It’s not like Luanne was a bad person, but after staying up all night pouring my heart out to Myra, Luanne kind of seemed like a caricature of a friend. The loud sidekick in a romantic comedy. And when I thought of her that way, all of a sudden, I kind of wanted to high-five myself. I usually felt like the sidekick in my friendship with Luanne. When it comes down to it, you probably aren’t supposed to feel like the sidekick in your own life.
I had to make a choice. Luanne was a big old monkey wrench in the plan. I couldn’t tell her the truth. There was no way she’d ever understand. How would I even start that conversation? And I couldn’t have her showing up at the hotel and risk her running into Myra. These kinds of things always end badly in movies. If Myra did find out I wasn’t Jessie, and Luanne wasn’t there to bear witness, at least when I went home I could pretend none of it had ever happened. And if Luanne didn’t show up, the chances of Myra finding out dropped dramatically.
So instead of saying, “No, Lu, I’m pretending to be this other girl, and if you show up here, you’ll out me,” I said, “You know, I think this is something I need to do by myself, Lu. I mean, no offense or anything. I think I really need to process, you know? To sit with myself or something.” And it wasn’t even a lie.
“Sit with yourself?” Luanne said, with a snotty little cough. “Do you have a split personality all of a sudden?”
“You know what I mean. If you come, I’ll have a fantastic time.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“That’s a wonderful thing, but then I won’t be processing. I won’t be getting over Deagan. I’ll just be putting everything off until later. And I’ll get home and it’ll all hit me, and I’ll be stuck running into him and Faye at Wegmans and hiding in the cereal aisle.”
“So you need alone time now.”
“Cap’n Crunch can’t save me if I don’t man up and save myself.”
“Woman up,” Luanne said.
“Exactly.”
“I get it,” she said softly, and suddenly I felt awful about the way I’d been feeling about her. “I’ll even take care of your cat.”
“You hate my cat.”
“That’s how awesome a friend I am. But I’m watching him at your place. I’m not driving him to the kitty kennel. The puking beast does not enter my car.”
“Lu.”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for understanding.”
“You owe me a spa day. You, me. Ithaca. Wine. Hot stones and a masseur named Sven.”
“Deal,” I said.
We said good-bye, and I hung up the phone. I felt bad for lying, but in reality, I was processing, and if I spent a week at a spa with Luanne, I’d probably need three weeks to recover.
It’s not that I didn’t love Luanne. She saved me from the adult version of the loser table. But she wore me out. And even though I could never quite put my finger on anything she said that was directly hurtful or mean, I always kind of felt like I needed to curl up in the fetal position and cry for a few hours after I spent any significant amount of time with her. Little, seemingly benign comments like “You know, I admire how you wear colors that clash with your skin tone—you’re such a rebel!” or “You look so much better when you pack on a few extra pounds!” all added up to a big feeling of ick.
It was just easier this way. I was sparing Luanne’s feelings and my own. I was sparing Myra’s feelings too.
I brushed my teeth, watching myself in the mirror. I wasn’t used to the hair or the makeup. It was eerie, like watching a stranger copy my movements. I kept expecting the girl in the mirror to stop brushing or spit before I did.
I’d like to say the lying was a new thing, but it wasn’t. When you spend your whole life trying to be good enough to appease your drunk mother, you get really good at telling people the things that will make your life easier. Suddenly it’s less like lying and more like a million tiny accommodations to keep everyone happy.
Of course, nothing I ever did really made my mother happy. But the idea of what could have happened if I didn’t at least try was always completely overwhelming. If my mother got so angry over a C on a science quiz that she slammed the dishwasher closed with enough force to break every glass in the top rack, what would she have done if she found out the truth, that it had actually been a D and I’d cried my way up to a C? I can still remember the exact sound of the glasses when they broke, and how when I cut myself picking the broken shards out of the dishwasher my blood was so red it looked fake. I can remember the way she screamed so loud it made my heart rattle in my chest. But I can’t remember a time when I ever really felt completely and totally like myself. It was easier than it should have been to be Jessie Morgan, because I wasn’t ever really Jenny Shaw either. I never had the luxury of just being me.
I swished some water in my mouth and spit in the sink. The girl in the mirror did too. Then we added a dab of gloss to my lips in unison, and I felt like maybe this mirror person could actually be me. I wanted her to be.
And then, of course, I looked at the clock and realized I was already five minutes late to the conference and had to finish getting dressed so fast that when I raced to the elevator I realized I’d forgotten to do the little hook at the top of my skirt, and the zipper was slipping. I almost lost my skirt right in the middle of the hallway. I held on to it with one hand, reached out with my briefcase to stop the elevator door from closing, and slipped into the elevator. It wasn’t empty. There was a gorgeous guy in a gorgeous suit standing there smiling at me.
“In a hurry?” he said.
“Yeah. Lobby, please?” I hoped that when he hit the button for the lobby I could discreetly hook and re-zip my skirt. But he was going to the lobby and the button had already been pressed. I mean, of course he was. Who isn’t going to the lobby in a hotel elevator headed down? It’s just the way it works.
I thought about dropping my briefcase to see if I could get him to pick it up and to buy myself some zipper time, but with my luck, he wouldn’t pick it up, and I’d have to and would probably manage to drop my skirt in the process.
Luanne was a fierce advocate for picking wedgies when wedgies occurred. She always said that life is too short to walk around with underwear bunched up your crack. I’m sure she’d express similar sentiments about unzipped skirts, but I just couldn’t muster the courage to go for it. Jessie Morgan, I’m sure, would have just zipped. She would have found a way to be cute and sexy about it. But I wasn’t Jessie Morgan that morning. I had to go back to being Jenny Shaw. I held my hand on my hip and tried to make it look like it was just a comfortable and casual way to stand.
“Coming?” Suit Guy said, when we got to the lobby. He stepped out of the elevator and held the door open for me from the outside.
“Oh, I forgot something upstairs,” I said, and pressed the Door Close button with the corner of my briefcase as soon as he let go. I zipped and hooked my skirt, smoothed my hair, took a deep breath, and pressed the Door Open button. I rushed to the doors of the conference room, only to end up standing right behind Suit Guy in the line to sign in.
“What are you, Clark Kent or something?” he said, smiling, when he noticed me standing next to him. “Did you fly back to your room?” He found his name tag on the table and pinned it to his suit lapel. Kyle Scott. Good name.
“Um, no,” I said, looking over the rows of tags for my name. It wasn’t there. “I thought I left my phone upstairs but turns out it was in my bag.” I picked up the tag for Monica Levi.
“I’m Kyle,” he said, offering his hand. He had a great smile and firm handshake. Like Deagan. If you made a spreadsheet of guy types, Kyle and Deagan would end up in the same column. “Monica.” He pointed to my tag. “Nice to meet you.”
“Oh, no,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not Monica. I’m just filling in for her.”
“I guess
I’ll see you in there, Not Monica,” he said, running his hand over his head. He had a buzz cut, not because he was losing his hair—you could see his healthy hairline of blond fuzz—he had a buzz cut, I think, because his face was so gorgeous it would have been stupid to take any attention away from those clear blue eyes and that bright white smile.
“Yeah,” I said. “See you in there.”
I turned to the woman behind the table. “Is there a way I can get a new tag?” She took the name tag from me, pulled the paper with Monica’s name on it out of the plastic sleeve, crossed out Monica’s name, and handed me the pen so I could write my own.
“You might not want to pin that on your sweater,” the woman said, as I put the tag back together again. “It’ll snag. Maybe pin it to your skirt instead.”
I carefully pinned the tag at the waistband of my skirt so my sweater fell over it and no one could read it. Just in case. And when everyone was introducing themselves at the meet and greet, my name caught in my throat every time I introduced myself as Jenny Shaw. Like somehow I was the lie, and Jessie Morgan was the truth.
When the meeting started, Kyle was the one running the first session. He stood up at the head of the table and ran a PowerPoint presentation on the impact of new media.
It was really a conference for managers. Anyone who worked on the front lines and got stuck tweeting for a client who didn’t understand Twitter etiquette, or tried to convince a company that their idea for a blog on whatever widget they were pushing needed to have a personal touch, already knew everything Kyle was talking about. Monica didn’t, but that’s why she had a team of lowly account execs like me.
My eyelids were getting heavy. I made thumbnail sketches of the people in the room, to keep myself awake. Kyle wasn’t bad to look at, but he talked about social media in a very corporate way. He was linear and overly precise. It was all about metrics and numbers and staying on point, like the PR textbook version of social media. Drawing the angle of his eyebrows was far more interesting.
“So here’s the thing,” Kyle said. “There’s a lot of random conversation on Twitter, but if you’ve got a copywriter tweeting for a brand, you have tell them to be specific. Don’t let them take a picture of their lunch and call it a tweet.”
I shook my head and sighed.
“Excuse me?” Kyle said, eyes wide. I guess I’d been more obvious than I’d thought.
“It’s just that—I disagree.” I’m not sure where my sudden outspokenness came from, other than the fact that I was possibly too tired to be self-conscious. “If you have a brand that needs to work on being approachable, maybe you do need to focus on a more personal side. Maybe you set up Twitter accounts for a few key players, get them to tweet about their lives, and throw in details about work from time to time.”
Kyle didn’t say anything. Everyone was staring at me, so I did that nervous thing I always do and kept talking when an uncomfortable silence would have been far more merciful. “Say Jill from product development is working through lunch on a project she’s really excited about. She’s R & D and it’s prelaunch, so she can’t talk about the actual product, but she can tweet a picture of last night’s leftovers on her desk. Maybe there’s a company logo somewhere in the background. She can tweet something like ‘So excited about this new project, I don’t even mind eating leftover meatloaf at my desk.’ Then people will want to know what the project is. They’ll be curious. It’s not a sales pitch. It’s voyeurism. When that project launches, her followers will be interested because it’s something Jill cares about, and they’ve come to care about Jill. She’s commented on their car troubles and bad breakups. She’s not a salesman. She’s their friend.”
Once, in tenth grade, I was so into reading My Antonia in my lap, under the desk, during math class that I forgot where I was and burped really loud. The whole classroom stared at me. Nervous laughs erupted around the room, and I wished I could shrink up small enough to crawl inside my desk.
That’s pretty much what it felt like when I told Kyle I disagreed with his Twitter philosophy. Someone giggled. I felt my face getting hot. But then I thought, Jessie Morgan would have done that. She would have challenged anyone who was wrong, without worrying about what they thought of her. I was right. I had a good point. I wasn’t going to be embarrassed by that.
“I mean, the metrics are good,” I said, holding my own hand under the table, “but you can’t measure warm feelings about a brand. Five loyal customers who care about Jill might get you a lot further than thousands of followers who have already muted you. It’s more of an art than a science, I guess, is what I’m saying.”
There were actually some people in the room nodding in approval, a few even seemed to be taking notes on what I’d said.
“Interesting,” Kyle said, his eyes narrowing into slits as he gave me a sly smile. He clapped his hands together. “Well, you’re still going to have to report back with numbers. Twitter followers may like pictures of lunches, but I can guarantee you that your client is going to want cold, hard numbers.” He hit the button on his clicker and went right back to his PowerPoint, but he called out items on his charts with greater intensity. Jessie Morgan, I thought, wouldn’t even notice that she’d made him angry. I decided to pretend I didn’t notice either.
All day I’d been choreographing in my head what needed to happen after the conference let out for the evening. I thought about going to the pre-reunion cocktail hour. I thought about not going. Confessing. Not confessing. I played out every possible scenario in my head, instead of listening to Kyle talk about social media metrics.
In the elevator on the way back to my floor, I decided I would go to the front desk and leave the Jessie dress for Myra, with a note explaining that I wasn’t Jessie Morgan. I’d ask for a room change—say there was a draft that kept me from sleeping or the couple next door was loud or something like that. Draft probably. That was less embarrassing to explain. Or maybe if I went with the more embarrassing choice, I’d have to say less. I read once that people are more likely to get caught lying when they say too much. They over explain. Maybe if I implied there was crazy sex going on next door, and didn’t say much else, they’d rush to fix the situation and the less I said the better. Any which way, I decided that I wasn’t going to the Mount Si Class of 1999 Pre-reunion Cocktail Hour. It was absurd that I’d even considered it.
When I got back to my room, I put the Jessie dress on, because it was the most perfect thing I’d ever worn, and I wanted to see myself in it one last time, to feel like someone who could pull off a dress like that for one more moment. I turned from side to side, admiring the way the dress swished across my body as I moved, and I couldn’t help but think about Myra, designing the perfect dress for a friend she’d lost. She’d be so hurt and confused when the front desk returned it to her with my note, and then she’d have to put on a smile and steel herself to see her ass-face of an ex-boyfriend and his wife. Or maybe she wouldn’t even go. Maybe she’d be so freaked out that she’d spent the previous night pouring out her heart to someone who was only pretending to be her long-lost friend that she’d just go home and give up the chance to show John what he was missing out on. Maybe she’d cry and have weird mascara tracks on her face and be humiliated. And I couldn’t do that to her. I liked Myra too much.
So instead of dropping the dress off and switching rooms, I called Myra.
“What are you wearing to the cocktail hour tonight?” I asked when she answered.
“Did you see that little black dress in the window at the store?” she asked, not missing a beat.
“Yes,” I said. “The one with the silver thread sewn in? Right?”
“Yeah, I snagged it.”
“John’s not going to know what hit him!”
“Are you getting a cold? You sound funny.”
“Oh,” I said nervously. “You know, airplane air. I always catch som
ething.”
“So, what are you wearing?”
“I was just trying on the red dress.”
“No! Wear that tomorrow!” She snapped into full-on designer mode. “Gray wool skirt, keep the brooch on it. But wear it with the recycled-tie silk camisole. Bring your black sweater, the one you had on yesterday, but only wear it if you absolutely get too cold to go without it.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks, Myra!”
“It’s what I do.”
“See you downstairs in twenty minutes.”
“I’m already here, setting up. Come down whenever.”
We hung up, and a second later she called back to tell me I should wear my hair pinned back on the left side and she had bobby pins in her purse so she’d pop up and do it for me.
“Oh my God, I’m so nervous,” she said, running into my room. “Do I look okay?” She was wearing the gorgeous dress from the shop window and black pumps with silver polka dots and crazy flared heels. She had perfect black winged eyeliner on her top lash line and her lips were shining with a pale pink gloss. Her hair was pulled back in a very high, sixties-style ponytail, and her bangs were brushed to the side.
“You look like a movie star,” I said.
“Thank you! I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, hugging me. “I couldn’t face him otherwise. I just couldn’t. You know, Karen is in Florida and Heather—you know how Heather is.”
“Mmhmm,” I said, standing in front of the mirror and pulling my hair back on the opposite side of my swooshy bangs. “Like this?”
“Almost,” Myra said, digging two bobby pins out of her purse. “I’ll do it.”
I had to take my heels off again, so I was close enough in height for her to reach. She twisted my hair behind my ear and secured it with two crisscrossed bobby pins.
“Crap,” she said, looking in the mirror. “I forgot my necklace.”
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