“I’m doing so well? This is doing so well?” she says, aware of the inappropriate decibel level of her voice. “I’m coming apart at the seams, Sally. I went on a bender with a guy I barely know last night. I’m hungover as shit and this restaurant is about to make me sob because the last time I was here was with him and I’m doing so well? And who the hell are you to decide what I should know, Sally? I know you are the younger and wiser one, but don’t you think I might like to know that the man I came very close to marrying is having a baby with someone else? Shit, Sally, what is this? I loved him. I was converting to Islam for him. He and I were talking about kids and now you’re all carrying on like it was nothing, like what we had was a figment of my imagination.”
“Smith,” Sally says, dragging out the one syllable of her name. “Smiiiithhhh. I know you loved him. I know how hard the breakup was, but I also felt that it would be incredibly hard for you to hear this piece of news. You must see that it was a tough call for me. That I was trying to protect you.”
“I don’t need you to protect me,” Smith says, wondering if this is true. Maybe her sister is right, her sister is always right, sunny Sally who has always gotten it. Maybe this is exactly what she needs, someone to protect her, a paternalistic shield from this unfurling nightmare. She feels sick. She sips her water but can barely swallow. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. We used to tell each other everything.”
A tear snakes down Smith’s cheek, but she doesn’t look away. Instead she looks right at Sally. And here it is, a staring contest like old times. They used to sit on their twin beds, cross-legged, hair back in ponytails, all business, and do this very thing. They’d keep it up for a long while, but invariably it was Smith who looked away first. Sally was better, faster, more determined.
“Speaking of which, why didn’t you tell me about this guy? Mom says he might come to the wedding?”
“Is that a problem?” Smith says, studying her sister’s face for judgment.
“Don’t be silly,” Sally says sweetly. “I want you to have a date. Who is he? Do you like him?”
“I think I do, but then again I have no idea what’s up and what’s down. I’m not sure it matters if I like him because he hasn’t called and I doubt he will and it’s all just fitting. I feel sick.”
“I’m sorry,” Sally says. “I didn’t mean for this to be this way. Especially this week.”
Especially this week? What does that mean?
“Me too,” Smith says, pushing her chair away from the table. “I’m really not feeling well. I think I’m just going to go. I have to pick up some things for your out-of-town bags.”
“Let me come with you?” Sally says.
“No,” Smith says. “I need to be alone right now.” Her hands shake as she pulls out her wallet and fishes a twenty from the billfold. She attempts to flatten it on the table under her palm, but the wrinkles remain. She leaves it on the table and slips through the front door, sneaks through the elevator doors that are closing.
Outside, it’s cold. The streets swarm with people and cars. She heads east to Lexington Avenue, to the Container Store. Before entering, she admires the place as she always does, her big glass haven, where he asked her to marry him.
She didn’t expect anything, not that night. She met him after a long day of surgery in front of New York Hospital, where he worked. He wore his scrubs. It was a breezy night and they walked west. He led her down Lexington. It was late and the store was closed, but Smith noticed the flicker of candles inside. Asad walked to the entrance and motioned to a guard who waited inside. When the guard unlocked the glass front door, Smith knew. He proposed in the kitchen aisle, and per Asad’s very particular instructions, after she said yes, the guard played Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” from an old-school boom box just as John Cusack did in Say Anything, which was her favorite movie, quickly his too. The ring, the one they’d spotted at Bergdorf’s just weeks before, fit perfectly, and she stared at it through tears as he changed out of his scrubs in the men’s room. Asad thanked the guard and escorted Smith to Daniel, a famous French restaurant, where a champagne-soaked seven-course tasting meal awaited them. It was, without question, the best night of her life.
When Smith enters the store, the memories of her engagement night fill her. It’s the first time she’s been back here since the breakup. She’s had items shipped or messengered, but these weren’t options this time. She walks to the customer service desk, aware of her heightened anxiety.
“I’m picking up an order for Anderson,” she says to the clerk, who then disappears into the back. The clerk, a heavyset, kind-faced woman named Dawn, returns empty-handed.
“I’m sorry, I have nothing back there for you. Could it possibly be under another name?”
Another name. For a split second, she thinks, Rahman. Smith Rahman. Almost. Shit, she needs to get a grip.
“No, it’s Anderson. A-N-D-E-R-S-O-N. I called last week. It’s one hundred translucent take-out containers. The polyethylene ones, BPA-free? I can find the product number on my phone if that would be helpful.”
“No, I know what you’re talking about. Let me look it up on the computer and see if we have some of those in stock here in the store,” she says, tapping away at the keyboard, squinting at the monitor, shaking her head. “No, it looks like we have only eighteen. Would you like those?”
“Dawn, I’m sorry, but I ordered these items and I need them today and I’m not leaving the store without them, so you better come up with them, okay?”
The woman looks up from the computer, something like fear in her eyes. “Ma’am, it’s showing that we have eighteen in stock upstairs if you’d like those. I can run and get them for you.”
Smith feels her pulse quickening. “I do not fucking want eighteen. I want one hundred. Like I ordered. I need to fill these boxes with jelly beans, Dawn, for my sister’s wedding, which is this weekend, and it will take me some time to fill these and I need them now. Do you realize how often I shop at this store, Dawn? How many clients I send here? Can I talk to your manager about this?”
Smith barely recognizes herself in this moment. This isn’t who she is; she’s kind and patient, slow to anger, but here she is being one of those abominable people who lash out. She’s ashamed, but also notes that it feels strangely good to be standing her ground after being so acquiescent all the fucking time with her parents and her sister and her clients.
And yet she feels for poor, visibly shaken Dawn, Dawn who looks like she might cry, Dawn who nods and disappears. Smith knows very well that this is not about Dawn and missing plastic containers.
A man comes out soon after, clutching a stacked tower of take-out containers, which he hands over the counter. “Ms. Anderson, I’m so sorry about the mix-up with the order. I would like you to take these today, and we will have the rest shipped to you by Wednesday at the latest all free of charge. I know you are a good customer of the store and I apologize for this.”
Smith takes the containers, containers that cruelly remind her of the Chinese food she scarfed last night; hugs the tower to her chest; and feels her eyes pooling with tears. “Thank you,” she says. “I’m so sorry. Truly sorry. Wednesday will be just fine.”
Back on the street, tears begin to roll down her cheeks as she heads for home. Poor Dawn. What was Smith thinking yelling at the unsuspecting woman like that? She was just doing her job.
As she walks, she pulls out her phone and runs her fingers along the shattered screen. She types in her password and begins going down the rabbit hole, checking everything—her calendar and her e-mail. Her Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. She looks up Tate and sees that he’s spent the day exploring Battery Park City. On his Instagram feed is a photo of an old man with a cane and a mother pushing a double stroller. He also took a black and white photograph of a graffiti-laden wall. She remembers more from last night. Snippets of endearing booze-soaked wisdom. Maybe it’s clichéd, yes, it most definitely is, but I think the ugly and hard t
hings are sometimes the most enthralling.
The social media anesthetic is swift in taking hold; her mind grows blurry and numb. She nearly walks straight into oncoming traffic.
She checks everything again and again, to fill the empty space that’s starting to expand within her, a deep, throttling loneliness. There’s nothing from Tate. Not a thing. Two days ago she was fine with not having a date to the wedding, it didn’t faze her, but now she dreads the idea of going alone. And she doesn’t just want to go with anyone. She wants to go with him.
Fuck.
She walks on. At Central Park South, she stops for some reason and finds herself staring at the carriage horses lined up to take tourists through Central Park. They’re dolled up, these immense and gorgeous animals, festooned with foolish jewel-toned feathers. She read an article once about these horses, about how poorly they are treated, and yet it’s an industry that booms because people are blind to the truth and the misery, forking over bundles of cash and climbing on, settling into the clichéd fairy-tale carriage, eager for a tour of a heralded place that’s shiny and new, a small adventure, but at what expense?
These horses break her heart.
Their eyes are dark and scared and sad. They wait because it’s all they can do.
6:32PM
“Thank you for being human.”
A nondescript brown paper bag sits outside her apartment door. She lifts it and is hit with the familiar, sweet scent of oatmeal raisin cookies from Levain, her all-time favorite bakery. She hasn’t had one in ages. Slipped inside of the bag, Smith finds a sheet of Sally’s new stationery with her soon-to-be triple-barreled name—Sally Anderson McGee. Words are scribbled on it. I’m sorry, S. Forgive me.
It’s not that simple, Smith thinks tersely, walking inside, tossing the bag to the floor, grabbing a pen from her purse. This gesture is so incredibly Sally. The last thing Smith wants is to stew unnecessarily, but what happened at the restaurant hurt her. She saw a different side of her sister. Maybe the wedding’s getting the best of her, she hopes that’s all, but that Sally across the table was distant and distracted. Smith flips over the card and writes her own words: Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I don’t eat these anymore. She contemplates dropping them outside her sister’s apartment just next door but stops herself. She doesn’t want to be that person. She takes the cookies to the kitchen and places them on the counter and then retreats to the bedroom, where she changes into her Monday evening uniform: a ratty old Yale sweatshirt and a pilled pair of sweats she’s had forever. She sits in her bay window, staring out at the treetops, and waits to dial her coach.
Talking to you, I’m sensing a power-strip metaphor, Laura said during their consultation call almost a year ago. So many people plugging into you for a charge—your parents, your sister, Clio, your clients—but what do you do to charge yourself, Smith?
Smith was dumbfounded. More than thirty years on this planet and it took this woman all of thirty minutes to come up with this? Who cared if she charged a hefty fee and she would never meet her in person? Worth. Every. Penny.
Smith did wonder at first if it was a bit strange to have these sessions by phone when she lived in a city teeming with therapists and experts and coaches, but she decided that there was something nice, and deserved, about curling up at home for these therapeutic calls. And she knew herself, too; she’d be more open and less self-conscious on the phone.
But what was Smith doing to charge herself, Laura wanted to know. Then, nothing. She was working eighteen-hour days, racing between clients, sleeping poorly, eating crap and gaining weight, trying and failing to hold it together after her breakup with Asad. Everyone was worried. She was worried. Worried enough to hunt down a life coach. Even ever-optimistic Bitsy suggested she might want to “see someone” and ever-practical Dr. Sally suggested she might want to “take something,” but Smith wasn’t going to be yet another New Yorker racing for therapy or pills for what she honestly believed was a fleeting moment of crisis. She was stronger than that.
But even Smith knew she needed help from someone objective outside her circle, someone who could offer some guidance. She got Laura’s name from a client and though initially very skeptical, she did copious research about life coaching and found its core beliefs compelling: that people are essentially creative, resourceful and whole, that there is no assumed pathology. She got over her skepticism quickly and found its core beliefs compelling: that people are essentially creative, resourceful and whole, that there is no assumed pathology. She learned that the job of a coach is to listen deeply, ask powerful questions, challenge assumptions and evoke wisdom that the client holds inside herself within a space of nonjudgment, that coaching is an empowering, supportive process with tangible, transformative results. All of this was right up her alley. Still, Smith was a bit dubious and concerned. The profession was new and still largely unregulated. Anyone could call herself a coach without formal training, and “life coaching” had a bad name for many. You had to be careful.
Before their first session, Smith meticulously filled out an Intended Goals Sheet and a questionnaire, with questions like: If someone was giving a speech about you fifteen years from now, what would you want them to say? Who would you be and what would you do if no one was looking?
Laura told her she could just jot notes, but Smith treated it like a proper assignment and wrote and wrote, even editing her answers as if she were to receive a grade at the end.
Smith picks up the phone, stares for a moment at the receiver and then looks around her quiet home. She dials and Laura answers, beginning the way she does each week.
“How has the week been since we last spoke? Were you able to complete this week’s goals?”
Smith doesn’t answer.
“I’m noticing some silence, Smith. Can you try to explain that silence to me?”
Smith laughs. She laughs. The sound of her own laughter is a foreign trill, a near-cackle, edged in almost cartoon darkness. “I’m sorry, Laura. I don’t even remember what my goals were. Things kind of fell apart in the last twenty-four hours. I don’t even know where to start.”
“Start at the beginning. And remember, Smith, that this is a safe place, that I am granting you permission to not know the answers. There are no gold stars here. Just give me the quick and dirty version of what happened. No editorializing.”
Safe place. Permission. Gold stars. These words, usually fine, seem like jokes today. What is she doing spending good money on this nonsense? Does she really think that speaking to a stranger on the other side of the country will fix this shit?
Smith forces a deep breath and begins. “Okay. Well, first I woke up on my bathroom floor in a bridesmaid dress I don’t remember putting on. I’d gotten sick from drinking late into the night with a guy. Then I apparently e-mailed Asad in the middle of the night telling him how I didn’t need him anymore and he responded telling me that he and his wife are pregnant, which was like a dagger. Oh, and Clio’s moving out to live with Henry and I just got in a fight with Sally. Apparently, she’s known about Asad having a baby and didn’t tell me. I haven’t written a word of her wedding toast. Oh, and for the grand finale, I made a poor woman cry at the Container Store a few hours ago. It’s been a day.”
“Wow. That’s a lot, isn’t it?”
Yes, Laura. It’s a lot.
“Well, I’m hearing a lot of things coming up in what you’re saying. Clio moving out. Your ex having a baby. Your sister getting married. All of these, Smith, are huge triggers. And triggers make all of us do things that might feel very out of character. I invite you to get quiet, to breathe and acknowledge yourself for everything you’re dealing with, because it’s a lot. Remember, it’s okay to give yourself a little room for imperfection. Be where you are in terms of whatever feelings are coming up. You know that expression ‘Wherever you go, there you are’? Just be there. Can you tell me what you’d like to focus on, what’s most important to you to look at and get curious about today?”
“I told him a secret,” Smith says.
“Who?”
“The guy.”
“Who is this guy, Smith?”
“I went to Yale with him. I didn’t know him that well then. We didn’t run in the same circles.”
“And you told him something, Smith? A secret? Are you willing to tell me what you told him?”
A secret. That’s what it was, what it is, though it hasn’t felt like a secret because she hasn’t been thinking about it, about the fact that she’s been hiding something from her family, from the world, even from herself.
“I had an abortion freshman year of college,” Smith blurts out.
“Thank you for trusting me with that information,” Laura says. “How did it just feel to tell me that, Smith?”
“I don’t know. Kind of scary, I guess.”
“It makes sense that it was scary. And did you tell anyone when it happened? Who was there to support you?”
“Just Clio,” Smith says. “I barely knew her, but somehow I knew she was the person to tell.”
It was Clio who asked if Smith might be pregnant, who walked with her to the pharmacy to buy the test, who waited outside the bathroom stall in the dorm and guarded the door so no one else would come in. It was Clio who sat with Smith on the bottom bunk in their closet-sized bedroom while a stunned Smith cried. It was Clio who listened, not a flicker of judgment in her steady blue eyes, as Smith marched rationally through her options and concluded that she would end the pregnancy. It was Clio who walked with her that damp morning to her appointment at the clinic and waited in the grim, fluorescent-lit waiting room for it to be over. It was Clio who hovered without intruding in the days, weeks, and years that followed, always asking if Smith was okay.
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