Talk to Me

by John Kenney

  Franny stared back at him and said, “Your breath smells like meat and cheese and vomit. Also why don’t you go fuck yourself. Merry Christmas.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “What story?” Franny said to him now, standing, pulling her headphones off, gathering her things, putting her MacBook Air into her bag, putting her coat on. “The story about Britney Spears’s custody battle? The story about underboob selfies from celebrities? The celebrity wife-swap story? We do a lot of stories here at shit. I mean scheisse. Isn’t that what it means in your lovely-sounding language?”

  “What crawled up your ass?”

  She could feel it coming on, shaky and electric, and she hated it. She’d always hated it. Since she was a child. The trapdoor fall, the energy drop. It felt out of control and terrifying. The moods. The therapists since she was eleven and the overheard conversations her parents had about her, the arguments and shouting about her, the fights and the bullying in school that she never told her parents about. What had ever become of Joey Staley, Franny wondered, the meanest girl in Bedford? She played a game at recess. Who do you like better? Franny or Lila? she’d ask to a recess crowd. Lila! they’d shout.

  “I want it tomorrow,” he said.

  “Tomorrow, please,” Franny said.

  “What?” Henke said, clueless, Teutonic tit.

  “Don’t bark at me like you’re ordering a coffee.”

  He stared, all bluster, secretly intimidated by her.

  “Tomorrow,” he said, then turned and walked away, “bitte, mein Fräulein.”

  * * *

  • • •

  She tried to do a SoulCycle class but it was full. She didn’t really want to do a SoulCycle class.

  She stood on the corner of Ninth Avenue and Sixteenth Street, the young and fortunate streaming out of Google and the tech companies, the ad agencies and talent firms, the editing houses and music studios, New York fast walk. Where were they going? she wondered. To Equinox, to yoga, to tai chi, to Rolfing, to a spa treatment, to sushi, to the newest and hippest overpriced bars and restaurants on the Lower East Side, to Contra, to Dirty French, to Stanton Social, in buildings once home to Judaica shops and butchers and tailors, whose upper floors contained overcrowded apartments, cold-water flats, one toilet at the end of the hall, long gone, long forgotten.

  Let us go then, you and I, / When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table. Let us go through certain Uber-crowded streets, the constant tweets, our headphones made by Beats. In the room the men and women come and go talking of Google and Apple and Facebook.

  * * *

  • • •

  A guy named Matt had texted earlier.

  Hey.

  That was it. Just . . . hey.

  They’d met on Tinder, gone out a few times, hooked up a few times. He was in finance. Or insurance. She wasn’t sure. He was cute. He was sweet and fake and needy and vacuous and knew the right things to say, a soap actor who could memorize lines, a guy who would marry a pretty woman and be unhappy in ten years, divorced in fifteen. He wasn’t a man. He wasn’t a grown-up. He never would be. He was a guy who would always think about “great tits.”

  Hey.

  In previous generations, young men stood below your balcony, looked up with wonder, spoke poetry.

  But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?

  It is the east and Juliet is the sun!

  Or hey.

  Hey spoke volumes, a language unto itself, a worldview. Hey told you everything about a guy. Hey said he didn’t really respect you. Hey said he wanted to dispense with thousands of years of courtship and mating rituals, of decorum and chivalry. It said, instead, that he wanted to meet you at your apartment—or his place, if you thought you might be in Midtown later—with boozy breath, begin making out before the door was closed, hands fumbling for clothing and breasts, for ass, moving awkwardly to the bed.

  And it begins.

  Him, sucking a nipple too hard, you pretending it felt good.

  You holding his semi-erect penis, thinking “penis” is just a stupid-sounding word.

  Him, squeeze my balls (Shakespeare!).

  You, slow.

  Him, stopping, looking at you, the look men gave, the wide-eyed lust at your body, the lines and curves, the flair of hips and contour of thighs, hair splayed out on a pillow.

  You, a desperate sadness that the look was only lust, no love, never love, why am I doing this?

  Him, reaching for the condom, the moment changing, like a doctor’s office now, the smell of latex, the foil wrapper tossed to the floor, his eagerness and hopes for a non-fading erection.

  You, eyes closed, finding a place as he enters you, that moment unlike any other physical sensation, like surprise, like a gasp of air, the best moment.

  Him, single-minded, laser focus, a series of calisthenics soon to follow: hands under ass, hump; flip, ride him; half turn, half screw; facedown, from behind. On your back again, him close, telling you to touch yourself.

  You, why not, you’re here. Eyes closed tight now. How strange the images that drift across your mind in that moment of deepest lust, hungry desire. Vivid, ethereal, physical, sensatory, until your head, thrown back, the small sound escaping.

  Him, gone. The sound alone enough.

  You, watching his contorted face.

  Him, pulling back, rolling off, falling on his back.

  You, the moment gone, the lust gone, the fleeting, false connection long gone in the seconds since it ended. Strangers now. What are his parents’ names? Where did he go to grade school? How did he get that small scar on his chin? Who was this person you just had sex with?

  She texted back, Hey.

  Because Hey, in response to his Hey, was I’m just as powerful as you. I can have casual sex just like a guy. I can care just as little as a guy. Hey, in response, was victory. Freedom. So why, to Franny, did it feel like surrender?

  They met at his place, so she could leave, come home, and pretend it never happened.

  * * *

  • • •

  When she got home she showered and got into her pajamas. She didn’t feel like cooking and ordered in Thai. She sat down, unsure where to start. She poured a glass of wine and opened her laptop and reflexively checked CNN and HuffPo and WaPo and nypost.com and Vox and TMZ. There was a message from her mother that she needed to return but didn’t want to right now.

  She put on music. She sipped her wine. She decided not to write it. She’d email Henke and tell him. She wasn’t the right person. No. That was wrong. She didn’t want to. She didn’t know where to start. Too much history. She paced. Fuck it. She wasn’t going to do this.

  She wrote.

  * * *

  • • •

  He hit her once. She was home from college. She was late for dinner. She’d lost track of time, got stoned with some friends. It was a beautiful early spring evening and they were in a cemetery in Bedford dating back to the Revolutionary War and they were lying on the grass and staring at the sky and it was so peaceful. She might have dozed for a bit and somehow it was late and she rushed home. And he hit her. She tried to explain. He slapped her across the face and her mother screamed.

  He became a stranger to her, walking past her, not saying a thing. True, she was the same way. True, she knew they feared her at times. But still. Couldn’t he try? They forced her to go to boarding school. Fine. Technically her father was against the idea. But he let her go. And that winter. The storm. The time in the hospital. Where was he then? When she’d overdosed. Maybe don’t mention overdose. It’s not necessary to the story. It’s her story and she gets to tell it the way she wants, revealing what she wants. The point is she was hospitalized with an illness and he didn’t show. Who does that?

  She wrote until almost 2:00 a.m. She
wrote and rewrote; sometimes it flowed and sometimes she sat and stared out the window. She wrote in bursts, whole paragraphs, whole pages. It poured out of her like a good therapy session. Her sense of being wronged in full flow. Why hadn’t he . . . why hadn’t he . . . why hadn’t they . . .

  She was sure she knew the whole story.

  * * *

  • • •

  It was late when she finished, hints of lights in the eastern sky. She felt very tired and sat for a time looking at the file on her screen. “Ted Grayson.” The words that had defined her life, defined who she was. She went to the window and stared out. The city was quiet, a few birds beginning their morning song. It felt cleansing to have written it. To have told it all. Almost all. She was tempted to call him. To read it to him. Could they ever start again? She asked herself this sometimes, a deep, fearful hope. But she couldn’t see it happening.

  The real question, the question right now, the one that she had stored away since Henke had asked her to do it, was whether she could actually hit send.

  She emailed the piece to herself, a habit. Then she dragged the piece to the trash, heard the sound of it landing there. She sat and stared at the icon of the old trash can. Go ahead, delete it. I dare you. Then she dragged it out of the trash, saved it to the scheisse cloud. Henke would be waiting for it. She knew. But she couldn’t send it. She couldn’t print it. She texted him. “Can’t run story. Talk tomorrow.” She took an Ambien, got into bed, and did something she hadn’t done in many years. She turned off her phone.

  Sag Harbor, one last time.

  Claire had spoken with her lawyer earlier and confirmed the meeting with Ted’s team to finalize papers and ownership. But she couldn’t quite manage to call him. Instead, she had done errands; bought plants, ordered new bathroom tile, gone food shopping at the A&P in town, called Franny and left a message. Franny had texted back seconds later. TTYL. She had also made an attempt to pack up Ted’s things, an exercise she found to be less satisfying than she’d initially imagined. Shirts she had washed and folded hundreds of times. Khakis and sweaters and old baseball caps and belts and ties. A Dopp kit full of toiletries. She abandoned the effort halfway through in favor of some vigorous digging in the garden, the smell of the dirt rejuvenating, followed by a late-afternoon bath.

  Nancy was coming over that evening and they were going to make a Bolognese sauce and open a Barolo. After the bath, she’d dressed in yoga pants and, initially, an old shirt of Ted’s, until she realized that it was an old shirt of Ted’s, changing to a T-shirt and cashmere sweater. She’d laid the food out, all the ingredients she’d need for the sauce and the salad. She always did this. She liked the way it looked, a still life. She turned on music, picked Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic.” College days. Boston and Cambridge days. She opened the wine, poured herself a glass.

  It was their ritual in the evenings. A long time ago. A shower, pajamas, music, wine. The giddy excitement of the hard part of the day done, the possibility of the evening, of talking and listening to music, drinking the wine and eating the food, watching half a movie. This was what marriage became for most people, time with a best friend. It may be dark and cold outside but here we are, in this warm, safe place. There is garlic to peel and a dressing to make and a salmon to poach. We are not alone. There is a person to talk with. A person who is endlessly interesting and interested in you, a shared history, someone to talk with about the price of pears at the new supermarket, about the small leak from the eave on the back of the house, about your day. Who’d you talk with, hon? Wait, what? Phil has skin cancer? Martha and Roger are splitting up? Gary’s dad passed away? These things that happen to other people. You talked about it and lived with it for a moment or two and then thanked the good Lord it wasn’t you, returned to your life, to the music, to the warm kitchen, to the sauce and a sip of the wine and the feeling as your husband came up behind you, wrapped his arms around your hips, his strong body against you, how it felt like home. He could sense the smile on your face as his face fell into your neck, how you could feel how much he needed you, as he inhaled your smell, his eyes closed now, a smell he knew. It was a moment and you were there, together, holding on, the music playing. Your music. Your moment. Your life together. Until it was gone.

  Claire sipped her wine, alone in the kitchen. The song had ended. She tapped the iPad and played it from the beginning. She should call Ted and ask him to take his belongings from their two homes. Take it all. The clothes, the photos, bikes, and exercise machines used nine times and abandoned. She rubbed her forehead. The good feeling was ebbing. She’d call him tomorrow.

  The knock at the back door startled her. She turned and saw Nancy smiling as she opened the door, talking, carrying a bottle of wine. Claire couldn’t make out what she was saying. She wasn’t really listening. She was listening to Van Morrison. She didn’t want the song to end.

  * * *

  • • •

  Ted inched along the dense traffic on the Long Island Expressway on a Wednesday evening. He sat behind the wheel of an eight-year-old Volvo wagon. The helicopter was in his contract. He should have sensed something wrong when they said it wasn’t available to him. The network had two: a Bell 430 and a Sikorsky S-76. He preferred the Sikorsky, as its top speed was 180 miles per hour, whereas the Bell’s was only 160. Though even thinking this caused Ted to feel like a monumental blowhard.

  Every one of the drivers around him—the overworked nurses coming home from a twelve-hour shift, the construction workers, the bankers and lawyers, the dentist getting a hand job from his assistant before dropping her off a block from her house in Ronkonkoma (Ted’s demographic, in other words)—knew who Ted was, had seen his face a million times, had probably read about his shame in newspapers and online, heard it on Entertainment Tonight, on the late night talk shows. He felt that they could see him, in the dark, as the car made its way east.

  * * *

  • • •

  Claire had initially wanted to simply split everything, fifty-fifty. She didn’t care about the money. She wanted a clean start. Yes, she loved the Bedford house and hoped to keep that.

  Claire’s lawyers, however, felt differently about what Claire was owed.

  “Did you give up a lucrative career in advertising to raise your daughter?”

  “Well, yes, but I’m not sure I’d call my career lucrative.”

  “Were you rising? Do you think if you had stayed with it you could have achieved a high position?”

  “I think so. I was good at it.”

  “Over, say, a thirty-year career, how much could you have made?”

  “Oh, I have no idea.”

  “We do. We spoke with a top recruiter in New York advertising and she assured us that someone in your field could have made close to five hundred thousand dollars a year, not including bonuses. Now, if you were earning this salary for just half of those thirty years, that’s $7.5 million that you forfeited to raise Ted Grayson’s daughter, tend to his home, and emotionally support him.”

  The numbers surprised Claire. She was not someone who thought in those terms.

  “The next thirty years of your life, Claire, will be years where you won’t earn an income. How will you live?” She thought of Dodge but her brow furrowed because she didn’t want to be taken care of. She didn’t want to be kept.

  Her attorney continued, “It is our experience and our opinion that you deserve far more than half. You earned this. I understand this language is uncomfortable for you and your sensibility. But it’s my job to think this way.”

  And so, after giving it some thought and talking with Nancy (“Take it all,” was her advice), Claire instructed her attorneys to ask for the following, with the assumption that Ted’s attorney would come back with their own demands and that they would land somewhere in the middle:

  The Bedford house (including all artwork, furniture, rugs, and draperies);
>
  The adjoining ten acres of the Bedford house (which were Ted’s idea to buy and which had more than doubled in value);

  The Sag Harbor house;

  Ted’s vintage and pristine twenty-seven-foot Boston Whaler that Ted repainted himself every spring, alone, at the Sag Harbor house, to get away from Claire and Franny;

  The new Audi;

  The two-year-old Volvo wagon that they kept in the driveway for God-only-knows what reason; occasionally the maid used it, sometimes Franny when she came home. Mostly it sat, clean and gassed up, in the garage, depreciating in value;

  The 1968 Mercedes coupe, garaged at the Sag Harbor house, that Claire bought Ted as a fiftieth-birthday gift;

  Annuities, life insurance policies, various stocks, 401(k);

  And a lump-sum payment of $20 million in cash.

  What Ted got to keep was the Upper West Side apartment, though he would forfeit all of its belongings (except for his own clothes), including artwork, furniture, rugs, lamps, window treatments.

  Despite vigorous pleas from Polly, Ted didn’t want to negotiate. “Let her have it all,” he’d said.

  What would he do with the Bedford house, anyway? Or Sag Harbor? The plan had always been to put it in Franny’s name, anyway.

  That woman gave you her life, Ted’s mother would have said about Claire. Surely, she deserved the money.

  * * *

  • • •

  Claire had called. She had called and asked him to move all of his belongings out of both houses. He wasn’t ready to do this in the Bedford house yet, to remove what he owned, to ship it to a storage unit in White Plains or some industrial part of town. It was too much. It seemed unreal. He really only had clothes and some boxes of old papers in Sag Harbor. He’d start there.