Элисон Скотч - The Theory of Opposites

And then without warning, he yelps: “On your marks, get set, jump!”

And I murmur goodbye to this sweet life. But before I die, I try to muster the one thing that I would have done differently in this life if I had the chance. What’s the one thing that could have made all the difference? I can rewrite my master plan, I can resist inertia, I can open my eyes. But what I really need, what I’m so utterly lacking and what feels as critical to me now as oxygen, as blood flow, as air, is guts.

Guts.

If I can corral just a smidgeon of guts, then whatever this new path has in store will be okay.

So I breathe in and then I go deeper still, and beneath the panic and adrenaline and my ever-present instinct to flee, I find it.

Guts.

And so I jump.

Email from: Rick@dareyoushow.com

To: Willa Chandler-Golden

Subject: Rad!

Willa — Hey! I’m part of the Dare You! camera crew, and I snapped this pic today just as you caught air — it’s attached. Well done, lady! I thought you might want it as a reminder of your leap. See you in a few weeks! (I dare you!) (Ha ha ha.) — Rick

Email from: Willa Chandler-Golden

To: Rick@dareyoushow.com

Subject: re: Rad!

Rick — Hello. This is Willa. What’s in a few weeks?

My dad is released from the hospital the same day that my cast is due to come off. Vanessa tells me that this is a metaphor, and I can see what she means, but then they slice the plaster in two and my wrist and fingers emerge, dried up but also somehow moist (the worst word in the world), and truly, the smell is akin to death warmed over, so I discard the metaphor pretty quickly. Your cast is off, and your dad is free! By the transitive property, you should be free of him too!

I get it, I do. But there are still so many things to ask of him, so many questions unanswered. It’s not as if he can just stop being my father. It’s not as if I can just stop being his daughter.

“So ask him what you need to ask him,” Vanessa said over the phone earlier this morning while I was getting ready to head to the hospital. She was still a little irritated, just like she was up on the bridge.

“I’m trying,” I said. “It’s not easy. It’s not like I haven’t had thirty-two years of programming.”

“I know,” she said before making an excuse to hang up.

We all show up for my dad’s send-off from the cardiac ward, even my mom. The media is there too — partially because he called them. A statuesque brunette who can’t be that much older than I am wheels him out the front doors, angling her chin toward the photographers, brushing her hair back, cocking her head.

“Who’s that?” Nicky asks, with more than a little pubescent interest.

“A hospital admin?” I suggest.

My mom says: “Your father’s girlfriend.”

Raina says: “What?”

“That’s what he told me. I think the girlfriend should perhaps be in quotations.” My mother makes that air quotes gesture again.

I sputter: “You can’t be serious.”

My mom raises her eyebrows, and then smiles for the cameras because that’s what she’s always done when she trails my father anywhere. But then she stays true to her new master plan: she makes a sharp right and heads toward her own Town Car, the one waiting across the street.

I watch her go, and she must sense it, because she turns and says:

“Oh William, who cares who that girl is? Open your eyes and live your own life! Don’t worry about it too much. Your dad is always full of shit. I should have told you earlier.”

Facebook Profile: Willa Chandler-Golden

Hometown: New York

Friends: 261

Occupation: Fired

Religion: Looking

Relationship Status: Married to Shawn Golden

New Facebook Notifications: 2

From: Equinox Gym

Wall Post:

Dear new member, thanks so much for “liking” our page! Now that you’ve joined the club, we hope you’ll swing by and use your free training session. There’s no time like the present. Fitness is life. Life is fitness. (1 hr ago)

From: Minnie Chandler

Wall Post:

Willa! Look! Nancy taught me how to use the Facebook! Will you be my friend? (Is that how I say it?) (5 hrs ago)

Oh my God, I think, I have no life.

I download Rick’s jpeg file to my hard drive.

Willa Chandler-Golden has updated her profile picture!

I can fly, I write as the caption.

I stare at my screen and wait for the little red indicator lights to blip at the top, blipping to show me how much my friends like me. Like me, really, really like me!

I busy myself scrolling through photos of other people’s lives. People who never mattered much to me. Faces from high school, random acquaintances from college. They all seem so glittery. So content. So sure of their Points North. Their eyes are always open, and they’re always bright and crystal-clear and wonderful. No one ever posts a shitty picture of her husband with his hands down his pants, passed out on the sofa with Cinemax on behind him. No one ever snaps that just-so image of her toddler, right as he’s on the cusp of a volcanic explosion, with grubby cheeks and a hateful scowl and fists so dirty that baths four days in a row won’t do the trick.

What’s illusion and what’s not? Maybe Mandy from sophomore bio lab really does have the best, sweetest, most awesome husband and partner in the world!!!! Or maybe she’ll be divorced by Christmas. No one really knows. Maybe not even Mandy. It’s my dad who knows: he knows that fate will be what it is. Even if your husband is an asshole or if it turns out that your kid is, too. Mandy will find a lot of solace in that, my father’s chapters, when her divorce papers come through.

The red indicator light flares atop my toolbar. I hurriedly aim my mouse toward it.

Shawn Golden likes your profile picture!

Shawn Golden commented on your profile picture!

Comment Shawn Golden:

That’s pretty awesome. I never knew you had the guts.

When I return from my first stint at the gym, Raina, Theo and Ollie are huddled around the kitchen island snacking on a something that looks like kale chips but could also be some other sort of veggie “chip” that I’d never dream of eating.

“You went!” Ollie says.

“You look pink,” Raina says.

“Very funny,” I say. “I did three miles. I’m getting back in shape.”

“Taking responsibility,” Ollie chimes in, which I find really irritating. “I’m helping her.”

I unpin my taupe ribbon and drop it on the counter. Ollie’s insisted they be worn at all times while in public, just in case anyone knows who I am. I’ve tried telling him that no one knows who I am — I have seventeen Twitter followers and most of them are twelve-year-olds who live in India — but he’s waved me off.

I unscrew the cap to a Diet Coke and drink deeply.

“That undoes all the healthy benefits of the gym,” Ollie says.

I ignore him, and Theo stops chewing whatever it was he was chewing and says:

“Hey.”

And though I have a million things to ask him, to share with him, instead I just say: “Hey.” And then the blood rushes to my already fluorescent-pink cheeks, and I hope that he thinks I’m just warm from the exercise, not warm from him.

“Give me one hundred crunches right now,” Ollie bellows, like he suddenly thinks we’re in the middle of a military drill.

“What?”

“You heard me. One hundred crunches.”

“In the kitchen?”

“Do you not see the floor?”