Chapter 37
At breakfast the following morning, I announce that I’m going to Boston for the day to see the Bad Teachers and to show my tenant where to kick the hot water heater to make it go.
This is not true. I’m going to do whatever the opposite of letting Stewart off the hook is.
I’m going to tell him off. I dress in the same clothes I wore yesterday because I liked who I was yesterday in Victoria’s library.
In jeans, boots, and a gray wool sweater, my official Dolly Brick costume, I climb into the passenger side of Naomi’s station wagon.
The makeover was one thing, but I am not doing this without Naomi.
“You’re sure about this?” she asks as we cross the bridge.
“I am. I mean, I’m terrified, but I’m more terrified of carrying this around. I’m going to say it, all of it.”
“Okay,” she says. “We get it done, and we leave nothing on the table. That means thanking him for the sleeping porch.”
“Why?”
“Because you have manners, and if you don’t thank him, this won’t be over.”
“Fine,” I say.
I practice my matter-of-fact voice as we drive.
What I want to say isn’t that complicated, but I say it out loud to Naomi over and over, just to make sure I can get it out without a quiver.
Naomi practices saying his name the way Jerry Seinfeld addresses his nemesis, Newman.
“Stewart,” she spits over the steering wheel.
We drive straight to the Whitfield building. I pay eighteen dollars for one hour of parking and I don’t even blink.
We walk into the lobby, and I place my hands on the reception counter. “Dolly Brick to see Stewart Whitfield.”
“Damn,” Naomi whispers behind me.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“I do not,” I say.
She picks up the phone and announces me. “Yes, really,” she’s saying. I’m picturing Smithers racing into Stewart’s office to deliver this news. “Okay.”
“Mr. Whitfield will be right down,” she says.
Heat moves from my chest to my face. I turn around to Naomi with wide eyes. I had rehearsed storming into his office. It was going to be a surprise rage attack. I was not anticipating being fetched from the lobby and then riding an elevator with him for thirty awkward floors.
There’s a ding and then footfalls, and I look up to see Stewart walking briskly toward me. He’s in a blue suit and a blue-and-white-striped dress shirt. He looks magnificent, but I’m prepared for that. He stops a foot from me and looks over my shoulder at Naomi and then back at me.
“Is everything okay?” he asks.
“I want to talk in your office.”
He nods and turns back toward the elevator, and Naomi and I follow him. Stewart presses the button. “Is this about Gus?” he asks.
“Gus is fine. Everyone is fine.” The doors open and I get in first, then he presses thirty.
The ride up is an eternity of noisy heartbeats and irregular breaths. I swear I can hear the blood swooshing through my veins. I can smell the leather and grass of his skin. I cannot believe I didn’t account for the elevator.
The silence breaks him before it breaks me, and I feel like that’s a small win. “How’s Sully?” he asks.
“Fine,” Naomi says, and then adds, “Stewart,” the way she’s practiced.
When the doors open, we follow him past the receptionist and along the wall of packed cubicles to his office. Smithers stands and I see him take in the bounty of Naomi in her tight pink sweater, but he doesn’t have time to say hello before I close the door behind us.
“Sit,” I say, motioning to his desk.
Stewart raises his eyebrows at me. “Okay. Can I get you anything?”
“Yes, water, please. We want water. Both of us.” Now that we’re in his office, I’m back to the scene I rehearsed. I promised myself I’d take a drink if he offered me one. Even if it was scotch.
He hands us each a glass of water from the wet bar and sits behind his desk. He gestures to the leather club chairs across from him. Naomi sits and looks around at the floor-to-ceiling windows, leaning forward to get a better view of the seaport. I don’t sit.
“Tell me what’s going on,” he says.
I look around his office, and I did not account for the telescope trained on Fenway Park.
Or the tidal wave of memory of that first night together after we were in this office.
I did not account for the way he’s looking at me like he really does want to know that I’m okay, biting his bottom lip the tiniest amount.
The thing that I want to say, the thing I said fifty times in the car, will not dislodge itself from my throat.
I try to ease my way in, coax it out. “I moved back to Whitfield.”
“Why?” he asks.
“Because I like it there and it’s home. And Gus likes it, and it’s nice to have family to lean on.
That’s not why I’m here though. Gus got really sick.
Your mom treated him, maybe saved him. Also not the point.
” I’m standing with my hands on the back of the chair.
Then I put them behind my back and then on my hips.
I turn to Naomi and she nods at me. “I was in the hospital waiting room, thinking about Gus and what it would feel like to lose him.” My voice cracks and I take a sip of water.
“I thought about Christopher in that same hospital and my mom. And how she left. And how no one ever said anything, we just moved on. And I think what I came to tell you is that I’ve hit a wall with that. ”
He’s tense in his seat, mouth in a firm line. He leans forward like he’s preparing to speak, and I raise my hand. I’m not leaving without saying the thing.
“You broke my heart. Broke it. And you left. You messengered me a goddamn check. Like an asshole. And it would be like me to just move on from that. Maybe you’d come to the fish house this summer and I’d be cordial wrapping up your halibut so it wouldn’t be awkward.
So I’m here to tell you that you broke my heart and I’m going to let it be awkward. ”
“Boom,” Naomi says.
I shoot her a look. “You had a good, rare thing and you blew it up. You were going to change the world for me, remember? So either you’re a liar or you’re pathetic.
And I’m not going to make that okay for you.
” I look around the room like I’m just coming to.
That was a lot more words than I was planning on, but I stand behind them.
I actually feel better. “Okay, I think I’m done. ”
“Can I say something?” he asks.
“Can you, Stewart? Because in the past six months you’ve said nothing.”
“Ha!” It just slips out of Naomi. “Sorry.”
“I completely lost my family’s confidence in me by trying to make them have confidence in me.”
“Irony,” says Naomi.
“And now I have to clean up the mess,” he says.
“Of course you do. I would too, because we’re the same in a lot of ways,” I say.
“But the difference is that I have the courage to change. I have the courage to get uncomfortable and, believe me, this is uncomfortable.” For some reason, I motion to the telescope.
“But here you are, back to killing yourself to get a job you don’t even want.
” He raises an eyebrow at me and leans back in his seat.
“You don’t. You just think you have to. You have no idea what you want. ”
Smithers beeps in through the intercom. “You’re going to need to leave soon for your twelve-o’clock.”
“I’m fine,” Stewart says into the intercom. He looks tired. I didn’t notice it at first, but he’s thinner and his eyes are a bit sunken.
“Remember that time you asked me what I wanted? Remember? We were in my bed, that first morning we woke up together.”
He blinks like I’ve just punched him and now I am wild with power. “I remember,” he says.
“I said this.” I gesture between us. “And I meant it. I get credit for that because it’s hard to say what you want.”
“But she’s getting great at it,” Naomi says.
“I am.” I take a breath and square my shoulders. “Get your shit together, Stewart.”
I turn to leave and Naomi whispers, “Nothing on the table.”
“Fine,” I say, and turn back around. “Thank you very much for the renovation of the sleeping porch. It looks absolutely lovely.”
Naomi nods in approval and we turn on our heels and leave.