I climb the stairs to our second level and peer into the nursery directly in front of me. Many times when Monica has been upset she comes up here to work out her frustrations by reorganizing and rearranging the baby's room.
It's dark now and looks as if it has not been disturbed in several hours, so I turn to my right and proceed the four feet to our bedroom door. I find myself rooted to the carpet. The door's not latched and I make out through the crack only the shadow of our bed. The covers are messed. The sound of a muffled sob rouses me from inertia.
I gently push the door open and creep in. The hall light bathes the room in a weird sort of twilight, as though the blackness of the room swallows what little light slips in.
"Mon, honey."
"Chandler." She pulls herself up from her semi-fetal position and into my arms.
"Shh, honey. Honey it will be okay, you'll see. Shh." God, I hate it when Monica cries. Great, now she's sobbing even harder.
"Chandler, I don't know if I want to see him."
"What?"
"I don't think I want to see him," she repeats quietly, punctuating each trio of words with a hiccup.
"Why not?"
She clings tighter to me and I feel Jack protest. "Mon, what's bothering you?"
I wait while she gets her tears under control. She pulls away looking scared and confused.
"I don't know," she admits. "Everything."
"Well, good, that narrows it down a bit." She gives me a dirty look, but allows me to brush away a rogue tear with my thumb.
"How are we going to explain all this?"
"All what, exactly?"
"This!" She gestures wildly with her arm, narrowly missing my shoulder with her hand. I shrug.
"The house, the car, us, the baby," she clarifies.
"Well, I think it's pretty simple."
Monica grunts.
"No, it is. We fell in love," I start, ticking each step off my fingers in the process. "We got married, got pregnant, bought a house in the suburbs and, since I still work in the city, we bought a car for the commute." I smile, proud of myself.
"You know what I mean," she retorts, unimpressed. My grin fades.
"Okay, so it's not going to be so easy," I concede. "But you know what? This is us. This is who we are now and what we are, and Ross is just going to have to accept that."
"Do you think he's going to? The last time Ross saw us I was drinking my way to spinsterhood and you were still bolting from commitment every time you got involved in a relationship."
"Hey, that's not completely true," I argue.
Monica gives me a look.
"I wanted to commit."
"To who? Janice."
"At one time Janice. Aren't you glad I didn't?"
"Aren't you?"
She has a point there.
"Hey, when the right woman came along I stepped up to the plate," I defend. "I committed to her. It wasn't even that hard."
Just absolutely terrifying.
She gives me a knowing look. "I know."
"Anyway, Ross changed. We never thought he would just forget about us and look what happened. We're all going to have to accept the fact that things are different now with all of us."
"Exactly!" Monica exclaims, jumping up.
"Things have changed. I've changed. I've spent five years learning to live without a brother and falling in love with his best friend and getting married and developing my career and being happy and trying for a baby and now we're going to have one and I'm so, so, happy with you and my life, and I've learned to accept that I don't have my brother here to share these things with because he made the decision to step away from our lives and now he wants to pop back into them with discussions and explanations and, Chandler, I don't want to discuss anything! I don't want to explain anything. And I don't want to hear the reasons why he couldn't be apart of all this—" she gestures wildly again—"because nothing excuses him from our lives!"
"I agree."
"Wh-what?"
"You're right."
She frowns at me suspiciously as though I'm trying to trick her. It's quite amusing to see the wind taken out of her sails. She opens and closes her mouth a couple of times, searching for the right words to regain some thread of her righteous indignation. It's quite a rare sight to see Monica thrown by an admission she already assumes in any given argument.
"Nothing excuses him from our lives. But he's making a gesture here, Monica. He contacted me. He wants to get together with everyone and talk. He's trying to put things right. I think he knows there's the possibility we may not forgive him. He knows that what he has to say may not excuse what he did and the void he left in the group. But he's trying. I think we owe it to him to at least listen."
"So what's our plan of action?" Monica asks, shoveling the crust of her pizza into her mouth. It's her fourth slice. Joey just started his fifth and Phoebe, Rachel and I are still muddling through our second and third respectively.
"Plan?" Rachel repeats.
"Yeah. We need a plan. We can't just walk in there without a plan."
"That's a good idea." Phoebe agrees.
"Do we really need a plan?" I ask.
"Of course. Come on you guys. We haven't seen Ross in forever. And we didn't all part ways on the best of terms. Things are going to be intense. Emotions will be running high. We need a plan so we don't get distracted and bogged down by our feelings and lose control of the situation. Defeat is not an option."
"We're not going into battle, Mon," I say.
"You don't know that," Phoebe argues. "Monica's right. Things could turn ugly. We need an escape plan."
"Mmm," Rachel nods enthusiastically. "Definitely."
Joey polishes off his fifth slice and reaches for his beer.
"Right!" Monica beams. She shifts slightly, stretching out her left leg before tucking it under her again. We're sitting in the family room, one of the few rooms with actual places to sit.
About half of the house is furnished—the bulk of the furniture coming from the apartment. The breakfast nook has the table and chairs from our apartment, while the formal dining is empty, except for three boxes of china. I promised Monica we would have a dining room set by Thanksgiving and it's already early October. With the move, and work, and Jack we just haven't found the time.
Or I haven't, at any rate. Monica, if I remember right, has already gone furniture shopping with both Rachel and Phoebe and has narrowed the dining room down to two choices.
The living room is also mostly empty, save for two potted plants and an old RCA stereo record player set in a wood cabinet that came with the house. It still works, too. Monica wanted to get rid of it, but the night we moved in I plugged it in and put on a Henry Mancini LP I found in the cabinet. We lit some candles and poured two flutes of grape juice and slow danced through both sides of the record. When that was over we put on a little Percy Faith and made love to "Theme for Young Lovers".
Now Monica is trying to find end tables to match the dark mahogany of the cabinet and a living set that would accentuate the room.
The only two rooms we've bought furnishings for are my office and Jack's room. A large oak desk, matching file cabinet, and black leather executive chair fill most of the space in that room, and Jack's crib rests against the wall in its box, waiting patiently for the time when I'll put it together. I told Monica that is one of things I want to do for Jack, although what will most likely happen is I'll invite Joey over to help. We'll spend half the day deciphering the directions while sipping beers and at the end of the day the thing will be put together by an exasperated Monica.
The kitchen is state of the art, which is one of the main reasons why we settled on this house. It has two ovens and a large stove, an island, lots of cabinet space and ceramic-tiled floors. The four barstools were the first purchases Monica made for the room.
Upstairs the situation isn't much different from the ground level. Jack's room contains a dresser and the boxed crib, a bassinet and changing table, and a rocker/glider that we bought when we picked out the barstools. The master bedroom has our bed, dresser, and nightstand from the apartment, but the room is much larger than our former one, so it still looks pretty empty. Monica and I are trying to decide whether we'd like to get a whole new bedroom set or just add a couple miscellaneous pieces. I earned a substantial bonus this summer and most of it we have earmarked for furniture purchases, but it's not going to be enough to furnish—or refurnish—the entire house, so I suspect we'll probably just add a few pieces.
We do have one of the upstairs bedrooms completely furnished and set up for guests. The "beautiful guestroom" transplanted nicely from the city to our new digs in the suburbs, but so far no one but Monica appreciates the hospitality. The remaining bedroom is filled with boxes of clothes, books, and other junk from the move and our apartment—stuff I actually hadn't seen since the days when I first moved in across the hall from Monica and Phoebe. That room is rather like Monica's junk closet in the apartment—it's practically overflowing with uncategorized crap and closed off from the rest of the house.
But the family room, it's almost an exact replica of the living room in the apartment. I think maybe in a year or so we'll change it—add a playpen or entertainment center, but for now it's going to remain true to the space we always gathered in. The only difference is behind me there is a wall separating the gourmet kitchen from the couch instead of the open space, across from me are the windows instead of to the left, and to the right is a door leading out to our semi-wraparound porch.
Otherwise, it's like always. Rach, sitting next to me on the couch, stretches her legs on the coffee table, while Phoebe has her feet tucked under her on the big comfy chair. Joey and Mon sit on the floor, the coffee table and three boxes of pizza between them.
"So, first things first: we need to decide where we're going to meet," Monica announces.
"Someplace nice," Phoebe puts in.
"And Ross pays," Rachel adds. I roll my eyes. Phoebe nods in agreement.
"That's a good idea. If something bad happens we can just leave and stick Ross with the bill."
"You guys—" I start to interrupt, but Monica just ignores me and continues on. I roll my eyes again and look at Joey for support. He's staring at his pizza as if it just offered to spend the night with him. I sigh and decide that letting the girls coordinate battle plans is probably the least painful way to go at this point. They'll stumble on strategy somewhere and hopefully I can manage to talk some sense into everyone in the ensuing silence.
"And it shouldn't be any place we like, in case things get a little bit wild and one of us yells or screams, or throws our drink in Ross' face, 'cause I'd still like to show my face around here," Phoebe points out.
"Mmm," they all agree.
"You guys automatically assume everything's going to go wrong," Joey puts in, providing a welcome dose of pragmatism.
"Well," Rachel begins, "Monica's got Chandler's bun in her oven, you and Phoebe are mad cause you haven't seen or talked to him in ages and there's the whole Ross/Rachel thing with us, and my whole…situation. I think we have to go with the odds, here, Joe, of things being pretty unpleasant tomorrow."
"There's not much happiness we can salvage in this first meeting," Phoebe agrees.
"First?"
"Yeah, come on, you guys. Do you honestly expect Ross to absorb everything and turn around and be like, 'So Joe, great seeing you on Days, man'? Or Chandler, 'Yeah, thanks for impregnating my sister'? I mean, no matter what he tells us, we're probably not going to be like, 'Uh-huh, so, yeah, you have no good reason for not seeing us for five years, but hey, how about that Saltriosaur?'"
We all frown.
"That new species of dinosaur they discovered in Italy a few years ago? Supposed to be one of the oldest carnivores." Phoebe clarifies.
"Oh, yeah, right," We all nod intelligently, and judging by everyone's expression still have no idea what she's talking about.
Phoebe's got a point, I admit to myself. I wonder if it's realistic for everyone to expect to have everything sorted out during a two-hour dinner. I hope Ross doesn't expect it.
Monica shifts again, and I touch her shoulder and make a motion for her to stand up and take a seat next to me. She shouldn't be sitting on the floor in her condition anyway. She shakes her head stubbornly and indicates a new slice of pizza she's working on. I sure hope our baby can stand that much garlic. I slip my hands under her armpits and motion gently for her to stand. She does, grudgingly, and takes a seat next to me, rolling her eyes. She thinks I worry too much about her and the baby. What the hell am I supposed to do? I'm the husband and the expectant father. These are the two most important persons—important things—in my life. I'm not about to let anything or anyone jeopardize it.
And truth be told, Rachel's remark about Monica's and my bun hit an already sore nerve. I'm not sure how Ross will react to our…redefined relationship, but jumping for joy is not something I see him doing initially.
I suppress a sigh of frustration. This is going to be one big mess for a long time. I toss my pizza crust onto the box and lean back against the couch. Monica glances curiously at me, and return her look of concern with a brief smile of reassurance. The discussion of when and where goes on without me. I've long since washed my hands of this particular debate—the only part I'm willing to play is that of Ross' messenger.
I just pray that old adage doesn't eventually prove true.