Элисон Скотч - The Theory of Opposites

“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.

“Hannah?” I say. “Oh my God. Hi!” It’s my old boss, Hannah. The cocaine-addicted, recently rehabbed Hannah.

“Willa Chandler-Golden! Get out.”

“You look amazing,” I say, “I heard…”

“Oh, you can say it. You heard I went to rehab.”

“Yes,” I concede because there’s no less awkward way to come out with it. “I heard you went to rehab.”

“And I heard your husband left you, your brother got arrested, and your dad almost died.” She pauses. “I read the Post. ”

“When you put it that way, you got the better end of our unemployment tenure.”

She laughs, and I muster something close to a laugh, too. I wonder if she ever replaced her Live Free or Die poster, and lose myself for a moment in the memory of that last day, when she unceremoniously fired me, when my life tipped off its balance.

“I’m here getting some tests, picking up some meds.” She falters for a breath. “Trying to pick up the pieces.”

“Good for you,” I say.

“It’s not like I had much of a choice,” she says. “Are you keeping busy?”

I shrug. “I’m working on this book project. It’s kind of fun.”

“That’s cool,” she replies. “What’s the book?”

“You know that show Dare You! ? My friend and I are writing their book. And it’s sort of about my dad’s book. I don’t know.”

“I love that show!” she squeals. “That show totally kicks ass!”

“Yeah,” I say, wondering why I never knew that about her before. “It’s okay.”

“Oh, Willa Chandler-Golden. That’s the thing about you. You’re always, ‘ I don’t know’ and ‘ it’s okay’ when you should fucking know and it’s pretty fucking awesome! That’s what you should be dared to do: accept that your life is so goddamn great!”

“Besides my brother and my husband and my dad,” I say, but I’m in on the joke, and she laughs so hard her face turns tomato-red and she shouts, “Oh em gee, I’m gonna pee in my pants!”

Then we hug goodbye like she never balled up her Live Free or Die poster and chucked it at my head.

“Well, don’t be a stranger. Email me. Maybe you’ll be a contestant! How fricking cool would that be?”

“Oh,” I deflect, before meandering down the hall. “I doubt it. It’s not that kind of book. And even if it were, it’s not for me.”

She shakes her head and chuckles.

“I get it,” she says. “Some people watch, some people do. At least you know you’ll never be eaten by a bear.”

Shawn meets me on the 96 thStreet entrance to Central Park. He’s waiting when I get there, though his downtown commute was much further than my walk across the street from the hospital. He’s on a bench, eating an ice cream sandwich, and I stare while the light changes from red to green, wondering if he thought to buy me one too. When we first started dating, back when we went to Hop Lee and made out for free egg rolls, he always would have thought to buy me one too.

He looks up, so I wave and take an awkward quick step as if to feign that I was in motion the whole time and not just standing there spying.

“Hey.” He kisses my cheek, as I sit. “I actually happened to be in the neighborhood, so I was right around the corner.”

“Oh. Aren’t you working downtown?”

He bounces his head up and down. “Yup. But I had a thing.”

I want to ask: what sort of thing? A thing with Erica Stoppard? The old Shilla wouldn’t have a “thing” without the other. Any sort of “thing” would be programmed in our Together To-Do! app, for God’s sake.

Instead I manage, “Thanks for coming. I know it’s breaking the rules. Or whatever. But…I don’t know if I can do this alone.”

“Is your dad worse?”

“No. He’s better.”

His brow wrinkles and he seems a little confused by this, that I need him now, when maybe everything is going to be okay.

Finally he says: “So that’s good news, right?”

And I say: “It seems that way, but it’s really not.”

His phone beeps a double-beep, and he tries not to look at the incoming text, holding his eyes to mine, but eventually, he gives in to his weakness and holds up a quick finger to me and types quickly with his other hand. Before I can think it through, I fold my good hand over his Blackberry and say:

“Please. Don’t. Just give me you for ten minutes.”

And he looks sad, weary really. “Willa, we can’t figure this out in ten minutes.”

So I plead: “I get why you were bored. I get golf and Grape! and the mousse and the leather jacket.” He looks perplexed, so I clarify: “Like that ridiculous Varvatos leather jacket that’s meant for an Italian male model?”

And he says: “You don’t like the jacket?”

And I exhale: “I think we’re not communicating.”

And he nods: “That was sort of the point. Of the break. To start fresh.”

“Well, my dad almost died, Shawn!” I’m on my feet, angry now, that I can’t rely on him like I used to be able to, that he has the audacity to make this about him when it is about a million other things, not just him.