A tesseract kind of happened in my brain when I saw them together. Four dimensions of simultaneous understanding. I cubed the cube of all the men I’d ever known and drew a speed-of-light conclusion. “I’ll be right back,” I said to Lindsey. “I’ll meet you outside.”
She looked at me with confusion. “Where are you going?”
“I’ll be right back!” I called again as I walked away.
Stealthy as a trained international assassin, I went to the back of the store, behind the Elfa Design Center, so that I might circle around the perimeter and catch Ben red-handed in the plastic tub aisle. What I’d learned from my parents was that denial, as well as plausible deniability, could keep a woman stuck in some bad situations. If I were to confront Ben directly in the moment, he might make up some excuse, turn on the gaslights, accuse me, like Wolf had, of being off my meds.
So instead I crept over to the end of aisle three and pulled out my phone, in order to record my boyfriend’s conversation with the woman whom I believed was his other girlfriend. Which seemed like the only reasonable course of action given my compromised position.
From this position—namely, kneeling on the scuffed linoleum, straw from my huaraches scratching the back of my thighs as I crouched, I couldn’t see these two shameless adulterers. But I could hear them. Each word made my chest ache.
“What about this one?” the woman said, her voice melodic.
“I don’t think that’s big enough,” Ben replied.
“But your mother has so much stuff!”
Oh, I thought, so he’ll talk to her about his mother, he’ll talk to Simone about his mother, but he won’t talk to me? He’ll let this floozy help take care of his mother, and not me? I’d rather have caught Ben mid-coitus than in the midst of shopping for home goods with another woman. At least that could be chalked up to raw animal impulse. But this? This implied real intimacy, the banal intimacy of daily life, which is the majority of intimacy and, in truth, the one I’d never had.
Over the past few weeks I’d realized that’s what I wanted the most: that banal intimacy with Ben. I would have done anything to cultivate it, banged notes over and over on that out-of-tune piano until Mozart finally came out of my fingertips. Come, take a walk with me, I wanted to be able to say to him, say until the day I died. Even if we just talk about television and the weather, with you I will be happy.
I hated myself all of a sudden, for allowing my hopes to float so high.
“Why don’t we start with these,” Ben was saying. “We can always come back. Didn’t you want to get one of those pill organizers for her, too?”
In retrospect, I can see how this might have served as a useful context clue. But I was so far afield I wasn’t thinking too much about context, including my surroundings. Which is why I missed the sound of Ben’s and his lady’s footsteps, and why by the time they rounded the corner into my aisle I had only a split second to spring to my feet and sprint toward the exit.
I only got halfway down the aisle when I heard Ben say, “Casey? Is that you?”
I whirled around.
“Ben? Ben! Oh my God, I didn’t see you there! Hi! Wow, what a coincidence!” I was shifting my weight and swinging my arms around like a rubber-boned lunatic. “I’m here with Lindsey, ha ha. This is ‘our place’! Your place too, looks like. Me, oh, well I just got some new closetry!”
“What were you doing just now?” he said. His face had that focused, penetrating expression.
“You know?” I said. “Ha, I can’t even remember! I came back here looking for”—my eyes scanned the aisle—“bathroom drawer organizers, but then I realized, I don’t need them! Plus Lindsey already checked out; she’s waiting outside. Anyway, I should let you go. I’m Casey, by the way,” I said to the woman, waggling my fingers. “Casey Pendergast. Friend of Ben’s. Nice to meet you.”
“I’m…Maria,” the woman said.
Ben had kept that same funny expression on his face. “She’s my mom’s new in-home aide. We’re moving her to the downstairs bedroom so she doesn’t have to worry about the stairs.”
“Your mom’s new in-home care person!” I said. “The downstairs bedroom!”
The cube that I had cubed was morphing, the white-hot clarity in my brain dissolving back into a muddle. The only sense I could make of this snarl in my brain was: me make mistake. And also: he know me make mistake.
I had to get out of there. I started inching backward. “Oh, wow, that’s great! I’m so glad you guys found each other. Not found-found, ha ha. Anyway, like I said, Lindsey’s waiting for me outside, so I better”—I stuck my thumb toward the exit—“be on my merry way. But, wow—so great to meet you, Maria, and so great to see you, Ben, and see you guys together. Not together-together, but—okay I’ll talk to you later, yeah?” I was shuffling away with increasing speed. “Cool, cool. Bye!”
I turned and ran.
Outside, I found Lindsey sitting forlornly on the curb. She looked like a kid whose mom had forgotten to pick her up after swim practice. I plopped down beside her and rested my head for a second on her shoulder. Her corn-silk hair brushed against my temple.
“Everything okay?” she said.
I sighed and shook my head.
She put a thin arm around my shoulder. “Me neither.”
“I keep messing up,” I said. On the up, my voice broke in half.
“We all do,” she said, and kissed the top of my head. The gesture reminded me of my mother. Not because Louise had made such gestures, but because I had always wished she would.
After a minute, I pulled my head back. I looked at her; she looked back at me.
“I hurt people,” I said. “All the time. I don’t want to hurt people anymore.”
Now it was Lindsey’s turn to sigh. “I dunno. I think hurting people is inevitable.”
“Why?” I rubbed my forehead with the back of my hand.
She shook her head, shrugged slightly. “ ’Cause we’re afraid,” she said simply. “And most of us don’t know how to be anything else.”
I dug through my ear. It was filled with wax. There was stubble on my legs and my stomach was pushing against the button of my shorts and I wondered if all women felt as disgusting inside their skin as I sometimes did. I looked down at the pavement.
“I ruined things with Ben.”
“You did? What? Where? How?”
“He was in The Container Store. I thought he was with another woman.”
“He was?!”
“No. I just thought he was. It was his mom’s aide.”
Lindsey shifted her weight. “I was going to say, he didn’t seem like the type—”
I laughed despairingly. “Oh, he’s not. But apparently I still needed to spy on him? He caught me hiding in the air fresheners.”
Lindsey winced. “Oh, Casey.”
“I don’t know what to do,” I said, burying my face in my hands. “I really don’t.”
“You can apologize. Go back in there. Maybe he’ll understand.”
I peered through the cracks in my fingers and looked across the parking lot. “Or maybe,” I said, “we could just go to Applebee’s.”
Lindsey smiled gently. “If you want to make jokes, that’s fine,” she said. “But you never have to, not with me.”
“Yeah, but,” I said through my fingers. “How else can I make you love me?”
Lindsey didn’t make me go talk to Ben again. I think she realized I didn’t have it in me. So instead we stood and walked with our arms around each other’s shoulders to an oasis that served neon drinks and boneless wings and chicken quesadillas: not alleviating the other’s sorrow, oh no, we could never do that, but keeping watch over it, keeping it company.
* * *
—
I didn’t hear from Ben until that night. when he finally did call,
he told me a story. He had spent, he said, four years with a woman in his early twenties, a woman who’d been with a few really terrible men. Ben did everything to help her feel safe—he called her every night, only had sex at her initiation, apologized and beat himself up every time he did or said something that she called a “trigger”—right up until the day she told him she was having an affair with her boss.
“I can’t go through something like that again,” he said. “I’m always trying to understand where you’re coming from better—but the bullying? The spying? I can’t get behind it.”
“Okay,” I said faintly. I was sitting on my bed, knees hugged to my chest. My windows were open, and I could hear the cacophony of summer birds in the maple. I leaned one cheek on my knee and looked outside. It was the kind of twilight past the beautiful, wistful blues and purples, the time when darkness was inevitable and the day surely done.
“Why did you do that today? Right after we—” he started to say more, but his voice was rising, and he stopped himself.
“I know,” I said. “I’m a really messed up person.”
“I think you’re an incredibly special person,” he said. His voice caught a little. “I’m just sad things didn’t work out.”
I startled. “Didn’t work out?”
He exhaled audibly. “I need a little time, that’s all.”
“Please don’t go,” I said, my voice trembling. “I love you. I can trust you, I’m doing better. It’ll just take time.”
It was the first time I said it. The I love you, I mean. Plain and clear, they were the most honest words I’d said in a long time. In response my breath deepened, I sat up a little straighter, the uncanny feeling I’d been fighting all day dissipated. The whole body changes when you tell the truth; it’s just that most of us, as we grow up and forget our bodies, forget this too.
After a silence he said, “I love you too.” I could tell he was crying a little because his voice sounded like he’d swallowed a bubble of water. “But I can’t do this again.”
“Please don’t go,” I said again. Now I was really crying, for the second time that day.
“I hope everything goes well for you,” he said. “Don’t worry about the office—it’ll be fine. Most of my work is virtual anyway.”
I choked out, “I’m not even thinking about the office.”
There was everything and nothing more to say, so we hung up. With my phone still warm in my lap, I put my forehead on my knees and wept.
But it’s not enough to cry, is it? For years I’d let crying settle matters. It was a necessary release. I luxuriated in the physical catharsis, felt as clean and refreshed by it as I did after a bath, refusing to allow the tears to reveal the information they contained. Action, for example. Words. A hard examination of what led to them in the first place. Without these steps, crying was sex without love, work without purpose. Fine, important, pleasurable at times. But not enough.
But what was enough? I had never been enough, that much I knew. We are born into this world with a great nameless absence. And it was haunted by this absence, this terrible, yawning lack, that I finally, some hours later, fell asleep.
The next day, Monday, I awoke and took inventory. Best friend, gone. Boyfriend, gone. Sabbatical, not happening. I dressed grimly in all black and went into work, resigned to making the best out of the remaining shambles of my existence. I consoled myself with the fact that I still had fifteen percent equity and a ten percent raise, not to mention Lindsey’s friendship and my new Elfa closetry. Yes, there were always ways to look on the bright side. Even when your life is in flames, the light can be very pretty. Not!
Celeste called me into her office first thing and gave me the dossier for my final assignment—the tenth asset—before we took Nanü to the VCs. In short, I was to harpoon the white whale of Blue Ocean. A white whale that turned out to be, of all people, Julian North, the one who’d gotten Celeste interested in this Nanü business in the first place. And of all places, she needed me to harpoon him in Vegas, where the annual American Book Fair was taking place.
Celeste explained that the ABF was where publishers and authors acted as hype men for their upcoming books in the hopes that booksellers, jacked up on booze and flattery, would choose those books to be the ones facing out on the shelves. Apparently there were whispers going around the publishing industry, rumors about what Celeste was up to, though all the contracts with Nanü were still confidential and out of the public eye until autumn. Celeste didn’t want to start a big publicity push until we’d secured funding and the paperwork to sell PR was final.
Indeed, only Ben’s social media activity with Waterman Quartz was live, but even that little partnership was ruffling some feathers. The party line among writers and publishers was that they were completely against the quote-unquote corruption of the literary arts and this quote-unquote disgraceful turn into advertising. But Celeste was well-connected enough that she could burrow beneath the party line, and the unofficial word was that there were plenty more writers ready to cede their quote-unquote artistic integrity if we had the right pitch and dollar amount ready.
Including Julian, who in the years since I saw him speak in college had amassed a number of national awards, as well as publishing one novel that climbed to the top of the bestseller lists. Julian’s wife had been diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer. Julian was already two years late on turning in his next novel, a sequel to the bestseller, but apparently, devoted as he was, he was unable to work with his wife so sick.
The treatments weren’t going well, either, and they were so expensive that they’d devoured the last of his advance. Word on the street was that he was desperate for cash to keep up with the medical bills. “He may be a literary lion,” Celeste said, and sighed. “But even lions have to eat.”
Upon hearing this news, instead of feeling uncertainty or moral circumspection, I thought: my God, perhaps my luck is turning already! I guess we want so badly to be okay that even when we’re in a pot of hot water and sweating like mad, we’re telling ourselves all sorts of encouraging stories, stories like, hmmm, maybe this hot water is good for me, as it will release what Gwyneth Paltrow calls “toxins”; or, oh please, there’s no way this warm comfy bath could ever become something nefarious and boiling! As Susan always said, my optimism bordered on the deranged, and one of the key symptoms of derangement is selective amnesia.
But look, Vegas was my favorite city in the world, and I was going there to remeet my literary hero, who had already reset my moral compass once, back in college. Maybe, in some limited way, he could do so again. I was getting so wound up and excited to see him that I didn’t really listen to Celeste talk about the product that Julian had been pegged to hawk—a new tablet created by a yet-unknown American-made electronics company—and its sexy attributes designed specifically for writers, like voice transcription and front lighting and a stylus in the shape of a quill. I imagined a scenario in which Julian, so impressed with my professionalism and spunk, asked me if I might leave my job at Nanü in order to become his full-time…something. Assistant, maybe.
“One more thing,” Celeste said as I stood up to leave.
A nervous chill passed through me. I was hoping Ben hadn’t contacted her about the end of our romantic liaison out of some weird ethical obligation. I was also hoping Wolf hadn’t contacted her out of some need to be a giant dick. “What’s up?”
“I was talking to Ben,” she said, “at the picnic.” She folded her hands on her desk. “He mentioned you were interested in taking acting classes. Said you’d always loved performing and were looking to get involved after a long hiatus.”
“He said that?”
She laughed drily. “It was quite…touching. It was clear from the conversation that he thinks quite highly of you.”
“Well—” I said, clenching my jaw. “I wouldn’t say that’s always—
”
“It got me thinking,” she said, and opened her desk drawer. “I wanted to do something for you anyhow, to thank you for the long hours and travel you’ve put in this summer, a gesture. I’ve met a number of producers and agents through our dealings with Ellen. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to set up a meeting with one or two of them after you get back from Vegas.”
“With me?” I said, abashed. “Why would you do that?”
“I know—” Celeste paused to clear her throat. Her words were coming out starched and stiff. “That I don’t seem like a particularly—emotional person. But I’ve grown quite—I suppose—fond of you over the years, and tried my best to cultivate your—talents—and if there is a way for us—ahem”—she coughed slightly—“me—to better use your talents…Well—I’m all ears.” She sped up and re-professionalized herself once she arrived at the logistics. “I’ve spoken briefly to an agent who’s currently pitching a reality show about twentysomethings working in the city, and she’d like to meet you and see if you’re a good fit for the programming. It’s also a good way to get Nanü exposure, since they’d probably want to film you in the office.”
“Oh my God!” I said, clapping a hand over my mouth in surprise. “I don’t—”
I rummaged around the drawers in my brain for something to say, but all I was finding were fortune cookie wrappers and platitudes from yoga teachers. “I don’t know what to say,” I said, dropping my hand. “Seriously. I’m gobsmacked.”
No, an ensemble role on a cable reality show was not exactly what I’d always wanted, but look, at this point, it was probably the closest I could get. I felt my eyes fill with tears, goddamn it, again. I was turning into a Lifetime movie. “What I mean is, I’m honored,” I said. “Sorry.” I dabbed at the corner of my eyes. “I just—I guess I’m also surprised—”
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