Forever is the Worst Long Time: A Novel Read online

  “Okay,” she said. “Then that’s our plan.”

  At dinnertime, I knocked on the door of the guest bedroom, where Lou had been napping. “You hungry?” I asked. “I made spinach pasta with chicken.”

  She stuck her head out the door, and I pretended not to notice that her eyes were bloodshot. “No, everything tastes like cardboard right now. But I’ll join you.”

  We sat across from each other at the table. I had just begun grating Parmesan over my pasta when she said, “This feels all wrong.”

  My stomach lurched, but then she walked around the table and sat next to me. “That’s better. What are you thinking about?”

  I put the hunk of cheese on the table and stared at her. “I’m thinking I’m terrified.”

  She put her head on my shoulder. “Me, too. But eyes on the prize, right? We’ve made a human.”

  “That’s right.” I wasn’t thinking about the miracle of life, though. I was focused on the mess we were in, and how my desire and greed had set this all in motion. Why couldn’t I have left well enough alone?

  But it wasn’t just me who screwed up, I thought as I looked at Lou’s stomach, which showed no signs of harboring a tiny life-form. It was Rob, too—with his foolish fling and stubborn headfirst plunge into divorce. If he had said yes to mediation or reconciliation, would Lou ever have invited me into her bed? As much as I hated to admit it, it seemed highly unlikely.

  Yes, I blamed Rob, too. I needed to.

  FOURTEEN

  September 2008

  “Jim? Are you okay?” asked Lou. She was sitting on the edge of an exam table, her hands tucked under her thighs while we waited for the ultrasound tech. As she had gathered, my mind was elsewhere. Specifically, I was thinking back to one afternoon when Rob and I were kids.

  “What’s it like having a sister?” Rob asked me. We were in his basement playing Donkey Kong and working our way through a box of pizza.

  I shrugged. “You know. Annoying.”

  “But you have someone to talk to,” he said. “Someone other than your parents to keep you company on, like, vacation and when you go out to dinner.”

  The only vacations I went on were with Rob, and if my family ate out, it was at Taco Bell—not exactly a hot spot for conversation. I wasn’t going to point this out to Rob, however, even if he already knew it. “More like you have someone to get you in trouble all the time,” I retorted, trying to figure out if I should make Mario climb a ladder. As soon as I decided to send him up, a barrel came tumbling down, and my turn ended. I tossed my remote beside me on the sofa. “Vic slaps me, but if I even look at her, she starts bawling and my dad hollers at me. You’re lucky.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Rob, who had started his turn and was staring intently at the flashing screen as he pressed the controller. “If you have a brother or sister, you don’t get lonely—everyone knows that. I don’t want to have kids until I’m super old. But when I do, I’m going to have a whole bunch. Dude, like three sets of twins. I’ll have so many you can borrow one and I won’t notice.”

  Maybe Rob would be right, I thought as I looked at Lou. Maybe he and Andrea would fall deeply in love and have a gaggle of children like he had predicted all those years ago. Maybe they were even expecting at that very moment, and this would soften the blow that Lou was having my child.

  None of this was remotely reassuring. “I think I’m okay,” I told Lou. “Or at least okay-ish. You?”

  “Nervous, obviously. I . . . I don’t even know what to hope for right now.”

  Before I could respond, the tech knocked and let herself into the room. “Ready?” she chirped, then instructed Lou to lie back and pull her gown up and her skirt down. Once Lou’s stomach was bare, she spread gel over it and began pressing the wand below Lou’s navel.

  I held my breath, waiting to see a tiny person or maybe hear a heartbeat. But there was nothing but blackness and silence.

  “Hmm,” said the tech.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked.

  “One second,” she said cheerfully.

  The fear in Lou’s eyes suggested that she now knew what to hope for. I offered her my hand, which she grasped tightly.

  “Tilt up,” the tech said as she put a small towel under Lou’s hips. She began to move the wand around again.

  For the longest minute in history, we saw nothing. Then a fast flutter appeared on the screen. “That’s your baby’s heart!” announced the tech. “Yes, that’s exactly what we want to see. And there’s its head, and its spine . . .”

  Sure enough, there you were—a wiggling little skeleton who seemed to be waving right at us. We’re having a child, I thought with wonder. True, I understood this in the way that one understands the earth is constantly rotating without feeling its spin. But for the first time, this all had a purpose.

  “Right now this baby is nice and healthy,” said the tech. “Mom and Dad, you’ve got a good-looking kid here.”

  When I looked at Lou, she was crying. She squeezed my hand again. “She’s perfect, Jim.”

  “She?” I asked Lou later as I examined the ultrasound pictures the tech had given us. It was too early for a gender scan, but maybe I had missed some crucial clue. “How can you tell it’s a girl?”

  Lou glanced down at her stomach. “I can’t. I just have a feeling.”

  I thought of what Rob had told me about her being afraid she would become her mother. “Are you feeling okay about becoming a mom?” I asked.

  She tugged her shirt down. “I think so. And I have almost five more months to get used to the idea. But yes, I’m thrilled. I can’t wait to meet this baby of ours.”

  But on the way home, she stared out the window, dazed. “This is so strange,” she said at one point. “I can’t believe I’m in Michigan right now, and we’re going to have a child.”

  What she did not say—which I had heard all the same—was that what was truly so strange and heartbreakingly sad was that she wasn’t making this life-altering journey with the man she loved. She was making it with me.

  FIFTEEN

  September 2008

  Rob called me a week or so after Lou’s ultrasound. It was a Monday, I think, or maybe a Tuesday; I was rushing around in the kitchen, trying to put together a sandwich to take for lunch.

  When I saw his name flash across the phone screen, I wanted to lick the peanut butter–coated knife I had just used at the exact moment I developed a deadly nut allergy. Then I wanted to impale myself on said knife, just in case someone produced an EpiPen too soon. Even slow death by cyanide, I thought, would be preferable to talking to him. We had not spoken in nearly two months, which had suited my guilty mental state just fine. I was going to call, I told myself—just as soon as I figured out what to say.

  Lou was sitting at the table with a mug of tea, reading the newspaper. We had been living together for more than six weeks, and though I struggled with our platonic arrangement—guilt had not fully quashed my desire—I had accepted that for the time being, we were essentially roommates who were collaborating on a significant science experiment. “It’s Rob,” I said to her.

  She looked up from her paper with dread. “Oh crap. What are you going to do?”

  I grimaced. “Answer, I guess. I can’t avoid him forever, can I?”

  “I don’t know, Jim. Be careful.”

  My heart was pounding as I walked into the living room. “Hey, man. Long time no talk. What’s up?” My voice was thin and reedy, but Rob didn’t notice.

  “There’s trouble, dude,” he said. “A whole ton of trouble.”

  I swallowed. “This about Lou?”

  “Lou?” Rob said, almost like he didn’t know who I was talking about. “I wish.”

  “What’s the trouble, then? Are you back in the city?” The last time he had emailed, he said he was ping-ponging between London and New York.

  “Yeah, I’m home now. At my apartment. The company . . .” He exhaled loudly. “It’s folding. I mean, it’s fold
ed. Done deal. I’m toast, James.”

  “Wait, what?” I was having a hard time wrapping my mind around what he was trying to tell me. “What does that even mean?”

  “We’ve—they’ve—declared bankruptcy. It’ll be all over the news by noon. The whole operation is a house of cards, and the Fed figured it out.”

  I had heard my coworkers talking about Rob’s company—how it had recently shut down an entire division dedicated to subprime mortgages and laid off more than a thousand people. But I had been so wrapped up in Lou’s pregnancy that I had missed the part about bunk investments foreshadowing the company’s bankruptcy and the collapse of the financial market. My wish about the economy being the worst of his worries came ricocheting back to me. Each thing Rob said was more damning than the last.

  “So you’re out of a job?” I asked after he had finished.

  “Uh, yeah. Another bank is in talks to buy some of the company’s divisions, and some employees will be moved over.” He paused. “I won’t be one of them.”

  He said it in a way that suggested the rest was going to have to be coaxed out of him. “And?” I asked.

  “I’m basically number five in command in the division where the most shit is hitting the fan. Which means I’m going to be unemployed indefinitely. And that’s if I don’t . . . God, I can’t even say it.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “That Andrea woman—she’s your supervisor.”

  “Was,” he corrected.

  “That makes her the number four in your division, then?”

  “Technically number three.”

  I let out a low whistle.

  “Yeah, it’s not good. There’s a chance she’s going to face indictment. Or worse. No one really knows right now.”

  “She with you now?”

  “No, she’s on her way home.”

  I wondered if by home, he meant to his apartment. I kind of hoped so. “Did you know that this was going to happen? With the bank, I mean? Argh, should I even be asking you this?”

  “Probably not,” he admitted. “I just—I don’t even know what to do, James.”

  He had not come to me for advice in a good long while. I would have been flattered if I weren’t so busy thinking about how I was not just the scum of the earth, I was also the grime stuck to the gum attached to the bottom of the shoe that the scum of the earth was wearing on his filthy foot. “You have money in the bank, right?” I said.

  “Yep.”

  “A lot of it, if I’m not mistaken?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Is the government going to come after it?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt it—it’s not like it’s in an offshore account, and I paid taxes on everything.”

  “There’s that, at least. Well . . . I don’t know, man. I’m really sorry about this.” I’m especially sorry because your not-yet-ex-wife is sitting in the other room, and, oh yeah—she’s having my kid.

  “Me, too. I’m in a deep, deep hole.” He didn’t ask how I was doing, and I didn’t volunteer this information. Honestly, I wanted to get off the phone as soon as possible, before I gave some indication that I had rigged a trapdoor at the bottom of the hole he had just mentioned.

  I heard a click. “There’s Andie on the other line,” he said. “I’ve gotta go.”

  “Keep me posted, okay?”

  “I will,” he said. “James?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Don’t mention it,” I said. No, really—don’t.

  I stood there for a few minutes, phone in hand, thinking about what a horrible human I was. Then I went to my computer and opened the front page of the New York Times. It confirmed everything Rob had said, and worse. The Washington Post and Reuters offered more of the same.

  Even if Rob had not been directly involved—and that seemed unlikely—why had he stayed on at his company? When he was in London in May to “turn the Titanic around,” as he had described it, he must have known. He could have walked away then. I mean, Rob had taught me how to unravel a quadratic equation when our algebra teacher could not. He had later advised that I drop statistics when I was struggling to do even the most basic problem set. “James, give it up,” he had said. “You don’t need it anyway, unless you go into engineering, which you’re not going to. You’re a writer, so go write.” He had risen through the ranks of his company faster than any of his colleagues. How could the smartest guy I knew get tangled in such a sticky web?

  Then again, I thought as I turned off my computer, this was the same guy who trusted me.

  The week was endless. I could not stop thinking about what Rob had told me and how at some point in the near future it was only going to get worse for him. At least there would be time between now and then, I told myself.

  When Saturday finally arrived, Lou was craving cider doughnuts, so we made plans to visit an apple orchard just outside of town. We were about to pull out of the driveway when a car parked in front of my house. It was a sedan, the same color and model as Rob’s mom’s car.

  That was because it was Rob’s mom’s car. And Rob was behind the wheel.

  “Oh my God,” I said. When I was a kid, my mother caught me stealing a pack of gum from the checkout aisle at the grocery store. She didn’t make me return it or even confess. Instead, she just looked at me, leaving me to panic about what she was waiting for and what was going to happen to me. Each second was more gut-wrenching than the last, and when we finally got home, I threw up all over the lawn. This feeling was a lot like that. Only worse.

  Lou began to laugh.

  “Why are you laughing?” I snapped. “This is the least funny thing I can think of.”

  “Obviously,” she said, still sputtering a bit. “I can’t help it. I’m afraid, and sometimes this is how I react when I’m uncomfortable.”

  I was the most annoyed with her I had ever been, but her laughter was the least of my worries. What were we going to do? I considered fleeing, but that would be just as fishy.

  Maybe Rob’s visit was fortuitous, I reasoned. Maybe it was a sign that now was the time for us to reckon with the truth. I took a deep breath and let myself out of my car.

  “Hey!” I said, sounding awfully prepubescent for a man who was just a few years from forty. “You didn’t tell me you were flying in.”

  Rob was slouching like he had just suffered a career-ending defeat, which I suppose he had. “I hope you don’t mind that I didn’t call. I, uh, switched off my phone. Too many reporters trying to get in touch.” His eyes shifted toward my car. “Is that . . . Lou?”

  Lou had just climbed out of the passenger side of my car. “Hello.” She said this coolly, the way you would greet an acquaintance whose company you didn’t particularly enjoy. But her eyes told a different story; the sight of him clearly pained her. “I’m staying with Jim for a bit. I needed to get out of the city.”

  “You what?” Rob hadn’t shaved in several days and probably hadn’t showered all that recently, either. To tell you the truth, he looked kind of wild-eyed and unstable. “What the . . .” He looked at Lou, and back at me. “Can someone please tell me what is happening here?”

  Neither Lou nor I responded. Honestly, I didn’t trust myself to open my mouth for fear my breakfast would find its way to the grass, just as it had that day my mother caught me pocketing the gum.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” he said, and let out a string of expletives. “As if things weren’t bad enough already. Please,” he said, looking at me with those same savage eyes, “for the love of all that is good and holy, tell me this is not what it looks like.”

  I could not seem to get my brain and mouth to collaborate. “You—we—” I sputtered.

  Lou stepped forward. Her smile was forced. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but whatever it is, it’s not that,” she told him.

  “Lou.” I said her name too harshly, and she looked at me, furious and wounded. I opened my eyes wide, trying to convey that
there was no backing down now. Running from the firing squad did not prevent you from getting shot.

  “Trust me, Jim,” Lou said in a low voice.

  She was right, of course, but it was already too late; Rob’s face was twisted with pain. I had known all along that Lou and I had done a terrible thing to him, but it was not until that very moment that I was able to appreciate just how appalling it was. My instinct—and this is atrocious, I’m aware—was to do something horrible to myself, like scale a tree and throw myself from it in such a way that resulted in my femur poking through the center of my thigh. Anything to make his pain seem less terrible, or at least give him something else to focus on. Even now, I cannot recall a time when I felt more wretched than I did as Rob pulled at his face with his hands. “This is over right now,” he said.

  I had no idea what he meant, but before I could ask, Lou said quietly, “But it’s not over between you and Andrea, is it?”

  “It’s over between all of us!” Rob shouted.

  “Rob, come on. Can’t we talk about this?” I said to him.

  He looked at me with disgust. “Talk? Absolutely not.” He turned toward his car and muttered to no one in particular, “I’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Where are you going?” I called.

  “To find a very tall bridge,” he hollered.

  He wasn’t serious. Was he? Oh God. I began running toward him. “Rob!” I yelled, but he was already in the car. He revved the engine and took off down the street, tearing through the stop sign at the end of the block.

  At once Lou was at my side. She put her hand out. “Keys.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ve got to go after him.”

  “No, you don’t. That’s my job.”

  “Yes, I do. Keys, please,” she said again. “He’s still my husband, Jim.”

  When I hesitated, she looked at me fiercely. “Trust me on this one. I know Rob. He can’t go this alone.”

  Her words led me to believe that unlike my halfhearted thoughts about self-harm, Rob was actually tempted to hurt himself. Maybe because of this, I handed her the keys. She took them from me and got into my car without saying good-bye.