Questions and Answers
Carrick stares at me for a moment, his face almost completely blank like he doesn’t understand my question at all.
“You mean… you want to visit me in California?”
I shake my head. “No. I want to go. I don’t want to come back here.”
“You can’t just run away from your problems,” Carrick replies, running his fingers through my hair in a way that I suppose is meant to be soothing enough that I will ignore his words.
It isn’t. “Yes, actually I can. As long as I’m here, nothing is going to change. And I don’t know if anything ever will change about Taylor. All I can change is me.”
“And you can’t change you in Tulsa?” He asks, but his tone says that he already knows what my answer will be.
“If I could, I think I would have by now,” I say. “I know it just seems like I want to run from my problems, but what else can I do? If twenty six years hasn’t been enough to cure me of this, then nothing will.”
“So what, you run away, quit the band and then you can just pretend you’re over him?”
I shake my head. “I’m not quitting the band. I just need a little distance.”
“I just don’t see how this will accomplish anything,” Carrick replies, sighing.
I pull back from Carrick, feeling my lips turn down into a childish pout almost like they have a mind of their own. “So what you’re saying is you don’t want me to come out there?”
“No,” he replies, shaking his head. “I didn’t say that. I just want you to be sure that it’s the best thing for you to do. And right now, I’m not sure it is. But I know you’re stubborn. You’ll probably move out there whether I let you move in with me or not.”
“Probably,” I admit. I try to laugh at the end of that in hopes of lessening some of the tension of this conversation. Tension that I caused.
“Listen, Zac,” Carrick begins. “Your divorce isn’t even final yet. And you’re leaving how soon for Australia? Let’s wait until after you get back to talk about this, okay?”
“Why, because you think I will have changed my mind by then?”
“Didn’t I just say you were stubborn?” He asks a little teasingly. “I just want to give you a little more time to get used to the idea. Make sure that you’re sure about it and not just jumping to the only solution you see at first. Just take some time to think, alright? I promise we’ll talk about it seriously then.”
Carrick’s face is serious enough that I know he isn’t just trying to brush me off. I believe him. We’ll talk about this again, and I hope that when we do, he will agree that I should move to California with him. Maybe it isn’t the smartest thing to do, maybe it’s even cowardly, but I don’t see any other escape from this. And an escape is what I need.
“Get some sleep, alright?” He asks. “I know you guys are diving right back into rehearsals tomorrow for that tour. We can’t have you falling asleep at the drums.”
I wonder if we will rehearse, though, when Taylor might still be at the hospital with Natalie. But I don’t voice that. I don’t want to talk about him or her or anything. Right now, all I want to do is curl up next to Carrick and sleep. He’s the only thing that brings me any peace lately, and I want to cling to that. That’s why I know I need to go with him. I can’t let him leave and take my peace with him.
For now, though, I still have some amount of peace. It’s enough for me to drift off to sleep in Carrick’s arms and sleep through the night easily. I only begin to toss and turn when the smell of food hits my nose and pulls me from my wonderful, dreamless sleep.
I’ve woken up to Carrick’s cooking so many times this summer. As I lay in bed and will myself to get up, I decide that I could really, really get used to this. The idea of waking up to Carrick, either next to me or a few rooms away cooking breakfast for the two of us, forever isn’t a bad thought at all.
Before I married Kate, I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around the idea of forever. It always left this weird lump in my stomach, but I just assumed that eventually I would get used to it. I would learn to like forever. I would learn to be okay with loving the same woman every day for the rest of my life, never knowing if there was someone or something else—besides Taylor—out there for me. In time, being with Kate every day did become routine, but that sense of worry, almost dread, never fully faded. Being married to her was just routine. It wasn’t exciting. It wasn’t the kind of forever I wanted.
But when I think about forever with Carrick… there’s no dread. Just happiness and anticipation of something I know will be better than what I’ve had before.
With a mind full of confusing but happy thoughts, I pull myself out of bed and walk to the kitchen. There’s Carrick, just as I expected, pouring coffee. There are plates of French toast on the counter, and I’m surprised he’s even found bread that isn’t too moldy to toast, but apparently he has. I give him a quick peck on the cheek before grabbing my plate and scarfing down what I’m not surprised is the best French toast I’ve ever had.
We don’t talk much as we eat breakfast, shower and get ready to head into the studio. He doesn’t have to go in today since the day is mostly about us rehearsing for the upcoming Australian tour. But I guess he knows that I need his moral support. No one has texted to say that rehearsal is canceled due to Natalie’s hospitalization, and I have no clue what the day while bring, but I don’t see how it can possibly be good, whatever it is.
As much as I want to delay going into the studio, I know it will only make me stress out more and consider all the worst possible outcomes for the day. So I force myself to stop dragging my feet and get to rehearsal on time. With Carrick there to push me along, we end up being a few minutes early. We’re barely in the door before I see Taylor’s car pulling into a spot right in front of the building. I’m not sure if facing him right away is better or worse than delaying the inevitable.
Taylor walks in the door and glances back and forth between me and Carrick for a moment. Finally, his eyes land on me and he very pointedly says, “Can we talk?”
I nod. I know that means he doesn’t want to say whatever he has to say in front of Carrick. I don’t like that, but I understand it, so I start walking down the hallway toward our conference room, which I know no one will be using right now. We’re practically the only people here this early so any of the rooms in our office would have worked, but at least here, I can sit at one end of the table and force Taylor to sit at the other. I don’t trust myself to be close to him, no matter what he has to say.
He looks like he hasn’t slept or showered in days and I know I should ask how Natalie is, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. Unless something else has happened that I’m unaware of, I assume whatever he wants to talk about has something to do with her.
“Umm,” he begins, clearing his throat. “Nat’s getting out of the hospital later today, if she’s still doing better, so I guess I’ll need to leave rehearsal early.”
“Okay,” I reply. I’m sure the formalities of our rehearsal schedule aren’t what he brought me in here to discuss, but if that’s where he wants to start, I’ll let him.
“They, umm, wanted to keep observing her for a little bit longer… just to make sure everything was back to normal,” he continues.
“And is it?” I ask.
He shrugs. “It never will be again, really.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I ask, feeling my stomach drop at his defeated tone. He still hasn’t told me what is wrong with Natalie. He’s just dancing around it and avoiding saying it, and I don’t know why.
“Do you know what diabetic ketoacidosis is?” Taylor asks, his head tilting to the side a little.
I shake my head. I can guess that it has something to do with diabetes, but other than that, I have no clue. What could it possibly have to do with Natalie?
“It’s this thing that happens when people with diabetes have a shortage of insulin,” Taylor replies in this detached, matter-of-fact tone that makes me shiver. “Sometimes it’s because they don’t know they have diabetes, and sometimes it’s because they just really failed at managing their diabetes.”
“Okay…” I reply, still completely confused. I know he thinks he’s explained everything to me, but he hasn’t.
He tilts his head to the other side. “You remember how Nat had gestational diabetes when she was pregnant with Viggo?”
I nod. Even though it went away after she gave birth, it made them both a little cautious about having another kid. Until this new pregnancy, they’d never gone so long between kids, and for a while I’d hoped they weren’t going to have another. I knew it was a strange thing to hope for, but I also knew there were times when he’d been on the verge of walking out before she conveniently discovered they had another bun in the oven. I always thought it was a little too convenient, but I never said anything. The fact that they lost this one after the trouble the last pregnancy caused didn’t pass me by unnoticed either, but again, I didn’t say anything. Maybe I should have.
I meet Taylor’s eyes again and ask, “But that went away, right? She was fine.”
“Maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t,” Taylor mumbles. “We always knew it put her at a higher risk of developing diabetes later on, and guess what? She has. And the doctors all keep talking like she should have known and should have taken better care of herself. That she wasn’t managing her condition well. Funny how I didn’t even know she had a condition.”
“Did she know?” I ask.
Taylor throws his hands up in defeat. “Apparently there is a limit to what information husbands can know about their wives’ medical treatment. But I can’t help thinking that yes, she did know. How long she’s known, suspected, whatever… I don’t know.”
I still feel like there’s something important about all of this that I’m missing, but I can’t figure out what. “Does it make a difference whether she knew or not? Or when she found out?”
“Actually, it does,” Taylor replies. “One thing I remember from before, from the last pregnancy, is that women who already have diabetes are inclined to have higher risk pregnancies. Meaning a higher risk of miscarriage.”
Miscarriage.
The word rings in the air, and I’m brought back to that moment a few months ago when I had to take Taylor to the hospital. If Natalie knew then that she had diabetes and she got pregnant anyway… I don’t know how to finish that sentence. Why would she purposefully put their baby at risk? But why does she do anything she does? The most likely reason is for personal gain, but what could she gain by being so reckless not only with her own health but with that of a defenseless little baby? It makes no sense.
Yet, somehow, it does. Keeping something like this a secret so that Taylor wouldn’t protest another baby seems perfectly in line with everything else Nat has done to keep her marriage together. The look on Taylor’s face says that he’s come to the same conclusion. I almost want to rush around to the other side of the table and sweep him up into my arms.
Almost.
“So what do you do now?” I ask, crossing my arms over my chest.
Taylor shrugs. “I don’t know. I just don’t fucking know. Pick her up from the hospital, I guess, but after that…”
He trails off, and I wish had some words to comfort him. I wish I had anything at all to comfort him, but I just don’t. My capacity to care about the situation he’s gotten himself into seems to have run out. Maybe that’s harsh of me, but he knows what she is like, and after his confession in Canada, I’m starting to think that he’s exactly the same.
I’m starting to think they deserve each other.