The Ten Girls to Watch

by Charity Shumway

  “It’s okay, Sarah. I’ll do it. But thank you, seriously, thank you.”

  “Okay, see you tomorrow,” Sarah said.

  “See you tomorrow,” I answered, with warm, leaky tears.

  First, I called my mom. When I said “fire,” her voice went red with panic. She asked if I’d been to the hospital to get checked out. She asked if I’d saved my immunization records, which I took to be her panicky stand-in for important papers of all sorts. She asked where I was staying that night. The more questions I answered, the calmer she became, and it was only a few minutes until she was comforting me instead of the other way around. I told her about losing her letters, and how it wasn’t even the biggest deal, but how I felt so sad about it.

  “Sweetie,” she answered, “I just want to hug you and sing you to sleep. I’m hugging you right now. Can you feel it?”

  I really could feel it.

  “I can be on the first flight in the morning,” she said. I knew this wasn’t really true. Some Mary Kay ladies drive pink Cadillacs, but some, like my mom, were lucky if they could pay their health insurance every month. She wasn’t in the position to buy last-minute plane tickets.

  “Sarah is coming tomorrow,” I told her, realizing I should have let her know that very first thing.

  “I’m driving over there tonight with some things for you, then,” she said.

  “That’d be great,” I said. I wasn’t sure what she meant. Old clothes or banana bread or a Mary Kay face mask. But whatever it was, I’d be happy for it.

  When I called my dad, as soon as I told him what had happened I told him Sarah had already booked a flight.

  “I’ll come too,” he said.

  Maybe this is exactly what I should have expected. What kind of parents don’t offer to fly across the country when their daughter is in real need? But I hadn’t actually thought they’d be so ready to get on a plane. Not that they didn’t love me, just that I knew traveling wasn’t a matter of whipping out the frequent flyer miles or the platinum card for them. But deeper than that was a feeling that had started with their divorce and then intensified when I’d gone so far away for college and stayed so far away after: I’d stopped thinking that I could count on them. Yet here they were, proving just how much they were still there for me. They weren’t going to buy me an apartment or serve as my healthy-marriage role models, but they loved me and Sarah, and they were good people worth emulating in plenty of ways.

  I talked my dad out of coming. I told him maybe next week, after Sarah had to go home.

  Finally, he said, “Do you want to come home?” He’d had to work hard, waiting so long to say it.

  I paused and considered. What was keeping me here? Not friends or love or the pain of packing. I was free to go. But as I thought about leaving, my brain jumped to an image of the night on the Brooklyn Bridge with Elliot. Scratch him from the picture, and the edges of the city still stood bright against the water, doubled in their beauty. The taxis still trailed over the bridge and zipped up and down the avenues like golden fireflies. The glittering lights still felt like countless pinpoints of potential. So much could happen for me here.

  “I want to stay,” I finally answered quietly.

  “Okay,” he said in a sweet, soft voice. Like he was finally accepting it, not just for this moment, but for good.

  I hung up feeling like an overwatered flower, all droopy with love and fatigue.

  I should have gone to bed then, but I decided to make one more phone call. Up-in-flames apartment buildings overrode friend breakups, or so I figured.

  I didn’t have to look at my notepad to dial. I knew Robert’s number.

  I counted the rings. Three, four . . . voice mail.

  What sort of message was I supposed to leave? My apartment building (sob) burned (sob) down (double sob)? I considered it, then I just said, “Call me, will you?”

  I’d imagined he might not answer, and for that reason, I’d also jotted down Lily’s number. It was late, but I dialed anyway.

  Three rings, four rings . . .

  “Dawn, what a surprise,” Lily answered. The way she said it, it didn’t sound like a happy surprise.

  “Oh, hi. Sorry, I’m not calling too late, am I?”

  “No, it’s fine,” she said, but again it didn’t really sound like it.

  Usually Lily was more of a firecracker of friendliness.

  “Well, I’m actually trying to track down Robert. He wouldn’t happen to be with you, would he?” I tried to sound casual.

  “Funny you should ask. I guess that means he didn’t tell you he dumped me.”

  “Uh, wow, no, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.” And then I added, as if I needed to explain further, “We haven’t really been talking lately.”

  “Yeah, well, we actually broke up earlier tonight,” she said. “I thought he might have called you.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  On the other side of the phone, she sniffled, and I was pretty sure she was crying.

  “Lily, are you okay?”

  “What a stupid thing to ask,” she scoffed.

  She sure was good at speaking her mind.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s just . . . are you all by yourself tonight?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, but her voice broke as she said it.

  That morning at five o’clock when I’d been huddled in the bodega on my corner watching my second fire of the day, if you’d asked me how many bars I was planning on hitting up that night, I would have said zero. Apparently, the answer was two.

  An evening of magnanimity from Regina Greene, Gerri Vans, XADI Crockett, Helen Hensley, and my sister and parents had primed me for generosity. After a few more minutes, Lily conceded that yes, she could—sniff, sob—really use some company. I changed out of my bathrobe and back into my black dress and hailed a cab, grateful once again for the cash XADI had given me that morning. I’d never expected to be in the position of comforting Lily, but here I was, headed her way.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Predictably, Lily lived on the Upper East Side, and although the plan was for me to meet her at her place and then take her out for a drink, as soon as she opened the door it was clear from the mascara dripping off her chin that we wouldn’t be going anywhere.

  It was also clear that I’d underestimated the size of her trust fund. The apartment sprawled in all directions, including a sizable terrace off the living room.

  “It’s three bedrooms,” she said, following my eyes. “I know, it’s ridiculous, but my parents thought I should have ‘room to grow.’ Do you know what Robert said when he broke up with me? He said he thought I was too dependent on my parents.”

  “Oh, that’s rich, coming from him,” I said.

  “That’s what I said!”

  We sat down on the couch together.

  “So what’s the plan? Rogue Taxidermy?”

  “I haven’t gotten that far yet.” She laughed. “Though we should definitely look up their latest offerings. Pickled sheep brains might be just the thing.” Then she looked toward the kitchen. “Do you want something to drink?”

  “Well, maybe something like hot chocolate,” I said.

  “Me too,” she said. “Or hot chocolate with bourbon.”

  We went to the kitchen and heated up some milk over the stove. Lily took a box of Kleenex with her, and as we leaned against the cupboards, she proceeded to wipe her tears with tissue after tissue, dramatically wadding each one and throwing it to the ground when she was done. By the time the bourbon cocoa was ready, the floor was covered.

  We finally got around to what was going on with me, and I started with Elliot.

  “You’re fucking kidding me,” she said. Then her outrage seemed to crystallize. “You’re going to write an article back. Even just a letter to the magazine. You have to. He does not get the last word in print.”

  “I might get around to that eventually,” I said, “but I probably have some other things to take care of first
. Uh, well, uh, my apartment building also burned down this morning?”

  I said it like a question. Like I wasn’t sure it was actually true.

  She slammed her bourbon cocoa on the counter and gave me an openmouthed look of incredulity, with a cocked eyebrow that said “You’re crazy.” Not so much that she didn’t believe me, more that she couldn’t believe I’d told her about Elliot first.

  I giggled a little. And then she laughed, and soon, weirdly, we both started howling uncontrollably. Eventually, there was some crying mixed in, but even then, it was minutes before we could keep the laughter down.

  We slid to the kitchen floor, pushing aside wadded Kleenex, and then, with our backs leaning against the cupboards, we talked for another hour. Lily firmly believed that Trevor the fireman and I were meant to be together. Right after she ghost-wrote my retaliatory article about Elliot, she was going to engineer a way to bring us back together, even if it required arson.

  Finally, I sighed and said I really had to go.

  “That’s insane. Would you look at this place?” she said. “I have two guest bedrooms. Would you please do me a favor and take one of them?”

  I spent the night.

  The next morning I had breakfast with Helen, who offered to stay another few days to help me, but I reassured her that Sarah and I would be okay. I promised I’d call her with updates. Just before she got in the cab to go to the train station, she hugged me and said, “Someday you’ll write about this.”

  I thought she was probably right.

  I met Sarah at JFK that evening, and instead of a hotel, we stayed with Lily, who’d insisted it was the least a decent person with a three-bedroom apartment all to herself could do.

  Sarah opened her suitcase in the living room. “Mom sent this for you,” she said, handing me a stuffed horse with yarn hair. Part of the stuffed animal collection I’d wisely left in Oregon. Instead of giving the horse an actual name, at age nine I’d just called him “the white stallion.”

  “Look who’s here to save the day?” I said, laughing and tearing up.

  Friday, at nine o’clock I left my sister at Lily’s place and went to XADI’s office, as requested.

  She was wearing a bright green top, the first time I’d ever seen her in anything but black. I liked it on her.

  Thanks to my sister, I was able to give her an envelope with the two hundred dollars cash I owed her.

  XADI tucked it into her desk drawer without a word and said, “There’s an editorial assistant position opening up. I’d like you to apply for it.”

  “Here? In this office?”

  “Your desk would be in the pod,” she said, ironically inflecting the words.

  “Wow,” I answered, half seriously, half with the same tone XADI had just used.

  “It’s not glamorous. You’d be answering my phone and keeping my calendar and expenses. But you’d also have some chances to write for the magazine, and you’d get some experience editing features. The pay is not much more than you’ve been getting as a freelancer, but it’s full-time, so you’d have benefits, and you’d be on the masthead.”

  The masthead—that page at the front of the magazine that listed the editorial staff. A page everyone but people who worked in publishing skipped right over. A page I was dying to be on.

  “I’d love to apply,” I said.

  “Good, send me your résumé. And whatever happens with the Gerri project, we’ll make sure you have time to work on that.” And that was the end of our conversation. She stood up, her usual signal that that was all, I was dismissed.

  Back at the elevators, the receptionist tucked a pencil into her big white bun and crooned, “I’ve got something for you, honey. Remember that mint I promised you?”

  She lifted a tiny pot with two sprigs of mint poking out of the dirt. “I knew I’d see you again soon,” she said, handing the plant to me.

  “Thank you!” I said, putting the mint to my nose, the bright and cool scent making me instantly tingle with memories of home. “Wow, just, thank you!”

  She hummed her deep “mm-hmm” and leaned back in her chair.

  The next day, Sarah and I went to the DMV and got me a new driver’s license, we went to the library and got me a new library card, we replaced all my bank cards and credit cards, we got me a new cell phone, and we went on an Old Navy, cheap-but-acceptable-clothing shopping spree.

  After everything she’d done for me, that night I channeled Sarah’s take-charge attitude and tried to do something for her. Following a quick dinner at a falafel place on Bedford Street, I pulled her a few blocks over to Cornelia Street Café, a little West Village spot known for its open mic nights. We listened to five or six numbers, and then I nudged Sarah toward the stage. She resisted for about half a second before she borrowed a guitar from the guy who’d gone just before her and settled into place in front of the microphone. I didn’t know what she’d play or sing. For a moment, she looked out into the crowd of tables, her dark hair hanging loose around her shoulders, her eyes wide, and it seemed like she might not play or sing anything at all. Then, without strumming a single note, she sang the first aching, soulful phrase of James Taylor’s “That Lonesome Road.”

  Walk down that lonesome road, all by yourself. The room fell silent except for her breathy, beautiful voice. She lifted up another a cappella phrase, arching her voice up and down the steps between notes—Don’t turn your head back over your shoulder. Only then did she join in with guitar chords. It seemed to me that even the waitresses raised their eyes from their trays to watch her. In the same way certain frequencies can make glass quiver and even break, I felt my whole self vibrating with the sound of Sarah’s singing. When she sat down beside me again, I squeezed her hand. She squeezed mine back.

  Later, in the cold air on our way to the subway, we shivered as our misty breath mingled in front of us, and Sarah said, “Thanks for that, Dawn.”

  “You were the best act all night,” I answered honestly.

  She shrugged and gave a little I-don’t-know-about-that laugh, but then, after another minute she said, “Next time you come home, I’m going to make you drive to Portland with me, and I’m going to do that again.”

  Back at Lily’s apartment, Sarah and I changed into our new matching pajama bottoms (no monkeys, but very cute end-of-season-sale penguins) and started trawling Craigslist for apartments. When Lily saw what we were doing, she piped up with her usual tenacity.

  “Would you please just stay with me? I’ll charge you like five hundred bucks a month and we’ll call it a day.”

  And that was how I came to be Lily Harris’s roommate.

  I sent Sarah back to Oregon a day earlier than she’d planned, but only if she promised to get on Skype with the girls and say hello when she got home. She did, and we sang half a verse of “The Wheels on the Bus” together before the twins bolted, but it was still great, and we promised to do it more often. I told my dad not to come quite yet, and instead we planned a trip, his first ever to New York, for the February school break.

  The next week, XADI called to tell me the job was officially mine if I wanted it. I did. I e-mailed Lily to tell her the news, and when she walked in the door that night, she was brandishing a bottle of champagne.

  “This is to celebrate all the cool parties you’re going to get us into in the future.” She winked.

  “I’ll do my best.” I laughed.

  I’d brought home Patricia Collins’s bottle of wine, and while we waited for the champagne to cool, I decided this was the perfect occasion to sample it.

  “It’s supposed to be crisp and full at the same time,” I said, pouring.

  I told Lily all about Patty, and then we did our best impressions of wine connoisseurs, taking in the bouquet with our noses and rolling the wine around in our mouths. By the time we poured our next glasses, I’d regaled her with a handful of other TGTW winners’ life stories, including Tanisha Whitaker’s.

  “We should go see her show,” I said. “Yo
u’d like her.”

  “One better”—Lily raised her glass—“let’s just invite her to dinner.”

  And so we invited Tanisha and a couple of Lily’s girlfriends over for dinner that weekend, and just like that, I was on my way to having three new friends. Not college friends. New York friends.

  The assistant to Allen, the head of Gerri’s book division, called. I went in for a meeting. I was almost as nervous and excited as I’d been that first day at Mandalay Carson, but XADI had been good prep—no one would ever be as intimidating as she had been. As I waited in the reception area I thought about how Helen was right, once you have an experience under your belt, you’re more confident ever after. When Allen walked toward me, I stood nice and tall and shook his hand with a good, firm (but not weirdly firm) grip. It might have also helped that Lily loaned me her pearl earrings. We didn’t settle on anything that afternoon, but Allen promised he’d be back in touch after another internal meeting or two. For my part, I’d never imagined feeling so excited about sidebars.

  My last day at the warehouse archives, Ralph must have been monitoring the security cameras again. I hadn’t seen him since I’d gotten the new job (or during any of the days I’d been in the office since the gala, for that matter), but XADI had cc’d me on the e-mail where she explained the timeline of my transfer from the archives to the main office, so he knew I was packing up. I gently took everything down from the bulletin board and placed it in a file folder, then tucked it in a bag with the rest of the files I planned to take with me to the pod, and not ten seconds after I’d finished this and stepped into the hallway outside my basement office, Ralph appeared.