The Instant When Everything is Perfect (21 page)

Mia gets in her car, starts the engine, and then waves, pulling out into the street. He turns, follows the Volvo until she makes a left hand turn and is gone.



Once Jack said, “You know, people forget how many mistakes
they
make a day. Running a red light. Pushing the wine stopper in instead of pulling it out. Slicing a finger while cutting an onion. Typos. Spilling paint. Tripping over the dog. And why then does anyone think we don’t make mistakes? Why are doctors supposed to be above that? Like we know something everyone else doesn’t?”

Jack had been drunk at the time, but even so, Robert agreed with him. If the average person could follow a doctor—maybe a surgeon like him—around for a day and if the doctor was honest, it would be clear in about an hour that doctors weren’t better than anyone else. But instead of spilled paint, it was a sloppily written prescription that resulted in the wrong drug in the right bottle. It was a misread of a slide that sent a sick man home with a cancer that would have time to multiply even further. Or it was just boredom or fatigue or anger or an incessant pager that kept the doctor from paying attention, missing a key point, the telling symptom, the worry in a patient’s face.

Now, after his lunch with Mia, Robert forces himself out of the memory of her, of their kiss. He pushes himself into the moment with Mrs. Millar, his gloved hand under her armpit feeling her lymph nodes. As he always does with patients, he does not look at her face while he does this exam, even though they are just inches apart. He keeps this distance so he can help Mrs. Millar forget they are so close, and he does this because he doesn’t want anything on his face to show if he feels something he doesn’t like. And at this moment, he doesn’t like the way her nodes feel; they are hard and swollen under her armpit, and he is certain that the surgery will not reveal the best news.

As he moves his fingers slowly, Robert realizes he will not perform the delayed reconstruction on Mrs. Millar for a long time, maybe never. She will come out of her surgery with a stage three or four diagnosis, and spend the next months of her life trying to live. Certainly, they will talk further about all her options after he finishes this exam, peeling off his gloves, and washing his hands. He will make another appointment with her, to confirm that she does indeed want a delayed reconstruction. But sometime—either before her surgery or after—she will decide she needs to focus on living. Mrs. Millar is only 56, and the chemo will be long and painful. Maybe later, maybe after the drugs and the hats and wigs and weight loss and despair, she will decide to come back to him, her body scoured and purged by chemo, her immune system regrown cell by cell. But Robert doesn’t think so. He thinks Mrs. Millar will have had enough.

Robert slides back in his chair and looks at her. He takes off his gloves and throws them away. She nods, sighs, and begins to cry.

“It’s bad, isn’t it,” she says, rather than asks.

He wants to lie, to tell Mrs. Millar it will be all right. Maybe before, he would have extolled the virtues of chemo and radiation and brought up the wonders of Tamoxifin and Herceptin, new, improved weapons for the war on cancer. He might have told her what a wonderful surgeon Cindy Jacobs is, accurate, steady, clever, thorough. But now, Robert just takes her hand, lets her cry, and later, when Mrs. Millar has left his office clutching the slip noting her second appointment, does he realize that he’d managed to forgot Mia and her lunch time tears.

At home, Phyllis is ignoring him, as usual, her tail whooshing back and forth behind her as she faces her empty dish. The floorboards creak under him as he walks to the kitchen to find, again, that he’s forgotten to go shopping. There is so much he can’t seem to supply himself with, food being the most obvious.

“Shit,” he says, putting down his briefcase. Now he wishes he’d taken home the chicken that neither he nor Mia could really finish. He thinks it was good, but he’s not sure, as all his senses were focused on Mia, her words, her face, her body.

Robert is about to pick up the phone and call DiGrassi’s pizza for a delivery when the phone rings.

“I’m down here by myself,” Jack says before Robert can say anything more than hello, “imagining what my best friend is doing without me. I’m hoping, he’s got a girlfriend, a replacement for the beautiful Leslie. Finally, I think, he’s found someone to settle down with.”

“Shit,” Robert says again. He’s not only forgotten to shop, he’s forgotten his standing date with Jack.

“Rob, get your ass over here or we’re finished.”

He knows he has to go meet Jack, but his body is weary, all his appointments and his lunch with Mia heavy inside him. But there’s food at Basso’s, and maybe he can talk to Jack about Mia.

“All right. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Make it seven, or I’m finding a new boyfriend.”

Robert hangs up the phone. He wants to go in and check his email, but if he does that, he knows he’ll never make it to the restaurant. So he fills Phyllis’ dish, turns off the kitchen lights, and leaves.

Jack is on his second beer, an empty bread basket in front of him. He has a tan from a weekend trip to Palm Springs, his tie in a loose pile on the table top.

“I’m crushed,” he says as Robert sits down. “I’m mortally wounded. Stood up.”

“I’ve redeemed myself, haven’t I?” Robert waves the waiter over and orders a beer, taking the menu, feeling the repetitive motions from his lunch today. Maybe, he thinks, he should only eat in restaurants, never shopping, never cooking. All he has to do is sit and order and wait and then eat. But then, it wouldn’t be much different from the way he eats at home.

“Not yet. You need to tell me a good story.”

“What about you tell me about Palm Springs? How was the golfing?”

Jack holds up a hand. “I’m the one who’s been waiting.”

Robert nods, reading the menu. The waiter comes back, takes their orders, and then he sits back, his hand on the beer the waiter brought him. Robert knows he’s already told Jack about Mia and how he read her medical file. But as he opens his mouth to talk about Mia, he suddenly feels protective of her, of them. Or is he scared? As if by breathing the words into the air, he’ll jinx the whole thing. And he can’t do that before Thursday, before she comes to his house.

“What are you thinking?” Jack stares at him, no longer ready to joke. “Something at with a patient?”

Robert rubs his forehead, closes his eyes.

“Man, what is going on? Nothing happened like . . . .”

Robert shakes his head. “No. Nothing at work.” He doesn’t know how to say what he has to, but if he can’t talk with Jack, who can he talk with? Jack is his best, oldest friend. The one person who knows everything. “It’s the patient’s daughter.”

Jack sips his beer, sits back, thinks. Then he says, “The one with the medical file? With the kid in rehab?”

“Yeah. We went out to lunch today.”

“One lunch did this to you? That’s it? Nothing more than a meal?”

Putting the beer on the table, Jack folds his arms, staring across at Robert. Finally, he laughs. “You’re gone.”

“What?”

“You’re gone, Rob. I haven’t seen you like this since—since, Christ, I don’t know. You’ve got that weird, spacey thing going on, kind of like you used have during finals.”

The waiter brings over their salads, and Robert stares at the arrangement of greens and vegetables. He does feel like it’s finals, needing to learn all the important things before the big test, the one that could make or break him. All these days, all the emails, the meeting in the cafeteria, their lunch today, Mia’s swift kiss in the hospital corridor, the deeper kiss by the car—all of this is leading to something he can’t really see but knows is crucial.

He picks up his fork, spears a tomato. “Yeah, I’m gone.”

“What’s she like?

“She’s. I don’t know. Smart. Talented. Pretty.”

“Sounds like most of the women you’ve dated. And this one’s married. Kind of a drawback.”

Robert sighs. “Yeah. But I feel—I feel something different when I’m with her. I can’t really explain.”

“Well,” Jack says. “Be careful. This one is complicated.”

“I know.”

“It’s not perfect, Rob. It’s not easy. But it’s good.” Jack laughs, sits back, wipes his hands on his napkin. “It’s about fucking time.”

This time when Robert comes home, he doesn’t go into the kitchen. Instead, he walks into the living room and turns on the lights. He stands in the middle of the room and turns around slowly, looking at his leather furniture, his full bookshelves, the potted dracaena and palm, dark wool rugs. He pretends he’s Mia, seeing his house for the first time. He imagines he’s Mia trying to figure him out by looking at what’s here in this room. He’s pulling clues from objects, from the ceiling beams, from the oak plank floor, from the windows looking out to the courtyard.

After a few minutes, he knows he wants Mia to see him as she sees his house. Attractive. Good looking. Comfortable. Sturdy and solid and clear.

Turning off the lights, he leaves the living room and walks to his study. He clicks on the email program, his hands shaking. He wishes she were here now. Right now. And before he reads any of his email from friends and colleagues, he writes to Mia. He writes to her and tells her how to get to his house.

Ten

Mia

In the long night after her lunch with Robert, Mia lies awake in her bed, Ford next to her, snoring softly. Her body is pressed up to his, her breast against his back, her stomach against his naked ass, her arm holding him, her hand on his chest. Harper is still awake, his music in the hallway, and outside, an owl trills a spring song over the bay laurels and oaks.

Ford made love to her again, the second time this week. Again, as he held her body, his hands and arms seemed to be filled with an explanation of some kind. He was slower, tentative, just plain different, needing to tell her something important. But even as they moved together, she didn’t ask what we needed to say, and now Mia wonders if like Harper, Ford knows about Robert, too. It’s as if she is giving off radio waves or signals or pheromones that relay a message of betrayal that everyone can hear or see or smell.

But after all the kissing and sucking and penetration, the rocking and Ford’s moans, the caresses and sighs, he’s said nothing, and now he is asleep and Mia holds him and her guilt.

Mia moves her hand on his chest, her fingers traveling through the scant hair. When they met, he had exactly three hairs growing in the bone valley between his pectorals, and now, with time and age, his chest is full of the black, springy hair. She feels she knows every hair follicle; she knows everything about his body: the feel of his skin, his smooth shoulders, his strong arms, his wonderfully long fingers. She knows his smells, the way hard alcohol comes out of his pores at night, the tang of his morning breath, the whiff of his underarms and crotch. She’s held him while he’s thrown up—she’s comforted him in fever and through cold. She’s cut his toenails; she’s bathed him and washed his hair after his bunion surgery. Every single thing she’s done for her children, she’s done for Ford, except, really, to wipe him after he’s gone to the bathroom. But she would, if he needed her to. She would without flinching.

And he’s known her in this exact way, through all the growing and then aging of their flesh, through childbirth, through illness, through the sex they’ve had for years, all kinds, the experimental and the comforting. He’s watched her gain and lose and gain weight. He doesn’t leave the bed when she passes gas at night; he laughs, makes a joke, keeps watching the news. He stays in the bathroom when she changes a tampon. They know each other in a way Mia realizes she doesn’t literally have the time or strength to get to know another human being. She will never know Robert’s body in this way, and then she wonders why if she’s been graced to know another person the way she knows Ford, why does she want something else? Isn’t this enough? She can hear Sally’s voice in her head, saying words Sally hasn’t really uttered.

“You shouldn’t give up something so many people will never have. Someone who loves you. Someone who takes care of you. Don’t you realize that on this planet there are millions of lonely people? Be grateful for what’s in front of you. You’re imagining a kind of love that doesn’t really exist. That doesn’t last for long. For heaven’s sake, Mia, be a good girl. Snap out of this!”

Mia sighs, moves in closer to Ford’s strong body. Sally’s right. There is something terribly wrong with her if Ford and his solid love aren’t enough.

And she wants Robert so much, even though she would be cheating. Cheating. What a terrible word. Is what she’s doing with Robert cheating? Or is she cheating herself by staying with Ford when she doesn’t feel connected, attracted, engaged? Is she cheating Ford out of a love he might find with someone else? Is she cheating Harper out of his family by not insisting on counseling? She should wake Ford up right now and demand it. Not let him go back to sleep until he cries out, “Yes.”