Chapter Three #2
Watching her depart, David felt that tiny ball of grief he carried inside him expanding.
He had wanted what Danielle and Robert had.
He wanted to be a good husband and father, the type of man who helped his wife cook dinner and played with the kids, too.
When he married Evelyn, he told her that he didn’t want to be fifty-fifty with any woman.
Instead, he wanted them both to be one hundred percent.
He wanted to be the type of man who gave it his all without the other person asking.
And he was supposed to have had that with Evelyn, been that for her—but then they got divorced.
Most of the time, he felt like he had done the right thing.
By the time their marriage ended, neither of them were giving it one hundred percent.
He doubted they were giving it ten percent, honestly.
All he knew was that he wouldn’t have survived one more night sitting alone in that sad and empty apartment, waiting for Evelyn to come home.
Yes, he had betrayed her. He had broken their marriage vows, a chilul hashem, and a desecration of God’s name.
But he’d ended their marriage holding on to one small consolation: Evelyn had left him long before he ever walked out on her.
All he’d done was gather up the paperwork and make it official.
“So,” Danielle said, taking a seat at the counter across from him. “Tell me . . . how was it being back at CBS7-T studios?”
David shifted. “Fine.”
She raised one eyebrow. “Just fine?”
Honestly, it was weird to be back. David had never really liked working in television medicine.
Sure, it allowed him the prestige of working with athletes and celebrities.
Plus, the pay was amazing, and there was almost no threat of medical malpractice lawsuits.
But television medicine, and especially sports medicine, had never been his passion.
In fact, he wasn’t all that into sports.
The reason he’d gotten involved in orthopedic medicine was because of his sister.
Danielle had a disease called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, or EDS for short.
As a young child, most people just considered her accident-prone and clumsy.
She was constantly fending off sprains and getting sidelined by microscopic tears.
She was impossibly flexible, able to bend her elbow all the way back, or hyperflex her thumb until it the touched the tip of her wrist. Nobody really thought anything of it at the time.
When they were growing up, very few people—including doctors—had heard of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.
But by fifth grade, Danielle was constantly in pain.
As a result, the whole family spent an inordinate amount of time in orthopedic offices.
And while there were lots of surgeries, and medications, suggested for Danielle throughout the early years of their lives, none of them completely healed his sister’s chronic pain.
It was after seeing his sister crying one night in her bedroom that he knew he was going to become a doctor.
“What’s there to report?” David jested casually. “One skinned knee, a swollen ankle . . . Mainly, I’m there for insurances purposes.”
“You sell yourself short.”
A timer went off. Danielle lifted from her seat and grabbed two oven mitts before pulling a tray of Hanukkah sugar cookies out of the oven.
“Actually.” David rubbed the back of his neck. “I ran into Evelyn today.”
His sister froze. The tray of cookies began sliding to the floor. “Whoa there,” David said, nodding to the baking tray.
Danielle managed to regroup, placing the cookies safely on the counter to cool.
“I was wondering,” she said, returning to the kitchen island.
“When you said you were coming into town last-minute, going back to work at the studios . . . I was wondering if you would run into her.” She inched closer. “How did it go?”
“Honestly,” David said, dragging one hand down his face. “It was terrible.”
“Oh, David.” His sister appeared truly forlorn. “What happened?”
“She hit her head on a piano.”
Danielle ’s chin dipped back. “Wait . . . what?”
“I mean,” David said, attempting to clarify, “she ran into a piano. Or the piano ran into her. I’m not totally certain .
. . But point being, she hit her head, passed out, wound up in my office .
. . and then, it basically went downhill from there.
” Of course, he left out the part where his heart had lurched into his throat upon seeing her again, how he struggled to even push her name past his lips.
Danielle blinked.
“Are you going to say something?” David asked.
“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I got caught on running into a piano. That is . . . so random, and yet . . . so interesting.”
He squinted. “Why interesting?”
“I don’t know,” she said, quickly. Too quickly. “I’m just saying . . . there was a chance you would run into her, but the piano clearly took it somewhere else.”
He didn’t like the insinuation. Like the universe was conspiring in some way to see them together. Indeed, hope was a terrible thing when it came to crappy relationships.
“So,” Danielle said, her eyes wide with curiosity. “What happened?”
“I told her she needed to go to the hospital.”
“And?”
“She told me it was a migraine, and to back off.”
“Ah,” Danielle said, almost sadly. “Well, that sounds like Evelyn.”
In Judaism, marriage was considered a vital part of Jewish life, a necessary component of spiritual and emotional fulfillment, and a mitzvah, or commandment, under Jewish law.
David frequently thought back to a teaching from the Talmud that stated, When a man divorces his first wife, the altar cries.
“She hates me,” David said.
Danielle frowned, before rightly pointing out the obvious. “Well, I mean . . . you did walk out on her.”
“It wasn’t that simple,” David said quickly.
“I know,” she said quietly.
A pressing silence worked its way through the room, before an eruption of shouts drew both their attention away. In the living room, the girls were jeering. All David could hear over the high squeak of their voices was Robert shouting, “Okay! Okay! We’ll do a once-over!”
“But that’s cheating!” Jesse screamed back.
Danielle rolled her eyes. “I should probably check on that.”
Finding himself alone, he thought back on the events of the day.
He knew when he took the job that there would be a chance of running into Evelyn.
He just hadn’t expected that after two years .
. . he would still be attracted to her. She looked good.
She smelled amazing, too. It was her scent, really, that brought back a thousand pleasurable memories .
. . heated kisses, that one time on the kitchen counter, her fingers pulling open his belt.
Yet there was so much bad, too.
“Seriously,” Danielle said, returning to the kitchen. “What sick, childless bastard decided to make Hanukkah eight damn nights?” Danielle caught on the words. “Oh my God,” she said, covering her mouth. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s fine,” David replied quickly.
“I didn’t mean it like—”
“Danielle.” David laughed it off. “It’s a saying. I get it.”
She came closer, laying one hand on his wrist in solidarity. “So, what are you going to do about Evelyn?”
“What can I do?” David said. “Avoid her as much as possible. Keep things professional. Try not to talk about the divorce or rehash the past.”
Even though the past was exactly what they needed to talk about. The ball of grief that lived inside his chest returned and became expansive.
“Well,” Danielle said, “I just hope that whatever happens this week is healing. Both of you deserve some sort of closure . . . after everything that happened.”
“Thank you.”
“Oh!” Danielle said, suddenly remembering.
“I meant to tell you. Tomorrow night, we’re going to be at Wollman ice skating rink in Central Park for candle lighting.
Our synagogue is holding a Hanukkah on Ice party.
There’s going to be ice-skating, fried foods.
We’ll do the candle lighting there and come home to open presents.
You okay with meeting up with us there?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Great.” Danielle smiled, and grabbed another plate of latkes. “Because there are a lot of single moms in our shul.”
David coughed. “What?”
“I’m just saying.” Danielle shrugged him off, playfully, before heading toward the living room to announce the start of dinner.
Before he could ask her what she’d meant, he was bombarded by a rush of little girls sprinting into the kitchen.
They were followed by Robert. David watched them grab plates, loading them up with food, before racing back to the living room to eat.
David followed after them, doing the same, taking a seat beside his niece, Robert and Danielle leaning into each other across from him.
“So, David,” Robert said. “How’s the rural life going for you?”
“Pretty good.”
“You take in any more animals?”
“Actually,” David was proud to share, “I just took in a pregnant alpaca last week.”
“An alpaca!” Jesse perked up from where she was eating latkes, then immediately spun in the direction of her mom. “I want a pregnant alpaca!”
“They’re kind of hard to have in the city,” Danielle humored her. “But you’ll get to see the alpacas when you visit in the summer.” Danielle raised one eyebrow in David’s direction. “We’re still on for that, right?”
“Always.”
She sighed, relieved. “Thank you.”
She didn’t have to thank him. The week Mom and Dad took to themselves, when David watched Jesse, was one of his favorite times of the year.