Элисон Скотч - The Theory of Opposites

“Job?” I ask.

“The Dare You! companion guide, remember? Daring Yourself to a Better Life: How These Simple Steps Will Put You on the Road to Happiness. ” She’s stymied by a Japanese man who doesn’t seem to know if he should move left or right. “Listen, I mean, I know it’s not for a Pulitzer or anything, but it’s a huge paycheck with a pretty sweet bonus.”

I remember now. I’d loved the book’s concept in theory—daring yourself to live outside the lines and change your life from within — though probably less so in practice. Also, I didn’t really believe in any of it. But still.

“I think it’s awesome,” I say. “Who needs a Pulitzer?”

“Your dad?” she says, and we both smile.

We hit the park traverse and stop in tandem for a horse and carriage plodding by us.

“Theo friended me two days ago,” I say, knowing that I have to tell her sometime.

“And you wait to tell me until now?” She ties her sweatshirt around her waist and rewraps her ponytail.

“I’ve been distracted. For one, Adult Diapers tanked. Hannah’s going to be a mess today.”

“Because of her coke habit.”

“No. Well, that too. She inadvertently sexted me at 4 a.m.”

Vanessa emits a deep-down belly laugh. “God, what a disaster she is.”

“But she’s still going to be a mess because the meeting was as horrendous as a meeting can go. Jesus, did the universe screw me this week.”

“The universe didn’t screw you, Willa. Hannah did. You can’t expect for life to go smoothly when you spend your nights inhaling the better half of a kilo of cocaine.”

“Well, I mean, maybe she doesn’t have control over…”

Vanessa halts abruptly and flashes a hand. “Stop. Just stop. Before you even start in with that crap from your dad. No one has a choice. We all lead the lives we were meant to live. Oh, bullshit, Willa. Just bullshit. Hannah has a choice to stop doing coke. She just doesn’t choose it.”

If you didn’t know Vanessa, you might think that these mantras are part of her new self-help gig, like she’s next in line to be the next guru for better living. But Vanessa’s been this strident for as long as I’ve known her. Own your choice. Live your life. Be brave. Be bold. She had the entire Nike campaign — Just Do It! — tacked to her college dorm wall when we first met. And besides, why argue with her now when I’m not even sure what I’d argue in return? Vanessa is sure about her truths, but I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know about free will and fate and destiny and my father’s New York Times bestseller, which was hailed as “the greatest self-help book since The Secret!,” even though I grew up swaddled in this mumbo-jumbo, swaddled tightly enough to sometimes feel suffocated, like if I didn’t break free, I could be smothered alive. But a lot of it made sense to me all the same. And besides, isn’t it easier not to upset the apple cart?

But if I said that aloud, Vanessa would tell me that there I go again , not owning my choice .

“Well, anyway,” I say, matching her step through the park. “Today is going to be damage-control, and Nicky’s coming tonight, and I’m still not pregnant, and so I forgot to mention Theo.”

“I’m sorry about the still-not-pregnant thing,” she says, meaning it.

“Ugh,” I moan and actually shake my fists at the sky. “Fuck you, universe!” A mom pushing a Bugaboo scowls at me and makes a sharp perpendicular turn away from us.

Vanessa shakes her head and grins, and I drop my chin to my chest.

“Actually, the truth is…I’m not even devastated by the whole not-pregnant thing. I know that I should be, but…” I watch the mom stride down the path, then loop under a bridge and disappear out of view. “But…maybe not everyone is meant to be a mother.” Maybe @nurseellen is right , I think.

“According to you, everyone is meant to be whatever he or she’s meant to be,” Vanessa says. It does sound ridiculous when she puts it that way.

“Touché,” I say. My shoelace has come untied. I crouch to fix it. “Also, I think Shawn might be cheating on me. But that’s probably insane. It’s probably nothing. Just, you know, an overreaction on my part.” I don’t meet her eyes until I find that I have to.

She holds my eyes for a beat, then offers me her hand, pulling me up.

“Sweetie, you never overreact. It’s not in your gene pool.”

I exhale and lose myself for a minute, staring at the expanse of buildings in front of me, their steel, their power, their unquestioning architecture. Life should be like that, I think, fully aware that my dad spent a lifetime proving this theory: one brick on top of the next, each with its place, each with its purpose. Eventually, you reach the highest floor, and you can stare down with the understanding how you got there.

There I go again, agreeing with my father. I find myself doing that sometimes, even when I wish that I knew better.

Hannah looks uncomfortably warm when I arrive in her office. She’s wearing a navy turtleneck better suited for February, and her cheeks are too pink, like the underbelly of a pig. For a second, I imagine her as bacon. Her hair is matted to her temples with a sheen of perhaps both sweat and some sort of day-old gel or mousse, if anyone still uses mousse anymore.

Hannah’s gaze rolls off me and moves to the files on her desk.

“Let’s not talk about the text,” she states flatly.

“Consider it never spoken about again.”

I fumble with my hands and try to think of something to say to make this any less awkward than it already is. But before I can, she starts:

“So when I told you to knock the pants off Dependables, you knew that I meant, like, do a good job, not a totally shitty one, right?”

“Pun intended?”

Her already puffy eyes narrow to slits.

“Sorry, sorry. Bad timing. Shawn made the joke last night.” I pull back the chair in front of her desk and sit. And that’s when I notice the empty boxes stacked in the corner.

“Are you moving offices?”

“If you call it that.”

She reaches for a poster that’s she’s torn down in haste and unceremoniously dumped on the floor. The masking tape loops now stick on the wall, limply hanging at half-mast. “Do you see this, Willa? Do you see this? Do you know what it says? ”

She shakes the poster, with its image of New Hampshire’s Mt. Washington, in my direction. And though the poster is crumbled and fraying now, and moving to and fro and actually totally unreadable, I know that I should nod my head and say yes. Besides, I do know what it says, what it reads: the image has been taped to her office wall since my first day here. She shakes her poster more virulently.

“Live free or die, Willa! Live free or die!”

She stands suddenly and throws the poster to the ground, kicking it for emphasis.

“I’m sorry, Hannah, I’m not following.” I think she may be suffering from a psychotic break? (“ There is no such thing as a breakdown in psychosis. Our psyches have been developed to withstand nearly any sort of physical or emotional strife. Do not let anyone else tell you otherwise! Any classification of ‘psychotic break’ is simply a diagnosis not to be able to confront reality! But reality is exactly what we must confront! ” — New York Times bestseller, Is It Really Your Choice? Why Your Entire Life May Be Out of Your Control, p. 58.)

“No, of course you’re not following. I told you to knock their pants off, and you so thoroughly did the opposite that they dropped us,” she shouts.

“Dropped us?” I offer meekly.