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“The book club.”
“Yes, my book club that reads roughly one third of the books assigned. And Lawrence isn’t half bad. I think I’ll keep him.”
Lawrence is Janelle’s boyfriend. She didn’t let him come around for the first two months I was living with her. She told me afterwards she didn’t want to upset the apple cart. I’ve gotten used to her animal and agriculture-related adages. I now try not to put the cart before the horse when making decisions, I know there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and I realize that leopards generally don’t change their spots. Sometimes I amuse myself trying to come up with ones that apply to my life. Like I didn’t give Simon a reason to buy the cow, you know, having given the milk away for free, and as a result, the chickens have come home to roost. Yes, I have that much time on my hands. Five months later and Lawrence has yet to stay overnight. But I watch them, they’re affectionate with one another. I figure they probably get it on while I’m at school during the day. As they say, while the cat’s away, the mice will play. Yeesh.
Our smiles fade in tandem. “So…”
She looks at me square, reading the question on my mind. “Paul and his wife have three children.” She rolls her eyes. “Amandalovesposting dorky photos.” She adds, “He looks happy and that’s what I wanted for him.”
I reach out and squeeze her hand. Every single person has a story, and I feel closer to Janelle knowing hers.
I don’t get much sleep the night before the surgery. My aunt is wonderful, so wonderful, but she’s no substitute for Simon. When I first got the news, I wailed like a wounded animal, faced with the prospect of losing our child, our son. Up until that moment I was so undecided, ambivalent at times even. But now I feel as if I would surely want to die myself if my baby doesn’t survive. God, I want Simon to hold me, to tell me it’s all going to be all right. I want him toknow.
But he doesn’t know because he never came looking for me. It pains me to admit that I believed he would. After everything, after the way he left and the deafening silence in the weeks that followed, I still believed that I was special to him, that he must be suffering, missing me and what we shared. I believed he would find me, sweep me up in his arms and tell me he was sorry. He’d hold me and tell me again how he’d love me forever.
As they roll me towards the operating room, I wonder where he is at this very moment. Is he just waking up, thinking about an assignment due later this week? Or maybe he’s eating breakfast with his new friends in the dining hall. He might even be on his way to class walking alongside some new girl—flirting, laughing, entirely oblivious to what is going on.
Simon.
He is my last coherent thought, the last face I see before the anesthesiologist places the mask over my face and instructs me to start counting backward.
One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight…
Chapter Seventeen
Simon
“You’d be up shit’s creek if I fell for an accountant.”
“Brandon enjoys working on my truck. You like the challenge, don’t you?”
“It’s not a challenge, it’s just an old piece of crap five year’s past its expiration date.”
Mike comes over to the kitchen island and hands both of us a beer. “Is it running?”
Brandon smiles at my brother the way you smile at someone you love. “It’ll get the job done.” Looking to me, he adds, “For now.”
“For now my ass. I need that baby to get me back and forth to my job.”
“How is that working out?” Mike clearly doubts my ability to keep up with classes while holding down a night shift. “You know I can lend you some money.”
I take a long pull off my beer and shake my head as I swallow it down. I’m exhausted, and I’ve been questioning my decision making skills lately too, but I’m not taking my brother’s money. “My classes are manageable…The workload isn’t too bad.”
In truth, I feel like I’m drowning sometimes. The kids here are different. Their mothers and fathers are research scientists, prize-winning novelists, corporate titans—they come from the land of success and they speak the language of privilege. I retreat to Mike and Brandon’s place sometimes when it gets to be too much. I don’t have to pretend like I have my act together when I’m around these two. I can be myself, let my guard down.
Brandon grabs a sweatshirt from a hook by the door. “I forgot the arugula. I’ll be right back.”
Mike gives him a lazy salute. “I’d say screw it, but I’m making broiled salmon over a bed of arugula. It’s kind of necessary.” When we’re alone, he asks again, “Sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine. It just takes some getting used to.”
“I know what you mean. I felt like Chicago was some giant, scary, alien metropolis when I stepped off that bus.” He stops in the middle of chopping some scallions. “Sometimes I think about those first few days here, scared out of my mind, and I can’t believe I was stupid and desperate enough to do what I did.”
“It all worked out.”
“By the grace of God.” He goes back to work prepping the fish. “I’m lucky I didn’t get killed.”
“You never really told me the story behind what happened.”
