“Look, Katie, this is nice of you,” Jen said, trying to mask her irritation over the dirty kitchen, the greasy smells, and the very presence of anyone else in her home when, of all nights, she wanted nothing out of place. “But this is not some college cram session. I have to get up tomorrow morning in front of my boss and the senior vice presidents and the whole leadership team and give a presentation that’s the culmination of everything I’ve worked on over the last year. I need calm, and . . . and . . . not action movies and junk food.”
Katie was shaking her head. “I thought I’d try to do something nice for you. Something . . . I didn’t have to be sitting around your place getting yelled at. Abby and Myra from work asked if I wanted to go out with them tonight, but I told them I couldn’t go, because I thought you’d need some girl time before your big meeting. And instead you’re just . . .” Katie reached for words, then pounded the stove with a satisfying clang instead.
“Sheesh,” said Jen, the kitchen mess grating on her as much as her sister’s anger. “If you wanted pizza, we could have just ordered some. This place is a wreck.”
“Fine! You know what? Have your calm,” Katie announced. “I’ll call up Abby and get out of your way for the night.” She stormed into her room and slammed the door. Jen contemplated going after her but couldn’t decide if she felt the need to apologize. A few moments later, Katie issued from her room, phone to her ear, evidently talking to her friends from work. She had traded in her top for a tighter one of shiny material and put on the heels that Jen had given her the night before.
She paused by the front door. “Just a second,” she told the phone, and then, turning to Jen, she delivered the parting shot she had evidently been saving up since the first confrontation: “Nice hair. I hope the business-bitch look sells your iPhone wannabe.”
The door slammed, and she was gone.
Jen surveyed the wreckage of the kitchen coolly. Then she changed out of her work clothes, cleared the counters—dumping the popcorn in the trash—and mopped the floor. She left the pizza out in case Katie was hungry when she got in. With the kitchen clean, she opened the freezer and found the pint of cookies ’n’ cream Katie had bought. With this she retreated to the couch.
Jen had set both her alarm clock and her cell phone, determined that no accident would result in her oversleeping, but she found herself wide awake at five, staring up at the ceiling in the dim first light of a summer morning. She tried to think whether it was nerves that had wakened her, or some sound made by Katie getting ready for work, or just the knowledge that she must be up on time.
Getting ready took less time than she had allowed, and she considered going in early, but the memories of sitting in her office with nothing to do but think about the presentation warned her off. She made eggs and coffee instead and perused the newspaper. Katie’s pizza remained untouched on the stove. She felt a sudden craving for the iniquity of morning pizza, but if Katie had not yet touched it, she was reluctant to capitulate so visibly by taking the first piece. She let it be.
When she pulled into the parking lot at work, it was already much fuller than at her accustomed hour. Since it was too late to get a spot that would be shaded, she parked well out, where no one would park next to the newly detailed coupe and ding it. She strode along the sidewalk toward her building, her good-luck pumps giving a commanding tic, tic on the sidewalk. Kanga, on guard in the lobby, was wearing a Shriner fez and cradling a Hindu god in her paws. Jen glanced at the lobby clock: 8 A.M. One hour to go. She pulled out her phone and checked her e-mail as she walked to her office. Candice in Accounting, with whom she had spent many hours calculating how different types of packaging affected the number of Players that fit on a pallet, and thus per-unit shipping costs by air and sea, had sent a note: “Big day. Good luck!!!” Josh, her boss, had sent one as well, “Stop by my office when you get in.”
She set her laptop on the desk and headed down the hall to Josh’s office. The glass door was shut. She could see Josh cradling a paper cup of coffee and talking on the speakerphone. He waved in response to her knock, then held up a finger, signaling, “Wait a moment.” After a moment, he stabbed the phone off and came to open the door.
“Sorry to keep you waiting. Come on in.”
Jen took the seat opposite the desk. Josh sat, tapped a few stray papers into a more precise stack, and set his coffee to one side.
“All of us appreciate the work that you’ve done on the PocketDJ Player project,” he announced. “I know that all of the leadership team have been impressed with your hard work and ownership of the process. So I know that you will understand this is in no way a reflection on you personally or your performance. As part of a major new partnership and restructuring, the leadership team has decided that a hardware device is not the right direction for the company.”
The meaning of the flood of cushioning corporate-ese in which the essential message was wrapped suddenly struck home, and Jen found herself watching Josh speak as if from a distance, hearing only the key phrases.
“. . . is one of the positions no longer required under our new plan . . . given your length of service at AppLogix that severance will be four weeks’ pay . . . this additional severance is contingent on your signing of the noncompetition agreement . . . any unexercised options . . .”
It was not yet 8:30 when Jen found herself passing through the lobby again, feeling unnaturally light with no laptop bag, only the folder of HR paperwork in her arms. (“You can make an appointment next week to go through your office and collect personal possessions.”) Two programmers in shorts and comic tees were playing noisily at the foosball table. Kanga leered derisively from under her fez.
Outside, the light seemed unnaturally bright—it was a time of day when she was usually indoors. She realized that she was shaking. Feeling a sob welling up within her, she bit her lip and redoubled her speed in order to reach the shelter of her car. As her pace neared a run, she placed a foot wrong and twisted her ankle hard, biting back a cry of pain. She kicked off the shoes and carried them the rest of the way, feeling the rough warmth of the pavement under her bare feet. Her reflection in the glistening black hood looked tauntingly similar to the day before, but with red-rimmed eyes looking out from beneath the hair that had inspired such confidence in her then.
Once she was muffled in the warm, leathery interior, she leaned her forehead against the steering wheel and allowed herself, for a long moment, to cry. Then she wiped her eyes, forced herself to breathe slowly, and started the engine. Katie was scheduled to work until two. At least she would have some hours of solitude to gather her thoughts before facing anyone.
Back in the condo, she sat at the kitchen table, a cooling cup of coffee in front of her, numbly staring at her personal laptop and willing herself to update her résumé. Perhaps it would have been satisfying to break down and drain all the emotions away through tears until she could go to sleep. After the last few weeks, she must need rest. But since that first flood in the car, tears would not come, nor would rest, only overpowering numbness.
The sound of the front door opening only half registered with her, and it was a moment before she looked up to see Katie coming in, still wearing the clothes she had left in the night before and carrying her heels in her hands. Their eyes met, and Katie froze.
“You’re supposed to be at work,” Jen stated.
“I didn’t make it home last night.” Katie responded with the equally obvious fact. “I met a guy while I was out at the bar.” She shifted uneasily from one foot to the other as Jen continued to fix her stare on her younger sister. “His name is Brian,” she supplied, as if this clarified matters.
“You met some guy. Named Brian. At a bar,” Jen summarized in slow sentence fragments, her voice still shaky with the last hour’s emotion, her pain and frustration converting to anger as she spoke. “And you went home with him and blew off your shift at work. Threw away your new job.”
“It’s a stupid job. You said so yourself.
”
“Threw away your job,” Jen repeated, rising to her feet. “What kind of a stupid, irresponsible slut—”
With an inarticulate shout, Katie hurled one of the shoes at Jen. The throw was so unplanned, so poorly executed, that the shoe flew high and wide, bounced off the kitchen counter and clattered onto the stove, where it came to rest on the still untouched pizza.
“What the hell?” Jen yelped.
“Shut up!” Katie demanded, brandishing the other shoe, her own voice sounding dangerously close to tears.
For a moment they stared each other down. Then Katie dropped the shoe and rushed for the bathroom, wailing, “Oh man, I’m going to be sick!”
Jen stood listening to her younger sister’s misery for a moment; then, after a glance at the shoe lying in the ruins of the pizza, went after her into the bathroom.
Katie was crouched in front of the toilet, leaning her arms on the rim. It was impossible to remain angry with this image of suffering. Jen knelt behind her and smoothed her hair back out of her face.
“You look terrible. Can you get anything out?”
“No,” moaned Katie.
“Have you taken any Advil?”
Katie nodded.
“Can we get you to your bed?”
“Okay.”
Jen helped Katie up and guided her gently into the spare bedroom, where she crawled into bed and lay, huddled and miserable, in the middle of it. Jen put the trash can where Katie could reach it easily if she needed it and pulled the blanket up over her.
“Are you ready for anything to eat or drink yet?”
Katie shook her head.
“All right. Get some rest. I’ll see you in a bit.”
Shutting the door of Katie’s room quietly behind her, Jen finally felt exhaustion settle upon her and knew that she could rest. She went into her room, collapsed onto the bed, and—conscious even in her numbed and battered state of the luxury of being able to sleep in the middle of the day—fell immediately asleep.
3
The daylight filtering into Jen’s room through the blinds tracked slowly across the walls. Drained as she was by her weeks of preparation for the launch, the shock of the layoff, and the fight with Katie, she might easily have slept all day, had the presence of someone next to her not wakened her. She half sat up with a start and then saw that it was Katie, clad in her accustomed tank top and plaid flannel pants, her hair looking recently washed, who had nuzzled into bed next to her like an oversize teddy bear.
Katie opened her eyes and regarded her. “Did I wake you up?”
Jen flopped back on the pillow and stared at the ceiling. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve been asleep a long time.”
“What happened?” Katie asked. “Did something go wrong? Are you sick?”
“I got fired,” Jen said flatly.
“What do you mean you got fired?” Katie asked, incredulous.
“Fired. Laid off. No job.”
“But . . . Even I didn’t get fired. I called Mandy, my boss, and told her I was really sick. She said next time I better call and tell her that before my shift started. But that’s it. She didn’t fire me. How could you get fired?”
“It’s not personal.” Jen shrugged. “There was some kind of strategy change, and they cut the whole Player program, and a lot of us who were working on it got laid off. They don’t need me. That’s it.”
“I’m sorry.” For a moment there was silence. “What will you do?” Katie asked.
Jen sighed. “Well, I’ll have to find a new job. I guess there wasn’t much I could do today anyway. I’m so tired. I’ll clean up my résumé over the weekend and start searching on Monday.”
“I can help pay the rent till you get a new job,” Katie offered.
“Kiddo, do you have any idea what the mortgage on this place is?”
Katie shook her head.
“Thirty-eight hundred dollars a month.”
Katie made a strangled noise. “Will we have to move?”
“Only if my new job is somewhere else. I’ve got six months’ expenses saved up. We can get by for a good while. Maybe order out less, but we’ll have plenty of time to cook.”
Katie burrowed into the sheets and pillows. “I’m nowhere near to making it on my own out here, am I?” she said in an unusually small voice. “Are you going to send me back to Mom and Dad?”
Jen raised herself on one elbow and regarded her sister’s half-buried head. “No, I guess not.” She saw Katie’s shoulders relax.
Jen reached out and stroked her back, like a parent comforting a small child. It was some small sop to her sense of self that, despite the layoff, she was so obviously more able to provide for herself than Katie was. “I’m sorry. This must be hard for you. You’re used to having someone take care of you. And I haven’t been paying any attention. I’ve been so busy.”
She felt Katie’s shoulder shaking gently under her hand. It was a moment before she realized that her younger sister was sobbing silently into the pillow.
“What? What’s wrong, Katie?” she asked, leaning close.
Katie’s shoulder gave a last shake or two, and her hand pounded the pillow. “No! It’s not like that at all! No one keeps an eye on me except to tell me when I’m screwing up. You’re the one who’s all grown up and Mom and Dad are proud of. And I’m just . . . No one even remembers me.”
“What are you talking about?” Jen asked, surprised by this seemingly self-indulgent outburst. “You were always the baby. Mom was always worrying about you.”
“Only because she wasn’t proud of me, like she was proud of you. Remember that time I got locked in a trunk for hours at Grandma’s house? Nobody noticed. That’s what it’s always like with me.”
“What?” Jen sat upright. “What do you mean locked in a trunk? You were never locked in a trunk.”
“I was!” Katie contradicted, in a half sob. “Don’t you even remember? I’d just turned five. All the cousins were over. I got locked in a trunk up in the attic. For hours.”
Jen wondered for a moment if this was another of Katie’s scams, but her voice remained at the edge of sobs. “I’m sure I’d remember something like that. Locked in a trunk?”
Katie sat upright and kneaded the pillow in her lap.
“We were over at Grandma’s for . . . I don’t know. It must have been in the spring, because I had just turned five. I was playing hide and seek with the cousins—Jamie and Ann, and Tim and Bobby—and they helped me hide in one of those old trunks up in the attic. And then . . . when the grown-ups asked them afterward, they said they’d gone to play another game and forgot I was still hiding. The latch must have closed. I couldn’t get out, and no one could hear me. No one thought to look for me till dinnertime. It was hours, and I’d screamed until I’d given up. I had nightmares after that for years about being trapped in the dark. Mom and Dad yelled at you afterward and said you should have been keeping an eye on me.”
This detail finally jogged a memory in Jen—her agitated parents holding the sobbing Katie and grounding her on the theory that she should have known where her younger sister was. As if she would have been playing with the little kids.
“Okay, I think I do remember something about that. You can’t have been in there for hours, though. Maybe ten or fifteen minutes.”
“It was hours. I’d cried myself hoarse.”
“It can’t have been hours. You kids ran off while we were all finishing dinner, and we realized you were missing when dessert was served, and you were the only kid who didn’t show up. Twenty minutes tops.”
“How do you know?” Katie demanded fiercely. “You didn’t even remember five minutes ago. It was hours.”
“I remember. I just didn’t connect it with what you were saying because it wasn’t that big a deal. You cried for a few minutes, and Mom and Dad yelled at me, and then you fell asleep and were fine.”
Katie cast herself, facedown, on the pillow. “It was a big deal!” she wailed in muffled tones. “Yo
u just don’t remember because you didn’t care.”
Jen watched her shoulders shake, then gradually settle into rhythmic breathing. Though still tired, she no longer felt like going to sleep. Instead, she looked at her sister, trying to reconcile her own memories with Katie’s deeply felt ones. That she had nearly forgotten something so essential to her sister’s memories of their childhood was unsettling to her view of herself and her family. They had never been the closest family, but she had never thought of them as being the sort of family in which dark memories bubbled up. Nor, she was sure, could Katie’s memory of this event be correct. There was no way she could have been missing for hours without anyone noticing. And yet the very fact that the incident had barely impinged upon her memory except as a case of her parents’ blaming her unjustly seemed to underscore the possibility that Katie’s memory of it was more accurate.
After turning the issue over for several minutes, while Katie continued to sleep in apparent peace, she lay back down next to her and drifted off into uneasy sleep, but with a protective arm around her younger sister.
The light was beginning to fade outside when they both stirred again. Katie swung her feet to the floor and sat up.
“How’s the hangover?” Jen asked.
“Better.”
“Feel like you could eat?”
“Definitely.”
“Let’s go see what we can find.”
In the kitchen, the pizza confronted them, one shoe still embedded in the clammy cheese and toppings.
“I think the pizza is a goner,” Jen ruled. “Do you still want the shoe?”
Katie accepted it and wiped it off with paper towels while Jen slid the pizza into the trash.
“What do you feel like eating?” Jen asked.
Katie opened the freezer and peered inside. “Where’s that pint of ice cream I got for us?”
“I ate it after you left,” Jen confessed.
“After all that grief you gave me about carbs, you ate my ice cream?” Katie demanded. “You bitch!” But the imprecation was delivered fondly.
If You Can Get It Page 3