On Second Thought

Judy sobbed happily, and Aaron wiped his eyes. “Love you, too, son,” he managed.

“My awesome team at St. Luke’s, Dr. Benson, Dr. Ramal, Dr. Williams, and all the incredible nurses and staff at the infusion center.” A round of applause followed, though none of the team had been able to make the party.

“My workmates, who were so great while I went through this ordeal.”

The Wall Streeters gave themselves a rowdy cheer, and Blake shouted, “I’d give my left nut to be half the man you are!”

Eric pretended to smile; he hated that joke. He went on to thank his boss, his assistant, the receptionist.

Come on, Eric. If he went through the entire list (as he seemed intent on doing), he’d be here all night. Alas, he loved to give speeches. Next thanked: his cousin, who’d flown up from Boca to visit—for nine days, and let me tell you, that wasn’t exactly a favor. Eric’s golf buddy—Kate’s husband, Nathan—for keeping his spirits up, though to the best of my knowledge, they’d played golf only once.

Next on the list: everyone who read and commented on The Cancer Chronicles. I sneaked a look at Jonathan, who remained stone-faced. Eric thanked Beth for her good cheer, the Hoffmans for plowing our driveway (once; I shoveled the other times). He thanked Ollie, “my little buddy when I was too weak to do anything other than nap.”

Come on, Eric.

“And last on the list, but first in my heart, of course, is someone very special I need to thank.”

He looked at me, his dark eyes wet, and my irritation vanished. My heart stopped, then surged forward, hot and full of love.

“Someone who stood by me every minute, who kept my spirits up when I stared down Death, when I was too weak to lift my head.”

Granted, there really hadn’t been a moment when he was too weak to lift his head, but yeah. I’d been great. Judy’s quiet sobs resumed, and she gave me a watery smile. Aaron squeezed my shoulders.

“Babe, come over here,” he said, and I went, my heart thudding, practically levitating from happiness and adrenaline. I was hyperaware of everything, like Peter Parker is in Spider-Man—the tag sticking up from Rachelle’s neckline, the nice orange blossom smell of Beth’s perfume, Ollie being fed an appetizer by Esther, Jonathan’s constipated expression, my sister’s sardonic smile.

Eric touched his pocket, where the box-shaped lump sat so promisingly, and I smiled through my happy tears.

It was about damn time.

Chapter Three

Kate

I tried to remember a time when I loved parties. College, maybe?

This kind of party was the worst. I didn’t know many people aside from my family members, and I’d talked to Esther and Matthias as long as they tolerated me, then trailed them down to the basement cellar, where they booted up Mad Max: Fury Road. When guilt forced me upstairs, I saw Nathan getting a plate of food for my grandmother.

An aching, lovely pressure squeezed my chest. He saw me looking and smiled.

“Kate, your husband is so wonderful!” Gram-Gram chirped. “I didn’t know what I wanted, so he got me some of everything!” She popped a mozzarella ball into her mouth and chewed. “Delicious!”

“My pleasure, Lettie,” Nathan said, sliding his arm around me. “Is it me, or does all the food here look like testicles?” he whispered.

I choked on a laugh. Come to think of it, yes. Mozzarella balls, melon balls, grapes, cherry tomatoes, little round onion puffs, scallops...

Gram-Gram patted my cheek. “It’s so good to see you happy, dear,” she said. “Nathan, thank you for marrying this girl! We thought she’d be an old maid forever.”

“Yes, thanks, Nathan,” I said, nudging him with my elbow. “Community service and all that.”

“It beat picking up trash on the side of the highway.” He kissed my temple and dropped his voice so Gram-Gram wouldn’t hear. “And thank you for the great shag earlier.”

My cheeks warmed. “You’re very welcome.”

My grandmother ate another round thing. “You’re in love! Oh, Kate, we’d given up on you!”

“That’s enough, Gram-Gram.” I smiled as I said it.

Eric started clinking his glass. “And here we go,” I murmured, finishing my wine. Considered taking a photo of Eric, then opted against it. Clearly, he had too many as it was.

As he thanked the many people on his list, I felt myself getting drowsy. Nathan glanced at me and smiled. “No sleeping,” he whispered. “If I can stay awake, so can you.”

I smothered another laugh.

“...and my golf buddy, Nathan.”

Nathan raised his glass and smiled. “We played once,” he whispered as Eric kept naming names.

Uh-oh. I felt a case of the giggles coming on.

Nathan squeezed me a little closer. “Is my wife’s glass empty? Uh-oh. I better fix that.”

“Yes indeed,” I said, handing him the glass. He went off to the back, where the makeshift bar was set up.

Eric paused and looked meaningfully at my sister. “And last on the list, but first in my heart, of course, is someone very special I need to thank. Someone who stood by me every minute, who kept my spirits up when I stared down Death, when I was too weak to lift my head.”

Laying it on a little thick, Eric? I chastised myself for the unkind thought.

He summoned Ainsley to his side.

It was about damn time Eric proposed. I mean, clearly, this was the proposal, finally. The fact that it was taking place in front of a collage of himself and himself alone bothered me, but it wasn’t surprising. Ainsley had always been something of a groupie where Eric was concerned.

To each her own. Ainsley was glowing as she made her way to Eric, and that was what I should focus on. I adjusted my lens subtly, hoping to catch the moment.

“Everyone, raise your glass to Ainsley,” Eric said.

Nathan was still waiting at the makeshift bar. He’d have to hurry so I could toast my sister. I’d sucked down that first glass fast to help me deal with that damn collage. There was a picture of his scrotum, pre-and post-op, with a little infomercial text underneath it. A quick wine buzz had been required. Even now, the scrotal sac photo seemed to beg me to look at it.

Behind me, I heard my mother sigh. She had a very distinct sigh, years of practice. Dad wasn’t here; he was calling a game somewhere out West. A shame. Ainsley, product of the wife he truly loved, was his favorite.

Eric took my sister’s hand. “Babe, I couldn’t ask for a better woman in life. Ever since we met, I knew you were special, but my cancer journey has shown me that you’re not just special...you’re extraordinary.”

Did the word cancer have to be in every other sentence? Still, Ainsley’s chest was hitching; I could imagine how hard it was for her not to cry; she could cry at Antiques Roadshow. She bit her lip and smiled, her mouth wobbling a little. Sweet kid. Well, she was thirty-two. Sometimes I forgot, since she seemed so...naive.

Eric gazed out at the crowd. “Everyone, a toast to the woman who is not only kind and generous and strong and beautiful, but also...” He reached into his pocket, and I raised my camera. “But also the woman I want to spend the rest of—”

There was a little cry of surprise from behind me, and out of the corner of my eye, I caught a movement.

Nathan.

He tripped. That was embarrassing, right at the big moment.

It was just a flash of a second. Wine sloshed over the rim of the glass Nathan was carrying. A woman jerked as it splashed on her back. Nathan stumbled, and someone stepped neatly out of his way, and he fell.

There was a thunk, and I couldn’t see my husband anymore.

A ripple of laughter rolled through the crowd. “Someone’s cut off,” a Wall Streeter said.

“Shame to waste good wine.”

“Make sure he pays for that!”

My camera was still pointed at Ainsley. I looked at her, and she wasn’t smiling anymore.

Her face was white.

Her boss, Jonathan, knelt down where Nathan had fallen.

I felt my heart roll. Get up, Nathan. Get up.

“Call 911,” Jonathan barked, and then my camera hit my side as it fell from my fingers, the strap yanking against my neck.

Nathan was lying facedown.

Wait.

He’d only tripped. He wasn’t a drama queen, not like Eric.

But he was just lying there.

A seizure?

Ollie the dog barked.

“Honey?” I said, but my voice was thin and weak. My wobbly legs carried me closer.

Jonathan rolled Nathan over, pressed his fingers against his throat.

Was he checking for a pulse? Why? Nathan just tripped, that was all. Big deal. Maybe his legs were a little weak because, yes, we’d done it against the wall not more than two hours ago, and it wasn’t as easy as it looked on TV.

Jonathan started CPR.

Oh, Jesus. Jesus, Jesus, this couldn’t be happening. This had to be a mistake. I’d never seen anyone do compressions before. It looked painful. Would Nathan’s ribs be okay? Should Jonathan ease off a little? “Honey?” I said. I was on the floor all of a sudden, on my knees. Please. Please. Please.

Nathan’s eyes were only open a slit. “Nathan?” I whispered.

“Help him,” someone said. “Call 911.” But that had already been said. 911 had already been called.

I could smell chardonnay.

“Help him!” my mother barked. “Somebody, breathe for him!” And somebody did, one of the frat brothers, the one who made the left nut joke.

Someone was saying “Nathan? Nathan?” in a high, hysterical keen, and I was pretty sure it was me. The dog was still barking. Then my sister’s arms were around my shoulders, and she was telling people to step back, make room, get a blanket.

But a blanket wouldn’t help him.

Nathan was dead.

Chapter Four

Ainsley

I’d never seen anyone die before. Cross that off my bucket list. Not that it was ever on it, God!

I watched Nathan go from smiling to startled to dead. Just like that. My Spidey-senses had been going crazy, soaking in the happiest moment of my life.

There was the tag on Rachelle’s dress. Jonathan’s face of constipation. Nathan, carrying Kate’s glass of wine.

Then he tripped on Rob’s foot. It wasn’t Rob’s fault; it was crowded in here. The wine sloshed over the rim and sloshed down Beth’s back, making her yelp, and Frank turned. If Frank hadn’t turned, Nathan would’ve hit him, but he did turn, and Nathan fell forward, nothing to stop him.

His head hit the edge of the granite counter with a soft thunk, and his eyes widened, and just like that, he was dead.

I knew it before it was pronounced. I knew CPR wouldn’t work.

Eric and I followed the ambulance, Candy and Kate in Jonathan’s car, since he was parked on the street and able to get out without ten other cars needing to move first.

As we drove, I knew the ER doctors would try and fail. I don’t know how I knew, but I did.

“This is unbelievable,” Eric said, his face grim as he took a turn too hard.

I realized I should call Sean. “The kids are okay,” I said the second he answered, hearing laughter and silverware clinking in the background. So they had gone out to dinner instead of coming to the party. “But Nathan’s in the ER, Sean. Hudson Hospital. It...it’s pretty bad. Esther and Matthias are at our house with Eric’s parents.”

“Oh, my God. What happened?”

“We’re not sure. He...he fell and hit his head. They gave him CPR.”

“Oh, fuck,” Sean said. He was a doctor, and his words didn’t bode well. “I’m on my way. Jesus.” He hung up.

“I can’t believe this. I can’t believe it,” Eric said, careening into the hospital parking lot. “He has to make it. He has to pull through.”

He wouldn’t. Please God, let me be wrong about that.

We were put in a private waiting room while they worked on Nathan. I held my sister’s hand, and she looked at me, her eyes open too wide, as if she didn’t know who I was.

Sean and Kiara came, hugged and waited. The Coburns, thank God, someone had called the Coburns; Nathan’s parents, sister and brother-in-law came in, white-faced, panic-stricken, and Candy opened her arms without a word and just held Mrs. Coburn, murmuring quietly.

Then the doctor came in and confirmed what I already knew.

I’ll spare you the next hour.

In a weak voice, I offered to drive Kate home and stay with her, but Candy said she’d take care of it. Sure. A person needed her mother at a time like this. That made sense. I called Dad’s phone and left a message for him to call me, no matter how late, that it was important.

It occurred to me that Dad had gone through this, too, when my mother died. I remembered when the police came to tell us. One of them gave me a little toy, a cat whose head bobbled, how I had loved it and hadn’t wanted to stop playing with it as my father tried to get my attention. He’d been crying and said Mommy had gone to heaven.

Was Nathan there yet? Did it happen that fast? Or was he lingering, here still, or with Kate?

I wiped my eyes and blew my nose.

“I’m gonna call my folks,” Eric said. His eyes were red. He squeezed my shoulder and went outside.

My feet were throbbing. Right, I was still wearing those slutty red shoes. And the white dress.

I left our “quiet room”; it hadn’t been quiet, not with the sound of poor Brooke wailing, and Mrs. Coburn’s sobs, and Mr. Coburn breaking down, saying, “My boy, my boy.” Oh, God, this was unbearably sad! The main waiting room of the ER was filled with the usual suspects—someone holding a bloody towel to her hand; a teenager slumped next to his mother, a little green around the gills; an older lady in a wheelchair with an aide, who was checking her phone.

And Jonathan. I’d almost forgotten about him. He stood up as I came over.

I swallowed, my throat aching. “He didn’t make it,” I whispered.

“No, I...I assumed. From all the... From their faces.” He put his hands in his pockets.

“Thank you for trying.” Tears sliced a hot path down my cheeks, and my face spasmed.

A normal person would’ve hugged me then. A family tragedy had just occurred, for the love of God, and no one knew it better than the giver of the unsuccessful CPR.

But Jonathan was not normal. He looked like an alien’s take on what a human should look like. Not enough emotion flowing through to really pass.

Instead of a hug, he looked at me, his pale blue eyes unblinking, and offered his hand, as if we’d just been introduced.

I sighed and shook it.

Then he brought up his other hand and held mine in both of his. For a long minute, he just looked at my hand. Human hand: warm, smooth. Interesting.

“I’m very sorry,” he said without looking up. He did have a nice voice.

“Thank you.”

He let go. “See you Monday.”

“Jonathan. My brother-in-law just died. I won’t be in.”

“Oh. Right.” Human wants time off. Fascinating. “Call Rachelle and let her know your schedule.”

“I will,” I said through gritted teeth.

He left—finally—and Eric came back in. His thick lashes were starred from crying, and my heart pulled hard. He was such a softy. “I just can’t believe all this,” he said, his voice rough.

“I know.”

“I can’t believe it.” He hugged me for a long minute, and my tears dampened his shirt. “I love you,” he said, his voice rough.

I started to cry in earnest.

My poor sister. Nathan was so nice! How could he be dead, just like that?

Eric’s arms tightened around me. “I can’t believe this happened to me.”

I jerked back and looked at him.

“To us, I mean,” he corrected. “Tonight of all nights. You know?”

Right. The ring. The party. It seemed like a hundred years ago.

“Let’s go home,” I said, acutely aware of just how lucky I was to be able to say that, to have someone to go home with. Kate didn’t have that anymore. Gone in an instant.

She was supposed to be a newlywed, not a widow. Nathan had died at Eric’s “To Life” party. He was gone. Forever. How could that be?

One image kept coming back to me, over and over.

Jonathan, his hair flopping over his forehead as he did compressions, his face tight and grim.

He’d known, too—Nathan was dead. All the other stuff had just been for the living.

For my sister.

Chapter Five

Kate

It didn’t surprise me to be widowed.

I mean, it surprised the shit out of me. Who the hell dies like that? What the hell had happened?

But what I meant was, Nathan always did seem a little too...serendipitous? Too good to be true? Just what the doctor ordered?

All of the above.

You have to understand. I was single for twenty years. Meeting the man of my dreams...well, come on. The phrase becomes ridiculous after you pass twenty-six or so.

I dated in high school and college, casual, mostly happy relationships that never ended horribly. After college, I dated nice men, though there was always a sense that maybe someone better would come along, someone I hadn’t yet met, my soul mate. There was never that gobsmacked thunk, oh, God, he’s it, as my sister had described when she met Eric at the age of twenty-one. My parents were hardly role models.

So if it happened, it happened.

It didn’t happen.

In my two decades as an adult, I had three serious relationships. First was Keith, a fellow grad from NYU. He was terrifyingly handsome, the kind of guy who made people walk into lampposts. Beautiful smooth skin, green eyes, dreadlocks, six foot three, hypnotically perfect body. That relationship was tumultuous and spicy, lots of fights and making up and storming out (mostly on his part). I finally broke things off for good, unable to picture a future full of that kind of drama. He went on to become a model, and I got great pleasure out of pointing him out in magazines and telling friends that, no, seriously, I had seen him naked.

My next boyfriend, Jason, was the opposite. We started dating in our late twenties, which is still infantile by New York standards. He was a very nice guy. Things were steady and reliable...and bland. After a year and change, we just ran out of things to talk about and spent lots of time watching TV in a pleasant boredom until he finally euthanized the relationship by moving to Minnesota.

And last, there was Louis. We met at a gallery opening, just as cheesy as it sounds, when I was thirty-two. We enjoyed each other’s company. Moved in together after a year, laughed a lot, felt comfortable enough that he knew that my eating popcorn drizzled with Nutella meant my period was nigh, and I knew that if he ate cabbage, he’d be in the bathroom six hours later. It felt real, and happy. Louis was smart, a psych nurse with a lot of compassion for his patients and great stories from work.

Then he got a tattoo. And another. And a third and fourth. And then, just after he got a Chinese character depicting commitment, he dumped me for his tattoo artist.

Then came the online dating years. Sure, sure, we all know the happy couple who met online, who exchanged fun, flirty emails and then finally met, and voilà! They were in love. Oh, the fun stories of the losers they’d endured before they found each other! Daniel the Hot Firefighter and Calista, who lived on the same Park Slope street I did, had met online, though they divorced after a few years so Calista could devote more time to her yoga. But there were others who’d met online, married, and were still very happy together. I was game. I gave it a shot.

It was a fail. Same for my closest friend, Paige. Like me, Paige was abruptly and completely unable to find a guy. Like me, she was a successful professional—a lawyer—attractive and interesting. Like me, she’d had a slew of nice and not-bad dates, never to hear from the guy again. We both bought a few dating books and followed the rules assiduously. We both wasted our money.

Dating in your thirties becomes a second job. Some of the books remind you to Have fun! If you’re not having fun, what’s the point? The point was to find a mate. There was no fun involved, thank you very much. The fun would come after, when we could wear Birkenstocks and give up Spanx.

Honestly, it was more work than my actual career. I knew what I was doing with photography. This, though... The writing of profiles, the witty exchange of emails, the blocking of perverts. The careful mental list of what to reveal, how to make yourself sound interesting without sounding dysfunctional—should I mention my terror of earthworms? Do I admit that my parents have married each other twice? What about the fact that I binge-watched five seasons of Game of Thrones in one weekend without showering or eating a single vegetable?

Sometimes, the men who seemed nice at first would reveal themselves to be not quite so balanced. After a really fun online exchange with Finn and a perfect first date that involved a tiny Colombian restaurant, much laughter and great chemistry, I got a text that was one giant paragraph without a single capital letter or punctuation mark.

kate you are really great i hate dating dont you we should definitely be exclusive because tonight showed me youre a good person i had a girlfriend who was such a slut she blew my brother in the gas station bathroom btw we were on the way to my grandmothers funeral then they wondered why i was mad seriously people can be such assholes but tonight your eyes told me you have compassion and are fun and wont judge me for things i maybe shouldnt have done

You get the idea. I printed it out for posterity. It was five pages long.

Even when I’d mastered the art of conversing politely yet genuinely and humorously yet seriously while making sure I listened carefully and attentively...well. All those adverbs were exhausting.

And even then, even if I liked a guy and the date went well, nothing came of it. In five years of online dating, I had two second dates. Zero third dates.

Paige and I would cheerfully obsess—Why hadn’t he called again? He said he would! We had a good time! We laughed! Hard! Two times!—and complain—His hair smelled like pot. A noodle got stuck in his beard, and then he got angry when I told him about it. He stormed out of the restaurant because they didn’t have local sheep cheese. We’d laugh and order another round, trying to protect ourselves from too much discouragement or hope.

The single guys we knew, like Daniel, the now-divorced and still-hot firefighter, dated twentysomethings—the False Alarms, Paige and I called them, since nothing serious ever developed after Daniel’s divorce. The False Alarms were all pretty much the same—shockingly beautiful, thigh-gapped, vapid. There was a new one every month or two.

Occasionally, we’d run into Daniel, his cloud of pheromones thick enough to make us choke. Paige called him Thor, God of Thunder, and yeah, he had that kind of effect. Once, Paige and I were sitting in at Porto’s Bar & Restaurant, and Daniel walked in at the very moment the jukebox started playing “Hot Stuff” by Donna Summer. Even the machinery knew.

He was friendly, sure, slinging an arm around my shoulders. “Hey, Kate!” he’d say, his eyes flickering from their usual good cheer. After all, I’d known him as half of a couple, back when he and Calista were newlyweds. I’d seen him sitting on their front steps, waiting for her to come home, unsure of where she was. I knew that he’d been heartbroken, and she had not. Calista moved to Sedona after the divorce, taught meditational movement and spiritual cleanses. I still got a Namaste card for winter solstice each year.

But Daniel and his ilk—the cheerful man-children of Brooklyn—didn’t give women like Paige and me a second glance. Marriage? Tried that, didn’t work. Those guys just kept buying lemon drop martinis for their just-graduated girlfriends, women a decade (or more!) younger than I was, who considered Britney Spears songs classics. They didn’t care about things like fatherhood potential, didn’t care about depth of character. They were simply smitten by the FDNY insignia on Daniel’s T-shirt and the bulging muscles that were showcased by it. (To be fair, I’d once seen Daniel shirtless, and I stopped caring, too.)