Page 24 of Exit Lane
As I dig through my tote for my notebook, the leather of my bag slouching in the space between my personal pod and that of my neighboring passenger, I realize how long it’s been since I’ve been back to Iowa. I go to New York for work almost every month—for board meetings and partner meetings, business trips enhanced by dinner with Violet or one of her PR events and the occasional tried-and-true hookup. At thirty, it’s harder to get excited about the potential of encountering a perfect new person and a lot easier to send an Uber to bring Gabby from her place in Williamsburg to my favorite room at the Marlton. “Move back,” she whispers as I go down on her.
But my life in Copenhagen is easier, and I like that about it, something I can’t bring myself to admit out loud. A lack of close friendships leaves time for me to have hobbies, something my life in New York never seemed to allow for. I take morning barre classes and plant herbs in my kitchen. I see my therapist every Wednesday and started riding horses outside the city most Sundays.My evenings are my own, which usually means tackling an ever-growing pile of self-help books and prompted journals. I’ve even started working toward building my own investment fund—something my stability-loving self would have shuddered at the thought of a year ago.
A late-night film or a walk around a well-lit park, they’re mine if I want them. Plus, there are plenty of fucked-up workaholics to date in Denmark, too. Instead of telling Gabby any of this, I make her come, kiss her shoulder, and assure her it’s my job that’s keeping me away.
In three years of visits back to the city, I’ve yet to run into Teddy. There are eight million people there, but our nonencounter still feels improbable given our track record. His existence is like a shadow in my life. Part of his charm has always been his lack of online presence, and I do my best not to pester Sloane with questions. I’ve heard that his treatment went well, and I know that I hurt him too much to deserve any more information than that.
But Sloane and I are still Sloane and I. When she and Carter FaceTimed me with a diamond pressed to the front-facing camera, I couldn’t have been happier, or less surprised. I’d been emailing with Carter about Sloane’s ring for almost a year. “And the best part”—Sloane sighed, smiling at Carter before looking at me over the phone—“is that we’re doing the wedding in Iowa City. Iowa Shitty, Mar! It deserves to be immortalized.”
As maid of honor, I’ve gone all out at every opportunity. A long bachelorette weekend in a cottage in the Cotswolds with a male dancer wearing only an apron while serving ushigh tea? A smash hit. A bridal luncheon for Carter’s and Sloane’s extremely buttoned-up moms at Mayflower Inn? One for the books. Dress shopping, which mostly entailed a forty-three-part email chain between me and Sloane? Weirdly emotional. But I’ve learned enough about myself over these last few years to know I’m overcompensating for fear that I’m not going to be able to pull off what lies ahead. It’s Iowa I’m worried about.
It’s the turn off the interstate where my dad is buried, which used to just be the exit we’d take to get BBQ after church most Sundays. It’s his best friend’s house, the place we thought of as a second home, where I haven’t been since he’s been gone. It’s the basketball court in the backyard of our old house, where we’d shoot free throws for hours until my mom turned on the back porch light. “You can’t control anything in life,” he used to say, switching out our regular ball for the late-night version that glowed in the dark, “except your free throws.”
Shifting in my seat, I try to read one of theNew Yorkers I packed. The wedding’s on Saturday, send-off brunch on Sunday, best friend debrief session Monday before Sloane and Carter jet off to Antigua. I’m cutting it a little close flying in on Friday afternoon, but I couldn’t bring myself to book anything earlier. I’ll make it there right before the rehearsal dinner, slip into a silky matching set and loafers, and charm the pants off of the aunts and uncles I haven’t seen since our graduation.
Last night, packing with Violet on FaceTime, I asked her to weigh in on jewelry options. “Won’t Teddy be there?”she inquired gingerly. I suppressed the part of me that believes my job as her big sister is to convince her my life is stable, settled, and safe.
I’d realized I’d been holding my breath and exhaled. “I mean, of course. He’s Carter’s best friend.” Even through an iPhone screen, I could tell she was searching for something in my eyes. “It’ll be good to see him again. I think it’ll be reassuring to see for myself how he’s doing.”
Ever since my screwup, I’ve been collecting dispatches to Teddy in the same painted notebook where I transcribed the email draft that Carter intercepted when he called. Some nights, I write to him about the horrible dates I find myself on with towering Danish men who insist on pulling out my chair when we sit for dinner. Other times, I write a list of questions about his treatment, about where he’s living, basic pleas to color in his distanced life. After too much wine, the notes lean wistful and saccharine, my longing for him evident in every sentence I scrawl. The letters are mostly a reminder of how much I miss him and how one-sided that feeling has become. Last night, after zipping my suitcase shut, I wrote a short missive. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m so terrified you hate me. Please forgive me. Please hug me and tell me you’re doing OK and that we’ll both be OK somehow.” The whole notebook reads like this—cheesy, unedited, but honest. Sharing my thoughts with this clutch of paper makes me feel less alone with them, and I’ve come to count on its proximity.
“We’ll be landing at Chicago O’Hare Airport in forty minutes,” announces the pilot. “We’re experiencing some snow, so bear with us on what might be a bit ofa bumpy landing. Seat belts fastened, please.” The eight hours evaporated with me lost in my own thoughts, and I suddenly want more time to prepare or distract myself or otherwise avoid what comes next.
Landing feels precarious as the plane seems to slip, just slightly, as we taxi to our terminal. As soon as I hear the ding, I pull down my suitcase, nod to the flight attendant, and make my way to my connecting flight.
I step off the jet bridge, and my palms start to sweat, even before I notice the crowds huddled around flight information displays. More flashing red text populates the screens by the minute. Weaving past customer service lines, I hurry to my gate, hopeful the forty-five-minute connection to Iowa City is local enough to be unaffected by the snow accumulating outside the airport windows.
Even here, in my long alpaca coat and cashmere sweater, I can sense the brutal Midwestern wind. I check my watch, trying to calculate the hours I have to get into my silk suit. Approaching my gate, I see it’s full, thank God, but as I get closer, I start to worry the mass might not be a good sign. “We’re offering reimbursement for a local hotel and booking on the earliest flight out tomorrow,” mumbles the agent.
I stop short, and my forehead tightens. “No, no, this isn’t happening,” I mutter to myself, incredulous at my stupidity for scheduling the latest possible travel, as if I hadn’t grown up with this weather. I steady my hand against a charging station, trying to push past jet lag and into problem-solving mode. I’m getting to Iowa City. I just need to figure out how. But before I can consider a plan, I see him.
XIX
Teddy
I never imagined a sense of dread would accompany a trip to Iowa, but I’ve been fighting nerves since I booked my travel, the latest itinerary I could manage. This is supposed to be the place I can always come back to, but it feels like something else right now, a series of unwelcome reminders and realities. Marin and everything she represents, the well-meaning questions I’ll field about my health from people who know me only as the Promising Young Man Who Battled Cancer, my parents placed in a setting that reminds me of the cracks in their own union.
And that’s just the twitchiness I feel before rumblings of incoming weather from the flight crew somewhere over Ohio fix me to the edge of my seat.
When we land, I notice flashing cancellation signs out of the corner of my eye and the snow falling out the windows. A winter wonderland in other circumstances, a hurdle to overcome in this one.
Approaching my gate, a message over the loudspeaker confirms my fears: Flights are grounded. Someone is yelling at the ticket agent. Someone else is slumped against aconcrete wall, coat tugged over their head. And then there’s a tall woman with an intense stare and a hand tucking her hair behind her ear. There’s Marin. The only other person in the world who’d cut it this close on her flight home. The person I think of every time it snows.
I hate how much better the sight of her, the certainty of her, makes me feel. That, against all odds, she is still a comfort to me as we stand amid crowds of tense passengers in an airport while the likelihood of us being with our best friends to celebrate one of the most important moments of their lives decreases exponentially. That she’s still ethereally beautiful to me straight off a transatlantic flight with a scowl on her face. And then she sees me. And the corners of her mouth quirk up.
Marin
I don’t know how Teddy manages to show up at just the right time, every single time, but he does. It’s been three years. That’s hundreds of times I wanted to call him, a couple of dozen I’ve masturbated thinking of him. I can sense my face flushing. It’s the kind of feeling that renders me immobile.
The old Teddy would have run over with a wide smile plastered on his perfect face, pulled me in tight, and said something like “Mar. Of course you’re on the last-minute flight.” But present-day Teddy has every reason in the world to keep his distance. And his apprehensive expression says as much.
There might be a thousand different ways to play this: pretend I didn’t spot him, beg for forgiveness on my knees on the patterned carpet, respectfully wave from afar. Something deep within me takes over, and I’m suddenly in motion, walking toward him. His surprised expression says I didn’t do what we both probably expected: run in the opposite direction.
I try to make out every detail of his physical well-being as the distance between us disappears. He’s a little slimmer than in Copenhagen, when he lifted me onto the counter with one arm around my waist. His hair is cropped closer, less boyish. His posture is stiffer, like when I first met him. Like the ease he’d found when we were together was temporary too.
“Hey,” I offer, unsure where else to start. It’s clear from the way he barely turns his body toward mine that this is going poorly already.
“Really? Three years, and that’s your best line?”
