by Lauren Fox
Chapter Fourteen
For a time after Amy and Rafael’s wedding, I floated through my days—sleeping, drinking coffee, drawing, hanging out with Jane and Ben, who did have jobs: generally existing as if I had a trust fund. In the end maybe it was a good thing that my bank balance dipped to $74.92, because how long could I have kept it up, my princessy, jobless drift, the days piling up like pretty snow, a formless heap of pleasant hours? Probably for quite a while.
It was on one of those long, lazy afternoons that Ben brought home a job quiz from the library, a page torn from a career counseling workbook someone had left behind. What are your goals? the quiz asked. Would you rather plan a wedding or build a road? Style hair or predict severe weather? And after I filled in my answers (style the hair of people who have survived severe weather), I put down my number 2 pencil and admitted to myself that all I wanted to do, all I’ve ever wanted to do, was draw. It turned out that I didn’t have goals, only a dream: compelling, impractical, and useless as a hair stylist in a hurricane. Which left me feeling both despondent and, strangely, free.
So I went out for a walk in my bustling little neighborhood, and I gazed at the world of industrious, productive humans. A man in a brown uniform lugged a huge package from his double-parked truck while two blond women carried trays outside the Blue Roses Café, and a priest, in full regalia, hurried down the sidewalk. It was a bright children’s book out here, a scene from Busytown—the mailman, the grocer, the baker; Leo, the friendly, chain-smoking gay man who owned Spexxxy Time, the weird store that sold upscale eyeglasses and, in the back room, sex toys. Okay, Leo might have been exiled from Busytown, but still, here he was, in the real city, making his living. Did none of these people have rich inner lives, dreams of their own? Of course they did. I was waking up to it all, it seemed, for the first time.
I was also calculating the maximum number of days through which I could stretch $74.92. I got to twenty-two if I was willing to consume a lot of canned tuna when the HELP WANTED, PART-TIME sign in the window of Molly’s Blooms caught my eye—like a message from God: Willa, you hate tuna! I pushed the door open, little bells like angel’s wings tinkling after me.
The store was empty, damp, and cavernous. Buckets of flowers stood neatly along the walls, two or three deep, the colors of the petals splashy and chaotic, a shade or two brighter than what you see in nature—like genetically engineered combinations of flowers and neon signs. The glass door of one of the coolers was ajar, and I gently tapped it shut.
A woman emerged from behind the counter. She had flowing red hair and bright green eyes. Her neck was long. She looked like she was made to work with flowers, like she herself was part flower. She looked like the kind of person who might start dancing spontaneously to no music. “May I help you?” she asked.
“I’d like to apply for the job,” I said, gesturing toward the help wanted sign.
She asked me if I had any floral experience, and I pictured my grandmother’s old sofa. I tried to think: Do I have any floral experience that I have forgotten about? I shook my head.
“My last part-time employee called in sick on Mother’s Day.” She tilted her head and fixed her gaze on me. She was sizing me up.
“I would never do that,” I said. “I have an excellent immune system.” I was suddenly self-conscious under her gaze. She was surprisingly steely for a redheaded flower sprite. I liked her.
“You’re hired,” she said, and she reached out and shook my hand.
It’s cool in the shop today, a relief from the June heat wave, the fog of wet lethargy that has been sitting on the city for the past two weeks. I’ve only been here for ten minutes, only just flipped the OPEN sign around in the window; the sweat from the short walk over is still drying above my lip. I’m pinning my name tag onto my apron when the bells ring. “Be right with you,” I say, as I fasten the pin. Every day I make myself a new name tag. Yesterday I was Xena. Today, Saffron.
“Well, isn’t this just grand,” a familiar voice says. Grand. “Her ladyship can’t be bothered to help a customer.”
It’s Declan, tall and lanky. The prototype for the word “rakish.” Pushing one hand through his hair, which is unkempt, convincingly bed-headish. In his other hand he holds a paper coffee cup, lifts it to me. I haven’t seen him in three years. He flashes me a huge grin. His left incisor is slightly crooked. I had forgotten that.
My hands drift down, from my name tag to my sides. I’m wearing my pretty purple sleeveless dress, the one with the swingy skirt and the neckline that sits just below my collarbone. Good thinking, forty-five-minutes-ago self! For a second, for the one that matters, the thump of my heart that I’ll remember later, I feel like my entire body is levitating. Just for a second. I feel as if I’m an elevator—not that I’m in one, but that I am one. I’m off the ground, and then I’m back. It’s Declan of the mismatched socks, Declan of the dirty jokes. Declan of the I-choose-someone-else-over-you. I extend my arms like I’ve just sung the last note of something loud. “Well.”
“Never you mind. I’ll just take my business elsewhere.” He’s wearing a loose gray T-shirt and black biking shorts, and his skin is, as always, winter pale; he looks like he’s just cycled out of a cave.
I tuck my chin, look up at him, flutter my eyelashes. We know a thing or two about each other.
He lopes over to the counter, four long strides, and leans across it to kiss me hello, once on each cheek. And I’m right here in it, feeling his smooth cheek on mine, breathing in the vaguely familiar, menthol smell of his skin … until I remember, with a sudden bolt, all the strange, wrong moments in our brief relationship: the misunderstandings, the long waits. The forgotten birthday. The Valentine’s Day card that said, To a terrific pal!
“Hey,” I say, more sharply than I intend, as Declan retreats. “What are you doing here?”
He looks down at the counter, embarrassed or pretending, I’m not sure—we’re two actors in a bad high school play, all exaggerated gestures and slightly off-key emotions. Then Declan’s gaze settles on my name tag, and he grins. “Well, Saff, I’m here to see you, of course.” He pushes his coffee cup to me across the counter. “There are five packets of sugar in here,” he says. “And about a liter of half-and-half. I know you like your coffee to taste like melted ice cream.”
I take a sip; it’s disgusting, and just the way I like it. I lick the foam from my lips. “Yummy!”
He takes the cup back from me and drinks from it, winces. “Willa. You poor thing. Were you not allowed sweets when you were small?”
“My mom tried to convince us that prunes were candy,” I say. “Oh, and also? Seriously. What are you doing here?”
“Ah, luv.” Declan has heard too many times that his Irish accent is sexy. It’s no longer even an act; he just pours it on and splatters everyone within earshot. And who can blame him? It is sexy. He runs his hand through his hair again. “I really am here to see you.” I roll my eyes. “All right. I’m here to have lunch with a client.” He raises one eyebrow. “And dessert with you?”
I nod slowly, recognizing this for what it is, matching his suggestive look with a half smile of my own. “Maybe. But probably not.” The air conditioner’s fan kicks into high gear, blowing a cool breeze through the vent above us, and Declan meets my eyes with what looks, finally, something like honesty. “I’ll get coffee with you, though,” I say. “More coffee, that is. I’m off at two. You can meet me at my apartment.”
I drum my fingers on the smudged top of the counter, glance at the door. People don’t buy as many flowers when it’s hot outside. I’ve recovered from the initial surprise of seeing Declan, the first sizzle of recognition, and I feel dulled, suddenly, and cautious. I remember the way I had opened up to him, three years ago, and the unexpected heartbreak.
But then all the longing of the past six months, all the mixed up pleasure and regret of watching my two best friends fall in love in front of me, next to me, near me, practically on top of me; every Good night, g
ood night at the doors of our respective bedrooms, every Bye, babe, every thigh pressed against thigh on the couch two feet from where I sat, it all just floods over me, and I decide on a leap of faith. “Two o’clock,” I say again. “Thirty-two seventeen North Bradford.” And I take another sip of the oversweet coffee he’s brought for me and then rest my fingers lightly on the warm paper lid, thinking that this might be an answer, although of course everything depends on the question.
I’ll say now that I know you can’t change a person. I know that you can’t mold him to be who you want him to be. But maybe you can hone in on certain glimmers, you can recognize certain buried elements or unrealized traits, and you can hope—when you want something.
When I come home from work, I’m bursting to tell Jane about Declan, to unwrap the glittering details of our reunion and examine them with her, to see if, after six hours, they still shine. But when I walk in the door, the apartment is quiet, save for the whirring of the window air conditioner, and dark, even for our usually dimly lit rooms; the shades are down, and I wonder with a shudder if I’m walking in on something. Did they think they had the apartment to themselves for the afternoon? Oh, God. “Hello!” I shout, even though the place is so small there is never any real need to shout. I drop my bag with a thump, kick my shoes off with extra vigor. “Hello?”
The living room lamp flicks on, and there is Jane, hunkered down in a chair, covered in a sheet, her right hand on the switch, her left shielding her eyes. She turns the light off again. I half expect to find a bunny simmering in a pot on the stove. “Janey?”
“Hey,” she says, and I feel my way over to the couch, plunk myself down across from her, wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Has Ben broken up with her? It’s all I can imagine.
“What’s going on?”
There’s a long silence, and then, finally: “My dad … just … left.”
What was Charlie Weston doing in our apartment? I swipe my hand across my perspiring forehead, my hot cheeks. My palm smells like roses. “He left? Where did he go?”
She turns the light on again. The room is aglow; all the smudged details—the edges of the brown coffee table, the frayed blue-and-green rug—are sharp in the sudden glare. The hand that was shading Jane’s eyes covers her whole face. “That was my first question, too,” she mumbles, through splayed fingers. “ ‘Where did he go?’ Actually, though, it turns out he left my mom.”
I swallow. “Oh, Janey.”
“Well,” she says, “apparently it’s temporary.” She hangs air quotes around the word.
“What happened?”
“I don’t really know the details,” she says. “He made some bad investments, I guess, without telling my mom, and they tanked. He lost a lot of their money. Like, a lot. They might lose their house.” Jane blushes and the unexpected intimacy of it all, how the failings of our parents still, at twenty-six, embarrass us. “Do you want to know how they told me?” She doesn’t wait for me to answer. “My mom sent me an e-mail. She got herself a new computer last month, and she’s so proud of herself, of how well she’s adapted, you know, she’d be a technological wiz if this were 2002. Anyway, she sent me an e-mail. ‘The e-mail,’ she calls it. ‘I’m going to check the e-mail.’ She wrote, They’re opening a Walmart in New Hamburg. Also, Dad left.”
I cross my legs, then uncross them. My skin sticks to itself like cling wrap. “She didn’t.”
“She did! She asked him to go. So he packed a bag and left this morning. He’s in a hotel for a few days until they can both cool off.” Her voice cracks, and she starts breathing heavily, sighing slowly, repeatedly, through her nose, the sound underneath her exhalations a high, whistling wheeze, like a tea kettle. I would like to tell her that: You sound like you’re about to boil. But I don’t.
She looks up at me, her eyes bloodshot. “Gack.” She tries to laugh. “This is ridiculous. What am I, twelve?”
And memories of my childhood do not pour over me, images of my parents’ divorce do not come flooding back. A deluge of sadness does not rain down upon me. I don’t even think about my parents, or Seth and Nina, or Ben. Every relationship is weak and shoddy, every bond always, always, just one light tap away from shattering. Why do more people not know this? I reach across the coffee table, fumble for Jane’s hand, find her fingers, which are limp and cold despite the heat, her palm clammy. I squeeze, suppressing an urge to let go of it—the bony, dying starfish; I squeeze, and Jane holds on, even after it becomes a little bit uncomfortable, after the gesture is complete.
“So … are you going to go home to Marcy?” I ask. “Are you going to go see them? Do you want me to come?”
Jane kicks the striped sheet off her legs and finally slips her hand out of mine, reaches up and swats at her hair, which is frizzy and matted on one side of her head from resting against something for a long time, a pillow or a phone. “Do you ever lie in bed and worry that you won’t be able to fall asleep ever again?” She’s wearing a red tank top of mine and a pair of Ben’s boxers, as if she woke up this morning and assembled herself out of parts. “Like, you’re tired, but nope, it’s not going to happen anymore—sleep is a thing of the past?”
I tilt my head. “Um …?”
“Because that’s how I feel,” she says, with an embarrassed smile. “Like I’m going to be awake forever.”
“You could get a lot done if you were awake forever,” I say. “You could get one of those make-ninety-five-thousand-dollars-a-year-working-at-home jobs they advertise on the Internet.”
“I’ve always wondered about those jobs,” she says. “Is it stuffing envelopes? Like, just a ton of envelopes?”
“I thought it was webcam porn.”
“And that’s what you were suggesting to me?”
“Well, I wouldn’t care. I’d be sleeping.”
“I should call Ben,” she says. “But I don’t really want to.” I raise an eyebrow at her. “He’ll be so kind and sympathetic.” She shakes her head and looks down at her lap, and I’m staring at the crooked part in her hair, the thin line of naked scalp. Jane’s childhood is a rubber band that has just snapped back hard.
And then we are both jolted by the sound of the doorbell ringing and a simultaneous knocking on the door, a jaunty little song, a charmingly impatient announcement. The voice on the other side of the door says, “Jaysus, it’s hotter than balls outside,” and Jane raises her head and looks at me, puzzled, and then she snorts a laugh and says, “You’ve gone all blotchy!” And I think, not for the first time, that if all of my dating stories, horror and otherwise, grease the wheels of my friendship with Jane, if they do nothing more than serve this, then it’s worth it, all of it. I stand and bow, kick a little shuffle-ball-change to the door, Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
“And, ah, by the way, Willa,” Declan says, before I’ve even fully opened the door, as if we were in the middle of a conversation, as if I’ve just clicked back from call waiting, “Molly’s Blooms? Molly’s Blooms? It’s an offense to my people.” Declan has always held a proprietary grip on Irish culture. “How would you like it if I worked in a handkerchief shop in Dublin called A-Jew’s?”
I laugh, as much at his audacity as at the wretchedness of the pun. We’re standing toe to toe in the doorway, an echo of Ben’s first visit to the apartment on that cold winter morning six months ago. “It’s my boss’s name,” I say. “Molly Blumenfeld!”
“Also, I was going to bring you flowers, but then I thought that would be like bringing a leg of lamb to a butcher.” He holds a brightly colored slip of paper in his hand, offers it to me. “So I’ve brought you a lottery ticket. If you win, you can split it with me.” He exhales with relief, and grins.
I look down at the lottery ticket. There’s a cartoon drawing of a friendly looking badger on it, along with nine boxes, each decorated with a neon-orange hunk of cheddar cheese that you scratch off. Do badgers eat cheese? It makes absolutely no sense.
“A handkerchief shop called A-Jew’s?”
“D’you like that one? I’ve been working on it all day.”
Jane, still sitting in the living room, clears her throat loudly. She’s leaning forward, her elbows resting on her knees, looking, for the first time since I got home, delighted. If she had antennae, they’d be quivering. “Declan,” I say, loving the feel of his name on my tongue. I throw open the door. “My roommate and best friend, Jane.”
I hold my breath as they take each other in, but all I see on Declan’s face is pleasant, vague curiosity, polite distance. Something loosens in me, a knot I didn’t even know had been pulled tight. “I remember hearing about you a few years ago,” she says.
He walks over, shakes Jane’s hand. “Listen,” he says to her. “We’re not splitting our winnings three ways, and there’ll be no discussion about it, so you’ll just have to hope your roommate and best friend Willa is generous, right?”
“She’ll take care of me,” Jane says.
Declan digs around in his pocket and hands me a dime. He smells of coppery sweat and of the spicy deodorant I remember. Something about the heat wave, the fleshy closeness of it, the thick hot air that is only slightly undercut by our valiantly clunking window unit, something about it makes me feel as if Jane and Declan and I are in the midst of something bigger than we are. “I think we’re going to win!” I say, scraping silver and orange paint from the little scratch-off boxes. Declan stands close; I can feel his breath on my neck. Jane is still peering at us from her perch on the chair, too intent. I recognize that look, the laser-sharp focus of the magical thinker, the quiet attention of a girl making a quick bargain with the universe.
I hold up the ruined ticket, shavings of shiny metallic paint falling from it, pass my hand underneath it like a game show hostess. “Ahh! So close!”
Jane’s concentration breaks, and she rises. “Oh, well!” Her voice is unnaturally loud. “Nice meeting you,” she says, as she abruptly heads to her room, the striped sheet balled up in her arms like a tabby cat.