The next morning Gus called me to his office. My bowels tightened as I crossed the gray speckled carpet, the floating walls smelling of wood cleaner. I crossed and uncrossed my legs, waiting next to Poor Charlene’s desk. I avoided eye contact with the cappuccino machine the way people afraid of heights won’t look over the edge of tall buildings for fear they might accidentally throw themselves off. A few long moments later Gus’s door opened a crack, and I stood. I passed the windows with their king’s-eye view of the parking lot and sat in one of the wingback chairs while Gus finished typing something on his computer. My pulse pounded in my ears.
“Give me just . . . one . . . more . . . second . . . Halley.” He tapped another key. “There.” He turned to face me.
“Oh, you look nice today,” he said, scanning my hunter green shirtdress up and down.
I choked out a “thanks.”
“Did you have a good flight back?”
“Sure,” I said. “Yeah, uneventful.”
“That was some meeting,” he said. “Did you hear about the trouble with our limo?” It may have been my imagination, but he seemed to be eyeing me as if this were some kind of inside joke.
“Yes,” I said.
His mouth formed a wicked grin, tongue flashing between his tooth gap, then flattened again.
“Halley, we want you to join the launch team. I am officially offering you the position.”
I let out a breath. “What?”
I lost some of what he was saying, preoccupied with how to adequately express myself. Should I give him a hug? Shake hands? Was “thank you” enough? Should I gush about how much this was going to change my life, or was that unprofessional?
“We’ll need you to be ready to move in two weeks. Can you do that?”
“Okay,” I said. “I mean, yes, absolutely, I can do that.”
I tried not to giggle like an idiot.
“Do you need time to think about it? Keep in mind that you’ll be taking a risk. We will have to backfill your position here. I can promise you that you’ll have a job when the launch is over, but it might not be a job you want.”
“Oh,” I said. “No, I don’t need any time.”
He continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “If the launch goes well—and we have every reason to think it will—you can have the Level 3 position that I mentioned before.”
I crossed my legs again. Holy shit. I could be a Level 3.
“Of course we have to wait and see. There are others who want that position too.”
I thought of Molly. For certain she’d be jockeying for it. Then my thoughts sobered. “What about Celeste?”
“I know. Well, it was a tough decision. Maybe something else will come up for her. You should plan to bring her over for the final event in Paris next year, to help you on-site. We’ll need all of our best people there.”
I nodded.
He cleared his throat. “That’s settled then. HR will get all the paperwork to you. They already have a new cell phone for you, and you’ll be getting your company car when you move in to your new apartment in France. They’re also working on our visas—oh, did I tell you who else will be on the team? It’ll be you, me, and Darren, of course, plus Max Bateman and Lauren Miller. The company is putting us up in a town called Biot. It’s cheaper than living in a big city like Paris or Barcelona, and it’s close to an international airport. They originally wanted to put us in the Heidelberg facility, but I asked that we be a bit isolated from the rest of the corporate nonsense so we can actually get things done.
“Anyway,” he continued, “HR will talk to you about insurance, shipping your stuff, everything in your expat package. Your pay will stay the same, but you’ll get a cost-of-living allowance and an expat bonus, and Findlay will do a tax equalization for you, so you won’t be paying any more taxes than what you would have been paying here.”
He studied me for a few seconds, then decided we were done here. “If you don’t have any other questions for me, then I’ll see you in France. I leave tomorrow. Travel will book your ticket; just give them a call.”
It happened so fast. I rose from the chair and floated out of his office in a state of semi-disbelief. Even after what I’d done in San Francisco, part of me still figured Celeste would get the job. I wasn’t lucky enough to land an opportunity like this. I almost believed this might be a practical joke, my just desserts for the transportation company thing. Any minute Gus was going to come back out of his office and say, “Heh, just kidding, we’re taking Celeste after all.”
But he didn’t. And suddenly what I’d done to Celeste became bigger. It was more than one betrayal. It was the rest of our lives.
The office looked different to me now. Was it my imagination, or was Poor Charlene’s face a little bit less friendly? The air in the building felt a little chillier. I felt like a dead woman walking, this seeming coolness of the world’s gaze along with the fear and the relief and the anticipation of soon leaving it all behind.
I almost bumped into Baldwin Frank, standing in front of Gus’s cappuccino machine. Chad Johnson stood beside him.
“What are you doing, man?” Chad whispered. “Are you nuts?”
Baldwin didn’t reply, didn’t even look around to see who was looking. With a sure hand, he shoved his Kelley School of Business coffee cup under the nozzle, toggled through the drink options, and pushed a button.
It took me a few seconds to register what was happening here. Baldwin Frank, using Gus’s off-limits cappuccino machine. I wanted to shake him. What the heck was he thinking? Poor Charlene stared at him with the horror of someone witnessing a rape. Chad and I looked away, then back, then away again. Baldwin offered no explanation besides a look of desperate, end-of-your-rope menace. I stepped back slowly for fear I might appear complicit. The coffee finished making with a satisfying “scree,” and Baldwin pulled the cup to his lips and took a sip. This appeared to steady him, and he took another, bigger drink. We stared. And just when I thought he’d gotten away with it, that maybe the world I knew wasn’t the world at all, Gus poked his head out into the hallway, locked eyes on Baldwin, and called him into his office.
“Baldwin Frank just got canned,” Darren said when I saw him in the hallway. “Something about a direct-to-consumer sales idea that lost the company a bunch of money.”
Word traveled fast. “He drank Gus’s coffee,” I said.
“No way!” Darren shouted, then lowered his voice. “Really?”
“I was there; I saw it happen. Poor guy. He had this crazy look in his eye.”
“Damn,” Darren said, scratching his fingers together.
I still couldn’t figure out why he’d done it. Baldwin knew as well as anyone else what the rules were. Temporary insanity? Problems on the home front? I wondered if the whole ordeal should mean something.
Celeste was hanging up the phone when I got back to our cubicle.
“Well,” she said, “the transportation company still insists I canceled that car. Leona says she spoke to me on the phone, and that I told her to do it.”
I didn’t say anything. The fluorescent lights overhead felt uncommonly bright. She turned to look at me.
“Was that . . .” She paused. “Were you just meeting with Gus?”
The area around us went silent and I could tell everyone in the vicinity was listening to us now.
“Yes,” I said.
“What did he say?”
I braced myself, knowing this was going to hurt. My eyes squinted into a sad grimace. “He gave me the job.”
“Oh,” she said, sitting back in her chair. “That’s great. Congratulations, Hal. We’ll have to go and celebrate . . .”
Her eyes narrowed, and she looked out into space. Then straight back at me, realization darkening her features.
“No,” she said slowly.
I looked down at the
floor.
“The car company,” she said. “Tell me it wasn’t you. You’d never do something like that to me.”
The moment was upon me so quickly. My mind wound in circles and I couldn’t think fast enough to lie. If I had she wouldn’t have believed me anyway. She knew me.
“You wouldn’t do that, right?” she whispered. “Halley?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry, Celeste.”
I wanted to take it all back. Everything I’d ever done wrong, every lie I’d ever told, every mean thought I’d ever had, every hurtful thing I’d ever said. I wanted to do some extra nice stuff that very minute to convince her I was still the same old me. I looked into her eyes and saw the sea change, and I knew our relationship would never be the same again, and the seeming finality of it was almost unbearable. I thought of the day in sixth grade when Celeste braided strands of our hair together and made me wear them as friendship bracelets. And sophomore year when her dad caught us trying to pierce our belly buttons in the downstairs bathroom with nothing but a sewing needle and ice cubes. And my first day at Findlay, when Celeste left a strawberry cupcake on my desk.
A fat tear rolled down her cheek. “Get the fuck out,” she said. “I hope I never see you again.”
It knocked the wind out of me. I fell heavily into my swivel chair as panic stabbed me in the chest. It’s astonishing, the human capacity for catastrophic harm. That we can spend decades building grand palaces and then, in a matter of minutes, shatter them all to pieces. Celeste rose from her chair, packed her laptop into her bag along with a couple files, and grabbed her coat.
“You are a fucking monster,” she said without looking at me and walked out. She didn’t say where she was going—maybe another part of the building, or maybe she took some time off and went home—but she didn’t come back. It would be a long time until I saw her again.
13
The night before I left Ohio, suitcases packed and waiting by the door, I pulled my hair into a ponytail, tugged on a pair of jeans and a black sweater. The highways were congested with construction and it took me longer than normal to get out to my parents’ subdivision. Gentry Quarters. The name always made me roll my eyes. If you have to call yourself gentry, you probably aren’t gentry. Two sheriff cars were leaving the subdivision as I pulled in. I groaned when I saw my uncle Larry’s Ford parked in front of my parents’ house. Apparently when she’d said family dinner, my mother had meant extended family too.
Dry, savory heat wafted in my direction when I opened the door, the smell of fried chicken and Lawry’s Seasoned Salt. I could hear the oil popping as my mom dropped the flour-dusted breasts into the electric skillet. I stood by the refrigerator with its plastic fruit and vegetable magnets. The house was alive with voices and feet. My dad sat at the dining room table—which my mom had extended by pushing a folding card table up next to it—double-fisting two cans of Coca-Cola and listening to Uncle Larry’s latest get-rich-quick scheme. Granny, with her hair done up like the top of a cartoon ice cream cone, stood at the counter peeling potatoes and dropping them into a pot of water. Aunt Jo stirred a pan of gravy, because we couldn’t have a meal without gravy. My sister Lindsay peeled biscuits out of a can (the kind you have to tap on the counter and wait, cringing, for it to pop open like a jack-in-the-box) and lined them up on a cookie sheet. My brother Luke was absent, probably in his room playing video games.
“Hey Halley,” Aunt Jo said when I stepped through the door. She put down her paring knife, wiped her hands on a towel, and crossed the room to give me a hug.
“Hi,” I said, sounding more energetic than I felt. “It smells good in here.”
“It should be ready soon,” my mom said.
“Go tell Grandpa you’re here,” Granny shouted. “He’s in the other room.”
“Are you sure I can’t help?” I said.
“No, no, there’s nothing else to do,” my mom said.
I bent down to snuggle the dog, who vigorously licked my palm. Then I shuffled past the dining room table and into the living room. My grandpa snored on the couch with his head back and his mouth open. On the TV across from him, there was some nature show about bears mating. Two huge brown grizzlies were going at it, humping away. I was struck by the awkwardness that would ensue if my grandpa woke up at that very moment, and I walked out.
“He’s sleeping,” I said to Granny.
“What?” she replied. She turned to face me so she could see my lips move.
“Jesus, Mom,” my mother said under her breath, rolling her eyes.
“HE’S SLEEPING,” I repeated, louder.
“Well, wake him up,” Granny shouted.
“That’s okay, I can talk to him during dinner.”
She clucked. “I’ll get him. He needs to take his pills anyway.” She shuffled away, and a few seconds later I heard her say, “Heavens to Betsy, Mert, what are you watching?”
“You r’member that ol’ man, used t’come around with that horse-drawn ice cream cart?” Grandpa asked, pointing his fork at my grandmother. “Only flavors he had were chocolate an’ vanilla, an’ they both tast’d like horse.” He chuckled at his own memory.
“Did you hear about Krissy Taylor, Halley?” my mom asked as she passed the bowl of gravy to Uncle Larry. “Just got married.”
“Good for her,” I said. In ninth grade Celeste took some photos of me for a photography project, and in one of the photos I had my head down, smelling a flower. Krissy Taylor stole the negative from the school darkroom, superimposed a penis where the flower was, and circulated the prints all over school. My parents knew about this, of course—knew that Krissy Taylor was a vicious bully—but they were in denial, as if it was a stain on my character they’d rather believe didn’t exist. Both of my parents had been popular in school, just like my siblings.
“Your sister was invited to the wedding, but she had to go to Justin’s family reunion that weekend,” my mom continued.
“I probably wouldn’t have gone anyway,” Lindsay said between bites. “I’m not very close with those girls anymore; we were only friends because of cheerleading.”
“She married Jason Bunt, so her last name is Bunt now,” my mom said. “Krissy Bunt.”
“I can think of a word that rhymes with Bunt that describes her better,” I said.
“What?” Granny shouted from across the table, straining to hear.
“Halley Marie Faust!” my mom said.
“When are you getting married, Halley?” Aunt Jo said. “Your mother said you have a boyfriend here in town.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I said. “We broke up, like six months ago.”
My mom and sister glanced over at me with the disregard of people who’ve witnessed all of your most embarrassing moments.
“I’ll tell you something,” my dad chimed in. “All a man wants is a woman who’ll take care of him and won’t nag him. You’re a pretty good cook, Halley.” He gave my hand a supportive pat. “You shouldn’t have any trouble.”
“Lindsay, have you and Justin decided where you’re having your wedding?” I asked, changing the subject.
“At church?” she said, like it was the dumbest question ever.
“Oh, I meant the reception.”
She swallowed a drink of iced tea. “Yeah, I think we’re gonna have it at the park.”
I looked down at the diamonds on her ring finger and felt the slightest twinge of envy.
“There’s a place in town where we can rent all the tables and chairs,” my mom said. She smiled proudly at my dad.
Granny pulled a partially chewed piece of meat out of her mouth and fed it to the dog.
“Them Taylors been livin’ up at ol’ Roger Ziebert’s place,” my Grandpa said to no one in particular. “You remember? That ol’ house on the hill? Fixed it up pretty nice, looks like a different place now. I used to go
there an Roger’s mother’d let us pick apples off that apple tree. Place was in shambles back then . . .”
“We’re still looking for the dress,” my mom said.
“She took care of it best she could, I ’magine,” Grandpa continued, “but, you know, after ol’ Herb died, she couldn’ keep up on the yard work. I used to mow their lawn for a nickel. Can you believe that, Halley? A nickel . . .” He winked at me, and I smiled into my mashed potatoes.
“I think I’m going to make most of the food,” my mom said. “Some of the ladies from church have offered to help out too. David said we could use the church kitchen, isn’t that nice?”
Aunt Jo nodded.
“What’s ol’ Harrison up to these days, Larry?” Grandpa asked.
“Oh, he’s still trucking along,” Uncle Larry replied.
“I’m not going to attempt a cake though,” my mom said, stage-laughing.
“I know a woman in Avon that makes beautiful cakes. Cheap too,” Aunt Jo said. “Well, cheaper than most, at least.”
“He’s a tough ol’ bird,” Grandpa said. “I was sure sorry to hear about that cancer. Jus’ sorry to hear it.”
“He seems to be hanging in there,” Uncle Larry said. “They’ve got him on those radiation treatments.”
“What do you know about that, Halley?” Grandpa asked.
“Not much,” I said. “Sorry, Grandpa.”
“Well you better start findin’ out. One o’ these days it’ll be me in there, and I might be needin’ to call you up!” he said with a wheezy laugh.
“Mert, tell Halley about France,” Granny said.
That was all the prompting Grandpa needed to start spinning his yarn. Everyone always said my grandfather had “the gift of gab.” I’ve never been sure whether to be sad or relieved that this gift wasn’t passed down to me.
“. . . Operation Overlord,” he said, “they sent us—‘Ol’ Reliables,’ they called us—a few days after D-Day to take the peninsula so they could capture Cherbourg. Hadn’t slept a wink in two days with all them planes flyin’ over. I was one o’ the guys landed on Utah Beach. Course, after bein’ up ‘ere in England with all them movies ‘n dances, France looked purty shabby to me . . .”
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