by Ariella Papa
“Something is different about you,” she said.
“What do you mean?” I asked, stacking the dishes up in the dishwasher, trying to avoid her gaze.
“I don’t know, it’s your body language. It’s your energy. Something has changed.”
It was freaky. Kirsten said that her other senses were heightened because of her ear, but could she tell?
“What do you want, to photograph me or something?” I asked, hoping she would say yes. I had been feeling sexier lately, turned on. I wanted proof. I wanted some evidence that I looked different. Nothing other than my long lunches had changed.
“Actually, I do want to, but not tonight. I’m exhausted tonight. I’m a little drunk. And I’m a little sad. It’s not a good night for creating anything.”
“A little sad? Why?”
She shook her head. “Never mind.”
I was still mystified by how she could tell. And part of me thought I could tell her and it wouldn’t matter. She may have been judgmental in her own way, but I felt as if she was one of the only people I could tell my secret to.
I was barely speaking to my mom. I called her from work, so that I could get off the phone with the meeting as an excuse. I kept feeling betrayed by her. I felt like a show horse. And I tried to see things from her side, a single mom, trying to raise a daughter and keep her out of trouble, but why did everything about my life have to be so focused? Why wasn’t there ever a time to simply coast?
I kept looking around at all the people I passed in the day. I used to look at them and feel so superior. I used to walk into a room and know I was the smartest person, the most accomplished. I had it all on paper. No one could argue with my success, but now I looked at people and realized I was finally catching up. Everyone had been in on this secret, these moments of wildness and passion for so long. While everyone was having fun, I had my nose to the grindstone so that I could get to the finish line faster and then hurry up and wait.
Other people got together, fell in love, had wild and crazy sex and didn’t care about the mess. They didn’t care about the future; they just lived. I had squandered my youth, and now that I had something fun, I had too many responsibilities to actually enjoy it.
And so I was once again struggling to get dressed in Keith’s apartment. It was, in all honesty, a mess. But I never really had time to look around. Every time I was there, I wanted to do the pile of dishes that was in the sink, but of course I never got a chance. He was always pulling me close, pulling me down.
I could never live this way, I thought. Not that anyone was asking. I was trying really hard not to get caught up in the outcome of this, but sometimes I let my mind wander to what could happen between us.
“So I guess we need to get back, huh?” he said, reaching out to cup my butt. Sometimes, I still had flashes of self-consciousness. I worried that the way he touched me so freely gave him the upper hand.
“Yeah, I have a meeting at two,” I said. I thought about giving him more details, but I realized that Keith wouldn’t really be listening to me. He didn’t seem to have much interest in the day to day of my life. I searched for clues about him, the few ideas I had about his life were from things he had said before we had sex. Now we barely talked.
While I craved Keith, I didn’t really know how to talk to him. I had the impression that he thought I simply showed up at the appointed time and then went into deep storage when we weren’t together. He didn’t seem to want to know anything about me.
When we weren’t together, I thought about him constantly and maybe convinced myself that I was falling in love with him, but then we were together and there was nothing about his personality or his intellect that appealed to me. That made me feel worse. I didn’t want it to be only about attraction, but I was starting to think it was.
But he spoke to me as if this was a big deal for him. Maybe it was how some men were during sex. I wondered when he was going to get over it. I still couldn’t believe he wanted me. I couldn’t believe this body of mine made him look that way. It truly didn’t seem possible.
“So tomorrow, then,” he said more than asked. “Same place, same time.”
“Yes,” I said. I wanted to say no, but I couldn’t.
I left the apartment first, as I always did. Even though we didn’t work on the same floor, we didn’t want anyone to see us together in the neighborhood or going back into the building. All of this illicit behavior was part of it too. The old competitive part of me was happy I could handle this without getting caught. I waltzed back to the building.
I definitely felt changed. The constant orgasms were doing wonders for my mood and maybe even my complexion. Plus, I never had the chance to eat during lunch, so I was losing weight.
“Anything happen when I was at lunch?” I asked Jennifer, expecting to get the usual answer. It was amazing how little ever happened. And to think, I used to focus on only this. How could it have been enough for me?
“Deanna was looking for you,” Jennifer said. I hadn’t stopped walking as I got in, but now I stopped in front of Jennifer’s desk and tried to gauge her expression.
“What do you mean? Did she call?” I asked.
“No, she came by,” Jennifer said. She shrugged.
“Ok,” I said. “Did she say anything?”
“Just to have you call her when you got back.”
“Did you tell her where I was?” I asked as if Jennifer knew where I was.
“No, I didn’t know where you were. I said you were at lunch,” Jennifer said. And I gathered from her expression that while she wasn’t going to hazard a guess to Deanna, she had her suspicions as to where I might have been. But instead she said, “That’s where I assumed you were.”
“Ok,” I said and I started to walk into my office. “What time was this?”
“12:15.”
“Thanks, Jennifer,” I said. I closed the door to my office behind me.
Shit! Almost two hours ago. Breathe, breathe, relax, I told myself. Jennifer didn’t know where I was, and Deanna definitely didn’t know where I was. For all she knew, I had a long lunch with a friend or a root canal or a family emergency or sex two times. Shit!! I didn’t have to answer to Deanna for being gone for so long. She didn’t know this was a habit. I deserved a pass. And from now on, I would scale back a little. Maybe I would keep it to Fridays or a few times a week or at least limit my lunches to one hour.
But why had she come down personally instead of calling or emailing?
I called Deanna and talked to her assistant, Kate. Deanna was in meetings until 4, Kate said. I tried to keep my voice light. I tried to stress the urgency that she have Deanna call me back without seeming frantic. It shouldn’t have been urgent. She is the one who wanted to talk to me.
I sat there at my desk, sweating even though the air conditioner was turned up way too high. I had so much to do. I always had so much to do. And lately I hadn’t done much of anything. But it was summer and most people slacked in the summer, I’d noticed. All that time studying the grasshoppers, I picked on the seasonal ways people checked out. I found that people were most productive in January, February, September and October. The rest of the time they were beaten down by winter or already off on some holiday in their heads. Most grasshoppers spent their work lives barely getting by, covering their asses. Now it was time to cover my ass. This was the consequence, I guess. But it didn’t seem so bad.
I started to do some work research, in case certain things came up, in case that is what Deanna’s call was about. Budgets were due in October, but I always had a good handle on the numbers way ahead of that. I guess this whole thing with Keith had made me removed from all the responsibilities that were supposed to fall under my umbrella.
Everything was fine. I was fine. No, I was terrified. I don’t know why. I had the urge to run out of the building. Over the Brooklyn Bridge and all the way home. I had the urge, this weird primal urge, to grab my children and hold them tight. Animals always sense when a
disaster is about to happen, Kirsten said. It was rubbish, I thought at the time. But now I wanted higher ground. I wanted something safe.
I called the day care. I spoke with Svetlana. The twins were napping, she said. They were having a great day. She sounded surprised to hear from me. I never called to check up. I wanted to believe that they were ok when I dropped them off. I didn’t want to be one of those helicopter parents. I was on the phone with Tatiana for a little longer than necessary,
“Is there anything else, miss,” Tatiana asked in her hesitant English made even more hesitant by my weird behavior.
Yes, Tatiana tell me what to do. Tell me how to make my kids look at me the way they look at you even though I’m not worthy.
“No, that’s all. Thank you.”
“Ok, see you later,” she said cheerfully.
“Ok, bye.” I hung up the phone and looked at it. The digital display read just after three. What had Deanna wanted? I picked up the phone and called Jennifer.
“Hey,” she said. She answered fast and cheerfully, which I took to mean that she was probably on a personal call. Jennifer was an expert grasshopper, well versed in covering her ass. I should have asked her for tips.
“Hi, Jen,” I said. Jennifer may have had her suspicions about me doing something illicit, but I needed to keep my tone even and professional. “Do you have some—I don’t know—software you use that tells you what conference rooms are being used and by whom.”
“Yeah, do you need me to schedule a meeting?”
“No, can you look and see which of the meetings that are going on right now might potentially be a meeting Deanna would be in?” I asked. This was certainly teetering on sounding like a stalker.
“Um, ok, let’s see here,” I heard her clicking. I imagined the look of confusion and annoyance on her face.
“All of this is pretty low-level. Well, wait, maybe this, do you think she would want to talk about secrets and shame?”
“What?” I asked, my voice betraying my shock. Was Jennifer trying to be funny? Was this some weird administrative blackmail? “What are you talking about?”
“You know that new web soap they’re kicking around. You told me about it. Secrets and Shame. Would Deanna go to that?”
Oh, right, that stupid idea for a web soap. I was way too high strung. I was going to give something away if I didn’t relax. Maybe I needed to go outside for some fresh air. No, I couldn’t leave my desk.
“Maybe, what room is that?”
“The little one on thirty-seven. It’s B. Not the one near the bathrooms, the one closer to the kitchen. You know the one?”
“Yes, thanks. How’s your day going?”
“Um, fine, thanks,” she paused. I don’t know why I was keeping her on the line. I don’t know why I needed to talk to someone. I didn’t want to be alone. “How are you?”
“Oh, good. I’m great. You know, it’s nice to have summer.”
“You looking forward to getting away from it all?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I assumed you were going to the lake house again this year. Aren’t you? You have a block on your calendar for the week before Labor Day.”
“Yes, of course, I just forget,” I said. I always forgot how much more Jennifer knew about me than I did about her. It was weird to have someone work for me, to have someone study me. Maybe she could give me some advice based on her past observations.
“Well, it sounds like a good time,” she said. She paused. I could here her tapping her pen on the desk. “So, did you, um, need anything else, Claudia?”
“Oh, no, thanks.”
“Thank you, bye.” She always ended calls that way. There was no reason for her to thank me. Ever.
So there I was again. In my office. Stuck with myself. Waiting. All the documents I was opening had letters that blurred together into nonsense. The phone wouldn’t ring no matter how many times I looked at it. Where was Deanna? The Secrets and Shame meeting was on thirty-seven which was Keith’s floor. I didn’t have the strength to see him again today.
I sat there, my heart racing. This was getting to be a common occurrence, but it wasn’t exhilaration I was feeling. It was fear. I was so afraid. I couldn’t connect with myself. I couldn’t slow myself down. Where was this going to go? Really, rationally, there couldn’t be anything Deanna was going to talk to me about. She didn’t know. I had to stop acting so weird.
But the part of me that used to be rational was long gone. And I knew that no matter how much I told myself not to worry, whatever was coming, I should have been worried.
For once in my life, the shit was going to hit the fan. And it had all been my own doing.
The phone rang and I almost jumped out of the chair. It was a number I didn’t recognize. A Brooklyn number. Was Deanna at some off-site location ready to dole out my fate?
“This is Claudia.”
“May I speak with Ms. Bynum please?”
“Yes, this is she,” I said. This was all so formal. What was happening?
“Hi, Ms. Bynum. This is Xionin from Brookese.”
“Oh, hi, how are you?”
“I’m fine, thank you. Is this a bad time?”
“No, I mean, I may be called to a meeting, but no, it’s fine.”
“Well, I have very exciting news,” she said. It sounded as if she was about to give a small child a giant piece of chocolate cake. “Your son, Jacob, has been accepted into our playgroup for next year. Now this doesn’t mean that he gets in to the school, but it’s an amazing first step.”
“My son? Jacob?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” I realized as soon as I asked how bad it sounded.
“Why,” Xionin repeated, laughing. “We don’t often hear that. But I guess Jacob was identified as an independent and creative thinker. He was a leader among his peers. That is what Brookese is striving for more of. Not that this necessarily means he gets in to the school. I want to remind you it’s just the playgroup.”
“Right. So what about my daughter?”
“Your daughter?”
“Emily. Is there a spot for her.”
“You know, I don’t see her on the list. I wasn’t the one who reviewed the applications,” she said. “I guess we should look into that. They are twins, yes?”
“Yes,” I said. It was unbelievable to me that Jacob made the cut and Emily didn’t. Sweet, goofy Jacob. An independent and creative thinker? Unbelievable. I guess I was going to have to figure out a way to keep Emily entertained while Jacob was busy.
“That is going to be difficult, to separate them, no?”
“Well, I don’t know, I never tried. I guess it could be a good thing. But it seems like it might be a logistical inconvenience,” I said.
“Yes, yes,” Xionin said, sounding genuinely concerned. “You know, we will put Emily on the wait-list. I’m sure we can figure out a way to get her in. To the playgroup that is, not the preschool.”
So now Emily, the more advanced kid, was going to be riding on Jacob’s coattails. The grasshoppers really were taking over.
Xionin was going to send me an informational packet with everything I needed to know about being in the playgroup (not the preschool).
This was big. I was one step closer to accomplishing my goal of getting the kids into a preschool. No matter what Xionin said, from all my research it seemed that kids who were accepted into the playgroup got into the preschool. It wasn’t going exactly as planned, but it was going.
I looked around my office. This would be the moment for me to call Peter and share the news. Or maybe I could call my mother, who was perhaps, more emotionally invested. Though she thought this was a “safety” preschool.
But forget her, I was proud of Jacob. And I was also proud of Emily. Being proud of my kids because of or in spite of what they did or didn’t accomplish was something she could never quite grasp.
Deanna was still not calling me. I thought about checking in again. It was aft
er four. But calling her assistant again would be pathetic. Maybe I had to seek her out myself. I had happened by Keith’s desk so many times. I could stalk her too.
I took a deep breath and went down to her floor. I went the most direct way, not the way I had been going that would send me right past Keith. I wanted to get there.
Kate was sitting at her desk outside. She looked up at me and narrowed her eyes. She wasn’t surprised to see me, but there was something.
“Hi, Claudia,” she said. Her eyes darted around. “Hold on a sec.”
She picked up the phone. Then she turned her body away so I couldn’t hear what she was saying into the phone. I instinctively took a step closer, but I still couldn’t hear her. I stepped back quickly when she hung up.
“Claudia, can you go up to Lucia Dolven’s office. They’re waiting for you. Do you know where it is?”
“Yes, on thirty. But Lucia . . . that’s Human Resources.”
Kate didn’t say anything. She nodded her head, slowly. I started nodding too.
And then I knew it. I was fried.
Chapter 17
Kirsten Gets a Lot Off Her Chest
It was liberating to finally confront someone.
I was pulled up at a red light after dropping Julissa off at day camp. A van pulled up next to me and I saw a woman glancing into my backseat. I had been caving in, lately, letting Sage wear what he wanted if it was after David left the house. Today he was wearing boy’s jean shorts and a fuchsia tank top with spaghetti straps.
I saw the woman next to me make a face and then look sharply at me in the front seat. I looked away, hoping the light would change soon, so I could escape the judgment in her eyes. But it was never that easy.
She beeped her horn and gestured for me to roll down my window. I wasn’t going to.
“Mama, what is that lady doing?”
“She’s beeping, buddy. She’s just beeping her horn.” I wish she could have mouthed her request. This way no matter what it was I would know and Sage wouldn’t have to. But she didn’t know I could read lips.