Chapter 31 Marsh
Marsh
“Uncle Marsh, guess what?” Sadie sits on my lap. It’s a cool evening and we’re in the backyard just as the sun sets. Rows of string lights illuminate my niece’s face. We’re nearing the end of September, and I always find the change in weather the perfect excuse to drive up and see family.
“What?” I adjust her weight on my leg.
“Mommy and Daddy said I can get a dog!”
My head turns toward Oliver, who’s sitting on the opposite side of the patio table. He merely makes a defeated shrug. “Oh yeah?” I look back at Sadie. “What kind of dog?”
“I want a Saint Bernard.” Sadie gives a big toothy grin.
“She watched Beethoven once and this is all I hear.” Oliver rolls his eyes.
“You know, Dee Dee,” I start. “Saint Bernards are a lot of work. Maybe you should get something that’s smaller than you are so you can walk it.”
“I want a dog bigger than me,” she says. “That way it can protect me, and I can ride on its back like The Neverending Story!”
“Makes sense.” I nod. “What are you going to name it?”
“CUJO!” Sadie yells out in a voice that’s very similar to the Hulk. She then jumps off my lap and runs into the house. I let out a laugh because I seriously love that little girl so much.
“Dude”—I turn to Oliver—“are you just letting her watch everything?”
“Okay, in my defense she found Cujo on her own and there was nothing Quinn and I could’ve done to stop her.”
“You’re lucky she’s not terrified of dogs.”
“It only made her want a dog more.” Oliver gives me a bewildered look. “I can’t believe we’re getting a dog.”
“Oh, come on. It’ll be great. You both work from home, you have like acres of land. Sadie’s going to be so happy.”
“Yeah, I just gotta bite the bullet. When did I become that person with a child and a dog?”
Oliver has been with Quinn for as long as I can remember, but they were nomads for a while.
They traveled every corner of the world after graduating college and were never the type of couple that thought about having kids.
When Oliver told me Quinn was pregnant, he was so scared and so excited.
He told me that Sadie would be the greatest adventure they ever had.
“I think you were always meant to be one of those people, Ollie. You just needed to get a few things out of your system first.”
He takes a sip of his beer and then grabs a handful of chips from the bowl in front of us. “How’s work?”
“Good.” I follow and swipe some chips for myself. “Finally in the swing of things. I’ve been able to turn around like five stories a day.”
“Five stories?” Oliver repeats. “How are you not burned-out?”
“I don’t get burned-out,” I say.
Oliver bobs his leg up and down vigorously like he’s waiting for something.
“You wanna talk about it?” Oliver says.
“Talk about what?” I ask.
“What happened at the wedding.”
It’s been one week since Julia’s wedding. After the incident that nobody has mustered up the courage to ask me more about until now, I said my goodbyes to my mom, Oliver, and Quinn. I said I didn’t want to talk about it and to not ask me.
I think about Lucy. Of course I do. I thought about her that entire weekend and debated whether I should chase her.
But what’s the point of chasing someone who doesn’t ever want to be caught?
On Monday I deleted our work message history so the little green icon next to her name wouldn’t taunt me at every waking hour.
I haven’t read her column, and I washed my sheets two times over to make sure the smell of strawberries was gone.
“I have nothing to say about that.”
“Forget what actually happened at the wedding,” Oliver says. “Are you okay?”
It’s a loaded question. Yes, I guess I am okay.
I’m here, I’m alive. But that’s not what anyone really means when they ask if you’re okay.
This is the first time Oliver and I are having an honest conversation about what’s happened in the past year, and at this point, I don’t have it in me to sugarcoat anything.
“Is it bad if I say this hurts more than when things ended with Julia?”
“This is a safe space,” Oliver says softly.
“You know…” I start. “There’s a difference between being scared to lose someone you don’t know how to live without…and being scared to lose someone you don’t want to live without.”
With Julia, I didn’t know how to be on my own after it ended. I was with Julia in my most formative years and suddenly being my own person felt jarring. Like I was a baby deer learning how to walk. With Lucy, I don’t want to be alone. I think that’s scarier.
“Why don’t you try and talk to her then?” Oliver says.
“Lucy doesn’t want to be with me, Ollie,” I say because it’s that simple. There’s no trying to make it work or meeting in the middle. “That’s it. It’s over.”
“Yeah.” Oliver shakes his head. “I just…I don’t want the same thing to happen to you again.”
I frown. “What’s that?”
“You’re going to be more buried in work than you already are,” Oliver exclaims. “I mean, come on, seven stories a day?!”
“Five,” I correct him.
“Five, whatever.”
“Work is the only thing that’s keeping me sane,” I say.
“I think you’re using it as an excuse,” Oliver says like he’s been holding this back for more than just the duration of our conversation.
“An excuse for what?”
“Come on, I knew you were having problems with Julia ever since…” He stops, knowing that this topic is already veering into too sensitive of a place.
“Since the miscarriage,” I finish his sentence.
“That’s when it started,” he says. “You couldn’t deal with it and you buried yourself in your job. All you cared about was work and we barely saw you. It wasn’t even until we had Sadie that you lifted your head up and started being a brother.”
“Jesus, Ollie.”
“But you do this, Marsh…You did it then, you did it after you broke up with Julia, you’re doing it now. It’s like you aren’t even a person without your job.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“Marsh,” Oliver says seriously. “If you got laid off tomorrow, what would you do?”
“I would find another job,” I answer logically. “But that’s what anybody would do. You’re saying that you wouldn’t do the same if you lost yours?”
“What if there were no news-writing jobs…What would you do?”
“Well, the way things are looking—”
“Just entertain me for a second,” he says with a sigh. “Who would you be?”
“You know this is getting offensive,” I say. “You telling me that I’m this empty, detached person and that I have no other qualities aside from my work?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.” Oliver slows down.
“What I’m saying is that you’ve been hiding behind your news stories.
When grandma passed away, you acted like nothing was wrong because you were so focused on that college paper.
It’s like you use the problems of the world as a shield from feeling anything. ”
“Yeah, well, guess what?” I set my beer down. “There’s a lot of shit going on in the world…bad shit. And it’s a lot worse than whatever heartbreak I’m feeling. So, I think it would be pretty selfish of me to put those stories aside to focus on my own.”
“But that’s the thing, Marsh…This is your life. You’re allowed to put yourself first for a second.”
While I knew that my work ethic was a problem for me and Julia, I didn’t think it affected my other relationships.
I remember my last conversation with Lucy. Then my first conversation with her. Everything always came back to our careers; it’s one of the reasons we so quickly respected each other. In the end, she chose her career over me. Just like I’ve always done.
We’re even more alike than I thought.
I watch the condensation from my beer bottle drip onto the solid mahogany table. I pick it up and swipe my thumb against the wood.
“Lucy was right.” I let out a regretful scoff. “I was a coward. Maybe work is just a part of that…something to hide behind.”
“I hate that you felt like you couldn’t talk to us,” Oliver says. “I can’t imagine what it felt like going through this past year alone. How hurt you must have been.”
“That’s exactly why I didn’t say anything,” I respond, looking at him. “Because of this poor Marsh narrative that people are going to now see when I enter a room. I don’t want that.”
“It’s okay to be vulnerable, Marsh,” Oliver says like I don’t know that. “It’s okay to be hurt—”
“But I wasn’t hurt,” I say, and it shuts Oliver up. “That’s the problem.” I lift my glasses for a second and pinch the bridge of my nose. “I don’t think I ever loved Julia.”
“What…”
“God, fuck.” I look away. “I sound like a piece of shit, I know I do. But I wasn’t hurt when we ended things, Ollie. You know the first thing I thought when we decided to break up? I thought, What’s everyone going to think?”
Julia didn’t stab a knife through my back or even my heart…It was through my pride.
“Why did you care what people thought?” Oliver shifts in his seat.
I know I could tell my brother right now that Julia cheated on me.
If I were to tell anyone, it would be him in this exact moment.
But I can’t bring myself to. I just can’t.
I was honest with Lucy and look where that brought me.
I’ve done a lot of thinking this past week, and I’ve come to the conclusion that nobody needs to know.
“Because it’s embarrassing,” I say, and even saying it out loud makes me feel so much smaller than I am.
“My ex-girlfriend got married and she showed the world that I’m not good enough, she needed someone else.
So yeah, I bury myself in work because that’s the one place where I’ve proven that I am good enough.
I’m not this giant fucking disappointment. ”
“Nobody is seeing you that way, Marsh—”
“Mom is,” I say matter-of-factly. “You have no idea what it’s like to be compared to Dad your whole life. Like I missed out on learning the most valuable life lessons because he wasn’t there to teach them to me. I see the way Mom looks at me, like I’ll never be him and I’ll never be you.”
“Me?” Oliver gapes.
“Yeah, you,” I tell him, now feeling terrified of saying how I really feel, but I’m like a spout with a broken valve.
“You’re the golden child. You have the dream house, the dream job, and the dream family.
And even though I have two out of the three, for some reason it’s never enough until I have the latter.
I just…” I run a hand through my hair. “I just didn’t want everything that happened between Julia and me to add to all the reasons why I’m not good enough. ”
Oliver looks down, speechless. Everything feels so still. It’s not until an airplane flies overhead that I remember that the world is still turning.
“You know, sometimes I look at you and I’m jealous?” Oliver finally says.
My expression goes blank. “What?”
“You know I love Quinn and Sadie. They’re my whole world and I wouldn’t trade them for anything, but I don’t know…
I look at what happened with you and I think, Wow, he gets to live his life all over again.
You get a second chance at living the life you really want whether that be moving to another country, or starting a whole other career, or sleeping with as many people as you want.
You can make mistakes, and you can live.
And yeah, Mom is…Mom…but she’s hard on you because you’re her favorite. Not me.”
I laugh, knowing very well that can’t be the case. “If you say so.”
“You remind her of Dad.”
I so badly wish that sentiment didn’t feel like a punch to my gut. “So I’ve been told.”
“You’re stubborn, you’re opinionated, she can’t control you…” Oliver says. “And she really fucking loves you.”
As if on cue, Quinn peeks her head out of the glass door. “Everything okay?” She gives the two of us a concerned look. Probably based on the tense look on our faces.
“Yeah, we’re good.” I wave for her to come over.
She passes us two bottles of water and then squeezes my shoulder. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but Sadie was saying you promised you would watch The Brady Bunch Movie with her.”
I let out a weak laugh and then look at Oliver, who tips his head toward me. “Yeah, I’ll be right in.”