Perfectly Undone

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“It was perfect,” I say, not to make her feel better but to defend my choice. I’d go back to that day in a heartbeat. “What happened, Mom?” I almost clarify that I’m not talking about Abby’s death, but I think she knows that the rift in our relationship goes much deeper than that.

“Your dad’s at the office,” she says, avoiding the question. At her response, tears burn at the corners of my eyes, and I’m left knowing I’m not going to get an answer out of her today, and I probably never will.

“Right,” I say and I back out of the room. I catch one last glance at the picture, one of my most prized memories tossed carelessly onto the heap that is all that’s left of what could have been. I turn and let myself out.

* * *

I spend Sunday night in the labor and delivery unit coaxing out a little girl who isn’t quite ready to leave her mother’s womb. Afterward, Vanessa sends me home to catch up on some sleep. When I pull into my driveway around ten in the morning, Cooper is gone, but Reese’s truck is in the driveway. I forgot he was starting on the backyard today. After my little scene the last time Reese was here, and after admitting my reluctance to get involved, Cooper took it upon himself to work out the rest of the details. But mostly, he told me, he’d given Reese free rein. I walk from the garage to the front door, watching beads of rain breach through the layer of dirt on his windshield, smudging out spots of clarity that are just as quickly blotted out by the next drop. I see no signs of Reese.

I leave my shoes in the foyer and pad to the kitchen, using the excuse of a glass of water to stand at the window and search for him. Despite my hesitation about the garden and having a stranger at the house, now that the idea has sunk in, I’m intrigued by the development of my little spot in the world. The fantasies I once harbored about a peaceful space of my own have resurfaced. I cling to that show of love more than ever with the distance Cooper has been putting between us.

From here there’s nothing to see, but since I know I won’t sleep, I decide to get closer.

Outside, a light rain continues to drizzle. Reese is turned away from me, so I try to make my presence known with heavier footfalls, but as I watch Reese work so attentively on the trench he’s digging, I’m sure I’ll startle him no matter how I approach. I stick close to the house to avoid some of the errant raindrops while he digs in a slow and steady rhythm, tossing the loose soil into a growing pile on the grass. He’s knee-deep in the hole he’s created, which is a few feet long, moving from the side yard toward the space beneath my bedroom windows. Despite the cool temperature, he seems unaffected by the rain on his exposed arms and the back of his neck, both a deep tan, no doubt from years of working all day in the sun. I stumble over a branch, and he looks up at me.

“Hello, Dr. Michels.” I stop where I am, giving myself distance, but the way he says my name makes my mouth suddenly dry. He draws out each syllable, and somehow it sounds more intimate than calling me by my first name. Without the buffer of Cooper, or maybe because I’ve interrupted Reese’s focus, the current that surrounds him is less contained.

“Dylan,” I correct him. “How is it going?”

“Just fine,” he says. He rests one foot on the lip of the shovel and leans into the handle. “You’re home early.”

“Actually, I’m home late. Just got done with surgery.”

“Ouch. Do you work all night a lot?”

“Here and there. It’s not too bad.” I shrug.

“Man, I couldn’t do it. I need my sleep,” he says. He laughs, but I miss the joke.

After a moment of silence, his eyes narrow, gauging me—the woman who wanted the moat. I can’t tell what he’s looking for, or whether or not I should be threatened by it.

I cross my arms over my chest. “Well, it’s not for everyone.”

“Sure.” After a moment, he says, “If you’re not busy, I can show you what I’ve got so far.”

“I can’t. I have to get back to work,” I say, which isn’t true, but it comes out before I realize it isn’t. He nods, smiling. The lie must be written all over my face.

I sigh. “Okay. I guess I have a minute.”

He lays the shovel down on the grass and hoists himself up to my level. Like the first time I met him, I’m struck by his lightness, his agility. He seems so carefree, like someone who lives in a different world, apart from the stress and struggles of everyday life. As I look around me, at the kind of places he gets to work, I wonder if maybe he does.

“Come here,” he says and waves me over. I inch forward until we’re standing in front of each other, only the gap in the earth separating us.

“So here’s your moat so far,” he says, barely hiding a grin, teasing me. He’s giving me what I asked for, clearly more for his own entertainment than thinking it’s a good idea. I must have made a hell of a first impression.

“It’s a pretty stupid request, isn’t it?”

“Let’s just say it was a first. I appreciate your bravery, though. And I admit, it is nice to have a challenge. I could use a break from the koi ponds. Want to see the rest of my ideas?” he asks. His green eyes light up against his dark hair.

“Sure,” I say.

“Come with me.”

He jumps across the divide in a single bound, and I let him lead me around the house to the front yard.

“Don’t you have any employees?” I ask him as we traipse through the overgrown grass.

He waves the question away. “I prefer the silence.”

When we reach the driveway, he opens the door of his truck and leans far over to reach for something on the dashboard. I lower my gaze.

“Now, keep in mind, this isn’t finished, it’s just what I’m starting with. Most of the time, the ideas come to me as I work.”

I nod and take the sketch pad he offers me. I’d expected a list or, at most, a computer-generated rendering, but inside the front cover is a hand-sketched portrait of what I recognize as my backyard from the viewpoint of the tree line. I recognize the structure of my backyard anyway. The back door and the windows of the house are clearly visible. Everything else is foreign: the water that runs around it a few feet from the exterior walls, the bridge coming out from the back door to connect to the rest of the yard, a stepping-stone path cutting through the grass into the trees. He’s scribbled out vague flowers along the base of the house and patches on the outside of the moat that bleed into the grass. Vines weave it all together.

Reese’s creativity and steady hand are beautiful. I always wished I had more of an eye for this type of thing, but that’s my mother’s forte. An unexpected yearning to ask her opinion bubbles up inside me, but I suppress it.

I clear my throat. “How did you get so good at this?” I ask.

“I don’t know. Practice, I guess.”

“A teenage boy practicing gardening?”

He laughs. “How old do you think I am?” he asks, and the way he says it, the way his brow furrows, does make him look older. “Never mind. Don’t answer that. Yes, as a matter of fact, this previously teenaged boy practiced gardening. My mom worked—well, works—a lot. My neighbor, Abraam, used to watch me after school. He must have been in his, I don’t know, seventies? But that didn’t stop him from getting down in the dirt with me every day. The man had a gift. He grew the most beautiful roses you could imagine. I always told him he should compete, but he said it wasn’t about that, it was about the process.” He purses his lips together to stop himself, seeming to realize he’s rambling. Then he asks, “What about you? How did you become such a great doctor?”

“How do you know how good a doctor I am?”

“Well, Dr. Caldwell seems to think so. And I trust his opinion.”

A tense laugh escapes my lips, but my heart warms to know Cooper’s been complimenting my work, even if he’s stopped sharing the compliments with me. “I wouldn’t. He’s biased.”

“Maybe.”

Reese waits for me to go on. I notice the way he’s leaning slightly toward me, ready for more clues to blend into whatever picture he’s painting of me. I look away.

“I’m just trying to understand what kind of person you are, the kind of things you like,” he says, sensing my hesitancy. “The thing is, I can put almost anything you want in your backyard. If you don’t have a preference, I can choose anything I want. What I’m trying to figure out is how you want the space to feel.”

“Feel?”

“What gives gardens life is the way each individual detail adds up to something more meaningful. What will your garden mean to you? What do you want to feel when you’re there?”

I ponder the question—somewhat personal coming from a stranger who was hired to dig a glorified trench in my backyard.

If I could walk into another world and feel anything, what would it be?

My mind wanders to Cooper and the look on his face when I left him alone with the champagne. It flashes to the way my mom hardly speaks to me anymore, the way I’ve given up on ever having a relationship with her again. I picture Abby with the oxygen mask over her face. I always picture Abby.

“Forgiveness,” I say, not meeting his gaze as I utter the word. “I want to feel forgiveness.”

A single raindrop hits the page, smearing a charcoal flower, and I try to brush it away.

“I’m... I... Sorry.” I thrust the sketch pad at him but he doesn’t take it. He stares at me for a moment, his hands in his back pockets. The way he looks at me, I’d swear he can read my mind.

He finally lifts the pad from my hand and opens the truck door to place it back inside. Before he faces me again, I walk toward the house.

“Dylan.” He almost whispers my name, but I hear the very breath it rides on. I was wrong. My name on his lips is disconcerting either way. I look over my shoulder at him. “Glad you like it,” he says.

* * *

On Wednesday night, I stop by the grocery store on the way home to buy the ingredients for Cooper’s favorite dish—tacos—as a thank-you for the garden, and as an apology when words aren’t enough. On nights like this, part of me is thankful I don’t have clinical trials and paperwork to sort through and catalog. It makes me look forward to the days when this will be our life, every night, however far into the future that might be.

I drop the groceries in the kitchen, then search the house for Cooper. As I approach our bedroom door, I hear Cooper murmuring as if to a child. At first, I irrationally think he’s brought a patient home from the office—those are the only children either of us knows—until I inch my way into the room where he’s hunched over on the floor next to the bed, cooing and humming words I can’t make out.

“What’s going on?” I ask from the doorway.

He looks over his shoulder at me, a grin from ear to ear. This makes me more nervous that it should. He stands and turns to face me with a small German shepherd puppy lounging across his palms, belly up, tongue flapping lazily out of its open mouth.

“What’s that?” I ask, the shock giving me no time to filter my thoughts.

“My receptionist had puppies.”

“Your receptionist gave birth to puppies?”

Cooper laughs nervously, his smile shrinking down a size. “You know what I mean.”

I force myself not to jump to any conclusions, calming my racing heart with one long, controlled breath. Cooper knows we don’t have the time or energy to take care of a puppy. He wouldn’t spring something like this on me. Except that he just sprang a landscaper on me...

No matter how bad an idea, I can’t resist—I step forward and reach out to rub a finger between the puppy’s ears. It nips playfully at my knuckle with its sharp little teeth. Cooper, ever naive, seems encouraged by this.

“Do you want to hold him?”

As much as I would rather crawl into bed—work clothes on and all—and pull the covers over my head, I say, “Sure.”

I move to the bed and sit down on it. Cooper sets the German shepherd in my lap. The puppy yelps and begins to lick every inch of available skin on my arms. At first, I try to redirect him but soon realize it’s no use. I allow him his fun until he wears himself out and rolls over onto his back again, apparently approving of me. Cooper watches the whole scenario play out without comment. I just wanted to make Cooper dinner, but it’s never enough—nothing I’m able to give ever is. I place the puppy on the ground, walk past Cooper to the bathroom and shut the door.

I collapse onto the toilet and push my fingers against my temples.

A moment later, I hear a thump as Cooper leans into the door frame.

“Dylan,” he says, his apologetic tone muffled. “Will you come out here and talk to me about this?”

After a few deep breaths, I stand up and place my hands flat on the counter. My bloodshot eyes, dark circles and pale skin make my reflection look washed out and scary. To escape it, I turn around and open the door. Cooper is standing there alone. I look past him and see the puppy playing with one of his old socks on the carpet.

“Did I do something wrong?” he asks. When I don’t answer, he says, “I thought we talked about moving our relationship forward. And then this little guy fell into my lap. It seemed like a sign.” His enthusiasm is gone. Once again, it’s my fault.

“I thought we talked about going on vacation. How are we going to go on vacation with a puppy?”

He shrugs. “We don’t have to keep him,” he says, but I can see in his eyes that he’s already fallen in love with it. Why wouldn’t he? He fell in love with me that first night.

“This is a living thing, Cooper, not an undercooked steak you can send back to the waiter.”

A silence spreads between us like an ink stain. It’s broken when his phone rings on the nightstand. I look away, and he crosses the room to answer it. He says a familiar, “Hey,” and then takes it out of the room, leaving me with the dog.

I heave a sigh, reluctantly cross the room and pick it—I check. Him.—up.

“I don’t know much about dogs,” I murmur to him as he licks my fingers, “but I’m guessing you’ll want to go outside now.”

I carry him to the back door, turn on the porch light and set him loose on the grass. I leave the door open so I can listen for him, then unpack the groceries I no longer feel like cooking. I poke at the potting soil where my daisies have yet to sprout. What the hell do I know about taking care of something?

“Babe,” Cooper says, walking into the dining room. He’s pulling on a T-shirt and has his phone in his hand like he’s on his way out.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

He shakes his head and throws his hands in the air, as confused as I am.

“Stephen’s on his way over. He and Megan are separating.”

I freeze. “What? You’re joking, right?” I ask.

The purse of Cooper’s lips tells me he’s not. I blink slowly, waiting for time to rewind or for this to be a hoax. Cooper just went hiking with Stephen last weekend and everything was fine. I saw Megan at their parents’ house three weeks ago and she was...well, actually, she was a mess, now that I think about it. And I haven’t seen them under the same roof for months. Funny how, after spending so many years around doctors, that didn’t strike me as out of the ordinary.

“But...no.” That’s all I can think to say, because the more I think about it, the faster the pieces come together. Still, I shake my head, refusing to believe it. Stephen without Megan isn’t possible.

Cooper says, “Megan told Mom this afternoon, and she’s been at my parents’ house crying all day. I just got off the phone with Stephen. Apparently he’s been staying at a hotel all week. He finished his shift at the hospital fifteen minutes ago, and I told him to come over. I hope that’s okay.”

My fingertips go numb with shock.

“A week ago?” I breathe. “Of course it’s okay. Are you okay?” Am I okay? The weight on my chest grows heavier in response. I can hardly see Cooper’s expression in the darkness, but it’s his best friend and his sister. He can’t be okay.

The puppy comes racing in through the back door, his nails clicking on the floor.

“I don’t know. I don’t know how to feel. I guess I’ll decide when he gets here,” Cooper says. “C’mon.”

Cooper scoops the puppy up and closes him in our bathroom, then takes me by the hand and we wait on the front porch for Stephen to arrive, both of us barefoot. He doesn’t let go of me, just keeps looking over at me with sad eyes and a hopeful smile.

Of course he’s hopeful. That’s the kind of world Cooper grew up in, the kind of example his parents set for him during their thirty-three years of marriage. He believes in love stories and happily-ever-afters. As much as it drives me crazy that he thinks relationships should be as easy as all the good parts his parents let him see, I’ve always loved him for it, too.

That’s not the example I was given. I used to believe in forever, but the truth about relationships revealed itself around the same time as Santa Claus’s fake beard and the Grimms’ version of the fairy tales, when Mom traded her flowy skirts for pressed pantsuits, and my once-affectionate parents stopped cooking together and began arguing more. Then, when Abby died, Mom shut down completely. Now my mom merely puts up with my dad’s existence, and my dad tiptoes around her, like we all do. That’s what I know of relationships.

It wasn’t until I met Cooper’s parents that I began to see the possibility of a loving marriage again. But watching Stephen grow into a devoted husband is what really showed me I might be able to overcome my need to keep everyone at an arm’s length and find happiness for myself someday, too. I thought if Stephen could overcome his self-destructive habits, I had a chance. So I don’t just hope Stephen and Megan work things out; I need them to.

A few minutes later, Stephen’s headlights flash through the trees, and he comes to a stop in the driveway. Cooper’s hand slips from mine as he steps off the stoop to meet him at the truck and pull him into a hug. I rub my hands together for something to do with my nervous energy and allow them a minute alone. I hear Cooper ask, “Why didn’t you tell me, man?”