The Bucket List

by Georgia Clark

  “When?” he asks.

  I’m breathless. “End of this month.”

  “Oh.” Cooper stops walking. His forehead twists into uncertainty. Our fingers unthread. “I have a trip coming up. Back to Germany. I’m actually going for a job there.”

  “What?”

  “Chief technology officer for a VR company in the social-good space. Way out of my league. It’s crazy I’m even being considered—” He catches sight of my face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to tell you.”

  My chest feels numb. “You’re moving to Germany?”

  “Only if I get this job, which is a long shot. Chances are I’m staying right here.”

  “But maybe not.”

  Cooper looks pained. “No. Maybe not. I applied for this thing months ago. Before you and I . . .”

  I nod. I can’t look at him. I stare at the water, where the wind is making rough little whitecaps.

  “Lace.” He runs both hands through his hair. “I like you, you know that. But talking about my helping you after a mastectomy and we haven’t even”—an uncomfortable laugh—“kissed. It feels like it’s moving so fast. Like I’m already your boyfriend.”

  But you’re not. And you don’t want to be. A hot tear spills down my cheek. I turn away so he can’t see.

  Behind me, Cooper makes a strangled noise. “I don’t want you to think I don’t care. That I won’t be there. If I can be, I will, I promise.”

  “Right,” I say, “you’ll be the one vomiting in the bathroom at the first sight of anything unsexy.”

  He’s silent. Raindrops spatter the concrete like bullets. Something’s wrong with me. Everyone I care about leaves. No one sticks around. A safety net I imagined was underneath me has revealed itself to be nothing more than a trick of the light. I start walking away.

  “Lacey!” He calls after me. But he does not follow me. He lets me leave.

  I hold myself in until I get to my apartment. Then I fall apart. I cry because I am scared and disappointed and alone, and so is Bee, and so are so many women in this fucked-up world. I cry because I messed this up and it’s my neck on the line.

  I cry because I don’t want to lose my breasts.

  I can’t do it. I know I should, but I can’t.

  I call the New York Cancer Care Center, and I cancel my surgery.

  47.

  * * *

  In lieu of the surgery, I book a screening at NY3C, the alternate path for a high-risk cancer patient. I am increasingly distraught as the date arrives, certain something will be found, a punishment for my cowardice. Nothing. I’m perfectly healthy, which is its own complicated diagnosis. If I’m in such good health, why consider a life-changing procedure? A hard, angry part of me is almost disappointed. My worst self wants to get sick, just so everyone can feel really fucking bad about not coming through for me.

  I go through the motions with Clean Clothes, giving the lion’s share of the work to Suzy-from-Texas, our other outfit curator. Vivian’s in San Francisco for a conference and investor meetings; we haven’t talked face-to-face in weeks. The next time Steph and I have one of our cheap-and-cheerful dinners, I tell her about Cooper but play down how much it crushed me. “Probably for the best” and “easy come, easy go” are both phrases that come out of my mouth. When Steph tries to dig deeper, I change the topic.

  I throw myself into work, keeping my sales numbers high even through the dog days of summer. I do what I should’ve been doing this whole time: refocus on the fashion editor position, bombarding Eloise with textbook-perfect reports, being sure to CC Patricia. My one on fashion influencers in the Middle East is so good, I’m asked to present it in-house. It goes well, and Patricia decides to put it on the site, for paying customers.

  “You look surprised,” Patricia says.

  “Well, yeah,” I manage. “The standards for editorial are as high as Miley Cyrus on any given day.”

  Patricia chuckles. I trust she knows I’m actually quite fond of the wily Ms. Miley. My boss has a laser-sharp ability to know when to laugh at a joke and when to hook the dreaded eyebrow of disapproval. It’s part of what makes her such a successful member of the upper echelon: Patricia has taste, in people, as well as in things.

  * * * *

  One day later, Eloise’s assistant sends me a meeting invite. Just me and Eloise, in her office. It has to be about the job. One step closer. I dress as carefully as one defuses a bomb. At the last second, I add the gold Miu Miu headband that Eloise gifted me when I first started. Full circle.

  I haven’t been in her office since I was an intern. As I take a seat opposite her, I try not to stare at the gorgeous black-and-white photographs of Paris street scenes, the 1920s silk nightgown hanging on a satin coat hanger, the tall bunch of white roses. Every detail, perfect.

  Behind her desk, her stomach blooms like an overripe heirloom underneath a tight white bodysuit. She looks fantastic. Naturally, Eloise understands all the implicit rules of modern pregnancy: be beautiful, not sexy. Talk of cravings is okay; talk of placenta and shitting yourself on the delivery table is not. Love every single second of it and never, ever complain. She caresses her belly gently as she gazes at me from behind her desk. “Patricia thinks you’re the right fit for my job.”

  Patricia has talked to Eloise about me. I try to make my rehearsed words sound natural and genuine. “I am so excited about this opportunity and I really feel that—”

  She cuts me off with a little wave of her hand. “I don’t agree. I don’t think you’re a fit.”

  I’m thrown. I wait for clarification or an amendment. Nothing. Unease seeps into my stomach. “Well, I’ve . . . I’ve been here for three years.”

  “I know. I checked your file. Patricia does like an underdog.” Her gaze is curious. Cold. “I just had no idea how much that would blind her.”

  I’m taking small, shallow breaths. “What?”

  “I’m going to be frank. You don’t have the pedigree, taste, or composure to be a fashion editor at Hoffman House. Your taste is colorful but parochial. You’ve shown no real commitment to this place.” She taps a piece of paper on her desk: my résumé. “You never did an MBA. You’ve never even attended a conference or a course outside the city. For you, fashion is a foreign language. You speak it conversationally. But you’ll never be a native like me and the members of my team.”

  My jaw works, opening and shutting. My vision swims. I can’t conjure a response.

  “I really believe in this place,” she continues, her gaze fixed on me. “I respect it, as much as I respect my own reputation. And I’m telling you: you will buckle. You probably think I’m being mean, but honestly, Lucy, I’m doing you a favor. You don’t have what it takes.”

  She called me Lucy. She doesn’t even know my name. I make myself respond. “I . . . I . . .”

  “Yes? What?”

  “I’m right for this job. I believe I’m qualified.”

  She shrugs simply. “I don’t. I know it’s ultimately Patricia’s call, but when we talk, I’ll have to be honest. The members of my team know how I feel.”

  I stare at her. Frozen.

  She looks pointedly at the door, then back at me. This is over.

  With limbs that feel waterlogged and a rapidly pin-holing vision, I make it back to my cubicle. I’m panting. My hands leave sweat marks on my desk. I rip the headband off so fast I pull strands of hair from my head. I walk to the nearest window and in one easy motion, toss the headband onto the street below. It arcs gracefully, like a glittering, falling star.

  48.

  * * *

  It’s a hot, sunny afternoon when I visit Bee. We lay out on the back patio on old towels to sunbathe. Topless. Number one on my bucket list. When I scribbled it on Steph’s whiteboard back in January, I assumed this would take place on a remote beach boasting sand as white as the GOP and drinks with tiny umbrellas in them. A concrete patio in Staten Island was not what I had in mind.

  But it’s better.

  B
ee’s breasts are healing, slowly. She has more freedom of movement, able to reach for a coffee cup without wincing, but she’s scheduled for more surgeries later this year.

  “All good,” she says. “Weiner women are tough as balls. Besides, I’m psyched for all those sponge baths.” She pretends to address someone between her legs. “Higher. Higher. Don’t hold out on me, Doc: Little Bee needs some loving.”

  I laugh. “I’m just glad you’re okay.” We sip cold lemonade with just a tiny splash of whiskey (Bee’s still healing) and I tell her about what happened at work, with Eloise.

  “What a fucking bitch,” Bee says. “I’d slap her if I didn’t have a pair of butchered tits. So, what, no promotion?”

  I shrug. “I’ve decided I’m still going for it.” What I don’t know is how much sway Eloise has with Patricia: if her disapproval cuts me out, period. Work has been horrible. The fashion team is nice enough to my face, but I have no idea how they really feel. It’s draining and depressing: feeling like I’m constantly having to prove myself around them all. “Fuck her. Fuck Eloise.”

  “Right on, sister. Stick it to the wo-man.” Bee lowers her sunglasses and looks at me. “So you know what that means.”

  “What?”

  “You have to come clean with Vivian. About everything.”

  I cringe. “I can tell Viv about the job. But I can’t tell her about Elan.”

  “Why not?”

  “Are you kidding me? She’d lose her mind. I lied to her.”

  Bee gives me a funny look. “Who taught you to do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Lie. You have a little problem with lying, Whitman.” She ticks off her fingers. “You didn’t tell Steph about Elan until she caught you; you haven’t told your boss about the surgery or that you were dating a client; you haven’t told Vivian about this job you’re going for while still working for her, or that you were fucking the sole member of your board of directors. Did someone in your family lie a lot? Is that where this comes from?”

  I close my eyes. The sun turns the back of my eyelids red. Bee’s not like Steph—already with an opinion. She’s waiting for my answer.

  It’s not as if I lie to make myself more powerful, like a politician or a crook. It’s more a way to stay afloat: as an employee, or a friend, or a girlfriend, or even a cancer patient. And I guess, thinking about it, that’s the way my father lied too. It was almost as if he lied because he didn’t want to let us down or lose us. Fat lot of good it did him.

  I squint up at the sky, at the vague thumbprint of the moon, milky-white on the horizon, and murmur. “It’s just easier than telling the truth.”

  Bee purses her lips at me and shakes her head. “That’s where you’re wrong, chicken. It’s really not.”

  * * * *

  I meet Vivian in a café in South Williamsburg, just before it’s about to close. Blank-faced, she listens to me bumble through an apology-strewn explanation of my job prospect. “I was okay compromising a junior sales gig, but I can’t compromise the fashion editor position. I can’t work a sixty-hour week for Hoffman House and then do the same for Clean Clothes. And that’s what you need.”

  “But you told me you weren’t going for that job,” Vivian says. “You told me you were committed to the app.”

  I can’t meet her laser-beam eyes. “I’d started to think the fashion editor position was out of reach. That’s why I got involved with Clean Clothes.”

  “But it’s in reach now.” Her voice is as hard as a fact.

  “Yes,” I whisper. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t . . . entirely truthful about that. I didn’t want to let you down. I need options, Viv. I don’t have a safety net.”

  Vivian’s voice is flat. “It just looks so shit: a member of the founding team quitting, so soon after the lead developer left. So much of all this is perception.”

  I shift in my too-hard chair. “But we’re not really . . . progressing, are we? Even with Tom’s money, we’re not growing like we should be, right?” Because Elan Behzadi fucked us both over.

  Vivian stares out the window, her stony expression reflected in the glass. If she was any tougher, she’d rust. “The company is facing some challenges, none of which are entirely unprecedented.”

  “Viv,” I say. “It’s me. You can be honest with me.”

  She laughs, once, I assume at the irony of my plea. Her eyes swing to mine. “Did something happen with you and Elan?”

  “What?” I cough and clear my throat. “What do you mean?”

  “You were so keen for him to be involved, even though it diluted your equity.”

  I should tell her the truth. It’s the right moment; she’s already upset with me. But Bee is wrong—I can’t. I can’t handle the disappointment Viv would feel: in me for being unprofessional and a liar, and in the future of the company, doomed over a lover’s spat. I can’t bear the burden of any more disappointment. Distressingly, and in a way that feels almost beyond my control, I feel myself channeling my father. His bravado. His deception. “Babe, nothing happened with Behzadi,” I say. “Maybe, there was a time when I wanted it to. But nothing did.”

  She stays staring at me, neither accepting nor denying this. After an excruciatingly long moment, she looks back out the window. “Then I just have one favor to ask.”

  “Anything.”

  “I need you to come to a wedding with me.”

  * * * *

  Tom Bacon invited Vivian and me to his wedding out in the Hamptons after coming on board as lead investor. Vivian never gave me my invite, claiming to have forgotten in the madness of getting the seed round closed. She wants us to go together, as the team we’re not. The plan is to provide a united front for the three seconds we’ll get with Tom, with a secondary aim of networking with influencers who might prove more useful than Elan. I don’t want to go, but I owe it to Viv.

  The invitation came on a bed of silk in a vintage wooden cigar box.

  Tom Bacon and Peter Lennox request the honor of your and your guest’s attendance at the Bacon family estate in East Hampton, New York.

  I trace the lettering: real gold leaf. “I can’t believe we both got a plus one.”

  “I can,” Vivian says. “They’re rich, gay, and interracial. Half of New York will be at this wedding.”

  I bet that half includes Elan. The prospect fills me with prickling, hungry dread. He’s sent me a few text messages, even an unchecked voice mail, wanting me to call. I haven’t responded. I just don’t have the bandwidth for it.

  At my weekly dinner date with Steph (a buzzy new Ethiopian restaurant in Clinton Hill), I beg her to come as my date. She refuses, citing her thesis and some snark about gay weddings being a bourgeois construct.

  But when I come by the loft the following weekend, she accepts. Enthusiastically.

  “I thought you were busy with your thesis,” I say. “You said all of September was completely out of the question.”

  “It’s only a weekend.”

  “But aren’t gay weddings ‘bourgeois constructs steeped in middle-class morality and neo-capitalistic values’?”

  She laughs as if I’m not quoting her exact words back to her. “I heard Betty Who is playing. She’s awesome.”

  “How did you hear that?”

  A micro pause. “Vivian told me.”

  “Oh.” So they’re still in regular contact. Whatever. I lay back on her bed, listening for door creaks or water running: anything to indicate there’s someone else home. But the loft is silent. “Okay. Well, I’m happy you’re coming. Someone to endure this with.”

  Steph clucks. “Don’t be such a spoilsport. It’s going to be the fanciest wedding you or I have ever or will ever attend. Can you blag me some nice flats from one of your designer mates?”

  Steph has never asked for a designer hookup in her life. I elbow up to frown at her. “Why the sudden interest in fashion, Stephanie?”

  “Or don’t,” she says, “I can always rock some flip-flops.”

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sp; I gasp in faux horror. “No! God, no. What are you going to wear?”

  “T-shirt and jeans? But like, a really nice T-shirt. Minimal stains.”

  We both laugh. I jump to my feet. “Stand aside, Steph. Your personal stylist is in the building.”

  I spend the next hour doing a major cleanout of her closet. It’s fun and we laugh a lot and we don’t talk about Cooper. Which feels very deliberate. I assume Steph would tell me if he moved out, but maybe she’s trying to be less up in my business, and is waiting for me to ask. When she’s in the bathroom, I sneak a peek in Coop’s room. Blue walls and books. He still lives here. I tiptoe in, feeling illicit. It’s such a calm, interesting space. I want to open every drawer, flip through every notebook, try on every shirt. The harmonica is still on his desk. I put my mouth on it, where his mouth would have been, and blow gently. The sound is much louder than I expected: high and thin, five notes in one. I put it down quickly, my heart jumping. I want him to find me in here. For both of us to bumble through a conversation to find a way to say, “I’m sorry. Can we try again?”

  The toilet flushes, and I slip out, closing the door behind me. As I put my final touches on Steph’s outfit, I can’t help but wish I was adjusting the bow tie of a Harry Potter–loving nerd with surfer pecs. I throw my arm around her shoulder and squeeze. “You look amazing.”

  Steph squeals, preening. “I love it! Oh, we’re going to have so much fun.”

  I smile back, hopeful. Maybe she’s right. Maybe we will actually have fun.

  Of course, I had no idea we’d have nothing of the sort.

  49.

  * * *

  September

  The weekend before the wedding, I drive up to Mara’s. She makes iced tea and tofu burgers with the taste and texture of old carpet. We sit on the back patio in wide-brimmed hats and sunglasses, watching Storm bolt around the backyard. The house is a maelstrom of toys and princess costumes and strewn DVDs.