Chapter 4 #2
Her head snaps back as she glances over at me, and I can feel a Ms. Juarez-style story coming. She doesn’t tell stories so much as she spews them, rarely pausing for breath.
“I’ve never told you about Jack? Jack Wilder was the last man I ever loved, and the only man I ever loved to hate.
” She pauses, choosing her words. “We were working on a case together in the summer sometime in the early sixties. It was long hours in the sweltering city, but I didn’t mind it because I was in love and engaged.
We were busy daydreaming about honeymooning in Italy the following summer just to escape another Houston summer.
I assume you know what Houston is like in July?
The air can feel like walking through a steam bath of piss. ” She sighs.
“Anyway, I knew this was the case that was going to make my career, and Jack made the long hours of depositions and combing through evidence a bit more bearable. He was the first man who ever really appreciated me for my brain, not just my body—because back then, wooo, did I have a body,” she says, smacking her lips together.
“I guess I was na?ve, thinking we could all find our own Martin Ginsburg. The man who will love you even when you’re more successful than him, cook for you because you can’t be bothered with trivial shit like that; someone who was looking to celebrate my successes, who knew that my light would amplify his, rather than dim it.
Maybe Ruth Bader got the only guy like that. ”
It’s impossible for me not to think of Nate and how he was that person for me.
How he was my biggest supporter, how my successes brought him as much happiness as if they were his own, how for years he lived for me and my racing career.
And how I was secretly ready to walk away from racing forever so that he could finally get back into it if he wanted.
I just wanted that one crystal globe first, just wanted to say that for one year I was the best in the world, and then I’d tell him I was retiring.
As it turned out, I never got the chance.
“What’s wrong?” Ms. Juarez asks, carefully assessing my face with her narrowed eyes as I shake my head trying to sweep the memories out of my brain.
“Nothing,” I mumble.
“You look like you saw a ghost. You’re not thinking about that cad who left you years ago, are you?”
It’s funny how old memories can still feel so fresh, so painful. I wonder if that’s how she feels when she thinks about Jack Wilder after all this time?
“I’m fine,” I tell her. “So what happened with Jack? He wasn’t your Martin Ginsburg, I take it?”
“Lord, no. It was a Friday night in early August. I was sifting through boxes of paperwork and evidence looking for something, anything, that would confirm something our client had told us in a deposition a week before. And lo and behold, I found it. I was ecstatic, jumping around that conference room with a receipt from a gas station in my hand. And Jack was jumping right along with me before he kissed me, telling me how brilliant and beautiful I was. I knew that this was my shot for partner. I’d thrown everything I had into that job .
. . I did not make it to thirty-two, still unmarried, to not make partner.
Jack and I agreed that since it was late on a Friday night after everyone else was gone, we’d meet with the partners on Monday morning and tell them what I’d found.
I spent all weekend planning what I was going to say.
And you know what happened when I walked into that conference room again Monday morning? ”
I shook my head, already prepared for the punch in the gut that I knew was coming for thirty-two-year-old Ms. Juarez.
“They’d made Jack partner. He’d gone behind my back over the weekend, shared his big break in the case, and they were so busy passing around cigars when I walked into the conference room that they didn’t even notice I was there.”
“Why would he do that?” My heart breaks for her, having her triumph stolen away from her like that.
“Because he could. Claiming success without merit—it’s the oldest story in the book. He told me he did it for us, because he couldn’t possibly marry me if I was both Latina and technically his boss.”
The hiss that escapes my lips is filled with the anger I feel on her behalf.
“You know what? He should have thought about that before he proposed. I went to a different firm and my career took off, eventually I became a judge, and you know the rest. I bested him in every possible aspect of our field, while he was forced to retire early because it turns out he was an even worse partner than he was a junior lawyer.”
“So in the end you got your revenge,” I say.
“Yes, but . . .” She pauses, giving me time to lean in. Ms. Juarez likes to know her audience is hanging on her every word. “It was a hollow victory. I would have been better off if I’d forgiven him.”
“What?” My whole body leans back involuntarily. “You’d have wanted to marry someone who could do something like that to you?”
“Marry him? No. But you can forgive someone without giving your heart back to them,” she says, and the truth of that statement hits me like a ton of bricks. Just as I suspect she wanted it to.
“But why would you forgive him? It doesn’t sound like he deserved it.”
“I held on to that bitterness and hatred for decades. I used it to push me forward in my career, but then every success was just a way to prove I was better than him. In the end, nothing I did was about me,” she says, her voice thick with emotion, “it was always about him. How much happier could I have been if I’d forgiven him and moved on?
I could have appreciated and enjoyed my life so much more if I wasn’t holding on to all that negativity.
Years ago, I went to his funeral and dropped a rose on his grave.
I walked away wishing I could have back the forty years I spent hating him, so I could have spent that time loving someone else instead. ”
“Your heart couldn’t handle both hating him and loving someone else?”
“You can’t grow weeds and grass in the same garden. Hatred and bitterness are like those weeds, and unless you spend your time fighting the weeds and nurturing the grass, the weeds just take over. In the end it hurt me more than it hurt him. Sit with that for a minute.”
I do as she says, wondering if that’s what I’ve been doing with Nate—spending so much of my energy hating him that I can’t nurture and grow in other areas of my life? Other relationships?
“You’re much too young to be this bitter.” She shakes her head and I know this is her way of telling me to let go of this hurt I’ve been carrying around for the past five years, but she knows better than anyone how impossible that is. “Anyway, do you want to play a game? Maybe Scrabble?”
“Sure, let’s play Scrabble,” I say, thankful for the opportunity to think about something other than my own baggage.
I get the big board out, the one I gave her last Christmas because it has plastic ridges between the squares on the board so she can set the tiles in and they don’t move.
It’s hard for her to line them up just right otherwise.
Halfway through the game, she looks up at me. “Thanks for coming, sweetie. I’m sorry for bringing up all that history earlier, but I just had the sense that you needed to hear it.”
I ignore the implication that I’m following in her footsteps, and instead tell her, “I’m always happy to hear about your life.
” I hope she knows how much I mean that.
Since she has no family, every story and every memory will die with her, except for the ones I can keep alive.
And maybe in the end, this is what keeps me coming back week after week.
Because we all need someone to listen to us, to know us.
I return to work more conflicted than I left.
I probably would have been better off if I’d just gone to yoga like TJ suggested.
Then I’d be relaxed and ready to face Nate later today without losing my cool, and potentially losing my job.
Instead, I’m left mulling over my conversation with Ms. Juarez and wondering if I’m determined to end up alone too, bitterness having hollowed me out like it did to her.
No, you’ve moved on. You just need to keep moving forward and not looking back, I remind myself. But that was so much easier to do before Nate showed up.
I slide into my seat at our team meeting right before the men’s head coach, Matt McCarthy, walks in.
Josh’s old coach, Lyle, who is one of the team’s assistant coaches is right behind him.
The coaches don’t normally join our PT team meetings, but I suspect they’re here to make sure we can take good care of Nate.
“Jackson.” He nods to me as he takes the seat next to mine. “How’re you doing?”
“I’m fine, Coach, how are you?”
He looks at me without answering, just stares at me for fifteen seconds that feel like fifteen minutes, his dark brown eyes assessing me.
I swallow and raise my eyebrows, refusing to be intimidated by him.
I’ve studied human behavior enough to know how I should act, and when I should act that way.
In this case, Coach McCarthy is clearly trying to get me to crack—though I’m not sure what he expects. “Are you really okay?” he finally asks.