Chapter 24 Nola #2
By Sunday morning, it was clear Emma and I couldn’t leave him while he recovered.
He’d woken up at some point in the early hours and made the trek up to his room.
When I asked if he was more comfortable in his own bed, he was hallow.
“It’s fine. I came for the blackout shades and the ability to wallow in self-pity alone. ”
I rebooked our flights for the following Saturday, emailed Emma’s teacher, requesting access to do a distance-learning week, and updated Callie on my change in plans.
When she asked how my new landscape for the Hotel McCall was going, I hung up and placed a delivery order from the closest art supply store.
I’d begun one before coming to Arizona but it would be easy to start over and ship the project home.
Max wasn’t kidding when he said the kitchen nook had great morning light.
Once the canvas and acrylics come on Monday morning, I spread out everything on the large island and begin to mix blues together to get the right hue.
There’s a photo I took of Payette Lake on my camera roll, with a deer at the water’s edge and a cool morning’s summer mist rising from the trees.
I had pulled it up on my phone for guidance and was studying the balance of light when Emma paraded through the room, leading her field trip.
Around noon, the shower from Max’s ensuite turns on. I take this as my chance to sneak into his room and grab his phone.
“Whatcha doing?” Emma’s voice at the doorway makes me jump.
“Tidying up.” I smile and fluff his pillow.
She scrunches up her face. “That lie is going to cost you.”
“That’s fair, but then your phone bill is due the fifth of the month.” I’m not messing around.
“Well-played, Mom.” She backs out of the room. “I have homework to do.”
His passcode is our wedding anniversary—I teased him about it when he set it but now I’m grateful for a set of numbers I know. Once I’m in, I scroll through his contacts and add what I’m searching for into my phone before leaving his device where I found it and going back downstairs to my nook.
I’m not sure what the rules are in our situation when it comes to each other’s family.
Obviously, I have a working friendship with Stella, but his sisters?
I haven’t talked to them since the wedding.
Can I drop them a text? Could he randomly call Belle?
I don’t know. Whatever is happening, though, feels intervention-necessary, and so it’s a risk I’m willing to take.
Me: Hello, this is Nola—Max’s wife. Not sure if you know, but he got a concussion at Thursday’s game. I’m here in Arizona to help and he’s fine, but he’s not handling life very well. I think I’m out of my wheelhouse here.
I push send and begin drafting a second text that is on its way to becoming dissertation-length when an incoming video call pops up. Madelyn. Quietly, I sneak out the front door and pop in my earbuds, accepting the call.
“Hi,” the redhead movie star greets me. She’s in full hair and makeup, with a bib still tucked into her shirt collar. “Hang on just a sec, I’m going to conference Violet in.”
In a couple of seconds, her video materializes and I see her in what appears to be her office. With a smile, the oldest Hutchings sister asks, “Can you two hear me?”
We both nod. Madelyn tosses her hair over one shoulder and tells us, “I’m going to be summoned in about ten minutes to film my next scene, so I thought this would be easier than texting. What is going on?”
I give them the Cliff Notes version and add, “Is he going to be mad at me for talking behind his back with the two of you?”
“Please,” Madelyn scoffs. “He’s harmless. Yes, he loves to be totally brooding and woe-is-me, which we’d all hoped he would have outgrown by now, but . . .”
“Oh yes, he’s loved to play the down-and-out, misunderstood man, but I don’t know if we can say he’s still that way, Lynnie. I saw a totally different guy at the wedding,” Violet muses.
“Only because the baseball carrot was being dangled in front of him,” I remind them to get us back on track.
“And now he’s worried it will go away as fast as it came.
This is the part that I’m not sure how to handle.
Do I call Aaron? Is there somebody within the team I’m supposed to pass him over to? ”
“No. Unfortunately, this is what he does,” Violet sighs.
She asks some follow-up questions about his concussion and course of home care prescribed by the team doctor, agreeing with what’s been happening before continuing her thoughts about his behavior.
“You’re doing everything right and he’ll recover.
But he goes to his dark place where he gets in his head.
Our brother is the baby of the family—by fourteen minutes—and he lives it hard.
“My guess? He’s worried if he doesn’t play baseball, you won’t like him. If he doesn’t play baseball, he won’t know who he is. Sure, he peacocks around like king of the world, but he’s a huge softie who needs a lot of reassurance. Even if you’ve told him once, he needs to hear it again.”
Madelyn nods. “He hasn’t always been that way. I mean, he was a happy little kid and then our parents died, and he had to grow up. We all did, but he throws his whole self into whatever he’s doing and can’t let himself enjoy it because he’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“So what do I do?” I know time is running out, but I’m still at a loss of how to help him.
“You want the honest answer?” Violet asks.
“Nola, he’s done the therapy. He’s had the dream career.
For all the bad in his life, he’s had things handed to him on silver platters.
If he can’t figure out how to be happy with whatever his next chapter is, then you’ll need to walk away for your own sanity.
Fulfill your end of this bargain and get out.
I love my brother, but you deserve better than a man-child. ”
“Ouch. Would you believe it if I tell you that Violet is the naturally happy one?” Madelyn gives me a big smile. “He’s going to sulk for a few days and bounce back. You just have to ride out the wave and be willing to give him the space to do his thing.”
“Okay.” It isn’t exactly the four-step formula I was hoping for, but it helps to know this was Max-normal. There is one thing I need clarification on before we hang up. “Does giving him space mean I should totally ignore him?”
Violet’s face puzzles. “I’m not sure. He’s never had somebody he cares about—outside of us—see this side of him before.”
Emma wanted me to calculate the length of Max’s pool compared to an Olympic-sized pool and figure out how many laps she’d have to swim to swim the 100.
While I wasn’t sure what the “gold” was in her mind, I told her that sounded like a great math problem for her to figure out.
The answer: enough laps and she was out like a light at eight o’clock.
That hadn’t happened in years. Bless her tween heart.
I’d taken the Hutchings sisters’ advice and let Max be Max for the rest of the day.
Made good headway on the landscape for the hotel, ordered more groceries for the house between laundry and tuning into the Seafarer’s afternoon game, followed by lifeguarding my child’s athletic feat.
I owe Max an apology for when he told me giving her a B was a fair grade.
After locking up, I carry a tray of grocery store sushi and sparkling water up to Max’s room.
Knocking would be the polite thing to do, but I’m also the wife, so I let myself in and can’t believe what he’s watching.
The romcommest of all romcoms: When Harry Met Sally.
There are so many ways I could react to this.
I could point out his sisters were right and he is a big softie.
That would mean admitting to talking to them earlier and I’m not sure I want to go there right now.
I could also point out how it’s adorable he identifies so much with the grumpy main character, Harry Burns.
Instead, I climb into bed next to him and hand him a crunchy tuna roll and ask him to start the movie over.
“Is this from the grocery store?” he asks after one bite.
“You know it, and all you gotta say is thank you.”
The only light in the room comes from the TV, and from the corner of my eye, I see him chuckle. In my book, that’s a good sign, all things considered, and I say nothing else while we eat.
The silence, though easy, eats at me after a while, and halfway through the movie, I grab the remote and push pause. Setting aside my almost finished third spicy California roll, I tell him, “We’re going to get through this together, whatever happens, okay?”
“What’s happening?” he asks and takes a bite of his roll.
“As requested, we’re finally talking like adults.”
“Oh.” He puts down his tray and runs a hand down the side of his face. “What if I’m cut from the team?”
“It’ll be really hard and disappointing. You’ll go through the five stages of grief and eventually, you’ll buy that key and kite and follow me to Philly,” I tell him and he seems to appreciate me remembering his promise to go wherever I was.
“And if I decide to quit before I finish out my contract?”
“That’s fine too.”
His gazes narrows. “There’s more, isn’t there?”
“I need to say something right now, and you might not like it but you need to hear it.” I wrinkle my nose.
“Try me.”
“It’s hard for me that when things get hard for you or don’t go your way, you make poor choices.”
“I—”