Truth Be Told

by Kathleen Barber

  I started responding to comments about my clothing, nail color, and music in my headphones, but not the one query that kept reappearing: Why are you leaving New York?

  Good fucking question.

  It was the question that was raising my cortisol levels, the one that had me chewing benzos. I mean, I loved New York. It was the most vibrant city in the world, the most exciting and unquestionably best place to live. For almost as long as I could remember, I’d dreamed about living there. I’d even collaged my childhood bedroom walls with images of the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, and dozens of other landmarks.

  But now, seven years after I thought I’d found my home, I was speeding away from it on the Amtrak while my belongings simultaneously made their way south on a moving truck. I used to imagine that if I ever left New York, it would be for someplace almost as glamorous: Paris, London, Tokyo.

  Washington, DC, had never made that list.

  I fingered another Xanax and wondered whether I was making an enormous mistake.

  You’re doing the right thing, I told myself. How could taking your dream job be anything other than the right move?

  Because the truth was that I had aspired to work in a museum even longer than I had wanted to live in New York. I’d graduated from college with a degree in art history and planned to take a year to work in galleries in New York before applying to graduate school for a museum studies degree—but one year turned into two, and then I kept finding reasons not to apply. I put it off even as I watched the plum museum jobs I coveted all go to candidates with master’s degrees, and so I was stuck working part-time in a couple of privately owned art galleries and volunteering at museums like MoMA and the Whitney.

  Last month, though, I had been browsing the job boards and spotted the advertisement for the Hirshhorn Museum’s Social Media Manager position. I could do that, I thought as I read the description. I could totally do that. I excelled at social media. Seriously, how else did a random midwestern transplant construct a minor cult of personality out of thin air? I submitted an application before I could second-guess myself.

  When Ayala Martin-Nesbitt, Director of Public Engagement, called to offer me the job, I had momentary cold feet. I’d fallen in love with the world-class museum—part of the Smithsonian system—during my interview, but I’d been less taken with the location. How could I move away from New York? Ayala gave me a day to think it over, and I’d decided to celebrate the offer and talk it out with Izzy. Izzy had been my best friend since grade school and had talked me through decisions ranging from whether to cut bangs to how to confront a former boss who made inappropriate jokes. She’d always steered me straight; I knew she wouldn’t let me down.

  But when I’d flung open the door of our East Village apartment, clutching a bottle of Prosecco and bursting with enthusiasm, I found Izzy sitting stiffly on the couch.

  Frowning, I set down the bubbles and asked, “What’s up?”

  Izzy lifted a few strands of her long, dark hair and examined them for split ends. To her hair, she said, “Russell’s lease is up at the end of the month.”

  “Oh, bummer,” I said, hoping this meant that Izzy’s terrible boyfriend and his annoyingly trendy beard would be leaving the city.

  “Yeah, well.” She dropped her hair and finally met my eyes. “He’s moving in.”

  “What?” I gaped at her. “No way, Iz. You can’t just announce that your boyfriend and his collection of fake Gucci sneakers are moving in.”

  Her hazel eyes darkened and she pursed her mouth. “Actually, I can. My name is the only one on the lease, because you were too busy working below-minimum-wage jobs and chasing Instagram fame to qualify as a renter. This is my apartment, and I decide who lives here.”

  Her words hit me like a fist in the chest. Over the course of our decades-long friendship, Izzy and I had fought infrequently, and never about money. I had no idea she was harboring resentment for covering a few rent payments years ago. I’d long ago paid her back, and it wasn’t like I didn’t fork out my share these days. Besides, she never objected to accepting the sheet masks, adaptogens, and slow fashion items I got from brands courting me to promote them on Instagram.

  “Whatever,” I sniffed, picking up the Prosecco. “I’m moving to DC anyway.”

  Izzy blinked, surprised. “You got the job?”

  “Yep,” I said, unwrapping the foil around the bottle’s top.

  Not too long ago, Izzy would have demanded to know all the details, would not have relented until she’d heard my conversation with Ayala recounted in excruciating detail. She would have stayed up all night with me, discussing the pros and cons of taking the job, thoughtfully helping me reach the right decision. Now, she merely nodded.

  “Oh. Well. I guess this will all work out then.”

  “Yeah,” I snarled, popping the cork and taking a swig. “Everything’s going to be just fine.”

  And it would be. Better things awaited me in DC. That much was finally clear.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CAT

  Every Saturday, I ran my hand along the rows of nail polish displayed on the salon wall, lingering on shades of cherry and coral and fuchsia. And every Saturday, I selected the same pale pink I’d been wearing for the last four years.

  “Live a little!” Monet, my favorite manicurist, implored. “Go for something with a little pizzazz!”

  “Maybe next week,” I said, knowing I would not. “I have an important client meeting on Monday.”

  “You always have a client meeting,” she clucked as she began removing the chipped remnants of last week’s polish.

  That wasn’t strictly accurate but it was close enough. If I wasn’t meeting with a client, I was seeing opposing counsel, having lunch with a partner, or accompanying a more senior associate to court. I needed to command respect, and I couldn’t do that with “Showgirl Red” on my fingertips.

  Monet nodded at my phone as it balanced faceup on the arm of the chair. “Must be an important client.”

  My phone usually stayed in my purse at the salon. My weekly manicure was one of the few bits of time I carved out for myself, and it was the only time I turned off my ringer. For a glorious forty-five minutes on Saturday afternoons, I was unreachable. Client emails had to wait; partner requests for more research were put on hold.

  I had been using manicures for stress relief since freshman year of college, when Audrey first got me hooked on them. She’d found me in the library, unshowered and unraveling into a pile of textbooks. She’d grabbed me by the hand and physically dragged me to the nail salon, despite my protesting the whole way. I told her I didn’t have the time for a break, that manicures were a waste of money. She just laughed like she knew better. And she did. There was something inherently soothing in having someone else gently shape and lacquer your nails. I was an immediate convert. Maybe now that Audrey was moving to DC, she and I would start going together again. I wouldn’t mind sacrificing my weekly forty-five minutes of personal time for Audrey time.

  Audrey and I had lived together in college, but after graduation seven years ago, she had moved to New York to live the glamorous life of her dreams and I moved to Virginia for law school. As many college friends do, we went from sharing secrets and Diet Cokes daily to catching up at the occasional wedding festivity or baby shower. I missed her. Audrey wasn’t a perfect friend, but she was the best one I’d ever had.

  I could still remember, with brilliant clarity, the day we met. It was the first day of college, and I had been hopeful things would finally be different. After all, I was different. I had shot up in height since that disastrous summer at camp, and counseling and medication had nearly eradicated my stutter. I was no longer the girl Emily Snow had called “freak.” My fantasies about college being tolerable were shattered when I met my roommate, a snub-nosed brunette who introduced herself as “Tiffani with an i” and regarded me with barely concealed disdain. When our floor assembled for a meeting that afternoon, Tiffani pretended no
t to know me, and I resigned myself to being at the mercy of mean girls for another four years. I took a place on the floor, sipped a Coke, and tried not to cry.

  When Audrey sauntered in, perfectly fashionably late, everyone turned. With her shiny, red-gold hair and her infectious laugh, she was impossible to ignore. She was flanked by a pair of thin blonde girls, all three of them in denim cutoffs so short the pockets were visible, and as she sat down, she said something to the blondes that made them cackle like hyenas. I was captivated. Throughout the meeting, I watched Audrey from underneath my eyelashes, wondering what it would be like to make my way through the world so self-assuredly. She never so much as glanced in my direction.

  But when Tiffani (purposefully, I think) kicked over my can of soda on her way out the door, it was Audrey who materialized by my side with a wad of paper towels.

  “Here,” she said, handing a few to me and dropping the rest to the floor, using her sandaled foot to wipe up the mess.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She flashed a bright smile as she nudged the mass of soaked paper towels in the direction of the trash can before abandoning them in a pile at its side. “No worries. See you around.”

  That “see you around” shifted my entire perspective, made the entire college experience stretching before me seem doable. And, with Audrey by my side, it had been.

  CHAPTER THREE

  AUDREY

  Other than the afternoon I interviewed at the Hirshhorn, I’d only been to Washington, DC, for an eighth-grade class trip. I had exactly one distinct memory from the visit—that of a classmate with food poisoning decorating a White House carpet during our tour—but it was otherwise a dim haze of monuments and museums.

  I should have come down one weekend to apartment hunt, but after I accepted the offer, the reality of leaving New York hit me like a wrecking ball and I couldn’t imagine wasting even one precious second of my remaining time there. My last two weeks in New York were a blur of indulgent dinners at favorite haunts; drinks upon drinks with friends, acquaintances, anyone I’d crossed paths with in my tenure there; and late nights roaming the streets, trying to commit every crowded, trash-heaped corner to memory.

  One such night, buzzed on spicy margaritas and feeling the weight of my impending move, I’d gone home and inquired about a random apartment on Craigslist. When I awoke in the morning to an email from the landlady, I did just enough research about the neighborhood to convince myself it wasn’t a scam listing and told her I would take it. But even my meager concern felt like overkill: the woman used an email signature that included a motivational quote in rainbow text, for crying out loud. How bad could one of her apartments be?

  I arrived in DC the afternoon before my scheduled move-in, and so I crashed with my college friend Cat. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d seen each other—two years ago maybe? At Amber’s wedding? I vaguely recalled unsuccessfully trying to pull a blushing Cat up onto a bar with me at the after-party—but when I told her I was moving to DC, she immediately and enthusiastically invited me to stay with her as long as I wanted.

  When Cat opened the door of the well-maintained, three-story brick row house where she lived, she looked exactly as I remembered: thick, blonde hair falling to her shoulders in an enviable natural wave; bare face; long limbs emerging from a preppy sleeveless chambray shirt and pink chino shorts.

  “Cat!” I exclaimed, leaning in for a hug. “It’s so good to see you!”

  “You too!” she said, embracing me in a floral-scented squeeze. Until I was pressed up against her, I’d forgotten just how tall Cat really was; my head only hit her collarbone.

  “Come in,” she continued, pulling away and leading me up a set of interior stairs to her unit. “How was the train?”

  “You mean aside from Chi-Chi the Chihuahua? It was—” I broke off when I saw Cat’s confused expression. “You saw my Instagram Stories, right?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t really use Instagram.”

  “I forgot how weird you are about social media,” I teased.

  “I just—”

  “Relax, Cat, I’m kidding. Anyway . . .” I trailed off as Cat opened the door to her living area. “Wow. Nice digs.”

  The entire second floor was one open space cast in a soft yellow light from the enormous front bay window. The seating area was anchored by a pale gray sofa I’d drooled over in the Restoration Hardware catalog and arranged around a brick fireplace filled with cream pillar candles. A full-size dinner table made of rustic-looking wood separated the living area from her well-appointed kitchen with its shining stainless-steel appliances, espresso machine, and high-end blender. Behind that, a wrought-iron spiral staircase disappeared upstairs.

  “This place looks great,” I said appreciatively and a bit enviously, running my fingers along the supple fabric of the sofa. “I know you said you don’t do Insta, but this living room—or even just this fireplace—could get you a thousand likes easy.”

  She laughed. “My decorator will be pleased to hear that.”

  “Oh, you hired someone?” I asked, instantly relieved but not surprised. Style was my domain. Cat was sweet, but she lacked imagination—she was the kind of woman who walked into J.Crew and bought whatever was on the mannequin. Besides, Cat had the money to splash out on interior designers. She worked at a fancy law firm, and she came from money. In college, she was the only one of us wearing real Burberry, and I’d often wondered why she—smart, ambitious, wealthy—went to a state school. I assumed she’d flubbed her interviews at the elite private schools. Poor thing could be so awkward.

  “You think I have the time to decorate? Come on, let’s put your stuff in the guest bedroom.”

  Impressed she had a guest bedroom—my guests had always been lucky if I could scare up an extra blanket for the couch—I followed Cat up the tightly coiled staircase.

  “Whoa,” I said, clutching the handrail. “This thing is an accident waiting to happen.”

  Cat smiled apologetically. “I don’t recommend going down it in socks.”

  At the very top of the stairs was Cat’s bathroom. Through the open door, I glimpsed gleaming white tiles and the edge of an old-fashioned bathtub. Cat pushed open the next closest door to the bathroom.

  “Here we are. Is this okay?”

  “Um, this is more than okay,” I said, looking around the room. Like the rest of Cat’s apartment, her guest bedroom had the obvious touch of a professional: clean lines, soft linens, thoughtful accents. Most of the room was occupied by a low Scandinavian bed covered in a gray duvet, accompanied by a minimalist nightstand topped with fresh flowers. But beside the flowers, one thing seemed out of place.

  “You’re kidding me,” I said, laughing, as I picked up the framed photo of Cat and me at a sorority formal. We were the picture of opposites: Cat draped in a gauzy, powder-blue dress with her hair pulled into a severe bun, and me squeezed into a skintight black dress with my long hair flat-ironed within an inch of its life. I remembered consuming nothing more than lemon water for two days before the event just to fit into that thing.

  “Look at us! We were such babies.”

  “I know,” Cat said, smiling fondly. “We were juniors there. Can you believe it’s been eight years since that picture was taken?”

  “Unbelievable.” I sank down onto the bed and slipped off my sandals. “Thanks again for letting me stay tonight.”

  “Stay as long as you want. Really. I rarely use this bedroom.” She smiled shyly. “It could be like college all over again.”

  “You mean we could do shots of Goldschläger while watching Gossip Girl?” I laughed. “Sounds tempting, but my movers are arriving at the new place tomorrow.”

  Concern flickered across Cat’s face. “I still can’t believe you rented a place sight unseen. How can you be sure the apartment even exists?”

  “Don’t worry, I promise I didn’t wire money to some offshore scammer. I searched Google Maps and checked out the landlord, who, by the
way, is a nice old lady named Leanne—”

  “You think she’s a nice old lady. She could be anybody. She could be a he. She could be Ted Bundy!”

  “Ted Bundy’s dead, Cat.”

  “She could be like Ted Bundy. She could be worse than Ted Bundy. You never know.”

  I shrugged. “Sometimes you have to roll the dice. You know what I always say—”

  “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you more interesting,” Cat finished. “Let’s just hope that apartment makes you nothing more than fascinating.”

  • • •

  CAT’S INVITATION TO move in was generous, and for a hot second I even considered backing out of my lease, but ultimately I knew I couldn’t live with Cat for more than a few days. It wasn’t that Cat was a bad roommate. Rather, she was too good of a roommate. When we lived together in college, she was always doing my laundry or fixing me tea or checking on me when I was out late. It was like living with my mother but with less nagging.

  I never said anything to her, of course. Cat meant well. She was just a little needy. My stomach bottomed out as I remembered the first day of sorority rush. I’d stood in front of the Kappa Gamma Alpha sorority house—my top choice and the house I would eventually pledge—sweating in the midwestern August heat and scanning the (pleasingly lackluster) competition. As I was doing so, I locked eyes with Cat.

  I recognized her from my dorm and looked away quickly, hoping she wouldn’t come over. There wasn’t anything wrong with her per se, but her entire demeanor seemed a little forced. She walked around with this approximation of a smile on her face that verged on a wince, and she was always lurking. She would come up behind the rest of us and just stand there, nodding like she was part of the conversation and smiling that weird smile.