The elevator doors open on fourteen and Jean sees Helen, talking on the phone at the reception desk, and the pure white wall with her own smoky Lucite letters spelling PALEY, and she has to say: it's a relief to be here.
Either she was too tired to enjoy it after driving down from Preston Falls, or Halloween really hadhecn dreary this year, (The three messages from Marty Katz on the answering machine in Chesterton didn't help her mood either.) Roger had wanted to be Dennis Rodman—this would've involved a blond wig and blackface, which Jean thought was racially tricky—but luckily he changed his mind and decided to be Frankenstein. (Frankenstein's monster, Willis would say. But while the cat's away.) She got him a rubber mask that had the things sticking out of the sides of the neck, and he wore Willis's arctics, tied around his shins with twine, the toes stuffed with newspaper, Mel was Courtney Love: basically an excuse to put on a hiked-up skirt, fishnet stockings, heavy makeup. Jean wouldn't let her go to the party ail her friends were going to, ostensibly because it was a school night, and really because she'd heard rumors of dosed Hawaiian Punch at the same party last year. So Mel declined to go through the motions of trick-or-treating—she's stopped eating sugar anyway—and stayed, in costume, in the Cherokee, watching Roger thrust his treat bag at grownups in their doorways, smiling their forced smiles. Next year they've got to have a better plan.
Jean left Carol to hold the fort while she took the kids around. But only four trick-or-treaters came to their door the whole night, so they're stuck with all this candy, plus the bagful of loot Roger collected. Before he brushed his teeth, Jean let him have some M&M's and a Milky Way from their stockpile, and told him he could start on his own stuff tomorrow, after she'd looked it over. She saw no signs of tampering, but of course with an expert job you wouldn't. When he went to bed, she
PRESTON FALLS
noted down everything in his treat bag, took it all out to the garbage can and drove to Rite Aid to buy replacements.
This morning the kids whined and dawdled from the minute she woke them up, and she finally just said, which was really unlike her, "Why are you punishing meV They both gave good imitations of bewilderment, and probably they were bewildered. She poured Product 19 into their bowls and sogged it down with milk, thinking (stupidly) that if she poured in the milk they would have to hustle. Meanwhile she didn't even have time to make herself toast; she folded a piece of bread and gnawed at it to keep the coffee from making her sick to her stomach. She did finally get them mobilized and into the Cherokee; she dropped Mel at Chesterton Middle School, then Roger at Mary M. Watson. Watching him safely inside, she began to weep because all she ever did was crab at them and they really seemed to do so much better with Carol. So then of course when she got to the station she had to pull the mirror down and fix her stupid makeup in the parking lot, with a million people looking. No wonder all these men on the train don't go home until like eight o'clock at night. Though by this afternoon she'll be longing to be with her children again.
The Paley Group was her first job interview when she finally finished Pratt, and she was too stupid then to realize how lucky she was. While every other investment firm was cutting back, Paley had committed to a ground-up in-house redesign. She now knows this was Jerry Starger's idea, hiring some young designer (on the cheap) to take charge of everything from stationery and brochures to the monthly newsletter to the whole look of the offices. Jean probably got the job because she wasn't all that young and therefore seemed more trustworthy than some little chickie from Parsons or FIT with a stud in her nose. And things being what they are, it couldn't have hurt that she was a woman. And okay-looking: not the beauty of the world, she knows, but sort of perky—a word she hates. You can be too beautiful, like Claudia What's-her-face, the supermodel. (At the newsstand downstairs this morning, Jean saw her on the cover of some magazine: "A Supermodel Who's Super-Nice.") You can picture all these men tripping over their shoes and, in the end, not liking you because of it. Jean has an idea Anita Bruno—another of Jerry's hires—suffers because of her looks. Though on the other hand, if not for her looks she might not be here to suffer, if that's not too catty
Anyhow, she earned her keep that first year. She came up with the
2 I I
new logo (basically PALEY in this austere lettering) and made sure it got on business cards, letterhead, all the signage. They needed the help: one of the old brochures actually had this crosshatched drawing of two white guys in suits facing each other across a desk, one pointing to something on a piece of paper and the other cocking his head like the RCA dog. She even picked new art for the corridors, getting rid of the giant color photos of sailboats and bringing in these plexiglass-framed constructions of torn-paper triangles, thread and birds' bones that she'd found at a show in Connecticut.
Of course everything was a battle royal. "How the hell is it supposed to show up?" Arthur Paley said when Jean and Jerry Starger brought the big Lucite P into his office to show him. "Hell, you see right through it."
"Right, but don't forget," Jean said, "that wall's going to be absolutely white."
Arthur Paley held up the smoky P and looked through it out his window at Central Park. "Christ," he said.
"Trust me," said Jerry Starger. "This is perfecto." He brought thumb and forefinger together to make an OK sign and pumped it three times. "This says ex^^c^ly what needs to be said. The name is there, three-D, an inch thick. Solid. But at the same time it's not up there screaming its head off at you. It's like: We are here, for those who know."
Arthur Paley shook his head. "The world lost a great Fuller Brush man when they let you into Princeton," he said. "I have to think about this." But he came around, and the reception area won Jean her first bonus. A thousand dollars, which she used to start a little fund for Mel and Roger.
The redesign's pretty much in place now, and she's gone on to stuff like working with the computer people on the new Web site, which Jerry Starger wants up and running by the first of the year. But she always has to keep an eye out to make sure everything isn't sliding back. Accounting complains about the cost of repainting this wall every four months, but in order to work, it has to be absolutely white, not just sort of white like everything else in New York.
Helen, shoulder raised to wedge the phone against her ear, is writing on a pink While You Were Out slip; she sees Jean and turns on a smile. Jean always feels funny waltzing in here wearing slacks and whatnot past Helen, in her outfits and power blouses. They sometimes ask about each other's children. Helen hangs up the phone and puts the call slip in the S section of the metal rack on her desk. There's a story about that metal
PRESTON FALLS
rack. What convinced everybody that Jean was a head case was her taking it home and painting it white; she just couldn't stand looking anymore at that tan thing plopped down on the white desk in front of the white wall and next to the terrific square white vase she'd found at Pier 1. She called around and learned that nobody carried these racks in white, so she asked Helen if she could borrow it over the weekend. Out in the garage on Saturday morning, she took it apart—twenty-seven fins plus the base—and sprayed everything with white Rust-Oleum. She reassembled it on Sunday and brought it back Monday morning in a plastic bag inside another plastic bag, dreading that she'd scratch it.
But of course you can be only so compulsive. Like, she obviously could never ever say anything about what colors Helen should wear, or what kind of flowers she should put in the vase. So there'd be days when Helen would be sitting there in like a burgundy jacket next to these blazing orange lilies or something, and you would just cringe. And Jean so much wants to chuck the tacky gold frames Helen has for pictures of her husband and daughters—Lechter's has these white ceramic ones—but she has to tell herself Stop, just stop.
"Good morning," Helen says, hanging up the phone. "You had one call yesterday."
Jean takes the slip out of the K section. (These pink While You Were Out slips are another irritant.) Champ, 4:16 p.m.
, will call hack. Willis's brother never calls here: he must have news. She's afraid he does and afraid he doesn't.
She goes on past her office to the end of the hall. Jerry Starger's assistant, Martha, isn't at her desk, but his door is open, so she peeks in.
"Hey, there she is," says Jerry. "You get everything squared away?" On the phone yesterday, she told him she had some family business.
"Pretty much, I guess," she says. "For now." With her index finger she tries to smooth out a bubble under the tape at one corner of the poster on his door. (This beautiful bleached-oak door.) A grinning little girl with metal crutches and leg braces, and the legend Help jerry's Kids.
"All we can ask in this life," he says. "Meeting at eleven?"
"Fine."
"In the meantime, think beautiful thoughts. Think: Marietta, Georgia." The latest branch office, due to open December 1. Decent-sized space in a hopeless strip mall.
Jean closes her office door behind her, logs on and gets PHONE. PRSNL up on her screen, scrolls down to W. Two numbers for Champ;
2 I 3
try the work one first. Right, and there's Sylvia's number. She never returned Jean's call, of course—though in fairness, maybe she did try Preston Falls. A man at the Counter Spy Shop says Champ called in sick; he sounds annoyed. Jean punches in Champ's home number.
A machine picks up, Jim Morrison sings Hello, I love you, won't you tell me your —then Champ says, "Wait-wait-wait, let me get this fucking thing. Hello?"
"It's Jean," she says. "Are you okay? They said you were sick?"
"On the record? Food poisoning. Off the record? Mai de something. Mai de lingering."
"Oh," says Jean. "I just got your message from yesterday. Actually, I was about to call you. "
"You did call me. Nurk nurk."
"Listen, have you heard anything from Doug?"
"Hey, great minds," he says. "See, / was hoping—shit. So he hasn't come back yet?"
"No. He was supposed to be back at work yesterday. I drove up to Preston Falls on Sunday, and it didn't look like he'd been there for a while. When was the last you heard from him?"
"Shit, a long time," he says. "Actually, I don't think I've talked to him since we were all up there for Labor Day. I tried to get ahold of him a couple weeks ago and never heard back. So then I tried him yesterday at work, because I remembered he was coming back on Halloween or something, and they said he was quote out of the office. So I thought I'd bother you for a change."
"Right." Jean's scratching white lines on the back of her left hand with a pushpin, from the center of the wrist to each knuckle.
"So when did you talk to him last?"
"Well," she says, "things were sort of at the point where we'd more or less agreed not to be calling."
"But how about the kids?" says Champ. "Oh fuck me, that was out of line, wasn't it? Doy-yoy-yoing, sor-ry. It's not like I'm a total animal."
Jean touches tongue to fingertip and starts rubbing the scratches away. "Oh look," she says, "it's stupid at this point for everybody to still go around being discreet."
"Right. But you weren't actually, like legally—or were you?"
"No. God, I've made such a mess."
"Hey, you had help. He said like a low-down disloyal un-brotherly dog."
PRESTON FALLS
"I'm sorry," she says. "I don't mean to be carrying on."
"You're not carrying on. You may not believe it, but I've always been a fan of yours."
"Is that so. But what could you say, right?"
"Well," he says. "Like you say."
When she gets off the phone, she takes the key to the ladies' room out of her drawer, stands up and feels she'd better quick sit back down. But she rides it out, standing there swaying, palms pressed on the desk as the buzzing and the sparkly blackness deepen, then dissipate. She finds she's staring at the picture of Mel and Roger: the two of them in their bathing suits, arms around each other's shoulders—a reach up for Roger—and showing teeth in grins she tries to see as unforced. Labor Day. When the pictures came back, she immediately bought a frame for this one and put it on her desk. Because she was afraid not to.
In the ladies' room, she runs cold water, gets a double handful and lowers her face into it. She pumps the soap dispenser, gets nothing—as usual—then lifts the lid the way you have to do and dips two fingers into the pink liquid. One of these days she's got to remember to pick up a traveling soap dish, so she can keep a bar of Neutrogena in her desk. ThafW. fix everything. She dries her face with a paper towel and sees she's going to have to put on more Cover Girl. For what, the third time this morning? And of course she's managed to splatter the front of her shirt. Willis's shirt, actually, that he bought years ago at a yard sale: a garage shirt or something, with Dan embroidered above the left pocket. She'd liked it for its grayish shade of green and for how the gabardine had softened just the right amount.
There's a story about the shirt too. Willis said he'd bought it just so he could say, if anybody asked, "I don't know why, my name is not Dan." She forgets what that was supposed to be a hne from; just one of his endless things. But it started to get a little snug on him, so he ended up not wearing it much. Finally she put it in the drawer with her tops. And bided her time for a month or so, until, one morning, she wore it to the table, and he said, "Hey, where'd you find that? Looks better on you than it ever did on me." Why hadn't she just asked him for the stupid shirt? Maybe because she has a thing about asking for anything. Your marriage, she used to assume, was a safe place to play out these harmless little things.
Back in her office, she gets Sylvia's number off the screen and picks up the phone. Five rings and, again, Willis's voice. She hangs up.
2 I S
What it is, she's furious at him.
And at his mother, who should've done a better job with him— though who is she to say? And at herself. Oh, of course, dear, if you need to go up and stare at trees and play your guitar . . . Think no more about it: I will take care of our home and our family and our life. And fine, let him hold that against her too, that she's another angry woman. Like when she was reading Sandra Cisneros and told Willis he should really check her out, and he said the idea of a woman hollering didn't exactly do it for him. And it was like, Thanks for one more precious insight into you.
Five of eleven. She's not prepared for this meeting: her dreams and schemes for raw space in a strip mall in Georgia.
But really, isn't it his mother's fault for screwing up his whole attitude toward women? (Right, as if every other man is so fabulously healthy.) Early on, when Carol first asked about Willis, Jean had said. Well, the sex is great. Which it really wasn't: him working away at her, trying to get her to give up and come first, while as a man he could let go anytime. All over her feet, once. And demonstrating in the process what great shape he kept himself in, back when he kept himself in shape. Like just daring her to run her hands down his ass and find any flab, though she's got to say, even then. ... So the more he worked away at her, the colder she got. The more observant.
One thing she observed, the act meant to degrade her—^which of course he secretly liked best—actually gave her power: he would lose command after three strokes, at most, and it was over. His half-babies mixed with her wastes, and away it all went, leaving her free and clean and empty. She was supposed to trust him enough for it to be safe to act out her fantasies of being degraded. Or something. The old porno propaganda, which they've now got women believing. All it did, really, was allow her to see him.
Though not really. As it turns out. And in fairness, she didn't always think sex with him was stupid.
The phone rings, and she leaps for it.
Jerry Starger says, "Meeting."
When she gets home, only Rathbone greets her. Mel's upstairs, and Roger and Carol are in the living room, watching Rocky and BuUwinkle. The kitchen smells of microwave popcorn. Jean guesses it's good they show the old Rocky and Bullwinkles on cable; at least they're not violent, and the
values probably aren't the worst, though the Dudley Doright stuff does make fun of heroes and chastity She calls Hi, then sticks her head in: they're both staring at the screen, and Roger's hand is feeling for the popcorn. It's like a diorama.
She goes back into the kitchen. Somebody's left a knife smeared with peanut butter just sitting on the counter; they're going to be the first family in Chesterton to have cockroaches. God, she's starting to sound like Willis, the difference being that she doesn't actually say anything. She wills herself to go wash the stupid knife, as well as the JOE mug, which has been in her purse all this time. But her legs suddenly feel like they're going to give out, so she sits down at the table. She's still sitting there when a commercial comes on, and at least Carol deigns to get off her duff and come in.
"Tough day for you?" she says, putting a hand on Jean's shoulder. "What would you like—tea?" She begins running water into the kettle. "How about a little something in it?"
"Regular tea is fine. Thanks."
"You haven't eaten, right? We were just having some popcorn."
"I gathered."
"What happened," Carol says, "poor Roger was starved when he got home, because today was Sloppy Joes. Why, after all these years, they insist on giving kids Sloppy Joes . . . Anyhow. Mel said she was hungry too, so I fixed them alphabet soup and got some bagels out of the freezer, and then Roger discovered peanut butter on onion bagels. So none of us
2 I 7
are hungry. But there's more bagels, and you're welcome to the rest of that soup."
Preston Falls : a novel Page 24