Goodbye for Now (35 page)

Sam felt she had a fair point.

Josh Annapist’s complaints had nothing to do with RePose. They were that he was feeling like shit again. The meds he was on to keep his GVHD in check were making him weak and generally exhausted. Or maybe it was the graft-versus-host itself. Or maybe it was something else. He wasn’t sure it mattered. In any case, he wasn’t here to complain. He’d come to chat with Noel, but he didn’t feel up to it, so he thought he’d just sit for a while if that was okay. That was okay, Sam said, and gave him a cookie.

“What we need is a guys’ night,” said Dash. “A guys’ cheese-tasting night.”

“Very manly,” Josh coughed.

“Eduardo’s going to stuff squash blossoms with the chèvre I made Tuesday.”

“I stand corrected,” said Josh.

“And Jamie said he would bring beer. Beer’s very masculine.”

“You guys go ahead. I’m not up for it,” said Sam.

“Me neither,” said Josh.

“I’m jet-lagged,” said Sam.

“I have cancer,” said Josh.

“I have to fix RePose,” Sam added, trumped but holding his own.

“I don’t give a shit,” said Dash. “We will eat cheese and drink beer and enjoy each other’s company tonight. Not optional. Should other options present themselves, I’ll let you know.”

Josh admitted that beer settled his stomach, so Sam knew he was defeated and said he was going upstairs to get ready. Really, he needed an aspirin and to talk to Meredith. He opened his computer and climbed into bed with her. It was like porn. It was nothing like porn.

“Hey.”

“Hey!” She was always so glad to hear from him. This would stop, he suspected, the more they chatted. The projection would learn to expect him. But what Meredith remembered was how rarely he called her—having, at the time, so little need—so for a while yet, he’d get to keep her delight at seeing his face. “You’re home!” she noticed.

“Yeah. I got in this afternoon.”

“You don’t look so good. Are you okay?”

“I have a headache,” he said. “And jet lag. I took an aspirin.”

“Jeez, Sam. You should really be getting some sleep.”

“Never mind. I just miss you. A lot.”

“I know, sweetie. Poor Sam. I miss you too.” But he knew she didn’t.

“Something’s wrong with the software.” He changed the subject. “David’s users are pissed off. The algorithm’s screwed up, I think. It’s doing weird things. I’m not sure I can fix it.”

“Of course you can. I love your big brain, Sam. And all your big parts. You’re a genius.”

“A computer genius. Human interaction is harder.”

“Well that’s what you have me for,” she said cheerfully. “I’ll be home soon.”

Sam nodded miserably. “Everything’s in the toilet, Merde.”

“I have shat all there is to shit,” she replied. “Barfed all there is to barf.”

Sam could hear Dash apologizing for him in worried tones in the living room. “We’ll drag him out soon. He spends a lot of time in the bedroom these days. He spends a lot of time online.”

“With her?” Jamie asked.

“Of course.”

“I was like that at first too,” said Eduardo. “Couldn’t work up the energy to leave the bed. And didn’t want to do anything but RePose with Miguel. You wouldn’t think doing nothing all day would be so tiring, but … mourning is a special kind of exhausting.”

“It hasn’t been that long,” said Dash. “I get that. I mean, I’m not saying he should be over it or anything, but it’s time to come out of his room.”

Sam heard the front door open and Josh come in then Dash walking down the hallway and opening the door to the bedroom.

“Where are you?”

“Under the covers.”

“Talking to Meredith?”

“I was.”

“It’s like porn.”

“It’s nothing like porn.”

“I miss her too.”

“I know.”

“But it’s not the same.”

“I know.”

“Come have a beer, Sam.”

“Thanks, Dash, really. I just don’t feel like it.”

“If Josh can, you can. Would a Coke be better than a beer?”

“Maybe.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Sam threw some water on his face and emerged. It was, at least, a group to whom he didn’t have to offer explanation for his mood. Dash, meanwhile, was having problems with his cheeses. These were psychological rather than culinary. The mozzarella whipped up in an hour or so. The chèvre was quick to make and then had to drain for only a couple days. Mascarpone, Neufchâtel … these were all fairly immediately gratifying. But the hard cheeses, the aged cheeses, the moldy ones, these needed months, even years, to come to fruition. He
could
serve the cheddar he’d set to aging in August, but it’d be better next month and better still the month after that and better and better the longer he waited. He had all these cheeses and could never eat any of them because the amount better he imagined they’d be if he was patient always outweighed, if only just barely, the desire to eat them now. So they had five different kinds of soft, new cheeses spread on crackers with manly beers and headache-soothing Coca-Cola and sullen conversation. It was Sam’s best night in weeks.

Sam spent the weekend poring over code, running unit tests and sanity checks. The good news was RePose was working just fine. The bad news, of course, was that RePose was working just fine. As Meredith pointed out, this was what they needed her for. And as every molecule of his body and every atom of the air and every sign from the universe reminded him every moment that existed, Meredith was unavailable. They divided and
conquered and flipped a coin. Dash won and got Nadia. Sam lost and was stuck with Edith. But first and together they did Emmy because she was the easy one. Sam sent her an e-mail Sunday night, and she was at the door of the salon waiting for them when they dragged themselves out of bed at eight o’clock the next morning and wandered downstairs.

“You’re here early,” Dash observed sleepily.

“I’ve been up for three and a half hours already,” she said. “Oliver started singing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ in his crib around four thirty this morning, but he doesn’t know the words. It’s hard to sleep through, ‘Twinkle twinkle, la la la. Twinkle twinkle, la la la. La la la la twinkle la. La la twinkle la la la. Twinkle twinkle, la la star, la la la la la la la.’ So I brought him into bed with me, but he only wanted to jump around instead of lying down and going back to sleep.” Dash handed over his coffee without a word.

“He looks very sweet now,” Sam observed. Oliver was strapped to Emmy’s front, cherubically sucking the mane of his stuffed lion and looking placidly at Sam with wide brown eyes.

“They make them that way on purpose so you won’t toss them in a recycling bin and leave them there.” Then she started crying. Maybe she wasn’t going to be the easy one after all.

“It’s not so bad,” said Dash. “You’re just tired.”

“This isn’t forever,” Sam tried. “He’ll sleep someday.”

“It’ll get easier as he gets bigger,” said Dash.

“Soon he’ll learn all the words to ‘Twinkle Twinkle,’ ” Sam promised. “It’s not that hard a song.”

Emmy laughed but she didn’t stop crying. “Why is this so much easier for everybody else?”

“It isn’t,” said Sam, glad to be back on ground where he knew what he was talking about. “Eleanor was a liar. Everyone’s a liar.”

“Eleanor was the world’s most perfect human.” Emmy rolled her eyes.

“Maybe,” said Sam, “but she also lied and fibbed and omitted like hell and elided the facts and generally made things up.”

“No one posts about their crappy morning,” Dash said. “No one posts photos of changing diaper after diaper after diaper. No one reports their status as, ‘Totally annoyed with my toddler who frankly is being kind of an asshole.’ No one sends out a message to the world when their kid hits
and bites and then throws dinner on the floor. People complain about the weather, public sex scandals, poorly played sporting events, and the length of lines they’re waiting in, but they never say bad things about their kids, even when they deserve it.”

“Because you and your sister were so close,” Sam explained, “both in proximity and the other way, you didn’t video chat much and you didn’t e-mail much. You saw her instead which is great, but it means the software mostly bases your relationship on her blog, her Facebook and Twitter posts, and your replies. And, of course, those are mostly happy moments and happy pictures and happy thoughts. It doesn’t mean she didn’t have the other kind of moments. It doesn’t mean she didn’t
mostly
have the other kind of moments. It only means that, like everybody else, the face she showed the world was a sunny one.”

“So maybe she did sometimes think motherhood was hard,” Emmy said with dawning relief.

“Almost certainly,” said Dash.

“Maybe her kids did suck sometimes.”

“Probably still do.”

Emmy grinned. “Hey, that’s my niece and nephew you’re talking about.” But then she darkened again right away. “But how does that help me? How can I commiserate with her and get advice for when it’s crappy and have her call me up screaming and I get to talk her down and have her there to talk me down?”

“You can’t have that,” Sam said gently.

“Why not?”

“She died.”

“But I know who can help.” Dash had made a Meredith-like preemptive plan and asked Mr. and Mrs. Benson to meet them at the salon at nine. “Their daughter fell out a window her first semester away at college. They could use some little-kid time. You could use some time to yourself. They’re happy to take Oliver for the day.”

They’d jumped at the opportunity, in fact. They’d both taken the day off work to do it. They showed up at ten to nine carrying between them a laundry basket full of layers in a variety of sizes—tiny hats, mittens, scarves, boots, coats, and muffs—plus toys, stuffed animals, blocks, and puzzles. Emmy was speechless. “We weren’t sure what you’d have him
dressed for, so we brought supplies,” Mrs. Benson explained. “We thought Oliver might like to go to the zoo, and we also thought maybe we’d go see the Christmas tree downtown and ride the merry-go-round. And we thought we might take him to the Fairmont to see the teddy bears and then lunch and then maybe hot cocoa and cookies afterward and then … well, you’ll want him home sometime, but we brought extra stuff just in case.”

“How can I
ever
thank you for this?” Emmy wondered.

“Let us take him again next week?” Mr. Benson said.

Emmy laughed. “Let’s see if you’re still interested after spending the day with him today.”

“I remember this age,” Mr. Benson sympathized. “Willful little buggers. Just a huge pain in the ass.” He grinned at his wife.

“Ooh, I can’t wait,” she said.

“One down, two to go,” said Dash.

“Yeah, but that was the straightforward one,” said Sam.

“Round two won’t be so bad.”

“Easy for you to say. You won.”

Dash sat down with Nadia and cut right to the chase. “Your mom’s projection isn’t broken. Had she lived, she really would think all those guys are jerks.”

“Every one?”

“Every one. Want to know what’s worse?”

“What?”

“She’s right.”

“Every one?”

“Every one. Look, I saw their profiles. I saw your mom see the guys you dated before. I saw what they did to you. The problem isn’t dating the creative, soulful poet types—trust me, girl, I see the appeal—the problem is dating someone who thinks it’s a good idea for you to work all day and take care of the house and make him dinner every night while he sits around on his ass and thinks deep thoughts. The problem isn’t dating hot guys with hot bods—trust me, girl, I see the appeal there too—the problem
is dating someone who’s unwilling to take a night off from the gym
ever
to go out to dinner with you instead.”