The Opposite of Drowning

by Erin McRae

  “Really?” Harry sounded surprised. “It must have taken months to get this place to move on anything. Who knows how long it will take to get your next steps sorted out? I mean, I always assumed you were the sort of person who had everything planned out years in advance.”

  “I’m not saying I don’t have plans,” Eliza shot back. “I’m just saying I haven’t been thinking about it much.”

  “Oh, do tell. Now I’m intrigued,” Harry said.

  Eliza sighed. “I suppose it wouldn’t occur to you, but I seem to have stumbled into a part of life where everyone else makes plans for me.”

  “Your mother’s driving you crazy,” Harry said. It was barely a question.

  “Among others.”

  “About the wedding.”

  “Of course.”

  “And you can’t stand it.”

  “Not at all.”

  “So I should probably stop badgering you.”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. I never seem to mind talking to you, so... as you will I suppose.”

  “What do you want?” Harry asked. Something in his tone made it clear he didn’t just mean whether or not he should keep asking her about her future.

  Despite the cold, Eliza’s steps slowed down. Harry matched her easily and without question, verbal or otherwise. Eliza found herself looking up at the buildings that towered around them. Lights were still on in offices here and there – empty rooms and cleaning crews mostly, but a few people working late, some due to passion, some due to obligation. She knew which description fit her and Harry, together or apart. She smiled. She’d never been in love with the myth of New York before, but here and now, she finally understood it. Perhaps because New York understood her.

  Eliza turned her gaze back to Harry and his too-kind and slightly worn face, reddened now as surely as her own by the cold. “I don’t want to be beholden to anyone.” She took a sip of her coffee, grateful for the warmth as much as for something to hide behind.

  Harry looked as though he was going to say something, but then he blinked and looked away. “I know the feeling,” he finally said, as they reached the door of their office building.

  FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS Eliza went to work and got coffee and occasionally ordered takeout with Harry. Dutifully, she went through the motions of texting Cody and asking him how his day was and how his campaign was going as if they had never argued. He answered her in the same workmanlike fashion, and Eliza wondered if this was how the rest of her life was going to be: Arguments and playing nice and pretending to care and feel more than she did.

  She was on her work line with Philippe doing the verbal equivalent of smiling and nodding while he fretted to her about whether his latest book would get the reception in Paris he hoped for, when her cell phone rang. She checked the caller ID.

  Cody. She sighed. They hadn’t actually spoken via voice since their disagreement, and Eliza was all right with that state of affairs. Now, an unplanned word from him in the middle of the day probably spelled a disaster he expected her to be invested in fixing. She wrapped up her call with Philippe, debating to herself all the while whether this was more likely to be an issue with his campaign or with the wedding planning.

  Once she was finally able to say goodbye to Philippe and call Cody back, he greeted her cheerfully with, “Hi, sweetheart!”

  “Hi, I’m on a deadline. Is this important?” Cody would think it was regardless, but there was no harm in making him consider the question.

  “I’m coming to visit you!”

  Eliza opened her calendar on her laptop, baffled by Cody’s change of tone and attitude from their latest interactions. “Oh, all right. When? I’m free in a couple of weeks,” she said. “I think –”

  “No, I mean, I’m coming to visit you right now.” Cody interrupted her. “My guy got me booked on one of the late afternoon shows on MSNBC... you know the one.” Eliza didn’t; she was a Rachel Maddow girl all the way, but there was no point in saying so. “About the special election, of course. So I’m coming to New York.”

  “Oh! That’s nice. Where are you?” she asked, grateful when he took her nonplussed bafflement for enthusiasm.

  “I’m about to get on a plane, you almost missed me. I’ll be there in a couple of hours.”

  “Oh.”

  “I thought we could go out for dinner after the taping. Can I pick you up at the office?”

  “I – yes, but your luggage...?”

  “You gave me a key, remember? I’ll leave it at your place.”

  “You’ve thought of everything,” Eliza said, her heart sinking. She loved Cody, she did, but spending a surprise night with him while he was buzzing from a national TV appearance was the last thing she felt capable of dealing with right now. She had work to do and her own life here; why couldn’t she be left to enjoy it on her own?

  “I do my best,” Cody said, a smile clear in his voice and her sarcasm entirely lost on him. “So. Dinner. I’ll be there at seven I guess?”

  At a quarter after six, Eliza was in her armchair in Harry’s office, her hands around a cup of tea. She’d finished her work early and escaped here to savor the last few minutes before Cody arrived. Because when she thought about her life in New York and her desire to hoard every precious second of it, she thought of this – a warm mug, the quiet of a nearly empty office, this view, and Harry. However messy their interaction had been lately.

  She leaned against the back of the chair and listened in a half dozen as Harry rambled about his favorite theories about the meaning and origin of the Voynich manuscript. He had a lovely voice and a not quite newscaster-neutral accent that was a product of age and class and New England; Eliza knew her voice sounded much the same when she wasn’t being careful to seem just like everybody else. But she had always been careful about everything around everyone. Except, increasingly, around Harry. He would smile slightly sometimes at the way she said certain words and that was always, somehow, worth the risk.

  When there was a knock on the door, she was feeling too comfortable and lazy to even lift her head.

  “Come in,” Harry said, evidently annoyed his monologue had been interrupted.

  “Harry?” It was Jonathan. “Is Eliza here?”

  Harry nodded to Eliza’s chair. Situated in the corner as it was, it wasn’t immediately visible from the doorway.

  Jonathan looked over at her and smiled. “Hey. I’ve got a visitor for you.” And with that, Cody walked into the room.

  Eliza sat bolt upright, spilling tea all over herself in the process.

  “You have a habit of that,” Harry said casually.

  Eliza grimaced. “You’re early,” she told Cody, after a frantic glance at her watch to make sure she hadn’t lost track of time. “Aren’t you supposed to be on TV right now?” And shouldn’t I have been watching like a dutiful partner?

  “I was on TV thirty minutes ago. You weren’t in your office, so they thought you might be here.”

  Jonathan discretely exited the room and closed the door behind him.

  “She often is,” Harry said. Eliza could have killed him. But Harry just stood from behind his desk and walked around to greet Cody. “I’m Harry Sargent. I have the honor of working with Eliza. I’m glad to meet you.”

  Cody shook Harry’s offered hand. Eliza could see the moment where he squeezed ever so slightly too hard, because Harry’s eyebrows twitched up.

  The whole charade was ridiculous. Cody was being obnoxious and Harry was being absurd in response, but Eliza was still grateful for the moment to compose herself. It wasn’t quite spilling a pitcher of water on a conference table, but she appreciated it nonetheless. Except now she had to break up this little tempest of testosterone. She set aside her cup of tea, blotted herself with a napkin, unfolded herself from the chair, and went to Cody’s side.

  “I’m so sorry I missed you in my office, I wasn’t expecting you ’til later,” she purred, wrapping her hands around one of his arms and leaning in close. Harry turned
his raised eyebrows on her. She turned even more pointedly to her fiancé. “I have to go back to my office and get my things, will you walk with me?”

  They said polite goodbyes. Eliza turned and mouthed I’m sorry to Harry before she pulled the door closed behind them.

  “What were you doing in there?” Cody asked as they walked down the hall together. To Eliza’s annoyance, he put an arm around her waist. They were at her workplace, not on his campaign trail.

  She fished for a reasonable excuse with which to answer Cody’s question. “You saw the view,” Eliza said. “It’s like being in a library where I can spill tea on things.”

  “I don’t understand that at all,” he said.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “No need to be sharp.”

  “No need to worry about where I’m spending my time at work,” Eliza countered. She hoped she sounded gentle to Cody. She certainly didn’t to her own ears.

  “Doesn’t Harry mind?” Cody asked.

  “No.”

  He seemed to ponder that for a moment and finally nodded. “I guess he likes to have someone listen to him talk.”

  “You’d know,” Eliza said under her breath. She regretted it immediately.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Cody asked.

  “You were just on TV!” she said, forcing herself to keep her tone light. She was growing more annoyed at Cody’s presence by the second. “Getting the entire country to listen to you. What do you think it means?”

  Cody did not seem particularly placated but shifting the subject to him was clearly helping. “Did you really not watch?”

  Eliza knew she couldn’t admit that doing so hadn’t even occurred to her until he had appeared and caught her in Harry’s office. “I figured we could watch it later, when it goes up online. I mean, I’m sure you have a commentary track. What was it like?”

  “I should have had you in the studio with me,” Cody said after some consideration.

  Eliza was willing to do a lot of things, but taking the heat for not doing something that hadn’t been asked of her wasn’t one of them. “Then you should have asked.”

  BY THE TIME THEY GOT back to her apartment, Eliza was already exhausted from the fight they weren’t quite having. She felt like she was walking a tightrope between all the correct and supportive things she was supposed to say and the evening she actually wanted to have.

  “I’m sorry we’re both so out of sorts tonight,” she said on reflex. “I get so used to my life here. It’s easier not to miss you if I just focus on my quiet, solo existence. I didn’t have enough time to change gears.”

  Cody flopped down onto her couch with his usual attractive ease. “Distance is never easy. And national TV! I might be a little out of sorts too.”

  Eliza smiled with relief. There was the gentle goodness that had gotten her into this mess in the first place. She sat down beside him.

  “Plus,” he added, turning to face her. “It’s only for a little while. Once the election happens, we’ll have to see how much of your contract you can fulfill remotely.”

  She blinked at him. “My contract’s through the end of September. And it isn’t remote.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not like you actually need to put in face time and my offices will be in Boston and D.C.”

  “Yes, and New York is right in the middle, so that will work out just fine. My job is here.”

  “For now.”

  “Yes, for now. And for the foreseeable future.”

  “What are you going to do after I win and this contract is done? You can’t expect me to be able to burn all that time on the train coming to see you.”

  “If you win the election,” Eliza said. She crossed her fingers as if she were warning him about jinxing the outcome rather than scolding him for presumption. “Nobody said anything about you burning time on the train.” No one in his life has ever suggested he spend a moment of time on something other than himself and his career. “But if you ever need me in D.C. – or Boston – the Acela can get me there in three hours. Which is no worse than a bad day on the subway here,” she said with a laugh she didn’t feel.

  Cody, though, shook his head. “That’s not going to work.”

  “Why isn’t it going to work?” Tension crept into Eliza’s body, and her voice, again.

  “The logistics of it. We’re going to be too busy as it is for you to have any job easily. Much less one in a completely different city from any one I have an office in. Plus, think of the press. Young, star congressman whose gorgeous wife doesn’t even live with him?” Cody shook his head, smiling as though Eliza’s career, Eliza’s life, was just a scheduling issue.

  “Are you listening to the words coming out of your mouth?” Eliza asked. She felt cold. How had she not seen this coming?

  “Tell me why you’re so upset about this,” Cody said. He clearly thought she was the problem, and he was the one offering thoughtful solutions. “I didn’t know you felt this way about New York.”

  “Because we never talked about it! Any time Boston came up, or New York came up, you said we’d talk about it later,” Eliza said, her voice rising. “And now, apparently, it’s later, except we’re not talking about it at all because you’ve already decided! Without even asking me what I want!”

  “What do you want?” Cody ask, his own face darkening. “To sit around and write essays about summers on the beach? You can do that as well in Boston as you can here.”

  “Yes, you’re right,” Eliza snapped. “I can sit around and play with my books, whenever I’m not planning dinner parties for your political associates or hanging onto your arm at official functions.”

  “You know I know you do more than that,” Cody said. It was so placating, and so absurdly out of the worst part of the 1950s, that Eliza had absolutely no response. To engage would have been to dignify the argument and she was not about to argue her right to a career and professional fulfilment with anyone, much less her fiancé.

  “Except you clearly don’t, because you are sitting here in my apartment, which my job is providing me with, and telling me that I am not allowed to work once you’re elected. At which point, might I add, we won’t even be married yet. Though that clearly doesn’t stop you from seeing me as you to do with as you please.”

  ELIZA WOKE FAR TOO early the next morning, if indeed she’d ever fully fallen asleep. Cody was dead to the world in bed beside her. She knew she was supposed to feel contrition: For her role in the fight, for not being the passive peacekeeper and smoothing everything over, for not apologizing and capitulating until there was no disagreement – or any sense of her own self – left.

  Instead, she made herself coffee; showered, dressed, and put on makeup. She did not try to be quiet at all, but Cody never stirred. She left a note on the counter before she left. Gone in to work to check on some things. Will be back.

  As usual she walked to the office. She was glad for the opportunity to move, for the brisk sting of icy air on her cheeks, and for the satisfying crunch of salt and ice under her feet. Once inside the building she encountered no one on her route up to her office. Which, at ten on a Saturday morning, was hardly surprising. Except that when she reached her floor she found Harry’s door open. Glancing back to take another look, she saw the man himself sitting at his desk.

  He looked up when she appeared in the doorway, though he’d seemed absorbed in his work and Eliza was sure she hadn’t made a sound. He was dressed more casually than she had seen him before. He had on a button-down shirt with no tie; his collar was open to show his throat, including a spot low on his neck where he must have nicked himself shaving. His cardigan, in a lovely dark steel-blue wool, looked so warm and soft Eliza could nearly feel the gentle scratch of it on her palms. Which was maybe a thought she shouldn’t have, given that she was engaged to another man. But it was the twenty-first century, and Eliza wasn’t going to apologize to anyone, even herself, for having male friends. Or for looking at them.

  Wo
rdlessly, Harry’s eyes tracked over her, from boots to hat and back again. Eliza was well-dressed; her hair was done; her makeup was perfect. There was nothing, to a casual eye, to let slip the fact she’d had a sleepless night or the reasons therefore. But Harry, she knew, saw it all.

  He met her eyes only briefly and went back to his laptop. “I’m not going to ask,” he said.

  “What if I want you to?” she said defiantly. Because she did. She wanted Harry to challenge all of her terrible choices until she had no option left but to save herself from a life she had been raised to want, but was now realizing with chilling, creeping certainty, that she didn’t.

  Harry’s eyes snapped back up to hers. For a moment, they stared at each other.

  “I’m not going to ask,” he said, more firmly this time.

  Eliza turned and left his office.

  BY THE EARLY AFTERNOON, Eliza had worked off enough of her frustration to feel capable of facing Cody again. Perhaps he would be reasonable. Perhaps, since he wanted to be a politician, he would be willing to negotiate. Maybe she had been overreacting. Maybe everything would be fine.

  To her pleasure and no small relief, Cody was sitting on her couch working on his laptop when she let herself in. As soon as she shut the door behind herself, he put the tablet aside, stood up, and pulled her in for a gentle kiss.

  As an olive branch, Eliza allowed it. He also took her coat and hung it up for her, and asked how her time at the office had gone, as if it had been a typical work day.

  “I want to talk about some of the things you said last night,” Cody said, taking her hand and leading her to the little table that doubled as both dining space and desk.

  “Me too,” Eliza said. She hoped desperately he wasn’t going to ask her for an apology.

  “If I win this election, I have to live in Boston and DC. There’s not going to be time in my schedule for another permanent home anywhere else. But I don’t want to take you away from work you love. So I’ve put in a call to my office, so we can at least start strategizing about how we can both do the work we want to do without living apart full-time. I’ve also got a contact at a publishing house in Boston, for you to look at if you want. So maybe we can explore our options, in both directions, and have a lot more conversations about this going forward?”