Miss Me When I'm Gone

chapter 34



Jeremy’s condo was in a boring but well-manicured complex in a quiet central Massachusetts town. The place was a mass of gray paint and white balconies, each unit with the same red-brown door.

I could hear some kind of video game playing behind Jeremy’s door—the revving and crashing of a driving game. The noise stopped after I rang the bell. As the door opened, I pulled my cardigan over my stomach and buttoned the button over the roundest part. Jeremy stood in front of me in a light blue work shirt and a pair of navy sweats.

“Jamie!” He put his hand on his head and rubbed his hair. “What’s going on?”

I put an indignant hand on my hip. “I need to talk to you.”

“Huh? Do you, uh, want to come in?” Jeremy said. He glanced over my shoulder and squinted at my car in the parking lot. “Is Sam here with you?”

“No. And no. I’ll talk to you out here. What the hell is going on, Jeremy? Did you break into my house?”

Jeremy’s mouth hung open for a moment. “What’re you saying, Jamie?”

“I heard you wanted to get your hands on Gretchen’s manuscripts.”

Jeremy ran his hand through his hair again, but said nothing.

“Gregor called me, Jeremy. He told me about your conversation the other day. And I know Gretchen’s parents don’t have any intention of getting you involved with her book.”

“Right,” Jeremy whispered, pressing his glasses up his nose. “Jamie, won’t you come in so we can talk?”

“Nope. Right here.”

“I hate to have you standing out here . . .”

“Spare me the fragile condition bullshit, okay? Just tell me what’s going on. Did you try to steal Gretchen’s notebooks?”

“Her notebooks? From whom?”

“The laptops? Did you think her work would be in those laptops? Because it’s not.”

“What laptops? Jamie, you need to help me out here. Did someone steal Gretchen’s drafts from you?”

I didn’t reply. He pushed his glasses up his nose.

“I really don’t know,” Jeremy said. “I did ask Gregor for the files, yes. I shouldn’t have done that. But I wanted to see them before I talked to you. I needed to know what kind of conversation we were going to have to have.”

“You haven’t answered my e-mails. Why didn’t you just answer me and ask to see them?”

“There’s a bench outside.” Jeremy tugged at his sweatpants’ drawstring and tied it tighter. “Will you at least sit out there with me? We obviously need to talk, and I have a feeling it’s going to take more than a couple minutes.”

“Fine,” I said, and he led me to an island of hedges in the middle of the parking lot, where there were three granite benches surrounding a small fountain with no water.

“Nobody ever sits here,” Jeremy informed me before sitting.

I plopped myself down on the bench opposite his and waited for him to speak. Instead, he watched as a white Hyundai drove up and parked by the condo next to his. A young couple—a beefy guy and a pretty redhead in low-rise jeans—got out. The guy opened up the back and started sliding out a large box from IKEA. His lady friend grabbed hold of the other end of the box. He talked and she giggled while they worked, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

“What is it you wanted to tell me?” I prompted Jeremy.

Jeremy gazed at the couple until they’d disappeared behind their red-brown door with their box.

“I’ve wondered often, especially lately, what she told you about the divorce,” he said finally.

“Not all that much, really,” I admitted.

I watched him play with his sweatpants drawstring for a few moments, wrapping it around his thumb.

“She tell you I hit her?” he asked quietly.

I stared at him. “No.”

He put his palms on either side of him, flattening them against the granite as if he were about to spring up. But he stayed put.

“You mean once or you mean a lot of times?” I asked.

“More like once.”

“More like once?” I repeated.

The red-brown door opened and the couple returned to their car, pulling smaller IKEA boxes from it. This time, when they returned to their apartment, they left the door open. I watched them intently so I wouldn’t have to look at Jeremy.

“I want to tell you what happened between her and me,” he said.

I hesitated, distracted by the obvious question: Why hadn’t Gretchen told me what happened between them? Why was this the first I was hearing of this?

“Okay,” I murmured. “So tell me.”

“My dad was real sick. He died of lung cancer, did you know that?”

I nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

“And Gretchen and I, we’d been talking a lot about how we’d have kids soon. I mean, around the time he decided to refuse any more treatment. A really hard time.”

“Okay,” I said again.

“And, not like she has it in the book. In the book, she makes it sound like some kind of agree-to-disagree thing we had going. But she basically had said yes, we were doing this. She’d stopped taking the pill and everything. Did she ever tell you that?”

“No,” I said, feeling vaguely inadequate for not knowing that either. Not that Sam or I told anyone when we were at that stage.

“Okay. Well, she did. We were trying, you know? And with my dad, there were some days when that was the only thing that kept me going. Knowing there’d be this other life . . . knowing there’d be something to look forward to. I know it sounds weird from me, the guy, to be so sentimental about it. It was like we were reversed. The woman’s usually the one who’s all excited about it.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “I’ve known a lot of couples where the guy’s the one who really goes crazy over the kids.”

“How is it with you guys?”

I had to think about this before answering. It was a good question.

“We’re both equal, I guess. We both knew we’d do this eventually. But, um, it gets more complicated when it becomes a reality.”

Jeremy seemed to hear only the first part of my response. “Well, that was kind of how I thought we were. That we both wanted it. But one day I got home early and took in the mail. And there was this notice for Gretchen from the medical center. It pissed me off, because she’d had some X-rays done like eight months before for a back problem she’d been having, and the insurance was supposed to pay for it. We kept getting the bills. And then we thought we finally got it squared away with the insurance, but here was a bill again. At least that’s what I thought. I tore it open, and what was in there wasn’t a bill for an X-ray. It was a reminder notice. It said that Gretchen had to come in for her next Depo-Provera shot. Do you know what that is?”

“Yeah,” I said. My heart did an extra little hard thud. This was starting to sound like a sordid story—the kind Gretchen probably wouldn’t have wanted me to hear.

“Women get them every three months—”

“Jeremy, I know what they are. I don’t know if we should be—”

I’d been gazing at the open red-brown door of the young couple. Now I was watching as a long-haired tuxedo cat pranced out of their apartment.

“I just want you to understand what happened.” Jeremy was staring at me, trying to reestablish eye contact. I let him. “I need someone who was close to her to know. I thought it was a mistake. I thought, this stupid hospital f*cks everything up. I think that’s what I said when I showed the notice to her when she got home. And then the look on her face . . . And she starts telling me that she just couldn’t handle it yet, it was impossible for her to even think of kids yet. Oh my God, Jamie. I was so angry.”

“So you . . .”

“I kind of pushed her into the wall. Hard. When I heard that, I was just, like, out of control for a couple of minutes there. Like there must be something terribly wrong with both of us for her to do that. To do that and let me think we were trying for all that time, rather than just talking to me. To make me think that any minute now we’d be—”

“It had been three months?”

“Six.”

“Okay. So how did Gretchen react? When you did that?”

“Well, she was shocked. And she kept trying to explain . . . That she wasn’t ready, she was terrified, but I had been so sure, and so stressed about my dad, she didn’t want to upset me. It felt like crazy talk to me, though. I mean, who does that?”

I shrugged. “Maybe a lot of women? I mean, not with such extreme measures. Maybe for a lot of people, though, controlling the situation is easier than talking about it?”

“I don’t know. But I thought we could talk about things. I mean, I’m not some insensitive prick. I mean, that day aside. We talked about everything. Or . . . I guess . . . I thought we did.”

“So was there another time?”

“A few days later. After I visited my dad in the hospital, I went for a couple of drinks. When I got home, I was getting all up in her face. I was like ‘When do those magic shots wear off, Gretchen? When are you going in for your next one?’ I was following her around saying that, while she was trying to dry dishes and put them away. I kept getting in front of the cabinets wherever she was trying to reach, blocking her way. And then finally she looked right back at me and said, ‘So you’re an a*shole now? This is who you are now? Because I’m not ready to be your baby machine?’

“That’s it. That’s when I hit her.”

“In the face?”

“Yes.”

“With your fist?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer.

“No. With my hand, though. The other side of her face kind of slammed into the cabinet door. Then she pushed me away. She ran into the living room, and I followed her, trying to apologize. She started pulling books off the shelves. Big ones—the biggest she could find. Dictionaries and stuff. And throwing them at me. She was screaming, ‘Don’t you EVER hit me! Who do you think you are? What the f*ck do you think this is? A turn-of-the-century whorehouse?’ ”

I bit my lip, stifling a snort. “She said that?”

Jeremy’s face was purple by now. He stared at his hands. “Yeah. And she kept throwing those books. Till one hit me in the head. Then she ran upstairs and locked herself in the bedroom. She wouldn’t let me in to talk. I could hear her crying in there all night long. The next day she had a bruise on her face. I think she may have called in sick so people couldn’t see her. And she spent that night away. I don’t even know where she went. A couple of days later she tells me she thinks we should separate.”

“DAMN IT, ANGELA!” A yell came from the open apartment, and the IKEA guy came outside, looked under his car, then under the bushes nearest his door.

“And did you agree that you should?” I asked.

“My head was kind of still exploding from everything that had happened, so I didn’t know what to think. But we met for dinner a couple of days later. And she was like, ‘I had to tell the people at work I bumped into a door. I had to be one of those women.’ And I didn’t know what to say to that. I was sorry I put her in that position. I kept apologizing. But I guess I expected her to apologize, too. She didn’t, really. Should I not have expected her to?”

“I don’t know. Apologizing after you hit her . . . why would you expect that?”

“Um . . . I didn’t mean it like that. Of course that sounds terrible. I was sorry. I can’t tell you. Really sorry. I still am. But I mean, I expected her to acknowledge the other thing. That was never really resolved, though. She started saying stuff about how if we broke up now, and didn’t stretch it out, there would still be time for me to find someone I could have a family with. Because she was pretty sure it wasn’t going to happen with her.”

By now both the young man and the young woman were outside, looking under cars for their cat.

“And I started to see that she was right. It was like we’d both seen each other’s absolute bottom. Lying and sneaking and hitting and shit. It was, like, who wants to try to be in love after that? We’d already seen how bad we could be to each other. It was like something was erased after that. There wouldn’t be any joy in getting back together.

“And she started talking about Shelly a lot. I think, in a way, it was always about Shelly. At one point, when I was trying to get her to come back, she said to me, ‘I never really knew how to pretend to be a daughter. I don’t really want to try to pretend to be someone’s mother either.’ ”

“I see,” I said slowly. It sounded like Gretchen also found it difficult pretending to be someone’s wife.

The tuxedo cat ran out from under my car just then. The guy leaped at him but missed. The young woman tried to chase him back into their apartment, but the cat ran right past the door.

“Should we help them?” I asked, turning to Jeremy.

Jeremy shook his head. “They do this at least once a week. Even if the whole baby question wasn’t about Shelly, then the, uh . . . incident between me and her . . . what I did . . . that was. I think it sort of triggered something in her. I’d flipped a switch. She couldn’t give me another chance, because that was the sort of thing Shelly was always doing. And she couldn’t make the same mistakes as Shelly, cuz look where that led.”

“But her life was so different from Shelly’s.”

“I know. I tried to argue that point. And that she and I had so much more history than just those two bad nights, but . . . that was that for Gretchen.” Jeremy shrugged. “I think that whole thing always weighed more on her than she was ever willing to say.”

I watched as the cat hopped up on a garbage barrel, looked at his owners as they crept toward him, lifted his paw, and licked the fur between his toes.

“Now, we didn’t talk much after the divorce.”

“Right. I know.”

“Except when she was in the middle of this new book. We had coffee a few times. Because there was something she was writing about that she wanted me to know about.”

“Which was?”

The young woman snatched at the cat’s tail, then scooped him into her arms. She marched haughtily to her door and slammed it behind her. The guy followed her, opening the door for himself and slamming it as she had.

“She said that she wasn’t sure how she was going to do it in a way that was fair to both of us. But she found herself wanting to write about what really happened between her and me.”

“Why now?” I turned back to Jeremy. “Why all of the sudden, after skipping over it so nicely in the first book?”

“That’s what I wanted to know. At first I accused her of just wanting to sell books. She said it wasn’t about that at all. She said she’d learned some things about Shelly that made her reconsider certain feelings she’d had about her own life.”

“Did she explain what that meant?”

“Well. Yeah. She said she’d found out, she was pretty sure, that she was wrong about some of the choices that Shelly had made. Namely, that she didn’t think Shelly’s death had anything to do with her choice of men. That it was never about that guy Frank. Never about her choice to stay with him.”

“Meaning that she didn’t think he did it?”

“Right. So that made her feel better about Shelly. Relieved, in one sense. And she said that made her want to write about herself. The influence Shelly’s memory had had on her own choices. Her own relationships. And she wanted to be more honest about that in this next book.”

“Did you give her permission to do so?”

Jeremy bit his lip and gazed into the shrubs behind me. “She didn’t need my permission.”

“I know. But did you give it your approval?”

“I told her I’d think about it. In all honesty, I was hoping she’d change her mind. Gretchen was a pretty private person. I had a feeling that even if she wrote that stuff down for herself, she’d eventually edit it out for publication.”

“So you wanted to see what she’d actually written, because you were afraid I’d just go ahead and publish it as is, and never speak to you about it?”

“I just needed to see what was there. What I needed to be prepared for. And how I was going to talk to you.”

“Gretchen hasn’t even been gone a month. All things considered, you couldn’t wait a little while longer?”

“It kept me up at night, knowing it was out there. This thing that I’d done. Out there when Gretchen wasn’t anymore.”

Charlie Bucket jabbed me at that very moment. I put my hand on my side and rubbed away the soreness. His strikes seemed bony and sharp lately. I was starting to feel like I was housing one of those boxing nun puppets they sell in novelty stores.

“People make mistakes,” Jeremy said, maybe mistaking my distracted silence for anger. “People can change.”

“I’m aware of that,” I told him, pressing my fingers gently against a second jab. “Do you think you’re one of those people?”

“I’d like to think so. But I guess I shouldn’t expect you to believe me.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because your loyalty lies with Gretchen.”

“It sounds like Gretchen still had some faith in you, if she’d sit you down and tell you her plans to write about what happened. And expect you to be perfectly civil about it. Which you were.”

Jeremy was silent, fiddling with his drawstring again.

“So you don’t know who broke into my house, then?” I asked. “You know anything about that?”

Jeremy took off his glasses, closed his eyes, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “No.”

“Okay,” I said.

I didn’t know what I believed about him anymore. Or about him and Gretchen. But I was pretty sure I believed his answer to my question.

“Someone broke into your house and stole Gretchen’s things?”

“Just a couple of notebooks. And two laptops, but not the one with Gretchen’s files on it, because I had that one with me. But I think that was the intention. They just didn’t find the rest of the stuff. They stole some other things, but I think that might have been to hide what they were really looking for.”

Jeremy put his glasses back on. “Do you know how serious this is, Jamie?”

“Of course I do.”

“If someone went to that extreme to get their hands on something Gretchen wrote, they probably have something a lot worse to hide than I did. Something Gretchen knew.”

“I know, Jeremy.”

Jeremy stared at me through the finger smudges on his lenses. “Should I be worried about you?”

I gazed back at those smudges and smiled a little. His glasses were never clean in college. I tried to remember how young the rest of his face used to look back then, when we were all twenty-one. But couldn’t quite.

“No,” I answered. “I don’t think you should.”