Fourteen
In the car, Wes stayed quiet until they passed through the gates, thinking over the last hour. “That was weird,” he said. “Do you think that was weird?”
Nadine flipped on the turn signal. “Yes. You might be right about her being nervous. Each time, she’s getting closer to letting it go.”
“We didn’t get to follow up on what she said last week about writing for revenge.”
“I couldn’t find a way to bring it up,” Nadine said, lifting her shoulders as if in defeat. “Not the way the conversation was going.”
“Me neither. Also.” He paused to find the words. “What she said about your obituary section.”
Nadine held up a hand. “She was right.” The firmness in her voice surprised him. “I could have done more. Thanks for sticking up for me.”
“You’re welcome.” He changed the topic, not sure how to react to her gratitude, brisk though it was, which made him feel confusingly good. “I’ll be sad when she tells us her secret and we have to stop going over.”
“Maybe she’ll let us come by for visits.” Nadine sounded hopeful.
Wes had an idea he knew was woo-woo, then decided to say it. “What if she thinks when she tells us, she’ll have nothing left to live for?”
To his surprise and relief, Nadine nodded. “That makes sense. I wonder if we can find a way to reassure her.”
“I don’t know if it’s something rational you can be reassured out of.”
“You’re probably right. She didn’t look well.” Nadine glanced at him. “Should we call Brent?”
“I suggested it to Maria when we were leaving,” said Wes. “She said she’d take care of it.”
“I’m worried,” she said.
Wes weighed his options—to be honest or to be comforting—then defaulted to the latter. “She’ll be fine. She’s thinking about the past, and I’m sure it’s bringing up feelings for her.”
“You’re lying,” Nadine said. “You’re concerned too. You’re thinking about what she said about death and if her nails looked blue or if it was your imagination.”
“How did you know?” He was astounded at her perceptiveness.
“We’ve known each other a long time, Wes.”
“Yeah. We have.” He found a strange comfort in that. There was distance between them, but Nadine had been there to witness his first awkward attempts at writing and his terrible bowl cut when he was twenty. Mocking him lightly, to be sure. Always with an eye to beat him, absolutely. But she’d been there, driving him to do better.
He tried not to think about what he had named The Night. That winter university party when he caught her as she stumbled over someone’s foot in the hallway, her hair wavy with the heat of the house instead of blown straight and tied back the way it usually was. Her brown eyes had seemed bigger than usual, which was saying a lot because Nadine in her natural state had what he mentally thought of as doe eyes, although it would take torture for him to admit it out loud. Her lips had been wet and red, and when she smiled up at him, his heart thumped so hard he felt it in his throat, and he thought, Oh my God . For the too-brief moment she’d been in his arms, she’d been warm and so alive he nearly burst.
Then of course he’d ruined it, making some crack about an award she’d won over him, and she’d stepped away, lips thinning and eyes narrowing.
Wes cursed his excellent memory, which had him reliving those six seconds from a decade ago with disturbing regularity.
“I like her,” said Wes, rubbing at a streak of dirt on his pant leg and bringing the conversation back to the safer territory of Dot.
Nadine hummed in agreement. “She makes me feel like her books do, that there’s always another meaning behind what I understand but can never seem to grasp.”
Wes nodded vigorously. “I feel the same. I have a good feeling about week five. Five is the charm for Dot.”
“I hope so.” Nadine waved as he got out of the car.
He watched her drive away, Daft Punk drifting out of her open window from the radio, and was glad they’d handled this shift in their relationship like professional adults. It was much better to work with someone he got along with.
After the intensity of the afternoon, he couldn’t bring himself to go into the house where his mother was undoubtedly waiting, so he went to the park down the street. A woman was tightrope walking between two trees, and a group of kids screamed on the pitch as they played a chaotic version of softball. Lounging people were scattered across the grass, and he did a quick scan of their picnic blankets. Not a swatch of chintz or gingham in sight.
No wonder he wanted to get back onto the I-team. It wasn’t that he didn’t like working for Rebecca—she was great—or minded most of the stories he did. He knew it was important for people to occasionally read the news and not be depressed. Sun care tips were service journalism after all, and highlighting local designers brought attention to their work. These were good things, and he should be grateful he had a job instead of bitter that it wasn’t exactly what he dreamed of doing.
Morose, he pulled out his phone to text Caleb, who was always good for a pick-me-up and usually free to talk on Sunday afternoons.
Hey , he wrote. How’s Calgary?
Caleb wrote back immediately. Same old. It was good to come home for a visit. Isabel isn’t too happy this contract was extended.
Wes decided to call.
“Hey, man. What’s up?” When Caleb finally answered the phone, Wes knew something was wrong. Caleb never sounded low. He was permanently wired to look on the bright side.
“Contract extension?” Wes asked immediately.
“Yeah, you know what this job is, but it’s good money.”
“You said Isabel didn’t want you to take any extensions.”
“Sure, but she wants all this fancy shit for the wedding, and I want to make her happy.”
Wes watched a kid drop a ball. “Did you talk to her?”
“What’s the point? She says she wants me home, but then she pulls out these, like, branded tablecloths that cost an extra few hundred bucks.”
“It’s your wedding too. If you don’t want the tablecloths, you don’t need to get them.”
Caleb laughed. “Yeah, right. This is her dream day.”
Wes had worked on enough wedding features to know that was often the primary message fed to engaged couples. “Marriage isn’t about a day, and if you can’t talk about stuff like that now, do you think it’s going to get better? You hate being out west.”
“It’s fine.”
“You don’t sound good,” said Wes doubtfully.
“I’ve had this feeling in my chest lately,” Caleb said, tapping what must have been his sternum loud enough that Wes could hear his voice vibrate. “I’ve never had it before.”
Wes stood up as if he could summon help from two provinces away. “Jesus. Are you having a heart attack? Can you feel your arms? Is your face numb?”
“What? No. My arms are fine. My face is fine. I was lifting heavy this morning, bro. I’m not having a heart attack. Also, face numbness happens with a stroke. Know your blockages.”
Wes relaxed. “It’s probably heartburn from that gross hot sauce you love.”
“No, it’s like I’ve been running super hard but I haven’t been. My heart is racing, and I feel sort of sick but also like I need to take a shit.”
Wes watched the tightrope woman wobble and regain her balance. “That’s dread. Anxiety. You’re anxious.”
“Anxious?” Caleb sounded astonished. “About what?”
“Are you serious? You’re getting married. You’re living away from home for months at a time. You miss Isabel. That’s a lot of stress.”
Caleb paused. “I suppose that makes sense. I’ve never felt this before. I don’t like it.”
Wes wasn’t surprised. Caleb was without a doubt the most well-adjusted person he knew. They’d done an online quiz for fun when Caleb was thinking of changing to sales and wanted to know what his personality strengths were. His score was in the top ten percentile of agreeableness and extraversion and almost at zero for neuroticism.
Wes’s score had not been similar.
Which, surprisingly, put him in a good position to coach Caleb through baby’s first anxiety attack. “You want to talk about it?”
“Talk about what?”
He gritted his teeth, unable to tell if Caleb was being deliberately or unthinkingly obtuse. This was why he could never be a therapist. “About what’s bothering you.”
“Nothing, I told you.”
“Except feeling stuck in a place you hate, away from home, to pay for a single party you’re at best ambivalent about.”
The long pause meant he’d hit the issues dead-on. “I can’t tell her that.”
Wes remembered one of his stories from last year. “Have you considered a wedding therapist?”
Caleb burst out laughing. “Damn, you know how to cheer a guy up. A wedding therapist. Like I need that.”
Wes recognized the tone and knew there was no point arguing with Caleb. “Well, I’m here if you want to talk.”
“Told you I’m fine, bro. What’s going on with you and working with that girl you had a crush on?”
“I didn’t have a crush on Nadine,” Wes said quickly.
“Sure, that’s why you made me go to the same coffee shop where she hung out to study our entire last year of university.”
“It was a convenient location!”
“Right. So how is it?”
“We’re getting along better.”
“You going to ask her out?”
“No.” He didn’t have to think before he answered. “It’s not like that. We barely started treating each other as people.”
“That’s how it starts.” Caleb’s voice was that of the wisest sage on the mountain.
“I also know she wouldn’t think twice about screwing me over if it benefited her.”
“Oh.” Caleb paused. “Okay, that’s not usually how it starts. I’ve got to go. Sunday work call, if you can believe it.”
They hung up, and Wes hesitated before sending the wedding therapist link over. It couldn’t hurt, and sometimes Caleb was too focused on how he thought he should act about things instead of how he wanted to. Reading about the other couples Wes had featured might convince him to talk to Isabel.
A woman with dark hair and huge sunglasses strolled by, chatting on her phone. His heart gave a little lurch. Was that Nadine? It wasn’t impossible, as she lived in the neighborhood. No, the woman was too tall, and when she laughed, it was nothing like Nadine’s gasping chuckle.
He watched her kick a soccer ball back to the game to a chorus of thanks. A crush on Nadine. Maybe he’d had a little one all those years back, but that was a lifetime ago. Ask her out? God, he could imagine the look on her face. He shook his head at the ridiculousness of it, then walked slowly back to his house. A text from Caleb came in reply to the wedding therapist link, and all it said was LOL.
So that was a bust. Wes would make sure to keep up a regular series of calls and check-ins to see how he was doing. Caleb wasn’t a guy used to needing help, and he’d bristle at any offer. Christ. Why were people so difficult?
Speaking of. He fished out his keys and let himself into the house.
“Ma?” Wes called out as soon as he came in the door, then nearly jumped out of his skin when a pale ghost rose from the table. “Shit.”
“Wesley. Watch your language.” His mother’s chiding voice came right before the lights flashed on. “Did you eat?”
“Why were you sitting at the table like that?” There was no book or anything in front of her. She was just waiting.
“You’re late.”
“Sorry, Ma.” At least she was in a pleasant mood.
“Sit. You need to eat.”
“I’m good.”
His mother bustled to the stove as if only activated when one of her children came home. “Go wash your hands.”
He apologized to his stomach but knew when he was beat. To refuse would mean several days of assuring his mother that he loved her and she was a good mother.
Twenty minutes later, he was back at the table, picking at a plate of rice and flavorless greens. His mother must be the only Chinese woman on earth to not season her food with garlic. Or soy sauce. He felt the chalky grit of the boiled spinach in his teeth and cursed his mother’s stint in England during her formative cooking years, although he knew that was unfair. Even the British used salt.
His mother sat on the other side of the table, using him as a captive audience to pour out a litany of complaints that he barely heard anymore. He’d tried so hard over the years to fix her problems, but nothing ever worked because another issue simply rose to take its place. He made the appropriate noises so she felt heard though, because the moment she sensed him tuning out, she would turn on him.
First it was the people next door. Their baby cried too loud, and she thought the woman smoked. So dirty. Ella wasn’t answering her calls. Wes wasn’t married. Amy was working too hard and getting wrinkles. “Aiya,” his mother said. “No one will marry her if she looks old. She’ll end up like me. Alone.”
He ignored the last part. “She hasn’t hit thirty.”
“I had you when I was twenty-three,” his mother announced as if she didn’t constantly remind him.
“Amy has plenty of time to meet someone if she wants.” Wes picked up his plate, having nobly eaten as much as possible, and went to do the dishes. His fingers ached, and he looked down to see his knuckles had turned white from gripping the edge of the sink. It was always like this with his mother, who simply refused to see the world through anyone else’s eyes or accept it in any way other than what she wanted.
“Amy made me a doctor’s appointment for tomorrow for my check-up,” said his mother from the table. She hadn’t moved. “Come to my office to take me for two in the afternoon.”
Wes took a long breath and turned off the water. “I have to work.”
“Tell work you need to take your mother to the doctor.”
“I can’t do that.” He turned to face her. “You know where the doctor is, Ma. All you do is take the subway to Bay station and walk south.”
“I don’t like going alone.” His mother’s mouth was a stubborn line. “I can ask Amy since you’re so busy. Amy said it’s a shame the way you treat your mother.”
He had an instinctive resentment toward Amy that he immediately extinguished. Divide and conquer was one of his mother’s standard devices for getting her own way, and his sister would never say that.
“Amy has work,” said Wes firmly. As the oldest, it was his job to stand up for his sisters. “You are not going to ask her.”
Surprisingly, his mother backed down. “Then how do I get there if my son is too busy for his mother?”
“I’ll call a cab to pick you up.”
She didn’t answer but went into the living room and turned on her favorite reality TV show.
Wes stood over the sink, soapy pan in his hands, until he eventually turned the water back on so he could finish the dishes. This was as good a resolution as he was going to get, so he should be happy. At least he had next week’s Dot meeting to look forward to. His car should be fixed by then, but Nadine might be open to carpooling. It was good for them to have a chance to debrief. Plus, it was environmentally friendly. He’d text her this week to check. Doing the dishes soothed him in the way that creating order always did. Blocking out the sound of the television and humming the chorus to “Get Lucky,” he finished up and thought about next Sunday, when he’d get to see Dot—and Nadine—again.