My life was a clean slate. What did I want to do with it?
I found a pad of paper in Laney’s desk and settled on the couch again. “New Possible Careers,” I wrote at the top. I sat there for a full five minutes staring at the paper. Why wasn’t anything coming to me? Anything, I told myself, write anything that comes to mind. I shook my hand to relax it and scribbled the following list:
Journalist
Clothing Store Owner
Music Video Dancer
Ambassador to France
A good list, excellent really. These were the jobs that I’d always thought so glamorous and cool. I could almost see myself as a political journalist, a pen tucked behind one ear, the president at the podium, pointing to me and saying, “Kelly,” because of course I’d know the president. The problem was that in reality I had no writing skills to speak of and it probably took twenty years of hard-core newspaper journalism to get on the White House beat.
All the other possible careers I’d listed had impediments, too. I’d love to have my own clothing store, to be able to change outfits in the middle of the day just because I could, but I knew that owning a store was a massive amount of hard work. And as much as I’d been interested in the retail stocks and my own shopping, I really couldn’t envision myself standing in the same shop day after day.
As for the music video career, well, I couldn’t imagine what would be more fun than wearing a don’t-fuck-with-me face and shaking my thing behind J. Lo or whoever, but I could dance about as well as I could remember the last five months. Ditto for the ambassador to France gig. I couldn’t speak French.
I crossed out the list and tore the paper off, giving myself a fresh sheet. I would concentrate on the things that I could do, the activities that truly gave me pleasure, whether or not they could lead to a career.
The thing that came immediately out of the pen was “Photography.” Ever since my stepfather, Danny, had given me that Nikon, a gift I later heard my mother say was “probably hot,” I’d loved taking pictures. As a kid, it was something to do, something to play around with, a way to let myself be part of a crowd while still hiding behind the safety of a lens. As I got older, I realized that I was a natural at it. I could study the light on a sidewalk and realize how it would appear as a pattern in a black-and-white photo, and I knew how to take portraits from different ranges and angles to make the subject appear more studious or glamorous or thoughtful. Ben had even given me classes at a local university as a gift, and for the last few years I’d been taking them weekly. Was I still taking those classes?
I made a note to follow up on this issue, then wrote, “Shopping.” Definitely one of my great loves, something I’d already made into a career of sorts, but I wasn’t a retail analyst anymore, and I’d already done enough shopping on Saturday. I could probably get an analyst job at another investment firm—I knew enough people in the business; I could work my way up again—and eventually I’d be a partner somewhere else, just like Ben. Yet, even as I thought this, the realization came to me that I didn’t have to work right now, and that knowledge took away all my drive to be in the market again. Maybe I’d never had the drive, or I’d only been driven by money.
What else? I lowered my pen and scribbled, “Walking.” I wasn’t much of a runner. I hated the way my breath came ragged and hard when I tried jogging, but I loved to walk. Again, I couldn’t imagine why I had holed myself up in my apartment during an entire summer in Chicago, a city that was made for walking along the lake and through the zoo and down the Mag Mile. That’s what I would do today, I decided. I’d take a huge walk.
But first I wanted to finish my list. What else, what else? It came to me, the answer, but I had a hard time putting it on paper. Finally, I wrote in small letters, so fine that you could barely read them—“Family.” My mom had given me the best life she could muster, but it was one filled with random men, alternating cities and a series of small apartments. For as long as I could remember, I’d been jealous of the typical family—the husband and wife in the country with the 2.5 kids—and I’d sworn I’d get that for myself someday. And so I’d always been concerned about the ticking of my so-called biological clock (although to be truthful I couldn’t hear a peep), pointing out to Ben time and again that if we were going to get married and have kids, we had to do it soon—a belief that led, in part, to the ultimatum I’d given him. But now I didn’t really have any family at all. Dee was gone in an instant, in a tangle of metal and rubber on the Dan Ryan Expressway, and Ben was gone now, too. And the children I was supposed to have one day? Far, far away.
My mom was still around, of course, but she and I had been family in name only since Dee had died. We’d handled Dee’s death differently, to say the least. Me, well, I had my tantrums, my not-so-occasional flashes of anger when I tossed picture frames and broke dishes. Ben, after quietly watching me shatter more than half of my Pottery Barn bowls, had bought me a big brown candle and taken me into the bathroom one day.
“Throw it,” he had said, opening the shower curtain and pointing to the wall inside the tub.
“What?” I looked from the candle to Ben and back again, irritated at this cryptic directive.
“Look.” He took the candle from my hand, hurling it at the wall. It bounced off, a mere dent in the brown wax. “See? You can throw it and smash it. Do whatever you want, but it won’t break.”
“I want it to break.”
“No, you don’t.” He kissed the top of my head. “You just want the feeling.”
He was right. I turned to that candle often. I threw it against the bathtub wall over and over until the wall was splotched brown and the candle beaten into a misshapen lump. And one day I put the candle away, tucked it far under the sink, just in case. But I hadn’t needed it anymore.
My mom, on the other hand, broke nothing, smashed nothing. She’d seemed to shut down after the accident. She didn’t want to talk about it, she said. She wanted to leave Chicago and forget. And so off to L.A. she went, only one month after the funeral, and without Dee’s death to talk about, all our conversations felt like disingenuous, twenty-first-century versions of the “Emperor’s New Clothes.” They were five-minute chats we both looked forward to ending. I had no idea when I’d last spoken to her.
I looked down at my watch. Right now, Sylvie Custer was probably at her desk on the set of The Biz, an entertainment “news” show that reported on the minutiae of celebrity activity—“Tom Cruise considers sideburns! Tonight on The Biz!”
I called information to get the general number, and the receptionist routed me through to my mom’s desk. She answered with a crisp, “Sylvie Custer.”
“Mom, it’s me.”
A little stretch of silence followed, and I knew what had happened. She’d been taken by surprise, and she’d thought for a moment it was Dee.
“Kelly,” I said in a softer voice.
“Hi, honey. How are you?” Her words were mothering, but her tone slightly formal. It was the way we talked to each other now.
“I’m okay. You?”
“Crazy over here. Some starlet got arrested for shoplifting a pack of gum, and I’m trying to convince the LAPD to release her name. Meanwhile Mella, that Swedish fashion model—you know her?”
She made it sound as if I might have had martinis with Mella last night. “Vaguely,” I said.
“Well, she’s gained a few pounds, so I need a quote from the restaurant near her apartment.”
I listened to some more Hollywood gossip, wondering how my mom could do it. She used to produce news segments on political corruption, double murders and Middle East violence, and now here she was, digging up info on Mella’s calorie count.
“So how’s Ben?” my mom said in a swift topic shift, and I wondered, frantically, if I’d told her anything about our breakup. It didn’t sound like it. I half wanted to tell her about my memory gap, but I didn’t want to give her any more worries. I honestly didn’t know if she could handle it, and it had been so
long since I’d confided in her. And I was fine, wasn’t I? Better than fine, actually. I’d admit to the breakup, I decided. I couldn’t hide that, but I wouldn’t mention the memory issues.
“Ben?” I said. “Well, you know we broke up, right?”
“What?”
Okay, she definitely hadn’t known that, which either meant that I hadn’t spoken to her for a long time or I’d avoided talking to her about that subject. It didn’t surprise me, really. Our phone calls since Dee died were so few and so brief.
“What happened?” my mom said.
Great question. “He didn’t want to get married.” That was the simplest, most truthful answer I could deduce. I’d given him the dreaded ultimatum, the give-me-a-ring-or-I’ll-walk speech, and it’d slapped me right in the face.
“Oh, honey, are you all right?” I could hear that anguished, parental tone in her voice, the one that made me feel warm and taken care of, but it scared me a little, too. I was always worried that she was close to a breakdown after Dee, and even now I wasn’t sure what would make her snap.
“I’m fine. I really am. I saw him this weekend, actually, and we had a nice chat.”
“What a little bastard. He probably wanted more time to run his races, right?”
“To be honest, I think he just didn’t want me.” Saying that out loud forced the breath from my lungs.
A pause. “Well, do you want to visit me? Maybe you should leave Chicago for a while, take your mind away from it. You could probably get some time off work, right?”
Shit. Apparently, I hadn’t talked to her about work, either. “Um, I got laid off from Bartley Brothers.”
“Oh my God!”
“But it’s a good thing, Mom,” I said quickly, making sure to keep my tone light and untroubled. “They gave me a severance package, so I don’t need to work for a while.”
“Then you should come out here. Spend some time on the beach, eat lunch on the boardwalk. It would do you good.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“You need to keep busy, Kelly. Are you still taking those photography classes?” I could tell she was struggling for a way to help me, one that wouldn’t require any intimate revelations, but it dawned on me that she had a very good point.
I reached down and wrote on my list, “Go to school, today.”
7
I struggled a bit with my new hairstyle, my hands sticky from the pomade that Lino had insisted I use, but I finally shaped it into some semblance of the chunky bob he’d given me. I was able to render a toned-down version of the makeup job, too. Meanwhile, my new camel trousers looked great with a soft black sweater and my old leather jacket, although I still stood in front of the mirror for an inordinate amount of time. My body looked odd to me, smaller and sharper, as if it wasn’t my own. As much as I liked my new look, it gave me a flash of that feeling I’d had when I was trying to shove my key into the mailbox Saturday morning.
I finally shut Laney’s closet door on my reflection, ready to walk the city, to find out if I had taken any photography classes over the summer or was currently enrolled in one, and if not—sign up for a boatload of them.
I wandered down Wells Street past the amalgamation of storefronts—an old-fashioned tobacconist, cute but overpriced boutiques, a couple of sex shops—until the beacon of my mother ship called me. It wasn’t a Saturday, but what the hell? I ordered a White Chocolate Mocha, anyway. I sat in a plump velvet chair in Starbucks and sipped my coffee, happy to be there, to be paging through the Tribune, which I couldn’t recall reading in ages. The news hadn’t changed much in the time I’d been gone.
“Being gone” was how I’d begun to think of the months I couldn’t recall. I pretended, at least to myself, that I’d simply been away on a long trip to somewhere, maybe Nepal or a remote South Pacific island, and now I’d returned with a touch of culture shock. This I’ve-just-been-on-a-long-vacation kind of mentality made me feel much better, edging me away from my fears about the need for a straitjacket or a fall back into the depression I couldn’t remember.
I took my cup and continued strolling along Wells, then up Lincoln Avenue, and finally west on Fullerton, window-shopping here and there, sometimes poking my head in a store. Finally, after about thirty minutes of walking that left me feeling vibrant and healthy (although I suppose it could have been the caffeine), I reached the patches of brick buildings and green lawns that signaled the university. As usual, I felt like the oldest person on the premises as I made my way to the registrar’s office, but it bugged me less today, since I was feeling rather saucy in my new outfit.
The registrar’s office was a cramped little room with stacks of paper everywhere, making it look as if they hadn’t discovered computers yet. The harried woman behind the counter did manage to unearth a keyboard from the mound of documents on her desk, and she confirmed what I had feared: I hadn’t taken any classes since last spring. Actually, I supposed this shouldn’t have disappointed me, since I wouldn’t have remembered the classes even if I had taken them, but still the news raised the image of me in that strange apartment all by myself, an image I’d been trying to avoid with my vacation mentality.
I was flipping through the course guide, looking for classes that might allow late entry, when I heard my name being called. I turned and saw Rita Denny, a professor who I’d taken a few classes with already. A statuesque black woman, she always seemed confident and pulled together.
“Where have you been?” Professor Denny said.
“I took a break, but I’m ready to get back into a few classes if anyone will let me start late.”
“Well, let’s see.” She took the notes from my hand and began reading over them. “Do you have any of mine here?”
I pointed to the seminar on portrait photography, which Professor Denny was conducting.
“Of course you can take it, but have you thought about an internship instead?” She glanced at me, and I must have worn a blank expression, because she laughed.
“It’s just that I take classes for fun, not for a degree,” I said, “so I didn’t think any internships would apply to me.”
“You might be surprised. You could probably learn more with an internship than you could in school this semester. Go to the placement office, and they’ll show you the listings.”
I thanked her and headed over to the placement office, fairly bouncing on the toes of my new camel boots. Maybe the Art Institute would need an intern, someone fresh, someone with vision to capture a new exhibit. Maybe the ambassador of France had turned to the university to help document his tour of America.
The realities were not so interesting. Most of the jobs were posted by companies looking for cheap labor to photograph and catalog merchandise, another by an insurance agency seeking someone to shoot brochure photos.
I stepped outside the office and decided to call a few of them anyway, just to learn a little more. Ten minutes later, I dropped my cell phone back into my purse and sagged against the wall. Despite Professor Denny’s assurances, the fact that I wasn’t a degree candidate had eliminated me from each position I called about, and one was already filled.
I dragged myself back into the placement office and paged through the rest of the listings, scribbling a few notes, although most positions looked as unpromising as those I’d already called.
Finally, I came to the last listing, which, according to the date, had been posted there for at least six months. I couldn’t imagine why, since it sounded like the best one of the lot.
“Established photographer seeks assistant for work with commercial campaigns, magazine shoots and artistic portraits. Call 555-6754.”
It was short and sweet, but it had my attention. I used my cell phone again and was surprised when a man answered immediately with a slightly belligerent, “Yeah?”
“I’m calling about the assistant job?” I hated how my own voice came out meek and questioning. I hadn’t applied for a job in almost a decade, and making these calls was fore
ign to me.
“Yeah. Okay,” the man said, and this time I could tell he had a British accent. “What’s your name then?”
“Kelly McGraw.”
For whatever reason, this drew a chuckle from him. “Kelly, Kelly, Kelly. Bet you’re Irish then?”
“Half.” Was this standard questioning for a photography internship? Did heritage and nationality count somehow?
“Well, Kelly Kelly. I’m called Cole. Want to come round to my flat tonight then? Say seven o’clock?”
“Uh…” Was this supposed to be a date or an interview?
“Oh, now don’t be scared, Kelly Kelly. I just don’t have time to talk at the moment, and I’ll still be working tonight. There’ll be others here. You’ll see.”
“Well, I guess so,” I said, thinking that I’d make Laney come with me. Safety in numbers.
“Lie down on the washer!” Cole shouted away from the phone. “No. Over it, please. There you go. Now, Kelly, where were we?”
“The address to your studio,” I said, while at the same time saying a silent prayer that he wasn’t some kind of pornographer.
“Right, right. Got a pen?”
After I left the university, there was little to do. In one day, I’d watched TV, had my Starbucks, read the paper, taken a walk and followed up on my photography interests. And now I had an interview—something that hadn’t even seemed possible this morning. What else was there?
Then it dawned on me. I needed to get ready for the interview. I should probably bring my own camera and portfolio. And that thought brought the reality I’d been hiding from—I’d have to go back to that apartment on Lake Shore Drive. My apartment. There was nothing stopping me except my fear that spending time there could somehow boomerang me to the depressed state Laney had told me about. At the same time, a little interest tickled at the back of my mind, because maybe if I went back to the apartment I could figure out why I couldn’t remember.
I hopped into a cab, and in less than fifteen entirely too short minutes I was in the circular drive. The building was tall and imposing as I got out and gazed up at it, the huge gray blocks cold and aloof. The same doorman who’d been there when Laney brought me on Saturday was at the front desk inside.
A Clean Slate Page 7