Chapter 22 Patton
twenty-two
patton
Ten Things I Wish About You
Seven Years Ago
Ipush through the door of our penthouse apartment, clicking it shut behind me, noting how my desperate voice echoes louder than usual today. “Neesh!”
I haphazardly leave my luggage in the empty foyer, the sound carrying through the space that feels too vast. It’s the same spot Nisha usually greets me in, with that smile that makes me forget the weeks I’ve been away, and eyes that speak louder than the words she always whispers in my arms. “God, I missed you, husband.”
My feet carry me forward, toward our spacious living room, looking for signs of my wife.
My eyes skim the multitude of perfectly fluffed throw pillows on our sectional before I turn to walk down the long hall toward our bedroom, past the gallery wall of black and white photographs of our wedding—my hands cradling my gorgeous bride’s face with my lips against hers.
The two of us with her dad, sister, and Piper.
The two of us with my foster parents, Joe and Molly.
Each frame seems to follow me as I pass, the people from those happy moments staring back a little vacantly today.
“Nisha?” I repeat, looking around the room as if she’ll pop out from behind our bed. But it stands uninhabited, the white duvet cover pulled tight and pastel-colored throw-pillows arranged neatly.
Except, today our bed doesn’t feel so inviting—not the way it usually feels when I get back home, pulling her into it before we’ve even exchanged a single word. No real conversation, no exchanged pleasantries, just needing to be inside her more than I need my next breath.
I turn my gaze toward the window seat she likes so much, looking for her knitting supplies, but find it empty, too.
I stride toward the adjoining bathroom, my heart pounding as I rap my knuckles on the door. “Nisha? You in there?”
Silence. No sound of a running shower or her humming.
I turn the knob, pushing the door open to step onto the marble tile. But the bathroom is empty.
Not just empty.
Different. Wrong.
It takes me a moment to understand why, like trying to visualize a puzzle with the center pieces missing.
Her robe—the wine-red one that always hangs next to the walk-in shower—is missing.
The counter, with her caddy of neatly organized skincare products, makeup brushes, and the perfume she loves, is bare, save for the pump dispenser of hand soap.
Even her electric toothbrush is gone from its charging station near the sink.
My heart stutters, my lungs feeling like they’re too small to capture any air.
The missed calls I found, the broken and pleading voicemail she left me three days ago, had me rushing to the airport and taking the first flight back home, knowing something was dreadfully wrong.
“Please, Patton, pick up. Please . . . I need you.”
We’ve been through so much to get pregnant again; what if something happened to Nisha or the baby? But she would have told me. Even if it was through a text or in a voicemail, she would have told me.
Wouldn’t she?
I know my wife.
Her strength, her fortitude to withstand more than almost anyone on the planet, and her pride. Even with the disappointment she expressed the night I left, telling me how lonely she’d been feeling, how blindsided she felt when I told her I was leaving, she held it together.
I knew I was breaking her heart, pushing her beyond her limits and asking her to accept my choices without her input, but she never told me not to go.
Maybe she’d already reached her limit?
Maybe she’d already decided enough was enough?
I move toward her closet, flipping on the switch, and the sight nearly brings me to my knees.
It’s empty, save for the small trashcan in the corner and a price tag lying next to it, like she was trying to throw it in there but didn’t bother in her rush to get out.
It’s completely devoid of her clothes, her fifty shades of black shoes, and the little jewelry boxes she’d collected over the years.
Where is she?
Where did she go?
The stagnant air still holds a trace of her pomegranate shampoo, the scent I was looking forward to burying my face in for the past three weeks. But even that seems to fade with every inhale I take.
With my hand trembling around my phone and my breaths colliding against one another on their way out, I call her. Without thinking, I step on the small pedal of the trashcan, needing something to do while I wait for her to pick up.
The phone rings three times before her voicemail picks up.
I call her again, bending to pick up the crumpled lined paper inside the bin. This time my call goes straight to voicemail.
My hands shake as I unfold the paper as if it contains the answers I’m looking for.
It’s probably nothing—a grocery list or supplies for the nursery—so I can’t quite understand what compels me to smooth it out and read the title at the top written in her familiar clear-cursive slant. Ten Things I Wish About You.
My eyes dart down the list, but the words seem to swim on the page, refusing to register—something about phone calls and being best friends.
I can’t process this right now. Not when all I want to do is search for her in every room and closet in the apartment, hoping this is just her torturing me for leaving so spontaneously.
I admit that springing my departure on her right after we’d made love was a little underhanded. I thought she’d be in a better mood to handle the news if I’d shown her how much I loved her, but maybe that wasn’t right.
Okay, it definitely wasn’t right. But she wouldn’t leave because of that, would she?
No. We’d talked after that; several times over the last three weeks, save for the past few days that I was on set in a remote location.
But I’d told her I’d be reachable soon; I told her I’d talk to her as soon as filming was over. And I made sure that if there was an emergency, she had the landline number for the makeshift production office. Someone would have tracked me down if she needed me sooner.
So, why wouldn’t she wait?
My mind filters through our recent conversations—mainly Nisha telling me that her morning sickness was getting worse by the day, that she could barely keep anything down.
Unfortunately, with my insane schedule and the time difference, it was hard for us to have lengthy conversations.
But I’d tried to be there for her emotionally the best I could, hadn’t I?
Our last time together, she’d admitted how lonely she felt here. She wasn’t happy with how many projects I’d taken on, but I thought she understood that this was the “growing phase”.
Actors waited their entire lives for the roles I was getting. I was still early in my career, and rejecting opportunities at this time would kill the momentum we’d worked so hard for me to build. I thought she knew that. I thought she believed in it . . . believed in me.
Crumbling the piece of paper again, I stuff it into my pocket and slam the back of my head against the wall in her closet, questions running rampant inside my mind.
“Fuck!”
My eyes prick as my brain works, trying to comprehend what’s happening.
This morning I got back to the mainland in Thailand and turned on my phone as soon as I had reception. My stomach dropped when I heard the panicked voicemail she left three days ago.
I tried calling her, to no avail, before packing my things and getting the hell out of there to get to her. Her broken words echoed inside my head the entire flight, and I fought to keep my thoughts from taking a dark turn. Because I knew that when I got to her, we would work it out.
Nothing was insurmountable when we were together.
It’s been that way since we were sixteen, since the week I moved in with Joe and Molly and met the most beautiful girl in school.
At first, I thought my luck had peaked when they assigned me a locker next to hers.
Then she actually talked to me, introduced me to her sister and her best friend, and encouraged me to join the theater class.
Luck would have it that we even ended up in the same dojang, learning taekwondo together.
Soon, she was unveiling little pieces of herself, telling me things she only told a few others. Because while the girl had befriended me, she was a quiet enigma, preferring to be the listener rather than the talker, the calm rather than the chaos.
I learned that her mom had died the year before, and Nisha used the mats in our dojang to quiet some of the grief, practicing for hours on end. It was also because of her mom that her family was fluent in sign language, given her mom was deaf.
I learned the first thing she wanted to do when she turned eighteen was get her arm inked with vines of stars and flowers, that French toast was the answer for every meal, and that she had an inexplicable fear of helium balloons.
The last one dated back to when she and her twin had turned five.
Apparently, she’d wandered into the dark hallway for the bedroom and found their birthday balloons floating near the ceiling.
In her half-asleep mind, they’d turned into looming ghosts.
Instead of making it to the bathroom, she’d peed her pants, and the fear embedded deep into her psyche.
Even now, Nisha couldn’t look at a helium balloon without trembling. And my wife—my fierce, indomitable wife—trembled at nothing.
With my thumb over another phone number, I rush out of the bathroom. I wait as the ring goes through to Sarina’s phone. When she doesn’t answer, I call Piper.
Again, no answer.
What the fuck?
Standing in the living room, I send off several text messages to Nisha, urging her to call me. But when I don’t receive her normal Read receipt after several minutes, I call her dad.
After Nisha and I moved to L.A., and Sarina married her pro-golfer husband, Suraj found a tech job that brought him from Boston to San Francisco to be closer to his daughters.
Relief washes over me when he answers, and I cut him off mid-hello.