The Theory of Opposites (8 page)

“I’m thinking we should get going,” Vanessa says. “I have to be there by nine — they have a camera crew there, so I need make-up, which is sort of ridiculous since they better not be doing a close-up of me hanging upside down with my face all morphed and bulging.” She scrambles off her stool. “And also, I don’t know why I just ate these since I’m probably now going to throw them up before I jump. The whole theory of what goes down, must come up.”

“Wait,” Shawn says to me (not Vanessa, who is shoving the last bites in her mouth too quickly). “Seriously, why are you mad at me?”

“When did you take up golfing?” my tone is a little too forthright to be casual, a little less kind than conversational.

“I…I don’t know. I’m trying new things. Recently.”

“And that jacket over there…” I gesture to a motorcycle jacket that I am only now noticing thrown over the couch. “What is
that?
Do coders wear that?”

“Ooh, that’s actually really nice.” Vanessa gets up to paw it. “This isn’t ridiculous. This is the real deal. Varvatos. What did this set you back?”

“Oh Jesus, Vanessa, can you please pipe down for once?” I say, then immediately follow with, “Sorry. Shit, sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Hey, no flies on me. I’m gonna do this thing without you. You guys keep going. Just call me. Coffee later.”

She quickly kisses my cheek and breezes out the door before I can beg her not to leave without me. Shawn and I are left alone, flanking each other in the kitchen. He pours himself more coffee, making a big show of the silence, dropping in his first plop of milk, then his second, then one last splash, as he does every morning, and for the first time ever, this makes me insane. I don’t want my husband to make me insane, I want Shilla! But then I remember
Grape!
, and that I’m not exactly the one who might be cheating on us.

He sprinkles exactly half a packet of Splenda in, then stirs, then sips, and then sighs. Then he unspools the plastic wrap and envelops Nicky’s plate as carefully as parents would swaddle their newborn. Finally, he turns back toward me and says:

“Why are you so mad at me?”

“I’m not mad at you.”

“You’re mad at me. You said, and I quote, ‘I’m resolving as of this moment to stop being mad at you.’”

I’m about to shout out:
Grape!
when his phone vibrates on the counter, and he grabs it.

“Hey,” he says, then wanders to the couch and perches on its arm. “Oh. Okay. Sure. For how long?”

A long pause.

“Um. Okay. No, no, that’s fine. I mean, I have to talk to Willa.” He falls silent.

I can feel my nerve ebbing out of me. I can’t talk to Shawn about
Grape!
now. That might undo everything – set something in motion that I’m not ready to face. And besides, now, he has something to talk to
me
about. My thoughts turn to static. I try to catch my breath — breathe in and out, like Oliver showed me — and not totally come undone with the notion of what Shawn needs to talk to me about — affairs, divorce, one-night stands — and to whom he’s saying all this. Please, universe, do not betray me. Please do not make Shawn be like that Goldman guy who slept with Izzy’s friend, Candice.

Shawn says to his phone: “We’ll figure it out. Sure, sure. No, I get it. I’m sure that Willa will be fine with it.”

I allow myself a little more air because he must know that taking a call from some floozy whom he met at
Grape!
or at golf or whatever is not something I’d be fine with. I look at him sideways now, but he’s focused on the long view out the window. Who knows what he sees out there in the distance. But it’s not me.

“He’s still sleeping,” Shawn says. “I’ll have him call you when he’s up.”

Another pause.

“Okay. Be safe. No, I understand.”

He presses the off button and stares at the floor for a moment, then seems to remember that I’m sitting there with my runny eggs, that we were in the middle of something, that there were things to be said.

“That was Amanda.” He rises slowly, like he threw out his back while talking.

“Okay.”

“She needs us to watch Nicky for a while longer.” He doesn’t make eye contact and instead reaches for his coffee.

“Well, that’s fine, I guess. How long?”

“Um, most of the summer.”

“Most of the summer?”

“She was up for this position in Tanzania, and she got it. Which is great, by the way. I mean, she’s out there making a difference.”

“No one said she’s not.” I can’t help but wonder if he doesn’t mean that coming up with sexy ad campaigns for Adult Diapers is not exactly out there making a difference.
Hello! I’m well aware that it might be the dumbest thing on the planet. Why do you think I was texting Vanessa in the meeting in the first place? You try to make an incontinent Indiana Jones sexy!

“Well, you know,” Shawn says. “Where she’s going to be isn’t safe for Nicky right now, and this job is pretty much all she has other than him, and it’s only until August.”

“That’s our whole summer, Shawn! I thought we were, like, trying for a baby!”

“We can try for a baby with Nicky here, Will. Come on.”

“You know what? Let’s not try for a baby right now,” I glower, raising my voice a little too loudly. “I don’t think I want to.”

A wild overreaction to be sure. But also, a wee relief. As soon as I say it, I feel it in my guts, deep on my insides: a weight lifting, a release from the burden that has been pressing me so very far down. Maybe @nurseellen at BabyCenter was right. Maybe I owe her an apology. Maybe some of us just aren’t cut out for offspring, and if that’s what God’s plan is telling us, then maybe we should lean in and listen.

“What?” Shawn reacts. “Now we’re not having a kid?”

“You heard me! The kid is off the table! I mean, we can’t even have one anyway, even when we’re actively trying! I’m not pregnant again, and maybe it’s just a goddamn sign!”

“Where’s this coming from? Because Nicky will be sleeping in our spare room?”

“No!” I shout even louder. I breathe in, breathe out through my nasal passage, just like Oliver showed me. (“This is called pranayama breathing,” he said. “I know master yogis who can orgasm from it.”) I feel my pulse slow, then say hesitantly, more quietly:

“It’s coming from…golf…and the Yankees…and…”

I try to say it, I try to actually be forthright and confront what needs to be confronted, but I can’t. My dad would say it’s because my conscious mind is too scared to set something in motion that I don’t want to set off, but he’d also tell me that it wouldn’t matter: if disaster is impending, it’s a-coming anyway. But I’d say that it’s probably something simpler: that I don’t want to say
Grape!
because of the simple truth that I’m a coward who never wants to rock the status quo.

“What the hell, Willa?” Shawn snaps, still a decibel too high. “You don’t want to have a kid because I’m taking up golfing? What does that even mean? We’re supposed to have a kid now. We agreed that we were having a kid now! It’s part of our plan!”

“Well, now that you put it that way, let’s definitely have a kid! Let’s have twins!” The pranayama breathing is of no use. (Orgasm? Really? From breathing? Not buying what you’re selling, Dalai Lama.)

The guest bedroom door opens and Nicky wanders out, his hair a bird’s nest from behind, his skinny legs gawky in his boxers.

“What the fuck, you guys?”

“Don’t say fuck, Nicky,” I say back.

He shrugs.

“These for me?” He spies the spare plate of eggs on the counter. Shawn nods yes, so he scrambles up on the stool, unwraps the plate, and digs in.

Shawn sees his opportunity to deflect.

“So your mom called…we should talk, dude.”

I consider if this is the first time Shawn has ever called anyone “dude,” and if he realizes what an idiot he sounds like. And then I hate that I’ve even thought this. I want to scrub the notion from my mind: that my husband sounds like an idiot, that I’m the type of wife who would ever see him as such a moron.

“Whatever,” Nicky says.

“Whatever,” I say.

“Whatever,” Shawn replies in return, which is not the white flag I was hoping for.

I grab my purse and turn into the foyer, then out the front door. The door slams behind me, and then the latch clicks, and as I wait for the elevator to come and take me away from this mess, I try to muster the courage to go back in and apologize. I count to twenty in my head.

If the elevator dings before I reach twenty, I’ll get in and go meet Vanessa. If it doesn’t, I’ll go back.

I don’t even get to eleven.

The door opens, and I step forward. The universe gave me a sign. I’m just listening.

—

The taxi drops me right at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, from which an enormous banner hangs.
DARE YOURSELF TO A BETTER LIFE!
It’s red and bold and unavoidable, and all around me, pedestrians stop to gape and wonder, perhaps, if they can indeed dare themselves to a better life. Maybe it’s that easy, the girl to my left considers —
dare yourself!
— and she can finally meet a guy who calls her after sex. Maybe that’s the answer, the chubby guy next to the girl thinks —
dare yourself
! — and he can finally stop inhaling éclairs at midnight and lose the twenty pounds he’s convinced are keeping his life, his entire life, in a rut.

I peer toward the bridge, right in time to see Vanessa catch air. She hesitates just before jumping, and I know it’s to swallow down her fear, but then she closes her eyes, counts to three, and throws herself forward. I can hear her shriek all the way from where I am on the sidewalk, but then I also hear her scream, “Holy shit! This is amazing!” And I watch her fly, soar, float through the air on her way down. The gathered crowd erupts in spontaneous applause, and Vanessa pumps her fist in reply. She bounces twice at the bottom, and then starts to hyena-laugh at what she has done.

I stand there watching, my heart in my throat, my breath quick and measured, and I start to weep. For her bravery, for her leap. For something that I could never do.

And then, as they pull her up, she must spy me, even from her upside-down angle, and she yells, “Willa Chandler-Golden! I dare you: you’re next!”

And we both laugh because we know that I’m not.

—

Vanessa insists that we walk home, though it’s over five miles and the June heat wave has continued, and I’m already feeling damp. I wrap my hair up in a bun and tug my tank top away from my chest, but I’m too late: already, tiny pock marks of sweat have seeped through.

“You should tell Hannah to get into bungee jumping. It will goddamn blow her mind!”

We’re weaving our way through Chinatown, which is vibrant, too awake on a Sunday morning. Chickens hang in windows, knock-off handbags spill from corner vendors, tourists push and elbow their way through. Vanessa’s practically levitating, amped on high from the adrenaline of the leap. A guy tries to sell me a fake Rolex but I contort my face
no
and say to Vanessa:

“Why would I try to get Hannah into bungee jumping? Also, I’ll probably never speak to her again.”

“Because this is probably exactly how coke feels, but it’s better for you. And you never know. Don’t burn a bridge.”

“Just jump off one instead?”

“Hardy-har,” she says.

We point ourselves north through Little Italy toward Soho, the demographics shifting with each passing block.

There’s a hot new yoga studio on the corner of Broadway and Houston —
Yogiholics!
— and throngs of skinny women in black capris and Lululemon tanks emerge. They slide on their sunglasses and make plans for brunch. Vanessa and I stop on the corner alongside their pack, as the skinniest, tallest one of them says:

“God, is Oliver not the best teacher in the world? I swear, his pranayama breathing turns me on.”

The light changes and they charge forward, giggling, gossiping, mostly happy, though also probably with a secret Xanax habit just like Raina.

“That’s weird,” I say. “Her yoga instructor is named Oliver. How many hot yoga instructors are named ‘Oliver?’”

“Isn’t yours in India? I checked his Twitter feed last week.”

“World’s most famous yoga guru is addicted to Twitter. How ridiculous,” I say, a little too spitefully.

Vanessa’s eyebrows skewer inward. “Oliver isn’t hurting anyone, even if he is a little ridiculous.”

“You’re right,” I concede. The blood moves over my cheeks. “I’m just having a bit of a shit life moment.” I explain Nicky, and my dad’s
lover,
and Shawn’s disgusting eggs and coffee and “dude.” Not to mention our argument this morning, to which she was witness. “Shawn and I don’t argue. I mean, we don’t have shit moments.”

“I guess you do though.”

I want to slug her for being right, but instead, I mutter: “Well, I don’t know.”

And she says: “It’s the not knowing that will kill you.”

And I retort: “I’m pretty sure there are other ways to die.”

And she answers: “Of course there are. But at this rate, I wouldn’t count on it.”

—

OLIVER CHANDLER

Yogi, life-lover, naturalist, vegan, student, teacher, wanderer, admirer of beauty. Namaste!

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Amazeballs power vinyasa class today at Yogiholics! Thanks ladies for getting your om on!
(1 hr)

@RainaChandlerFarley
Are you serious? You’re in NYC, and this is how I find out?
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Best cure for jet-lag? A green smoothie from Juiceriffic. Thanks, Juiceriffic! Twitterphoto.com/oc1842
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@savvylady
A little birdie tells me you’re coming to town. Buzz me.
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Yay! Can’t wait! Like old times. Balthazar this week?
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