Perfect Life

by Jessica Shattuck

  Chrissy went inside and found a vase for the flowers with the definite attitude of someone who was hassled rather than gladdened by such a gift. Elise buckled the boys into their car seats and climbed into the passenger side.

  “So what is it?” Chrissy asked when they were driving, her eyes darting up to the rearview mirror.

  “No more ‘off-target’ research.”

  “Oh, no!” Chrissy gasped. “Why?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  In the backseat James began a sort of tuneless humming, the sweet childish notes of which sounded melancholic to Elise.

  “What will happen to Ula?” Chrissy asked. And with a pang, Elise realized that this question—or rather, the answer to it—had been hanging over her all afternoon. Ula would have to be “sacrificed”—the euphemistic laboratory term for killed. This was a given. It was hardly the first time one of Elise’s animals had met such a fate. But there was something more personal about it this time. More pointless. Poor Ula, after all, had done her part and the science had certainly done its. “The usual, I guess,” Elise said, staring out the window.

  “I’m sorry.” Chrissy put a hand on Elise’s knee.

  From the backseat, James’s singing turned to fussing.

  Chrissy glanced back up at the mirror and then over at Elise. “Can’t she just…retire somewhere?”

  19

  AS SOON AS THE TUICĂ came out, Neil knew he should have insisted on going out to dinner. That had been his plan: take Galena to some innocuous restaurant and delicately, but unsentimentally, end things with her. Because it was better to do this sooner than later. There was a kind of corrosive energy to their interactions—a mutual sharpness and derision, which he recognized from past mistakes. There was certainly no foundation of respect, to put it in the language of Oprah.

  To be honest, he had assumed it would be easy. After all, Galena was not falling for him—she was as utilitarian as he was. But the conversation so far had been surprisingly bristly. She was prideful, and used to calling the shots, and his tack of assuming a mutual dilettantishness about the relationship (“So this has been a lot of fun, but I think its probably best to cool it”) was greeted with hostility.

  Oh, it’s been “fun,” has it? Galena had said in a voice dripping with sarcasm. And Neil had attempted to backtrack, but she had excused herself to go to the bathroom.

  The length of time that had elapsed since then was making him nervous. He girded himself for a puffy-eyed, swollen-faced Galena returning to the table only to pick up her bag and go. This had happened to him before.

  But when Galena came back, she did not look like someone who had been crying. She had applied a fresh coat of bright red lipstick and wore a kind of wry, crafty expression on her face.

  “Well, I guess you should get the check,” she said, smirking, “if it’s best that we ‘cool it.’”

  Neil regarded her warily. “Okay.” He lifted a hand to signal the waiter, a rotund Bangladeshi man who seemed, for some reason, to hate them. He yanked the oily remains of their chicken korma and mushroom paneer off the table with a scowl.

  “You know I didn’t mean that I don’t have a lot of respect—” Neil began hesitantly.

  “Posh!” Galena scoffed. “You don’t have to bullshit me.”

  “It’s not bullshit—”

  “Sure, sure, sure.” She waved this away and squinted up at him nastily. “You think you’re some kind of rock star, don’t you, Neil Banks?”

  Neil sat back in his seat. “No. Believe me, I don’t. I am not a rock star. At all.”

  “Right.” Galena nodded sarcastically, as the scowling waiter presented Neil with the check.

  “Do something for me,” Galena said, leaning across the table toward him.

  “What?” Neil asked, relieved.

  “Come back and have some tuic? at my place.”

  Neil’s relief turned to dismay. Tuic? was the traditional drink of Romania—a cross between ouzo and lighter fluid—which Galena drank with great gusto. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  “Oh, shut up. Suddenly you’re too good for tuic??”

  And so, despite the strong conviction that it was a bad idea, Neil went along. After all, why stop making mistakes now?

  Galena kept up a stream of derisive comments that pretended to be good-natured teasing on the walk back, and Neil entered her apartment full of self-loathing. Why the fuck had he agreed to this when he could be on a bus now, on his own, heading back to J.P. free of Galena’s bullshit?

  “To good times,” Neil offered, with his own hint of sarcasm, as they lifted their second shot.

  “You call those good times?” Galena asked.

  Basically Neil could see what was coming, but still, the force of it took him by surprise.

  Galena strode across the floor and planted an aggressive kiss on his lips, shoving his shoulders back against the sofa.

  “I don’t think—” Neil began to say, pulling his head back, but her knee dug into his hip and she leaned over his head, breathing warm, Thai-food-infused tuic? breath into his face. “This will be a good time,” she said, grinning, and Neil honestly felt somewhat afraid.

  What followed was a session of some of the weirdest lovemaking, if it could be called that, that Neil had ever had in his life. Galena poked and prodded and bossed him like a bullheaded Soviet street cop. She wanted to be on top, and sideways, and upside down. Any protest on his part was greeted by dismissive snorts of laughter, or worse, taunting, on her part. What, my rock star can’t take the heat? she jeered, wrapping herself around him and reaching a hand under his scrotum. It was a face-saving operation for her, he could see—a last kick in the balls, which she could be the one to turn away from. But all the same, he shouldn’t have allowed it to happen.

  When he woke up, he was sweating, and had the unrested, slightly achy feeling of a person who had not so much slept as hovered in some excruciating state of middle-consciousness. And in this state he had been dreaming—or worrying, really—about Laura. She had been sick. Or hurt. They had been climbing a dark stairway and he had been pulling her up. Or trying to, but she kept slipping from his grasp. He was full of the feeling of panic and responsibility. It was like 9/11 in reverse—he was pulling her up into the tower instead of down. Why isn’t there someone else to help her? he had been thinking. Where is her husband? Where are the authorities?

  Even awake, he was suffused with guilt. He had as good as dropped her hand in life. Left her halfway up some dark, menacing stairway. And this was wrong, even though she was not actually his responsibility. Was she?

  Beside him, Galena snored lightly, sprawled across the bed, the tiny goose pimples that gave the backs of her arms a sandpapery roughness illuminated in the moonlight. He had not meant to go to sleep. The digital clock blinked four a.m. He certainly had not meant to wake up in her bed.

  Carefully, he rose and picked up his clothes, wincing when his cell phone dropped from the pocket of his jeans with a thud. But Galena snored away, insensible. Out in the living room/kitchen zone of her apartment he realized he was burningly thirsty. His mouth tasted acrid and cottony. He flicked on the light in the tiny kitchenette and opened her cupboard to find a glass, which he filled with lukewarm water from the tap. He drank this down without pause and refilled, this time sipping more slowly.

  It was standing here in the fluorescent light, the night stretching wan and not even fully black outside the giant, unshaded plate-glass window in the living room, that he saw it: a Genron promotional folder lying open by the phone. Inside there were a number of pages. On top was the “fact sheet” on Setlan he had been handed at their first meeting in the ZGames conference room: over thirty million users worldwide, used to treat panic disorder, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, premenstrual syndrome, posttraumatic stress disorder, and social anxiety. Was there any kind of emotional discomfort this fucking drug didn’t treat?

  Hadn’t the “symptoms” Setl
an aimed to smooth over evolved and refined themselves over millennia to serve some purpose? Weren’t they, for most people, part of a natural system of checks and balances? And wasn’t the fact of their rising prevalence a warning that this modern American way of life was unsustainable?

  Underneath this folder full of standard Setlan promotional materials there was another folder. The blue cover of this one was embossed with the same Genron logo, but stamped with the word “Confidential.”

  Neil hesitated for a moment, not actually considering whether or not he would open it—of course he would!—but honoring the moment, the trope of human behavior in the face of such signaling words. Then, with a glance at Galena’s door, he opened it.

  There were only two pages inside it, the top one a glossy photo advertisement of a pretty woman lying on a field of grass, holding aloft a laughing baby, smiling up at it, the baby’s chubby arms and legs flailing in delight. Setlan PPD was emblazoned across the top in a sunny yellow font, followed by, You deserve a happy motherhood. And then in smaller print: You deserve…to enjoy the life you brought into the world, to feel good about yourself and your baby, to sleep when your baby’s sleeping, to have energy, to feel less anxious. Below this was a description of postpartum depression. Postpartum depression affects one in three American women. Talk to your doctor about Setlan PPD if you are experiencing trouble sleeping, headaches, stress, unexplained mood swings, food cravings, sadness, or loss of appetite.

  You deserve? Was this what it had fucking come to? Who “deserves” to be happy? And the answer was this? Middle-class white American women, living in the richest, easiest, most spoiled country on earth?

  At the bottom of the page was a Post-it. Jenny—this is perfect! They really took notes!—smiley face—Galena.

  So this was Jenny’s brainchild. The campaign she had been so impossibly distracted and consumed by, according to Galena. Neil had asked Gelena how involved Jenny was in the gaming industry promotion of Setlan. She has no idea, Galena had said with a shrug. She’s all wrapped up in this new postpartum drug campaign she came up with. It had been reassuring to Neil, actually. He had chafed at the idea of being, in an indirect way, a henchman of Jenny’s bidding, creating the in-game billboards or spaceship walls or what have you that would be emblazoned with her product promos.

  But this took the cake! Here was what she had been working on instead: a campaign that rested on the notion of “deserving.” And you had to give it to her. She knew her audience. But this made her not only complicit, but responsible. She was one of the wizards behind the national psyche.

  “What are you doing?” Galena’s voice assaulted him from the doorway. She was standing, with the blanket held up around herself, looking both incredulous and cross.

  “What’s that?” Neil said, raising his eyebrows, his heart pounding, less from the surprise of interruption than from the frenzy he had been working himself into.

  “Are you looking through my papers?”

  “I just…yeah. Well, no,” Neil stammered stupidly. “I mean, I just wanted to see this.”

  Galena took a few steps closer, brown blanket trailing and eyebrows knit.

  “What is it? Let me see it.” She held out her hand.

  It occurred to Neil that she was speaking to him as though he were a child. Or a dog, actually. A bad dog she was training.

  Sheepishly, he handed her the paper in his hand.

  Galena looked at it and then up at him in surprise. “Why did you want to see this?”

  “I don’t know—I just—Why?” he asked switching tacks, finally, affecting a kind of wide-eyed surprise and trying to preserve some shred of dignity. “Is it important?”

  Galena frowned. “What about the word ‘Confidential’ did you not think meant important?”

  “Oh, does it…?” Neil was not a blusher, but he could feel the color flooding from his pounding heart up to his face. It was an asinine position to be in. “I guess I didn’t really see that—I just…”

  He stopped and Galena’s eyebrows raised disdainfully.

  “Liked it.”

  “You ‘liked it.’”

  “Whatever,” Neil said bitterly. “I thought it was fucked up, actually. I thought it was a fucking mockery of human suffering around the world. I thought it was the biggest piece-of-shit idea I’ve ever seen—like anyone fucking ‘deserves’ anything. And you people sit in your plush offices coming up with shit like this, feeding it to people…” He was aware of the words tumbling out of his mouth and sounding all wrong. Sounding not interesting or true or profound, but crazy.

  Galena stared at him. For the first time since she had emerged from the bedroom something other than anger and incredulity crossed her face. Was it uncertainty?

  “I think you should leave,” she said. And Neil realized the uncertainty was not intellectual, but physical. She was a little bit afraid.

  They stood for a moment looking at each other, with the sound of a siren flaring up somewhere in the distance. All the blood rushed back out of Neil’s face. “I’m not—” he began.

  “Please leave,” Galena repeated.

  Neil turned and ducked out the door, closing it behind him and holding on to the knob for an extra moment as if to be sure Galena did not follow him. Then he started down the long corridor to the elevator, feeling weak, almost dizzy.

  What exactly had just transpired?

  Part Three

  1

  IT HAD BEEN SEVERAL WEEKS since their date (if it could be called that) at the wine bar when Neil finally called Laura.

  “Can I take you out somewhere, Lo?” he asked. “To a nice dinner?” His voice sounded oddly quiet—even subdued. But there was no apology for his silence. No explanation for having dropped completely out of sight.

  “Do you remember that I’m married?” she said coldly.

  “Of course I do.” There was a pause. “I’m sorry. How about lunch?”

  Laura was silent.

  “Please, Lo—I know I don’t deserve it—and if you just want me to get the hell out of your life, I’ll respect that—”

  “I know. I know, Neil. You don’t have to rub it in,” she said with a sigh.

  “Shit.”

  There was a prolonged silence. Laura stared out the window at a giant pile of dog shit Cocoa had left as retribution for not having been walked.

  “Lo,” Neil said finally, “please?”

  It would have been wise to say no. To end whatever it was that was between them at that moment. He had frightened her at Patrick’s that night: his urgent, obsessive, and self-defeating questions. His general air of being unbalanced. And the hint—had it been a hint or simply her own worry?—that everything that had transpired between them had, actually, at its core, to do with Jenny.

  But then there was the feeling she had had for him: the incredible desire that had coursed through her in that dingy bedroom of his apartment. It was as if this existed separately from all circumstance—the memory conjured it back up. To never see him again felt suddenly bleak—and utterly, utterly disappointing. Would that last urgent kiss, that last burst of passion, be the last of her life? From here to eternity, would there be nothing like it again?

  “How about the arboretum?” she said after a pause. “I’ll pick up sandwiches and we can have a picnic.”

  The arboretum had always been one of Laura’s favorite Boston places. It was so big and so pretty and yet so overlooked. No one ever seemed to go there, nothing ever seemed to happen there, and the wide, ambling paths and fields were always empty. This was maybe on account of its location, which was decidedly uncentral. But there was a subway stop right there. It was not difficult to get to. No, its air of abandonment, Laura felt, had more to do with the kind of pleasures it offered: quiet, beauty, and tranquillity, but unaccompanied by stateliness, or class affiliation, or history, that quintessential Boston signifier. The Arnold Arboretum could be anywhere, which was part of what Laura loved about it. It was like a pleasant backdro
p you could paint yourself into, in any way you wanted.

  And then for Laura there was also memory. It had been one of her mother’s favorite places. The winding paths, the lovely old trees, the rose garden and old-fashioned gates, these had maybe spoken to Annabelle Trillian’s English sensibilities. Laura had memories of coming as a little girl, for Sunday “strolls” with her parents before lunch at the University Club. It was one of the few places where she clearly remembered her mother as able-bodied, tramping through thickets to examine the leaves of some bush or tree, walking with her up to the top of the lookout hill. In those memories it was her father who had seemed old—which he was, a good seventeen years older than Annabelle, who had been just nineteen when she had married him! It was just her illness that had equaled them out, made her old before her time and, in comparison, made Adam seem spry and youthful. Driving there today, Laura felt gripped by a horrible sadness for her mother, who had known so little of life! Who had been scooped up and married by Sir Adam, turned into a wife before she was even twenty, and then a mother, and an invalid in short order. She had certainly had no opportunity to slip away and meet a lover or an old friend, whatever Neil was, on a warm weekday morning.

  Did Mother ever date anyone before you? Laura had asked her father the last time she had seen him. It had been an uncomfortable question, both because it involved Annabelle, whom they talked about infrequently, and dating, which they talked about even less, or, in fact, not at all.

  Before we were married? Adam had parried in his most quizzical, distracted way. Oh, I don’t know, I think she had other suitors. But he offered her no names, no stories—nothing to build a picture of. Nothing that implied Annabelle Trillian had known romance.

  Of course, Neil was late. Laura waited leaning against the hood of her car for a good twenty minutes before his ragtag blue VW rounded the bend and pulled into the parking lot.

  “Sorry, Lo, I had this crazy thing with the laundry machine in my building—” he began to explain, but Laura waved his apologies away. Of course he’d had a crazy thing with the laundry machine in his building. Everything with Neil had the potential for being crazy. It had always been that way. Hadn’t it?