Such a Fun Age

by Kiley Reid

  “This isn’t just . . . thank you, sorry.” Kelley said this as the bartender dropped off his beer. Kelley reached back for his wallet. “This isn’t just an ex-girlfriend. Alex Murphy is . . . she’s more than just a loss-of-innocence moment. She’s a bad person.”

  “But I don’t work for Alex Murphy.” Emira took her purse off her shoulder and hung it on a hook underneath the bar. “I work for Mrs. Chamberlain. And you’re acting like you guys still talk or something.”

  The idea of Kelley still hung up on Mrs. Chamberlain was slightly entertaining. Mrs. Chamberlain—at her core—was such a mom. She said things like Look at Mama when I’m talking to you, and, Just one more bite, lovey. She bought nonfiction books and used the dust jacket as a bookmark. She ordered diapers in bulk, and when she thought she was alone, she put her headphones on and laughed out loud as she watched clips from The Ellen Show on her iPad. Emira could recognize the fact that Kelley and Mrs. Chamberlain were only a year apart in age, but not to the extent that it put them in the same league of parenthood. Kelley owned nice things, but owning a baby was next level. Emira tried to keep her voice even as she said, “I don’t understand why you care so much.”

  “I don’t care so much. Okay, listen . . .” Kelley sipped the top layer of his beer and bent his head lower to speak to her. “Emira . . . the fact that Alex sent you to a grocery store with her kid at eleven p.m. makes a lot more sense now. You’re not the first black woman Alex has hired to work for her family, and you probably won’t be the last.”

  “Okay . . . ?” Emira sat down. She didn’t mean to sound flippant, but she doubted that Kelley could really tell her anything she didn’t already know. Emira had met several “Mrs. Chamberlains” before. They were all rich and overly nice and particularly lovely to the people who served them. Emira knew that Mrs. Chamberlain wanted a friendship, but she also knew that Mrs. Chamberlain would never display the same efforts of kindness with her friends as she did with Emira: “accidentally” ordering two salads and offering one to Emira, or sending her home with a bag filled with frozen dinners and soups. It wasn’t that Emira didn’t understand the racially charged history that Kelley was alluding to, but she couldn’t help but think that if she weren’t working for this Mrs. Chamberlain, she’d probably be working for another one.

  Kelley laced his fingers in his lap. “I didn’t tell you this before because . . . I don’t know. We were just dating and I didn’t want you to think I was trying to be woke or whatever, but in high school . . . Alex used to live in a legit mansion. It was insane. Some shitty stuff happened where she wrote me a letter that got into the wrong hands, and this group of kids found out about where she lived. They tried to go swimming at her house because it was honestly a country club, but Alex called the cops. And this black kid named Robbie, who I’m still friends with, ended up getting arrested. He lost his scholarship. He had to go to community college for a year. She completely altered the course of his life.”

  Emira bit the side of her nail. “You were there when this happened?”

  “Yeah, we were dating. Until this went down,” Kelley said. “I told her not to call the police. Like—come on, a bunch of black kids on the property and a white girl calls the cops? It was obvious what would happen, but she tried to make it seem like she was protecting the black housekeeper her family employed.” Kelley stopped and took another sip of his beer. “She acted like she was so embarrassed of her wealth, but now she’s still living the same way she did then, and she’s still hiring black women to take care of her family. And I was an idiot at the time. I thought like—Oh sweet, your house has a movie theater and this woman makes you whatever dinner you want. But looking back, it was super creepy. Alex hung all over this woman and acted like they were best friends. This woman even did her hair before school. Alex completely gets off on either having black people work for her or calling the cops on them. I can’t . . . Emira, you can’t be one of her people.”

  Emira crossed her legs. “Kelley . . . I don’t know what to say. It’s a job. Briar hangs on me all the time. And I comb her hair every time I see her.”

  “Alex was a senior in high school. She wasn’t a baby.”

  “But . . . I don’t know. I know it’s weird”—she tried to explain—“but people do pay other people to act like part of the family. That doesn’t mean it’s not a transaction.”

  “Emira, this was different. The woman who worked for them? They made her wear a uniform. At first I just thought she wore the same polo a lot, but then I saw that it said Murphy on it and I was like . . .”

  Emira couldn’t keep it in. When Kelley said the word polo, she dropped her eyes. She let out a sound that was very Mrs. Chamberlain–like in pitch, and it sounded like a very curious “Huh.”

  “Wait . . .” Kelley lifted his hands and rested his palms at the base of his hairline. He looked like he was watching the end of a very close game. “Emira,” he said. “Don’t tell me she makes you wear a uniform.”

  Emira looked up at the water-stained ceiling. She raised her shoulders and said, “Well, she doesn’t make me do anything.”

  “Goddammit, Emira!”

  Emira gripped the sides of her chair and looked at the other end of the bar. Out of everything that had happened that evening, this reaction stunned Emira the most. She wanted to shake him and say, No no no. You’re Kelley, remember? You think videos of dogs who can’t catch anything are hilarious. You take pictures of mirrors you see on the street, and send them to me with the caption, “Hey, A-Mira.” You still put a glass of water by my side of the bed even though I’ve never drunk from it. Not even once. But here he was behaving as if they were alone, in the type of bar that Kelley should have checked in with her about before sitting and ordering a drink. “You need to calm the fuck down,” she hissed.

  “You have to quit,” he said. “You have to. You cannot work there. Holy shit, how did this happen?”

  “Okay . . . I’m a babysitter.” Emira scooted up on her seat to speak closer to him, hoping to lower his volume with her private proximity. “I wear a different shirt at work because we paint and color and go to the park and shit. It’s just so I don’t get my clothes messy, that’s it. This is nothing like the house you went to in high school.”

  “Oh, right.” Kelley had a childish glare when he asked, “So have you ever not worn it?”

  Emira closed her mouth.

  “Do the shirts say your name on them? Or hers?”

  In a small voice Emira said, “I feel like you’re being kind of a dick right now.”

  “This is not okay.” Kelley hit his fingers against the bar top on not and okay. The brown liquid in his glass trembled twice. “This isn’t me having some unresolved high school crush or grudge. Alex does this. She uses black employees as an excuse for her own actions. Not only is she a bad person, but it’s infuriating because you’re incredible with children! You should get to wear your own clothes with people who deserve you. And I know I said I’d drop it but I swear to God, if you released that video from the grocery store—”

  “Kelley? Back up.” Emira said his name the way she said Briar’s when the little girl wanted to open the trash can and look, just for a second. “Now you wanna use this video to shame Mrs. Chamberlain?”

  “Alex shouldn’t be able to get away with this shit. And you would probably get nanny offers from the richest families in Philadelphia.”

  “Cool, that would literally only make you happy. You do realize they’d pay me the same?”

  “Then tell me what I need to do!”

  “Kelley, ohmygod.”

  “If it’s money or a job or if you need to live with me for a bit, whatever.” He listed these options on his fingers. “Tell me what I need to say to get you to leave.”

  “I feel like leaving this fucking bar right now.” Emira grabbed her purse.

  “Emira. Don’t.”

 
Her heels clicked as she went for her coat. Emira heard Kelley’s stool move as he did, and then his voice behind her. “Wait wait wait, talk to me.”

  She opened the door to the bar vestibule, much like the one at the front of the Chamberlain house, but this one was dark and smelled like stale smoke and sweaty shoes. The door outside was heavy and cold as she pushed herself into it. A gust of wind and snow fought her from the other side, and the door closed shut against her shoulder. Emira said, “Fuck.”

  The door behind Kelley closed and then it was just the two of them in this tiny space. “Hey.” He held two fingers to the bridge of his nose as if he were checking it for a break. “Hear me out here. I don’t want to fight. All I’m saying is that you should—”

  “Okay, first of all?” Emira turned to him. She threw her coat over her arm and held it close. “You don’t get to tell me where I should and shouldn’t work. You literally have a cafeteria in your office. You wear T-shirts to work. And you have a doorman, Kelley, okay? So you can one thousand percent go fuck yourself. The fact that you think you’re better than A-leeks or Alex or whatever is a joke. You will never have to even consider working somewhere that requires a uniform, so you can chill the fuck out about how I choose to make my living. And second of all? You were so fucking rude in there! At a Thanksgiving dinner!”

  Kelley leaned up against the wall behind him and closed his mouth. Emira wasn’t finished, and she felt she was finding her thoughts and recollection of the evening as the words and cold found her body. “You’re not better than anyone,” she said, “when you hang up your own coat and take your plate to the trash. I’ve been those girls helping out tonight. I fucking am those girls helping out tonight, and you’re not making anything easier by giving them less to do. It’s like eating everything on your plate ’cause you think someone else won’t go hungry if you don’t. You’re not helping anyone but yourself. But that’s not even the half of it. You’re not seeing the whole situation for what it is. Of course I want a new job. I’d love to make real money and not have spit-up on all my clothes. But I can’t . . .” Emira thought, Oh God. She did what Shaunie called “the ugly cry lip” and looked down to her boots. The toes were wet from melted snow. “I can’t just fucking leave her,” she said.

  Kelley closed his eyes for a full two seconds, as if he’d been punched in the stomach, and had also seen it coming.

  “For twenty-one hours a week, Briar gets to matter to someone and you want me to just pick up and leave? When would I ever see her if . . . It’s not that simple.” Her voice cracked again. Emira shook her head and crossed one knee over the other. They stood there like that for what seemed like a long time.

  “I messed up,” Kelley said. “I’m not—I wasn’t trying to . . . even though it’s exactly what I did, I’m not trying . . . Emira, look at me. I more than just like you.”

  With her coat pressed into her gut, Emira stood frozen against the door and felt her heart beat into it. She said, “Okay.”

  Kelley pressed his lips together. He stuck his hands in his pockets and bent slightly to meet her eyes. “Do you get what I mean by that?”

  Emira nodded and looked back to her shoes. She wiped her eye with her pinky finger, looked up, and said, “Fuck.”

  An hour later, Emira sat in Kelley’s bed. In the living room, Kelley Skyped with his family in Florida and she listened to the way his voice changed from parents to siblings to grandparents to nephew, and then to a very old dog who wandered into frame. Emira grabbed her phone and texted a list to herself. When she heard Kelley say good-bye, she walked with the lit-up screen into the living room. It was dark and the snow sent spots from outside the window over her bare feet.

  “I have things to say.”

  Kelley closed his laptop and swiveled his chair to face her. Emira stood pantless and held her phone in both hands.

  “I know I have to quit,” she said. “I know that I can’t stay there, and that . . . raising Briar isn’t my job. But I just need to do it on my own terms. I turn twenty-six next week.” Emira grinned sadly. “And . . . I’m gonna be kicked off my parents’ health insurance. I’ve known for a while that this wasn’t exactly sustainable, but I just . . . yeah, I need to figure it out on my own.”

  “I completely understand,” he said. “And I didn’t forget your birthday.”

  “I’m not done yet,” Emira stopped him. She looked back to her phone. “Number two. You gotta stop bringing up that tape from Market Depot.”

  Kelley placed his elbows on the desk behind him.

  “Like . . . I get it,” Emira said. “You have a weirdly large amount of black friends, you saw Kendrick Lamar in concert, and now you have a black girlfriend . . . great. But I need you to get that like . . . being angry and yelling in a store means something different for me than it would for you, even though I was in the right. And I get that you wanna stick it to Mrs. Chamberlain or whatever to avenge your high school friend, but her life wouldn’t change at all. Mine would. And I don’t want anyone seeing it, especially as I start to look for a job.”

  Kelley nodded in long, slow dips. “Okay . . . I don’t exactly agree,” he warned. “I remember that night very well, and I really thought you kept your cool much more than anyone would expect . . . but I also respect that. And I won’t bring it up again.”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “Okay, and last thing . . . ?” Emira put a hand to her neck. “You can’t take me to bars like that anymore.”

  Kelley squinted. Then he tipped his head back, and she watched him appear to realize what he’d done, and why she was bringing it up now. “Okay . . . that was another mistake. But if it makes a difference, I’ve been there twice before, and I wouldn’t have taken you somewhere uncomfortable on purpose.”

  “Well, yeah, but, that’s the point. You think it’s comfortable because it’s always been that way for you.”

  Emira and Kelley talked about race very little because it always seemed like they were doing it already. When she really considered a life with him, a real life, a joint-bank-account-emergency-contact-both-names-on-the-lease life, Emira almost wanted to roll her eyes and ask, Are we really gonna do this? How are you gonna tell your parents? If I’d walked in here when they were still on the screen, how would you have introduced me? Are you gonna take our son to get his hair done? Who’s gonna teach him that it doesn’t matter what his friends do, that he can’t stand too close to white women when he’s on the train or in an elevator? That he should slowly and noticeably put his keys on the roof as soon as he gets pulled over? Or that there are times our daughter should stand up for herself, and times to pretend it was a joke that she didn’t quite catch. Or that when white people compliment her (“She’s so professional. She’s always on time”), it doesn’t always feel good, because sometimes people are gonna be surprised by the fact that she showed up, rather than the fact that she had something to say when she did.

  “I don’t know . . .” Emira struggled. “Lemme try to say this. You get real fired up when we talk about that night at Market Depot. But I don’t need you to be mad that it happened. I need you to be mad that it just like . . . happens. I’m also not asking you to boycott places or anything. Mrs. Chamberlain makes a big deal about not going to Market Depot anymore and it’s like umm, okay, the other stores are mad far, but it’s your life. But it’s the same thing for you. Like—I don’t want you to change your life because of me. If you wanna go to that bar without me, whatever. Just try to remember that we have different experiences. John Wayne said a lot of fucked-up shit and I’d rather not stare at his face while I have a drink.”

  Kelley poked his lips out in a way that let her know he wouldn’t forget. “I can be better about that.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can I also just say . . .” Kelley added, “I wasn’t trying to act like you can’t get a new job on your own. I know you
can.”

  “I know . . . well, ha, we’ll see. Maybe I will need your help in case Mrs. Chamberlain fires me or whatever.” Emira shook her head and clicked her phone to dark. “Which she better not. I’m babysitting every day next week ’cause she’ll be out of town till Friday and I need that money like, yesterday.”

  “Emira. If I know anything about Alex, it’s that she definitely won’t fire you.”

  “She might if she’s as bothered by us dating as you were.”

  “No way,” Kelley said. “She would never fire you because it would say more about her than it would about you. Not to mention, now she knows there’s a video of you being mistreated because of where she sent you.”

  “Kelley, she’s sent me there about a hundred times. It may have even been my idea. I’m sorry, but I think you’re the only one who sees it that way.”

  “Okay, fine. But listen, I obviously think you should start looking in the New Year, but for now, your job is safe. If I were you, I’d take the money and show that kid a really good time before you leave.”

  Emira crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the floor. She pictured Briar, hiccuping with each breath, and the way she always pointed to the ceiling when she was about to say something true. Emira pointed her toe on the dark wood floor and said, “That’s an interesting way of looking at it.”

  Kelley swiveled his chair from left to right for a moment. “Do you . . . wanna talk about what I said to you in the bar?”

  Emira bit her bottom lip. Kelley made her feel both extremely grown up and consumed with infantile reactions. Her heart could barely handle him remembering her birthday; she wasn’t going to touch the L-word today. “Ummm, nope.” She smiled. “I had three things on my list. So I’m good.”

  Nineteen

  On Friday morning, Alix woke up before her husband. There was a part of her that marveled that he was still there, in their bed, in their home, as if the previous night’s rift of turbulent envy could have deleted Peter from the equation that was her life. But there he was, very asleep, his face unknowing as it grazed the inside of his armpit. Alix rolled over and stared at her night table piled with books, her iPad, a gold lamp, and a picture of Briar and Catherine in bathing suits, eating watermelon with their hands. Catherine was in a yellow one-piece, but she was too little to sit up on her own, so Peter’s arms were holding her up, his biceps cut off by the frame. Alix’s children looked unbelievably small and innocent, pictured above her resting iPad, particularly because the night before, after her family was asleep, Alix had taken the tablet into the bathroom where she stayed for two hours to search, scroll, and stare at any image of Kelley Copeland she could find.