by Erica Katz
I nodded slowly. I appreciated her willingness to act, but I felt too defeated to get fired up. “Look, to be honest, Peter Dunn is the least of my worries these days. He didn’t force me to do anything.”
“Alex, are you kidding me? First of all, partners can’t just sleep with associates. Second, what does ‘consent’ even mean when the power dynamic is so screwed up? Did you ever consider what would happen if you turned him down? Or tried to end it? It’s sexual harassment if you even need to think about those things. When I overheard your conversation with him, I never wanted to speak to him again—but I’m on an active matter with him, so I have to. I have to be deferential to him because he’s my boss, in a way. It’s all sorts of fucked up.”
“I did end it with him. And he has been retaliating,” I said aloud before I realized it, then shook my head. “I’m sorry, but this doesn’t feel like harassment.” Granted, my baseline had shifted wildly in the past few weeks. “But if you feel harassed, you should say something. Be careful, though. Think about what you want out of this, because—”
“I want Peter gone, and I want an equal playing field so I can try to make partner without being made to compete with my best friend at the firm, or feeling like I need to go to strip clubs just to get staffed on deals.” She had raised her voice and was gesticulating wildly. I sat calmly, watching her, thinking that hers was the reaction I should have been having. Something was wrong with me. What had happened to me couldn’t be undone. I’m damaged goods, I thought.
“I totally agree, Carm, but I think you need to consider that this is a business,” I said. “And Peter Dunn has the most lucrative list of clients at the firm. They’re not going to fire him. We’re more disposable than he is. They’ll offer you money to leave, and he’ll stay.”
“I’d never take it!” she hissed.
“Look, I’ve got a lot going on. Can I think about it?”
She’d gotten up and was pacing by her window. “Of course. But I’m going to management on Monday.” It was Wednesday. “I can’t stand it anymore.” She stopped and placed her hands on her hips, her back to me, searching the city for answers.
“I understand,” I said, and she turned around.
“I think we both have stories that need to be told,” she said firmly, then approached me and flung her arms around me in an uncharacteristic display of physical affection. “I hope you do the right thing.”
I nodded, and she loosened her embrace, freeing me for a hasty escape.
Chapter 24
Carmen lasted until nine o’clock on Thursday evening before calling my office, presumably to press me for an answer. I ignored her call, silencing the ringer and letting it go to voice mail, before heading out to work from home and avoid a potential drop-by from her. Though I’d been trying to weigh the pros and cons of her offer, I knew I had no real intention of reporting my affair with Peter. I had wanted him, had even initiated at least one of our encounters—but more importantly, it wasn’t high on the list of battles I knew I should currently be fighting.
As soon as I stepped out into the marble lobby, the night sky cracked open with a bolt of lightning and the sound of a downpour reverberated through the walls. I looked back at the closing elevator doors and contemplated heading back upstairs to get an umbrella, but then I remembered that Lincoln always kept a few on hand. The security desk was empty, but I spotted him a few paces away, heading out of the building for a cigarette.
“Lincoln! I’m grabbing an umbrella, okay?” I shouted, and he threw me a thumbs-up as he stepped outside and under the awning. As I reached into the brown cardboard box under his desk for a Klasko-branded umbrella, I noticed a new column of moving images on one end of the screen, labeled “56th Floor.” I leaned closer to the screen and noticed the bare floors and the scaffolding I’d seen the night of the keg party, plus the yellow caution tape around the exposed elevator shaft, and . . . I leaned in closer. She just stood there, looking down. She wasn’t moving. I thought for a moment she might have been praying. I squinted at the grainy image, less clear than the ones on the other screens because of the lack of light on the floor. Shoes? Were those shoes? My spine snapped into a straightened position. Shit. I dropped my bag at the security desk and ran to the elevator bank, where I pushed the up arrow five times fast then held it down. C’mon c’mon, I prayed silently.
When the elevator finally came, the ascent to 56 felt like an eternity as my thoughts raced. Fuck. I don’t have a plan. What am I supposed to say? I’m not qualified to handle this. Maybe I should make up a reason to be there so I don’t embarrass her. I ripped my pearl earring out of my ear and held it in my palm, my idea just beginning to take shape.
As the metal doors opened, I saw her before she saw me. She was standing in the darkened room, lit only by the city lights surrounding our building, peering out into the unfinished elevator shaft at the far end of the floor, her bare toes hovering at the edge of the precipice, and crying. I narrowed my eyes, hoping to find evidence that what I feared was happening wasn’t actually happening. But instead, I saw her shoulders shake slightly, and I heard the echo of her soft weeping even from the other side of the room. Calm. Calm. Be calm, I told myself. Don’t make any sudden movements. The last thing I wanted to do was make her lose her balance.
I felt her register my presence, and I immediately dropped to my hands and knees, focusing on the floor as I crawled toward her, my hands patting the ground in front of me as the concrete dug into my kneecaps.
I looked up slowly, as if I was just noticing her in that moment. “Nancy. I’m so glad you’re here. I lost my earring earlier when some of us came up to scout office space. Can you help me? I’m sure it’s here somewhere.” She turned only partially to me before taking one more longing look fifty-six stories down into the dirt floor below Fifth Avenue. For a moment, I panicked that she would do it. “Please,” I begged, “can you help me?” I stretched my arm out to her, my voice breaking.
As she took a step away from the edge and toward me, then sank onto her hands and knees, I let go of the earring in my fist. Leaving it on the ground, I continued past it. I snuck a few glances at Nancy’s tearstained face as we inched past one another, moving like two toddlers.
“I got it!” she declared, sitting back on her calves.
“Oh my god! Nancy! You’re amazing! You’re a lifesaver!” I took the earring from her hand and hugged her close to my chest. The tension in my spine released, and I sank into her, realizing that tears were now streaming down my face too. “I’m so glad you’re here,” I said into her hair. “So glad,” I repeated, barely above a whisper.
She began to cry again, covering her face with her hands as I sat cross-legged on the floor and rubbed her back.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I finally asked. There was a long pause, and Nancy looked everywhere but at me. Her gaze finally rested on her bare feet.
“Sometimes I don’t want to be here,” she said quietly. “I don’t fit in here. I’ve never fit in—my whole life I’ve never fit in. Anywhere. You don’t understand. Everything is so”—she lifted her eyes to mine and held out her palms, as though waiting for the correct words to fall into them—“easy for you.”
I sat back for a moment, the concrete digging into my backside. “This year is hard for everybody. Even me.” I shrugged, putting the earring back into my lobe. “I just wear the struggle differently. We all do. But we’re all feeling the pressure. It will get better. Things always do. Nothing is forever.” This was a horrible don’t-kill-yourself speech. “I’m a disaster right now, by the way. Our clients are pigs, my closest friend at the firm and I slept with the same guy, and my boyfriend and I broke up a couple months ago and you’re the first person I’m telling about it. We come to work in skirts and heels, but it’s all just a costume to keep people from seeing how messed up we are.”
Nancy stared at the floor as I spoke, then finally looked up.
“You should see somebody if you feel like you don’
t want to be here,” I continued. “Will you do that?”
She looked over at her shoes and blushed, realizing that I knew what she had been doing on the vacant fifty-sixth floor. She nodded, locking her eyes with mine so I knew she took my request seriously.
“I really am so glad you’re here,” I reiterated, my voice and the meaning of the words in the broader, more mortal sense not lost on me. “This place can be super lonely. Which is weird, I know, because we’re in an office surrounded by people. But we all feel alone. I’m always here for you. For whatever. Even if you just want to walk around the block.”
“Maybe we could just . . . get dinner every once in a while?” she said sheepishly.
I brought Nancy down to my office, where I prattled on about how I’d gotten mixed up in a romantic relationship with somebody at work and how it ruined my relationship at home, how Sam had packed and left. It felt cathartic to share my mistakes with her, though I didn’t feel like I could let her in on the dark pockets in my mind that Gary had left in his wake. And Nancy, while she was sympathetic, was clearly comforted by the knowledge that I was not remotely as together as she had thought.
“Jordan was my first boyfriend,” she finally blurted out. I looked at her, slightly confused. “I know he’s married. And that we weren’t really conventionally dating . . .” She stopped and laughed nervously. “You wouldn’t understand.”
I took her hand from across my desk. “I might.”
“Why are you so nice to me? Even after you heard me say that awful stuff about you in the bathroom? I still feel terrible about that.”
I shrugged. “People say and do awful stuff all the time. I figured you were just doing it to fit in with those girls.”
“I was. But that’s no excuse.” She bit at a hangnail.
“I guess,” I said. “But don’t beat yourself up. This place is one big excuse for people to behave badly.”
An hour later, when I was sufficiently certain she had calmed down, and she had refused multiple offers to sleep over at my place or have me on her couch, I settled for calling her a car. We traded numbers, and she assured me she would be okay and that she would call me if she wasn’t. On my way home, I checked on her twice via text, and she called me to say good night. Though I felt racked with anxiety that I’d made a mistake in letting her go home alone, I could only watch the clock until, around four in the morning, exhaustion overtook me.
I woke on Friday to silence, allowing it to seep in for a moment before lunging toward my nightstand to see if Nancy had written me. She had. As I opened her message of thanks plus a promise that she’d stop by my office that day, I finally indulged in my tears, knowing they were coming from so many tender and painful places inside me.
I so badly didn’t want to need my family right then—but I did. I dialed their landline from my “Favorites” list and attempted a lighthearted “Hi!” when my dad picked up.
“Hi, sweet pea! What’s cookin’?” he boomed into my ear, oblivious to my emotional state.
“I was thinking of coming home tonight for the weekend. Just to get out of the city. Work has been really crazy. I need a break. If you and mom don’t have plans . . .” I trailed off, wiping away my tears with the back of my hand.
“What a great idea! Your mother and I have no plans. I’ll scoop you and Sam from the train whenever you give me the word. And guess what—our internet is fixed!”
“Sam can’t come,” I said quickly. “I’ll call you as soon as I know which train I’m on.”
I pushed a roasted carrot around my plate before pushing my fork prongs into it but making no movement to lift it to my lips. I felt both my parents watching me, expecting me to explain my dark mood and sunken cheeks, but I wasn’t ready.
“How’s the hospital?” I asked my father instead.
“Good! Good good. Busy,” he said, shaking his head as if disagreeing with himself. My mother looked at him worriedly and turned to me with an empathetic frown. “Your father had a really sick patient today,” she explained.
My dad put his elbows on the table. “My patients are all really sick. Otherwise they wouldn’t need an oncologist,” he said, as though reminding himself as much. I watched his eyes scan the table and linger at the bread basket before he opted for more salad.
“Sorry, Dad,” I said. He shrugged and forced a smile. I attempted to recalibrate my own problems, but they somehow weighed just as heavily on me. I turned back to my food.
“How was your day, honey?” he asked my mother.
“Great!” she said brightly. “We finally raised enough money for the new children’s wing at the library. I think it’ll have a bunch of optional classes to offer as well. And we’re going to have a whole room devoted to Legos and computers with virtual city software. So important for kids to be able to build things.”
My father looked at me. “And who better to oversee that room than your mother?” he asked proudly.
“Why? Because you have an architecture license?” I said to her. One she never used. However dysfunctional, abusive, misogynistic, and unbalanced my short tenure in corporate America had been so far, I still disagreed with my mother’s path, giving up her career to be a housewife.
My mother stared at me.
“Because she is an architect! Still certified,” my father interjected.
“I don’t need the license to do this. I just love the idea of children building something tangible.” She placed a forkful of salmon in her mouth and chewed calmly, though I knew I was trying her patience.
“The salmon is especially good tonight, Mom,” I said, and gestured to the platter. She smiled softly at me, accepting my apology.
At eleven o’clock, an hour after my parents had gone up to bed, I was halfway through Terms of Endearment on cable and two-thirds of the way through a box of Kleenex. I lay on the same couch on which I’d had my first kiss, and on which the recipient of that kiss had later broken up with me, proving to me that the fist-sized muscle in my chest could actually break. The cushion beneath the tan leather was still molded perfectly to my form, and the faux fur throw was just heavy enough to weigh me down comfortingly. When I heard a noise in the kitchen, I pressed pause and wrapped myself in the blanket to check it out. Only the refrigerator light illuminated my father’s frame as he stood contemplating the contents of the Tupperware containers stacked on the lowest shelf while shoving a croissant in his mouth.
“Gotcha,” I said with a laugh.
He jumped back as he covered the K&F symbol over his heart with his hand, croissant still shoved in his mouth. “You scared me!”
“Hungry?” I gave him a sideways smile.
He rolled his eyes. “I try to eat just a little out of every container so your mother can’t tell that anything is missing. But I forgot I could blame the missing food on you this weekend,” he said. “Sit with me for a second, sweet pea.”
Still draped in tan fur, I took a seat at the kitchen table as my father stacked four containers of Tupperware in his hands and made his way over to me.
“Your mom is the best cook,” he said, putting a slice of cold turkey on his plate and squeezing out a dollop of ketchup next to it. “You know, when I first married her, she couldn’t boil water.”
I nodded, allowing the familiar story to ease my mind.
“The first meal she cooked for me was lamb roast,” he went on. “I swear I chewed my first bite for ten minutes, and it was still just sitting there in my mouth.”
I giggled, and he leaned in closer to me, studying my face.
“Are you crying?” he asked, squinting into the dim light. I wiped at my cheeks.
“Terms of Endearment,” I explained, nodding toward the den.
“Ah, you love the tear-jerkers. You’re just like your mother.”
“I’m not,” I whispered.
“You are,” he said, not arguing so much as correcting me. A wave of sadness snuck in under my blanket. My father watched me patiently for a minute before reachi
ng out and taking my hand in his, and I burst into tears.
The words tumbled out of my lips before I could stop them. “Sam and I broke up. He moved out. And work is a mess right now. It’s too much.”
“Oh, sweet pea. Your mother and I thought that might be the case. I’m so sorry.” He scooted his chair next to mine and put an arm over my shoulder. I threw my arms around him, and he rubbed my back over the blanket as I allowed myself the comfort of his embrace.
“You and Mom knew?” I asked, pulling back. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“We didn’t know, but we wondered. Sometimes people need to share things in their own time.”
I sobbed harder. “Mom must be so mad. She loves Sam,” I managed to say.
My father stared at me. “Your mother loves you, Alex. You should talk to her about this.”
“I can’t. She doesn’t understand my life at all!” I cried. “She quit her job when she had me. I broke up with my boyfriend mostly because I work too much and don’t have time for him. And my stress is all . . . work-related. She wouldn’t understand at all.” I was wiping my tears away with my palms now.
“Enough, Alexandra. Enough is enough.” His voice was harsh.
I looked at him, shocked at his rare angry tone.
“Do you remember any of your nannies?” he continued.
I blew my nose and nodded, indulging him, though I had no idea where he was going.
“What about Ada? Remember her?” he prodded.
“Of course.” The memory of a large bosom and the smell of pierogis wafted over me, and I smiled despite myself.
“Do you remember why she left?”
I squinted to bring the scene into focus. There was a storm. I was in a tree with an umbrella, trying to fly. Then there was a white bone jutting out of my right leg as I lay, crumpled and crying, on the ground. I didn’t quite understand why he was reminding me of a time I’d misbehaved. “Was I a bad kid?”