The Theory of Opposites (20 page)

He takes my good hand and gazes soulfully into my eyes.

“It’s not to late for you, Aunt Willa. It’s never too late to find your calling.”

The cab whizzes forward toward Raina’s, toward the epicenter of the Chandler family dysfunction. He’s not exactly right. But he’s not wrong either.

—

My mom and Nancy make a grand entrance a few hours later when we’ve all retreated home for dinner and showers before heading back to sit vigil (is it a vigil if you know that he’ll live?) for my dad. Oliver has just wrapped a guided meditation in Raina’s library — (“I don’t know why my students should suffer just because the government has launched this oppressive witch hunt! Also, after all of this stress with Dad, I really needed some inner-Zen time,” he declares, right before powering up the blender for a wheatgrass smoothie), and his fresh-faced, uber-calm, Lululemon-wearing flock is filing out the door when I see my mother waiting in the foyer.

“Mom!” I cry, grateful for her presence.

“Mama Bear!” Oliver says.

“Hello, Mother,” Raina states.

We move single-file to hug her, and we’re all a little surprised when I tear up. I flap my hand in front of my nose, willing myself to stop.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I say. “You know I’m not a crier.”

“Oh, honey,” my mom answers. “You’re like a butterfly getting her wings.”

And I’m not really sure how to reply to that, since I sort of feel like it’s something I’d write for a tampon client back at the ad agency. So my mom wipes away my leaky eyes and says, “I get it, sweetheart. Your father’s in the hospital and your husband turned out to be a dick.”

Before I can protest, she steps past me, tugging her companion alongside. My mom flourishes her arm and says, “This is
Nancy!
”

Nancy blushes and bows her head, as if she doesn’t deserve such adulation, though she strikes me as the type of woman who knows exactly what she deserves. She looks vaguely familiar, like perhaps I do remember her from my childhood, from that vacation at The Breakers. Or it could simply be that I just recognize her from the society pages. She is pretty, with luminescent skin that is well taken care of, and a chestnut bob that is entirely appropriate for her age. She’s wearing chic white capris, and a scarf fancifully wrapped around her neck, and frankly, I can see why she’s a bit of a catch. She’s not the type of woman who seems like she needs to rewrite her master plan or find a way to swim upstream. She just knows her Point North and doesn’t misjudge it as disastrously as I seem to have and moves toward it with certainty.

“Nancy!” I say, clapping my hands together.

“Fancy Nancy!” Oliver says.

“Hello, Nancy,” Raina offers, then says to our mom: “I didn’t know if you were coming up. It was hard to reach you.”

“I’ve been living a life that doesn’t revolve around your father.” Mom sets down her bag on a console table and fluffs her hair. She looks healthy, vibrant, pink and shiny. “Forgive me if I wasn’t on speed dial.”

“Mom,” Raina says. “It’s complicated. We know. But…he almost died
.
”

“Your dad is well aware that death is part of life. He wouldn’t want us to make a big to-do. It’s part of ‘God’s plan’.” Now she’s the one to hold up air quotes, and in that moment, she looks so very much like Raina.

“Did someone mention God?” Nicky says, wandering in eating a Go-Gurt.

“Are you wearing a yarmulke?” Nancy asks, speaking for the first time.

“I am, ma’am.”

She lifts her eyebrows like she’s impressed, and since no one has anything much more to say, we head to the kitchen where Gloria is preparing pork chops, which Nicky has renounced eating because they are trayf.

“I heard about your marital troubles,” Nancy says to me later as we gather around the kitchen island and fill our plates. Raina leans over and slices my pork chop since I can’t maneuver a knife and a fork.

I check the clock on the microwave and wonder when the doctors will call to implore us to come back, to tell us that he is awake. They shooed us out tonight, saying he was resting, saying nothing more could be done until the surgery to repair the damage, but…it didn’t feel right not to be there. I look around the kitchen. Why am I the only one who thinks it doesn’t feel right not to be there?

“Shawn’s having a bit of an early mid-life crisis,” I say to Nancy. “It’s complicated.”

“Marriage always is,” she replies.

Raina snorts but then says, “Sorry. You’re right. Marriage is.”

I eye Jeremy to see if he’s giving her some sort of look, but he’s not. He just sips his wine and accepts the fact that it’s public knowledge that marriage is complicated, even if he should be offended that his wife is the one announcing it.

“Well, you’re not married,” I say to Nancy.
I mean, obviously. You’re a single, gorgeous lesbian!

“I was once. A great, great man. Not like your dad.” She catches herself. “That came out wrong. I only know about your dad through your mom.”

“He can be a real a-hole,” my mom offers, still nibbling on her pork chop bone.

“Mom! He’s at death’s door!” I bark. “Can you stop?” I glance to Oliver for backup, but he just gives me this weird look like
whaddya gonna do,
or
namaste!
Or something. Who the hell knows? No one in my family was ever good at backup, I realize, and spear the meat with my fork.

“I was widowed at fifty-seven,” Nancy says. “Pancreatic cancer.”

“That’s terrible,” I say.

“We loved each other well for a very long time. That he died was terrible. But when he was alive, it was wonderful. So I have that.”

“I admire that attitude so very much.” Ollie’s speaking in this weird, soothing tone. “It’s what my students are searching for. Perhaps you’ll speak at one of my classes.”

“Mom,” Raina interrupts. “You know I’m the first one in the family to come down hard on Dad, but...I mean…he’s…”

“He’s fine!” my mom states succinctly. “He is going to be fine. Do you really think that a little ventricle trouble will take out your father?”

“I don’t think that ventricle trouble is something that you can really control,” Raina says.

“Well, if anyone can, it’s your dad. And the doctors said that he’s stable! And besides, you know what he says: everybody dies sometime.”

And Nicky chimes in: “Does this mean I can stop researching how to properly sit shiva?”

And we all say: “Yes.”

So he says: “Okay.” And then, “L’chaim.” And then excuses himself from the table.

“Frankly, nobody’s stable in this family,” Raina says, and everyone laughs a little to diffuse the tension, but we also take deep gulps of our wine. I can’t help but look at the clock again and wonder when they will call with good news.

“Stability is where you choose to plant your roots, where you find your foundation,” Ollie says.

Nancy looks at him sideways but says nothing. The rest of us just ignore him.

“I think it’s lovely that you loved your husband so much,” I say to her. “In light of…the complications.”

“Oh, you mean that I’m with your mom now?” She laughs and reaches for my mom’s hand. Raina pales. “Listen, life is short. Be happy. That’s all I know.”

Ollie exhales like this is the most brilliant thing he has ever heard.

Raina refills her glass, and Jeremy rubs the back of his neck.

I lean back and think:
Life is short. Be happy.

That shouldn’t be so hard.

—

Text from: Theodore Brackton

To: Willa Chandler-Golden

I’m sticking around for a while. Can we grab a drink?

Text from: Willa Chandler-Golden

To: Shawn Golden

Know I’m not supposed to text u, but I thought mayB we cld get a drink? Or take in a game? Yankees? They’re baseball, right? (Har, har, har.)

Text from: Vanessa Pines

To: Willa Chandler-Golden

I know you r mid-family crisis. Need a drink?

Text from: Shawn Golden

To: Willa Chandler-Golden

Jammed 4 the next day or so, working l8t. Talk Tues?

Text from: Theodore Brackton

To: Vanessa Pines

Really want to pursue this but I want to give her space. WDYT?

Text from: Vanessa Pines

To: Theodore Brackton

Since when do u ever need advice from any1? U founded Y.E.S. for God’s sake. Here’s advice frm r nxt book chapter: open ur eyes & life follows.

Text from: Theodore Brackton

To: Vanessa Pines

So you say Y.E.S.?

Text from: Vanessa Pines

To: Theodore Brackton

Honey, I say Y.E.S. to everything. I’m not the 1 u shld be asking.

22

Daring Yourself to a Better Life!

By Vanessa Pines and Willa Chandler

PART THREE: OPEN YOUR EYES AND WRITE YOUR OWN MAP

Summary: It sounds so easy, doesn’t it? Open your eyes, look all around you, breathe it in and follow that breath toward wherever it takes you! Richard Chandler advises you to do the opposite. To
close
your eyes. When has anything good ever come from closing yourself off to anything? (Well, sure, there was that lousy ex-boyfriend who kept texting you for sex, but readers, we know that you’re smart enough to deduce the difference between closing yourself off to a douche bag and closing yourself off to life.) Try it. Try it now. (After you’ve read this paragraph.) Close your eyes. Focus on your other senses. You hear more, yes. You might smell more. You might be more aware of the goings-on around you. But then pop open your eyes and see, really see, the beauty and the colors and the brightness and the contrast and the faces and the smiles and the triumph and the grief and the wisdom that is all around you.
See it all and learn from it and then be big and brave and chart your course.
Write your own map. Get lost. Then get found. Closing your eyes really just means closing a door. Never close a door when you have the chance to leave it open.

—

My dad wakes up two days later, on Tuesday. Vanessa is taking the day to write, and since I don’t have anything better to do, I tell her I’ll just peek over her shoulder and won’t bother her at all. But she says, “Seriously, go to the hospital, Willa, even if you don’t want to. Don’t close yourself off because you’re scared. Open your eyes.
Write your map
.”

I didn’t want to go, it’s true. Hospitals remind me of Theo, and I don’t want to think of Theo, and also, all I do now is weep when I think of my dad and what life would mean without him.

Raina has gone into the office for the day to prepare for Ollie’s arraignment, and my mom and Nancy are taking a Skyline Harbor Cruise (“It’s a lesbian thing,” she says to me before kissing me on the way out the door), so I’m the only one sitting at his bedside today. I’m passing the time figuring out how to join Twitter when he comes to; he must watch me for a good minute before he makes re-entry into the world of the conscious.

Finally, he clears his throat, and I shriek and bolt upward, dropping my phone as I do.

“William,” he says weakly. “I’m so thirsty. What happened?”

I surge to be next to him and clutch his hand, but it’s limp against mine, flaccid, near dead.

“You had a heart attack, Dad,” I say, my cheeks already damp, my nose so quickly running down my chin. “But you’re going to be okay. We thought we might have lost you. But we didn’t.”

He bobs his head almost imperceptibly, as if any movement at all is asking too much of him. His skin is waxy and wan, his hair looks thinner, his lips like sandpaper.

“I’m so glad you’re awake,” I say. Maybe I should have resented him more, for my lost childhood, for my wandering ambition, for my incomplete sense of self. But here, on his near-literal deathbed, I can’t be angry. Anger would be the hard choice, the one that requires more effort, and this time, I don’t have the guts for it.

The doctor rushes in with his team of nurses, and as quickly as my dad was awake, I am ushered out of the room, like I’m disposable, like I can so easily be cast off. I know that I’m taking it too personally, that they’re just trying to do their job, but I wish that my dad had asked them to let me stay. I peer through the tiny window in the door and wonder why he didn’t ask to let me stay.

The nurses move all sorts of tubes around, and the doctor speaks to my father with words that I cannot hear. But then one of the nurses exits, and for a sliver of space and time, the air between my dad and me is connected. I press myself forward to hear: I want to hear them telling him that everything is going to be okay. That they will perform his surgery now, and he’ll be as good as new. And then maybe my dad will reply that he
has
to be good as new because he doesn’t want to leave us, to leave
me,
because he and I have so much unfinished business to muddle through.

Instead what I hear is the most crushing blow of all.

My dad says weakly, “You know that I signed a DNR, right? I don’t want to be resuscitated if I go. I’m not afraid to die. Everybody dies, after all.”

The doctor answers, “Everyone does, sir. But not today.”

—

My eyes are swollen and achy from crying, but I have been locked inside a stall in the ladies room in my dad’s ward for over an hour, and I know that if I stay much longer, one of the nurses will suspect I have, like, Ebola and take me away on a gurney. I want to text Theo and ask him to come find me. To lead me out of here like he used to lead me out of everything. But I can’t make this about Theo, and though I shouldn’t make this about Shawn, I text him instead. Through better or worse. Sickness and health.

This is sickness. And he should be here.

I press send and sigh a deep sigh and push myself out of the bathroom stall onto my wobbly legs and go in search of daylight.

On my way past the gift shop that’s stuffed with cutesy teddy bears and withered flowers, I do a double-take. She does too. She looks so different now. Skinnier. Healthier, but pale. Still though, shinier, with clean hair and a decent night’s sleep. She almost looks pretty.