by Kate Myles
“You’re making a scene.”
“I’m not!” She holds her hands up. “See? No scene.”
The elevator door opens. There are two people inside. No one from Beyond the Brand. “Going up?” says an old guy from a law office. Doug waves them off. The doors close.
“Here’s what I can do,” he says. “Since I set it up, I’ll give you all the money you should have gotten from Stan. What is it, two thousand each?”
“Twenty-five hundred.”
He raises his eyebrows.
“We asked them to rush the check,” she says, “but they’re not even calling us back.”
“Okay,” he says. He hits the button again.
When the elevator opens, there’s only one person: Elise, the vice president. Her mouth drops open. Doug moves in next to her. Chloe steps forward. He puts his hand up.
“You’re on the next one.”
Common Parlance meets that night. Dylan and Sheralyn are at the rehearsal space when she arrives. She almost cries at the sight of them together, splayed out in their sweats and leggings on the dusty floor of the dance studio. The rat-a-tat of a flamenco class pounds above their heads. This is her world.
“Holy crap.” Chloe drops her bag near the door and sits across from them. “You have no idea how awful my life is right now.”
Sheralyn gives her a pat smile and inches closer to Dylan. There’s a languidness, a confidence Chloe has noticed in her lately. “What did you do?” asks Dylan. He has a flicker of boredom in his voice.
“Chloe’s got a scarlet letter,” Sheralyn says. “T for tweet.”
“That place I work at, it’s toxic,” says Chloe. “I have these candies on my desk, and people come by and say things like, ‘Sweet on the outside but rotten on the inside,’ and they’ll, like, stare me down when they say it.”
Dylan frowns. There is concern on his face.
“I’m not crazy,” says Chloe.
“No, I don’t think that,” says Dylan.
Chloe gets a whiff of relief. Dylan’s a really good guy. She should be with someone normal and kind. Sheralyn glances Dylan’s way. She sidles up closer to him.
“So what are you going to do?” Sheralyn asks. Her tone is higher and lighter than Chloe’s ever heard, like she’s doing her best imitation of a girly BFF. Chloe studies her face. Her eyeliner is different, with deep purple applied directly on her bottom waterlines.
“You should quit,” says Dylan.
“I talked to Doug,” says Chloe. “He’s going to give me the money for the party, so that’s something. I’ll pay you guys when I get it.”
“How much?” asks Sheralyn. Her smile is serrated. Chloe searches the floor in front of her for a way to say, What’s your problem? “How much is he giving you?” Sheralyn asks again.
Chloe shrugs. “Ten thousand, I’m guessing.”
“Wow!” says Sheralyn. “That’s how much he’s giving Dylan to distribute. Do you think we’re getting double the amount?”
Blind white panic ricochets through Chloe’s body. Sheralyn hates her. Everyone hates her. She’d scramble out the door if she weren’t paralyzed in place.
“You talked to him?” asks Chloe.
Dylan stands and slaps his thighs. “We should get started. Howie’s not coming. He booked a commercial.”
“Jesus,” says Sheralyn. “We should just kick him out.”
“But I have good news. I wanted Chloe to get here before I said anything.” Dylan gives Chloe a reassuring nod. “The party wasn’t all bad. There was this guy there, Gill Summerland. He’s an investor in this immersive theater company in Brooklyn. They have a whole warehouse where they stage shows. I’m flying to New York next week to meet with him.”
Dylan focuses in on Chloe, like he’s trying to gauge her reaction. New York. Of course. But surely Chloe can’t just leave Los Angeles. Surely it’s not that easy. Dylan winks at her.
Sheralyn’s phone chimes on the floor. A text notification pops up. The sender’s name is Doug. Sheralyn snaps up her phone, but not before Chloe reads the top of the message: Put 2K of the $ into Pinterest doll ads.
“Give me that,” says Chloe.
Sheralyn holds the phone close to her chest. “No,” she says.
Chloe stands. “Is that from my Doug?”
Sheralyn gets up. “He’s not your Doug.”
“You’re texting with him?”
“Hey,” says Dylan. He steps between them.
Chloe can feel herself coiling. Sheralyn puffs up her chest and stares Chloe dead in the eyes. Sheralyn is relaxed. This is familiar territory for her. There’s no rage to Sheralyn. She’s just tough.
“Are you fucking him?” says Chloe.
Sheralyn points at her. “You are crazy,” she says.
“Guys! Stop!” says Dylan.
Chloe’s heat fizzes to her face, making her eyes sting. She points at the rose tattoo under Sheralyn’s collarbone and stutters an impotent, “You are not my friend.” It’s all she can manage to say.
Chloe walks out of the room. On the drive home she thinks over and over, Why? Why would she do that? Why would he? People are horrible. It’s the only possible answer. Tom the recruiter. Teddy from the mail room. They’re animals, all of them, gnawing her alive.
She gets home before Sheralyn and finds herself at the door to Sheralyn’s bedroom. She kicks it, denting the hollow wood at the bottom. The door opens. The floor is covered with bins of mophead dolls, neatly organized according to size and hair color. There’s a stack of empty FedEx boxes on the bed. Chloe pounds on the pile and scatters the cardboard. It’s not enough. She stomps. The boxes are too light. They only make her more angry.
She picks up a yellow-haired doll with black stitches for eyes and red dots for cheeks. She shakes it and says, “Please don’t hurt me,” in a high-pitched ventriloquist’s whine.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” she responds in a deeper voice.
The doll’s face stays expressionless. Chloe covers it with her palm and pulls. Nothing. She pinches its neck and twists the head sideways, but the best she can do is a button-size tear in the seam. Not good enough. She looks around the room. There’s a pair of pinking shears on the dresser.
She wraps both palms around the handle and plunges the scissors into a bin. But the point is too dull. It just goes around the dolls. She opens the blades and digs into a belly. She snips off an arm, then a foot, and noses, and knees, and heads, and shoulders. She cuts all the dolls from one bin, then another and another, until her hand starts cramping. She stretches it out and massages her palm. She switches the scissors to her other hand and cuts until she’s too tired to continue. Then she stands and wonders what she looks like, surrounded by these scraps, these shredded babies, such strange confetti.
There are two bins left. Chloe cracks her knuckles. It would be so easy to quit, to escape the horror she’s made of Sheralyn’s room. But she can’t. It wouldn’t be fair to the destroyed dolls to leave the rest intact.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
EMILY
I decided to have a C-section. I couldn’t stand the thought of Doug coaching me through some exceptional labor, a spectacular labor, and me all sweaty and panting and pained. I was done sacrificing my dignity. The operation was scheduled for 6:00 a.m., a week before my due date. We had to be at Cedars-Sinai by 4:30. I couldn’t sleep that night. I felt like I was floating between worlds. I wandered around the house and took a selfie in the kitchen, trying to solidify a memory of myself before baby. I posted it to Instagram with the caption, Calm before the storm.
Dr. Maryn liked it two minutes later. My body started in joy at the sight of her handle. Then I remembered. We had an agreement. This was her reminder she’d be coming to collect, like some modern-day Rumpelstiltskin or wicked witch, setting off an hourglass countdown to the end of my career.
I deleted my post and blocked her.
There was a wall of sheeting set up on the operating table, blocking my view of
my abdomen. I couldn’t see or feel when the baby was removed from my body at 7:04 a.m. I don’t remember how much it weighed. They brought it around and held it next to my face. The baby looked like all the pictures of newborns I’d seen, scraggly and coated in slime. They told me I could hold it later, after my medication wore off.
Its cry was pitiful. I knew that babies were supposed to wail after they were born, but it sounded so despondent. “Why is it crying?” I asked.
The nurse furrowed her eyebrows at me. “Because she’s a baby.”
They took her away. Doug followed them. I was rolled into the luxury maternity suite. The room was colorful, with a cherry blossom comforter and leather couch. It didn’t feel like a hospital. A makeup artist came to help me get ready for my first new-mom pictures. I asked my hairstylist for a neck massage and closed my eyes as she balanced the base of my skull on her fingertips. I almost forgot where I was until Doug rolled a plastic bassinet into the room.
I held the baby. I had expected to feel something once I had her in my arms, some lightning strike of affection, but we were strangers to each other. My instinct was to show her respect. She was an independent being. I wanted to introduce myself slowly.
“Hi,” I said. I held her on my lap and looked into her eyes, wondering what she could see. Was my face blurry? I’d read that newborns have short fields of vision. I bent close so she could get a better look at me. “Do you remember me? I’m that lady that was carrying you around.”
A nurse was in the room with us, wearing bunny-print scrubs. There was always some extra person, hovering. She butted into this first moment with my child with a panicked, “You’re her mommy!”
My voice rose, thin and tight. “Can we have some privacy, please?”
A lactation consultant came by a few hours later, a woman in her fifties wearing pleated khakis and an oversize blouse. She started off gushing at the baby in my arms. “Ooh, what a cutie! Hi, precious!” She raised her eyebrows at me. “What’s her name?”
Doug and I looked at each other. We couldn’t decide on a name.
“We’re thinking of Myrtle,” I said. “It was my mother’s name.”
“Nope,” said Doug.
“We agreed!”
“Em, your mother’s name is dated. I was fine with it until I saw this little baby here.”
He was never fine with it. I was never going to be able to name my daughter after my mother. What had brought Doug and me together, what I’d thought was love, turned out to be a momentary aligning of objectives.
Now he was just in my way.
“Myrtle the turtle,” Doug said. “Myrtle wears a girdle. Do you want her to get bullied?”
The baby clenched her tiny fists and raised them up above her chest. I felt a vibration as she let out a loud, burbling poop.
Doug reached for her. I clutched her close.
The lactation consultant put a bright smile on her face and said, “I think someone needs a diaper change.” I started to give her the baby, but she held up her hands. “Why don’t I come back later,” she said.
Doug and I fell silent. Neither of us had ever changed a diaper.
We decided on a name, Grace Myrtle Markham, and brought her home.
The afternoon she turned a week old, I sat in the rocker in the nursery and watched the nanny we’d hired change the baby into her Gucci onesie with the interlocking G logo on the front.
“Emily,” Doug said. He was standing at the door to the baby’s room. He had a gift basket of bibs in his hand.
The nanny handed the baby to me. I felt a sharp pain in my incision as I pulled her to my chest and shoulder. Grace nestled her face into the crook of my neck. “Did you see that?” I said to Doug, delighted. She’d been such a lump that first week. Just this tiny movement, this small awareness from her, was exciting.
Doug held up the gift basket. “It’s from Dr. Maryn,” he said. He read from the card. “‘Eagerly awaiting your announcement . . .’”
The nerve of that woman, disturbing our tranquility like this. “Throw it out,” I said. “Get it out of this house.”
The nanny asked if I needed anything else before she left. I told her she could go and stared out at the slip of ocean visible from Grace’s room as I rocked her. The light was mellow and cast a picture on the floor in the shape of a slanted rectangle. Grace fell asleep in my arms.
“Doug,” I called into the baby monitor. He came back to the room. “Can you take her?”
He scooped Grace from my arms and laid her down in the crib. She started to fuss. He turned on the zoo-animal mobile above, quieting her. The music was plinking—an eerie, bygone melody. I flashed to an involuntary image of us mourning our child, the mobile transforming into a brutal memento. I thought of a tiny coffin I’d once seen on the news. Something about babyhood felt so close to death.
“Did you write up the announcement yet?” Doug asked.
I shook my head. “Maryn is asking me to dig my own grave,” I said. “It’s cruel.”
“Here,” he said and helped me up from the rocker. I put a hand over my incision and rested on his arm. It felt like my insides were ready to burst out of me. I leaned on the railing as I descended to the kitchen and then sat at the breakfast bar, my nausea swelling as I turned on my laptop and composed an email to my colleagues. I wrote that I’d decided not to return after maternity leave, that I was doing it for “personal reasons.” I wrote that I was excited about “this new chapter” of my life and hoped they would be too. I said I’d do everything possible to make this a smooth transition, and I implored them, Please, don’t hesitate to contact me with questions.
I was going to have to send a personalized version of this same email to each of my clients. All because of my fucking husband and Dr. Maryn.
I hovered my finger over the “Send” button. I retched. I didn’t press it. I couldn’t. This was suicide.
No, I thought. I was ceding too much control. Dr. Maryn wasn’t in charge of my whole damned career. If she wanted me gone, she was going to have to fire me. And I doubted she’d do it while I was tending to a newborn. Her company was listed in the top ten places for new moms to work. It was a gamble, but I had three months’ maternity leave. I could figure something out.
Doug came downstairs. “Did you send it?”
“No.”
I let out a breath, feeling strong for the first time since my C-section.
“Just get it over with,” he said. “Then we can move on.”
I ignored him and attacked the stairs. I didn’t hold the railing. The first thing I had to do was get back in shape. After the first two steps, though, my whole body felt slammed, my incision tugging at the rest of my torso. I forced myself to keep going. My legs shook. By the top, I was dizzy and sweating. Doug came up behind me.
“Are you okay?”
I waited to catch my breath. “Yeah.”
“We need to do what Maryn says.”
“We don’t, actually.”
Grace began crying, a hiccuping whine. I went to her room. I knelt by her crib and put a hand over my stomach, longing for her, agonizing over the absence of her body inside mine. She’d been protected in there. She’d been abstract. I hadn’t really understood until she was outside me: her cries, her skin, what it meant that this creature was fully human.
Grace started wailing. I pressed my forehead to the slats of the crib and cried along with her.
If only I could rid myself of this memory—it was incessant, creeping around my thoughts like an invasive species. If I could just forget everything to do with Destiny Stimpson and her baby, born in a bathtub and buried in a dumpster. All my life I’d avoided thinking about it. But now I couldn’t stop the flood of pictures in my mind: Destiny’s baby sinking into the garbage, pricked by the sharp-edged packaging, melting into rotting food.
How long had it been in there, suffering? How long had it taken for it to die? I asked my mom the day after they found its puny body. She said she didn’t
know. She turned her head away. My mother refused to look at me again for months.
“Emily, what are you doing?” Doug was standing in the doorway, watching me. These awful hormones. They were intrusive, turning me into someone I didn’t recognize.
“Fuck this,” I said. I stood and shook my head, shook away my guilt. I leaned over the rail to pick up Grace, not caring how much it hurt my abdomen, and held her close. Her warmth, her weight, was like an opening, a tunnel through the expanse of my universe to some alternate dimension of pure love.
“You’re a lucky baby,” I whispered. I inhaled her powdery scent. She was alive. So was I. We would start from there. Motherhood wasn’t going to work for me if I spent it worrying about unlucky children.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHLOE
Someone is hammering at Chloe’s front door. She sits on the carpet in her empty living room and backs up against the wall. There’s no furniture to hide behind. Sheralyn took everything when she moved out.
Chloe watches the person’s feet, two shadows in the late-morning light seeping through the bottom crack. The knocker knocks again. Chloe sneaks to the peephole. Her mailwoman with the close-cropped hair is there, waving an envelope.
“Certified letter,” she says.
“Just leave it out there,” says Chloe.
“You have to sign for it.”
“Can I see it?”
The woman holds up the envelope. Chloe hones in on the orange flash of Doug’s company logo in the corner. She pauses. She needs a lawyer.
The mailwoman turns to leave. “It’ll be at the post office for seven business days.”
Chloe opens the door as far as the chain lock will let her. “Wait.”
“I’m not arguing with you. You sign for it here, or you can pick it up at the post office.”
“Can I open it first to see what’s in it?”
“Honey, it’s certified mail.” The mailwoman points at the return address. “These people sent you a letter, okay? They need your signature to confirm you got it.”
It’s harassment, showing up at her home like this. They keep calling. She’s had messages from Jo-Ann, from the human resources people.