Page 44 of Parallel
“They’re laying people off. Our profits tanked last year and haven’t come back…rumor is that they’ll have cut forty percent of the sales force by the end of theyear.”
Forty percent?My eyes squeeze shut. I’m going to have to pay the mortgage alone again. And why the hell are we looking at houses if that’s the case? “What will you do if that happens?” I realize, too late, that I didn’t ask whatwewould do. Fortunately, he doesn’tnotice.
He stares at the ground, unable to meet my eye. “I have no idea. I can’t go back to thefarm.”
Though I never, ever, wanted to live on his parents’ farm, his words shock me a little. He loved that life and only gave it up to follow me here. I suppose I’d begun to think that maybe, if we didn’t work out, if my doubts got the better of me, he would at least have that to fall backon.
“Why couldn’t you go back to thefarm?”
He doesn’t look at me, and he doesn’trespond.
Fear makes my voice sharpen. “Jeff, what happened to your share of thefarm?”
“I sold it,” he says. “That first job I took down here, when I followed you? It was a total pyramid scheme. I had no idea until it was too late. I was so desperate to make you happy, to impress you, that I just didn’t see the signs, and I wound up so far in debt that I thought I’d never get out from under it. So I sold my share of the farm to my brother. I already knew for a fact you weren’t ever going to want to live there, so it seemed like the bestsolution.”
Shock knocks me backward. My mouth opens and for a moment no words emerge. The man in front of me is suddenly a stranger. How could he have gotten into that much debt and never mentioned it? “Why am I just learning this now?” I finally ask. I sound winded and I feel ittoo.
He buries his face in his hands. “I didn’t want you to know. I was so fucking ashamed that I’d gotten played like that, and I just wanted you to be proud ofme.”
My hands clutch my throat. He loved that farm. He loved owning a piece of it, and I never wanted him to give it up. I just didn’t want to be part of it with him. He brought all of this on himself and yet none of it would have happened if I hadn’t insisted on moving toD.C.
He still won’t look at me, so I sink to the floor and put my hand on his knee. This has been my role for a long time—soothing his wounds, holding him together. It comes naturally, but I’m a little tired of doing it. “We’ll figure it out, okay? But if you’re worried about your job, why are we out here looking at a house we can barelyafford?”
“I just wanted us to have something,” he says. “I’ll get another job. Maybe not as good as where I am, but I figured if we had a home of our own, something solid and entirely ours, that it would be enough. We don’t have to get this place. I got a little carried away when I saw the yard, but really I just want to know when push comes to shove that we have a place to raise a family. A place where we can get our lifeunderway.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to temper my response because the sheer stupidity of this plan is mind-boggling, and it’s on the tip of my tongue to say it aloud. There’s this canyon between me and Jeff, and I think it’s always been there. We operate by shouting to each other over it, and it works, the shouting. It’s been fine. But now I’m seeing what it’s like to feel so close to another person I can barely tell where I end and he begins. And my God I want that. Imissit. “Committing to a mortgage we might not be able to cover won’t make any house ours,” I finally tell him.Nick would know this,I think before I can silence it.Nick wouldn’t need to be reminded about my desire to go back to school.Nick wouldn’t discover I only have a few years to live and push me to give up adream.
“I just need to know that when we say for better or worse in a few weeks, that you mean it. That we’re in this together,” he says, his voice hitching on the last words. “Arewe?”
He is so despondent, this man I love and have made a commitment to. And maybe there are other things I want now, things I want badly enough to weep and beg for them. Somehow, I’m just going to have to learn to let those thingsgo.
“Of course we are,” Ireply.
* * *
On Monday afternoon,I return to Georgetown for the tests I need prior to my meeting with the oncologist at the end of the week. Nick walks into the waiting room with the sleeves of his Oxford rolled up, his tie loosened, the first hint of five o’clock shadow along his jaw. He draws eyes, and not just mine. The teenage girl and her mother sitting across from me nudge each other as they look him over. I’m tempted to tell them both to grow the fuck up, but I guess I’m nobetter.
I cross the room toward him and his smile is sudden, andstunning.
“Hi.” I sound as breathless as a tween meeting her favorite boyband.
He looks around. “I assume Jeff’s not coming?” I hear a hint of disdain in hisvoice.
“He left town this morning. He had a conference he really couldn’t miss, but he’ll be back for the meeting with Dr.Patel.”
His hand presses against the small of my back as we head toward imaging. “And you didn’t sign any contracts thisweekend?”
I stiffen a little. “No.” Though it’s true, it’s also kind of a lie. Because all I did, really, is put off theinevitable.
* * *
When my test is complete,I head toward his office, with my brain flitting from Jeff to the house to Nick and back. I round a corner and collide with a teenage girl paying as little attention as I am. We look up at the same moment and for a millisecond she is a stranger. A breathtaking stranger with the most extraordinary gray eyes, going wide at the sight of me. It’s her astonishment that jars my memory: she’s the girl I saw as I floated back to consciousness during my last blackout, looking every bit as shocked to see me as I was to seeher.
I stagger backward, still grasping her arm. “I saw you,” I breathe. “I saw you in my dream.” I know it sounds crazy, but I’m past caring about that right now, and something about the guilt in this girl’s face tells me she already knows anyway. And knows she shouldn’t have beenthere.
She swallows. “Yes, that happenssometimes.”
“How?” I ask. “You’re able to put yourself in someone’sdream?”