Girls in Trouble: A Novel

by Caroline Leavitt

  Sara stayed calm, serene. “Tell me how I can help,” she said.

  “My baby died,” wept Nicole, and Sara felt a sudden fissure inside of her, like a crack in thin ice. She sat up straighter.

  Nicole talked nonstop for nearly the whole session, about how beautiful her baby girl Clare had been, how everyone said so, how she couldn’t walk down the street without people stopping in admiration. She talked about how she and her husband used to stay up nights just watching Clare sleep, and on one night, when they hadn’t, Clare had died of SIDS. Nicole stopped talking for a moment. She tilted her head as if she were listening to something. “I see her everywhere,” Nicole said. “Can you imagine what that’s like?”

  Sara was beside herself, but she fought to look calm. She willed her voice to be measured, in control. “Tell me how you’re handling this,” she said. She asked about Nicole’s support systems, she recommended a group of other mothers who had lost children. She talked about grief being a roller coaster, and then the session was over.

  “I can’t forgive myself,” Nicole said, balling Kleenex into tiny fists on her lap. “I see her! I keep seeing her!”

  “You didn’t cause this. No one did. Sometimes things just happen.” Something flickered along the wall and Sara glanced over. There, just for a second, Sara saw the ghost baby, too, in the corner, stretching, starting to stand. Startled, Sara blinked and the baby disappeared. “It’s not your fault,” she repeated.

  Nicole didn’t take her eyes from Sara. Drawing in a breath, she stood heavily and then noisily blew her nose. “You believe that, don’t you?” Nicole said in wonder.

  “I do.”

  Nicole swiped at her eyes and took in another deep, measured breath. “Then thank you,” she said, swiping at her eyes. “This helped. I think it helped.”

  Sara stood up and nodded. “Good,” she said. She felt like a fraud. She knew that Nicole might feel better now, but what would happen that night, when Nicole was back in her home, when everything suddenly reminded her again of all she had lost?

  “Can I come back? If I come back, can I get you again?”

  Sara’s stomach tightened. “Of course,” she said, but she couldn’t meet Nicole’s eyes. Sara walked Nicole to the door, opening it and closing it in one graceful move. She waited until she heard the whoosh of the elevator outside and then Sara felt the crack in the ice around her growing. She grabbed her coat and her bag and left the office. “Don’t take on other peoples’ problems,” Kaysen had said. “It’s countertransference.”

  She headed for the ladies’ room and threw her purse on the orange couch by the wall. She stared at herself in the mirror, and suddenly, nothing looked right to her. Not her smooth hair, not the chic earrings or the sleek dark dress she had on, and then she yanked out the knot in her hair, so her curls sprang across her back. She unhooked her earrings and flung them in her purse, and then she turned the spigots on full force, splashing water onto her face.

  Sara kept seeing Nicole’s hunched shoulders. She kept remembering the way Nicole had kept her hands protectively on her belly the whole time she was in Sara’s office. She heard Nicole’s voice, saying, “My baby died. I’ll never see my baby again.”

  Sara walked, automatically veering right, then left, until she was at Kaysen’s office. She didn’t have an appointment, didn’t even know what she expected might happen, but she knocked on the door and Kaysen answered. “Sara,” she said, surprised, and then Sara’s whole body began to shake.

  She couldn’t seem to stop. She covered her face with her hands, and then she felt Kaysen’s hands, warm and dry, guiding her forward. “Come inside,” Kaysen said.

  “Are you okay?” Kaysen’s voice was soft. She was seated across from Sara, settled in the black leather chair. Sara wrapped her arms about her body. “My client’s baby died.”

  Kaysen was silent. “Did something else happen today?” she asked finally. “Something with you and not a client?”

  “I had a baby when I was sixteen,” Sara whispered.

  Kaysen leaned forward.

  “I gave her up,” Sara said. “An open adoption. But before I gave her up, I fell in love with her, with the family, too.” She couldn’t stop the tears now, couldn’t stop the words, either. “I fucked up. I ruined everything. I don’t even know where the family is anymore.”

  “You were young, you couldn’t know from fucking up.”

  Sara’s laugh sounded harsh. “But I did. I did fuck up in ways you can’t imagine.”

  “What ways?”

  “I lost my baby. I lost the family. I can’t even really go back to Boston anymore.”

  Kaysen shook her head. “You never would have come this far if you had kept a baby. You wouldn’t have been able to go to school, to have a life. Think about what is. Not what isn’t. You could think of what you did, giving your daughter up, as very loving.”

  Sara grabbed for a tissue and then balled it into her lap. Her eyes were tight and dry.

  “It’s okay to cry, Sara. You can cry about this.”

  “No, no, I can’t. If I do, I’m afraid I won’t ever stop.”

  “Surely you know a thing like this takes time. Think of Odysseus. He had to go down into hell to emerge with new knowledge. Now so do you.”

  “Odysseus is a myth. And I’ve already been to hell, thanks.”

  “Sara—it was important that you tell me this. I’m glad you told me.”

  “I don’t know if I am,” Sara said. She felt Kaysen’s eyes on her.

  “I think we should start seeing each other twice a week,” Kaysen said.

  The room seemed filled with Danny’s scent, with the baby, with a thousand memories she wanted to forget, and she leaped up. “I’m sorry—I have to go, I have to get out of here—” she said, and then she was out of Kaysen’s office. Then she was out on the street, gulping in air, telling herself over and over that everything was going to be all right, that this was just a derailment and that’s all and before she knew it, everything would be back on track again, racing toward a new destination.

  * * *

  Sara tried to bury herself in her work, but the next few sessions she had with clients, she couldn’t listen to their issues without feeling her own pain reverberating deep inside of her. “Me, too,” she kept thinking. “Me, too.” She struggled for control, for detachment, and then when Nicole called to schedule another appointment, Sara put her off. “I’ll get back to you,” she promised.

  That day, Sara went to the dean’s office and got a leave of absence from school. She told herself it was just until she built herself back up again. Maybe when she was stronger she could deal with this, she could sit in an office with Kaysen and dissect her past, she could help her clients, but right now all she wanted was to feel better, to feel things were possible, not to dive deeper into a pain so bottomless it threatened to drown her.

  She called Kaysen’s office when she knew Kaysen wouldn’t be there. She waited for the record beep, her throat dry. “I need to take a break from therapy,” Sara said. “I know you’re going to want to talk about this, but I just can’t. I’m sorry.” She rested her head against the receiver. “I know you tried to help me.”

  That night, she was making pasta, a salsa CD was blaring, when the phone rang. She stopped cooking, listening intently.

  “Sara,” said Kaysen’s voice. “You have to come in and talk about this. I can’t stop you from leaving, but we do need closure.” I’ve closed already, Sara thought.

  “Call me,” Kaysen said, her voice stern. “Sara, call me.”

  All that week, Sara tried to figure out what she could say to Kaysen. Finally, she simply called, relieved when the machine clicked on. “I’m not coming back,” she repeated. “I’m sorry. I can’t even talk to you about it, and I’m sorry about that, too, but please don’t call me again. I’ll call if and when I’m ever ready.” And then she quickly hung up. She lay flat on her couch, her arms over her eyes. Already, she missed Kaysen. She use
d to love the feeling she got when she’d go to Kaysen’s all knotted up inside, and after a half hour of talking, the knot would slowly loosen. Her breath would flow and she’d feel more hopeful. She used to love the way Kaysen leaned forward as if every word Sara said was important, and even though she knew it was all part of the training, that no one really had the answers for another person, and that part of a therapist’s job was to look like she really cared, sometimes, she truly believed that Kaysen had cared about her. Well. Sometimes you could make yourself believe anything if it made you happy. And sometimes you couldn’t.

  That night, she called her parents to tell them she was taking a leave.

  “This isn’t the right thing to do,” Abby said. “Can’t you just take off a week?”

  “Come home,” Jack said. “I’ll make calls so you can work here. Or take classes.”

  “Yes, take the classes. Don’t go backward—” Abby warned.

  “No, no.” Sara swallowed. “Going home would be backward. I’m staying here.”

  “But why?” Jack said. “We can take care of you here. How will you pay your rent? How will you live? A young girl alone in the city!”

  “I’m twenty-four. I’ll work. And I’ll be fine.”

  “Why won’t you let us help you?” Abby asked. “We’re your parents. It’s only natural.”

  Sara thought of her parents taking over when she was pregnant, taking over after she was banned from seeing Eva and George, and something twisted deep inside of her. She took a deeper breath. “Listen, I appreciate your offer but I just can’t take you up on it. I have to work things out on my own. I just have to.”

  “Oh honey, it just breaks my heart to hear that.” Jack sighed and for a moment Sara imagined herself getting smaller and smaller until she could scramble up on her father’s lap, the way she used to when she was a little girl. He used to tell her the story of Rapunzel, making his voice high for the princess, and gravelly for the wicked witch, and when the story was over, she half-believed he was the one who had saved the day, that he was the one who could do anything, not the prince. And then she thought: Red light, Danger. She wasn’t a little girl anymore. And Rapunzel was a fairy story, told to put Rapunzel and her prince in the best light. Who knew what the witch’s version of events might be, how she might have put Rapunzel in a tower not to imprison her, but to keep her close and safe? “I don’t mean to hurt either one of you,” Sara said, “but I know what I have to do.”

  * * *

  Sara had to find work fast. She could stay in student housing until the end of the following month and she had enough savings for a deposit and the first month’s rent. She riffled through the employment section, and finally, she found a job opening as a junior copywriter at Madame, on Forty-ninth Street and Sixth. The McGraw-Hill Building.

  The president of the company was a tall, stark-looking woman named Yvonne. “Full-fashioned clothing for the fabulously full-figured,” Yvonne recited, and when Sara started to smile, Yvonne’s mouth narrowed, and Sara’s smile retracted. Yvonne turned Sara over to the vice president, a man named Hal Viceroy. He was young, with sandy, choppily cut hair. He sat across from her at his desk, snapping his striped suspenders, and his eyes were flat and blue as pond water. “What makes you think you can write ads?” he asked.

  “Try me,” Sara said. She tried not to flinch every time he snapped his suspenders.

  Hal nodded in a way that made her sure he was about to dismiss her. She started to stand, when he extended his hand to her. “Okay, then, we will,” he said. “The salary’s not much to write home about, either. So, can you start today?”

  Hal walked her past rows of open cubicles to the back, where he finally stopped. “Mona’s on extended sick leave,” he told her. There was half a desk, a small computer, a chair, and an empty bulletin board. Sara sat. She could barely turn around. Her knees bumped the top of the desk. Her feet stubbed against a grey wastebasket already crammed with paper. “I’ll bring you some work, you see what you can finish by the end of the day, and we’ll take it from there,” he told her. Sara looked across the aisle. There was another cubicle, and another in front of it, but no one was there.

  He brought her pages of layouts, scribbled with red corrections. She was done by three, printing everything out, attaching the new layouts to the old ones, and brought the work in to Hal. He frowned at her, annoyed. His mouth twitched. “What’s the problem?”

  “There’s no problem. I finished.”

  “You finished?”

  She nodded. Her stomach growled. Her mouth pooled with saliva. She was starving.

  “You did it all? Every correction?” He tapped one of the pages. “You did this here—’Take a Good Long Look’ for the long dress?”

  “I thought it sounded better,” she said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  He looked over at his clock. “It’s three.”

  “It took me time getting used to the computer. I’ll be faster tomorrow.

  Hal leafed through the rest of her layouts. “‘Bohemian Wrapsody’ for the tied Indian-print skirts,” he said, and then he shook his head. “Okay, you can go,” he said.

  “Go?” Sara said, confused. “I spell-checked. Did I do something wrong?”

  He lifted his head. “I didn’t think you’d finish half of it, let alone get it all done. And I like this copy.” He still wasn’t smiling. “Maybe we’ll make you a copy chief.”

  With steady work, she could afford an apartment, a shoebox-sized studio in Chelsea that she found advertised on a kiosk and took sight unseen because they weren’t asking for a damage deposit, or for first and last month’s rent. The apartment was all painted beige, and it had a funny smell, like something had died behind one of the walls, but Sara felt hopeful she could take care of that with cleanser and a good scrubbing. The bathtub was in the kitchen, covered by a plank of wood, forming a table, but Sara was sure she could make it charming. She painted the apartment soft white, the bathtub light blue. She bought a small sleep sofa on sale and a table. Two place settings in a cheery cobalt. The apartment wasn’t much, but it was hers and she liked coming home to it, liked having a door she was the only one who held the key to. “My home,” she said, patting the walls.

  * * *

  Sara, Walkman clamped to her head, Mozart soaring in her ears, happily typed. Her fingers, nails bit to the nubs, sped, primed from all those years of term papers, of so much pressure to excel that she couldn’t afford to waste a second. There were stacks of paper beside her, yards and yards of catalog copy that she had to finish by this afternoon, the pages of corrections continually plunked into her In box. Spelling errors. Size mistakes.

  She looked at a picture of a laughing woman in a pair of cheap, synthetic jeans, her sunny blond hair thrown over one shoulder, her teeth a blizzard of white. “Pure jeanius,” she Wrote. “Leaner, cleaner, these are the new rhythms in blues.” The faster she typed, the better she liked it. The heady rhythm of the keys soothed her.

  Sara was one of thirty people crammed into grey cubicles, arranged in rows that took up the whole nineteenth floor. “Welcome to McGraw-Hell,” one woman said to Sara. The space had high white walls and polished wood floors like a gym’s, and sealed windows (“so no one can jump out and end their misery,” was the joke). It was sweltering in summer because the building’s air-conditioning never worked properly, drafty and cold in the winter, and the same stale air seemed to circulate so that every time someone got a flu, it traveled up through the floors, and it infected everyone. It was a fairly new company, and even though no one other than employees ever came onto the floor, even though the catalog shoots were all held elsewhere, everyone was still expected to dress fashionably. Writing about clothing all day made Sara feel like the saleswoman in the Godiva shop up the block from her office, who couldn’t even look at chocolates when she was finished working. When Sara woke up, she grabbed for what was clean, what didn’t need ironing, what was closest, and if there was a designer name attached to
any of her clothing, it was usually Gap.

  The employees were mostly women, and all thin as swizzle sticks, with fussed-over hair and makeup, but Madame catered to women who were so over the usual plus sizes that they had real difficulties finding anything to fit them in the stores, and even if they could find something, it usually had all the style of a paper bag. The Madame woman, according to a profile Sara herself had recently written, was educated and style conscious. She held a good job, and was married or had a steady boyfriend who thought she looked great and sexy just the way she was, and who in fact approved of the larger woman’s own unique beauty. The Madame woman had size 55 hips and a 40-inch bust, but the models for the catalog were only slightly overweight, which made even the synthetic fabrics Madame used look chic. Madame got lots of adoring letters from their customers, and only a rare letter complaining about the models, but every time there was one, Sara brought it to her boss. “Why can’t we use real-sized models?” she asked, fanning the letter. “Why can’t we celebrate size?”

  “We’re selling fantasy,” Sara’s boss told her. “Fantasy sells.”

  She knew it. She went back to her desk, crumpling the letter into a ball, tossing it into the trash. They loved Sara at Madame because they thought she understood the client, but what Sara understood was the yearning to accept who you were coupled with the yearning to be someone else. What she wrote to was that desire to believe anything that might make you feel better, the need not to see what might be painful to you.

  Sara could name a line of clothing in five minutes instead of the two weeks it usually took everyone else, she could write an entire spring catalog in three days when it might take others a month, and she was the fastest typist anyone had ever seen. She didn’t take half-hour breaks or go with groups to the ladies’ room, lolling on the snazzy red leather couch in there, gossiping and reapplying makeup. She didn’t make more than a few personal phone calls to her friends a day. Instead, she mainly stayed at her desk, working so intently you could call her name and she wouldn’t hear you. You could tap her on the shoulder and she would start, not even realizing you were there watching her.