Элисон Скотч - The Theory of Opposites

Convince me to follow him. The opposite of Theo.

We fall asleep fully clothed in the king-sized bed with the 600-count Egyptian cotton sheets. He kisses my cheek goodnight, and I shift to the other side of the bed, already heavy, already dreaming.

When I wake the next morning, the sun is streaming through the slivers of the blackout shades, and it takes me a few seconds to orient myself, to remember that suddenly, Shawn is here, and maybe I’ll still get everything I wanted.

I rise and splash water on my face and find him pacing in the living room of the suite. He holds up a finger and gestures to his earpiece, then mouths, “Conference call.”

I nod, and he waves toward the cart of room service that he’s ordered. He whispers, “Eat!”

I pull off the silver lid of the serving dish to discover eggs. Shawn has ordered me scrambled eggs while I was sleeping.

He covers the mouthpiece of his Bluetooth and kisses the top of my head.

“It’s Sunday. We always have eggs on Sunday.”

Text from: Vanessa Pines

To: Willa Chandler-Golden

Hey. Call me tmrw. Finishing up draft of early chaps. Ready 4 final dare. R u?

Email from: Shawn Golden

To: Willa Chandler-Golden

Subject: List

W — I know you didn’t need to see this, but just in case. I’ve attached the list of reasons. I don’t want you to think I’m not serious about this. Working all night but talk tomorrow?

(1 attachment)

Voicemail from: Minnie Golden

Willa, sweetheart, I must have missed you at Raina’s earlier. Nancy and I are heading back to Palm Beach today. Please check in on your father. I believe that his “nurse” may be “on vacation.” I am concerned for his well-being but am done checking in on him. Raina is so busy, and Ollie can’t leave the house — ooh, did I tell you that I met Jennifer Aniston this morning, and now she is following me on Tweeter? — oh, that was exciting. Anyway. I love you, sweetheart. I know this is a growing period for you. I understand more than you know. You have such a full heart. Just make sure that it’s shining brightly.

My father is smoking a cigarette on his balcony when I arrive. The doorman has buzzed me up, but I use my key anyway, the same one I’ve had since childhood, to let myself in.

“If your mother sent you to ensure that I haven’t keeled over just yet, you can go home,” he says, without even turning around, the smoke billowing around him on an exhale.

“Smoking will kill you.”

He flails his arm rather than state the obvious: everyone dies. Get with the program, Willa.

I coax the sliding glass door over a few inches and join him on his post.

“Mom did send me,” I say, batting my hand in front of my face, diffusing the smoke, suddenly feeling queasy at the thought of more confrontation. I swallow hard on my gag reflex, and mostly, it passes for now. “Can you put that out?”

A muscle in his jaw flickers, but he stubs out the remaining nub and tosses it over the ledge, which I believe is technically littering, but you have to pick your battles.

“Your mother has a new life now. With her lesbian friend. What’s her name, Nanette?”

“Nancy. I’m pretty sure you know that her name is Nancy.” And then, because I’m my father’s daughter and feel just a twinge of pity for him, I add: “I think it’s just a phase.”

“It’s her life.” He crams his hands into the pockets of his robe and shuffles back inside the apartment. “I just thought she could give me the common courtesy that forty years of marriage bring, that one expects when one’s heart fails! That she would show up. And help.”

He lifts a bottle of Scotch from the bar, but struggles to open it, so just plunks it back down.

“You told her to go.”

“Well, taking a lover and ending a marriage are two different things!” he says. Then: “I am not sure you should be here. With the papers I have served.”

“We should talk about those. I’m not sure the papers have much legal merit. Also, Dad, we’re family.” I am trying to be kind now, though I don’t know why. But he is so frail and so pathetic, and he is my father.

“Well, how about the merit that I deserve?” he says. “Can you imagine what people are saying? That Richard Chandler’s own middle child is making a mockery of his life’s work? You don’t have a life’s work yet, William! You can’t know how it feels!” He wrestles with the Scotch bottle again and this time, comes out victorious. “Did I do something wrong with you, William? Did I not love you enough? Is this about that ridiculous skateboard that you always held against me?”

I didn’t even realize he remembered the skateboard. I don’t say anything in response, and instead, focus on my breath, focus on not puking.

“Well, William? What is it? Do you have no answer? What could possibly have gone so wrong in your terrible childhood with two parents who loved you, and two siblings who loved you, and the finest education and books and toys and everything else?”

My tears come before anything else.

Then quickly after that: “ Why wasn’t I your life’s work?”

Finally, posing the question that needs to be asked.

He looks at me like he’s never considered this before, like of all his theories and philosophies and musings, this one somehow slipped through. Or maybe he just thinks I’m insane, to hold such expectations of a parent to his child.

He sits now, slowly, as if sudden movements might literally stop his heart.

“You think that I failed you. I’m not so thick-headed that I can’t see that you think I’ve failed you.”

“You would say you didn’t?”

“I would say that it doesn’t matter,” he says flatly. “But you already know that. What I would say. So what I don’t understand is this: if you are so intent on humiliating me…”

“That is not my…”

He flashes his hand — don’t — and I fall silent.

“I will rephrase, because you are. You are humiliating me. If this is your path, then stop seeking my approval. You’re not going to get it. You will never have my blessing on this. In fact, just the opposite.”

Now it’s my own heart that’s shattered. I understand the weight of his words, what they really mean to say, even if he — just like his daughter — isn’t so good at saying them. After so many years, I should be furious, not crushed, at how easily he caves, how quickly he abandons unconditional love. I consider my own parenting instincts and wonder how I can ever be sure that I won’t do the same. But rage doesn’t come at the realization of the extent of his selfishness. Only devastation. I stand there in my childhood home, and I’m gutted all the way through. Heartbroken. I read about it way back when, back at the Bodies exhibit. The human heart. There are so many ways to destroy it.

After what feels like an eternity, I stutter: “So if I do the book…you and I…am I understanding correctly that writing this book will mean…”

I cannot even manage the words. To have spent a lifetime in his shadow, only to be proven disposable when I’m finally trying to step into the sun.

He eases back in his armchair and gazes, unblinking, at the ceiling for so long that I start to worry that he’s gone into cardiac arrest again. But then he says,“I don’t know what will become of you and me, William. You’re my daughter, and that’s blood. But this is something different. This is fate. And that’s not up to me.”

I linger in my father’s vestibule until I have no more tears to shed. Until I’ve thrown up all of my guts right there in the hallway. And then, I take one step away from him, then another, because it’s not like I have any other choice. If the map you’ve been given suddenly proves unreliable, you have to write you own. Even if you’re lost in the nothingness of dead space, even if you’re sure there’s not really a way out.