The Sweetheart Deal (3 page)

Like responding to a reflex, Kate began talking aloud to no one in particular. “Oh my God. Oh my God. I keep having this feeling. I can't stop having this feeling.” Her face was flushed and lovely. Her hands clung to the arms of the chair. “I can't stop having this feeling.” Five minutes earlier she'd been sobbing. The purest word I could think of to describe what happened to her was
epiphany
—a genuine spiritual ecstasy—that lasted less than thirty powerful seconds. We'd discussed it many times, my father, Kate, and I, and the only thing she could ever articulate was during that short, intense spell, Kate
felt
—didn't think, she felt—that for the rest of her life she would never feel sadness that our mother was dead. Although she had the memory of what happened to her, she'd returned to her grief after the sensation passed, and had told me more than once since how she wished she could call that feeling back up whenever she wanted.

I don't know why it was my sister and not my father who experienced what she did. My mother and Kate, they'd been as thick as thieves, with their tennis and their Junior League, and were both good Catholics. And when my mother was terminal, in those last months, Kate had suffered insomnia and a pervasive anxiety about my mother's death, about her leaving our lives, our physical world. I concluded later, in spite of my skepticism—I had witnessed it, after all—that Kate's euphoria was my mother's last message to her, letting her know she'd arrived safely in heaven, or the afterlife, or that her energy had traveled onward into the universe and its new destination. My family, whatever else you could say about us, we were consistent about one thing we asked of each other:
Call me when you get there. I want to know you arrived safely.
Our parents demanded it of us our whole lives, and when we got old enough, Kate and I demanded the same of them, and each other.

Leo flew east for the funeral, alone. My mother had loved him and had loved that we had stayed friends. He read the Twenty-Third Psalm at her funeral mass. We got drunk after the burial, and both wept over my mother, and he left the next day. That was the last time I'd seen him.

When the phone rang, late here, and I saw it was Audrey, maybe I should have known something was wrong. The late-night call. But it wasn't late on the West Coast, and Leo had called me on her phone before. Maybe he was having a beer and feeling chatty, too lazy to find his own phone. So I'd answered, “Hey.” But instead of Leo a little buzzed on the other end, it was Audrey, crying. “Oh, Garrett.” That was the first thing she said.

Although we'd been already asleep—it was after midnight in Boston—I told Celia to go home, I was sorry, I didn't know what to do, but I wanted to be alone. I knew she wanted to stay but I asked her to please, please just do this. She didn't know Leo, although I had told her about him. The last time I'd talked to him was less than two months before, on Christmas Eve when he'd called me from work. He'd told me the addition was going well, when he had the time to spend. He was doing most of the work, and Kevin from his firehouse was pitching in quite a bit.
Once it's finished, if it doesn't kill me, you have to come visit again,
he said.
I'm sure it will be as good and solid as if you'd built it with me.
When he had started the project in October, he had emailed me after he'd poured the foundation.
Audrey and I decided,
we can't move out of the house, so we're moving the house out,
he'd written. They had drawn the plans together with Mark, Audrey's best friend's husband, who was an architect. Everyone was in on the project. I wondered how far he had gotten, if there was a gaping hole left in the house.

After Celia left—I knew she was pissed—I poured whiskey into a tall glass and sat on the couch and drank. “Fuck you.” I railed at a dead man in my empty apartment. “Goddamn you, McGeary.”

I knew, in terms of what lay ahead, Audrey thought she could handle it by herself. She cried on the phone while she told me the news, but I heard her resolve underneath, her commitment to meeting it head-on, like potty training a stubborn toddler or running a race in a good time. Even though she hated help, she couldn't do this by herself, no one could. But that was her default. A few weeks after my New Year's visit, when she was pregnant with Andrew, Leo called and told me that while he was at work that morning she'd had a scare—she couldn't feel the baby moving, so she went in, and everything had turned out fine. The baby had only moved behind the placenta, where it was harder for her to feel him.

“Can you believe her?” Leo said to me. “‘Why didn't you call me?' I asked her. ‘If something had been wrong I should have been there.' Do you know what she said? ‘If something had been wrong, you would have been, because I would have called you and then you would have been there.' What am I supposed to say to that?”

“I don't know, man,” I said. “You seem surprised that your wife is the woman you married.”

That's how she was, but this was without precedent. The longer I sat there drinking, it came to me:
I'll go and finish the house
. We'd worked so many jobs together all those years ago that after I caught up, I'd know exactly where he'd left off and where to pick up again. And there were plans. There was nothing in Boston that wouldn't still be here, or somewhere else, later. If he could have, he would have done the same for me, I thought, as I filled my glass again. That stupid old promise had nothing to do with it. It really didn't. If there hadn't been what he'd left behind, unfinished, I wouldn't have had any reason to up and leave, but there was one thing out there I could fix. I took my glass, sat down at my desk, rifled through the drawer of files and found the paper, soft from folding and time, and forgotten for so long. Staring at it through my whiskey blur, I wanted to shred it, burn it, break a window with it clutched in my fist, but instead I tucked it deep into a pair of rolled-up socks, left the socks on top of my dresser, and went to bed. Initially—and for so long—the paper had been insignificant and juvenile, but with one phone call, it had turned into a sobering artifact from a careless night:
What you think will never happen, might.

I
n the hours, then days and then months after the recovery of Leo's body, when I keened when I saw him, with Richard Allen's firm hand on my shoulder, and the helmet that did no good—
don't fall down
—I was grateful that he hadn't died on Brian's birthday.

We had planned to go up to the mountain the previous Saturday, February 4, the day Brian turned fourteen, but the fridge, which had been on its last legs for weeks, tanked overnight. I opened the door early that morning, planning to pack lunches when it was still dark and everyone was waking up, and a sour warmth poured out. Everything was spoiled, and the food in the freezer was tepid to the touch. I was furious. I had seen this coming. The fridge wasn't old—it was a high-end model we'd gotten on clearance because it seemed like too good a bargain to pass up, but in hindsight, there'd been a catch. The icemaker hadn't worked for months, and for weeks the element inside the freezer had been caking with ice so that every other day Leo defrosted it with my hair dryer, insisting he could keep the whole thing working. When I badgered him enough to repair it properly, he finally made some calls and told me the model had been discontinued and parts were no longer available.

“Well, goddamn it, Leo,” I said. “We need a fridge that works, for Christ's sake. For as much food as we go through in this house.”

“Audrey, it's fine,” he said. “It's not old enough to die on us. I'll figure something out. There have to be parts I can find somewhere, or an old-timer who can extend the life of this thing.”

So that morning of Brian's birthday, when I took coffee up to Leo, I broke the news.

“The fucking fridge is done,” I said. “We can't go up today. I knew this would happen. We need a new fridge. I'm going back downstairs to toss out all our rotten food. All our balmy, rancid food. So Brian's not going to have the birthday we said he would.”

Leo sat up in the dark. “What are you talking about?”

“The fridge, Leo. It's done, dead. It's almost
hot
inside there. I told you this would happen. I'm going back downstairs. See you down there. Take your time.”

“Well, shit,” he said.

So we went the following weekend, and since the skiing was better than it had been the previous week, it felt like serendipity.

During that ride back from the mountain, and for months afterward, I sought comfort in one never-ending thought that flowed like water smoothing a stone:
Brian, my sensitive, sage soul. He would never have gotten over it.
But then, when I was awake at two in the morning, pacing the house, I'd think,
What if we had said fuck it. All the food was past salvaging. We should have gone anyway. Even if conditions did get lousy, we would have had a good morning. The fridge could have waited until Sunday.
We hadn't had to stay home, but I had insisted on dealing with the fridge, which wasn't a matter of life and death, so I blamed myself. Since I couldn't undo what had happened and couldn't let myself off the hook, I worked to accept the relief that for the rest of his life, Brian didn't have to share the day of his arrival in the world with the one on which his father left it. Three days later, on Valentine's Day, I accepted that I was a widow. Nobody's sweetheart.

But other days, I was enraged that he had insisted on making that last run, alone. And then, I raged at myself for the very last thing I had said to him before he skied down to the lift:
Don't be long
. I hadn't said,
Hurry
up
or
Make it quick,
but I'd tacked on that last statement after
Be careful
. Why hadn't I stopped there? Because the care was really what mattered, always—the time was nothing at all, it just came out. And if one of the boys had gone with him, surely he wouldn't have skied so fast. Leo had learned to ski when he was four years old—when he was finally ready to but wouldn't go on his own—and his mother had pushed him down the bunny hill in the Poconos. She skied behind him the whole way, although he didn't know it until they both reached the flat. He had sobbed and fretted the whole way down, but by the time he got to the bottom, he couldn't wait to go up and do it again. And yet. After surviving whiteouts and stupid stunts as a kid in the Northeast, the mountain that Leo had mastered and dominated for more than twenty years had taken him.

After all the years of shifts he'd been on. My worry every time he went to work,
Maybe he won't come home tonight
.

“It's a wonder you're alive,” I told him more than once.

Every time, he laughed and said the same thing. “It's nothing short of a miracle, I'll admit.”

He wasn't afraid of death, he'd often said, not back when he was young and careless and felt immortal and not later as a grown man, putting himself at risk in a different way. “How can I be if I want to do my job well? What's the cause of death, anyway? Being alive, right? Being afraid doesn't change that, and it doesn't help.”

After he was gone I kept waiting for him to send me some kind of message, some comfort that it wasn't something I should be afraid of either.

I
called Audrey early the next morning. I had a headache and was dehydrated, but my thoughts were clear. Shaky as I was, I was full of tenacity and ambition.

“When's the funeral? I'll fly out tomorrow or Tuesday, after I talk to people at school,” I said. “Then I'm staying. You can't say no. I'm not asking. I'm going to finish the house.”

“The funeral is in a week, on Saturday,” she said. “No, Garrett, I can't let you do that. Aren't you living with someone? Aren't you trying to get tenure? Come and then get back to your life.”

“I told you, I'm not asking,” I said.

She exhaled a quiet laugh. It was a small, unexpected sound. “It will get finished someday, and I don't even give a fuck about the house right now.” She wasn't saying anything I hadn't expected. Then she started to cry. “I'll have money,” she said. “Leo increased his life insurance two years ago and didn't tell me till after he did it. You know what he said when he told me? ‘It's a guarantee that you'll never need it.'” I could hear her trying to compose herself. “You have a life. Come and then go back to it.”

“I told you, I'm not asking.” We were deadlocked. “And no, I'm not living with someone. That was last year. Don't spend your money on that, Audrey. You'll use it for what you really need. I'll text you with details.”

“Okay.” Her voice was hoarse. “I'm so glad you're coming, Garrett. I'm really glad you're going to be here. For however long.”

I started packing and called Celia. I got her voicemail and left a message.

We had been together for three months, doing what we were doing, and I liked her, I did, or rather, I liked things about her. We had met at a birthday party of a mutual friend. Celia taught English and drama at a private school in the city, and she was funny and beautiful, and thirty. When I emailed Leo about her, he emailed back,
Good for you, no Amber or Trixie. How old is she, anyway?

In bed, I couldn't complain, but out of bed, she did things that made me feel worked over. She hadn't seemed impressed with me at the party—she talked to a lot of men that night, but she and I sang a karaoke duet when I grabbed her hand and pulled her up to join me at the mikes. I got her number, and when we went out two weeks later, she acted, a tiny bit, like she was doing me a favor. After all the women I'd known, if nothing else, I was hard to fool. From the beginning, she acted independent—for independence's sake, not because she really was. Whenever I asked her out, she was always busy and suggested a day or two later—every time. I started counting and after the fifth time figured out the pattern. Because I was feeling played, I asked if she was seeing other people, which was fine, I said, but I wanted to know. She fell all over herself telling me she wasn't, and asked me if I was, and I told her I wasn't either, not currently. So I thought that was good to get out in the open, but her games continued. Once I offered to pick her up at the airport and she said she'd take a cab. And some nights when I thought we'd spend the night together she'd get up and leave, saying she really wanted to sleep in her own bed, even if it was late.

None of those things alone was a deal breaker, and neither were all of them together, but nothing was ever
easy
, and her other, conflicting traits were more revealing. Every time she cooked dinner for me, it was a new, elaborate recipe that she slaved over in the kitchen, like a surgeon fighting to save the patient; her concentration and desire were so fierce. And within the first two weeks, although it was too early to be leaving personal items at each other's places, she had a new, full bottle of my favorite Scotch at hers. The way she clung to me, curled against my body, the mornings after we did spend the night together made me think she was trying very hard to seem one way but was really another. I would have preferred that she was genuine, no matter how she thought I might interpret her investment in our relationship, or her falling for me, or her ambivalence. I couldn't stand a phony, and I could stand Celia easily and well enough, but early on I'd recognized that her approach to our relationship was contrived. Not trying too hard, not being too needy—it was like a romance recipe she'd researched and was following to the letter. The thing was, I had been with women who had been genuinely independent or transparently attached, and it never made a difference. I only wanted each of them as long as I'd wanted them. So, when the time came, the way it did, Celia was an easy one to leave.

When I called her, I checked the time, set the stopwatch on my phone, and after twenty-three minutes, Celia called me back.

“Hi,” she said. “I'm sorry I missed you, I was in the shower. How are you doing? I'm so sorry.”

“I'm okay,” I said. “Can we talk? Can you come over?”

“Well, I'm meeting a friend for breakfast, how about later? Or tomorrow?” she said.

“I'm leaving town,” I said.

“Oh,” she said. “For your friend's funeral? I'll see you when you come back.”

“I'm not coming back,” I said. “If you want to see me before I go, it has to be this morning.”

“Okay,” she said. “I'll come over. Is now good?”

“Now is good,” I said. And I hung up.

She was at my place fifteen minutes later. Dressed and made up, not beautiful and barefaced with her hair still damp, like I'd expected, her coming over on the fly.

I let her in and we sat on the couch.

“I'm doing something you may not want to hear, but it's what's happening,” I said.

“You said you're not coming back,” she said. “I thought you'd just be gone for the funeral.”

“Hang on,” I said. I went to the fridge and got two beers, came back, and sat down. “You want one?”

She shook her head. I opened one and set them both on the table.

“Celia, Leo's family needs help,” I said. “What happened changes a lot of things for me, so I'm going to stay out there and help. It's the one thing I can do.”

“I'm really sorry about your friend—”

“Leo,” I said. “His name is Leo.”

“I'm really sorry about Leo, I am. It's terrible this happened, but what about your life?” she said. “I'm not talking about me. Garrett, you have a job.” She hadn't planned for this. This wasn't something she'd had time to research, or ask her friends about.

“I uproot pretty easily,” I said. “Like a weed.”

“A weed.” She crossed her arms.

“I hope this never happens to you,” I said, “but if it ever does, then you'll understand.” I reached out to touch her hand—a gesture seemed called for, since what I was saying wasn't doing any good—but she pulled it away. “Maybe I'll see you when I'm back.”

“Do or don't,” Celia said. “It makes no difference to me.” And she stood up and walked out of my apartment.

When things are messy, that's when you learn what a person is made of. I knew everything about Celia I needed to that morning, and I guessed she learned what I was made of too. If I had loved her, or felt an affection on my way to loving her, I might have asked her to come with me, told her I needed her, bought her a plane ticket. And if she had had a shred of empathy—an unrehearsed selflessness and accommodation for me—things might have been different. As it was, Leo's death shined the spotlight on the facade we were playing at, which, once illuminated, couldn't return to the shadows. Leo, even dead, saved me a lot of wasted time with Celia.

I finished the beer, opened the second one, and kept packing. I put the socks with the note inside at the bottom of the suitcase. I left a message for my landlord and then called Mitchell Britton, the academic dean at Boston College.

“Good morning, Mitchell,” I said. “It's Garrett Reese. I apologize for calling on the weekend. Can we meet sometime today?”

“Garrett, I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm in Philadelphia for my granddaughter's baptism. The mass is at eleven. Is everything all right?”

“No, Mitch, no it's not,” I said. “I hate to do this over the phone. I have a personal emergency. There was an accident. My friend, my best friend, Leo, his wife called last night from Portland—he died yesterday. I'm flying out as soon as I can.”

“Oh my God,” Mitch said. “Garrett, I'm so sorry. Of course, go. I'll take care of it.”

“The thing is, Mitch,” I said. “I'm going to stay out there for a while. I don't know how long, maybe a few months.”

There was silence on the other end. I waited.

“Garrett, this is unprecedented,” he said.

I was on track for tenure along with the rest. We were like puppies scrambling to get to the tit first, the status, the
title
. The dangling security seized after years of scrutiny. “Mitchell, I know,” I said. “Of course it's unprecedented. No one plans for something like this.”

“You'll pardon me for saying so,” Mitchell said, “but this isn't your family, correct?”

When I was quiet, Mitchell hurried to fill the silence. “Again, forgive me,” he said, “but we're not talking about your wife, child, or parents. This isn't your family.”

“They may as well be,” I said. “Mitchell, I'm sorry, I didn't call for advice, and I understand you don't understand. I'm only sharing my terrible personal news and how I'm handling it.”

“This is suicide, Garrett,” he said.

“Well, I won't have this job,” I said. “But not having it isn't going to kill me.”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “You know what I'm talking about. You won't have a position to return to. And you'll be damned for a position elsewhere. You've painted a very different picture of who we've come to know and the expectations we had.”

We weren't getting anywhere. I already knew everything he was saying.

“Mitch,” I said. “You've got talented people who want what I have. I have a syllabus, and you've got resources to tap. I'll send an email and take full responsibility. Thank you sincerely for everything these past three years. I'm truly grateful. But, really, I'm doing the only thing I can.”

He softened. “I'll look for the email. I'll get some things together—come by my office tomorrow. And, Garrett, I'm very sorry about your friend. I do wish you were making a different decision, but I wish you the very best of luck.”

I moved some money around, paid some bills, forwarded my mail. I drove to campus and packed my office. I cleared off my computer, saving what I needed onto a thumb drive. I made a folder for Leo's emails. Some of them were years old, but I couldn't delete a single one. A student had given me a jade plant that had survived its time with me despite my lack of doting. When I got home, I knocked on my neighbors' door. Rob and Morgan had moved into the apartment across from me the previous summer, before the school year. They both taught at the college too, in different departments, and were pregnant and due in two months. I went into as much detail as I had with Mitch and told them I'd be gone for a while, and gave them the plant. I thanked them and declined their offers to do anything else.

I made coffee and wrote the email for Mitch and everyone else who needed to know. A choice was easy to make, no matter how small or great, when you only had one, and sometimes the hardest one was the right one.

I booked a flight for six o'clock Tuesday morning, Valentine's Day, and texted Audrey
. I'm flying out early Tuesday. I'll see you in the afternoon.