F*ck Marriage Page 19

She licks her lips, eyes darting around. She’s trying to think up another excuse, but I’ve already beat her out, anticipating her bullshit excuses. There is no other option unless she wants to rent a hotel room for a few weeks. I tell her so.

  We both know how hotels jack up their prices around the holidays. The resignation settles in her eyes, and I can visibly see her shoulders rise and fall in a sigh.

  “Does Jules know?”

  “Yes,” I lie.

  I haven’t told Jules yet, but I plan on doing that tonight when she calls. It’s a temporary win. Billie hobbles over to the couch and carefully lowers herself down.

  Jules doesn’t take the news as well as I expected.

  “Satcher, you’re my boyfriend. I know Billie is our friend, but you refused to come home with me for Christmas and now you’re spending the holidays with a woman who isn’t me.”

  I’m making a run to the liquor store, and as Jules’ words hit my ears, I dart across the street to beat a cab.

  “I didn’t go home to see my own family,” I say. “Billie has nothing to do with my staying in the city.”

  “I didn’t say she did. I guess I’m just a little jealous,” Jules admits.

  I soften even though I’m still annoyed. “Jules,” I say. “She’s just had a terrible accident…”

  Despite the loud noises of the city I hear her sigh on the other end of the line.

  “I get it, okay. Like I said, I’m just a little jealous my boyfriend is spending Christmas with my gorgeous friend.”

  I see the liquor store up ahead and I don’t want to be having this conversation anymore. I picture myself tearing off the lid of a bottle of vodka and taking a long swig, the powdery burn crawling slowly down my throat. That can’t be a good sign. Wanting to chug liquor like a college kid when I talk to my girlfriend on the phone. I probably need to have a couple of deep thoughts about this very disturbing reality. The problem with thinking deeply about your behavior is that it has to be followed by personal accountability. Once you acknowledge you’re being an ass, you either have to stop being an ass, or you have to embrace being an ass, and both options are uncomfortable.

  I tell Jules I have to go. I can hear the hurt in her voice, the wavering like she’s not sure what to say. Instead of feeling guilty, I feel irritated. My friends would say that I’ve been single for too long, and when someone comes along and tries to tell me what to do, I buck against it. But I don’t believe that’s the case at all. No, when you’re with the right person, they can tell you to dance like a duck in Central Park while wearing a tutu and singing Liza Minnelli and you’ll consider doing it. Love is a compelling drug.

  By the time I am exiting the liquor store, my plastic shopping bags full of ingredients to make Billie her favorite drink, a rough idea is forming.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The call comes as I’m locking up to meet Jules for dinner. At first, I think she’s calling to tell me she’s going to be late, but when I pick up and hear her voice, I know something terrible has happened. Her voice hits high notes of panic, warbling unsteadily across the line.

  “Jules,” I stick my finger in my ear to block out the cabbie who is laying on his horn. “I don’t understand what you’re saying. Can you slow down a bit and say it again?”

  She’s not the hysterical type, and that simple fact twists my insides into knots as I wait for her to calm down.

  I hear Billie’s name ... twice ... My stomach has climbed from its spot in my abdomen up into my throat, and as I pull the key from the lock, Jules repeats her story in a slightly less hysterical voice.

  “She was crossing the street, at the intersection! A car ran the light and hit her and two other people.”

  “Where did they take her?” My voice is all business, but my hands are shaking.

  I bound down the street dodging waves of pedestrians, as Jules screams the name of the hospital in my ear. I tell her I’m on my way and hang up as soon as I have all of the information. The hospital where they took Billie is only twenty blocks uptown, but the holiday traffic has severely congested every street in that direction. It would take at least an hour to get there by cab. I run.

  The hospital is packed, the city ripe with New York-style emergencies. There’s a woman ahead of me at the desk asking asinine questions to the sole person manning the desk. I tap my foot, impatiently willing her to move on. When she finally does, I take her place.

  “Billie Tarrow. She was just admitted. Hit-and-run…” The woman behind the desk glances at me over her glasses and then goes to work at the computer. After around a minute, I lean over the desk. “Have you found her…?”

  “Was just finishing something. Looking now,” she says.

  The receptionist has large eyes behind even larger round glasses. I tap my fingers on the desk. “The woman I love is lying somewhere in this hospital while you’re just finishing something…”

  She pushes her glasses up her nose. “And do you think you’re the only one here who has a loved one they want to see?”

  “No, but right now I’m the one in front of you, so I’m the one who matters.”

  She tightens her lips, fingers moving across the keyboard. Finally she says, “She’s in surgery. You can wait on the fourth floor with her family.”

  I head for the elevator wondering what family Billie has in New York. It’s not until I’m walking into the waiting room that I see Woods is already here, a pale Pearl at his side. It’s apparent that Pearl doesn’t want to be here, and I don’t blame her, but Woods does. That’s what bothers me: the dedication on his face like he’s still responsible for her in some way. I want to remove that look from his face, remove him from the hospital, but I have no more right to be here than anyone else. Woods is speaking to Jules, who has mascara smeared across her cheeks and is wringing her hands as I approach.

  “Oh, thank God.” Jules launches herself at me, burying her face in my chest.

  “How is she?” I ask no one in particular.

  “We don’t know yet,” Woods says.

  He looks so stricken, my best friend instinct kicks in and I want to ask how he is. I turn to Jules instead, pulling her away from my chest so I can see her face.

  “What happened?”

  “I was on the phone with her. She was really upset ... crying. She said she was going back to Washington and then I heard this noise.” Her eyes glaze over and it’s as if she’s remembering the noise because she shivers. “I kept saying her name and then someone picked her phone up off the ground and told me what happened.”

  I hold her tight as she sobs against me. “Has someone called her parents?” I direct this at Woods, who is the only person in the room who might have their number. He nods, his nose red.

  “They didn’t even say they were coming,” he says. “They just told me to keep them updated.”

  I’m too worried to be angry. “What surgery? What are they doing to her?”

  “There was internal bleeding…” Jules’ voice trails off.

  I’m frozen: my face, my heart—all of it. I don’t want to think about what state Billie is in, but I can’t help it. In the next hour, another family trickles into the waiting room. We learn that they’re the parents and the husband of the other woman who was hit by the vehicle. She was pushing her toddler in a stroller when the green SUV came barreling around the corner. Their three-year-old son, Dakota, didn’t survive the impact; his mother, like Billie, is still in surgery.

  When a doctor walks in two hours later, everyone in the room stands. He’s still in his scrubs, which I notice with relief, aren’t covered in blood. That has to be a good sign, right?

  “Billie Tarrow’s family?” He looks at me when he asks this, and I nod.

  “She was bleeding internally when the ambulance brought her in. We managed to stop the bleeding, but we won’t know the extent of her injuries until she wakes up. She’s in critical condition. Unfortunately, we can’t let you see her right now.”

  We nod sim
ultaneously. I glance at Woods, who looks disheveled, and I see that Pearl is watching him as well.

  “We’re going to get going,” Pearl says. “Call us if anything changes?”

  Jules looks away. She’d rather die than ever call Pearl, but I nod. I can tell Woods doesn’t want to leave, but Pearl grabs his arm and steers him out. Jules and I collapse into the plastic chairs. I realize it’s almost eight o’clock and neither of us have eaten.

  “I’ll go get something,” she offers. “I can’t sit here and wait anymore. I feel like I’m going out of my mind.”

  “All right,” I say slowly. “I’ll call if anything happens.”

  She leaves, her eyes tinged pink, and her fists curled into balls under the sleeves of her sweater. I sit back down to wait. Jules has been gone for no more than twenty minutes when a nurse comes in and informs me that I can see Billie.

  “Is she awake?” I ask, following her into the hallway.

  She shakes her head. “No. But touch her, talk to her. Let her know you’re there. It helps.”

  I nod as she leads me to the door of Billie’s room. She leaves me there and I hesitate a moment before stepping inside. Billie is the only color in the room, her skin pale and mottled with cuts and bruises the color of ripe fruit. I flinch when I see the oxygen tubes snaking into her swollen nose and I realize that it’s broken.

  “Oh my God,” I say to myself.

  I stand for what feels like forever, staring down at her broken body. This is my fault. I fought with her, said terrible things. She left the office upset and distracted. I pull the only chair in the room right up to her bed. I can’t hold her hand because of the tubes and needles, so I touch the only piece of her arm that isn’t scraped and bruised.

  “Billie,” I say. “It’s Satch. I’m here, okay? And I’m not going anywhere. I swear.”

  There’s no movement on the machines that read her vitals, no movement on her face. What if she never wakes up? I think. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. I text Jules to tell her I’ve seen Billie, but by the time she arrives with two bags of takeout, they’ve told me visiting hours are over.

  “But I didn’t get to see her,” she complains.

  “We’ll come back first thing tomorrow,” I say.

  I have no plan to leave the hospital tonight, but Jules nods even though she doesn’t look convinced.

  “I can get out of work tomorrow. I don’t want her to be alone when she wakes up.”

  “No. You’ve taken your vacation time for Christmas,” I remind her.

  She frowns. Jules took off two weeks to go visit her family for the holidays. She flies out the day after tomorrow.

  “I’ll stay. The office is closed anyway,” I say.

  Reluctantly, she nods.

  We eat in the waiting room, though we probably could have gone home since they won’t let us back in to see Billie. When we’re done eating, we clean up our mess, silently dumping the empty containers into the trash.

  “I don’t want to go. I feel so guilty,” she says.

  “She’s not going to wake up tonight,” I tell her. “Get some rest and you can be back right after work tomorrow.”

  She nods, wrapping her arms around my waist. “I’m lucky to have you,” she says. “Billie and I both are.”

  I doubt that, especially since I am the reason Billie is laid up in that bed in the first place.

  When we walk out the door, there are two cabs waiting in the line.

  “Two cabs. Perfect,” she says.

  I put her in the first cab, bending down so I can see her.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow.” I kiss her on the forehead.

  As soon as her cab disappears, I walk back into the hospital.

  I doze in the waiting room, my head tilted back and my legs stretched out in front of me until a teenage boy whose head is bent over his phone trips over my legs. I jar awake and he mumbles an apology before moving to a chair near the window. As soon as the nurse on duty will allow it, I am back in Billie’s room occupying the sole visitor chair. She tells me that there has been no change since last night. I spend the next few hours rubbing my thumb across her fingers and staring at her face in case she decides to open her eyes. I’m sick with worry, and to make matters worse, not a person in this goddamn hospital will give me a straight answer. I take to the Internet, which feeds me page after page of depressing statistics about head injuries. I try to reason with her, tell her she has to wake up, but she stays stubbornly still. I memorize the veins in the thin skin of her eyelids.

  Jules comes to the hospital during her lunch hour. When she sees me in the same clothes as yesterday, she frowns.

  “You stayed all night?”

  Before I can answer, Woods walks through the door, a bouquet of wildflowers in his hand. His eyes widen when he sees Billie.

  “Great. The whole crew is here,” I say.

  He ignores me and steps over to her side, staring down at her. I’ll give it to the guy, he looks worried.

  “Probably shouldn’t let Pearl see that moony look on your face,” I say.

  “Fuck off, Satcher.”

  Dust motes dance in the streaming light. I watch those instead of looking at Billie and Woods. She’s in a coma, and I’m jealous that he’s standing so close to her. I don’t know whether to laugh at myself or be disgusted.

  “Did they arrest the driver?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  An officer came by this morning to let me know. The driver’s name is Rey and he claims he had a seizure and didn’t know he hit the women and child until ten minutes later when he woke up in his car a block away. The police aren’t buying it. I told him I was her husband and now all of the nurses are calling me Mr. Tarrow.

  “Pearl and I are leaving for Missouri tonight.” He rubs a hand along his jaw while staring at Billie.

  “I’ll be here,” I say. “I’ll stay with her.”

  Jules grabs onto my arm and squeezes slightly. She’d suggested canceling her trip home, but I told her not to. Billie would be mortified if she knew Jules had forgone Christmas with her family to sit at the hospital.

  “Somehow that doesn’t comfort me,” Woods says.

  His eyes leave Billie and suddenly he’s studying my face. I clench my fists. The fact that he’s here infuriates me. Forty-eight hours ago he was having sex with Billie while his fiancée waited at home for him. I am sick of Woods and his inability to make a choice in life and stick with it.

  “Satch…” Jules, who can sense my anger, looks up at me, her eyes searching my face.

  The hospital room shrinks around us. Jules is relaying a look that says this is neither the time nor the place, but I’m so angry I shrug her hand off my arm and take a step toward Woods.

  “You have no right to be here,” I tell him. “You’re nothing to her. You left her.”

  Woods snickers. “I have more of a right than you do … oh wait…”

  He has a sick smile on his face and I know what’s coming next.

  “You’ve always wanted to be that person for her, haven’t you, Satch?”

  A thick silence fills the room. I feel Jules stiffen beside me, then inevitably, the heat of her eyes bores into me. But I can’t look at her because Woods and I have locked eyes. For twenty years I’ve loved my best friend, when things got bad, when he broke Billie’s heart—I loved him. But now as I look at the man I used to skateboard with, then go to keg parties with, I feel nothing but contempt. Even as a boy, Woods was fickle. Our brown bag lunches at school were a perfect example. Every day my mother packed the same lunch for me: a ham sandwich, a banana, two Capri Suns. Woods would go through phases, swearing by roast beef sandwiches and then saying he’d never eat another and switching to turkey. He could never decide what he liked or wanted. That went for his extracurricular activities too: switching from football, to baseball, to piano lessons—all in the span of four months. He’d want to be a pro athlete and then he’d decide he’d rather be a musician. I can’t e
ven imagine the amount of money his mother lost every time he decided to take up a new hobby and then drop it. Before Billie, he’d dated a hippie named Zion for nine months. Zion had dreads and wore skirts with bells sewn into the hem. During their relationship, Woods grew a beard, got his nose pierced, and joined a yoga studio. He told me that he envisioned himself buying a ranch and growing his own vegetables (he was vegan now). We’d moved to New York together because we hated the suburbs, hated the slow drawl people from Georgia spoke with, and all of a sudden, he was talking compost piles and sustainable energy. He told Zion he loved her and they’d started looking at sapphire engagement rings (no blood diamonds for Zion), only to break things off as soon as Billie stepped into the picture. I’d thought he’d finally found himself when he got together with Billie. Hippie beard-wearing Woods transformed into New Yorker bar-hopping Woods. Suddenly, he was wearing a leather jacket that he pilfered from a thrift shop and talking about living in a loft. The first time we all went out to dinner together he ordered an eighteen-ounce ribeye.

  “I thought you were a vegan,” I’d said.

  “Was being the keyword,” he’d responded, sawing at his steak with a knife.

  I thought who he was with Billie would stick. He was twenty-four walking around the Upper East Side with hearts in his eyes.

  Woods doesn’t know who he is and he slaughters hearts in his attempt to find out. It hasn’t made a difference to me ... hell, I’ve even found it amusing, until he hurt someone I love—more than I love him.

  “You should leave,” I hear Jules say to him.

  I hardly acknowledge his exit, choosing to stare at Billie’s still form instead.

  I hear the door click closed softly and then Jules comes to stand in front of me. I don’t want to do this right now, I think. This is about Billie, not petty jealousy and pissing on each other for ownership. I think she’s going to ask me about what Woods said, but instead, she smiles weakly and tells me she’s going to get going.

  “Sure,” I say, still a little dazed.

  I lean down to kiss her cheek, which makes her look even sadder than she did a minute ago. She doesn’t ask me if I’m going to stay, or offer to bring me a change of clothes, and when she leaves, I’m so relieved I feel guilty.