“Well, speaking of moral clarity. It’s about Jack . . . I mean Harrison,” I began. I nervously clenched my free hand into a fist, and tried to remember the spiel I had rehearsed before calling her. Something about it happening without my meaning it to, not wanting to hurt her, hoping that we could move past it. Actually, it sounded like I was the one confessing to cheating. Maybe I was in a way.
“Yes, yes, I know,” Maddy sighed, and for a brief moment, my hopes soared. She already knew! And she was still talking to me! But how had she found out? Would Jack have told her without telling me?
But then Maddy continued. “I was seeing Alex—that’s his name, my boss I mean—while I was dating Harrison. And Harrison found out. It’s the reason why we broke up.”
Chapter 15
For the first year since I had started working there, I forgot to dread the Sassy Seniors! annual holiday party. It was normally an event I looked forward to even less than my annual Pap smear. I know everyone thinks their office Christmas party is a drag, but at most workplaces you at least get a free meal and the whole event is lubricated with plenty of cheap champagne. The staff of Sassy Seniors! was not so lucky.
For starters, a few years back, the powers that be—meaning Robert—decided that a big to-do was not in the company budget. So instead of treating the staff to lunch out, he decided we would celebrate the advent of the holiday season with a god-awful in-house party, complete with a potluck lunch, Secret Santa exchange, and no alcohol. Well, mostly no alcohol. Since my arrival at the magazine, a quart of vodka had routinely found its way into Peggy’s ginger-ale-and-sherbet punch, which went a long way toward making the party feel less like a root canal, and more like a small cavity being filled without novocaine. But this year, my thoughts were so cluttered, I’d forgotten to smuggle the illicit booze into the office. It was probably just as well, as after last year’s puke-in-the-Xerox-machine debacle (for once, it wasn’t me), there’d been word that the punch bowl was going to be guarded by Barbara, who was more pit bull than she was woman.
Lunch was pretty much what you’d expect out of a potluck—cheese balls, a tray of crudités, casseroles made with Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup, a limp salad, store-bought Parker House rolls, and a box of candy that was obviously a discarded early Christmas gift. I’d completely forgotten about the whole thing, of course, so at the last minute I grabbed a mostly full three-liter bottle of Diet Coke out of my refrigerator that I’d opened two days earlier, and plopped it on the potluck table, hoping no one would know it was from me. Or notice that it had gone slightly flat. I saw Peggy give the bottle the evil eye and then shoot a nasty look at me, but even knowing that I’d succeeded in irritating her didn’t cheer me up as much as usual.
The thing was, I was booked on the eight o’clock flight to London that night, and I still didn’t know if I was going. Okay, so my bags were packed, my mail was stopped, and my refrigerator was clear of anything that could turn rancid in my absence, so my mind was mostly made up. But as I sat there, picking at a plate of ham-and-potato gratin with a side of mashed sweet potatoes with a marshmallow topping, I still wasn’t sure if I should go.
For one thing, I hadn’t told Maddy about Jack and me. I’d meant to, truly I had. But what with her dual confessions of carrying on an affair with her married boss, and that she believed doing so was the reason Jack broke up with her, my original purpose in calling her had just sort of gotten lost. And I was no longer sure I even owed her an explanation. After all, if Maddy was cheating on Jack during the time they were together—not to mention cheating with a married man—then she wasn’t the aggrieved party in the breakup after all. She was the bad guy.
My reason for not being sure I still wanted to go was a little less complex. If Maddy was telling the truth—and really, why wouldn’t she be?—then Jack hadn’t broken up with her because he realized the relationship wasn’t going anywhere, as he’d claimed that first night we met on the airplane. Instead, he had ended the relationship because she’d broken his heart when she cheated on him. Which would mean that Jack had lied to me. But why? Once he knew that Maddy and I were friends, wouldn’t he have expected that I’d learn the real reason behind their breakup? Something about the whole thing felt off, a funny ping on my internal sonar. But I couldn’t tell if I was sensing something wrong with Jack, or if it was just my own neurosis churning things up again. After all, Maddy’s adulterous admission had stirred up a lot emotions I’d preferred left in the past.
One of my least favorite childhood memories was when I was thirteen years old. My parents were having a dinner party, and by the time the plates had been cleared, the party had turned rather raucous with loud voices and guffawing laughs echoing from the dining room. Not wanting to be noticed by the boisterous adults, I’d snuck into the kitchen in search of a bowl of ice cream, when I came across my dad and Mrs. Quinn, who lived three houses down from us. They were embracing, which didn’t seem all that strange at first, since my parents were always greeting their friends with social hugs and kisses. But then I saw that his hand was groping under her skirt, lifting the material up, baring her left thigh, and all of a sudden I realized that they were kissing, with open mouths and closed eyes, and Mrs. Quinn was making a strange, guttural throaty sound. My skin felt tight, and I began to itch all over. I fell back, returning to my bedroom, and scratched my blotchy skin until my fingernails drew blood.
“What are you eating? Don’t you know that ham-and-potato dish has a cream base? And those sweet potatoes are all sugar and have about a stick of butter in them,” Olivia, the food editor, tutted, interrupting my not-so-pleasant trip down memory lane. She sat down next to me and handed me a box wrapped in red-and-green-striped paper. “Here’s your Secret Santa present! I wonder what this could be.”
I accepted the box, shaking it a little. I could hear the muffled rustle of cloth within. “Maybe it’s a sexy new nightgown. I drew Peggy this year, and I came close to getting her one of those stretch red lace ones with the faux fur trim that they sell at Fredericks of Hollywood.”
Olivia—who couldn’t stand Peggy either—shrieked with laughter. “Girl, she wouldn’t know what to do with it. She’d probably think it was some kind of a Christmas decoration to hang on her door. What did you get her?”
I smiled enigmatically. “Oh, just a little something I thought she’d enjoy,” I said.
Actually, I’d re-gifted the same tea-for-one set I’d received in the Secret Santa exchange the year before. I suspected Peggy was the one who’d originally given it to me, since she’d been unable to resist making a comment about how now that I had my own, I could stop using the office coffee cups. Just for that, I’d begun using a fresh, clean mug for every single cup of coffee.
“I bet I get another fruitcake,” Olivia sniffed. “Every year, it’s the same damn thing. I don’t even eat cake, but if I did, I certainly wouldn’t have fruitcake. It’s a bad joke, not food.”
I shook my head ruefully. “Why do we do this year after year? No one ever likes what they get, so why bother?”
Crappy gifts, like those given at these stupid, pointless Secret Santa exchanges, fall under the category of “fuck-you presents.” Fuck-you presents are those that you are required to give—to co-workers, to pseudo-friends—and you want to make it clear that you (a) don’t like the person, and (b) have put as little money, thought, and effort into the selection of the item as possible, while (c) immunizing yourself from any criticism by the recipient, who would appear ungrateful if she dared to complain. It’s all very passive-aggressive.
“Open your present,” Olivia urged me.
I tore off the wrapping paper, opened the box, and pulled out the all-time ugliest sweatshirt I’d ever seen. It was bright red, 100 percent polyester, and had a close-up of a grinning reindeer head wrought in some sort of puffed plastic on the front. It was worse than a fuck-you present . . . this was openly hostile, I-hate-you-and-hope-you-drop-dead-right-now gifting.
Olivia wrinkl
ed her nose. “Well, at least it’s not a fruitcake.”
“You say that as though it’s a good thing,” I said darkly. “At least a fruitcake has rum in it.”
“Oh, you opened the present I got for you!” Helen cried out. She came skipping over to the table where Olivia and I were sitting, and was wearing an almost identical sweatshirt, only hers was green and had a picture of a puffed-plastic Santa on the front. “I know we’re not supposed to tell who we gifted to, but I just knew you would love it. I thought you could take it with you to London. And look what it does.”
She grabbed the sweatshirt from me and fumbled around inside of it, and a moment later, the reindeer’s antlers lit up with blinking white lights and its nose shone with a red light. Helen held it up and beamed with pride. I just stared at the offending sweatshirt, mesmerized by the lights reflecting off the shiny red polyester cloth. For the first time in my smart-ass life, I was completely speechless.
“It’s very . . . festive,” I finally managed. At least I knew that the gift of the sweatshirt hadn’t been meant as a declaration of war, since Helen was far too sweet for the fuck-you gifting game. But that was a cold comfort considering what came next.
“Try it on,” Helen urged me.
“Oh, no, it wouldn’t match what I’m wearing,” I protested weakly, but Helen was obviously not going to let the subject go, and she cajoled and bullied me until I finally gave in and ended up pulling on the horrible thing. I immediately felt hot and stifled in the polyester—it felt like I was wearing one of those Mylar exercise suits they used to sell in the 1970s that were supposed to make you sweat off ten pounds.
“There, now don’t you look Christmassy,” Helen said, beaming at me. Olivia coughed behind her hand to cover up a laugh at my expense.
I was just glad—for once—that I was working at a dorky magazine, because if I did work at a high-end travel magazine or a fashion rag, my career wouldn’t have withstood the humiliation. If the hipsters at Retreat could see me now, they’d probably be ill at the idea that they had even considered hiring such a loser to work at their hallowed grounds of style and cool.
“So what’s this about you going to London?” Olivia asked me, probably to distract me from my misery.
“I’m leaving tonight, and spending the holidays there,” I said vaguely, not wanting to get into my doubts about whether I should even go on the trip.
“I think there’s definitely a man involved,” Helen said, winking at Olivia. “I think Claire has a beau, and hasn’t quite decided yet what to do with him, so she’s keeping him a secret until she does.”
“No, it’s nothing like that,” I lied.
I really, really didn’t want to get into the details of my relationship with Jack with these two. First of all, even though Helen and Olivia were both dolls, they were also gossips, and anything I told them about my love life would quickly become fodder for the entire Sassy Seniors! staff. And besides, the whole triangle mess with Jack and Maddy was not something I wanted to talk about with anyone, knowing that I’d instantly face judgment and criticism, and I was getting quite enough of that from Max.
“Hmmm. You’re quite the dark horse, aren’t you? Well, I hope it is a man. It’s about time you got on with it,” Olivia said. “You can’t stay single forever, you know.”
Hmph, I thought. As though it were ever just that easy.
Okay, I was going. I’d decided, my mind was made up, and that was that. Besides, there was no way I could cancel now, it wouldn’t be fair to Jack. Jack. Just thinking of him made me feel a little light-headed, and I knew then that I’d never actually intended not to go on the trip. I couldn’t wait to see him, and I promised myself that as soon as I returned I would tell Maddy everything. I knew there was no danger of bumping into her on a London street; she was going to spend the holiday visiting her mother in Boston.
I hurried home after work (the reindeer sweatshirt safely stashed in my bag, ensuring no one would ever again see me wearing the wretched thing). I was packed and ready to go, so all I needed to do was grab my suitcase and hail a cab, and I was out of there, on my way to a nice romantic, toe-curling, sex-filled break from the real world. But by the time I got to my apartment, I was worried that I might be late for my flight. I had three hours until the estimated time of departure, but you never knew when the airport staff was going to mistake a thirtyish blondish American woman for a rabid Muslim fundamentalist who might just take down an airplane with the pair of tweezers she’d managed to sneak past security, and decide to strip-search me. So better to be early.
As I was turning my key in the lock, I was suddenly molested when a short man smelling strongly of rum ran up behind me and threw his arms around my waist. I’d learned my lesson with Jack, and didn’t immediately whip out my stun gun, which was good, since this time my attacker was Max. A very drunken, lurching, red-eyed Max.
“What are you doing? Get off of me,” I said, trying to shake him loose from the bear hug he had on my waist.
“I’m so glad to see you. I’m so glad you didn’t go to London,” Max slurred.
“What’s wrong with you? Why are you so drunk?”
“Christmas party. Or parties. I went to three, ’cause I can, ’cause I work freelance,” Max hiccupped. “Lemme in, I need to pee.”
I swung open my door, and he zipped past me and raced toward my bathroom. I hoped that he wouldn’t be in there too long, or trip and crack his head on the sink and fall into a coma. I didn’t have the time to wait for EMS to arrive and carry him out. I checked my watch and saw that I didn’t even have time to change, so I instead stuffed a few magazines and the paperback novel I was reading into my work bag.
Max wandered out of the bathroom. “Where are you going?” he cried out dramatically. “You’re not going to London, are you? You’re not going to see him?”
“Your zipper’s down,” I said, pointing to the gaping hole in his pants.
Max fumbled to pull it back up, but still continued with the theatrics. “I thought we talked about this, and you agreed not to go!”
“No, I agreed I would talk to Maddy about it before I went. And I did talk to her, last night,” I said, omitting the part where I hadn’t told her about Jack and me. I was guessing Max was too drunk to pick up the subtle nuances of my lie.
He stood staring at me, swaying slightly from side to side, his hair sticking up all over his head, making him look a little like Calvin from the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. His normally sallow skin was flushed red, but I couldn’t tell if it was from the booze or the cold air gusting around outside.
“Don’t go, Claire,” he said softly.
“I have to. I have my ticket, and all the arrangements are made. Besides, I don’t have any other plans for Christmas. Why are you so upset by this all of a sudden?”
“Daphne left me,” Max said starkly, and his face crumpled.
“Oh no. Oh God. I’m so sorry, sweetie,” I said. I stepped forward to hug him, and tried hard to ignore how awful he smelled as I folded him into my arms.
“It’s okay, because we talked about it, and decided it would be better if we were just friends,” Max said.
“Oh. Well. Are you okay with that?”
“Yup. It’s better, because I’m . . . well . . . Daphne knew, she guessed . . . so it’s better,” Max babbled incoherently.
“Daphne knew what?” I asked.
Max looked at me, a strange expression on his face. “That I love you.”
“I know, sweetie, I love you, too,” I said, speaking very slowly and kindly as though I were talking to a child on the verge of throwing a tantrum.
“No, I mean I love you. I’m in love with you. I don’t want you to go to London, because I want you to stay here with me,” Max said. For a minute he almost sounded sober, but the effect was ruined when he suddenly belched loudly.
“Yeah, right, very funny, you’ve always worshipped me from afar,” I said, smiling gamely at his joke. Max always deflected his pain
with humor, and this wasn’t the first time he’d joked about swearing his undying love for me. He thought it was funny when we went out to eat to fall down on one knee and propose to me in front of a restaurant of applauding people (similar to his practical joke of telling the waiter it was my birthday—when it was not—so that the whole waitstaff would suddenly group at our table, clapping and singing “Happy Birthday” to me).
“I’m not joking. I mean it. I love you,” Max said. His eyes, normally the color of Hershey’s kisses when they’re not so bloodshot, were dark and still. I stared back at Max. The room suddenly seemed overly warm and thick with expectation.
“Max, cut it out. That’s not funny. I’m going to be late,” I said, checking my watch. I pawed through my bag to make sure I had my ticket and passport. “I wish I could stay and talk, I really do want to hear all about you and Daphne. I promise we’ll do it when I get back, ’kay?”
“I’m not joking. Christ, how many times do I have to say it? If I hadn’t just downed an entire punch bowl of eggnog, I wouldn’t even be saying it now. I love you. I’ve loved you for years, literally years. Daphne knew, she guessed. It’s why we broke up. And I’m glad she left me, because you’re the person I really want to be with.”
“But—I—” I stuttered incoherently.
“I know all of your stupid rules, and the one about not dating short men, but I can’t help my height, and I can’t help how I feel, and I—no, don’t interrupt me, I want to get this out—I don’t want you to go to London and see that stupid guy, I want you to stay here with me, and if you do, I swear I’ll never break your heart, or do anything shitty, or cheat on you, or anything. It would be fantastic, can’t you see that?” The words were falling out of him in an uncontrollable gush, and as he talked, Max stumbled toward me and grabbed my hand.
True Love (and Other Lies) Page 20