Элисон Скотч - The Theory of Opposites

There are footsteps, and then there are sneakers, and jeans, and his Wired2Go graphic tee.

“No, hey, it’s me,” he says. “Dubrovsky called me, too.”

And then Shawn’s in front of me. Standing in our old bedroom in our old life though everything’s changed now.

It’s me, he said. Like I should have been expecting him, like his text was warning enough that he’d be rewriting the rules all over again.

He extends his arms and relieves me of the weight of the box, lifting it easily into his own, carrying the burden for both of us.

“My flight was delayed,” he offers. “I would have been here sooner to help out. I hope I’m not too late.”

We walk to Hop Lee, just like we used to, and we order too much Chinese food and egg rolls, just like we used to, though we don’t kiss to get a freebie like we used to way back when. Instead, we sit in a booth by the window, and I try to think of how to start talking to my husband. Shawn fiddles with his phone and types something quickly, then deletes it, then types something else, then finally sets it aside and says:

“So.”

“So.” I laugh nervously, though it sounds more like a mule in labor. “I wasn’t exactly expecting you. Your text wasn’t exactly conclusive.”

“No.” He pauses, as if I have any idea what he’s trying to convey. He opens up a pack of crispy noodles, the plastic crinkling to fill the dead air and dumps a mound in his hand. Finally: “I realized this is crazy. What we’re doing.”

“What are we doing?”

“I guess I don’t know.” He examines the noodles in his palm, not really eating them.

“I thought that is what you wanted.”

“It was,” he considers. “But I was being an idiot.”

“Did Erica Stoppard dump you?” I say quickly, too quickly, until I realize what I’ve said and what it’s betrayed.

“What?” He looks shocked, then kind of surprised, then delighted. “You kept tabs on me? On Facebook?”

“Well, I mean…you’re still in my feed. I wasn’t exactly keeping tabs. ”

“It’s fine.” He waves his hand. “No biggie.” I open my own set of soup noodles and think: so he wasn’t keeping tabs on me? Then he notes: “No…Erica and I…we work together. It wasn’t anything.”

Which is just ambiguous enough for me to feel stupid for asking anything else and not ambiguous enough for me to have any clue what he’s talking about. Erica Stoppard is exactly like our aforementioned box of stuff.

“So you came back,” I say finally.

“Here I am,” he says in response.

“Because you wanted to or because Dubrovsky called?”

He sighs. “Dubrovsky called, and I also wanted to. It was dumb what I suggested — this break.”

Lucy brings over our egg rolls and some egg drop soup.

“You two. Why the sad faces? You two always so in love. I want to see in love!” She gestures like we should kiss, so we both smile awkwardly and then I blow Shawn an air kiss, and he does some extremely weird thing where he pretends to catch it, and Lucy gets this really odd look on her face and says:

“Moo shu coming in five minutes.” And she walks off.

“So, what you’re saying is that we’re fine?” I ask when she leaves. “Because this seems very out-of-nowhere, and I’m a little caught off-guard.”

“Look, Willa.” He stares at his egg roll for a beat and then dunks it in the duck sauce. “I was being a dick. I don’t know why I did what I did…but I did it. Sometimes, you do stupid things and you have no clue why, you know? Just that you wish that you hadn’t done them.”

I said no to Seattle.

“Anyway,” Shawn continues. “I guess I needed to get something out of my system. Like, I wasn’t sure if I was okay that ‘this was it.’” He makes air quotes (why does everyone I know make air quotes?) with one of the egg rolls still in his hand. “Like, you know. How a guy in his forties dumps his wife and buys a Porsche? This was my mini-version of that…I don’t know. I felt like I was suffocating.”

“And you don’t anymore?”

“I guess I just miss being married.” He stuffs the egg roll in his mouth, making the chipmunk face that I used to love so very much.

I smile, though I can’t force a laugh.

Wired2Go has put Shawn up in a suite at the Tribeca Grand. He invites me down to the hotel and up to his room for a drink, and since he’s my husband, I say yes. His room is on the top floor and has views of the Hudson and the lights beyond. I stare out the picture window until I see his reflection behind me. He offers me a Reisling, which has always been my favorite.

“They’re sending up some dessert,” he says.

“So Wired2Go is treating you really well.”

He pauses before answering. “They actually asked me to move there. To help launch their global initiative.”

“Wow,” I say. “That’s amazing. You’re rewriting your master plan.”

He cocks his head like he doesn’t get it, so I offer:

“It’s the book we’re writing. Like…changing your fate, shifting the pieces around so maybe your entire life will shift with it.”

He smiles at me, breaking my heart just a little, but opening it up a little, too. The familiarity of how his stubble hugs his jaw, of how his dimples pock his cheeks, of his genuine sense of absolution now. I can read it all over his face, and I wish that I didn’t have the past two months reminding me that the pieces have indeed shifted for me too, and that perhaps that’s not something you can shift back. In June, before his rules, before the implosion of everything, before the book and inertia and guts, and yes, also before Theo, this plain open plea of his face would have been enough.

“I thought you didn’t believe in fate?” Shawn says now.

“I never knew what to believe in.”

He nods. “I guess that’s true. I guess maybe I didn’t either.”

He sits on the couch, and I follow his lead, sinking in, careful not to spill the wine.

“This is nice,” he says. “I’ve missed it. I was thinking….maybe I should do it.” He catches himself. “I mean, what I’m trying to say is that maybe we should do it. It could be a fresh start.”

“A fresh start for us?”

“Well, yeah,” he says. “We don’t have an apartment here, your family is a mess…why not leave? Why not make a break for it? Start over. It wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world. We’d still be us. We’d still be together. I guess, like you just said, we could ‘rewrite our master plan’ together.”

“We could,” I say. And at that exact moment, though I’m not sure why, I think of Theo.

“I made a list,” Shawn states, reaching for his laptop on the coffee table. “Of all the reasons you should come.”

In the movies, you sometimes see the heroine press pause, freeze everyone around her, and break the third wall. This is what I do now in my mind. I press pause on Shawn and try to be still, try to talk to the camera and break my own third wall. I consider Vanessa’s theory of opposites. That sometimes, you need to run in the other direction of what you think is meant to be. That running — jumping — flying — can change everything.

I slow my mental electricity, and I try to listen to what my inner heroine would tell me, but I can’t resolve anything conclusive.

“It’s okay,” I say to Shawn, unpressing my pause button. “You don’t have to read it to me. You don’t need to give me a list.”

He furrows his forehead. The old me, the old Shilla, would have very much preferred a list.

“I just wanted to be prepared. Do the research. Convince you if you needed convincing.”