November Surprise (19 page)

Monty looks at me in silent anticipation, waiting for me to
continue. I want to be honest, without saying too much. “All those years ago,
when I told Jack that we ought to be friends, he was hurt, and I felt bad.
Obviously he moved on, and it’s fine now. But when you and I hooked up I felt
guilty all over again. He’s always compared himself to you, and he feels like
he comes up short. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings for the second time.”

Monty rolls his beer bottle back and forth between the palms
of his hands. He nods but he doesn’t look at me. “So you were protecting him.”

“Yes.”

“Sort of ironic, isn’t it?”

I get up from my chair and perch on its arm, so that we’re
closer now, more on the same level. “Ironic, how?”

“You’re more worried about protecting Jack than you are
about me.” He says this without expression, and his face is unreadable. We’re
treading on unfamiliar territory, but he’s the one holding the map.

“I didn’t know you needed protection.”

He moves away from me, to the center of my living room. I
can see the tension in his shoulders; I can tell that I’m pinching a nerve
somewhere, somehow. Something is building in him, but I don’t know the genesis
and I feel powerless to stop it.

“Everyone needs someone to look out for them, Lucy.”

“I look out for you.”

“Sure. But not like you look out for Jack.”

I laugh in disbelief, though nothing about this strikes me
as funny. “Only because he gets hurt more easily than you do.”

Monty throws his hand up in the air, pivots on his heel, and
steps closer to me. “Everybody thinks Jack is so vulnerable. Everybody is
always so worried about protecting Jack. But you can do or say anything to me,
and I’m fine, right?”

“Monty, if this is bringing up some childhood issues…”

“You’re not listening to me.” His words are sharp, as sharp
as his eyes, which cut right through me. “Jack has been dumped once. By you.
And you’re right, he got over it. I’ve been dumped multiple times. Each time it
sucked. Most recently, I was near death, sweating out a 103-degree fever,
hallucinating and too weak to walk or pick up a glass of water. Meanwhile, my
fiancée is getting it on with my doctor. Sure, she waited until it was clear
that I was going to live, but then she left me. But somehow it’s still Jack who
needs protection.”

His speech just rolls out and I take it all in, but one word
resonates louder than the others do. Fiancée.

“You had asked Evelyn to marry you?” My question comes out
as little more than a breath.

Monty’s head snaps up, and I can see that he too is shocked
by what he just said. He runs his hand through his hair and knits his eyebrows
together. “Yeah.”

“And she said yes?” He nods his affirmation. “Was there a
ring involved? Had you set a date? Announced it to your families?”

He sighs in exasperation. “No. We just had an agreement.
We’d get married when we got back to the states.”

I wander over to my window and look out, creating as much
distance between us as possible while still staying in the same room. Without
looking in his direction, I say, “You two seemed awfully unconventional. Why
not just live together? Why did you want to make it legal?”

“Lucy, come on…”

I turn back and face him. “Were you thinking you’d have
kids?”

He looks up towards the ceiling, as if the answer to my
question is written there. In a resigned voice he says, “I was the one who
wanted to settle down and start a family. She agreed, but her heart was never
in it. I suppose I always knew that; I just didn’t want to accept the truth.”

For the first time in several weeks I feel like I’m going to
puke, but I push my nausea down, back into the pit of my stomach. “You never
told me that.”

“I didn’t think it was relevant.” He sits on the edge of my
couch, and places his beer bottle on my coffee table. I should sit too, so that
we’re on the same level, but I can’t. I have to pace.

“It wasn’t relevant?” I yell. “You were going to have a
family, with her. Now you’re going to have a family with me. But it’s not
relevant?”

He raises his arms up in exasperation. “Evelyn and I had
been together for years. We were deliberately making a choice, but it never
happened. It’s completely different from my situation with you.”

“Really? How so?”

“I think you already know the answer to that.”

“Explain it to me anyway, Monty. Pretend that I’m really
dim.”

He exhales through his nose and his nostrils flare. “You and
I have been dating a short amount of time, and we don’t even tell people that
we’re together. You insist on taking things slow. Then you get pregnant, which
wasn’t what we planned, and it wasn’t my choice. And every time I try to have a
serious talk with you about where we’re headed, you deflect. But…” he pauses
and he looks like he wants to say more. Is he afraid? What is he thinking that
he shouldn’t say? Monty shrugs his shoulders like he’s given in. “But now we’re
dealing with it,” he declares, the same way he would if we were “dealing” with
a serious illness or the aftermath of a natural disaster.

I feel like I’ve been smacked. I turn away from him so he
can’t see my reaction, but he gets up and walks toward me. He puts his arm on
my shoulder. I flinch underneath his touch and swat him away.

“’Dealing with it’ was a poor choice of words,” he says. “I
just meant that we haven’t had a lot of time.”

I turn around to face him. “I was afraid I was your second
choice. Turns out I’m not even your choice at all.”

“Lucy, I didn’t mean it that way.”

I wipe my face with my sleeve and try to hold myself
together. “I think you should go.”

“Come on. We should talk this through.”

I say nothing in response. Instead I grab his rain jacket,
hand it to him, and walk over to the door. I hold it open and wait for him to
leave.

He stands in his spot. “We’re obviously both upset. Let’s
just discuss it and try to find some common ground, okay?”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a client you’re mediating with.”

He taps his fingers against his
leg and looks off into the distance. For a moment I think he’s going to burst out
with some emotion he hasn’t allowed himself yet, but he retracts instead. With
careful control he says, “Fine. Have it your way then.” He walks toward my
door. Before he exits he pauses one more time, and says to me, “But this is
exactly what I meant. You refuse to really talk about anything.” He blinks a
couple of times, and then he puts on his jacket, pulling the sleeves down
slowly, with precision. “Call me when you’re ready to discuss this.” Then he
leaves, walking through my door without looking back.

Entrances are important. They dictate how people think and
feel about you. If your entrance is strong, your exit may be a long-time
coming. Sarah Palin’s entrance was nothing if not noticeable. At first nobody
knew who she was, but once she exceeded expectations with her convention
speech, that most definitely changed.

I was worried when she caused McCain’s poll numbers to shoot
up. But last week she had this disastrous interview with Charles Gibson, where
she claimed that living in close proximity to Russia makes her an expert on
foreign policy. Now, even as Republicans are crying foul at any sort of attack
made towards her, some are actually calling for her to be dropped from the
ticket. They say McCain chose her on gut instinct, and that his gut was wrong.

I’m happy about this, but on
another level, it makes me sick to my stomach. This partnership was an
important decision for McCain. He went with his instincts, and initially he
really thought he had got it right. How can something that seems so good at
first, be so easily broken?

Several days go by and I don’t call Monty and he doesn’t
call me. I guess no matter what my instincts were telling me, on him they were
wrong. I refuse to back down or fall apart. I just carry on with my week,
starting a new semester and doing all my normal errands. If an emotion
threatens to sneak its way inside and overwhelm me, I quickly push it away.
After all, I tell myself, it’s better this way. It’s better to know now that we
were never going to last. Having a child together will be hard, but there are
still several months before we really need to worry about it. We’ll figure
something out. In the meantime, I’ll plan my seminar on the power of social
protest from the 1960s to present time. It will be the second time I’m teaching
it, and I have a lot of ideas for new material.

On Thursday evening I’m wading through articles about Martin
Luther King when there’s a knock on my door. I try to calm my racing pulse.
It’s not him, I tell myself. He’d call first. Don’t get too excited.

I open the door and discover I’m right. It’s not Monty. It’s
Jack.

“You ruined my surprise.”

“Sorry,” I say with a deflated sigh.

“You ought to be.” He comes inside and plops down on my
couch like he’s been here dozens of times before. “There are so many things you
should be apologizing for right now, it’s hard to know where to begin.”

I sit across from him and nod my head. “I really am sorry,”
I whisper.

“For what, exactly? Lying to me for years? Breaking your
promise? Devastating my brother?”

I sniff and look at him. His face is a little more lined
than it was the last time I saw it, and his hair is combed forward, like he’s
hiding a receding hairline. But he’s still Jack; he’s still the guy who saw me
for the person I am when nobody else did.

I can’t answer. All the emotion I’ve kept repressed for the
last few days builds, and it erupts in a burst of tears. “Please don’t hate
me.”

“Lucy. Of course I don’t hate you. But I don’t understand
why you kept dating him a secret, especially since it was, like, the Mesozoic
era when we were together.”

I wish I could answer, but I just sit there and cry
uncontrollably. After a moment Jack gets up, and pulls me gently over to the
couch, so we’re sitting side by side.

“I’m in love with him,” I tell Jack. “And it’s so much worse
than it ever was with Drew.”

“Why does being in love have to be bad?”

“You tell me.” I wipe my wet face with both hands. “I’m
sorry,” I say. “I know I’m being pathetic. Just give me a minute, and I’ll calm
down.”

“I don’t want you to calm down.”

I sniff loudly and grab a Kleenex from the box on my side
table. “Well, I want to calm down. I hate being like this.”

Jack shakes his head. “Poor Lucy. Always needs to be in
control.”

I do a double take. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that in all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never
let yourself get hurt.” He softly rubs my shoulder as he speaks. “You just
don’t take risks that way.”

I open my mouth to defend myself, but no words come to mind.
All I can come up with is, “I don’t like taking risks.”

“And that’s your choice,” Jack says. “So I never said
anything. But now I have to, because Monty’s involved.”

Just hearing his name makes my heart do a cartwheel. I drop
my chin and bat away a stray tear. “Monty’s fine. He said himself that being with
me wasn’t his choice.”

Jack shakes his head. “No he didn’t.”

“You weren’t there. I know what he said. He’s still in love
with Evelyn. He was only with me because he felt obligated.” The tears start
streaming out again. Damn it. I grab another tissue and then a couple more.
“It’s like putting lipstick on a pig. Monty can pretend I’m more than a casual
fling that got way out of control, but it doesn’t change his feelings about
me.”

“Lucy, that’s just not true. I may not have been there, but
you misinterpreted his words. I’m sure of it.”

I ball my tissues into my fist and take deep breaths. I have
to force myself back into control. Nonetheless, I need to ask. “How do you
know?”

“Because,” Jack sighs deeply, “Monty told me.”

“What did he say?”

“That this has been going for years. That he always liked
you, even when you and I were dating. Years ago, you came for dinner and
lectured my parents about the evils of Reagan’s trickle-down economics, and he
thought you were really cute and interesting. That was when his feelings for
you began. But he wasn’t going to do anything about it because we were
together.”

I swallow back my disbelief. How can this be? “What else did
he say?” I ask.

Jack shakes his head. “I’m not here to speak for him. You’ll
have to ask him if you want to know.”

“I can’t.”

Jack stares at his hands, which are now placed quietly in
his lap. “You can. You just don’t want to.”

Suddenly my defenses go up. It’s easy for Jack to sit here
and think he knows everything, but he’s only heard one side of the story. “Did
Monty tell you that he was planning to marry Evelyn!? And have kids with her!?”

“That was years ago now.”

“But he’s still not over it. He’s been carrying it around
like old baggage that he can’t even talk about. And I’m supposed to reach out
to him?”

With an even breath, Jack responds. “You both have baggage
that you’re not talking about. Can’t you be the bigger person?”

“I don’t have baggage.”

“Of course you do! Everybody does!”

I say nothing. It doesn’t even merit a reaction.

“I know you as well as anyone, Lucy. So I think I’m allowed
to say this. You’re scared to death when you’re not in control. But love can’t
work that way. I may not be super-experienced, but I know that much.”

How dare he assume things about me, or think he knows more
about my situation than I do? I’m so angry I can’t find words. What I finally
come up with doesn’t do my emotions justice. “I don’t always have to be in
control,” I spit out.

“Fine.” Jack crosses his arms over his chest and glares at
me.

“I don’t.”