On my last day of work, the weather gurus were predicting that a foot of snow was going to be dumped on New York, which would almost certainly mean that the entire city would shut down while we dug out of the mess. For the first time in my tenure at Sassy Seniors! I was hoping we wouldn’t have a snow day. Ever since the Jack/Maddy debacle—or The Incident, as I’d come to think of it—I’d been feeling much like Han Solo must have after he was lowered into the carbon freeze (and the very fact that I was making an analogy between my pathetic love life and a Star Wars movie was a sure sign that Max had made me sit through that stupid movie an unhealthy number of times). But the idea that I was going to be free of Sassy Seniors!—free of Robert, free of Peggy, free of traveling to crushingly dull locations on a shoestring budget—allowed a little bit of optimism to leak into my frozen heart. So the last thing I wanted was to wait at least another day, if not more, before I could clean out my desk, bid my co-workers farewell, and never have to set foot in the dank, depressing office again. And things finally seemed to be turning my way when the storm that had been on a direct course for New York suddenly veered south at the last minute, sparing us completely.
I was also glad to be getting rid of Enid, the homely, reticent forty-something woman who would be taking over my job after I left (she had already brought in a poster of a fuzzy kitten clutching to a tree limb for dear life with the caption “Hang in There!” written across the bottom, which she meant to tack up on the cubicle wall once I deserted it, doubtlessly planning to hang it up next to her favorite Cathy cartoon strip). I’d spent the last week training her, and she gave me the creeps. Enid tended to stare at me with glazed-over eyes and a gaping mouth while I talked to her, and even when I said something that prompted a response, she’d continue to stare for a few beats before she responded. I had no idea if she was so incredibly bored by my tutelage that she’d mastered the ability to sleep with her eyes open, or if she just completely lacked all social skills and had no idea how to interact with normal people, or if she’d maybe fallen so head over heels in love with me that she was struck dumb in my presence (although she was so asexual, I tended to doubt the latter). I also didn’t know where Robert had found her—although Enid claimed to have prior copy-writing experience, I had to keep explaining to her that she couldn’t put phrases inside a set of quotation marks unless she was directly quoting someone.
“You don’t put your own descriptions, your own thoughts, in quotation marks just for emphasis,” I reminded her again on my last morning, while looking over a practice column I had assigned her to write on New York.
“But I’m quoting myself,” Enid insisted, while breathing heavily through her mouth.
I sighed, and rubbed my eyes, and tried to remind myself that in a few short hours neither Enid nor the travel column would be my responsibility anymore. Besides, I had no doubt that Robert would love her work—her column on visiting Manhattan made the city sound about as appealing as the dust bowl from The Grapes of Wrath. And I could already tell that Peggy adored Enid; despite my many attempts to indoctrinate Enid in the art of annoying Peggy—sequestering her favorite coffee cup, liberal personal use of office supplies, making creative claims on the expense account report—Enid had brought in her own coffee cup on the very first day (emblazoned with the bold statement “I My Tabby”), which she washed out dutifully every afternoon. And every time Peggy goose-stepped down the corridor, Enid would find some excuse to rush out and fawn over her. Peggy was in heaven—not only was I close to being gone, I was being replaced by someone she could turn into her own personal toady.
“You know, your voice sounds sort of familiar. Have you ever called into Relationship Radio?” Enid asked.
“No,” I said firmly.
“I just love Dr. Blum. I listen to her every day, and a few weeks ago there was a woman who called in who sounded a lot like you,” Enid continued. “She’d done something really horrible, like sleeping with her best friend’s husband. . . .”
Great. Now, not only was I notorious, but she wasn’t even getting the story right.
“Well, that certainly wasn’t me,” I said crisply, and then escaped to the bathroom before Enid could push the subject any further.
I’d been thinking about sneaking out after lunch—what were they going to do if I did leave early, fire me?—but Olivia and Helen blocked my escape and ushered me into the staff room, where they had a little farewell gathering, complete with a cake, waiting for me. I was so touched, I even felt a little guilty over my ongoing boycott of the office birthday parties. I thanked everyone, and told them all I would miss working with them (a complete lie, of course, but what else was I going to say?), and shook Robert’s hand and told him I appreciated the opportunity to write for the magazine, which I realized was true as I said it, even if I had hated almost every assignment he’d sent me on. Maybe it wasn’t a glamorous job or one that I’d particularly enjoyed, but it had turned out to be a stepping stone to a better position, and for that I was grateful. And then, flying on the sugar rush of yellow cake and soda, I finally skipped out of the office, a free woman at last.
It finally snowed the next morning, but since I had planned to spend the day indoors packing anyway, I didn’t care. As long as the airport would be open in a week, so I wouldn’t miss my flight to Chicago, a monsoon could fall on the city in the meantime. I was just in the midst of wrapping framed photographs in sheets of bubble wrap when the phone rang. I assumed it was Max again; we had plans for pizza and a movie that evening, and he’d stopped at the video store en route to the photo shoot he had scheduled for that day. He’d already called from his cell phone three times to pretend to ask for my input on a movie selection (amazingly, whenever Max was the one to pick up the video, whatever movie I suggested we watch was always checked out, leaving him free to pick up one of his selections).
“I just don’t believe that they’re out of Sleepless in Seattle, The Princess Diaries, and Hope Floats,” I said into the phone, not bothering with a hello.
“Hello? Claire?”
It wasn’t Max after all . . . it was a woman. And not just any woman. It was Maddy.
Chapter 23
“Maddy?” I asked, even though I knew exactly who belonged to the silvery voice on the other end of the line. I’d only logged about ten thousand hours on the phone with her over the years, so there was no mistaking her for someone calling up to sell me car insurance or student loan consolidation packages.
“Yeah,” she said softly, and then paused. “Is this a bad time? It sounds like you were expecting someone else.”
“Yes . . . I mean, yes I thought you were Max calling, but no it’s not a bad time,” I said quickly.
I sat down on my couch, and was surprised at how nervous I felt talking to someone who I’d once been so close to that she’d felt perfectly comfortable asking me to inspect her bikini wax to confirm that it was symmetrical.
“I tried you at your office first, but they said you weren’t working there anymore. When did you leave?” Maddy asked.
“My last day was yesterday. I’m moving to Chicago in a week, and starting a job there with Retreat, the travel magazine,” I said.
“Really? That’s great! I love that magazine,” Maddy said, and sounded so warm and effusive, I was beginning to wonder if she’d suffered a head injury that had caused her to suffer short-term amnesia, and had blocked out everything that had happened between us nearly a month ago. This Maddy was friendly and sweet, and about a million miles away from the snarling, furious Maddy I’d parted on such bad terms with. In fact, if I remembered correctly, the last thing she had said to me was something about wishing plague and pestilence upon me. Okay, maybe not exactly, but close.
“Yeah, I’m pretty excited about it . . . but, um, I’m a little surprised to hear from you,” I said cautiously.
In response, there was dead silence on the other end of the line.
“Are you still there?” I asked.
“I’m here
. I just . . . this is hard for me,” Maddy said, her voice small and hurt. “I’m still angry at you.”
“I know. You have every right to be,” I said. “I’m so sorry about everything.”
“Wait, that’s not why I called. I mean, I know you’re sorry, but I’m not trying to rub your nose in it, I just . . . I just wanted to do the right thing,” she said.
I had no idea what she was talking about, so I just said, “Okay,” drawing the word out into two long, questioning syllables.
“The thing is . . . I’m still angry at you for lying to me, but I understand why you did it, or at least I think I do. I was acting pretty nutty there for a while, after breaking up with Harrison I mean, and I think that maybe you just didn’t tell me what was going on because you didn’t want to hurt me any further,” she continued.
“Of course I didn’t,” I exclaimed.
“But that’s not really an excuse for your getting together with him. That was a pretty shitty thing to do,” she said.
“Yes, it was,” I agreed, still not sure where we were going with all of this.
“But you’re not a shitty person. I know that, I know you. Once I stopped being quite so mad at you, I started to think that there must be a reason you were acting so out of character. And I figured there were only two possible reasons—either you resented me, hated me even, over all of those years we were friends,” Maddy began.
“I never hated or resented you,” I cried out. “I’ll admit, it’s hard not to be a little jealous sometimes of, well, of how ridiculously beautiful you are, and how you have that magic ability to make all men fall madly in love with you on sight. They actually knock me into garbage cans in order to get to you.”
“You know, I don’t know why you think that. That I’m prettier than you, I mean. I’ve always been jealous of your looks,” Maddy said. “You’re incredibly sexy and curvy, and yet sophisticated at the same time. I’ve always felt like a little girl in comparison to you.”
“Oh, please,” I said sarcastically. It was like Julia Roberts saying she wished she looked like Drew Carey.
“It’s true! I don’t have any breasts to speak of, and I’m so short I get carded every time I try to buy a bottle of wine in the U.S. I always wished I had that fifties movie-star glamour thing you have going on,” Maddy insisted.
“Maddy, you don’t have a single physical flaw on your entire body, that’s how perfect looking you are. And I’ve seen men follow you home from the grocery store with their tongues lolling out,” I pointed out.
“But that’s not because of how I look. I mean, haven’t you ever known a woman who wasn’t really all that hot but got a lot of attention? Oh, like Bridget McCormick, remember her from freshman year dorm? She wasn’t very pretty at all—she had that awful curly hair, and her face was sort of flat and squashed in—but every guy at school thought she was the hottest thing. Remember?” Maddy asked.
“Yeah, I remember her. Didn’t she get asked to every single frat formal one year? It was some kind of a school record. But you’re right, I never thought she was very pretty. I just assumed that she was one of those women who men think are attractive but women don’t, the same way that a lot of guys don’t think Gwyneth Paltrow is anything special, but most women I know would cut off an arm to look like her,” I said.
“Bridget knew how to play the game. The whole trick to getting and keeping male interest is by being rude to them. You throw them a smile, maybe even flirt a little, but then you make it clear that you have no interest in them whatsoever. If you come across as too eager to get to know them, there’s no challenge, and that’s what guys live for,” Maddy said.
“But I’ve been off dating, off men, for years, and my disinterest hasn’t caused men to flock to me,” I pointed out.
“That’s because you really weren’t interested in meeting any of them! You don’t do the flirting thing at all, but just put out strong vibes that you want to be left alone. Men want a challenge, but they want a challenge they can win,” Maddy said.
Now that she’d described her technique to me, I remembered all of the times that I had seen her hot/cold routine—she’d smile, expose her neck, coquettishly touch a man’s sleeve, only to then lose all interest in her target, leaving him a confused, panting, hormonal mess. I just hadn’t realized that she’d been employing an actual method, as opposed to the kind of instinct that I thought came naturally to everyone but me. But if Maddy was right—and having seen her results, I suspected she was—then it meant that the Great Secret of the It Girls had finally been revealed to me. I was finally in possession of the power to drive men mad with lust for me . . . that is, if I could figure out how to stop sending out signals that I wanted to be left alone. Or if I even wanted to.
This reminded me of what Jack had said about having to work harder with me, and how my defenses kept going up, even while I was growing more and more smitten with him. But even if I did need to work at lowering those defenses and letting people in—and clearly, there were benefits to doing this, as I’d tried it with my mother and our relationship was better now than it had been since the day I hit puberty—I still didn’t think that I wanted to play Maddy’s game. I didn’t want to attract a man whose interest was piqued only when he thought he couldn’t have me. It was funny to think back to when I first met Jack, that I’d thought he might be a Chaser. I couldn’t have been more wrong about him. He wasn’t at all interested in games, and just wanted a relationship without all of the bullshit. I felt a tug of regret in my stomach, and closed my eyes for a minute.
“What was the other reason?” I asked quietly.
“What?” Maddy asked.
“You said that you could only think of two reasons why I’d go out with Jack behind your back. Either I resented you—which I don’t—or . . .” My voice trailed off as I waited for her response.
“Or you were really in love with him,” Maddy said. Her words were tinged with sadness.
“Yes,” I said. “I was in love with him.”
“Past tense?” Maddy asked.
“No . . . I do still love Jack, but I told him that unless you said it was all right, we couldn’t see each other again. And I meant it, I haven’t talked to him in almost a month,” I said.
“But that’s why I was calling. I am angry at you, Claire, and it’s going to take a while for that to go away, but I love you. You’ve been my best friend for what—fourteen years?—and I can’t imagine going through the next fourteen years without you. And I’m truly sorry for all of the ugly things I said to you, you know, about Harrison only dating you to hurt me. I know that’s not true, I know him better than that. And I definitely know how great you are. He’d be lucky to have you. So what do you think?” Maddy asked, and I heard her draw in a deep, shaky breath. “Do you think we could try being friends again?”
“Of course! You don’t have to ask,” I said. My throat constricted, and my eyes began to water with tears. “And I’m so sorry for everything. I promise you, I’ll make all of this up to you somehow,” I sniffed.
“Well, I know a good start,” Maddy said. “I think you should call Harrison . . . Jack . . . and tell him what you told me—that you love him and you want to get back together with him.”
“Do you mean it? We would have your blessing?” I asked, my voice catching in my throat.
“I’m not your father giving away your hand in marriage,” Maddy snorted, and then laughed, and I could tell then that everything would be all right between us. “But yeah, I mean it. I want you to. And you and I, we’re okay, or at least we will be.”
“But . . . but . . . the last time I talked to Jack, and told him that we couldn’t see each other anymore, he told me that there were no second chances,” I cried. “He told me that if we said good-bye, that was it.”
“All you can do is try. Be honest, tell him how you feel, and put the ball in his court,” Maddy said.
“I thought you just said that the key with men is to lead them on and
then ignore them,” I said.
“God, no. That’s only if you want to attract a crowd of them. Once you’ve found the right one, the last thing you want to do is play games. This is real life, Claire, not a Jackie Collins novel,” Maddy said sensibly.
And then Maddy and I had a nice long chat, just like old times, catching up on everything that had happened over the past month that we’d been estranged. She’d dumped her boss, and reported that so far the breakup wasn’t affecting her job. She worried that it was only a matter of time before it would, so she’d sent out a few résumés to test the waters, but she was up in the air about whether she should stay in London or return home to the States. She’d also decided to try staying single for a while, which was a surprise coming from the woman who was never without a boyfriend.
“I really went off the deep end after Harrison and I broke up, and the way I reacted kind of freaked me out. It makes me think that maybe I should try spending some time on my own, and figure out what I really want,” Maddy said.
“And I’m just the opposite. I’ve been alone for too long, and I’m tired of it,” I said, knowing that this admission was a big step for me.
“Call him,” Maddy advised again. “Get off the phone with me now and call him.”
“He might not even want to talk to me. I don’t think I’m his favorite person right about now,” I pointed out.
“Call him anyway,” Maddy repeated. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Wait, don’t hang up!” I cried, but she was gone.
I knew that if I didn’t act immediately on Maddy’s directive, if I thought about it too much, I’d chicken out. So before I could talk myself out of it, I called Jack at his office. His secretary answered the phone and informed me that Mr. Harrison was in the middle of a meeting and couldn’t be interrupted. I considered telling her it was an emergency, but I could tell from the steely tone of her middle-aged voice (there was no mistaking this one for a miniskirt-wearing sex kitten; I was guessing she more likely fell in the support-hose-and-sensible-heel category) that she wouldn’t buy it.
True Love (and Other Lies) Page 30