin’s offenses. They were too much alike, and they pushed up against the wrong parts of each other.

Whatever it was, my sisters hadn’t spoken in years and Erin required the distance of an entire ocean to cool off while she worked on her doctorate in Europe.

“I got it,” I murmured. “Let’s stick Erin and Shannon on Lauren’s brothers. Make the girls responsible for keeping you alive.”

“And Lauren can tell them to keep Shannon and Erin apart.” He nodded. “Okay. That might work. Does that mean we’re pimping out Erin and Shan?”

I pressed the palms of my hands against my eyes and groaned. “What they do with two SEALs on leave isn’t my concern. It’s not like they don’t know how to rip off some testicles when needed.”

Matt’s fingers flew across his phone’s keyboard while he asked, “So what’s your problem?”

“I’m turning into Angus,” I declared flatly.

“Unlikely. You’re just a bitch sometimes. Doesn’t mean anything.” He glanced up from his phone. “Lauren’s on board with her brothers keeping the girls apart, and wants to run point on that task force.”

“I’d pay good money to see that. Now stop worrying about jumper cables hooked to your dick.” I sighed before barreling ahead. “Would you tell me if I started turning into Angus?”

“Yes, and don’t be a moron. You’re not turning into Angus. Have you gone on any homophobic rants recently?” I shook my head. “Did you go on a pub crawl where you slammed every business partner that you have in town to anyone who will listen? Enslaved any children? No? You’re not Angus.”

Unconvinced, I stared out over the rows of roofs and toggled through memories of my father. Angus did unconscionable things, and most of those things defied forgiveness. But he didn’t start out that way. If anything, he was a good father and husband right up to the day my mother died, and he turned on us because he believed we didn’t do enough to save her. He broke, just like the rest of us, only those cracks deepened and spread over time whereas most of our cracks healed in strange, arthritic ways.

In a moment of perverse clarity, I understood Angus and his psychosis. I recognized the sound of his pain from the inside, and I knew its acrid taste. Andy was alive only three floors below my feet and merrily manipulating load-bearing walls. I couldn’t imagine the gnawing agony of losing her to a horrific death, drowning in memories of her, or coming face-to-face each day with the six babies she gave me.

What was it that Hunter S. Thompson said? Something about no sympathy for the devil?

Thompson was wrong.

I wasn’t forgiving, excusing, or justifying. I understood, and for the first time in my life, I sympathized with that particular devil.

“He chose to be a dickhead, Patrick. Don’t forget that. He just didn’t want to crawl out of the hole.”

Step one to avoiding miserable bastardhood: stop being a dickhead.

Step two: get out of the hole.

I wanted it to be that easy.

I walked to the far corner of the roof, and stood beside Matt. We gazed to the east, and a thin shimmer of the Atlantic in the distance. “How did you know, with Lauren?”

He typed another message then pocketed his phone. “Are you asking because you’re writing your toast for the reception and want a cute story? I don’t think any of our stories are fit for general audiences.”

Shit.
Was that expected? Sam knew how to tell an eloquent story. Riley knew how to hit the bawdy humor. Shannon always delivered with the heart. Erin had the smart wit. Firm handshakes were my wheelhouse.

“There’s no cute story,” he continued. “It’s hard work. It looks easy, but a lot of work goes into getting two people to that spot. There’s never enough time, ever, and that’s the most important thing. Time. Time to argue about keeping the peanut butter in the fridge, or whether we’re raising our kids Catholic. And everything in between. We make each other crazy, but we’d also go crazy without each other.” Matt propped his fists on his hips and shrugged. “I can’t breathe without her, and I knew after one night. I picked out the ring less than a month later.”

That sounded familiar.

“But really, why would anyone put peanut butter in the fridge?”

“That’s absurd, and don’t get me started on the hair in the drain,” I muttered.

“Oh my God, so much hair,” he groaned. Matt turned to face me. “Back up. What?”

I squinted at the ocean in the distance. “Judging by the amount of hair in the drain, women should be bald.”

He glanced at his watch. “Let’s not delude ourselves into thinking we’re getting any work done today. It’s presently beer o’clock, and I want to know whose hair is in your drain. It’ll take my mind off waterboarding.”

ANDY

M
y first year
at Cornell, my roommate Myra’s boyfriend from back home sent her a bouquet of flowers for their anniversary in October, and they arrived in a thin glass vase. As far as dorm rooms went, ours was petite, and flat surface real estate was at a premium. Myra made space on her desk for the flowers, but if she attempted to use her desk for anything else, the vase was always two seconds away from disaster.

Myra kept the flowers as long as possible—she even hung them upside-down to dry like a freaking prom corsage—and she kept the vase, too. Standing empty, it didn’t serve a purpose, but it was a totem for their relationship—they survived college on opposite coasts after all, and if she couldn’t see him every day, at least she could see the vase.

One day that winter, she was in a hurry to get to class and rushed past her desk in her thick puffer coat. She clipped the top of the vase, and it tumbled to the ground, shattering into a million shards. We found stray chunks and slivers in every corner of the room, and they appeared out of the blue weeks and months later. We agreed the suspicious gray carpeting was to blame for intermittently sucking in and spitting out the shards, and wearing shoes everywhere but bed was essential.

When springtime descended upon Ithaca and flip-flops didn’t pose a frostbite risk, a chunk of glass roughly the size of a silver dollar carved up the head of my big toe as I walked across the room. I needed seventeen stitches—that’s a lot of stitches for a toe, and it hurt like a motherfucker. How that piece of glass appeared, months later and smack in the center of our room, I will never know.

Patrick was my shard of glass on the first day of flip-flop weather. From the start he was dangerous, and even my best efforts at self-preservation failed. I knew nothing good could come from climbing into bed with my boss, but I went there knowingly. It ripped me open and branded me with the kind of thick, silvery scar that never faded.

And it hurt like a motherfucker.

*

Patrick seized every
opportunity to get me alone—which wasn’t easy, considering the Sam-Riley-Shannon-Patrick-Matt Show was packed into a couple of cramped offices and it was turning into a full-blown variety hour as the wedding neared—and he wrapped me up in tenderly whispered pleas for another chance. Between the office construction, the wedding, and all things Patrick, the week was overflowing with commotion, and I needed space to get my head on straight.

The wedding weekend finally started Thursday afternoon when two waves of Walshes loaded into Shannon and Matt’s cars, and headed to the Cape. Patrick elected to stay in Boston to keep an eye on the construction—or stalk me, whichever let him sleep at night. Evading him and his perfectly timed teas meant bouncing between jobsites and dodging the office entirely.

Not a day went by that I didn’t contemplate skipping Matt and Lauren’s wedding. Backing out felt horrendously wrong and the thought surfaced Jess’s raw critique, but neither killed the urge to stay home. Lauren and I texted about last minute preparations throughout the week, and she inquired as to my well-being one time too many. It was evident she knew what went down between Patrick and me, but she seemed to be the only one.

I didn’t want to dump that on her this week. I also knew she’d have to choose between Patrick and me, and there was no contest. Before leaving for the Cape today, she insisted we spend her last single night together. It wrecked my plan to show up for the ceremony and leave after the cake cutting, but I agreed.

I carved out most of my afternoon for Wellesley with the goal of walking through every element on the design plan. That site required work straight through the summer and into the fall, and I wanted to leave detailed notes about the progress before the end of my apprenticeship. Unlike the rest of the Walsh Associates projects, I was the only one who monitored progress on the site.