Элисон Скотч - The Theory of Opposites

Theo kisses me in the living room and my knees hinge just a little bit. I’d forgotten how he kisses. How slowly, how intimately, like he could read your mind and move to wherever you wanted him to move next.

“Is this okay?” he asks.

“It’s okay,” I say. Then worry that he’s misunderstood. “I mean, it’s better than o-kay. ”

He laughs and kisses me again. “Willa, you don’t have to keep explaining yourself to me. I know you. I get it.”

“You don’t know the new me.” I’m not sure why I say this.

He pulls back and studies me, then smile lines appear around his eyes, then his grin catches up to them.

“God, I’d love to meet her though. The new you. Rainbow cast and all.”

We sink into his sofa and he kisses me for the third time, and I’m so lost in the moment that I think I’m imagining the buzzing in the background. It’s endless, continual, like a hive of angry bees swarming his kitchen. Finally, he stops and says:

“Your phone has rung about twenty times. Maybe you should get it?”

His lips are swollen from moving against mine, and I can feel the stubble burn on my cheeks. I don’t want to stop. Resisting inertia means that I shouldn’t stop.

But then the angry hive buzzes again, so I reluctantly push myself up from the couch and dig into my purse.

Yes indeed. I reach right into the hornets’ nest.

Family.

Missed calls: 27

Texts: 23

Voicemails: 8

I steady myself against the counter in Theo’s kitchen and dare myself to listen to my messages though I don’t know if I have the stomach to. Something is wrong. Something has gone cataclysmically wrong. Good news never comes like this, in a wave. Maybe, I guess, if you got an Oscar nomination or something. But not for lay folk. Not for me.

No, this rush to find me could only mean one thing: disaster.

I inhale and find my guts and click on my voicemail as steadily as my shaking hands will allow. I think of so many people whom I love, so many people who could be felled in a quick swoop. No one is immune after all to life’s unpredictable and dangerous whimsy.

Shawn. Nicky. Vanessa. Raina. Ollie. Grey. Bobby. My mom.

It’s none of the first few who spring to mind, however. But it’s the one I should have thought right off the bat. Because he would have told me as much. He practically predicted it.

My dad. It’s my dad. The one who has succumbed to the very thing he always predicted he would: inevitability.

Voicemail from Raina Chandler-Farley

Willa! Where the eff are you??? Honestly, this is getting ridiculous! You’re in goddamn Seattle! Not on the fricking moon! Have you not seen any of our texts? Jeremy and I have been trying to reach you for the past three goddamn hours! What time is it there now? It’s, like, nine o’clock at night! Are you out clubbing or something? Is this part of your experiment to find the new you? Please call me. (Rustling of something and then a large boom.) Jesus, Grey! I told you not to throw the football in the apartment! Where is Gloria? GO GET HER. Willa? Are you there? Anyway, please call me as soon as you get this! It’s about dad. (Silence.) Well, I may as well just come out and say it since by the time you actually decide to pick up the phone and get this, he might be dead. But…shit...Jesus… (quieter now), dad’s had a heart attack. A bad one. Something about a ventricle failure…blocked arteries. I don’t know. I don’t really understand it. Please. Just…come home.

Vanessa meets us at Boeing Field. Y.E.S. has a corporate jet, so Theo makes some calls and within an hour, the three of us are waiting to board.

“This isn’t resisting inertia,” I say to Vanessa. “Please don’t be disappointed.” My voice breaks. “I have to go.”

“Sweetie, you’re my best friend. I’m never disappointed.” She hugs me. “Besides, this is the hard stuff. This is life. This isn’t about a self-help book.”

I hold her tighter and feel my tears fall. I didn’t expect to mourn him like this. Not that he’s died, but he might. I didn’t anticipate the agony or the empty pit or the blank moments of wondering what life means when your parents start to die. I bat my hand in front of my face and try to compose myself. My dad is okay with dying! It’s part of his life’s plan! Why am I not okay with it too?

Vanessa hands me a Kleenex. “Theo’s coming with us?”

“Only because it’s his plane. He has clients he needs to see in New York.”

“Uh-huh,” she says.

“It’s not really anything.” I’m already diminishing whatever it was because it’s too difficult to consider what it really could be. It was just one night. On a football field. With some kissing. High schoolers have nights like that every weekend. I blow my nose and hand the Kleenex back to Vanessa, who pops her eyes and says:

“Willa, come on now. I know that we’re best friends and you’re really upset, but I don’t do snot.”

I laugh, though it’s more of a sputter, so she laughs alongside me, and I try to go still and absorb the enormity of leaving Seattle and jetting back to disaster and how very grateful I am that she dared me to betray my comfort zone. That she dared me to step outside of myself, even if it lasted only ten days, even if I’ll be home in six hours and everything will go back to how it once was.

When we board, Theo turns on the satellite TV and flips it to CNN. My dad is all over the screen.

NEWS ANCHOR #1: “We are devastated to report that our colleague here, Richard Chandler, whom many of us have come to think of as a mentor…

NEWS ANCHOR #2 (interrupting): “As a bit of a God in these parts…”

NEWS ANCHOR #1: “Richard Chandler has had a heart attack. The details are still coming in but our source on the scene tells us that Chandler was on his way for an early swim at the New York Athletic Club when he suddenly collapsed in the middle of 60th Street.”

NEWS ANCHOR #2: “Yes, Tim, evidently, a passerby recognized his famous face and leapt in to perform CPR, which may have saved Richard’s life. As our viewers know, Richard is the author of Is It Really Your Choice? How Your Entire Life May Be Out of Your Control…”

NEWS ANCHOR #1: “Great book, Audrey. Just great. It changed my entire life.”

NEWS ANCHOR #2: “I couldn’t agree more, Tim. And to Richard’s point, emergency personnel are claiming that if this fan hadn’t stopped to perform CPR, that, in fact, Chandler would have died on the street. Everything happens for a reason, indeed.”

NEWS ANCHOR #1: “Remarkable, Audrey. Just remarkable. Richard Chandler. He has never been more of a God of Wisdom than today.”

NEWS ANCHOR #2: “Chandler is currently in doctors’ care at Mt. Sinai Hospital. There are conflicting reports as to his condition, but we trust that he is at peace with whatever happens. That is what he would have wanted.”

NEWS ANCHOR #1: “Let’s take a moment here and say a prayer for our colleague.”

NEWS ANCHOR #2: “I think we should pray for his family. Richard wouldn’t want our prayers.”

NEWS ANCHOR #1 (choking up): “Audrey, how right you are. We will pray for his family. They’ll need it.”

Raina and Jeremy are seated in the emergency room, clutching coffee and staring at their phones. I can see them from down the hallway: the fluorescent lights, the harsh shadows, the bleakness of it all. Raina sighs and rests her head on Jeremy’s shoulder, and he reaches up and touches her cheek, then kisses her forehead.

“Oh, thank God.” Raina spies me and hops up, spilling Jeremy’s coffee on his pants.