The Rom-Commers

Chapter Twenty-Eight

MY FATHER DIDN’Tdie.

Maybe that’s a spoiler—but we’ve all been through a lot so far. If you were anywhere near as worried as I was, I thought you might need some good news as soon as possible.

The surgery was successful, and once the pressure in his skull was relieved, he made a brisk recovery—all things considered. All signs indicated he’d be back to his old self in fairly good time. Or as much of his old self as he could be with a hole in his head.

We owed it all to Mrs. Otsuka’s grandson’s quick thinking and calm presence of mind.

What a blessing of a next-door neighbor.

If they hadn’t shown up when they did—if we’d lost any more time than we had—I might be telling a very different story.

I said this to my dad over Jell-O in his room that evening, when he’d been out of recovery several hours. Sylvie was in the room, too, and I averted my eyes from her presence so relentlessly that she finally excused herself to go look for a cup of coffee.

My dad’s sweet face was bruised and swollen and cut, and his head was bandaged and partially shaved, and it was hard to look him in the face. Instead I just kept squeezing his hand and thinking about how I’d know it anywhere.

He had a fuzzy blue blanket Salvador had brought from home on his lap, and he said, “I’m so sorry I scared you, sweetheart.”

“Thank god Mrs. Otsuka found you.”

“Mrs. Otsuka didn’t find me, she was with me.”

“I thought she discovered you just after you fell.”

My dad shook his head. “She was beside me when I fell. We were taking the stairs together.”

This seemed like a pretty fine point, but okay.

“You know those bedraggled teachers on the first floor who have eight kids?”

“I think they have three kids—but okay.”

“Kenji was with us because we were dropping him off to watch cartoons at their place for the evening while we went for a bite of dinner.”

I nodded agreeably, like that was a pleasant but not super-relevant detail.

But then my dad gave me a funny little smile that flipped all the lights on in my brain.

“Wait!” I gasped—raising both hands to my mouth. “Were you—?”

My dad didn’t say anything, but his eyes twinkled.

“Hold on! You’re saying—?”

This time, a pleased-with-himself shrug.

“You?” I asked. “And Mrs. Otsuka?”

My dad tapped his nose, like Bingo.

“You were going on a date?” I asked. “With each other?”

“Yep.”

“You’re dating? You’re, like, boyfriend-and-girlfriend?”

“More like late-in-life companions,” he said, “but that’s the basic gist.”

“When did this happen?”

My dad kept wrestling with insuppressible smiles. “Well,” he said, “you know. She lost her husband a few years back.”

“Yes,” I said. “I know.” Then, for proof: “Mr. Otsuka.”

“Exactly,” my dad said. “And ever since then—over a respectful time frame, of course—we just kind of developed a little flirtation.”

The pieces snapped together in my mind. “Is that why you’ve been teaching Kenji how to play the harmonica?”

“He’s been a little homesick.”

“And that’s why she kept having everyone over for dinner?”

“She’s a phenomenal cook.”

“And that’s why she kept stopping by with flowers from the community garden?”

Now the smile he’d been suppressing broke through. “It’s not her fault,” he said. “I’m just so irresistible.”

“Dad!” I said, nodding. “I’m very impressed.”

“Still got it,” he said, with a little wink.

“I love this for you,” I said. And I did.

“You know what I keep thinking?” my dad said then.

“What?”

“Your mom would love her.”

My eyes sprung with tears.

Then he added, “And Kenji, too. He’s a great kid. He wants to be a magician.”

“She would love them both,” I said. “And she’d be happy for you.”

“I think so, too,” my dad said, nodding like he’d given it some thought. “Good people have to stick together.”

IT’S HARD TOmaintain the silent treatment with your sister when you’re the joint guardians of a parent in the ICU, but I was up to the challenge.

I directed all my questions to Salvador, like he was my translator, and whenever Sylvie was in the room, I averted my eyes. Through Salvador, we agreed to trade off nights at the hospital until our dad was ready to transfer to rehab. I insisted on taking the first shift that first night—still unshowered, and still in my WRITERS DO IT ON THE PAGE ensemble, which allowed me to extend the enjoyable feeling of having been wronged. Not only was Sylvie guilty of attempted patricide and saying the meanest-thing-ever to me, she also wouldn’t let me go home to take a shower.

What a monster.

The next day, after Sylvie relieved me of my shift, I was heading home to change clothes after more hours than I cared to count, when I arrived at our apartment door to see someone sitting beside it, elbows resting on knees, head bent, like he’d been there a while.

Charlie.

As soon as he saw me, he scrambled to his feet and came as close to me as he dared, an intense, just-flew-to-Texas-without-telling-you-and-showed-up-on-your-doorstep expression on his face.

My first horrified thought was that I was still wearing his ridiculous sweatshirt. And I hadn’t showered. And I still had no underwear on. And my hair probably looked like I’d been electrocuted.

How humiliating.

But my second, more forceful thought was: Wait a minute. Who cares?

“Hey,” Charlie said then, with a little wave like he was striking up a conversation.

We were not striking up a conversation. “What are you doing here, Charlie?”

He looked at me like there were a hundred things he desperately wanted to say—but he couldn’t say any of them. He hadn’t shaved. His hair was mussed at its maximum level. He was also—I now realized—still wearing his same sweats from the last time we saw each other.

It was a basic question, but he couldn’t answer.

It’s kind of excruciating to watch words fail a writer.

But I let it play out.

Finally, Charlie bent down to unzip the backpack by his feet. He rifled through it, pulling out my strawberry hoodie. Then he stood and stepped closer.

“You forgot this,” he said, handing it to me.

Why was the sight of that red, fuzzy old friend so comforting? I took it, of course. But I said, “You came here to bring me my lucky hoodie?”

“I thought you might want it.”

He thought I might want it? So he flew halfway across the country? Wasn’t that why they invented FedEx?

“Why are you really here, Charlie?” I asked.

“When I woke up and found the house empty, I thought you’d left. Left left—for real. But then I heard from Logan about your dad.”

“I meant to text you,” I said—trying to stay explanatory instead of apologetic—“but things have been really crazy.”

“Of course—of course,” Charlie said. “I get it. I was just worried about you.”

“You were worried about me, so you flew to Texas?”

Charlie nodded, like Yeah. “You weren’t answering your phone.”

Of course not. “I was at the hospital.”

“How is your dad?”

“He’s fine,” I said. Depending on how you defined fine. But that was my story, and I was sticking to it. “He’s fine, I’m fine, everybody’s fine,” I said. Then: “I don’t understand why you’re here.”

“I just wanted to—check in.”

“Ah,” I said, in a tone like flying halfway across the country to check in like this was patently bananas. “Well, then. Mission accomplished.”

“More than that,” Charlie corrected. “I wanted to comfort you.”

“Comfort me?”

Charlie nodded.

“You can’t.”

Charlie frowned. “I can’t? That’s it?”

I shrugged. “That’s it.”

“But you’re having a tough time,” Charlie said.

“I’m aware of that.”

“I can’t just let you go through all this alone.”

“Sure you can.”

“But,” Charlie said, “I don’t want to.”

“Look,” I said, too tired to help him work through his thoughts on this—but somehow forced to do it, anyway. “I said I liked you, and you said no. I blatantly propositioned you, and you said no. At every chance, you’ve made it clear that you want to remain work colleagues at best with me. That’s fine. I’m not fighting you. But work colleagues work together. They aren’t friends, and they aren’t confidants—and they sure as hell don’t fly across the country to bring each other sweatshirts. We’re not in a relationship where we fly anywhere for each other. And we’re not in a relationship like that”—I paused for effect—“because that’s the way you wanted it.”

“But that was before your dad got sick.”

“Why does that change things?”

“I don’t want to not be there for you.”

“That’s a heck of a double negative.”

“I hate the thought that you’re suffering.”

“People suffer all the time, Charlie.”

“But it’s you,” he said, like I was something special.

“Sure. Fine. It’s me.”

“There has to be something I can do.”

“Yes,” I said. “You can leave.”

But Charlie shook his head at that. “I can’t. I don’t think I can.”

I met his eyes. “You have to.”

“But don’t you—need someone right now?”

“Of course! Obviously! Anyone—and everyone! Just not you.”

Charlie frowned, like that made no sense. “Why isn’t someone better than no one?”

I sighed. Did I really have to explain this, too?

Apparently so.

“I really liked you,” I said. “And you hard-core rejected me. So seeing you doesn’t make me feel better. It makes me feel worse.”

I watched the understanding overtake him.

“There’s nothing I can do for you.” Charlie said, trying on that idea for size.

“Nothing,” I confirmed.

“Nothing,” Charlie agreed. “Not even”—and here he cringed a little, anticipating my answer—“a hug?”

I gave him a look. “To quote a famous writer we both know: ‘Absolutely not. No way in hell.’”

Charlie nodded, like Got it.

But he was still lingering there. Like despite it all, he couldn’t bear to leave.

To be honest, I lingered, too.

Would I have liked Charlie to stay? Could I have used that hug? Was I tempted beyond description to just bring him inside and swaddle myself in his arms? Did I wish like hell that I could still feel about him the way I did before I knew how he felt about me?

All yes.

But there was no misunderstanding. I had fully, unabashedly offered myself to him, and he had clearly, plainly said no.

“The only thing you can do for me,” I said then, “is to get out of my sight and stay there.”

AND SO CHARLIEleft.

He left, and I got back to my life.

Almost—almost—as if those surreal weeks in LA had never happened.

Back at home, in our apartment, with my dad to look after, and Sylvie to ignore, and Salvador still living with us (now banished to the couch), and a whole new relationship to begin with Mrs. Otsuka, I was able to keep busy.

LA started to feel more like something I’d dreamed.

My dad spent a full ten days in the hospital, and—yes, I can hear how odd this sounds—it was a surprisingly pleasant time. That hospital was really a remarkable place. We got a surprise upgrade to a VIP room, for example, because my dad’s surgery was the ten-thousandth one they’d performed. And that room was part of some ongoing study about the impact of foliage on surgery outcomes, and so his windowsill was filled edge to edge with jade plants, and aloe vera, and bromeliads and prayer plants. Not to mention a gorgeous leafy shrublike beauty that exactly matched the fabric of Sylvie’s tropical maxi dress called Monstera deliciosa.

They asked us to keep them watered, so I got a little misting bottle and made one of my signature sticker charts.

And I guess this is VIP life, but the nurse’s station brought in astonishing, delicious food for lunch every day and insisted that we share with them. “It’s too much,” they insisted. “It’ll go to waste.” And so we were forced out of politeness to down steaming bowls of gourmet ramen, crunchy catfish po’boys, juicy gourmet burgers, gyros dripping with aioli.

I’m telling you, this hospital ward ate like takeout food royalty.

“Isn’t this expensive?” I kept asking.

“It’s the administrators.” The nurses would shrug. “They pamper us so bad.”

And who was I to argue?

My dad and I had spent a hell of a lot of time in various hospitals over the years. I could describe some of them down to the ceiling tiles. But we’d never seen anything like this before. Plants? In a hospital room? Free-roaming massage therapists in the hallways? Ice cream delivery on a three-wheeled scooter?

Insane.

But we sure as heck weren’t complaining.

Mrs. Otsuka stayed for hours every day, fussing over my dad, and reading to him from his new book on Norse mythology, while Kenji and I made origami animals to put on the shelves among the plants—frogs, foxes, whales, pigs. He had a whole zoo’s worth memorized, and he patiently walked me through the folds—his turning out like something you’d see in an instructional tutorial, and mine a bit more like wadded-up gum wrappers.

Even still, he kept saying, “You’re definitely getting it,” and I let myself feel encouraged—though I didn’t care too much about being terrible at origami. What I cared about was the companionable feeling that sitting together making things gave me. Comforting in the way that having a project with someone is comforting. Safe in the way that gathering with others always makes you feel safe. The way that being together was just, on some fundamental level, always better than being alone.

It was the most family-like vibe I’d felt in years.

Not to mention, there are conversations that happen sometimes when you’re waiting around that would never happen if you were just scurrying from errand to errand like we all do most of the time. There are conversations that can happen only after waiting has slowed things down.

One night, late, after a nurse had checked my dad’s surgical dressing and his vitals and then left the two of us alone, I had the bright idea to show my dad the video of us that Logan had sent to Charlie, way back when all this started. I thought at first that we’d find it funny, and we did—me and my dad doing our handstands, Sylvie’s little chipmunk voice, my mom scolding Logan—but by the time we’d finished laughing, all we were left with was tears.

“I’m sorry,” I said, as we both pawed at our cheeks. “Maybe that was better left unexcavated.”

“No, no,” my dad said, his chin still trembling a bit. “I’m glad I got to see it.”

I put my phone away.

Next, my dad reached up to touch the bandage on his head. “This wasn’t Sylvie’s fault, you know.”

He was looking for emphatic agreement. But… I mean, it kind of was.

When I didn’t answer, he turned to meet my eyes.

“It wasn’t her fault,” he said, leaning forward a bit for my full attention, “any more than the rockfall was yours.”

My eyes stung at that, and I looked down at my lap.

“Things happen, Emma,” my dad said, reaching for my hand. “Nobody can see the future.”

I kept my eyes down. “But—” I said. I felt a tightness rising in my throat, and then, without, of course, needing to specify who she was, I spoke out loud the one little sentence that had been haunting me in whispers for ten years: “But she wanted to go to the beach.”

This was the thought that woke me in the night. If I hadn’t been selfish—if I’d just given my mom what she wanted instead of being all about me—she’d have been on a striped beach towel with a book at the shore a thousand miles away on the day that rockfall happened. She’d have been nowhere even close. Our lives would’ve continued blithely on. Everything would’ve been different.

She wanted to go to the beach.

My dad squeezed my hand.

“I want to ask for your forgiveness,” I said to my dad then.

He looked at me. “You can’t have it.”

“What?”

“I won’t forgive you,” he said. “You only forgive people who’ve done something wrong.” He tugged my hand a little closer and shook his head at me. “Emma. You never did anything wrong.”

But I argued with him. “Sylvie said I killed her.” Was I trying to get her in trouble?

“When did she say that?”

“As I was racing to the airport.”

My dad studied me. “And you’re going to hold her to it, huh?”

He had a point. Was I going to clutch onto something mean she’d said in a moment of panic forever? What would be the point? It didn’t seem like a choice that would benefit anyone. And yet: She’d said it, and I’d heard it.

I wasn’t sure where to go from there.

I lowered my voice. “She’s not wrong, though.” And then I said the thing we’d all been thinking all along. “I wanted to go rock climbing. I insisted on going. If it hadn’t been for me, we’d have been nowhere near that rockfall. If it hadn’t been for me, she wouldn’t have died.”

But maybe it wasn’t the thing we’d all been thinking—because my dad sighed like he couldn’t even follow my reasoning. “That makes no sense, Emma,” he said. “Mom could have gone to the beach instead and drowned in a riptide. Or been run over by a drunk driver on the seawall. Or hit by a stray firecracker. Or bitten by a snake near the dunes.”

I frowned.

“There is absolutely no way to predict the infinite random forces in the world any of our choices will expose us to. How paralyzing would it be to even try?”

And then there was a seismic shift—for both of us—in our thinking about me.

Was that what I’d been doing? Trying desperately to predict the unpredictable and avoid the unavoidable? Was that why I’d been so willing—or, if I’m really honest, relieved—to stay home all this time? Had I decided in some place deep below my consciousness that the best way to avoid disaster was to just never do anything?

“You can’t live like that, Em,” my dad said.

I could have denied it, I guess. But it was late. And quiet. And we were already telling truths.

“I don’t know how not to,” I said.

He studied me. “I think California was a start. In more ways than one.”

At that, I let down the bed railing so I could scoot closer and lean in to rest my head on my dad’s chest. I could hear his heart beating a soothing rhythm, and I listened for a minute before I said, “How do you do it?”

“Do what?” my dad asked, his voice muffled through his ribs.

“How do you find a way to be okay?”

“Well,” my dad said, frowning. “I had to be, didn’t I?”

He squeezed my hand.

Then he said, “Things were very dark for me after Mom died. But I knew you and Sylvie needed me to find the light somehow.”

“I didn’t know things got dark for you. You always seemed… okay.”

“It was my job to seem okay.”

“You didn’t want to talk to me about it?”

“You were a kid.”

“Sylvie was a kid,” I said. “I was—”

“A girl who’d just lost her mom.”

Okay. That wasn’t wrong.

“I decided that if I just held on, things would get better. I wasn’t sure how much better, but better. And when you’ve seen worse, better is good enough.”

“But how? How did you hold on?”

“I just got up every day, and went to bed every night, and tried to be a good person in between.”

“That can’t be all there is to it,” I said.

My dad took a slow breath, and then he said, “Somewhere during that time, I got very lucky and I accidentally figured something out.”

“What?”

“Whatever story you tell yourself about your life, that’s the one that’ll be true.”

I lifted my head to give that idea my full attention.

My dad went on, “So if I say, ‘This terrible thing happened, and it ruined my life’—then that’s true. But if I say, ‘This terrible thing happened, but, as crazy as it sounds, it made me better,’ then that’s what’s true.”

“You believe you’re better? Since the rockfall?”

“I know I am,” my dad said, with so much conviction I had to believe him. “I’m wiser, I’m kinder, I’m funnier, I’m more compassionate. I can play at least ten instruments one-handed.” He held up his good hand for us both to look at. “I’m more aware of how fragile and precious it all is. I’m more thankful, too—for every little blessing. A ladybug on the windowsill. A succulent sprouting a flower. A pear so ripe it just dissolves into juicy sweetness in your mouth.”

Maybe this wasn’t polite, but I really wanted to understand him. “But don’t you miss Mom?”

My dad gave me a sad smile. “I do. Of course. And would I give up all this personal growth to see her again for even an hour and just clamp her into my arms? In a second. But that’s not a choice. All we have is what we have.”

“I miss her, too,” I whispered.

My dad squeezed my hand. “It’s okay,” he said then. “Here’s another thing I accidentally figured out: happiness is always better with a little bit of sadness.”

BY THE TIMEmy dad was in a pretty stable place with his postsurgical health, Sylvie and Salvador decided to make an announcement: they were getting married.

A surprise express elopement. In twenty-four hours. In Dad’s hospital room.

“We’re eloping,” Salvador explained.

“But we’re just doing it here,” Sylvie added.

“We don’t want to wait,” Salvador said.

“We just want to start our lives together,” Sylvie said.

“Sooner—not later.”

Of course they did.

“Works for me,” my dad said.

I wasn’t sure if it worked for me. And I was just wondering if there were a way for me to call in sick to this particular family event… when Sylvie asked me to be her maid of honor.

“What?” I said, as she dragged me out of the room to the hallway.

“You have to let me apologize to you,” Sylvie said then.

“You’ve already apologized like ten times.”

“But you never accept it!”

She wasn’t wrong.

That’s when Sylvie burst into tears. “I don’t know what else to do,” she said now, her face getting blotchy and her voice starting to rasp. “I didn’t mean to say it. I was just—I don’t know—scared and exhausted and trying to defend myself. I don’t think that. Nobody thinks that. It just popped into my head and I said it—more because it was mean than because it was true.”

“Does that make it better?” I asked.

“I regretted the words even as I was saying them. There’s no excuse. I don’t know how to make it right. But I’m begging you to forgive me. Please, please! You’re my favorite person. You’re my hero! Please tell me that I didn’t ruin our relationship forever in one stupid moment.”

I mean, I had figured I’d have to forgive her at some point. I just thought I’d give myself a few years.

But now she was suddenly getting married. Tomorrow. And if I didn’t let this all go, we’d spend the rest of our lives knowing that I was mad at her at her wedding.

What choice did I have, really?

“Fine,” I said. “I forgive you.” And as soon as I said the words, I felt them.

Sylvie threw her arms around me.

“But if you ever say anything like that to me again, I’m moving to Alaska. And I’m taking Dad.”

It was that easy.

Because she was the only baby sister I had.

Anyway, we had a sudden surprise wedding to plan.

It gave us a project, honestly. Twenty-four hours to hang some twinkle lights and fluff some tissue-paper roses. Mrs. Otsuka offered to make Sylvie’s bouquet with zinnias from the community garden, and Sylvie cried and hugged her.

We got grocery-store cupcakes and sparkling cider and asked my dad to play “Here Comes the Bride” on his harmonica.

Sylvie wore the dress our mother had worn at our parents’ wedding—not a wedding gown per se, but a simple white dress she’d loved—along with her favorite cowgirl boots. Salvador wore a ruby-red tux they’d found while thrifting. We got Dad a little tweed driving cap to cover his surgical dressing, and he put a gray jacket over his hospital gown and tied a silk scarf like an ascot. Kenji arrived in a little suit and clip-on tie with an origami flower pinned to his lapel for a boutonniere, and Mrs. Otsuka wore a salmon-colored pantsuit that was the exact color of love. And I let Sylvie put me in a chiffon bridesmaid’s dress with bell sleeves she’d found for three dollars at the Salvation Army.

The hospital chaplain performed the ceremony—which was mercifully short and very sweet—and we lit a candle beside a photo of our mom on the hospital tray table. Our dad “walked” Sylvie down the aisle by joining the couple’s two hands together. Sylvie and Salvador wrote their own vows, and read them aloud… and I didn’t even judge them.

I just took the high road right past all those mixed metaphors and clichés.

Love is love, after all.

Even for nonwriters.

And as those two kids kissed each other and pledged an astonishing, gorgeous, hope-filled promise to take care of each other for the rest of their lives… even though I never cried at weddings, I wept like a deluge. I wept because it was all too much—but in the best way. I wept with gratitude and grief and joy all at once—and because my mom would have done the same, if only she could’ve been here. I wept because my sister had found a genuinely good-hearted man, and because Mrs. Otsuka sensed halfway through that my dad was thirsty and slipped over to bring him some water. I wept because there was nothing cuter than my dad in his jaunty little cap—smiling through his bruises like a man who’d never seen a day of sorrow. I wept because halfway through the vows, Kenji slid his hand into mine in that sweet, unselfconscious way that little boys do. I wept because the nurses were all weeping, and because it was such a miracle to have something to celebrate, and because we were at a wedding right now instead of a funeral. I wept for luck and for beauty and for kindness—and for the magic of being alive.

And then we had a dance party.

Right there in the hospital room.

It was all just starting to wind down when one of the nurses stepped out into the hallway—and started shrieking like a teenager at a Beatles concert.

And we all rushed out…

And I know you’ll never believe me…

But there, looking around the empty nurses’ station—in a pair of Levi’s 501s and a T-shirt that could just as easily have been body paint—was Jack Stapleton.

The guy on the billboard outside the hospital. That Jack Stapleton.

I knew, like everybody knew, that Jack Stapleton lived on a ranch outside of town. And he had a well-publicized history of randomly showing up to serenade healthcare workers of all kinds in gratitude for the good work they do in the world. So it wasn’t an utterly impossible coincidence.

No more impossible than other impossible things, anyway.

Jack Stapleton randomly showed up at my sister’s last-minute hospital elopement. And then he stayed. He sang karaoke with every single person there, and he toasted the bride and groom, and he took a hundred selfies—even one with me.

He didn’t seem to remember me, but it was fine.

He might not’ve been quite as starstruck to meet me that day in LA as I had been to meet him.

And then, after Jack Stapleton had taken off, leaving a trail of swooning nurses in his wake, and after Mrs. Otsuka had taken Kenji home for bedtime, and after the bride and groom had waved and hugged their way down the hallway… just as my dad was about to turn in for the night, he squeezed my hand.

“That was fun,” he said. “Who’s next?”

“Not it,” I said.

“How’s your writer doing?”

“He’s fine,” I said. And then amended: “I assume he’s fine.”

“Not still in touch with the writer?”

I shrugged. “He turned out to be disappointing.”

My dad nodded. “Most people are.”

“I liked him,” I clarified. “But he didn’t like me back.”

My dad was appalled on my behalf. “Then he’s much worse than disappointing! He’s a dolt.”

I’d never really appreciated the world dolt before. “Thanks, Dad.”

“We’ll find you somebody good, sweetheart,” my dad said.

“We definitely will,” I said, not believing it at all.

And then my adorably out-of-touch-with-pop-culture dad gestured with his thumb at the door that Jack Stapleton had walked out of not fifteen minutes before and said, “How about that Jake Singleton guy? He’s not bad looking. I think he’s got a future.”