A Little Hope(6)

He feels Alex’s hand on his shoulder, and his head slumps forward like a resting marionette. There are pigeons on the roof of the building below them, and the guys are on their suspended platform squeegeeing the windows across the street. He sees a plane creep by in the empty blue sky, and he lifts his head and wipes his eyes with the side of his hand.

“People get better all the time. Every day, someone in a hospital is fixing something. Thousands of people go in sick and come out cured. Every day that’s happening,” Alex says. His voice is a low whisper, and Greg loves this man for saying this. He wishes Freddie would say this—that she wouldn’t look so uncertain. He wishes the doctor would say, “We’re going for a cure. Nothing less.”

“But I don’t feel lucky. I’ve won too much already.” He thinks of Freddie, beautiful and perfect with the winks she gives him, the way he can look into her eyes and know exactly what she wants to say. He knows the patterns of her breathing, how she’ll inhale sharply before she says something important, how she’ll barely breathe at all if she’s waiting for him to say something. He thinks of the Mercedes he feels so proud of, even years later, how he grins when he gets into it every morning, the familiar sag of the leather seat, the confident way it starts up. He thinks of this job in its old, classic, gray building. Their peaceful house with the light blue door. He thinks of Addie. How she looks into his eyes while she talks to him about planet names she invents. How she leaves misspelled notes on his bedside table (Dady I mis you). He shakes his head and sighs.

“You’re always a winner. Why should this be any different, huh?”

Greg listens for false cheer in Alex’s words, but hears only sincerity.

“Yeah,” he says. “Maybe.” He remembers pressing the elevator button in this same building all those years ago and shaking Alex’s hand the first time. He remembers what he said when Alex asked his plans: to keep developing his skills and have his responsibilities grow. He was only twenty-two. He remembers how Alex trusted him with clients right from the start.

He remembers, too, how Addie saw his framed MBA degree from Yale (he did the executive program while he worked full-time), and she wanted to know what Yale was. A school, he told her. Not far from here. “Maybe I’ll go to college there, too,” she said, “and you and Mommy can drive over to see me whenever you want.” He remembers showing her pictures of the campus on the computer, how he promised he’d take her on a tour there. Why hasn’t he done it yet? How many promises has he made her that he hasn’t made good on? Skiing in Vermont, visiting Disney World, Hawaii. He thought there would be so much time.

Will she even remember his voice? Will she tell people about him?

“Let me help you,” Alex says. “Let us help you. Kay loves you guys. We can make dinners, watch Addie, walk the dog. I know you don’t want charity and that you don’t need help. It would just give us an excuse to be with our favorite family more.”

“Thanks,” Greg says. “Freddie tried to get me to stay home a couple of weeks ago.”

“Listen to her then.” Alex claps his shoulder the way he used to do after a round of golf, and Greg aches for that old feeling when nothing else was going on.

Nothing else.

Now there is nothing else besides this, he thinks.

He could call his life perfect if he weren’t dying.

They stay in silence watching the cars on the street. He sees the fountain below, and in his head hears the splashing sound it must be making as the water cycles through one layer to the next. He sees the old St. Vincent’s Church steeple and tries to make a wish on it. “Alex,” he finally says.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

They walk toward the door together. Maybe after this, he’ll go see Freddie. Maybe they can drive to Yale when Addie gets home from school. Yes, he will take her to Yale. He will make time. He will carry her if she gets tired of walking.

Addie and Yale. How many kids her age care about college? Does she already have some notion of what she wants in life? He did. He always did. She is a little force of nature. She seldom blinks. She is so precise when it comes to her drawings, her clothes, the way she situates her stuffed animals on the bed.

Could she feel like she’s inevitable, too, the way he always did? For a second, he is proud. But then he doesn’t want her to feel inevitable. Maybe he jinxed himself that way.

When he applied for the job, he was the best applicant. He felt it in his blood, in every cell. He had the firmest handshake, the best answers to the questions. He was so damn alive and on fire. He made sure his shoes gleamed when he walked into this building.

He doesn’t want Addie to care about any of that. She should just be free. He wants to blurt that out like an epiphany. He wants her to keep skipping. He wants her to hold two halves of a peach in her hand the way she always does and keep staring at the fruit with wonder—as if it contains a secret. He wants her to jump rope, to keep giving a voice to the dog and cat. Hell, he wants the dog and cat to live forever, too. He wants her to know that he did all he did, that he tried so hard in everything—in school, in work, in being a husband and dad. He wants her to think that what he did—all this stuff—was enough. To know that she and Freddie were the most of all of that. The most he could ever ask for.

He grabs his bag and nods at Alex. His throat hurts so bad that he has to whisper. “I’ll keep you posted,” he says quietly.