Элисон Скотч - The Theory of Opposites

We gather on Raina’s building’s rooftop deck. It’s a perfect Manhattan evening: warm enough to feel it under your skin, not hot enough to make you curdle. The sky is clear, a few stars poking their way through despite the bright lights of the NYC skyline. Raina and Jeremy mingle with their neighbors, who have popped champagne and are passing stuffed olives and prosciutto melon skewers and other Upper East Side-ish finger foods. I lean against the balcony and feel the breeze against my cheeks, and I gape at the big bad world, wondering how everything ever became such a mess. I was always sort of a mess, even at five when I became Willa, not William; even at twelve, when my dad bought me a skateboard. I’m thirty-two now. How much longer could I go?

I feel Theo’s hand against the small of my back, and then he’s next to me, staring out, waiting for the spectacle of explosions to begin.

And then they do.

BOOM.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

There are yellows and pinks and purples. And stars and flowers and at the end, an American flag up in lights.

“I’ve never quite understood how they do that,” Theo says, his neck craned up at the sky. “Those shapes, the images.”

“I stopped trying to figure it out,” I answer.

He floats his gaze down toward me, and for a moment, his face is awash in something that I never see on him: sadness.

“Don’t stop trying,” he says, his eyes back on the sky. “There’s always an answer, even when you’re sure that there’s not.”

Later, once the fireworks have subsided and Theo has said polite goodnights to all, I realize that he never told me what his question was. I consider texting him to ask — I want to text him to ask.

What was your question to me and how will it change things?

I start typing with my good hand but my bravado fades. There are some things that are better left unsaid, and besides, now that I’m sober, I suspect I wouldn’t have an answer for him anyway.

My dad holds a press conference the next day. He sits at the podium and sips slowly from his water glass, looking a dozen years older than he did when all of us gathered at the Four Seasons and he announced that he was taking a lover. The cameras snap his photo for the front page of their websites, of their newspapers. The reporters, and there are many of them, hold their recorders in the air, as if my father has something so important to declare that it cannot be missed.

My dad leans into the microphone and starts talking about fate, about death, about embracing both. He gazes into the CNN camera and says that he hopes that he can offer comfort to those who are dying or those who are losing loved ones or those who simply fear the inevitable.

“It is inevitable!” His voice rises. “But let us all know that what will be will be. This was not my time. But if it had been…I would have been at peace with that too.” Then he shifts back into his wheelchair with a contented smirk, as if this is the most brilliant thing that has ever been said. I want to raise my hand and say, “Hey dumbass, you wouldn’t have been at peace with it, because, you know, you’d have been, like, dead.” But that’s not the part I play today. That’s not the part I play in the family. That would be something Raina would say, but she is simply focused resolutely ahead, staring at nothing, her eyes glazed over.

The nurse wheels my father out a back door, and the reporters holler more questions to his doctors. I watch him go and realize that the one thing my dad didn’t mention is family: how he was thinking of us, how we got him through. Nearly everyone says that on their deathbed, don’t they? When I saw that white light off in the distance, I was thinking of my dear wife, Rose, and how I couldn’t leave her just yet! But not my dad.

“Do you think your dad believes in God?” Nicky asks me after we usher out of the press room and down the hall. He drops quarters into the soda machine.

“I really don’t know.” I really don’t know him at all . “I think…he believes in something though.” His theories. His science. That’s what he believes in.

“So you think that he actually believes all this bullshit?”

The machine spits out a Dr. Pepper, and he pops the lid.

“Nicky, it’s ten in the morning. Should you be drinking that?” I feign an attempt at step-parenting.

“Probably not.” He slurps from the top.

I sigh.

“How can he not see that it’s all bullshit?” he asks again. “Like with my dad.”

“He doesn’t think that any of it is bullshit,” my mom says from behind us. She pecks my cheek. “And thank God that pomp and circumstance of a press conference is over. Speaking of bullshit.”

“Did you know that he has a DNR?” I ask her.

“Of course he has a DNR, sweetie. Who wants to be a vegetable?”

I exhale again. “That’s not what I meant. I just...”

She squeezes my shoulder.

“He believes what he believes. Nothing’s going to change that.”

“So that means that he knows about you and Nancy? And that he trusts that it will all work out?” I plunk in my change and aim the back of my cast at the Dr. Pepper button. Then I remember that yesterday Vanessa dared me to get in shape, so I opt for a water.

“He does not know about Nancy, no.” My mom grows quiet.

“Do you think he believes in God, Minnie?” Nicky asks.

“Do you believe in God?” she asks back.

“As a Jew, I must.” Nicky puts on a solemn face.

“That’s not really an answer.”

“It’s an answer.”

“Not really,” my mom says.

“You asked, I answered.” He takes a long sip of his Dr. Pepper and swallows down a burp.

“That’s a rote answer. There’s no critical thinking involved.”

I squint at my mother. This is new territory for her, for me. Before she had Raina, she’d been a high school math teacher. I’d forgotten that somewhere in her, she’d once been pinned to logic, to 10+10=20 because you can prove it. I watch her now and wonder if maybe she hadn’t forgotten too. Maybe she can explain to me why 1 +1 no longer equals Shilla.

“I don’t get it,” Nicky says.

“You’re accepting that there’s a God because you’re a Jew. That’s wonderful. But you’re not asking yourself why you accept it so easily, when there are plenty of reasons not to. Sure, that’s why people call it ‘faith.’ But I’m not exactly getting the faithful vibe from you.” She reaches over and takes the Dr. Pepper from his hand. “And you shouldn’t drink that crap. It will kill you.”

She aims the can into the garbage, and it hits the bottom with a clang.

“Wow,” Nicky says, as my mom heads down the hall. “What was that about?”

I smile and am surprised to feel a twinge in my nose, tears ready behind my eyes.

“That’s about being a mom. I didn’t know she had it in her.”

“Huh,” he says. “I don’t really get it.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Some of us are slow learners.”

Email From: Shawn Golden

To: Willa Chandler-Golden

Subject: Your dad

W —

Saw your dad’s press conference and thought I should reach out and let you know I’m glad he’s going to be okay. All’s well that ends well. I have to go back to Palo Alto tomorrow. I know that you want to talk and that our August deadline is just a few weeks away…how about if I call you when I’m back? Nicky wants to stay here with you. Guess he got bored of the zipline. I still think it’s awesome. That kid. Who knows what goes through his brain?