by Janis Thomas
She stands and crosses to her desk, leans over and scribbles something onto her pad. I maintain my composure, but on the inside I’m screaming. Xanax will not help me. Medication will dull my senses and further confuse the situation. I will fill the prescription, because I know Lettie will confirm my receipt of it, but I will not take it.
“How is next Friday at noon?” she asks.
The old woman from the antiques shop—Dolores is her name—comes to mind. She knew the puppy’s name. For some reason, when I recounted my ludicrous story for Lettie, I omitted any reference to Dolores. Perhaps I should seek the old woman’s counsel.
No. I should stay away from her. She will only make matters worse.
How can matters be worse?
“I’ll have to check my calendar,” I say. I gain my feet. The world still sways on its axis, but I am more acclimated to the roller coaster now.
Lettie hands me the prescription and looks at me closely. “I don’t disbelieve you, Emma.”
Yes, you do, I think. And why wouldn’t you?
I disbelieve me.
“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice,” I say. “I feel better.” A lie. I tuck the slip of paper into my purse and head for the door.
“See you Friday, then?” Lettie calls to me.
“I’ll let you know,” I reply, then leave the security of her office and head back out to my nightmare.
THIRTEEN
I cross the street to avoid walking past the antiques store and Paw-Tastic Pets. I can’t handle the sight of Dolores or Charlemagne, not when my head is filled with conflicting accounts of my past, not while shadow images pursue me.
As soon as I get behind the wheel of my car, my cell phone rings. I check the caller ID, and my shoulders spasm in response to the name that appears. I swipe the screen to answer, because letting the call go to voice mail will only prolong the inevitable.
“You bitch.” Owen. “Do you really think you can get away with this?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Owen.” And I don’t, but I manage to maneuver my way through the conversation as if I do.
“You can’t keep her from me, you know. She’s my daughter, too.”
“Only when it’s convenient.” My retort surprises me. I never engage with my ex because I haven’t the strength. Perhaps, with my impending stay at the local sanitarium, and with nothing to lose, I’ve grown balls.
He hisses into the phone. “You can say what you damn well please to the judge. Oh yeah, you can charm him and wave your pay stubs to him and trash-talk me, but Katie’s still mine. You can’t change that, Emma. She’s half of me.”
“Hopefully the better half,” I say, feeling a rush of giddiness at my quick thinking.
“I won’t let you do this, you know. I have a right to see her. I’ve put in another petition.”
“How can you afford a lawyer?” I ask, then let out a breath. “Never mind. I can’t believe your girlfriend is willing to put up the money for another lawsuit. You must make her scream with pleasure, Owen. Too bad it won’t be long before your dick shrivels to the size of a peanut from all the alcohol and drugs and she’ll have to look elsewhere for satisfaction.”
He is silent. I’m about to hit the “End” button when I hear him sigh. “When did you get so nasty, Em? You didn’t used to be this way.”
You knew me in a different time, when my life was bearable and you weren’t a slave to your addictions.
“Goodbye, Owen.”
“Wait!”
I hang up and drop my cell phone into my purse. Katie’s words come back to me.
You said it was all settled and that I didn’t have to see him if I didn’t want to.
A vague recollection of a court appearance suddenly manifests itself in my memory—Owen looking disheveled in an ill-fitting suit, his girlfriend tatted up and pierced and clinging to him like an octopus devouring a mollusk; Colin and me dressed to impress in our professional best, a smart, savvy, expensive lawyer beside us; a heavyset, balding judge at whom I merely had to bat my eyes to win his partiality, and a ruling decidedly in my favor.
This memory might be false, constructed by a feverish mind. But I like it.
I met Owen on a slate-sky kind of day in March, when the rain fell so hard it hurt. I was in the last semester of the graduate program at Montclair State University, vying for my communications masters along with 127 other candidates. The certificate would lead nowhere for approximately two-thirds of the graduates.
I stood outside College Hall, the oldest building on campus, with a malfunctioning umbrella and a mouth full of curses. Owen rescued me with his stalwart brolly and infectious laugh. I needed humor and a lightness of the spirit after my separation from Dante. The best—and worst—thing about Owen McBride was that he was the exact opposite of my former lover. He was a guy from Jersey who didn’t philosophize or aggrandize or fantasize about living a life beyond his meager skill set.
He was in graduate school because his parents could afford to send him. They clung to the hope that the business degree for which he strove would save their precious Paterson pub. His grades were less than spectacular, not because he wasn’t smart but because he had no attachment to his own intellectual enrichment. During the course of our relationship, the family bar–cum–restaurant was forced to close its doors.
Owen was charming in a self-effacing manner. His good looks and guileless appeal concealed a host of neuroses I couldn’t or wouldn’t see at the time. Ours was a love affair that existed in my mind and his trousers. I should have ended it sooner—I knew he was not made of the stuff I needed in a lifetime partner—but his penis and his prowess with that part of himself were a constant enticer. When we made love, passionately, sometimes savagely, Dante was erased from my mind. To be able to forget the love of your life with the thrust of another’s sword can be a powerful drug.
When I found myself pregnant that November—and why shouldn’t I? Even the most fail-safe birth control cannot withstand constant, frenzied coupling—Owen was resigned to do the “right thing” by me. He wasn’t making an honest woman out of me. Quite the contrary—he made me a liar.
We got married on a cold day in January at the county courthouse. The marriage lasted seven months. Two hundred and ten days of Owen trying to drown his resentment with booze and barbiturates and me trying to convince myself I’d made the right decision not aborting the baby. He left me the morning I went into labor, unaware that the pool of liquid on the floor of our studio apartment in the cheapest part of Montclair was the result of my water breaking.
I birthed Kate with my mother beside me instead of my husband. The nurses looked down on me with pity as I screamed and pushed and viciously propelled my daughter from my womb. But I was lucky, I told myself between blistering contractions. I was free of Owen before he could wreak more havoc on my life.
I thought that then. I know better. His havoc infects me even more now.
When I return to Canning and Wells, I toss a casual wave at Mr. Mosely and he gives me a curt nod in return.
Nepal. He went to Nepal with his wife’s ashes. I know that about him. But how?
Wally Holleran stands beside my (Valerie’s) desk. I almost don’t recognize him. His glasses are missing and his skin is clear of imperfections. I can tell by his posture and his grin that he is flirting with Valerie. He sees me in his peripheral vision and immediately straightens and washes the grin from his unblemished face.
“Hi, Emma,” he calls as I approach. “I heard about SoundStage. Totally g-g-great.” The acne and glasses might be gone, but the stutter remains. I remember how his speech impediment tortured him, inspiring slouched shoulders and the refusal to meet another person’s eyes during a direct exchange. Today he seems not the slightest bit self-conscious. “Way to g-g-go.”
“Thanks”—Golly Polly—“Wally.”
Fuck you, Richard. You’re ether.
You’ve been teasing me for five years, Em. I know thi
s is what you want.
It didn’t happen . . .
You like it rough, huh? I had a feeling.
Valerie and Wally are watching me expectantly. Did one of them just ask me a question?
“Sorry. My mind was on something else. What did you say?”
“I just asked if you want me in the meeting with P-P-Peters this afternoon,” Wally says.
“I thought it might be good to have him there to help with the website pitch,” Valerie adds. She looks up at him and gives him a quick smile. If I didn’t know better, I’d guess that Wally’s flirting has paid off. Except that Valerie has a fiancé named Erik with a k, a former college football star and current pool man who lives off her generous salary.
But that was before, when she was your superior. What is she making now? Enough to support the quarterback? Perhaps now she goes home to an empty apartment and drinks copious amounts of wine to obliterate her loneliness.
“It’s your meeting,” I remind her. “If you want Wally there, then he should be there.”
“G-g-great!” Wally says again. He has trouble with his g’s and p’s. I pray he keeps his g and p words to a minimum in the pitch meeting. As if reading my mind, he says, “Oh, and don’t worry about the, uh, you know.” He points to his mouth. “I don’t know why, but it tends to g-g-go away when I’m speaking in front of p-p-people.”
“I’m not worried,” I assure him. I have a son with cerebral palsy. Who cares about a lousy stutter?
I must have spoken aloud, because the two of them gape at me openly.
“Seriously?” Valerie’s eyes are shiny green buttons.
“I’m sorry. That came out wrong. I don’t mean to minimize your challenge, Wally.”
“Not that,” she says. “How come I never knew about your son?”
Because Richard doesn’t exist, therefore he was never here to expose my secret.
“Emma has to get home to her disabled son.”
“Sorry, everyone, but we’ll have to cut this short. Emma’s disabled son has been sent to the emergency room.”
My son’s disability was not a subject I wished to discuss at work. I told Xander out of necessity when I first came to work for him, and he took the news with grace and empathy, patting my hand and suggesting we come up with a code to spare me my coworkers curiosity and gossip. Josh’s babysitter canceled was my signal that I was unable to stay late. Josh is in trouble at school again meant I had to leave that very minute, no matter my current task, because of an emergency. Although Xander was duty bound to pass along all pertinent information to Richard regarding the firm’s employees, I have no doubt that he asked Richard to keep Josh’s circumstances to himself. But Richard being Richard, he could never forgo an opportunity to degrade one of his underlings. Richard fed off other people’s misery.
Not anymore.
“I’m so sorry, Emma,” Valerie says, buttons glistening.
“Yeah, Emma, that’s g-g-got to be tough.”
“I can’t believe you never told me.”
Remorse is a difficult emotion to contrive. Especially since, as far as I’m concerned—and based on my old memories—Valerie has known about Josh from the day she started here. When we’ve had the occasion to converse, she asks after him and periodically sends him a card with a funny cartoon on it. But on this not-real day, this here and now, this alternate reality, the news of my son is a revelation to her. I bow my head.
“Well, it’s not the kind of thing you just g-g-go and announce,” Wally says. “Now is it?”
Valerie’s expression is that of a chastised child. “I just thought I knew everything about her, that’s all.”
“What?” I ask. “What do you know about me?” In this surreal place and time.
She takes a breath. “Well . . . I know that you’re kind and fair, and sometimes stern, but only when you need to be. You never make us stay late. You demand that we give our best because you give your best.”
Kind? Fair? Stern? I am none of these things.
I am insecure, I am desperate, I am unfulfilled. I am resigned to play the cards I’ve been dealt, and I play them poorly at that.
“Your husband, Colin, writes biographies about famous literary figures.”
“And he teaches literature at the JC,” I interject.
“Since when?” she asks, giving me a suspicious look as though I am keeping secrets from her. “I thought he gave that up when you got your promotion.”
I clamp my lips shut to stop myself from contradicting her. “I mean he taught literature.”
She nods, mollified, then continues. “And I know that your daughter, Kate, is going into her senior year of high school and you’re worried about her because you think her boyfriend is corrupting her and also that he’s an ass, and your son . . . Josh . . . well, I just thought he was a typical teenager.”
I allow myself a mental tangent, a fanciful image of Josh as a typical teenager, but I cut the vision short. I will not go there, cannot go there.
“I apologize, Val. My son’s condition is something I try to keep private. I don’t want people talking about it at the water cooler. Josh deserves his anonymity.”
Valerie gives me a solemn look. “I understand.”
And I think she does. Despite having watched her clamber to achieve success within the Canning and Wells hierarchy for the past five years—the five years that happened before my boss-extinguishing wish—I honestly believe Valerie Martin is a good person.
I just don’t know what I am anymore.
FOURTEEN
When I arrive home that evening, the tree is still gone. The front yard looks bare without it, empty. Even the grass looks forlorn without the companionship of the oak’s overbearing roots.
I am desperately clinging to my to-do list. Whatever I’m experiencing, be it a dream, or a coma, a parallel universe, or a complete psychotic break, I need to get through it, and the only way I know how to do that is to check things off my list, one by one.
Workday completed. Check. I won’t think about non-Richard or my newly acquired position that is not new. Prescription filled. Check. I won’t think about the reasons for the prescribed drug or Lettie’s rote explanation for my circumstances or Dolores and her knowledge of Charlemagne, the puppy who does exist but is not barking next door.
As I pull into the garage, I don’t concentrate on the strange and inexplicable, but instead on the mundane: my to-do list and the looming tasks on it. Make dinner. Feed Josh. Pay bills online. Get Josh ready for bed. Read to Josh. Watch TV in bed with the volume low while I track Josh’s breathing on the monitor until I know he’s asleep. One by one, I will accomplish each task and mentally check them off.
The muted sound of Cole Porter greets me when I walk into the house. The melody line is familiar to me; my parents played Cole Porter frequently during my childhood. Every Friday night, they would put a vinyl record on the stereo, drink enough wine to get them on their feet, then proceed to cut a rug across the living room floor.
The music comes from behind Colin’s closed office door. When our realtor showed us the house seven years ago, I was opposed to buying a two story. It was a fixer-upper and the only thing we could afford in the school district we wanted for Katie’s education. Our options were limited, so we decided to make it work. We deliberated about whether to put Josh on the first or second floor. Colin fought for the second floor. He argued that Josh would feel isolated from the family on the first floor and we would feel more at ease with him close by. I had to agree with his reasoning, but I also knew he wanted the spare room on the ground floor for himself.
I pass by the closed door without knocking. I know what the music means. Colin only listens to music in his office when he’s struggling with his manuscript. I hear the music more often lately. If Valerie is correct, and Colin no longer holds his position at the JC, he spends the entirety of his days within the walls of this room, feverishly typing on his keyboard, or, alternately, listening to music when his muse
deserts him.
I wonder how long Cole Porter has been playing today.
As I walk down the hallway, the sound of jazz fades only to be replaced by some kind of techno hip-hop. The living room is flooded with light emanating from a large flat-screen television mounted on the wall above the fireplace. I have never seen the TV before, nor have I seen the raven-haired young woman standing in front of the couch, hopping back and forth on one foot and gyrating her slender hips in time with the music. She holds an Xbox remote in her hand, and I assume that the strobe lights and colored circles and left and right arrows on the TV screen represent a dance game she’s playing. Josh sits in his wheelchair a few feet from her zoetic form. Panic is not unfamiliar to me—I experience it regularly with my son and the many life-threatening challenges he’s faced—but today, panic has been ever present, and I feel it strike me with renewed intensity.
Who is this girl and what is she doing in my living room and what are we doing with a giant flat-screen television and an Xbox console?
The young woman whirls around and stops in her tracks. She greets me with an ice-blue-eyed gaze.
“Oh, hi, Mrs. D!” She puts a hand to her heart and takes a few gulps of air, then collapses against the side of the couch. “Thank goodness you’re here. I was about to have a heart attack.”
“Hi, Maah!” Josh calls, turning his wheelchair so that he can see me. But he doesn’t move closer, as he usually does to accept my kiss and hug.
“Where’s Raina?” I ask, but I’m not sure if I want the answer.
“She left at her usual time,” the girl says. “We’ve been dancing up a storm, haven’t we, Joshy?”
I wince at her use of the nickname. I called my son Joshy until, at nine years old, he told me in no uncertain terms—despite his near-unintelligible speech—that he no longer wanted to be called Joshy.
“Of course, I do all the work, don’t I?”
She is comfortable here, at ease. Clearly, she’s been a constant presence in this household for quite some time.