The Theory of Opposites (15 page)

Voicemail from Raina Chandler-Farley

Seriously, Willa, where are you? It’s imperative that I reach you. I realize that you are off, like, finding yourself or whatever, but we’ve run into a situation here, and I need to know what to do. If you get this, call my cell. Um, or…shit. If I don’t answer, try Jeremy. He’ll be able to reach me.

Voicemail from Raina Chandler-Farley

Well, I don’t know where the fuck you are, but your brother has been indicted. I hope that you are off enjoying yourself in la-la land or wherever you are because God forbid you leave me with an itinerary, but whatever. So, I’ve been calling you because the FBI arrested Oliver this morning, and they took him from your apartment. (Big sigh.) And maybe you’re too busy at, like, a day spa, but when they came in, he was smoking pot (did you know that he planned to smoke pot in your apartment?), which means they also seized your apartment because our genius idiot brother had moved three pot plants into your closet. Evidently, this is the purest form of marijuana, so it is all he smokes. You know. Because that sort of shit is important when you’re Oliver Chandler and a cosmic guru.

So if you would please take a goddamn moment to call me back, I would like very much to know what you want me to do now. (Big sigh.) Oh, PS, I have tried to reach your husband, but his assistant — no, I’m sorry, his “tech lady in waiting” because that is evidently what those losers are told to call themselves — said that he was scaling a rock wall and couldn’t be reached. Jesus Christ.

—

Page Six: iPhone Breaking News Alert!

Yogi-to-the-stars Oliver Chandler was arrested today on counts of money fraud. Chandler is alleged to have participated in a Ponzi scheme that raised over $1 million for the famous Kalumdrali Retreat in Mumbai. Celebrities such as Jennifer Aniston, Lady Gaga, Demi Moore and Halle Berry are said to worship at the ashram that promises “peaceful inner Zen to light and caress your very best and karmic soul.” We at Page Six think a cool million bucks will sure help.

When asked to comment, Chandler’s lawyer, Raina Chandler-Farley, said, “Ollie is innocent on all counts. He has devoted his life to nurturing his students’ spirituality and has never cared at all about materialism.” When pressed about the allegations of marijuana farming, Chandler-Farley said tersely, “No comment.” (Page Six knows that this means: “guilty mother-effers!”)

Both Chandlers are offspring of the much-revered author Richard Chandler, who made headlines with his own Nobel scandal last year. We can’t help but wonder if the elder Chandler sees this latest development as divined by the universe or if he’s making calls to bring in the big boys and help save his youngest, the prodigal son. Calls to his publisher went unreturned.

—

“I need to know what you want me to do about your apartment,” Raina says when I reach her.

“What do you mean? Can’t they just take the pot plants out?”

“Yes,” she replies, like this is the dumbest question in the world. “They are obviously not leaving the pot plants in your closet to get your winter boots high.”

“Great then.”

“Not ‘great then.’
Because
Ollie is the subject of an FBI investigation and
because
they indicted him today and
because
he is such a moron that he had illegal drugs on the premises, they consider your apartment a crime scene.”

“A crime scene for romance,” Vanessa says because we’re in the car on the way home from the mountain, and I’m on speakerphone.

“What?” Raina barks. “Who is this?”

“I don’t understand what’s going on,” I say.

“This family is a goddamn mess, that’s what’s going on. And naturally, I’m handling it.” Raina’s phone beeps twice, and she mutters, “Hold on,” and then it’s silent.

“Man,” Vanessa sighs. We’re stuck in the snarled traffic again on the commute back to the hotel. “You can’t make this stuff up.”

I don’t answer because I’m still pissed off.

“Listen. I know you’re mad about Theodore. But that’s the point of this trip. Of the book. Of the dare. You have to leave your comfort zone if you’re ever going to rejigger your own master plan.”

I stare out the window and try to look angrier.

“Come on, Willa. I’m your best friend. You need to trust me.”

I clench my jaw, and then Raina is back.

“Sorry. Grey has a stomach bug. Of course. Of course he does.” She inhales. “Here are your options. One: come home and deal with this.”

“We just got here!” Vanessa says too loudly, then adds: “Hey Raina, it’s Vanessa.”

“Well, your landlord is saying you’ve defaulted on your lease.”

“What?” I say. “How?”

“Yeah, um, illegal growth of marijuana plants pretty much gives him an out.”

I rub my face. “So then what?”

“Option two: move your stuff to storage. Option three: pray that your brother didn’t actually do any of the crap they’re saying.” Her other line beeps again. “God! Hang on.”

She clicks over, but the line mistakenly goes dead.

“Hey look,” Vanessa points to the car a lane over. “It’s marijuana mom! Now
she’d
support Ollie.”

Indeed it is. The MOMS FOR MARIJUANA minivan is just ahead. We inch up, trying to catch a glimpse.

“Ugh. I should probably go back to New York and help.”

“Hold up. What’s the easiest thing to do?” Vanessa asks.

“Go back to New York and avoid Theo.”

“Interesting,” she says. Then, after a pause: “So what would your revised master plan tell you to do, the opposite of what is easy?”

I sigh. I hate this stupid exercise. It runs counter to every instinct that I’ve spent my life adhering to: the instincts that tell me to tuck my head, make no sudden movements, linger in the shadows. Though admittedly, I have terrible instincts for just about everything.

“The opposite of what is easy would be to stay.”

“So?”

I know what I have to do.

“My new Master Universe Way will be to stay.”

I feel sick just saying it out loud.

Vanessa laughs and reaches over to squeeze my hand.

“See, just like that, we’ve changed your destiny.”

16

Though Seattle natives swear that it doesn’t rain in the summer, it is, in fact, damp and drizzly the entire next day, which is just as well because I’m too sore to move. Vanessa decamps to the hotel lobby to start writing, and I loiter in bed, mostly dodging Raina’s phone calls but also dodging life

I have gotten what I know about Oliver’s situation from TMZ and Page Six, and I can’t tell if it’s because he’s my brother and I trust him or if it’s because he pulls off doe-eyed innocence so well (“Namaste, my friends”) or if it’s just because my dad has brainwashed me to conclude that what is meant to be will be, but I believe Oliver’s claim of naiveté. I believe him when he stands next to Raina and a publicist I didn’t even realize he had (“Ollie has a publicist?” I text Raina), as they hold court outside Yogiholics, and Ollie rubs his prayer beads and says in a very calm but totally unpatronizing voice that
he doesn’t believe in capitalism and if anyone is the victim here, it is him, his practitioners and the other devoted few who were also duped by Yogi Master Dari when he asked them to donate to his cause.

It’s true that the right thing, not just the
easy
thing, would be to go back to New York. Yes, to fly back immediately, even though I can offer no real counsel. Maybe I could offer my siblings some comfort, but truth told, they hadn’t exactly enveloped me with sympathy when my own life fell apart. Raina slipped me a bottle of Xanax while I was packing, and Oliver stuffed a “healing necklace,” whatever that is, in my toilet kit. But those aren’t exactly the pillars of support that one’s looking for when one finds herself at rock bottom.

There’s a knock on the hotel room door and a muffled voice calls out:

“Room service.”

Vanessa had mentioned that she’d send up breakfast, so I limp my way out of bed, my hamstrings creaking, my lower back explosive, the space between my shoulder blades a minefield. I try to pull on my sweats but it just isn’t worth the agony of bending over, so I wrap the hotel robe around me in a loose knot and shuffle to the door.

I shouldn’t have quit those Sunday runs with Shawn
, I think.
Maybe I can start running again. Email him and tell him we should start running again. Rewrite our Master Universe Way together. Program our
Together To-Do!
app for tri-weekly runs. That seems nice. That seems lovely.

I know that I claimed that we mutually decided running wasn’t worth it. But really, it was me. We were married now, who needed to stay in shape? Wasn’t it so much better to honor Sunday as God intended? As a day of rest? Shawn pointed out here that he didn’t realize I actually believed in God, and that he couldn’t help but wonder if I wasn’t religious only when convenient. And I sat on the couch and thought about the fact that maybe he was right. But I still didn’t want to go running.

Later that afternoon, when he went out to Hop Lee for Chinese food, it occurred to me that I had my own religion: that everyone in my family had been indoctrinated into the cult of Richard Chandler, and believing in that (or disbelieving, if you were Raina) was enough. It was already exhausting to spend your days rationalizing and theorizing and putting everything in its logical place, so if I didn’t believe in God, actual God, well, who could blame me? My dad was God. That’s what everyone had told me, anyway.

“Room service!” the man echoes again.

“Coming,” I say, hoping for greasy eggs, which remind me of Shawn, so I reconsider and pray for Belgian waffles.

I unlatch the lock.

I look for the food cart, but there’s no food cart.

It’s Theodore. (Of course.)

“Sorry,” he says. “I had to.”

“You really didn’t,” I say. “You really shouldn’t have.”

He takes an arm out from behind his back and holds out a plate of waffles.

I shake my head. (He’s the founder of Y.E.S., for God’s sake.)

So he smiles. “Come on. Give a guy a break.”

So I smile back. “Fine. Only because I’m starving.”

—

One night, early in our relationship, Shawn and I were waiting on the popcorn line for the new
Batman.
He knew the guy who had done some of the special effects, so he was talking quickly, excitedly, about what we were about to witness. Two girls in line behind us overheard and interjected and said:

“Like, that’s so awesome! You know someone who worked on this movie?”

And as the line crept forward, Shawn beckoned them into the conversation, still spilling his secrets, and the two girls inched closer to him, and I was pushed ever so slightly further away.

Eventually, we bought our popcorn and sodas, and they bought their Red Vines and whatever, and on the way back to the theater, the prettier girl said to Shawn when she thought that I was out of earshot, “I don’t see a ring, so you should call me sometime.”

I turned around just as she handed him her card.

Shawn stood there shell-shocked for a moment, and then he got this loopy grin on his face, and then he noticed me watching, so he gave me this endearing look, like
what the hell was that about?
— and then he balled up her card and tossed it in the trash.

He had been a late bloomer, all pimples and bones and awkwardness in high school. His college girlfriend had been cute enough – she was from Missoula and was sort of boring, a little dull, and she liked reading
Popular Science
as much as he did. She broke up with him when she moved to St. Louis after graduation. So at
Batman
, he hadn’t yet adjusted to his handsomeness or the fact that coders and Internet geeks ruled the world. He was still a kid who played Dungeon and Dragons with the neighbors in his parents’ basement.

Later, back at his apartment, I asked him why he chose me, though I felt really presumptuous because it wasn’t like we were engaged or anything. It wasn’t like I had a ring.

“I don’t know, we fit,” he said. “You’re Switzerland. I am too.”

And we were. So I didn’t dispute him. (Switzerland doesn’t dispute anything.)

Now, I guess I hadn’t seen it, that we no longer fit, that he outgrew me. That the gawky high school kid eventually discovers that he can go back to his reunions and make the prom queens jealous with regret.

But what’s regret anyway?

Regret, I am learning these days, is a lot of things. But mostly, it’s a slippery seed of longing, of looking back and asking yourself why you didn’t know better when the answers were so obvious all along.

—

Theodore sits in the hotel room desk chair while I awkwardly position myself on the bed, clutching the robe shut so a boob doesn’t fall out. He sets the plate of waffles in front of me, balancing them on a pillow, and then returns to his chair, a safe distance away so I don’t feel threatened. I can tell that he does all of this unintentionally, even though with Theo, it’s second nature. That’s what he does: he reads your instincts and responds accordingly, before you’re even aware of your own instincts yourself.

“I can go at any time,” he says, once he’s settled in.

I laugh. “You’re such a bullshitter.”

He laughs too because he’s really not, but he also sort of is. Then he says, “I just wanted to see you. Talk to you. But I don’t want to, like, make you uncomfortable.”

I pick up a waffle and take a bite, buying my time, assessing him, how much the past eight years have changed him, or how they really haven’t. He is still boyishly handsome; he still wears black-rimmed glasses that add to his allure; he is still skinny but strong enough for that twenty-mile bike ride. He’s grown more confident, though that was a trait he never lacked, and he wears this certainty with ease, like he has all the answers. Which a lot of times, he does. He swipes his brown hair off his forehead and nudges his glasses up his nose, and I feel a tug of something inside of me, something familiar, something like what it felt like at twenty-one when I fell in love with him.