Designing Morgan

by Lucey Phillips

  I was starting to sweat. That last sentence sounded more like a question as the pitch in my voice rose proportionately with my level of insecurity. And straight-up fear.

  His reply was an unsatisfied “Hmf.”

  I started to pray that this interview would be done soon.

  “We’re looking at quite a broad time span here as well,” Dr Stanley said.

  “Yes, Doctor. Well, I did want to show my growth over the past few years,” I said

  “We see more undergrad projects in these portfolios than we’d like to,” she said. Her voice was flat and disappointed.

  Meanwhile, my stomach lurched and my palms felt slimy with sweat as I held Sophie’s leather folder in a death grip. I wanted to tell them that I’d made several new pieces, pieces that show how far I’ve come as an artist, but they were all smashed beyond recognition and soaked with water. But Mark had cautioned me not to say anything about the roof collapsing over my studio. “It might come across like you’re making excuses,” he’d told me.

  Please, please let’s be done here, I thought.

  “Here at the university, it’s important that our graduate students play a role in the arts community at large,” Dr. Stanley said. “Can you discuss how you are already doing this?”

  Crap. Other than my friendship with Micah, I had nothing.

  I was totally drained, but I didn’t want to give up. So I did the same thing I’d been doing since day one of this process—I spun my Candy Blue experience into something that just might, in dim lighting, resemble what the university was looking for.

  Then the doctors and I said our formal goodbyes, shared another round of stiff handshakes, and I got out of there as fast as I could, using all my grown-up willpower to resist the urge to break into a full run out the door and across campus to Lee’s office.

  He was sitting on a bench outside his building waiting for me, two cups of coffee in a drink carrier.

  “Hope you put some whiskey in that,” I said as I tried, but mostly failed, to smile. “I’m gonna need it.”

  “Just one cream, one Splenda,” Lee said as he handed me the cup and I sat down beside him.

  “Aw, you know how I take my coffee,” I said. The warm paper cup felt comforting in my hands. I gave Lee a kiss on the cheek.

  “So it didn’t go very well?” Lee put an arm around my shoulders and gently pulled me close to him.

  “It was a disaster,” I said. “The art school dean pretty much told me my portfolio sucks and then the lady was basically like, ‘what have you even been doing with yourself the past four years?’”

  “Aw, I bet it’s not as bad as you think.”

  I shook my head without looking at him. “I’m pretty sure I’m not going to grad school in the fall.” Then I gulped a big sip of coffee, struggling to get it around the massive lump in my throat.

  Lee could have fed me some platitudes like “you don’t know for sure,” but he didn’t. He simply kept an arm around me, allowed me to lean my head on his shoulder, and sat quietly with me and my disappointment.

  “You’re good to me—a good friend,” I whispered. I managed to get the words out before my tears began.

  20.

  What do people wear to their ex’s wedding? I had half my closet spread out across my bed as I tried to find the right outfit for Sophie and Clint’s wedding tomorrow. I only owned a few things that could fit in with the black tie optional dress code. One dress had a plunging neckline that I would love to wear in front of Lee. But it seemed like maybe too much skin for a wedding guest to be showing.

  I called Sophie.

  “What are you wearing tomorrow? I guess Tommy’s your plus one?” I asked her when she answered the phone.

  “I have a leftover bridesmaid’s dress from my cousin’s Christmas wedding a couple years ago,” she said. “It’s black with a dark red floral thing going on. It’s kind of ugly, but oh well. I paid almost $200 for it, so I’m glad I can wear it again.”

  I sighed. “I got nothing.”

  “You have that one black dress. With the cleavage?”

  “You don’t think that’s too much skin?” I said. “Especially for an ex-girlfriend to be wearing to a wedding? I don’t want to be that guest.”

  “You’re so neurotic, Morgan. Nobody’s going to care what you’re wearing,” Sophie said. “Lee will like it.”

  “You’re bringing Tommy, right?”

  Sophie let out a heavy sigh. “Yeah.” Her voice was flat.

  “Oh no, what’s wrong?”

  “He’s kind of been getting on my nerves,” she said. “He’s so ambitious. All he talks about is work. He’s been canceling, like half our plans, for work.”

  “You’re ambitious,” I said. “Sounds like a good match.”

  “You can’t have two ambitious people in a relationship,” she said. “Someone needs to bring an emotion to the party, you know? That’s why you and I do so well together.”

  “We are soul mates,” I said with a giggle. “Are you ok?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. “I’m not going to do anything drastic right now, I mean, he’s good company. Maybe just not, you know…”

  “Yeah I get it,” I said. “Plus you need a date for tomorrow.”

  “Exactly,” Sophie said, laughing.

  We decided to meet at her house tomorrow for a pre-ceremony cocktail, then we said goodbye.

  I was wearing only panties and a strapless bra, standing in front of my closet feeling bewildered, when Franklin started his red alert barking. I threw on a robe and went out into the living room.

  It was almost eleven at night. Maybe a neighbor was being noisy coming home for the evening. I looked through the window in my front door. There was a silver sedan parked in front of my house, but I didn’t see anyone outside.

  As soon as I got back to my bedroom, Franklin resumed barking.

  “Come on, man,” I moaned at my dog. I put on pajama pants and a sweatshirt. Then I put Franklin on his leash. Maybe he was just really desperate to go outside.

  As soon as I opened the front door a crack, he burst out onto the porch, pulling me behind.

  “Easy, buddy,” I said. Then I gasped as I saw what he was barking at.

  There was a man sitting on the bottom step of my porch, slumped forward. My first instinct was to call the police, but then I recognized the figure. It was Clint.

  He jumped up and turned around, stumbling a step as he put some distance between himself and the dog. His suit was rumpled and his tie was untied, dangling lopsided around his neck.

  “Clint! What the hell?”

  “Hey, Morgan,” he said. “You never returned my texts. I’ve been trying to talk to you.”

  His speech was slurred, but at least he seemed to recover his balance.

  “What are you doing here? You’re getting married tomorrow!”

  He gave me a weird, sly smile. “I know. We just got done with the rehearsal dinner. Why weren’t you there? I thought you would come.”

  I shook my head. This was ridiculous. I’d spent at least three years failing to free myself of him, unable to find the words to finally tell him goodbye. But now it was so easy, instinctive, even.

  “You need to get the hell out of my yard and never come back,” I said. I was yelling but I barely noticed.

  He raised his palms toward me in a surrender gesture. “Morgan, no, no. I really need to talk to you. Can I come inside?”

  “No. Give me your phone. We’re calling someone to come get you,” I said as I held out my hand for the phone. He’d obviously driven here, but there was no way I could let him get behind the wheel again. I could smell the whiskey from ten feet away.

  “Wait. Wait, Morgan. Give me a chance,” Clint said, pleading.

  “Give you a chance? Do you even hear yourself?” I was still yelling. “Hannah’s too good for you.”

  He stared blankly down the dark street. “Wait, what?”

  “For God’s sake give me your pho
ne right now or I’m calling the police to come get your drunk ass.”

  I reached my hand toward him again. It was trembling, but I didn’t feel frightened. I felt, well, I felt fantastic.

  “Ok, ok, jeez,” Clint said, as he fumbled in his jacket pocket for his phone. “Since when did you become such a ball-buster? Man.”

  I opened his texts and found the thread for Jason, his college friend.

  “Jason’s your best man right? This seems like a best man duty,” I said, mumbling mostly to myself. Clint was hunched over on the bottom porch step again.

  I took Franklin inside and headed toward my kitchen to start some coffee for Clint.

  I texted Jason, “Hey, it’s Morgan. Clint showed up at my house drunk. Can you come get him?”

  He replied almost instantly, “On my way. Address?”

  I suspected Jason was an accomplice in some of Clint’s cheating when we were together, but I didn’t hold a grudge. A bro’s loyalty is what it is. Besides, things worked out how they needed to. I could see that so plainly now. Why had it taken me so long?

  While the coffee brewed, I went back out to the porch to check on Clint. He was still there, slumped on the bottom step. I decided I should take his keys.

  “Jason says he’s on his way,” I said as I walked down the steps toward Clint. “Here’s your phone. I want you to give me your keys.”

  “Pfftt, who are you?” he said. “When did you get so bossy?”

  “You’re lucky I don’t call Hannah. Or the police,” I said. I held out my hand. “Keys.”

  As Clint was patting all of his pockets, looking for his keys, I saw the screen on his phone light up. It was a text from Hannah.

  “Did you get home ok babe? I’m at the hotel. Going to bed soon. Love you :)”

  Clint stopped looking for his keys and squinted at the phone.

  “You’re right. She’s too good for me,” he said. “So were you.”

  “True,” I said. “But that girl loves you and you’re lucky to have her. I hope you’re good to her.”

  “Hannah is, like, the anti-Morgan,” Clint said. “And suddenly you’re her biggest fan? I don’t get it.”

  “What can I say,” I said. “The sorority girl thing threw me off at first, but that was just superficial. She’s a sweet girl. She’s, she’s real.”

  His gaze was misty and far away.

  “She is,” he said. “But, I never got over you.”

  “We don’t belong together, Clint, and you know it,” I said. “I don’t feel that way about you. And you really didn’t want to be with me. You wanted to own me.”

  His head flopped forward. I wasn’t sure if he passed out or was hanging his head in shame of the realization over what he’d put me through—how wrong his supposed affection for me actually was.

  Then I heard snoring.

  I shoved him hard with my elbow and then handed him his phone. “Tell her you love her. She might worry if she doesn’t hear from you.”

  “I should call it off,” he said.

  “You’re nervous and drunk. If you want to call it off, do it in the morning. Just tell her you love her and if you still feel like this is wrong tomorrow, then don’t get married.”

  I watched Clint send a “Nite. Love you.” text, then drop his phone on the wooden porch step. He still hadn’t given me his keys. I walked over to the silver Acura, opened the driver’s door, and saw the keys there in the ignition. I took the keys and went back inside to get Clint’s coffee.

  When I returned, he was snoring again.

  I sat beside him, holding the coffee. I looked up and down the street eagerly, hoping to see a vehicle that might be Jason’s.

  Clint woke up and threw an arm, heavy and sloppy, around my shoulders.

  “You’re the best, Morgan,” he said sleepily. “I love you so much.”

  I slid to the other end of the step.

  “I am definitely the best,” I said. “But you absolutely do not love me. You loved keeping my friendship and my admiration dangling along on a little string. But you didn’t love me.”

  Clint hung is head. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  “I do,” I said. I walked closer to the street and looked both ways, hoping to see Jason.

  “Your house is different,” Clint called out to me. “What happened? Something looks different.”

  After scolding him for being too loud in my sleepy neighborhood, I explained.

  “There used to be a tree over there,” I said. “And I just got done having my side porch rebuilt so it looks different—new windows and siding and stuff.”

  Clint furrowed his brow. I imagined his alcohol-suppressed synapses trying to fire like lighters that were out of juice. A look of astonishment spread across his face.

  “The tree fell on your porch?”

  “Yup.”

  “Aw, man. Wasn’t that your art room?”

  “Yeah,” I said, unable to move my gaze from the newly rebuilt addition. “I lost almost everything. Saved two pieces, that’s it.”

  “Wow, that sucks,” Clint said, adding some drunken volume to his annunciation of “sucks.”

  I laughed. “Indeed.”

  “What about school?” Clint asked, sipping his coffee. His speech was becoming a little sharper now.

  “I probably didn’t get in.”

  He made a “pfftt” noise and waved his hand in a shooing motion. “Then screw those ivory tower snobs. You do awesome on your business. Why would you want to throw away all that time and money for a piece of paper?”

  When he looked at me, there was a familiar empathy in his eyes. It reminded me of a brief time, before we’d started dating, when Clint and I were friends and coworkers only. When I got a demanding customer or some jerk who hit on me relentlessly, Clint had a casual, easy way of putting things into perspective. He’d engage in some juvenile name-calling or deliver a wry one-liner, and my frustration would just melt away.

  “Thanks, Clint,” I said. I meant it.

  I felt tension leaving my entire body when I saw a pair of headlights coming up my street. At the same time, my system seemed suddenly realize how cold it was and I broke into a teeth-rattling shiver.

  “Your ride’s here.”

  Jason was a tall thin man who had a loping gait. He gave me an easy smile as he climbed out of his pickup.

  “Everyone all right?”

  “We’re fine,” I said. “Someone might have a hangover on his wedding day, though.”

  “We’ll hit up the diner, fix him right up,” Jason said. Then his tone changed, making him sound as if he were talking to a child. As Jason approached Clint, he said, “What happened, buddy? You get cold feet or something?”

  “I’m sorry, man,” Clint said, his speech clearer than it had been all night. “Not cold feet. Just being dumb, I guess.” He shrugged and gave me a sheepish smile.

  “Hannah’s a great girl,” I said. “You’re lucky to have her.”

  Jason looked at me with bewildered eyes. I handed him Clint’s keys and smiled.

  “I’ll bring J.T. by in the morning to pick up the Acura,” Jason said.

  “Sure.”

  Clint opened his arms and moved to hug me. “Thanks, Morgan, sorry I barged in on you here. Sorry for everything.”

  I stepped away and folded my arms across my chest.

  “Bye, Clint.”

  He dropped his arms and gave me a small wave goodbye. Jason threw an arm around Clint’s neck and steered him toward the truck.

  “Come on, buddy.”

  21.

  Even though I hadn’t had any alcohol in a week, I woke up on Clint and Hannah’s wedding day feeling hung over. The previous night, with Clint drunkenly professing his love for me and suggesting he might call off the wedding, now seemed like a strange, faraway dream.

  I couldn’t wait to tell Sophie what had happened. I was pleased with how I’d responded to Clint and I knew she would be happy about it too.

&nbs
p; Telling Lee would be another matter, though. He was aware of my situation with Clint and he’d even been understanding and supportive of me. But whenever I thought about telling Lee about last night, it felt like I was wading into a thick swamp of guilty inertia. I couldn’t think of anything I’d done wrong, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling I’d been disloyal to Lee. Right or wrong, I decided I would keep last night’s spectacle on my front porch private from Lee. For now, anyway.

  As I was letting Franklin in from his morning bathroom visit to the back yard, my phone started ringing. It was Sophie and she already sounded tense.

  “I’m so sorry, but Hannah’s having a little emergency,” Sophie said when I answered the phone.

  Of course we couldn’t simply attend the wedding today, drama free, and enjoy the conclusion of Candy Blue’s most challenging custom order.

  I sighed. “Don’t apologize to me, Soph. It’s not your fault. What’s up?”

  She explained that one of the bridesmaids had somehow gotten her necklace tangled on her curling iron in her suitcase and ended up breaking the clasp.

  “So I wanted to see if you had any time today to stop by the hotel and fix it for her?”

  That was all? “Sure,” I said. Seemed easy enough.

  Then I told Sophie about last night with Clint.

  “I did good. You’d be proud,” I said at the conclusion of the story.

  “You really did,” she said. I could hear the smile in her voice.

  ***

  The Edgewater Resort was always beautiful, but on this December Saturday, just after the season’s first significant snowfall, it was a wonderland. I didn’t always agree with Hannah’s taste, but she couldn’t have chosen a better venue for her Christmastime wedding.

  There was just enough moisture under the two-inch layer of snow to make the roads slick, but my Jeep didn’t have any difficulty winding its way up to the grand, hilltop hotel. The massive building had log pillars and stonework on the exterior walls. Giant pine wreaths and garland with deep red velvet ribbons and golden bells adorned almost every surface. There was a candle glowing in each of the hundreds of windows. Lanterns lined the circular drive leading up to the building.

  For a moment I wondered if I was technically a vendor. I supposed, right now, I was the help, and should probably use a service parking lot and entrance. But I decided against it. I couldn’t resist walking in the front doors and gawking at more grandiose decorations and the massive Christmas trees.