Beyond the Point

by Claire Gibson

  From: Dani McNalley

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Update

  Date: September 2, 2005 06:32:15 PM GMT +01:00

  To: Avery Adams

  (1) How was Napa? Tell me everything.

  (2) We really need to see each other.

  I’ve been trying to figure out a way to get us all together. Would you want to come up to Boston for Thanksgiving? I have a bunch of frequent flyer miles, so I’m flying my mom, dad, and brother up here. I asked Hannah and Tim, too. And Locke, of course.

  I’ll have a big turkey and some desserts. It will be amazing. I feel like we need a reunion so bad!! Apparently Thanksgiving up here is a big deal, too. If we want, we can drive up to Plymouth Rock or something equally American. Or we can all just stay here and eat until we’re sick. Which is also American.

  I really want you to come. Like I said, flight’s on me. Will you think about it??

  Also, I just talked to Sarah Goodrich. She’s deploying to Iraq tomorrow. Thought you’d want to know.

  Love you,

  D

  From: Avery Adams

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: **Update

  Date: September 3, 2005 13:27 PM EST +01:00

  To: Dani McNalley

  FINALLY! A cult reunion! It’s about time.

  I’m totally in. And . . . feel free to say no . . . but would it be okay if I invited Noah?

  A

  16

  Fall 2005 // Jamaica Plain, Boston, Massachusetts

  A man stood under the drizzle of a warm shower in his apartment, wearing a pair of navy swim trunks. Coarse hair formed the shape of a heart on his chest and narrowed into a thin trail down his stomach. With broad shoulders and large arms, he was bulky and strong, Dani assessed, with hair cut short and an accent that proved he was definitely a local. Boston became Bwaston. Coffee became cwahfee. Shampoo bubbled around the edges of his temple, threatening to spill over the edge of his raised eyebrow.

  “Am I doing okay?” he asked.

  “Just pretend I’m not here,” Dani instructed. She pulled the shower curtain open a little more.

  The guy laughed. “You going to take me out to dinner, at least?”

  “If you play your cards right.”

  “Well at least tell me something about you, so I don’t feel so . . . exposed.”

  “Unfortunately that’s not how this works. I get to ask the questions, and right now I don’t have any. So just . . . keep on showering.”

  Since she’d been hired at E & G, Dani McNalley had completed sixty consumer interviews like this in twenty U.S. cities; she’d logged thirty-five interviews in Europe. The research was fascinating. Men would complete their morning routines and, without even knowing it, provide Dani with little nuggets of insight to take back to the office. Most men kept their shampoo bottles upside down in the shower, to more efficiently squeeze a dollop into their hand. In Europe, men still used a soft-bristled brush to apply shaving cream. In America, men slapped it on with their bare hands, and if they used after shave, they put it on like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. While washing their bodies, two-thirds of men faced the showerhead; the other third faced away. She hadn’t figured out why that was significant, but it felt meaningful. Perhaps the ones facing away from the water had some psychological reason to avoid the heat.

  There were other interesting trends too. She’d learned that most men hadn’t seen the back of their heads in years. While women had mastered the physics of double mirrors to check that their hair looked perfect, men never took the time. They simply combed their hair until they liked the view from the front, then went on with their morning routine. Once, Dani’s subject had noticed her playing back video footage. He grabbed her camera and pulled it in close to stare at his own bald spot.

  “Wait, is that me?” he’d asked, touching the back of his head, as if to confirm the truth.

  “Aw,” Dani had said, patting his shoulder. “Maybe it’s time to get into hats.”

  Dani had gotten pretty good at consoling men about hair loss. She’d gotten pretty good at a lot of things actually. Packing a carry-on bag that could pass through security with ease. Walking through airport terminals with a BlackBerry in one hand and a latte in the other, without losing the dexterity to push her four-wheeled suitcase in front of her. She’d grown used to ignoring the stares of men who found the presence of a young black woman in first class so disconcerting. With the amount of miles she’d racked up, she’d earned her position at the front of the cabin.

  Sadly, the list of cities she’d traveled to in the last year didn’t include the two places she’d hoped to visit: Fort Bragg, to see Hannah and Avery, and Fort Hood, to see Locke. Apparently E & G didn’t believe it was necessary to interview America’s military population, which made little sense to Dani, since men in the military were required to shave. It was just another way that her life felt separate from that of her college friends.

  Dani had assumed that after college, her bonds of friendship would remain the same. But things were shifting. She could feel the seismic waves, like emotional plate tectonics. It had been weeks since any of them had replied to their dwindling e-mail chain, and a few months earlier, when Dani had made a conscious effort to call Hannah on her birthday, the conversation centered on the one thing that they couldn’t seem to avoid. Schedules.

  “Well, I was supposed to be with Tim this weekend,” Hannah had said. “But you’ve seen the news.”

  “Sure,” Dani had replied, though she wasn’t sure what Hurricane Katrina had to do with Hannah’s weekend plans. “It’s awful.”

  “They sent Tim’s unit,” Hannah had explained. “He’s literally there, fishing people out of their houses.”

  “Like a true disciple,” Dani had said, trying to crack a joke. “A fisher of men.”

  Hannah had laughed, but had chased that with a sigh. Dani couldn’t imagine surviving a long-distance relationship, let alone a long-distance marriage, but Hannah had a way of smiling through pain that put even Dani’s endurance to shame. Of course, most of Dani’s pain was physical. Maybe it was easier to tolerate pain if it only existed in your heart.

  “It wouldn’t matter that much if I had any friends around here,” Hannah had said.

  “What about Avery?”

  “What about her? We had a plan to meet up for lunch last week and I sat there for an hour waiting.”

  “She never showed up?” Dani had asked, incredulous. “Did you call her?”

  “I texted. She never texted me back. I have a weird feeling about this new guy she’s dating.”

  “Something must be going on,” Dani had said, trying to knock some sense into Hannah. “That’s not normal.”

  “Ha! Normal? What’s that word mean again?”

  Dani had felt utterly helpless over the line. At one time, she was the glue that held their group together, but they were loosening and she had no control over it. In a way, that fact made Dani more uncomfortable than the arthritis in her hips. In college, they’d tackled countless challenges together. But with all this distance between them, nothing felt right.

  Things with Locke had changed, too. They still talked on the phone every few weeks, exchanging stories about their jobs, laughing about old times, and swapping workout regimens, which Dani couldn’t bring herself to admit she wasn’t actually completing. As she walked around the streets of Boston, her limp only slightly hidden, Dani thought of Locke. If he ever came to visit, he’d like the open-mic poetry night she’d found in the Back Bay. And she’d take him to Copp’s Hill Burying Ground, where they would plant their feet on soil where more than a thousand slaves were buried, discussing the confusing history of this misguided, imperfect nation that they both loved and he still served.

  But those dreams had died when Locke let it slip that he’d taken a local girl out on a date.

  “Amanda,” Dani had reported to Wendy Bennett over the phone. L
ately, it seemed Wendy was the only person who reliably called her back. “Apparently she’s a kindergarten teacher.”

  “Oh, Dani,” Wendy had said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s fine. I doubt it’s anything serious. Just took me by surprise, is all.”

  “Life has a way of doing that, doesn’t it?”

  AS DANI TOOK notes on her clipboard, she noticed the date and felt accosted by shock. For her entire life, the rhythms of the academic year had marked the passing of time, like posts upon which you could hang the fabric of life. October used to come with football games and full notebooks and midterms. Breaking time into manageable academic chunks must have slowed it down, Dani thought, because out of college, the calendar had become a ruthless conveyor belt ushering her onward, crushing months like cans. In the real world, fall was no longer a beginning. It was just the middle, like everything else.

  The pen in Dani’s hand suddenly ran out of ink. She scratched invisible lines on the page, frantically trying to get it to come back to life.

  “Damn it,” Dani whispered under her breath.

  “You okay?” her subject, James O’Leary, asked. He’d turned off the water and was toweling off outside the shower.

  Digging a new pen out of her overstuffed purse, Dani stopped her stopwatch and jotted down the time. 7 min. 32 secs. It was a relatively long shower. Most guys limited their showers to five minutes, tops. Ignoring the inquisitive smile on his face, she started in on her list of questions.

  “So, James, when you’re in the shower, what do you think about?” she asked. “What’s going on in your brain?”

  “I’d say I’m mostly going through my schedule. Or thinking about what I’m going to eat next. Don’t write that down. That was a joke.”

  Dani wrote it down, mostly because she knew it was true.

  The clipboard in her hands listed his name and demographic stats, and though she’d already read it over a half dozen times, she found herself studying his details again.

  JAMES O’LEARY. White 28-yr-old male, $38K. Educator/coach.

  It seemed impossible for someone to live on that kind of salary in a city like Boston. Sure, he lived in Jamaica Plain, and his apartment was nothing like the four-bedroom, three-bathroom penthouse with a view of the Charles River Dani had secured. But how did James O’Leary buy groceries on $38,000? No wonder he worried about what he was going to eat next.

  Her yellow legal pad had filled with notes about everything from the type of shampoo he used to the order in which he washed his body. Observation was the only way to find insight—and that’s what Dani needed to find. A lightbulb. A general psychological truth, baked into an aha moment, that E & G could use to inspire Gelhomme’s next commercial campaign.

  “What are you doing now?” she asked as he approached the sink.

  “Now, I shave,” he said, opening his arms to present the long counter in front of him. “If you must know.”

  “I must. It’s why I’m here.”

  He spread a smear of shaving cream across his jawline—a square and impressive jawline, Dani noted. He rinsed his hands, then reached for a silver razor on the counter. Running it under warm water, James slid it down his face, cheek to chin, cheek to chin, in perfect vertical lines.

  “Do you enjoy shaving?” asked Dani.

  “Of course not. It’s a chore. Does anyone like chores?”

  “So why do you do it?”

  He rinsed the blade under the faucet. Little black hairs had gathered like confetti along the counter.

  “What do you mean, why do I do it?” he said. “I have to.”

  “Says who?”

  He splashed his face with warm water and retrieved a hand towel from the floor. Dingy and damp, it looked like it hadn’t seen the inside of a washing machine in weeks. Dani made a note of the moldy smell in the bathroom and the water splotches on the mirror.

  “I guess there’s something to be said for a good habit,” he said. “Like making your bed every day. There’s a ritual to it. You may not love doing it, but it gives you something in return.”

  “What does it give you?”

  He sighed, placing the razor back in a dirty cup on the counter.

  “Control, I guess. Maybe that’s all we want anyway.”

  Without waiting to see if his interviewer was satisfied with that answer, James disappeared into his bedroom.

  “I’m just changing,” he said through the crack in the closet door. “Help yourself to coffee in the kitchen. I’ll be out in a sec.”

  TAKING HER SUBJECT up on his offer of coffee, Dani held a steaming cup in one hand and flipped through the set of notes she’d taken that morning, leaning over the island in his kitchen. Something about his answers had struck her as meaningful. Perhaps even essential. Control. Ritual.

  There was something to what he’d said, but she couldn’t put her finger on it at the moment, so instead packed away her notepad in her bag and prepared to leave.

  Her subject emerged from his bedroom dressed in khaki pants and a slim fit collared shirt, in what Dani assessed must be his school’s colors—burgundy and white. He picked up the remote control and pointed to the television screen, swapping the Today show for ESPN.

  “You a Red Sox fan?” asked Dani, lifting her mug, which had the team’s classic logo on the side.

  “Unfortunately yes. Last year was incredible. But I doubt they’ll win a World Series again in our lifetime.”

  “How can you say that? That’s the beauty of sports—every new season is a fresh slate.”

  “Nothing’s a fresh slate.”

  “Ah, so you’re a pessimist.”

  “Sure, the Red Sox won a World Series. But that cursed mentality still persists. You got guys with those old mind-sets, old habits. Old injuries. You’re always fighting the past. And the Red Sox. They’ve got a hell of a past. And I’m a realist, not pessimist.”

  He paused, then pointed his thumb back toward the bathroom.

  “It’s not like if I shave really really well one day, the hair won’t grow back. No matter how good a job I do today, I know I’ll look in the mirror tomorrow and have to shave again. Coaching is like that. It’s just grooming. Every day I show up, and I have to remove the bad little insecurities and old habits that have cropped back up overnight in my boys. I can’t change who they are or what they bring with them every day. Best I can do is groom it.”

  “That’s actually quite poetic,” Dani said, wishing she still had her pen and paper to write it down. She lifted her bag to her shoulder and started toward the door. “You know, I used to want to be a coach.”

  “Used to?” The guy laughed. “You don’t look old enough to have a dream that died. How old are you, anyway?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  “Ah, a geezer,” he said. “So why aren’t you coaching?”

  Dani remembered the salary that had been listed under his name. “I don’t really know,” she said. “For one, my basketball career didn’t really go as planned.”

  “Well, that’s a dumb reason not to do what you love. Nothing ever goes as planned.”

  They stood there looking at one another for a moment before Dani shrugged and headed toward the door. “It’s been good talking,” she said, reaching her hand out to shake his. “Thanks for the interview.”

  “Hey, before you go, can I ask you something?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Are you single?” he ventured, putting his hands on his hips. “I don’t mean to pry, but I was thinking I could set you up. There’s this girl—my sister actually. She’s a few years older than you. But smart. Quick-witted. I think you two would really hit it off.”

  “Oh,” Dani said. “I’m not . . . I’m straight.”

  “Oh shit. Well now I really feel like an asshole. I just thought . . . the short hair . . . the . . . Right? God. My bad. Forget it. Forget I said anything.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Honest mistake. And hey, thanks again. You gave me a lot of good
stuff to work with here. They’ll send you a check in a few weeks for your time.”

  ONCE SHE’D MADE it into the back of a cab, Dani leaned her head against the window and groaned deeply. Shaking her head, she reached for the bottle of Advil in her purse, swallowed three pills dry, and carefully pulled the emotional dagger out of her chest.

  At every turn, people got it wrong. Black people thought she acted too white; white people saw her as black. People knew she was an athlete, but any time she tried to succeed, they thought she was cocky. For years, she’d fallen more and more in love with Locke, but he simply saw her as a friend. And now, James O’Leary had tried to set her up with his sister. Clearly, the energy she was putting off was completely different than the energy she wanted to put into the world.

  Was she too masculine? Too intense?

  What was it going to take for someone to finally see her for who she really was? And like what they saw?

  In her reflection in the window, wet tears glittered on Dani’s cheeks, mingling with her freckles. Wiping the wetness with the palm of her hand, Dani blew air out of her lips and pulled herself together. There was no use in getting upset.

  “Where to?” the cab driver asked.

  She wasn’t expected back at the office for a few more hours. And while there was plenty of work to do unpacking this interview with James, both professionally and personally, Dani knew she couldn’t do it yet. Not when her frustration was this raw. In just a few weeks, everyone she loved would arrive for Thanksgiving. Her parents were driving from Ohio; her brother, Dominic, and his partner, Charles, were flying in from Chicago. And despite their crazy schedules, Locke, Avery, and Hannah had all found a way to travel to Boston, too—significant others in tow.

  She’d be the only person at the table alone. The odd one out, who’d invited everyone in.

  She thought about the fresh money in her bank account and the winter displays that had appeared in the windows of her favorite boutiques downtown. The idea of brand-new clothes with fresh tags, perfectly folded in a thick shopping bag, soothed her, and she hadn’t even spent a dollar yet. Retail therapy. It was cheaper than real therapy, she told herself.