Jennifer Johnson Is Sick of Being Single

by Heather McElhatton

  Vogue says men will tell you what they like; you just have to watch for the clues. They’ve been trained to keep what they really want subtle to invisible for fear of being clocked in the head with a flying stiletto so they recommend paying attention to your guy’s “stories.” Especially about their friends. Example: He says, “My friend XXX likes anal. Is that weird?”

  Brad isn’t subtle at all. He wants anal bad, and I won’t budge on the matter.

  “It hurts,” I told him. “It’d be like me trying to stick a rolling pin in your eye socket. Is that sexy? No. So don’t ask me anymore. The day I can stick a rolling pin in your eye is the day I let you put your thing back there. That’s it.”

  Elle says the hardest part about capturing a guy’s heart is playing it cool. They insist a girl has to act nonchalant even in the most ardent situations. The minute guys think they have you, they lose interest in you. It comes from caveman days, when men hunted for food and chased after creatures that ran away. The minute they caught it the hunt, and therefore the thrill, was over. So you have to keep the hunt going by acting like you don’t really care, like you could take off at any moment. If you start acting “caught” or, worse, advance on him, he’ll be the one to turn and run.

  So great. While I’m cooking scrumptious meals in the kitchen and being a triathlete in the bedroom, I also have to act like I’m bored. And how long am I supposed to keep that up? For life? Am I supposed to be emotionally detached and generally uninterested when we’re ninety-two and sitting in rocking chairs next to each other on the porch?

  While it’s almost impossible to ignore Brad, it’s very easy to ignore Ted, who’s gotten really moody lately. We hardly talk anymore, but then again I hardly talk to any of my friends. I’m too busy. I’m always scrambling to get my work done, not that it matters because Ashley hates everything I do and has hit a new level of hostile.

  “What’s this?” she shouts at me in her office, holding up the Super Saver coupon book. It’s just this stupid book of nearly meaningless coupons, like twenty-five percent off men’s socks and buy-one-get-one-free pencil cups. We spend about half a day doing the marketing copy, which goes on the front, and in this case says, KELLER’S! COME INTO CLASSY!

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “What’s wrong with it? Are you telling me that I’m showing you this and you do not automatically know what’s wrong with it?”

  I shrug. Why doesn’t she ever call Ted in to yell at him about this stuff? We write all of it together. “I’m sorry, Ashley,” I say, “I’m not sure what to look for.”

  “Why don’t you look for the word ‘classy,’” she says, “and tell me if we did or did not decide to spell classy with a k this year.”

  “Oh, you wanted it to say, ‘come into Klassy’ spelled with a k?”

  “No,” she says. “We wanted it spelled with a k. The entire marketing department. We all agreed and you were at the meeting. No, wait! Maybe you weren’t at the meeting. Maybe you were out gallivanting around on one of your extralong lunch breaks or spontaneous pedicure appointments! Or maybe you were there and your brain just doesn’t have the capacity to retain a single thought anymore!” I just stand there with the coupon book in my hands.

  “I’m sorry, Ashley,” I say. “I’ll try to do better.”

  “Super!” she says. “Just grand. You better pull your act together, my little lamb chop, or you will be out of here. Consider this an official warning.”

  “Seriously? You’re writing this up?”

  She doesn’t say anything.

  I ask her again, “Are you serious?”

  She holds up a manicured hand and shoos me away.

  I sit at my desk and stare at my photograph of Mrs. Biggles. My phone rings. Brad asks me if I want to grab dinner after work and then he asks me what’s wrong.

  “Nothing,” I say. “I just, I got in trouble but I don’t know why.”

  I tell him about Ashley writing me up and what a terrible day I’m having; just like any girl might tell the guy she’s dating. That’s the whole point, right? Spend time together and talk so you can get to know someone? Share your dreams, your troubles, your stories of psychobosses? He tells me not to worry, everything will be all right, and I tell him I’ll be okay. I feel a little bit better after we hang up and I meet Christopher in the cafeteria for lunch.

  We both bravely try the chicken cacciatore.

  When I come back to my desk, Ashley is standing there with Ed Keller. Ted is sitting in his cubicle across the way with a weird look on his face. No one is speaking.

  Am I about to get fired? For all I know this is how it happens. Ed comes down and says, “Get out and remember God loves you,” and then a beefy security officer comes down and hustles you past your sneering co-workers and out the door where you stand on the street, probably never to get another job again.

  “Hi?” I say, like it’s a question. “Are you, are you here to see me?” I’m blinking and wincing as though someone might slap me.

  “We are here to see you,” Ed says and clears his throat. “Ashley here has something to say to you.”

  Ashley’s eyes are locked on the carpet and they do not leave this position at any time. Her voice is low and steady. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry that I communicated inappropriately with you earlier and I promise to express myself in a more respectful manner in the future.”

  Good Christ!

  I look at Ted, who seems equally baffled. My mind races through the variety of possibilities that could explain her bizarre behavior, which include a brain tumor and Ashley’s sudden religious conversion, but then I think of my phone call with Brad.

  Crap.

  Ed steps forward and smiles benevolently. “We value you as an employee,” he says, “and that goes for all of you!” He raises his voice over the tops of the cubicles for all to hear. Of course he must realize every single person in the office has been at their desks straining to hear this interaction the whole time. “No one here should accept disrespectful behavior at any time!” he says. “Not from their co-workers and not from their managers. We’re a company with God at the helm, and we strive to act as he would!”

  That Ed, I tell you, he has claws.

  He pats me on the shoulder as he leaves. “We expect to see you at the house for supper sometime soon,” he says. Then he turns and marches down the corridor, Ashley in tow.

  They go into her office and close the door. They’re in there together for about five minutes and when he comes out, he shuts the door behind him. It stays shut for the rest of the day.

  Brad takes me to his parents’ house for dinner, and he promises it’s no big deal, just “super casual.” Ed is away, so it’s just me, Brad, and Mrs. Keller, which is what I’m told to call her, and unless someone corrects me, what I think I’m expected to call her for the rest of my life. I shouldn’t worry about her correcting me, though; I don’t think that will be a problem.

  Mrs. Keller is a tiny woman and yet she walks into a room like a lit furnace. You always know she’s there; you can feel her sharp eyes watching you and her sharper mind making mental note of every detail she surveys. Details are her thing. She has a short silver pageboy that she sprays into a perfect helmet. There’s never a single hair out of place. She always wears feminine pastel dresses made of highly flammable materials, which flounce and ripple when she walks. There’s an almost forced innocence, a living-doll quality about them, as though she was a seventy-year-old little girl.

  When I meet her she’s wearing a knee-length Pepto-Bismol-colored dress with poofy sleeves and a high neck that doubles over into a wide ruffle so her head looks like a pink Gerber daisy. She tells us to take off our shoes because she’s just had the carpets done and I wish to God I’d thought of this possibility before, because there is the smallest hole in the toe of my stockings.

  Mrs. Keller has a crippled Pomeranian named Boots, who has her back legs strapped into a doggie wheelchair. Boots rolls along with us
as we take a tour, beginning in the immaculate mostly white living room, which looks like a nondenominational church sanctuary. Then we go to the gleaming dining room, which has a table that can seat twelve. We end up in the spotless kitchen, which has every kitchen amenity and appliance invented.

  “What’s that?” I ask, pointing to a big boxy thing. I think asking questions might make me seem polite. “Why, that’s a bread maker!” she says, tapping it with her manicured nail. “Hasn’t she ever seen a bread maker before, Bradford?”

  I was surprised to learn the Kellers don’t have a maid. “But your house is so big!” I say, wondering how on earth she cleans the cathedral windows in the living room, which are two stories tall. “I do all my own housework,” she says proudly, “all the cooking and cleaning. I believe it’s a good mother’s duty. Isn’t that right, Bradford?”

  “Mom’s a great cook. She baked every birthday cake I ever had.”

  “Bradford loves pecan pie,” she says, “but I’m sure you already know that.”

  I didn’t know that. I also had no idea pecan pie was considered a type of birthday cake, or that anyone made it after 1959.

  She busies herself with getting dinner ready. “No point in using the dining room,” she says, taking a dish out of the oven. “That’s for special occasions.”

  I wish beyond all wishes I could ask for a glass of wine.

  “We’re having duck casserole,” Mrs. Keller says. “Do you like duck, Jennifer?”

  “Yes, Ma’am!” I say and she gives me a funny look. She takes the potatoes and carrots out of the oven, which have been roasting in their own special potato and carrot oven-roasting dishes.

  “Jennifer,” she says, smiling over the steaming vegetables, “would you like to help?”

  “Of course!” I say, jumping up and knocking my knee painfully into the table leg.

  “Why don’t you get the butter,” she says. “In the Frigidaire.”

  I practically sprint to the refrigerator. I think the last time I heard anyone call a refrigerator a Frigidaire was on an episode of the Honeymooners.

  I’m taken with not only the number of items inside her Frigidaire but also the fact they’re all facing labels-out. “See it?” she asks and I say yes, but I don’t see it. You keep butter in the door, right? In the little flippy-lid butter compartment? But there is no flippy-lid butter compartment, just rows of short shelves that hold every kind of jam you can imagine and a tall wire rack that neatly holds cans of pop.

  “I guess I don’t see it,” I say, looking over my shoulder, and possibly see her rolling her eyes as she walks over, but I can’t be sure. She shows me the heavy crockery pot on the top shelf, where she always keeps butter, like that’s where any sane person would keep butter.

  After we’re all seated, I’ve already picked up my fork when Mrs. Keller begins to pray. “Dear Jesus,” she says, “blessed Father, blessed be this food and this house and all the people in it, including the people who are in our family as well as the people who are not in our family. We ask that you be with us here tonight, Lord, and to guide us in all our thoughts and decisions. Amen.”

  I open my eyes and half expect Jesus to be sitting there at the fourth place mat. “Is there anything to drink?” I ask meekly, holding my empty water glass.

  Mrs. Keller drops her fork loudly and says, “If it’s not one thing, it’s another,” and pushes her chair back. Brad is oblivious, slopping glops of duck casserole on his plate.

  “Here you go,” Mrs. Keller says, holding an earthenware pitcher and pouring a liquid that looks like rust water into my glass. I take a sip, and it burns.

  It turns out Mrs. Keller makes her own apple cider. The strongest, spiciest cider you ever tasted that doesn’t have a drop of alcohol in it. My eyes water and I nearly choke when I take a sip. “Isn’t it good?” Brad asks, taking a big gulp.

  “Is there pepper in it?” I ask, dabbing at my eyes with my napkin.

  “Family secret!” Mrs. Keller says, eyes glowing.

  Boots stares at me from the floor.

  Mrs. Keller starts asking me questions. She asks me about everything from where I went to school, to whom I’ve dated, to what my father does for work, to my religious beliefs, to whom I voted for in the last election, to which kind of lettuce I prefer.

  “Romaine?” I say, thinking it’s the most biblical-looking lettuce of all the lettuces. I can’t picture iceberg lettuce at the Last Supper.

  I keep looking at Brad to help me, but he seems as curious as she does. I do my best to answer her questions the way I think she wants me to answer them.

  I lie.

  It’s not hard to know what she wants to hear. Not really. You know you’re on the wrong track if she starts zipping that gold cross around her neck back and forth on its chain. By the time she serves us two pieces of strawberry shortcake with big dollops of whipped cream on them, I am exhausted, utterly drained, and I’ve given her every impression I’m a highly religious, politically conservative virgin who wants Brad to join my Bible study.

  I still don’t think I did it right.

  “My husband said you look just like his cousin Ada,” she says, looking me over, “but I don’t see the resemblance at all.”

  I go to the bathroom and press my face against the cool peach walls. I flush the toilet and run the water, even though I wouldn’t dare actually use either for their original intention. When I go back, they’re already almost done clearing the dishes and Mrs. Keller says not to worry, I can do all the washing up next time. Next time. Dear Lord in heaven, there might be a next time.

  When Mrs. Keller is off getting some article on sailing she cut out for Bradford, he tells me he thinks the night was a great success and his mother really likes me. He thinks we should make meals together a regular habit since they’re so close and everything.

  After a round of small hugs and polite kisses, Mrs. Keller tells me how good it was to meet me and how she does hope I can come back soon. “And, Bradford, buy the girl some new stockings!” she says, shaking her head at the hole in my toe. “Goodness. She looks like an orphan from Tobacco Road.”

  We finally escape down Mrs. Keller’s perfectly appointed walk. Then we cross the driveway and follow the short Kennebunkport cobblestone path up to Brad’s back door. It takes about thirty seconds total.

  “Isn’t that nice?” he says. “We don’t even need to get in the car to visit. They’re always right next door.”

  Hailey wants to “really go wild” for her bachelorette party. I’m not sure why I said I’d go. The idea of dancing to remixed eighties house music and slamming girly alcopop like the Buttery Nipple (butterscotch schnapps mixed with Irish Cream), the Kickin’ Chicken (whiskey and Tabasco sauce), and Liquid Cocaine (peppermint schnapps, Jägermeister, and 151-proof rum) gives me a girly alcopop headache.

  Maybe I said I’d go because disasters are entertaining. Ten girls, a rented limo, and my sister in a Life Savers–covered “suck-a-buck” T-shirt? True disaster and whatever happens I want my mother to have an eyewitness account.

  I’m not jealous. How could I be? All the prepackaged “significant moments,” it’s all just built-in disappointment, like Christmas or your birthday. Birthdays are such a big deal when you’re little. Everything is so amazing. You plan for months beforehand and you invite everybody. Every present thrills you; it hardly takes anything to make you happy. Clowns are great, balloon animals are great, grocery-store sheet cake is great, and dollar plastic prizes you get after you smash a piñata to pieces are great. You get so hysterical and crazy running around playing with your friends that eventually you have to be separated from the group.

  Then when you get older your birthday sucks no matter what you do. If you saw a balloon animal or a piñata or a rented clown on your birthday now, you’d just cry and cry and cry. Sheet cake is still cool, but nothing can really completely bring back that feeling you had when you were little of being utterly thrilled, of feeling like you were literally the
luckiest person in the world and this is the best day of your life. When’s the last time you felt like that?

  Maybe that’s why falling in love becomes so important. The hope of it. Because it’s the last standing pillar in the temple of thrill. When you fall in love with someone, it’s your birthday and you are nine. It’s sunny and your parents love you and there are clowns and they don’t creep you out or make you wonder what they did in life to end up a clown; they just thrill you through and through with this radiant green joy that feels like maybe it’s going to last forever.

  I guess I’m jealous after all. Hailey is experiencing her ninth birthday all over again, and here I am trying to poop on it every chance I get. That makes me feel awful. It really does. God help me. The nice side of me is in hell, the dark side is in heaven.

  “We said we would pick you up at six,” Hailey snaps. “Where are you?”

  “You said seven! You did! I was just stopping to get you some champagne!” I hold up the wrapped bottle with a blue ribbon on it, as though it was proof, over the phone.

  “Well, we’re here,” Hailey says, “sitting like idiots in a white stretch limo in front of your ugly house. God, this is a shit-hole.”

  “Did you get the limo with strobe lights? Because those actually can give you seizures.”

  “Well, if it doesn’t have strobe lights,” she says, “we’ll go get one that does.”

  “I swear you said seven. I have the text message you sent. You did.”

  “You suck,” she says.

  “I suck? Who goes out at six p.m.? Are you seventy? Where are we going, Old Country Buffet?”

  “If you don’t get here, we’re leaving.”

  “I’m just pulling around the corner. Seriously. Can you see me?”

  “No, I can’t,” she says, “and we’re only waiting one more minute, Jen. Seriously. You so suck.” One of the girls behind her shrieks, “You suck, Jen!”

  “You suck,” Hailey says, “everyone thinks you suck.” She holds the phone away from her ear. “Okay, group vote!” she shouts. “Should we leave my stupid sister behind or should we wait for her?”