The Smart One

by JENNIFER CLOSE

  Claire had told her everything—the engagement, Doug’s moving out, the apartment, how she still needed to tell her family and cancel the plans that had been made for the wedding—and Amy had listened, nodding and handing her tissues, making sympathetic noises at certain places.

  “It’s such a mess,” Claire said. “I’m sorry. It’s a mess, I’m a mess.”

  Amy had sent her home then, instructing her to take the week off. “You have so much comp time. Take it. We’re covered here. There’s nothing that can’t be done next week. Just get things sorted and settled.” Claire thought how strange this was, since the extent of her personal conversations with Amy up to this point had been about the salad place across the street that they both liked. When they ran into each other there, they’d laugh and say, “Funny seeing you here,” and then they’d discuss whether it was better to get walnuts or pecans on your salad, or to leave them off altogether since nuts were so packed with calories.

  “I don’t need a whole week,” Claire said, but Amy held up her hand.

  “Take it. This is your life and this is important. There’s a lot for you to figure out. It wouldn’t hurt to rest and be kind to yourself for a few days.”

  Claire was forever grateful for this. She hoped that one day she could show the same kindness to someone who worked for her. But she was also deeply embarrassed and when she finally did return to work, she couldn’t look Amy in the eye. It was like she’d taken all her clothes off in front of this woman and then expected it not to be awkward. It was awful, really.

  Claire had spent the whole week in her apartment. She didn’t leave once. She called her mom to let her know about the engagement and refused the suggestions to come home to Philly, and screamed, “No!” at the idea of her mom coming to New York.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Really. I just need to sort things out.”

  “Oh, Claire,” her mom had said. And Claire had to get off the phone before she started crying, because those two words coming out of her mom’s mouth were the worst. She’d heard them so many times before—when she got a D in calculus, when she crashed the car in the high school parking lot, when she got arrested at the shore for underage drinking.

  Claire e-mailed her friends, but didn’t take any phone calls. She made it seem like she wasn’t in New York. I’m sorting things out, she typed. I’m doing fine.

  That whole week, Claire took baths at night. She soaked in the tub, filling it with water as hot as she could stand. When the water started to cool, she would let some of it drain out and then turn on the faucet to let new, steaming water pour in. She emerged from these baths pink-faced and dizzy. She would wrap a towel around her head and another around her body and stare at herself in the mirror. She looked like a newborn hamster before it got its fur—a doughy pink blob of see-through skin, unrecognizable and delicate.

  Claire hoped for some revelation during these baths. She thought that soaking in the soapy water would clear her head. But it didn’t. Mostly she just tried to figure out where she’d gone wrong. Sometimes she wondered what would happen if Doug were still there. Almost always she replayed the moment in her head when the actual breakup happened, when Doug said he was going to move out, and Claire said, “What am I going to do now?” She hadn’t meant to say it, didn’t even realize it was coming out of her mouth until she heard it, and immediately she was ashamed. She didn’t want to be that person, didn’t want to hear her teary, pathetic voice in her head, admitting that she was lost, saying, “What am I supposed to do now?” like she couldn’t figure anything out for herself. And so she soaked in the water and hoped that somehow the words would steam out of her.

  During the days, she watched talk shows. On Tuesday, the guest was a kidnapping specialist, who talked the audience through gory details of women being dismembered and raped. Claire forced herself to watch as a reminder that things could be much worse. More than once, the man looked at the audience with serious eyes as he repeated his most important advice: “Never let them take you to a second location,” he said. He pointed at a different person with each word.

  Apparently, the odds of being killed went up enormously when you let an abductor take you somewhere else. Claire let this thought run itself over in her head. She ordered takeout every night, and figured she was safest in her apartment.

  Claire returned to work without one thing figured out. She had considered moving, but the thought of finding a new place that she could afford seemed impossible. And so she stayed put and dipped into her savings to pay rent after Doug stopped sending her checks. She told herself that it was actually less expensive this way, because to move she’d need money for a deposit and a broker fee and a moving company. It was the right thing to do, she thought, to stay where she was for the moment. Never let them take you to a second location, she’d remind herself.

  Of course, six months later, all of Claire’s savings were gone and she’d started charging anything she could on her credit cards—groceries, subway cards, taxi rides, the electric bill. It was easy to live in New York on credit.

  At least ten times a day, she signed on to her bank accounts to look at the numbers, trying to make sense of them, trying to make them add up differently. She studied the numbers, like if she looked at them long enough, more money would appear in her bank account. But that never happened. After staring at it for about an hour, she’d begin to get a panicky feeling, and she’d have to sign out quickly, clicking the button at the top, like closing the screen was going to make the problem go away.

  Sometimes at night, Claire dreamt about that crazy blond lady on TV, the one who tried to fix the financially irresponsible, adding up their bills, telling them, firmly, that they needed to change their habits. In her dreams, Claire saw this woman walking up to her in a no-nonsense suit, accentuating every word as she said, You cannot live like this. You have got to take responsibility. You have got to live within your means or you are going to end up—Broke. Without. A. Penny. To. Your. Name. Or. A. Place. To. Live.

  In the dreams, Claire would try to run away from her. When she woke up, she’d always think, Even my dreams have money problems. Then she’d try to tell herself it wasn’t that bad.

  This past month, she’d realized that she was totally screwed, that she probably wouldn’t even be able to pay her full rent next month. She wondered about this in a sort of abstract way, as if the apartment were so absolutely hers that the landlord wouldn’t be able to kick her out. But she knew that wasn’t the truth. She knew her borrowed time was almost up.

  EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE, Claire went to craigslist to look at apartment listings. She scrolled through them, clicking on the pictures of the tiny studios, usually in Brooklyn, or else so far up and so far east on the island, she wasn’t even sure it could be considered Manhattan anymore. She looked at the pictures of the empty rooms, clicking through the bathroom photo that showed a bare toilet, naked and exposed in the empty white space. She’d click, click, click along, each one uglier than the one before, until she felt like she was going to throw up.

  Even scarier were the apartment shares. She’d gone as far as e-mailing with one guy who was renting out a bedroom in a three-bedroom walk-up at York and Seventy-sixth. Claire set up a time to meet with him, got to the building, and then kept walking. She just couldn’t face it. She knew what she’d find: a tiny place with thin walls, where she’d be able to hear everything her roommates did and said, would have to run into them in the kitchen while eating cereal, and wait her turn for the shower in the morning.

  No. Sharing a place with randoms was out of the question. She was too old for that. Maybe a few years ago, it wouldn’t have seemed so bad. But she was twenty-nine and she didn’t want to have to negotiate refrigerator space with strangers.

  What she wanted was to stay where she was. It wasn’t fair that she had to leave. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d always had a job, had worked hard, had been responsible. Why was she the only one being punished? None of her other f
riends had to deal with this. Even the dumb girls she’d known in high school seemed to be capable of living as adults. How had they all ended up fine and she’d ended up like this?

  Claire loved the apartment that she and Doug had shared. It was a teeny bit run-down, but it was clean and in a beautiful old building. It wasn’t big, but it was certainly the biggest place she’d ever lived in New York—a proper one-bedroom, with a kitchen that opened up into the living room with a counter and stools. What more could you want? Sure, she couldn’t afford it, but maybe something would happen, maybe her circumstances would change.

  CLAIRE’S PHONE HAD BEEN RINGING all weekend, which was really annoying. It was one thing to have to talk to people at work, but on Saturday and Sunday, she wanted peace. The first call was from her sister, Martha, reporting that a meth lab had been busted on the Upper West Side. Martha assumed that the meth lab was right next to Claire’s apartment, possibly in the very same building. Martha left messages like this a few times a week. It was almost as if she searched for bad news to share, almost as if she liked it.

  Her mom had called twice more, asking about the shore. Claire didn’t even have to listen to the messages to know what they were about. Weezy wasn’t going to stop until she got the answer that she wanted.

  Her friend Lainie had also called three times, but hadn’t left any messages. Lainie never left messages; she got too impatient waiting for the beep to come. Claire wasn’t that concerned, because if it was a real emergency, Lainie would text her. But when her number came up a fourth time, Claire answered.

  “You sound miserable,” Lainie said. She didn’t even say hello. She was never one to sugarcoat things. Once in high school, when Claire was obsessing over a giant pimple on her forehead, searching for some sort of reassurance that it wasn’t as bad as she thought, Lainie had said, “Yeah, it’s huge, but what are you going to do? Stay in your house until it’s gone? Everyone knows you don’t normally look like that.”

  “Well, hello to you too,” Claire said now.

  “Hi,” Lainie said. She spoke quickly. “So what’s going on? You sound awful.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine. You sound like someone died. Katherine thinks you’re depressed.”

  “Katherine thinks everyone’s depressed.”

  “Fair enough.” Lainie knew this was true. Katherine loved therapy, thought everyone should be in it, and had encouraged Lainie to see someone after she gave birth to each of her children, just in case she developed postpartum depression.

  “I’m fine,” Claire said again. She felt awkward on the phone with Lainie, like they were dancing on the offbeat of a song. They hadn’t talked much since Doug moved out. Lainie had her third baby the month after, and was available only for quick calls, in which she often mentioned that her life was full of poop and that she sometimes forgot to brush her teeth. Claire was used to this, the way Lainie disappeared for a little while when each of her boys was born. She wasn’t surprised by it anymore, or even hurt. It was just the way things happened, and Lainie always resurfaced after a few months. Just because this last baby had come at an inconvenient time for Claire, a time when she could have used her best friend, there wasn’t anything she could do about it, except wait.

  “Are you sure?” Lainie was saying.

  “Yeah, I’m just … You know, trying to adjust, I guess.”

  “It’s been six months.” Lainie didn’t say this unkindly, but it still made Claire’s throat tighten up.

  “I know. It’s just weird, okay? It just sucks.” Claire heard a baby crying, and Lainie sighed. Claire could tell that Lainie was picking Matthew up and bouncing him around, trying to get him to quiet down.

  “I know, I know,” Lainie said. But she didn’t.

  “I just have to figure a bunch of stuff out. I just never feel like doing anything. I have to move, I have to do tons of things, and I just feel like I can’t.”

  Lainie was silent for a moment. “Maybe I’ll come up to see you this weekend.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really. That’s what we’ll do. I could come tomorrow and stay the night. It’s a three-day weekend and Brian can watch the boys. We’ll figure it all out. We’ll find an apartment, get you signed up for online dating.”

  “Funny,” Claire said. But then she did let out a little laugh.

  “I’m serious. We’ll get it all figured out.” Claire knew that Lainie was only half kidding. Lainie liked to solve problems and she probably thought she could come up for one weekend and easily sort out Claire’s mess. Which was just a little obnoxious, but Claire didn’t mind.

  “IT’S AMAZING, REALLY,” LAINIE SAID, “that this place hasn’t driven you crazy yet.” She dropped her bag on the floor and looked around at the apartment. Claire had to admit it didn’t look good. When Doug had packed up all of his stuff, it became clear that almost everything in the apartment was his. They’d both known this, of course, but somehow it was still a surprise to see him take it all with him.

  He’d taken all of the framed pictures from the walls, the big TV, the dresser, the desk, the big couch, and most of the stuff in the kitchen. He’d left her the bed to be nice, and so Claire had insisted he take the duvet and pillows, which he had (except for one pillow), and now the bed looked like it belonged in an insane asylum, stripped down except for white sheets and an old knitted afghan that Claire had stolen from home years ago.

  The only things left in the main room of the apartment were an old loveseat, a side table, a small TV, and a lawn chair that she’d found in the closet after Doug left. There were a few things in the kitchen, enough to get by, anyway—a couple of plates, a bowl, some silverware, a pot, and a skillet. She knew Doug had felt bad for leaving her with so few things, and he kept offering to leave more, but she insisted he take his stuff. “It’s yours,” she kept saying. “You should take it, it’s all yours.”

  Doug probably assumed that Claire had waited a few days and then gone out to replace what was missing, that she’d moved things around, hung new pictures, or at least covered the holes that were left. But she hadn’t done a thing. And now the whole place was practically empty, like she was in the middle of moving in or out, like the whole situation was just temporary.

  That night, she and Lainie decided to just stay in and order food and when the deliveryman came, Claire realized that she wouldn’t be able to charge it to her card. She hadn’t paid the bill and there wasn’t enough credit left.

  “Oh shit,” she said. “I forgot, there was some security thing with my bank and they canceled all my cards. I was supposed to get new ones, but they haven’t come yet.”

  “That’s okay,” Lainie said. “I got it.”

  “Thanks,” Claire said. Her heart was pounding with the lie, but Lainie didn’t seem to notice anything.

  AFTER THEY ATE AND DRANK WINE and went to bed, Claire lay on her back for a long time and stared at the ceiling. Her room never got all that dark, since the light of the city came in through the blinds and she’d never taken the time to get curtains or a shade to block it out. This never bothered Claire, because when she woke up, she could always see everything in the room and never had to turn on a light to go to the bathroom, never tripped over a pair of shoes or walked into a wall.

  “I have no money left,” she said. She wasn’t sure if Lainie was awake or asleep, and she figured that was her gamble, that she could just say it out loud and if Lainie heard, then she’d have to deal with it.

  But then she saw the pillow move, and then Lainie was squinting at her. “What?”

  Claire considered lying for a minute, or telling her that she was just exaggerating. But then it seemed too hard, and Lainie always knew when she was lying anyway. “I have no money left,” Claire said again. “I’m broke. And I don’t mean, I’m broke, like I normally mean it. I mean that I’ve spent all of my savings and have been living on my credit cards for months and now there’s no more room left on them, and I don’t th
ink I can pay rent this month. Not after I pay the minimum on the cards, and I seriously don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “Oh shit.” Lainie was sitting up now.

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you borrow some money from your parents?”

  “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I’m going to have to. But I don’t know what good that’ll do. Even if I get through this month, I’m going to have the same problem again next month.”

  “Well, you need to move.” Lainie sounded firm, like moving would solve everything.

  “I know, I know. I know I need to. I just put it off for so long because I didn’t want to live somewhere shitty, and it costs so much to move—to pay the movers and put down the deposit and all of that. At this point, I’d have to borrow ten thousand dollars from my parents to move and that probably wouldn’t even be enough. And I’d end up in some dungeon in Brooklyn.”

  Claire felt her nose start to run and knew she’d be crying soon. Lainie patted her knee, got up, turned on the bedroom light, and went into the kitchen. She came back with Kleenex and two beers. She handed one to Claire and sat cross-legged in front of her.

  “I’m so screwed,” Claire said.

  Lainie nodded. “We’ll figure it out,” she said. “It seems impossible, I know, but it’s not. We’ll figure it out.”

  There were times in college when the size of a paper she had to write would overwhelm Claire. She’d sit there in front of the computer and try to get herself to start typing, but all she could think about was how much she had to do, the enormousness of the project. It would paralyze her. People sometimes said that fear was a motivator, but she never found that. Instead, she’d sit, all night, staring at the screen and not typing a word.

  And it was happening again. The amount of her debt was too big, the size of her fuckup was too large. To act on it would be to acknowledge it, to start trying to fix it, and it just didn’t seem like there was any way to do that. And so she sat, paralyzed, and waited.