The Opposite of Love

by Julie Buxbaum

  “Will do.” White lie number two. I am not ready to tell him that Andrew and I broke up. Like my job, my relationship is a source of contentment for my father; it means that my happiness is no longer his responsibility. I am complicitous in this. Over the years, I’ve religiously followed our single unspoken rule that, whenever possible, I would take care of myself. Being a widower is hard enough without the added burden of having to parent.

  “By the way, I’m going to visit Grandpa Jack on Sunday. You want to come?”

  “Can’t, Em. You know how it is,” he says. “Tell my father that I’m too busy. Things are going crazy at the office.”

  “Will do.” White lie number three. I would never insult my grandfather with my father’s favorite excuse.

  “Keep up the good work, kiddo,” my dad says, and then replaces his voice with a dial tone.

  I crawl under the covers, exhausted, and glance over at my windowsill, empty except for a few photographs. Andrew and I at my last birthday dinner, candles glowing eerily under my chin, as if my face is lit up from within. Jess and I at her sister’s wedding, both of us in purple taffeta and smeared eye makeup. And one small photograph of my family, all three of us together on the front steps of our house in Connecticut. I am wearing OshKosh overalls and holding up my new Wonder Woman lunch box proudly for the camera. It is my first day of kindergarten, and I look fearless. The only thing holding me in place is the second I have to wait for the camera to click.

  Tonight, I leave the bathroom light on and double-check the lock on the front door. I rest in the middle of the bed again and make a few more snow angels. It is a fruitless exercise though, because when I am done moving my arms upward and downward, I end up in exactly the same place I started.

  Four

  How are you?” Jess asks, when I call her back the next morning. Her emphasis on the “are” makes it sound like someone just died.

  “I’m fine.”

  “I’m worried about you.” I picture Jess on the other end of the call, sitting in her hot-pink half-walled cubicle. I bet she’s curling the phone cord around her fingers into elaborate animal shapes, like she used to in college. Though her business cards say she is a graphic designer, Jess gets paid to doodle on a computer.

  “No need to be worried. I’m fine. I broke up with him, remember. This was my decision.”

  “That’s why I’m worried.”

  “Jess—”

  “No, seriously, that’s why. I’ve been thinking a lot about this. You’re probably the best person I know, and you’d never hurt Andrew unless you absolutely felt you had to. I just wish I could make some sense of it all. You seemed so good together.”

  “Jess, I’m not trying to punt here, but can we talk about this later? I’m in the office.” When I first called Jess to tell her that Andrew and I had broken up, I had naïvely hoped she would follow the universal breakup rules and indulge me in some ex-boyfriend bashing. I wanted her to say I never liked that guy, or I always thought he smelled kind of funny but didn’t want to say anything. Instead, Jess’s reactions have ranged from: (a) “But I thought he was the best thing that had ever happened to you,” to (b) “Fine, if you don’t want to marry him, I will,” and (c), my personal favorite, “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  “Okay, I’ll drop it only because it’s before noon and I can tell you haven’t had your coffee yet. But Friday night we’re going out,” she says now, her voice, unlike mine, not deadened by work. Jess’s office has that infectious Internet start-up energy. The potent effect of combining modern furniture, a high-tech latte maker, a pinball machine, and a staff made up solely of people wearing funky glasses.

  “Absolutely.” I wish I could be at Jess’s office right now, wearing jeans and sipping Red Bull. I would be trading one kind of conformity for another, maybe, but her type is still better. In her world, flip-flops are encouraged.

  “Absolutely?” she asks, unable or unwilling to hide her surprise.

  “Yeah, of course. Can’t wait.”

  “Seriously? I was gearing up to convince you. I had a whole speech prepared. Do you want to hear it?”

  “Not really.”

  “You sure? It’s very inspirational.”

  “I’m already inspired, but if you want me to play along, I will.”

  “No, the speech won’t be as good now. I don’t need you to pretend for me.”

  “Seriously, I am happy to play along. Which way did you expect me to go? Too heart-broken to go out? Or too busy with work?”

  “Of course too busy with work. You would never go the heart-broken route. Not your style.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  “Em, maybe you’re not ready for an Andrew.”

  “Please, let’s drop it. I don’t even know what that means.”

  “Can I just ask you one more question? Just one?”

  “Sure,” I say. “Okay.”

  “Are you really fine?”

  “I think so. I think I did the right thing here. For everyone. I really do.”

  “If you say so.” Her tone makes it clear she doesn’t believe me but she doesn’t have the time right now to deal with it. Instead, she talks to one of her colleagues in the background. “You have to make the cartoon’s boobs bigger, and Mark said he wants to see a hint of nipple. It makes them look healthier.”

  “What are you working on?” I ask, grateful for the opportunity to change the subject.

  “A kids’ vitamin label.”

  Five

  Over the next few days, work pulls me under. Carl keeps giving me Synergon assignments, endless, numbing tasks, and I conquer them, one after the other. The monotony and its low, rhythmic hum leave little room for thoughts of any kind. I spend twenty hours each day in my office and do not get out of my chair until my eyes glaze over and pins and needles prickle my feet. I eat all of my meals in this square cell, food that falls from a vending machine, and I litter important documents with their crumbs and smudges. In a law firm, these marks are a badge of honor.

  I do not think about Andrew. Instead, I feel an empty space, a white noise, where the thoughts of him, the memories of him, used to live. My apartment feels like that too, since there is now an overwhelming stillness to the place. The Cheerios are tucked away in the cabinet, my toilet seat is down, Andrew’s pillow is not indented. But I haven’t been home much.

  I leave early in the morning, when the streets are still quiet except for the sounds of garbage trucks taking away the trash. The few other people who share the city blocks with me at this hour walk with their heads down and their collars up. We all look guilty. Just before dawn, when I leave the office, I take a car with tinted windows home. I look out and blindly watch as the city passes in a dark blur. I climb into bed, my head too numb to notice Andrew’s absence, and sleep for just a couple of hours before I start all over again.

  There is a part of me that relishes the bags under my eyes, the fact that my body is sore from lack of exercise. I find myself saying things like “I might bill close to three hundred hours this month,” or “It looks like it’s going to be another all-nighter,” to my fellow colleagues when I pass them in the hallways to and from the bathroom, as if this is something to be proud of, this self-flagellation. I like to think they are a little in awe of my dedication, but I know better.

  I convince myself that I am having fun playing big lawyer in the big city—working all hours, surrounded by a ringing phone and day-old pizza crust. That I am reveling in this life of a caricature.

  But that would be a lie, because the truth is that I don’t really feel much of anything at all. Just a dull ache around my edges.

  “Ready?” Mason says, as he knocks on my door and takes a shocked glance around. My office, which is usually reasonably tidy, looks like the scene of a hit, as if the perps trashed the place to make the homicide look random. I can also tell he notices the stale smell in the air, from last night’s dinner and probably because I haven’t showered i
n a few days, but he is too polite to comment. Mason looks out of place here, his hair still wet and neatly combed.

  “Ready for what?”

  “Lunch.” Mason fixes the cuff of his shirt, as if my messiness is contagious.

  “Oh, can’t. Sorry. Forgot. Too much to do. I may bill close to three hundred hours this month,” I say, because those seem to be the only words I know how to put together into a sentence.

  “Shut up. You sound like Carisse. Now get that adorable ass of yours out of that chair. We’re going out. And by the way, you look and smell like the gift Rambo left for me last night.” Rambo is Mason’s basset hound; all jowls and drool. Guess Mason is not so polite after all.

  “Thanks.”

  “Come on. We’re going to Charlie’s. And you’re getting that steak you’re always talking about.”

  He leads me out the door with his hand on the small of my back, and his movements follow his speech, both commanding and lazy. He’s from Texas, and despite spending the last decade above the Mason–Dixon Line, he hasn’t let go of that slow, sensual Southern pace. I melted the first time he called me “darlin’,” but now I don’t notice so much anymore. I sometimes look at Mason, though, and his oversize hands, and think, The only cowboy left in New York.

  I follow him out of the office, and he leads me into the sunlight, which burns my eyes, and then, mercifully, back into the darkness again. Charlie’s has chocolate-brown leather booths, wood-paneled walls, and waiters in green felt jackets. It screams, Men eat steak here. I love everything about it: the small groups of businessmen with their shirtsleeves rolled up, digging into plates of ribs; the generous amount of olives that come with a martini; Charlie himself, who stands behind the bar and greets some of the customers by name.

  Mason sits down across from me, falling heavily into the booth. He likes to take up a lot of space, and he spreads himself out along the bench. I think it is his way of expressing his masculinity, this elaborate unfolding of his arms and legs, long and muscular.

  “Heard you’re working on the Synergon thing. My condolences,” he says.

  “It’s not that bad.”

  “Right. No, really, what’s up with you lately? Normally I have to kick you out of my office so I can get some work done, and now suddenly you’re billing like a maniac.”

  “Yeah, well, you know what it’s like working for Carl,” I say. “I’ve been very busy.” I wonder if I have to tell Mason that Andrew and I broke up. I feel as if saying it out loud, especially to him, will make it more real, more official. I have always gotten the feeling that he never liked Andrew, and telling him now feels something like a betrayal.

  I practice in my head a few times. Andrew and I broke up. I broke up with Andrew. These descriptions seem imprecise. Not exactly right. The truth is I broke Andrew and me. I broke us.

  “I broke up with Andrew,” I say, out loud.

  “I see,” he says, as if he needs a moment to figure out what to say next. Unlike my other friends, he doesn’t jump into apologies or bombard me with expressions of sympathy.

  “What happened?”

  “He was getting ready to propose.”

  Mason nods, as if there is nothing more to be said. As if he knows me, and this makes perfect sense. As if I am not crazy. On the other hand, it may just be his male impulse not to talk about these kinds of things.

  “Let’s order.” He signals one of the waiters over, and it seems, at least for now, like the conversation is over.

  “For me, the bacon double cheeseburger and a basket of onion rings. And for the lady, the twelve-ounce tenderloin. And please give her extra fries, ’cause she needs ’em,” he drawls, and then smiles up at the waiter. “She just gone and broke some poor man’s heart.”

  Andrew does not come up again for the rest of lunch. We chat about everything else, though. We talk about work, about Carl, about Rambo. We talk about Laurel, Mason’s current girlfriend, who recently made a copy of his keys without asking. By the end of the meal, I am nourished by the conversation as much as the food. When we leave Charlie’s and walk back out into the light, the sun feels good too, warm against my eyelids.

  I almost feel normal.

  The funk of my office hits me as soon as I walk in. I vow to go home early tonight, get a good night’s sleep, perhaps take a long bath to soak away the residue. I am refreshed just thinking about it, until I see Carisse standing in front of my desk. She looks like a bobble-head doll, the cranium of Cro-Magnon man balancing on toothpick legs. She dives right in. Teeth first.

  “Heard Andrew broke up with you. That sucks. He was a hottie.” Who uses words like “hottie” after the ninth grade? I consider correcting her, that I, in fact, broke up with Andrew, but realize with a flush of pleasure that I don’t care what she thinks.

  “You should probably put that away, then.” Carisse goes right for my jugular, pointing to the framed photo I keep on my desk of Andrew and me. In the picture, we stand shoulder to shoulder and hold hands, muddy after a camping trip in New Hampshire last summer. I had not yet decided what I was going to do with the picture. It felt wrong, somehow, to hide it in the drawer. Like throwing away exculpatory evidence.

  “I guess.” I must look sad, because Carisse actually smirks at me, as if we are playing tennis and she has just scored a point. Her thin lips slightly curl under, like a comic book villain, and I wonder if I smack her upside the back of the head if her face will stick that way.

  She waits a beat, as if we are friends and she expects me to confide in her. When it becomes clear that I am not going to, she drops a huge file on my desk. Did she think we were going to have a heart-to-heart and that I was going to cry on her shoulder? If I did, would she take the file back?

  “Carl wants you to write a motion to compel and to send me the first draft. All of the information is in there.” She starts to walk out of my office, tugging on the hem of her gray pencil skirt, which, like her heels, is at least four inches higher than what is office appropriate. She stops and looks back, as if she has an afterthought.

  “I need it by nine a.m. tomorrow morning.”

  Game, set, match.

  After Carisse leaves, the stink of her perfume remains. I look at the file and realize she has left me with about fourteen hours of work.

  I do a shoddy job. The only reason we are filing the motion is to force the other side to waste legal fees, which does not seem like a good enough reason for me to lose another night’s sleep. Even though I write as quickly as possible, I don’t finish until well after midnight.

  Before leaving the office, I set the e-mail attaching the document for a late delivery to Carisse. Four-thirty a.m. Serves her right for bragging that she sleeps with her BlackBerry under her pillow. I imagine Carisse twitching awake when my e-mail arrives. The loud beep making her drool like a Pavlovian dog.

  At least we’re playing a new game now. Fifteen–love.

  Six

  I am wearing white after Labor Day. I don’t care. Just arrest me and get it over with,” Jess says on Friday night, and by way of greeting, puts her hands out to be cuffed. She prances through my apartment door in a white halter top with a yellow ribbon that ties around her neck and tight white pants. An outfit only about three people in America can get away with. Jess happens to be one of them. “Anyhow, Vogue says that it’s totally allowed nowadays.”

  “Since when do you read Vogue?”

  “I don’t. I just made it up,” she says. “Did you believe me?”

  “No,” I say, and smile. Jess would never pick up Vogue. It would never occur to her to look at pictures so she could dress like other people. I, on the other hand, dress to blend.

  “All right, missy. Let me get a look at you.” Jess manhandles me toward the full-length mirror. She grabs my makeup bag and starts to paint my face, adding a lot to the little I have put on. Since we have been doing this routine for years, Jess knows my limits by now—just how much color I will allow, just how much makeup pushes me from feeli
ng attractive to pathetic—and stays within bounds.

  We have developed a division of labor. She is my personal stylist and interior decorator. I am her tax accountant.

  Jess takes a wand from her bag and dots glitter above my eyes. I immediately look more awake. Just before we leave, we stand side by side in the mirror and take pleasure in the fact that we are physical opposites. She is tall and angular, with sharp corners for elbows and knees. My edges are rounder, curvier; my bones comfortably padded. She has blond, almost white hair, kept close to her scalp, uneven enough to make it obvious she cut it herself. My hair is so dark it bleeds in photographs, and hangs long and wavy. When we walk into a bar, men immediately turn to get a better look at her. I tend not to be picked out from a crowd. I’m occasionally noticed, recognized over time. I don’t mind, really. Men who are interested in a woman like Jess won’t be interested in me, and vice versa. For all intents and purposes, we are different species.

  We have a couple of glasses of Two Buck Chuck while we get ready, so by the time we are outside I am feeling lighter. Jess tucks her arm under my elbow, and we teeter on our heels as we head farther downtown. For a moment, it feels like we are back in college, giggly and full of optimism. A spectacle, regardless of whether anyone bothers to look.

  “Have you spoken to Andrew?” she asks, and my lightness deflates.

  “Nope. He is definitely not going to call me.” I shrug, like it is out of my control. Like she didn’t just kick her heel right through my bubble.

  “Maybe you should call him.”

  “Nah. To say what?”

  “I don’t know. You miss him, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been way too busy at work this past week to even think about it.”

  “Why do you keep doing this to yourself?” She stops walking to turn to look at me on the sidewalk.

  “Doing what?”

  “You’re your own worst enemy. It’s like you get pleasure out of breaking your own heart.” She shakes her head at me, as if I’m amusingly incorrigible, like I’m an old man telling a dirty joke.