Page 22 of That's Not a Thing

“Okay,” he said into the phone, in a voice I hardly recognized. “Okay.”

He touched a button to end the call and then stared at the device in his hand while I waited and my dread mounted.

After a few seconds, he sank back onto the couch behind him, an expression of utter confusion taking hold of his features.

“What?” I finally asked in a near whisper. “What happened?”

“The plane crashed.” He spoke like he didn’t understand his own words. “Into the water. They’re dead.”

“What? Wait, what? Oh my God!”

He dropped his head into his hands and I stood there, mute, not knowing what to do.

When he finally raised his eyes to look back up at me, they were filled with hate.

Chapter Ten

December 2012

At the funeral three days later, we had still barely spoken, even though I had been by his side the entire time. Wesley seemed to be channeling his grief into a take-charge approach. His first phone call had been to the family attorney, as he sought to determine how his mother and father wanted their affairs settled. Suddenly, the corporate executive inside him, the part of himself that he had always resisted, had emerged in full force. From funeral arrangements to the distribution of testamentary funds, he was fixated on discharging his obligations as the surviving son with flying colors, as though he was paying tribute to his parents by becoming the type of man they had always wanted him to be.

Wesley was an only child, and his two aunts and one uncle were much older, leaving him basically family-less as he dealt with this situation on his own. There was only me, and, for reasons I couldn’t understand, Wesley could barely look at me.

As we drove back from the cemetery to his parents’ house in Irvington, I wondered how he was going to get through the whole week of shiva. Friends and relatives were going to be visiting the family home for seven full days following the funeral in order to pay their respects. I had packed Wesley a bag of clothes from his apartment to use for the week at his parents’, and my mother had jumped in to help out with the food, ordering platters of bagels and lox, cookies, and mini egg rolls to serve during the endless rotation of company that was about to begin.

I wasn’t sure how long to wait to bring up the wedding. Obviously, we weren’t going to be having a three-hundred-person celebration in three weeks. I wondered if we should just do one of those justice-of-the-peace ceremonies and get it done or wait until Wesley wasn’t so consumed by his grief. As I looked over at him in the limo that was carrying us back to the house from the funeral, the wedding seemed like the furthest thing from his mind. In fact, it seemed he could barely stomach sitting in the same car as me.

“My mom is waiting back at the house,” I told him delicately, looking at the text she had just sent me. “Some of your dad’s business people are already there, she said.”

“Yup,” he answered, looking out the window, the muscles of his jaw working while he stared at the bare trees along the road, possibly seeing nothing at all.

Maybe I should have been more patient. Not maybe. I definitely should have been more patient. Still, as I picked at the plastic label of an unopened tissue box resting between us, I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Is there something I should be doing that I’m not? I just feel like this is more than grief, like you’re angry at me ...”

“Jesus, Meredith. Not everything is aboutyou, okay?” he snapped.

“Wow, okay. Sorry.” I forced myself not to get defensive. Wesley should have a free pass for just about anything right now.

Suddenly, his eyes shot to mine. It was the first time since hearing the news about his parents that he seemed to actually be looking at me, seeing me.

“Fine,” he nearly shouted, his face abruptly flushed. “You want to know what it is? It was your mother who was supposed to die! Not mine! Your family that was supposed to fall apart! Not fucking mine!”

I jerked back as if he’d slapped me. Whoa. Maybe not a free pass for that, though.

“Hold on,” I said gently, like I was trying to calm a spooked horse. “None of this was supposed to happen—that’s true.”

“No shit, this wasn’t supposed to happen,” he spat back.

I tried to think how to respond, but he kept going.

“And maybe, just maybe, Meredith, if you and your perfect parents hadn’t been so high maintenance, so fucking stuck up about our stupid wedding, then my parents wouldn’t have gone on that trip, wouldn’t have needed to de-stress from the strain that you Altmans put on them with all your fucking demands. Did you think about that? Did you ever fucking think at all?”

I looked back at Wesley, stunned. I didn’t know this man. I didn’t know what to say or how to react. So I was silent.

The car was pulling up in front of his parents’ semicircular driveway before I had a chance to respond.

“Look,” he said, a little more gently, but not contrite, “I just can’t do this right now. I need some space. I can’t keep looking at you and thinking about all the things that should have been different. Can you just go? That’s what I need right now, for you to just give me some breathing room. Okay?”

Maybe I should have argued, refused to leave his side during that time, but I couldn’t fathom how he could possibly be blaming those deaths on me, or on my parents. I didn’t want to be around a man who would act out at me like that, not even when he had such extreme grief as an excuse. So, instead, I did what he asked. I left.