Chapter 9 #4
As it stood now, medical school made my undergraduate education look like one long game of badminton.
I wasn’t so sure how I was supposed to hold it all together once things got worse.
And things would always get worse. “When I’ve finished training I’m not going to have any time,” I said.
“I’ll be starting a practice, I’ll be working.
Or I won’t be starting a practice because I have no intention of being a doctor, so then I’ll have to go out and find a job and that won’t be the right time.
I can say that for the rest of my life, can’t I?
This isn’t the right time.” Though Dr. Able had told me it wasn’t like that.
He said the first year was the hardest, then the second, then the third.
He said it was all about learning a new system of learning, and that the farther along I went, the more fluid I would become. I hadn’t told Dr. Able about Celeste.
Maeve peeled the cellophane off the pack. Once she lit her cigarette I could tell she hadn’t really quit. She looked too natural, too relaxed. “Then the question isn’t about timing,” she said. “You deserve to get married and the timing will always be bad.”
“Diabetics shouldn’t smoke.” I was far enough along in school to know that much. In fact, that was knowledge that had nothing to do with medical school.
“Diabetics shouldn’t do anything.”
“Have you tested your sugar?”
“Jesus, you’re going to start asking me questions about my blood sugar? Stick to the topic. What are you going to do about Celeste?”
“I could marry her over the summer.” I had meant it to sound snappish because she’d snapped at me, but as soon as I said it I had a surprising glimpse of the practicality.
Why not? A clean apartment, good food, loads of sex, a happy Celeste, a level of adulthood I hadn’t yet imagined.
I repeated the words just to feel them leave my mouth.
It sounded worldly somehow. I could marry her over the summer.
All the various scenarios I’d played out in my mind up until now involved disappointing Celeste—she’d be hurt and I’d feel guilty, and then, after it was over, I would miss the naked girl in my bed.
But I’d never considered the possibility of saying yes, of simply seeing this as one inconvenient time in a long string of inconvenient times ahead.
Maybe marrying now wouldn’t be worse. Maybe it would be better.
Maeve nodded as if this was what she’d expected me to say. “Do you remember when Dad and Andrea got married?”
“Of course.” She wasn’t listening to me.
“It’s strange, but my memory always conflates their wedding and the funeral.”
“No, I do that, too. I think it has to do with the flowers.”
“Do you think he loved her?”
“Andrea?” I said, as if we could have been talking about someone else. “Not at all.”
Maeve nodded again and blew a long stream of smoke out the window. “I think he was tired of being alone, that’s what I think. I think there was this big hole in his life and Andrea was always there, telling him she was the person who could fill it up, and eventually he decided to believe her.”
“Or he got tired of listening to her.”
“You think he married her just to shut her up?”
I shrugged. “He married her to end the conversation about whether or not they should get married.” As soon as I said it, I understood what we were talking about.
“So you love Celeste and you want to spend your life with her.” She wasn’t asking me a question. She was just making sure, finishing things off.
I wouldn’t get married in the summer. The idea slipped off as quickly and completely as it had arrived, and the feeling I was left with was everything I had imagined: sadness, elation, loss. “No, not like that.”
We sat with the final decision for a while. “You’re sure?”
I nodded my head, lit a second cigarette. “Why don’t we ever talk about your love life? It would be a huge relief for me.”
“It would be for me, too,” Maeve said, “but I don’t have one.”
I looked at her square on. “I don’t believe you.”
And my sister, who could outstare an owl, turned her face away. “Well, you should.”
After I came back from Jenkintown, Celeste decided everything was Maeve’s fault. “She tells you to break up with me three weeks before finals? Who does something like that?”
We were in my apartment. I had told her not to come down, that I would take the train up to her and we could talk there, but she said that was ridiculous. “We’re not going to talk in front of my roommate,” she said.
“Maeve didn’t tell me to break up with you. She didn’t tell me anything. All she did was listen.”
“She told you not to marry me.”
“She did not.”
“Who talks to their sister about these things anyway? Do you think when my brother was trying to decide whether or not to go to dental school he came out to the Bronx so we could hash it out together? People don’t do that. It isn’t natural.”
“Maybe he wouldn’t talk to you.” I felt a quick gust of annoyance and I let it turn to anger, anger being infinitely preferable to guilt.
“And maybe that’s because he knew you wouldn’t listen to him.
Or maybe he would have talked it over with your parents because you have parents. I’ve got Maeve, okay? That’s it.”
Celeste felt her advantage tipping away and she changed her tack like a little sailboat on a windy pond. “Oh, Danny.” She put her hand on my arm.
“Just leave it alone,” I said, as if I was the one who was about to be hurt. “It’s not going to work. It doesn’t have to be anyone’s fault. It’s bad timing, that’s all.”
And for that small conciliatory sentence pulled from the air she went to bed with me one more time.
Afterwards she said she wanted to spend the night, that she would leave first thing in the morning, but I said no.
Without any more discussion we packed up what was hers and sat together on the train back up to the Bronx, each of us with a bag in our lap.