This Will Be
Page 21
So by the time the train got to Crestwood, the stop before Scarsdale, she emptied it all out of her.
She stepped off the train in Scarsdale and the scorching sun beat down on the platform at 10:45 a.m.
She glanced around the unfamiliar familiar, getting her bearings. She thought for a moment, where did I park? And found her way across the footbridge to the circle by the record store.
She opened the door of her boxy little blue Audi. And somehow had the brain power, in her fog of this new, weird, different day, to find her way home.
Now, ten minutes later, an exhausted Penny stood in the hallway of her house with Davis.
She glanced at him, sitting in his chair in the living room reading the paper like he always did, which was comforting. He’d hugged her. He’d cared. He’d offered coffee. She said she’d make it.
And now what to say?
“Davis...”
I slept with someone else. She’s a she. I think I’m in love with her. But I’m not throwing away my whole life for this.
Not that.
I think I’m gay...Isn’t that weird?
Not that.
Did you know you can be gay and still like sex with men? It’s your HEART that makes you gay.
Not that.
Something else.
She took a deep breath. And then let no true words come out - just plans.
“I’m going to head upstairs and have a shower. Can you put the coffee on?”
“Of course,” he smiled.
No, life needed to continue as it was.
It was the only thing that made her feel sane.
50
Jamie sat at her desk looking out at University Place. She had a sip of her third cup of coffee since Penny left. It was 3pm.
She had been sitting here since just after Penny left. She felt the fan blowing on her.
She felt a lightness inside her that she hadn’t felt in years.
Last night. The truth. Done. Said. Out there. The awful story no longer hers. Told, heard. Carried.
Then the kiss between them. The so much more that they were than a kiss or just sex. The so much more that couldn’t be.
That too was true.
Next to the typewriter, she glanced at the stack of pages of her book about Florence and art.
This wasn’t true.
She picked up the pages, kicked the black wastepaper basket out from her desk and dumped the papers in.
“Start again,” she said quietly.
She glanced down at the pages sitting there.
“Okay, no.”
She reached into the wastepaper basket and pulled them out like a lifeguard saving a swimmer from a riptide. She brushed off the pages and looked at them.
She pulled open her drawer next to her desk and slipped the pages in there instead. Use it as scrap paper. Nothing is ever lost. Everything leads to something.
Jamie leaned back in her chair and let the fan from the window blow on her.
She fixed her mind on the blank page in her typewriter. She clicked the power button on.
She closed her eyes, slipped her fingertips onto the whirring keys and typed without looking.
Tell the truth.
She typed in CHAPTER ONE
The light on University Place is both the reason I stay in New York and the reason I most want to leave.
Her name was Paige. But I didn’t know that was her name.
Tell me
What.
Anything.
Anything like what
Anything like anything.
She leaned back from her desk and fished out a business card from under some papers. She looked at it and propped it up against her lamp.
Dr. Dave… NYU 212 555-7639.
“Okay, let’s go,” she whispered.
To herself. Her blank page. And her pain.
51
A week after the blackout and Penny Langston sat in her office. New York was back to normal, and she wondered if she would ever be.
Her life looked the same from the outside.
“Good morning, Cathy.” “How are you, Tim?” “Joan, nice to see you.”
It was Scarsdale Station in the morning. The dash through Grand Central. The walk up Sixth. All the same on the outside.
But inside she was some new person with no new place to be.
She hadn’t called Jamie. What the hell could she say? “I’m sorry I messed up your life. See you at the office Christmas Party?”
Every telephone she glanced at seemed to yell, “Call her!” But Penny knew any step she took was a step towards hurting someone. Jamie, or her husband or herself.
So in this moment, as she had all week, Penny shoved the feelings away.
She was married and life was complicated.
“Here’s some mail for you.”
Penny glanced up from her desk. Cathy was standing there with a multicolored stack of mail. She’d gotten a new haircut and was holding her head in that self-conscious way you do when your hair’s been cut too short.
“Thanks. I like your hair.”
Cathy patted it. “Thanks.”
Penny leaned forward on her elbows and flipped through the envelopes. A few event invitations, a letter from an editor she knew at Harper and Row.
The other – a small cream-colored envelope. On the front – Penny Langston, Peckham Press, 1243 Sixth Avenue etc… On the back. “Mrs. Raymond Pell. 25 Glengrove Avenue, New Rochelle, New York 10803.”
Connie.
Penny opened the envelope and slipped the note out. The same cream-colored paper as the envelope.
She looked at the handwritten note.
“Penny -
Emma
Mansfield Park.
Sitting on the side of the fountain on sixth and eating yogurt at lunch and laughing
The words to Peace Train
You and me solving the problems of the world
I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.
How do I love thee let me count the ways, etc. And the rest of those Sonnets from the Portuguese.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Little Women
I can’t remember things, Penny. This stupid place. They’re letting me go home on weekends. And then back. They’re zapping away everything I am. I’m afraid I’m going to forget everything I love. And if I do Penny - will you remind me? You’re something I love. I miss you.
Be well xox. Connie.
Penny felt grief fill her lungs like water.
She heard Cathy come in quietly. “Um, sorry – I buzzed.”
“I didn’t hear it.”
“You’ve got a meeting with Joan Sussman and Kyle about editorial.”
“Thanks.”
Penny glanced at her Daytimer. It was full. Thank God. More distractions from the things she could do nothing about.
As Cathy left and closed the door, Penny folded up Connie’s note and slipped it back into the envelope.
A grief caught in her throat like a choke. Helplessness filled her veins. She felt the walls close in. The ceiling lower on her head.
She needed something.
Someone to talk to. A way to know the world was going to be okay. She needed a Connie.
She flipped through her Rolodex, twirling it till she got to what she wanted. She pulled the card out and looked at it.
Jamie Brennan, Home 555-7694 Work, Murphy’s New and Used books 212 555 1352.
She shoved the card back in the Rolodex and twirled it around. Jamie Brennan back lost in the crowd.
She stared at Connie’s handwriting on the envelope. Water filling her lungs again. Alone-ness making her wheeze.
“Fuck it,” Penny said quietly. “I just need a fucking friend.”
She spun her Rolodex around again, pulled out the card with Jamie’s number and picked up her office phone.
52
Jamie stood at the counter of the bookstore with the phone in her hand.
Would she like to go for a drink when Penny finished work? Of course, she would. See you at 8. I’ll tell Sal the security guard to let you up. I’ll meet you at Reception. Okay, see you then.
Jamie knew it was as a friend. Of course, it was. And that was fine. She knew Penny’s situation. And whatever they had the other night was a shooting star. Once and never again - it was a citywide blackout for God’s sake, stuff was bound to happen.
Jamie hung up the phone. Lynette was leaning against the counter. She looked up from where they were playing hangman on the back of an invoice.
“What’s that all about?” Lynette said.
“Oh, just drinks with a friend tonight…. One R,” Jamie said. “Where are all the customers?”
“Don’t jinx it, they might come in,” Lynette said, writing in an R in one of the hangman spaces.
Lynette looked over and spotted a blond head coming up the stairs. “See? Look what you did.”
The hangman figure was already a head, a body, one arm and one leg. Jamie was close to getting hanged.
She squinted at the dashes. “So this is a celebrity?”
“Yes.”
“An S?”
Lynette caught Jamie’s eye. She shook her head.
“Ah. I see.”
“What?”
“I see, Brennan,” Lynette said, “That phone call. A friend you’re in love with judging from the way your face is completely red." She pointed at the hangman page. "No S’s.”
“Oh God,” Jamie said. “Yeah, fine.”
“Little Miss Married?”
"It’s just a drink. Just friends.”
Jamie peered at the dashes on the page. “Okay. Lynette, ‘You’re an asshole’ is not a celebrity. And doesn’t count for hangman.”
Lynette filled in the dashes. “Nice one.”
Jamie laughed. “And there’s two S’s in that.”
“I didn’t wanna give it away.”
Lynette finished filling in the letters. She looked at Jamie.
"You're hopeless."
"Pretty much."
She smiled. "But..."
Jamie slipped behind the cash as a customer approached. She flipped open the small receipt book.
A late-20’s housewife in a tennis outfit slipped a copy of Rich Man, Poor Man across the counter. Jamie gave her a smile. "Find everything you're looking for?"
"Yes, thanks."
Lynette wrote something else down on the hangman page with the black pen she was using.
She slid it over to Jamie.
It said ‘I’m proud of you.’
Lynette looked at her. "Ya know?"
She pulled her smokes out from under the desk.
“At least you fucking love someone...”
“You make it sound like it’s a good thing.”
53
Penny glanced at her watch. 7:30 p.m.
She took the last puff of a cigarette and stood staring out the window of her office to 58th Street below and the office building across the way.
Just beyond it, up Sixth, a Manhattan summer evening sky. painted in sunset shades of orange and purple.
She exhaled the last puff of smoke and stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray on her desk.
Something caught her eye. There on her desk, the file of Jamie’s work. She slid it over and opened it up, had a glance at the first page and started reading. It was a funny piece about found inscriptions in the used books in the bookstore where Jamie worked. The ways different people dedicated Sonnets from the Portuguese to each other.
It made her smile. This wasn’t publishable but right now it was the perfect tonic to end her day.
She flipped the pages. The next piece was about the Central Park Zoo seals. Also entertaining, and evocative of New York on a rainy day in June.
Penny turned the page. The next one was shaped like poetry. It was dated July 6, 1977. Two weeks ago.
“17th floor”
The sweet in her lips and the world in her eyes
The gentle collaborator of her wit
quiet with waiting
She looks out the window at the city below her,
the clouds just above in a same as yesterday blue sky
She looks out to the city
and sees across the way,
the other people in other offices with dreams and dates and lives and birthdays.
And there is an aloneness that comes over her like a rain
That she thinks I can’t see but I do
And this aloneness that she retreats to,
is her mark and scar and gift and heart
It is the beautiful she is -
It is this that makes her beautiful.
Penny finished the words and slowly sat down into her desk chair.
This was about her.
The words filled her up. But she instantly knew they shouldn’t.
Her mind started racing.
“Oh no… She’s in love with me. What if she is? And I’ve just invited her up here?”
She felt pulled in two completely different directions like that two headed dromedary in Dr. Doolittle.
One the one hand, there was this poem - beautiful words, a dream to be written like that. Being seen from the soul.
But on the other hand, she couldn’t remotely handle this in her life right now.
She glanced at the file of papers. She wanted to close the file. But she didn’t.
Penny read the poem again. Because what she wanted more than running away, was for someone or something to see her. Even just words. She scanned her eyes along the words again.
The sweet in her lips and the world in her eyes
The gentle collaborator of her wit
quiet with waiting
She looks out the window at the city below her,
the clouds just above in a same as yesterday blue sky
She looks out to the city
and sees across the way,
the other people in other offices with dreams and dates and lives and birthdays.
And there is an aloneness that comes over her like a rain
That she thinks I can’t see but I do
And this aloneness that she retreats to,
is her mark and scar and gift and heart
It is the beautiful she is -
It is this that makes her beautiful.
“Oh my god,” Penny whispered.
She’s in love with me. And I’ve lead her on. And now it’s late to call and cancel.
More conflicting emotions crashed like waves inside her.
“This cannot be,” was one.
“But to be loved like that…” was another.
She took a deep breath and let it out. Calming herself.
Maybe this was better that Jamie would be here soon. Face her. Deal with it. Get on with it. Make it be over. Be an editor and a writer. Maybe friends. A special spark between them. Never to be spoken of. People did it. Jesus, Victorian literature was built on it.
This was good. This was a plan. And it made sense. Time for this thing between them, whatever it was, to end.
54
At 8:02 p.m., Penny walked down the empty carpeted corridor towards Reception. She could see Jamie Brennan in a cream colored, flowered sundress standing by the glass door with a smile and a wave. She looked lovely, her blond hair up in a ponytail.
Penny felt a flash in her stomach. Fear? Love? Memory of the sex?
Jamie smiled.
Penny flipped the lock and opened the glass door.
“Hey,” Jamie said.
“Hi.”
Penny looked at her. Jamie smiled that same quick shy smile she had the very first time they met.
And yet now, Penny thought, I’ve kissed those lips. I’ve loved that lovely body – those curves, that softness. That sweet wetness I’ve tasted with my tongue and my mouth.
Penny shook off the thoughts.
“You’re well?” Penny said.
“I am,” Jamie laughed. �
��And other small talk…”
Penny smiled. “I’ve got more – would you prefer something weather based?”
“Sure.”
“Looks a bit like rain.’”
“Nice, “ Jamie said, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.”
“Hottest summer on record.”
They just looked at each other. Jamie being here made Penny feel everything was okay.
Jamie smiled again “I’m not sure what to do. Do we hug?”
Penny laughed. “Of course we hug.” She pulled Jamie in and gave her a quick hug.
Just this was making Penny feel better already. Maybe this whole weird situation was a way of getting her to have a friend.
“I’ve just got a couple of things to finish up and we can go,” Penny said.
“Sounds great.”
They started walking down the hall to Penny’s office.
Jamie glanced into an office as they passed by and saw an orange cardigan on the back of a chair. Cardigan in air conditioning, yes. That particular orange, no.
“So where would you like to go?” Penny was saying as they walked down the hall.
“What’s around here that’s good?”
“How about the Carlyle?”
“The Carlyle sounds great.”
They got to Penny’s office and walked in.
Penny made her over to her desk and closed a file. She took another one from the side of her desk and placed that underneath, then she slipped out a piece of paper and signed it.
“There. Done.”
She stopped, she glanced at something on her desk.
It was the file of Jamie’s writing.
“Oh,” Jamie said. “Okay, now I’m mortified.”
Penny smiled. “On the contrary, there is some beautiful stuff in there.”
“Uh huh.”
“Really. It gives me such a great sense of who you are.”
“Oh God. Who wants that?”
Penny clicked off her desk light so that now they were only lit by the light in the hallway and the soft shades of sunset coming through the window.