Weezy walked toward the kitchen. “That sounds great,” she said. “I’m pooped.”
“I’m making sausage and peppers and some pasta thing to go along with it.”
“Mmm,” Weezy said. She smiled and sat down in a kitchen chair. “Do you need help?”
“No, I’m good. Where were you? Your phone kept going right to your voice mail.”
“I had some meetings. How was work?”
“Fine,” Claire said. “The same. Pretty boring.”
Claire had announced that she wanted something to do, a job, but she didn’t care what it was. This disturbed Weezy. She suggested that Claire look at grad school programs or research some nonprofits here, but Claire wouldn’t hear of it.
“I just want a job,” she’d insisted. “Just a job. I don’t care if it’s boring or what it is.”
Weezy wanted to tell her that this wasn’t the attitude to take. She’d spent years working at places that were “just a job” and it didn’t make it easier that you didn’t care about it. If anything, it made it harder.
She’d always known that Claire would be able to thrive in a work situation. It was Martha that she had to constantly build up. “You’re so smart and capable,” she’d said to her last week. Martha needed reminding, needed to be shown how to showcase herself. Sometimes her skills didn’t translate in the real world.
Claire didn’t go into much detail on her temp job, which was nothing new. She was always private with her information, never offered up anything unless Weezy was there to pry it out of her. Even after she and Doug called off the wedding, Weezy had to push to get any sort of answer. “It’s over, Mom,” was all she said. “What else do you want me to say? It’s done.”
“Was he unfaithful?” Weezy had asked.
“No, God, Mom. No.”
“I’m just trying to understand. Were you unfaithful?”
“Mom, stop. No.” Claire had breathed loudly on the phone, as if she was trying to calm herself down. “No one cheated, Mom. Nothing happened. We just don’t want to get married.”
Weezy had started to say something else, but thought better of it and stayed silent. She didn’t quite believe Claire, but there was no point in pushing further, she knew. Claire was the most stubborn of her children, and the more Weezy tried to put pressure on her, the more she dug in her heels and refused to move.
When the girls were little, Weezy sometimes resorted to trying to scare them into behaving. Once, in the grocery store, when they both refused to walk next to the cart, choosing instead to run in circles in the cereal aisle, she’d turned her back and left them. “Okay, then. I’ll see you later. I’m going home.”
Weezy walked down the aisle, turning once to look back at them for dramatic effect. Martha had screamed, “Wait! No! I’m coming,” and raced after her, snotty and red-faced, already crying in a panic. Claire had remained where she was. She sat herself down on the floor of the grocery store and didn’t budge. She just looked up at Weezy, daring her to go, her jaw clenched and her arms crossed, refusing to move.
And so Weezy went to the checkout, paid for her groceries, and then started walking to the car, sure that Claire would follow behind at any moment. Martha was still snuffling with fear because she’d almost been left behind. Weezy stood at the car, trying to remember what her childrearing books had said. Should she give in? Should she hold her ground? At what point did this become dangerous? Kids could be kidnapped anywhere at any time. Even if she was watching the front door, to make sure that Claire didn’t come out, you never knew.
She probably stood there for only a total of two minutes at the most, although it felt like an hour, and finally, convinced that Claire was in some sort of danger, she’d grabbed Martha and run back inside, and found Claire sitting right where she’d left her, staring straight ahead, refusing to move.
DINNER THAT NIGHT WAS WONDERFUL, mostly because Weezy hadn’t had to cook and Martha offered to clean up the kitchen. “Maybe having you two home isn’t so awful,” Will said, and the girls rolled their eyes at him.
Reading in bed that night, Weezy thought about the large flower arrangement of orange daisies, and how if she was really going to do this, she’d splurge for it. Even if it meant scrimping somewhere else in the budget, she’d do it. They were so beautiful and breathtaking. She could just imagine everyone’s faces as they walked in and saw them.
Will leaned over to give her a kiss good night, and his lips stayed on her for just a moment longer than usual. “You smell nice,” he said, smiling at her. “Like flowers.” He kissed her one more time, and then rolled over and fell asleep.
CHAPTER 9
The people at Proof Perfect (or “PP,” as they affectionately called themselves) took themselves very seriously. They wrote each other e-mails that said things like, “As we discussed,” and “FYI,” and “Per our earlier conversation,” and “Loop me in.” It was as if they’d all just read a book on office jargon and were in a competition to see who could use the most terms in one day.
People walked quickly, as if they couldn’t waste a second (not one second!) by walking at a regular speed, and so they raced from their offices to the restroom, and back again, presumably to continue their proofreading. As they passed each other in the halls, they often called out to each other, “Shoot me an e-mail,” because wasting time to stop and talk was clearly not an option.
Sometimes it was funny and sometimes it made Claire a little sad to watch them. They all seemed to have just discovered Microsoft Outlook meeting invitations and they sent them to each other for everything—weekly meetings, morning coffee breaks, birthday celebrations in the break room. It was the cause of many a scuffle when someone chose not to respond to an invite.
One of the women that Claire assisted, Leslie, called her anywhere from seven to ten times a day. She mostly called her Amanda, even though Claire was certain that she knew her name and remembered that Amanda was on maternity leave. Claire answered to it, figuring it was Leslie’s way of trying to tell her that she was very important and couldn’t be bothered to remember everyone’s name.
The job was easier than Claire had imagined. It was also a lot more boring. She mostly just sat around and waited for someone to ask her to Xerox something or for the phone to ring. If Claire had had any desire to write a book or a screenplay, this would have been the perfect opportunity. She could have sat all day and typed, mostly uninterrupted. But she had no such desire, and so instead she played solitaire, and perused cooking sites for recipes. Sometimes, she added up how much she was earning each day, and how much closer she was to paying down her credit cards. That was usually the most exciting part of her day.
AT HOME, MARTHA KEPT SAYING, “It’s good timing that you moved home now, since I’ll probably be buying a place soon.” Martha had been talking about buying a place for years now, so Claire didn’t pay much attention to her.
Each morning, Claire got up and was in the shower by seven, in order to beat Martha, who took forever in the bathroom. The two of them still often ended up in there at the same time, brushing their teeth or putting on their makeup, which made it feel like they were in high school again. Claire left the house around eight thirty and then was home by six, where she immediately changed into pajamas, or headed over to Lainie’s to drink wine. It was one or the other.
The first time that she came back late from Lainie’s, Weezy started to say something about coming home at a regular hour, and wanting to know where Claire was. While she talked, Claire just stood and stared at her and finally said, “Mom, I’m almost thirty. This isn’t going to work.”
Weezy let out a little laugh then, and looked just a touch embarrassed, as if she’d actually forgotten how old Claire was. “I guess it’s hard to get used to you living here as an adult,” she said. But then she made Claire promise that she would still just leave a message so that they knew where she was. Claire was too tired to protest, so she agreed. “Just Twitter me,” Weezy said, by which she meant send a
text.
They ate dinner together every night, and Martha talked about her new job, Will talked about his students, Weezy asked Martha about nursing, and Claire tried to figure out how she’d ended up there. After a week of the same routine, Claire felt like she was right back in high school. Or jail.
The other thing about living at home (which Claire had forgotten) was that all of a sudden, she was expected to be so many places, to attend so many random things—Lainie’s niece’s baptism, lunch with Weezy’s cousins, dinner with Will’s professor friends. When she tried to back out of anything, they would all just shake their heads. “You’re here,” they’d say, as if that explained it. As if her presence back in the state of Pennsylvania required her to participate in everything.
She even got roped into going to a wake for the father of an old high school friend. “I haven’t seen Kelly in, like, six years,” she said, but Lainie wouldn’t hear of it.
“You have to go,” she said. “It’s Kelly’s dad.”
And just like that, Claire was in the car with Lainie and Martha (who’d taken a math class with Kelly in high school) and they all stood in line at the wake, which was incredibly crowded, and then talked to Kelly’s mom, who looked really drugged up, hugged Kelly, and then stood and looked at the dead body at the front of the room.
“Doesn’t he look great?” Kelly’s mom said.
No, he didn’t look great. He looked dead. Kelly’s mom grabbed Claire’s hand, although Claire was pretty sure that she didn’t know who she was. Lainie, meanwhile, was nodding and telling stories and saying gracious things, like she was an expert at wakes now.
Claire hated wakes. It was a bizarre tradition to stand around and look at a corpse. And so, as soon as she could, Claire excused herself and walked outside and around the corner of the building, where she almost ran right into Fran Angelo, leaning against the wall, his head tilted back and his eyes closed as he smoked a cigarette.
For a second, Claire wondered what he was doing there. Was everyone in town required to go to this thing? Then she remembered that he was related to Kelly somehow, a cousin or a second cousin or something like that.
“Hey,” Claire said. He opened his eyes, but didn’t look all that surprised to see her, like he’d been waiting for someone to come find him. He smiled at her and she looked at the ground.
“Hey,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“Not much. Just, you know.” Claire motioned toward the wall of the funeral home, like that explained everything. She shifted from one leg to the other, hating that he made her feel like she was fifteen again.
“I haven’t gone in yet,” Fran said. “I hate wakes.”
“Me too. I was just thinking the exact same thing.”
“Do you want a cigarette?” He shook the pack and held it out to her.
“I don’t really smoke anymore,” she said. “But sure.” She didn’t bother to explain that she’d never really smoked in the first place, except when she was drunk and sometimes in college if she was bored. But now seemed like an appropriate time to smoke, and so she took one out of the pack and leaned forward to let Fran light it. She remembered parties in high school, clumps of teenagers standing around a backyard, smoking and looking bored. She inhaled and felt dizzy almost immediately. Fran smoked Reds, which seemed like a serious, old-man cigarette. He would probably smoke for the rest of his life.
“I was going to call you to hang out,” Fran said, “but then I realized I never got your number the other day.”
“Oh really?” Claire said. She sounded like an idiot. A teenage idiot.
“Yeah, we should get together.” He reached into his pocket, pulled his phone out and handed it to Claire.
“So, should I put my number in?” she asked. He nodded and she typed herself into Fran Angelo’s phone.
“I should probably go in, I guess.” He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, aiming his face at the sky. Claire remembered him in high school, how he was always tilting his face up like that to drop Visine into his eyes, like he was stoned or wanted people to think he was.
“Okay,” Claire said. “I’ll see you.”
Fran opened his eyes and looked at her. “I’ll call you,” he said. He walked back toward the front door of the funeral home, and left Claire standing there, holding her still-burning cigarette.
Lainie came out of the funeral home as Fran was going in. Claire walked around the corner of the building and called out to Lainie.
“Hey,” Lainie said. “I wasn’t sure where you went. Are you smoking?”
“Not really,” Claire said. She dropped the cigarette on the ground. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah. We just have to wait for Martha.”
“What’s she doing in there? Making plans to go to the burial with the family?”
“She’s just saying good-bye to a couple people. What were you doing out here anyway?”
“Nothing. I just didn’t want to be in there anymore. I hate wakes.”
“I don’t think anyone really likes them,” Lainie said.
“Martha,” Claire said. “I think Martha likes them.”
FRAN CALLED CLAIRE TWO DAYS LATER and invited her over. She’d lost her breath for a second when she heard his voice on the phone, and it was hard to recover and answer him when he said simply, “Want to hang out?”
“Sure,” Claire said. And then, “Sorry, I’m out of breath. I just got back from a run.”
“Cool,” Fran said.
Fran was living in the basement of his parents’ house. It looked just as she’d imagined it would. There were two old red-plaid couches that were scratchy when you sat on them, a banged-up coffee table, wall-to-wall brown carpeting, and a queen-sized bed in the corner. There was a small bathroom down there with a stand-up shower, a tiny refrigerator (the kind that kids keep in their dorm room), and a flimsy-looking desk with the oldest computer Claire had ever seen on it. In an adjoining room were the washer and dryer, and every so often, a whiff of dryer-sheet–smelling air would come drifting out, which was always surprising and pleasant.
“Here it is,” Fran said when she walked down there. “My new place.”
“It’s nice,” Claire said. She knew that since she was living in her parents’ house at the moment, she didn’t have a lot of room to judge, but it seemed worse that Fran was in the basement. Like it was more permanent or something.
Claire’s friend Natalie had a brother who had lived in the basement for as long as she could remember. He was eight years older than they were, and by the time they were in high school, he was a permanent fixture in the basement of the Martin house. He smoked pot down there, and he and his parents seemed to have an agreement—as long as he sprayed air freshener and pretended that he wasn’t smoking, his parents would pretend that they didn’t notice the smell of weed drifting up to the kitchen.
When they were freshmen in high school, they were all in love with Dan Martin. They’d giggle when he came upstairs and talked to them, kept their makeup on when they slept over, just in case he was around. As they got older, they sometimes went down to the basement with him to hang out, and by the end of high school, they sometimes drank beers down there or even smoked a joint.
But by the time they graduated from college, Dan no longer seemed cute or even a little bit appealing. He was thirty then, and even though he was thin everywhere else, he had a gut that hung over his pants. They never went down to the basement to see him anymore, and when he came upstairs they didn’t giggle. He transformed into Natalie’s creepy older brother, who was sort of a perv, and everyone seemed to forget that they used to worship him. Even Natalie started rolling her eyes at him, calling him a loser, blaming her parents for letting him live there. “What a waste of life,” she used to say. “What a complete waste of a person.”
Claire sincerely hoped that Fran would not live in the basement forever, but as she looked around she heard Weezy saying, “It’s a trend, an epidemic.”
Fran tol
d Claire that he’d let Liz keep their apartment, which was a loft on the edge of a trendy new neighborhood. “I didn’t want to stay there anyway,” he said. “She picked out all the furniture and decorated it. I didn’t want that place. It was full of fake posters and dream catchers.”
He got them both beers and they sat on the couch with the TV on, but they didn’t watch anything. Instead, he told her about Liz, who was a waitress and an artist who made jewelry that she sold at street fairs and some small boutiques.
“She thinks she’s going to make it,” Fran said. “She stays up half the night baking beads in a kiln that’s in the middle of the fucking apartment, thinking that she’s really going to make it.” He took a sip of beer and sniffed. “I mean, her stuff’s good, don’t get me wrong. But how many people actually make it big designing jewelry, you know?”
“Probably not a lot,” Claire said.
“Yeah, exactly. I used to tell her I wanted the kiln out of there, and she’d freak, like me saying that I didn’t want a huge fire pit in the middle of our apartment was single-handedly killing her career. Like, because I didn’t want to live in a fire death trap, I wasn’t supporting her.”
Claire laughed, and he smiled at her. He got them each another beer, and they set the empty ones right on the coffee table in front of them.
“Doug used to sleep with his BlackBerry. And I don’t mean he had it by the side of the bed. He had it in the bed, right next to him, sometimes on the pillow like it was a little pet. No matter what time it went off, he’d read it and respond. Like he was so important that he couldn’t even wait a second, like someone would die if he didn’t answer them right away.”
Fran nodded like he understood. He was just as confident as he’d been in high school, which surprised her. She thought maybe time or the breakup would have taken something off of him, but it hadn’t. After their second beer, he got them each another, and when he sat back down, he put his hand on her upper thigh, just letting it rest there right next to the crotch of her jeans.
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