Chapter 27
Will wakes up a little after 8:00 a.m. on Saturday, and for the first time since Rachel left, he turns off the TV. He purposefully left it on overnight because the room felt too quiet otherwise. He also left his ringer set as loud as it would go in case history repeated itself and she decided to reach out in the predawn hours. If something as simple as a U up? had come through, he likely would’ve knocked the phone off the nightstand down into the dark sea that was the carpeted floor in his scramble to respond. Although the need to reply never arose, hoping that it would only added to the swirl of thoughts that kept waking him back up whenever he managed to drift off for a few minutes.
When will Rachel be ready to talk?
What do I do if it’s time to go home and I still haven’t heard from her?
This episode of How I Met Your Mother would be pretty funny if I weren’t perched above a yawning chasm of despair.
How long will it take Rachel to forgive me? Can she ever forgive me?
What does it mean for us if she can’t?
The notion that he did something irreparable makes him uneasy. His actions were very stupid, but he isn’t a stupid person. Nor is he routinely oblivious to the feelings of others. If anything, he is too aware of everyone around him, too concerned with what they’re thinking and how his actions might make them feel. Rachel knows this. Which has to make the fact that he chose to email Beatriz—posing as Rachel!—cut so much deeper.
He acknowledged it was a mistake, that was true. But Rachel understood there was nothing unintentional about it.
“You care,” Ali told him the night before. It was near the end of the 45 minutes he spent on the phone with Will, who had debriefed him in painstaking detail. “You care so much. And you show up for the people you care about.”
“I don’t feel like I show up for you that much.”
“What’re you talking about? What about that Thanksgiving? I was desperate to get out of the city, I couldn’t fly home, and you made sure I had a place to go.”
Will had the phone on speaker and directed a dismissive laugh in its direction on the bed’s comforter. “Some friend. You had to drive like twelve hours to get there.”
“Okay. What about that time freshman year when that kid in the Confederate-flag hat tried to start something with me at that party?”
Will remembered this clearly. It had been October, a year before he would meet Rachel, when his new roommate had been the one and only person who made him feel like he belonged in college.
“Yeah, I asked you if you wanted me to help you kick his and his friend’s asses—which, hilarious given my lack of upper body strength—and then you told me if you got into a fight every time someone said something like that to you, you’d never not have broken bones or a black eye.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Ali said. “I’m talking about when we went out to that all-night diner afterwards, and you asked me about what I’d said, and I told you I didn’t want to talk about it. And you didn’t push it but told me you’d be there if I ever did. I knew then you weren’t some guy I was just going to live with my freshman year and then never talk to again.
“So don’t act like what you do doesn’t count. Like you don’t count. I know your dad made you feel that way, and I know I’ve never met him, but I’m pretty confident he’s never cared about anyone enough to do what you did this week, as batshit as it was.”
Despite the many conversations on many topics he and Ali would go on to have after that incident at the party, from race and religion to comic books and Chipotle, Will had never known what he’d said that night had meant that much to his friend.
The thing about his dad easily meant as much to Will now.
“Thanks, man,” he said. “I needed to hear that.”
“And Rachel needs you. Not the misterioso, go-behind-her-back you. The real you. The one who’s scared about being a dad and scared she’s not going to stay happy in her job. You can tell her all that. You need to tell her all that.”
“But what if it just stresses her out more?”
“More than you creating a fake email account for her and accepting job interviews on her behalf?”
Will gave a sad laugh this time. “Fair.”
“Besides, she stuck with you after that Buffalo Wild Wings date and then that rancid coleslaw from the deli, so she’s not going anywhere.”
This was a reassuring sentiment in the moment, but the intervening hours—first when Will should’ve been sleeping and now that he’s getting up to brush his teeth and use the bathroom, still with no word from her—have allowed the doubt to elbow itself all the way in. It doesn’t help that he’s never been able to entirely shake that feeling that their ending up together was some sort of oversight, that she’s supposed to be with someone ... less him.
Going all the way back to their first Christmas together and that scavenger hunt at the bookstore, Will’s grand gestures originated from how crazy he was about her. However, as he stands at the sink, changing the dressing on his tattoo bandage, being sure to never look at it, he’s forced to wrestle with how quickly those gestures also became his way of guarding against her ever noticing just how underwhelming he fears he is on his own.
And now it’s one of his big plans threatening to unravel it all. He gambled the relationship with the love of his life, who is pregnant with their child, on a phony Gmail and a flight to LA. And why?
Because it’s easier than admitting all the ways he doesn’t like himself.
His bathroom routine kills all of five minutes, and then he’s back where he started, on the bed, with nothing to do. And while he could call an Uber and do nothing anywhere in Nashville, he can’t bring himself to leave the room yet, hoping that Rachel might return after a late-morning checkout from wherever she stayed. So he will sit, and he will wait. It’s a kind of purgatory for someone who prides himself on finding creative solutions to challenging problems, one he’d be ill equipped to handle even if the stakes weren’t his marriage.
He does decide it’s probably time for him to have a real meal and calls room service from the room phone, ordering scrambled eggs, toast, coffee, and orange juice.
The phone rings two minutes later, and he wants it to be Rachel so badly that he doesn’t register how bizarre it would be for her to call that phone rather than his cell.
“Hello?” Will blurts out with more breathless anticipation than the room service guy is accustomed to.
“Sir, this is Jimmy from downstairs.”
“Who?” Will asks, deflating.
“Room service? You just placed an order?”
“Yes. Sorry. What’s up?”
“We’re actually out of orange juice.”
“Oh. That’s fine. Thanks for letting me know.”
“Now we do have other juice options you can choose from,” Jimmy says.
Will’s thoughts had already started going back to Rachel, so he sounds more confused than he should when he asks, “Juice options?”
“Yes. We have grapefruit juice, mango juice, pineapple juice, cranberry juice, tomato juice, apple juice, prune juice, and beet juice.”
“That’s a lot of juice.”
“It is.”
“And you have beet juice, but no orange juice.”
“Well, orange juice is a lot more popular than beet juice. It goes fast.”
“I would imagine so. I think I’ll just stick with the coffee.”
“Very good. Is there more than one person in your party? Would you like a pot?”
Such a simple question, and it slices Will in half. Logic dictates he answer no, but he doesn’t want to admit that to himself or the man on the phone.
“That would be great,” he says quietly. “Thank you.”
They hang up, and Will feels an immediate need to interact with something besides the self-loathing in his own head. He checks the clock again. His mom and he don’t usually talk this early, but she’s not a late sleeper, so he knows he can call. Except he doesn’t want to call; he wants to see her face, which leads to the even more unusual decision for him to use FaceTime. When he opens the app, the list of past video calls confirms that the last time they did this was in February. She had a question about her internet router, and he asked her to show him which lights were flashing in what color.
She picks up after the third ring. She’s in her robe, and he can see her pulling the door on her small sunporch closed behind her.
“Willie Will,” she says, her concern already evident, even through the small screen in his hand. “What’s wrong?”
“Good morning to you, too, Mom,” he says, emitting an unconvincing laugh. He wouldn’t have dialed her if he didn’t want to tell her everything, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Talking with Ali had made him more open to asking for help, though.
“Don’t try to change the subject,” his mom says. “You never FaceTime me. Especially not at eight thirty in the morning on a Saturday, and especially not while you and Rachel are on vacation. Why aren’t you still in bed with your beautiful wife?”
“Too much, Mom,” he says, the overly intimate nature of her question the only thing shielding him from the devastation of it. “I really can’t handle a sex talk right—oh my God, there’s a penis! I’m eye level with a penis!”
Unfazed by her son’s alarm, his mom turns to look at the naked man in the shadow of her sunporch doorway. Among other details Will wishes he hadn’t noticed in the split second before he looked away, the guy appears to be about Lawrence’s age, very fit, and likely the owner of some big shoes.
Like massive.
“Oops, sorry, Trishy,” he whispers. “Do you want any coffee?”
“That would be great, Glenn, thank you.”
Will hears her door slide shut again and looks back at his phone.
“Trishy?” he asks. His mom’s name is Patricia, and she typically goes by Trish. Katie called her Trisha from the time they were kids. And Will has heard Pat once or twice. But Trishy is a new one.
“Yeah, it’s his nickname for me. He says it’s because I have a nice tushy.”
“Dear God.”
“Don’t worry, I think I’m going to end it with him. He’s a nice guy but just not for me.” She makes a face like she just had something sour. “Too clingy.”
“It doesn’t look like you’re ending it.”
“I know. I mean to. It’s just that ... well, he does have some useful qualities, is all.”
“Yes, I believe I just got an eyeful of those qualities.”
She smiles knowingly. “Mmm. Sorry about that. But enough about me. What’s going on with you? No more stalling.”
He plays with his wedding band like Lawrence did at the pool and, under his mother’s watchful gaze from several hundred miles away, is forced to decide between giving her context or jumping straight to the conflict.
“Rachel and I had a fight,” he says, getting the end out of the way first. She’ll hear it all in short order.
“Okay.”
“A bad one. Actually, the worst we’ve ever had. She left the hotel room before dinner last night and hasn’t come back.”
“Last night?” his mom asks, her voice rising as a precursor to panic, any thought of what she’d been doing with Glenn a few minutes ago now vanished. “Have you heard from her? Is she safe?”
“Oh yeah. Yes. She texted me to say she checked into another hotel.” He takes a deep breath. “She, uh—she asked me not to call or text her.”
His mom sits there quietly thinking for a minute. While she does, Glenn reappears with her coffee in hand and some snug-fitting boxer briefs around his middle. It’s a modest improvement until he kisses her on the top of her head and then unintentionally brushes her shoulder with his bulge on his way out.
“So what did you do?” she asks Will after taking a sip from her mug.
This is the woman who tends to believe in him at all costs—she encouraged him, for instance, to try walking on to the basketball team at Michigan despite the five points per game he averaged his senior year—so her presumption of his guilt, as accurate as it is, surprises him.
“How do you know she didn’t do something?”
“Well, for starters, you said she said to leave her alone, which would be an odd thing for the person who screwed up to do.” He notices she has a strange look, like she’s pulling something from somewhere deep inside her. “For another thing, I know how much that girl loves you. She would not walk out on you like this unless you did something colossally dumb. And given the caring man I raised and that I know you to be, I’d also venture a guess that whatever it was caught Rachel completely off guard.”
His mom’s eyebrows arch, searching his face, and he can’t hold her stare.
“Where are you now?” she asks when he doesn’t respond, sensing his guilty conscience the way only a parent can. “Nashville?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay. That’s about a five-hour drive from here. So I need to warn you: if you’re about to tell me that you cheated on her, I will be there by this afternoon to break every bone in your body.”
“Oh my God, Mom—no!” he says, the sting of the insult whipping his attention back to the screen. “How could you even think that?”
They’re almost glaring at each other, and it goes on for several seconds until she softens and relaxes her expression, convinced he’s telling her the truth. He sits back a little, and she wipes the corner of her eye and takes another sip.
“I’m sorry, Willie Will. What you were saying took me somewhere else for a moment. Somewhere a long time ago. That wasn’t about you.”
Even though she’s being vague, and even though she’s referring to something they’ve never discussed, it’s all too clear what she’s talking about.
“My dad cheated on you?”
She sighs. “Yes. While I was pregnant.”
“Oh, Mom. I had no idea. I mean, I obviously knew he sucked, but this is like a whole other level.”
“You know, it’s funny,” she says with a hint of a chuckle. “You think you leave certain things behind, that you’ve made your peace with them, and then all of sudden, poof—you think of them when you least expect it. ‘Break every bone in your body’? I don’t talk like that. That was literally what Katie said about him when it happened.” She wipes her eye again. “Wow, do I miss her. Talk about things sneaking up on you. And again, I am sorry.”
“It’s all right, Mom. I miss her too. Part of me has been wondering if she’s been looking down this week trying to keep me from messing things up with Rachel.”
“Okay, so tell me: What did happen?”
Will gives her roughly the same recap he shared with Ali. She cringes whenever he mentions something about his communication with Beatriz at Creative Vices but never interrupts him, letting him make it abundantly clear that he both knew what he was doing was an enormous risk and that he took it on only because he’s desperate for Rachel to have everything she wants.
His mom finishes her entire cup of coffee while he’s talking, and she’s quiet again when he finally stops. But the look on her face this time is kind. And sad, almost pitying.
“Sweetie, Rachel already has everything she wants. She has her career. She has a partner she loves who she knows will support her in whatever she tries to do with that career. And she’s scared about this baby, but she’s also excited because she’s having it with you.”
“But what if I can’t do it, Mom?”
“Do what?”
“Be that partner she needs. Be strong. Be a dad. It’s kind of fitting you brought mine up because ever since Rachel got pregnant, I’ve been terrified I’m going to be as bad a father as he was. Like it’s in my DNA or something.”
“Willie Will, you listen to me: your mom forgetting who she was talking to and momentarily lumping you in with that SOB is the one and only time I’ve ever entertained you two having anything in common. You’re caring and thoughtful in every way that he is narcissistic and awful, and I’m so sorry my memory of something he did to me more than twenty-five years ago clouded my judgment.”
He wants to believe her. He really does. But believing he inherited nothing other than a few facial features from the man hardly seems possible. Wasn’t that why his mom had just worried he might also be a cheater?
“I know why he left,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“I was listening at your bedroom door. He said if you’d never had kids, things might’ve worked out between you.”
His mother looks not like she’s been stabbed in the back but harpooned through the heart.
“Oh, baby. I never knew that. Oh no. No, no, no. Why didn’t you ever tell me you heard that?”
Because I thought it was my fault. Because I thought it meant I wasn’t enough.
But that’s too hard to tell her without making her feel like she did something wrong.
“Because I was embarrassed, I guess,” he says.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but please tell me you heard what I said after he said that.”
“No. I was afraid I’d get in trouble for eavesdropping, so I ran back to my room.”
“I told him it had nothing to do with you and everything to do with him not being able to keep his dick in his pants.”
“Wait—he kept cheating on you?”
“Yes, he did. With his assistant. With a waitress at a restaurant we used to go to. With some sorority girl working at the driving range for the summer.”
For some reason, it stuns Will to learn all this. It’s not like he’s been operating under the assumption that his dad was a decent human being. And hearing that he’d had multiple affairs still can’t undo the well-worn tracks of what Will’s told himself for all these years about what caused his parents’ divorce. Then there’s the fact that if it had really just been because of the cheating, wouldn’t his dad still have tried to make some kind of an effort with Will?
It changes everything while changing nothing.
“What an asshole,” he says, which feels woefully inadequate.
“I promise you this: if your aunt had known you overheard what he said that day, we would’ve been visiting her in prison. Because hand to God, she would’ve murdered him.”
Will thinks of Katie at Harry Potter, and he nods weakly.
“I’m serious,” his mom says. “That woman adored you. I adore you. And most importantly, Rachel adores you. I’ve known that from the first time I saw you two together.”
“Well, I hope you’re right. I mean, that you’re still right. Because after this ...” He starts to tear up and, when he is unable to finish the thought, tries to wave away the emotion with his hand. Seeing him cry makes his mom start too.
“I wish I could hug you right now, sweetie. But I can’t.” She inhales deeply. “What I can do, though, is tell you the honest-to-goodness truth, and I’m not going to sugarcoat it.”
He sniffs hard and clears his nose. “I’m listening.”
“There’s good news, and there’s bad news. I’ll start with the bad. You screwed up. Big time. Bigger than you ever have in the entire time you’ve known her. You ignored what she asked you to do, you lied to her, and you compromised her ability to make her own decisions. That would be upsetting to anyone, but it’s doubly so as a woman since for all of recorded history, we’ve been told what to do. And because it came from the person she trusts more than anyone in the world, it feels like even more of a betrayal. You need to use this time apart to really think about all that.”
She studies his face for a reaction. She hasn’t said anything he hasn’t already been thinking about, but it hits hard coming from her.
“You said there was also good news?” he eventually asks.
“I did. The good news is that this is not going to ruin your marriage. Not even close. Trust me as someone who not only has had a marriage end but who also knows what you and Rachel have.”
She smiles at him. He makes himself smile back and tries not to think about how much faith she had in his basketball skills too.
Again, he wants to believe her, and mostly, he does, just the way he had Ali.
But he knows it’s not going to stick until he sees Rachel.
“Now get out of that room,” his mom says. “You’re not doing either of you any good just sitting there. You’ll think better if you walk around and get some fresh air.”
There’s a knock at the door, and she looks hopeful for longer than he does.
“Room service,” he explains. “Can you give me a second?”
“Of course.”
Will lets the woman with the cart in, she sets his breakfast up, and he tips her, the entire exchange taking under a minute. He retrieves his phone and his mom from the desk and is about to thank her and say goodbye, but there’s something else he’s been debating asking, and he’s found again that the call with Ali has increased his resolve.
“By the way, on the subject of my dad, did you ever find out why he wanted my phone number?”
“No. I just told him you didn’t want him to have it; he started to argue with me, and then I hung up. Why do you ask?”
Will considers playing it off as though he was just curious.
But then he decides he’s done enough lying for one trip.