Twenty Four Weeks – Episode 13 – “Twenty Four”
Written by J.D.Denisson.
A sequel to the movie “This is Where I Leave You”.
Characters and back story based on the novel “This is Where I Leave You” by Jonathan Tropper.
Copyright 2016 J.D.Denisson.
Previously…
“What can we do for you?” Wade asks.
“My job,” I tell him directly. “I want to get back to work.”
…
“But the thing is,” I tell them, “you need someone who can turn this around.”
“And that’s you, I suppose?” Stewart asks.
“It is. You know it is.”
“And how are you going to do that?” Wade asks, still grinning. I don’t know why.
“Because I know the people that pay your bills. They respect me. If I can convince them to stick around, then you’ve got a chance.”
“Can you do that?” Stewart asks. “Can you convince them?”
“I already have...”
…
And I feel suddenly guilty, because even though she’s broken our marriage and my trust, I’ve done the same and she doesn’t know about it. It probably wasn’t a good idea to tell her right then, but I’m a fool and the words just come out: “I slept with someone.”
“What?” She says, stepping backwards.
“Back home. When we were... when I was sitting Shiva. I’m sorry. I should have told you earlier, but...”
“Who?” she demands.
“It doesn’t matter.”
She steps forward and pushes me and my head collides with the metal door behind me.
“Get out,” she tells me coldly.
…
“I understand why you called him,” I tell her. “You were angry and betrayed, I know the feeling. They were the same reasons I slept with Penny. But I swear it was only once and before the hospital.”
“Penny? High school Penny?”
We’ve spoken of her before. “Yes.”
“And it’s over?”
I sigh. I promised that I’d call her in six months. “It’s over,” I tell her. I’m not sure if it’s a lie. Maybe it is. I’m not sure if I’m ready to give her up just yet.
She frowns. “I suppose I don’t have any right to be angry with you. I was still with Wade then, and we were separated.”
I nod.
“And I can’t make any claims on you now,” she continues. “I don’t know why I got angry, Judd. I think I got jealous. But after everything I know I don’t have the right to tell you who you can or can’t sleep with. It’s stupid, and maybe a little unfair, but I guess I always thought it would only be me.”
...
“It’s strange,” Quinn muses, “but every time we’re together... I don’t know... it’s just different than how it was before. You’re different. I can’t explain it. And then I found out about you and Penny and I just went crazy because I thought, well, that’s it. He’s moved on. There’s no hope.”
…
“But listen man,” Wade says, “she wanted you to stop screwing things up, she wanted you to start seeing her. But you never did. I was never going to cause her any trouble if she went back to you.”
...
After, all I had was this terrible shame. I went home and there was Judd, just watching the television, like he didn’t even know I was gone. And he didn’t know that I was gone from then on.
And that’s the thing. I could have stopped, I guess. I could have told him what I’d done, but I couldn’t. And for weeks after, I couldn’t look at him, I could barely say anything. But he didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t see that I was in pain. He didn’t look at me.
And then I got angry. Here I was, feeling this way, knowing that I’d done this terrible thing, and Judd didn’t care. He didn’t get jealous when Wade and I were talking – and let’s face it, we had to be fairly obvious. You can’t hide those sorts of strong feelings.
Wade calls me a couple of weeks later, asks me how I am. I told him how I was feeling and he asks me over again. And I thought: why not. I’ve already slept with Wade once and Judd didn’t notice or care, so why not again.
And being with him felt so good. He made me happy, once I learnt to ignore the guilt. I guess it was still there. I mean, sometimes I just wanted Judd to see me again, but he didn’t. The pain of that abandonment was sometimes more than I could bear.
...
“What is it with you?” I ask Wade.
He sits heavily. “I don’t know. That weekend got me spooked. You know that’s not me.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t roll that way. It’s just not who I am.”
“You’re married.”
“Yeah. I know,” he replies ruefully. Chloe keeps telling me.”
“Listen, man, you’ve got a good thing there and you’re well on the way to screwing it up like I did with Quinn. You know how that turned out.”
“Yeah. I know. I’m sorry about that, man.”
I’m taken a little aback. The closest I’d gotten to an apology is: ‘I’m sorry how this shook out.’ He’s looking as earnest as I’ve ever seen him. It’s not a look I’ve seen all that often, usually when he tells me I have another problem he needs me to make go away. I haven’t had any jobs like that to do lately, thank Chloe.
“I think you actually mean that.”
“I do. And I meant it when I said that you were one of my only friends. I tend to irritate people, you know. But you know that, and you’re still here.”
“You pay me well.”
He smiles slightly. “I do, don’t I.”
“So, what do you want to do? If you think you’re going to leave Chloe then you should do it sooner than later before she gets hurt too much. Don’t leave it a year and then surprise her like you and Quinn surprised me.”
“You’re not going to let that go, are you?”
“Eventually I will. It was a crappy thing you two did to me, and there’s no getting around it. But, buddy, I’ve forgiven Quinn and I’ve forgiven you. I’m not wasting my time being angry any more.”
“But I don’t want to leave Chloe and I don’t want to sleep around.”
“Then don’t.”
Twenty four
Monday
I’m seeing a change in Wade every day. I’m not sure I trust it, but there it is for all to see. Unfortunately the very people we need to turn away are seeing this change and they’re not liking it at all. Stewart can only do so much for us, and then he has to bring down some sort of ultimatum from upstairs.
The problem is this: if a show features as ass doing what asses do best, and that ass decides that he doesn’t want to be quite an ass any more, then can there be a show?
It turns out, the answer is no. Or, to be more accurate, not quite.
It seems that people ringing in are after something other than Wade abusing them. We’re not sure what that is yet, but it isn’t him telling them they’re wrong or to ‘man up’. I suspect he’s beginning to think that his definition of the expression might just be a little inaccurate. Now he’s dishing out advice, and what he’s saying doesn’t seem too far off the truth. And when the caller says something mind-bogglingly stupid, he tells them that too. It’s honest, sometimes brutally honest, and real and I can’t help feeling a little proud of him.
Unfortunately, my pride and Wade’s honesty can’t help us.
“The way I see it,” Stewart says, with us in his office, sitting down, looking like we’re about to be on the street with a sign around our necks saying ‘will d
o radio for food’, “you have two choices.”
“What are they?” I ask. I’m doing the talking. It’s what we decided.
“One: you get out gracefully. We pay out your contracts – very generous amounts – and try your hand someplace else.”
“Pass,” I say. The chance of us selling the show as it is to another station is remote at best. “What else?”
“Two: you go back to the original format. That’s what the station pays you for.”
I’ve learnt a thing or two in the last seven years. I know shows run on sponsors and advertisers, and on listeners.
“I’ve got another option,” I tell Stewart.
“Let’s hear it.”
“The show as it is doesn’t work where it is,” I admit. “Look at these figures.” I’ve got charts, I’ve got numbers. “We hit right in the middle of the late morning crowd. We keep the show as it is but move it to the next slot.”
“Martin and Jane’s slot?”
“That’s right.”
“And where are they going to go?”
Either he hasn’t heard or he’s keeping his cards hidden.
“They’ve been poached,” I tell him simply. “They’re out.”
His eyes are wide. He hasn’t heard. They haven’t told him.
“Anyway,” I continue, “we move into their time and that leaves our old slot for the young gun you’re in negotiations with.”
“How did you know about that?”
“Management wants us out. They’ll have in mind a few replacements. That’s how it works.”
Stewart sits back, thinks for a moment. “Let me get back to you,” he says. We walk out and back to Wade’s office.
“What do you think,” he asks me, pacing the room. “Will he buy it?”
I exhale deeply. “He’d better, or its back to being an ass for you.”
Wednesday
I’ve spend the night before, sitting up in my single bed in the spare room, worrying about the meeting with Stewart the following day.
I must admit the enforced celibacy that Quinn and I are experiencing has been good for me. Strangely I haven’t felt more close to her. Sex was always our go-to to fix our problems, and too often the problems remained unresolved. Grant would say that you sort out the issue first then have the sex. I want her so badly and I know that she feels the same way, and this will only make the time when we do make love special and wonderful.
I’m standing, watching her in the kitchen like I have for the last few weeks. She’s leaning against the kitchen bench, looking down at our daughter, holding her belly. She’s growing and she’s beautiful and I need her, want he..
She sees me starring and she smiles shyly and I fall deeper.
“How did you sleep?” she asks me.
“Not well,” I tell her, yawning.
She nods. “You’re worried about the meeting.”
“Yeah. A lot hinges on this. I don’t want to have to try and sell our show to another station. Not the way things are.”
“Stewart’s on your side.”
“He is, but there’s only so much he can do. He needs to convince management, and that’s the hard part.”
“Well, I believe in you.”
I smile warmly and I feel like I can take on anything. “I know,” I tell her. “That makes a big difference, believe me. If we can bring this off there will be other benefits.”
“Oh?”
“Well, the new time slot will mean that I can drive you to work and pick you up as well.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I mean things are going to change and I don’t know how long we can stay there, especially when Wade’s contract is up next year, but we’ll worry about that comes up. I’m trying to turn a setback into an opportunity.”
She leans over and kisses me. “I know why you’re doing this,” she says. “It shows that you love me, and Stacey.”
“Stacey?” I ask her, a brow raised.
She thinks for a moment and then shakes her head. Stacey is crossed off the list.
We eat breakfast like we do every work morning. We have a process that is efficient and I’m a little sad about that, but it is necessary. I’m determined to make other parts of our life chaotic and new and adventurous.
“Our anniversary is coming up,” I mention offhandedly. I don’t know what she thinks about this event. I know what I think.
“Yes,” she replies simply.
“I have a few ideas,” I tell her.
“Let’s not do anything big. I’ll be six and a half months then.”
“Sure.”
“But we can see a movie, have some dinner.”
“Okay.”
“Why don’t I plan something? You’ve got a lot on your schedule at the moment.”
I smile. “Okay,” I say again. At least she’s not going to let the day go by without a mention.
I kiss her and ride down the elevator to the basement and my car. I put my bag inside, sit in the driver’s seat and put the key into the ignition.
Then I’m riding back up the elevator to our apartment. The doors open with their usual fanfare. Quinn is in the kitchen, eating toast and starring out at the city slowly waking. She turns with a frown on her face. The morning sun lights up her shape like a painting and I’m losing the words that were forming in my mind on the way to the car.
“Did you forget something?”
“Yes,” I say, breathless, and I walk to her. I don’t touch her, hold her, I just stand there looking into her eyes.
“What is it?”
“I see you, Quinn Altman,” I tell her.
“What?” she replies quietly.
“I see you.”
She’s frowning. “I see you, too.”
“No. For too long I’ve looked at you, I’ve spoken words to you. For too long. But now I see you. I hear you.”
Then I lean forward and I kiss her and she moves into me. I’m kissing her and I’m feeling the passion rising in me. I’m kissing her like the first time I ever kissed her and I’m elated inside, giddy and light and out of control.
We pull apart and she’s breathing hard and fast. “God,” she says breathlessly.
I don’t say another word. I run to the elevator and my car and my meeting with Stewart.
Stewart is making us sweat. He makes us wait in his office while he talks to the suits upstairs. They’ve made up their minds already. They just want to make sure that we know they call the shots.
We know they do. It’s all quite ridiculous.
He comes in and apologies and sits behind his desk.
“Well?” I say.
“Come on, man,” Wade adds.
Stewart sits back in his chair. “It was a big task from the start to convince them.”
“But did you?”
“You did your homework. That got us across the line. But guys, you’re going to have to give us one mother of a show. Can you do that?”
“We can do that,” Wade says with a grin.
“Wait a minute,” I say. “Before we agree on anything, are we talking the same arrangements I brought to you?”
“More or less.”
“What about our contracts?”
“They’re still being honoured, for now.”
“Crap,” says Wade after exhaling deeply.
“But don’t blow it,” Stewart warns us, but I don’t need it.
“When does it start?” I ask him.
“Next week. We’ll announce the changes later today and we plan the restructure. But until this comes in, no screwing things up, right? No fighting on air.” He’s looking at Wade’s swollen face and my swollen, bandaged hand.
“Well,” Wade says with a slight smile, “technically that wasn’t on air.”
“Get the hell out of my office,” Stewart says.
The show goes on, and Wade is energised. He’s bringing that brand of ass and wise old uncle that I’m starting to like. We get through and meet after to try an
d gather our thoughts for next week. Quinn’s call interrupts us and I send him home to his bride.
“How did it go?” she asks hesitantly.
I give it a second and then tell her.
“You must be happy.”
“I am,” I tell her, “but work doesn’t make me happy. It’s just something to fill in my day between seeing you in the morning and being with you at night.”
“Smooth,” she tells me.
We sign off and I start to work convincing the people who keep our show on air that they should keep paying us.
Thursday
I take her for her check up after work. She’s almost six months in and doing well. I guess there is another cloud looming in the distance that we’re not talking about. Maybe it’s something that we’re not ready to face. I know I’m not, and I don’t expect that Quinn is any stronger than I am. Unfortunately Quinn obstetrician is not afraid to ask the questions we are.
“And your first pregnancy,” Dr Heigel says, reading through Quinn’s notes, “ended at eight months - a still birth.”
He’s saying those words that I hate to hear. Miscarriage is a horrible word too, but it implies that the baby was small and unformed. People hear the word and give platitudes like: “Oh well, maybe there was something wrong with the baby. It’s for the best. Now you can have another.” But miscarriage, horrible as it is, is over quickly. Some blood. Tears and lost hopes. Maybe a small operation. And then you can try again.
A still birth is something altogether different. The baby has reached at least twenty five weeks and is, to all appearances, a baby. When the baby has reached eight months, like ours, then you have yourself a fully formed child, ready to face the world. In that time you’ve had a long time to build attachments, to love this child on the way. When it ends you have to face the death of all those dreams and hopes, and then the grief stricken mother has to deliver the child.
And even after I have explained all that, there are dimensions that, as a man, I could never hope to understand, let alone explain.
To this day I will never know fully what Quinn went through. I can only imagine the hurt and pain she experienced. What I do know is that in the months thereafter I made things infinitely worse. I meant well, and it was never my intention to hurt her further, but that’s what happened. This is one of the things that I might not ever be able to forgive myself for. It was inexcusable and I hate myself for it, even now.
At some point, without agreeing with each other, or indeed talking about it all, we decided that we had a miscarriage and not a still birth. And we stuck to it without fail.
“Yes,” she says sadly.
“Well,” he says with a slight smile, “this pregnancy is going very well.” He looks at our latest ultrasound, done by the technician when we first arrived at the office. “Very good. Your baby is growing well. Everything looks to be in place. You know the sex?”
Quinn smiles. She recovered a little with the good news. “A girl.”
“That’s right,” he says. “I can confirm that.”
Then he pokes around with her belly, checks her legs and feet. I hold her hand this time. Things were still new the last time we came and I was physically distant because I was unsure of what to do, what my role was. I’m more confident now. The doctor gives Quinn and our baby a clean bill of health. We thank him and leave.
Friday
We go out to dinner on our date night. Quinn’s morning sickness – which was really all day sickness – has thankfully settled. But unfortunately there are now other challenges.
She goes to the bathroom and returns, sits heavily.
“I feel like an elephant,” she says, “and it’s only going to get worse.”
“You’re beautiful,” I tell her.
“I’m fat and you’re not going to love me and you’re going to find someone else that’s not.”
“You’re not fat. You’re pregnant. And I’m not going to leave you. I want you. And you’re beautiful.”
“Stop saying that.”
“I’ll stop when you start believing it.”
And that conversation is destined to be repeated over and over again. I try not to tire of it, because I know she needs to hear my words, needs to know that I love her. And god knows I do. In the beginning, when I returned to her, it was hard, but I made a choice and I stuck to it. I chose to love her then, even though she had hurt me terribly and she would never know the full extent of it. Now it was easier. Time had made what was something forced and intentional, into something natural and beautiful.
But she is still hurting. At night, as I lay upon my bed, I sometimes hear her crying in her room. We are abstaining, but that doesn’t stop us from caring. So I come to her, wrap my arms around her, rock her to sleep. I don’t ask her what was giving her such sorrow, that is for her to experience and work through, and tell me if she needs to. All I can do is hold her, comfort her, and maybe make her burden a little lighter.
Saturday
Quinn is crying again. I hold her hand as she explains how she feels about my sleeping with Penny. She knows that she has no right to feel this way, she says, that she had done worse over the last year, but it still hurts.
“I think of him in bed with another woman and I can’t breathe,” she sobs. “We were supposed to be together forever and I was sleeping with Wade and he slept with her. I just get so sad thinking about it.”
“All of these things are just another part of a wall that you build between each other,” Mary says quietly to her. Quinn’s head is on my shoulder and she’s sniffing and nodding. “Some of the bricks are small, like an unkind word or even a word that is held back when it needs to be said, but they all add up to one big barrier. Other bricks are quite large and they finish the wall quickly.”
“So what do we do?” I ask.
“You break down the wall, slowly, brick by brick, by talking about your hurts and forgiving them.”
“Which you’re doing,” Grant says. “Do you have anything you want to say to Quinn, Judd?”
My wife sits up and turns to me and we’re face to face. I can see the effect of my infidelity. Her eyes are red, liquid, searching.
Back then I was alone and hurting and I hadn’t been loved for a long time. I believed Quinn’s love had been false, and it made everything she said and everything that she did a lie. The gifts she gave me were a diversion. The sex was a duty. The words of love were just words. Then Penny came and she knew where I’d been and where I was and that I was broken. She loved me more in that one afternoon than I had been loved for over a year and I loved her for that. But it was brief, fleeting, like a wispy cloud. And I didn’t regret it, at least not until I had seen the pain it has caused Quinn. No matter what she had done, I still betrayed her, and that hurt me deeply.
So I tell her this. I don’t hold any of it back. I keep no secrets because secrets are another brick upon the barrier between us. I see the mortar crumble with our truth, our loving honesty. Little by little the large bricks fall and I can see beyond, to her heart and soul, open and vulnerable like a child’s.
She doesn’t cry when she hears my words, but she nods at the truth of them, and when I’m done she places her forehead against mine as a sign that she had heard and accepted.
“I’m sorry for hurting you,” I tell her. “I’m so sorry. I’ll never, ever do that again.”
Grant breaks the spell. “For your assignment together, I want you to talk about what vows you want to make to each other. Think about what is important to you, what you want from the other. I want you to think about just what kind of marriage you want.”
He asks me on the way to the door if I’ve started reading one of the books he’s recommended. On Tuesday I ordered two with the local bookshop. They haven’t arrived, but I’ll start them when they do. I’m reading the book he leant me on solitude and I have to admit to him that some of the ideas are resonating deeply with me.
Quinn wants to visit my family very soon and I’ll
like to have my relationship with my mother sorted in my head before we do. He wants me look at the fears I have in our relationship, to see them, understand them. He wants me to see that love is the power that drives out fear. He wants me to see that work in my life. I’m not sure what he means exactly, but I know what he has for me is important and helpful and so I’ll do as he suggests, I’ll work it out.
Later, when I’m in my bed and alone, I realise that I know exactly what Grant was saying about fear. I’ve lain many sleepless nights imagining the worst. I imagine Quinn and Wade are still together and playing some long game, that Chloe is an actor that Wade as hired to play his wife, that the two of them are slowly drawing me in so that they can get me to sign over the apartment and everything I own to her and then they’ll pull the rug out from under my feet again.
It’s stupid. I know Quinn. I know when she’s being earnest, but then she did play me for a fool for over a year. But when I think about it, she was never this committed then. She was going through the motions and that was exactly how it appeared. I wonder if she still truly cared for me then, if what she was doing gave her a pang of guilt while she fucked him. I’d like to believe that she did. The only thing I have to prove it is the way she looked when I caught them, but that was probably overwhelming shame.
At least while I’m thinking of this, I’m not thinking of Quinn’s body not ten feet away. I’m trying to control myself. I’m trying to do the right thing.
In the next episode of Twenty Four Weeks…
Judd and Quinn visit their families… The Uptons have Judd and Quinn talk about their sex lives… Quinn has an unexpected reaction to an injury Judd receives…
“Hey…” she says, as were near the front of her building.
“Hmmm,” I say back, watching cars and busses fly to and fro around us.
“I think we should drive down to Elmsbrook this weekend after the session.”
“Why?” I ask suspiciously.
“I have to face your family sooner or later.”
“True, but...”
“But...?”
“Do we really need that kind of stress?”
“I can handle it if you can.”
….
“She’s broken, you know,” I tell Quinn’s father, Frank.
“Excuse me?”
“She’s broken.” I sigh. “She knows she’s done some horrible things and really hurt the people she loves – and it’s broken her heart. But, she needs you. She needs to know that she’s still your little girl and you love her. But most of all, she needs her father. I know you’re not all that good at it, but she needs you to try. She’s carrying your grandchild for god’s sake. Can’t you get past everything and do that?”
He takes a deep breath, looks at me through his big, bushy brows. “Listen to you,” he says with something resembling awe.
…
Then, with the dinner over and plates away, the family stand, but Quinn remains. She looks at them, they look at her, and then they take their seats again.
“I just have some things to say,” she says, “to get them out in the open. If that’s okay?”
“Sure thing,” Phillip says.
“What is it, dear?” my mother asks.
Quinn takes a deep breath. “Firstly I want you to know how sorry I am for what’s happened. There were a lot of reasons for it, and Judd and I are sorting through them, but... well, I messed up.” She laughs a little. “Messed up... it sounds like it was a small thing. But I messed up big and I hurt Judd terribly, which you know. But I’ve said I’m sorry to him and he’s forgiven me. So I’m saying sorry to you as well, because I know I’ve hurt you too. And I hope that you can forgive me.”
…
“But there’s more,” Quinn adds. “I’m not using this as an excuse for what I did – I know there isn’t any excuse for that, but part of the reason why our marriage started to fall apart was Judd’s inability to open up to me. And we all know where that’s coming from.”
“What are you saying,” Paul asks her. He leans in a little, his face pulled into a frown. Alice pulls back her hand.
She looks around the table. “Just that I know when you all were growing up that everything about you was analysed and put into a book. I know that makes you guarded. I know it made Judd that way.”
“Are you blaming your infidelity on my mother?” Paul askes her, his face going red.
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Then what are you saying, dear?” my mother asks. She’s calm, her voice steady, but her eyes are hard.
…
Paul sends the ball to the back and I run around him, send the ball to the front. I step into the centre and wait. A second later there is a pain in the side of my head and the court tilts dangerously. My head bounces against the wooden floor, once, twice. Paul is in front of me, bending over. He’s speaking to me but I can’t hear him. All I can hear is a buzzing and a thump, thump of my heart. The world shrinks to the smallest point of light in a dark tunnel. And that was all that I remember.
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