The Nobodies

by Liza Palmer

  “It’s one fry,” I say.

  “Oh, is it?” Billy reaches into the box with his giant mitt of a hand, careful to only grab fries from the bottom of the box and not from our individual fry boats.

  “Wait, no—those … those are the Box Fries. Fine. Fine. I won’t. I won’t,” I say, pushing the box of food closer to him. We are silent for a while. Billy shakes his head.

  “It’s never just one fry,” he says. “And you goddamn know it.”

  We both throw our heads back and laugh. When we were little, Mom and Dad never let us swear, so when we were by ourselves we would, naturally, curse up a storm. One Saturday morning we decided that “And you goddamn know it” was hilarious. “Those Legos are mine … and you goddamn know it.” “You took the last piece of strawberry rhubarb pie … and you goddamn know it.” “I called shotgun … and you goddamn know it.” From then on, it worked its way into our vocabulary pantheon—although we still have yet to say it in front of our parents.

  “And nice subject change from Dad growing weed,” I say, taking a long sip of my root beer.

  “You do this all the time,” Billy says, plucking a fry from his own fry boat.

  “Do what all the time?” I pull a felted giraffe from between the seats.

  “Pajama Man was really a Russian spy?”

  “We still don’t know that that’s not true.”

  “He was a postman. He was our postman.”

  “Perfect cover.”

  “What about your ongoing theory that Mom and Dad’s lifelong friend—”

  “I stand by this one.”

  “That Sylvia, my godmother, has been secretly in love with Dad for decades.”

  “Tragic, right? So sad.”

  “It’s not … she’s been married for twenty-two years.”

  “Poor Greg. He has no idea.”

  “And what was that pyramid scheme?”

  “What isn’t a pyramid scheme?”

  “You’re not … you’re really not doing yourself any favors here,” he says, pulling into our driveway. He shuts off the old truck, grabs the box of In-N-Out, and looks over. “You can put your Tin Foil Reporter Hat away, Bumble, there’s no great conspiracy here.”

  “Hey, that Tin Foil Reporter Hat has been right more times than not. Besides, aren’t you the one who was just saying how concerned you were that I wasn’t figuring things out anymore?”

  “Fuzzpicking doesn’t count.” My family has its own dictionary of invented words. The term “fuzzpicking” originated when Mom told the story of how when she was a little kid, she picked the fuzz off blankets and sweaters when she got anxious. In the decades since, fuzzpicking has come to mean obsessing, monologuing, and fixating on meaningless fluff in an attempt to avoid facing the real issues at hand. By wielding the term, Billy has thrown down the gauntlet.

  “I am not fuzzpicking,” I say.

  “Of course you’re not.” Billy hops out of the truck. Before he shuts the door: “But, maybe ask yourself why you’re talking about this non-existent weed, instead of what happened on your first day of a job that didn’t involve journalism.” I’m just about to bark back what I’m certain would have been an erudite version of “NO, YOU SHUT UP” when he reaches his arm inside the cab and points. “Bring the giraffe, Poppy’s been looking for that everywhere.”

  I follow Billy into the house and both Mom and Dad immediately want to know why in the world we stopped for food when there was perfectly good food in the house. I momentarily miss the days of eating late-night ill-advised takeout and surviving solely on the cheese popcorn I shoved into my mouth. Anne is pacing around the kitchen with a sleepy Poppy slumped over her shoulder and rubbing her eyes.

  “She’s not down yet?” Billy asks, setting his food on the table and reaching for the baby, but Poppy reaches for me (or the giraffe, as the case may be). Anne gratefully passes her over.

  “Hello, you sleepy girl,” I say, eyeing Billy as he steals a Box Fry. Poppy pulls the felted giraffe into the crook of her neck and the smell of baby soap surrounds me. I smell her head.

  “Head smeller,” Billy says.

  “We’re all head smellers here,” Mom says, folding up her reading glasses.

  “You smell like sunshine,” I whisper to Poppy. She lifts her head up, her eyes blinking closed longer and longer. A weary smile and she’s back slumped over my shoulder.

  “She was down and then we had a bit of an accident,” Anne says, motioning all up her back. “It was everywhere.”

  “The crib, the walls, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Dad adds. Mom gives him a look.

  Anne cracks open a beer. The look on her face is one of hollowed-out terror. The things she’s seen.

  “She’s asleep now,” Dad says, motioning to Poppy. I tilt my head back, although I don’t really have to. Poppy’s snores ring in my ears like church bells.

  “Do you want—” Billy reaches for Poppy, his mouth full of Double Double.

  “I’ll put her down,” I say. I begin to walk down the hallway, but then turn around. “Don’t even think about eating any of my fries.” Billy puts his hands up in surrender. I look to Anne. She nods. She’s got this.

  I continue down the hallway, careful not to wake the baby. I step inside her darkened room, the little turtle I gave her for Christmas lighting up the ceiling with stars. As I’m about to put her down, Poppy fusses, so, rather than wake her back up, I sit down in the rocking chair to give her a few more minutes to fall asleep. I might also be doing this because sitting in a starry bedroom that smells like sunshine while holding a snoozing Poppy, finally free of coffee machines I can’t work and redacted emotional pleas in an In-N-Out line, feels so good my heart is about to burst. My breathing steadies. My shoulders come down. I feel my entire body unclench and I’m no longer bracing for the next new thing I can’t understand.

  I think about what Billy said. He thought he’d never see the day when I didn’t try to figure something out. All that did was remind me that I’m no longer who I once was. No longer where I once was. And why some temporary job at a temporary place with temporary people has me falling asleep on buses, I honestly don’t know. And, quite frankly, I’m weary of my weariness. I’ll start feeling normal again soon. It’s just the end of a long nine months. That’s all. Being unemployed is hard. Worrying about money is hard. People seeing me like this—is hard. Seeing myself like this—is hard.

  I rock back and forth. My hand moves over Poppy’s back in little soothing circles. The occasional sucking of a now long gone pacifier breaks up her quiet snores. I sneak another inhalation of Poppy’s baby wisps of hair and feel the soft weight of her body on mine. In the peaceful darkness of Poppy’s sanctuary, I look up at her ceiling and let the lit-up stars soothe me.

  When I was younger we used to have this dog. Dad always thought the nursery could use a pet, and one day he found this scruffy-looking terrier mix by the freeway and brought him home. He named the dog Alan. Dad said the dog “just looked like an Alan.”

  After a few weeks, it became clear that Alan had anxiety issues, maybe because he’d been on his own for however long. So Dad went to the pet store and came home with a tiny backpack for Alan. He’d read an article about how sometimes a backpack calmed down anxious dogs. The psychology being that a backpack meant the dog had a job. A purpose. People were counting on him.

  And that was that. Once Alan had his little backpack he was fine—better than fine. He thrived. He trotted happily around that nursery like he owned the place, slept in the sun, and let anyone and everyone pet him. He had his backpack. He was useful and part of something bigger than himself. Alan lived a full life, finally passing away peacefully under Dad’s workbench … with his backpack on.

  I too need a backpack. I too need to feel like I’m part of something bigger than myself. I too need to feel useful. What would it take—or who would I have to be—to belong somewhere? Actually belong, not just trying to fit in. How many backpacks would I need to feel tha
t ease of acceptance? To look around and think, these are my people, I can be who I am. Yes, you can rub my belly. I trust you.

  Even with my friends, I feel like I need a layer of protection. Even with my family. There is a stillness they luxuriate in with one another that I find myself stopping just short of. Except with Poppy, of course. She has a way of bringing out the best in everyone. I kiss the top of her head.

  I know that’s why I hold on to journalism so fiercely. Because each time I showed it a darker layer of myself, it embraced me. No layer of protection needed.

  But I was wrong.

  That warm embrace I felt with journalism wasn’t a backpack like Alan’s. It didn’t lessen my anxiety, loneliness, or fear. It simply became my whole world, shutting out everything and everyone. Too busy to examine anything other than Stories! Looking under rocks! Pulling on threads!

  What if that ease and belonging came from inside me? Rooted and anchored in something that couldn’t be taken away. Not a desk, or a job, or a relationship, or even a fantasy of what success looks like. To feel certain I’m good enough despite an ever-changing landscape that keeps telling me quite the opposite. To be my own true north.

  To have an internal backpack.

  I lay Poppy down in her crib, putting the felted giraffe next to her. My hand lingers on her back just long enough for her to settle.

  “Nunight,” I whisper, bending over Poppy’s crib. “Thank you for choosing me.” In response, Poppy sticks her butt up in the air and shoots her arm out with a yawn. I watch her sleep for a little while longer and then finally tiptoe my way back out into the hallway, latching the door closed as quietly as I can.

  I pad back into the kitchen just as Mom and Dad are saying their good-nights. Hugs and kisses all around. It takes fewer than ten minutes to inhale my dinner, and soon enough I gather up my stuff and say my own good-nights.

  I throw away my trash and do up the dishes left over from dinner. I start to walk down the hall toward my bedroom.

  “Did you get a chance to start the book?” Anne asks, motioning to The Golden Notebook.

  “Oh—” I turn around. I lift the book up and glare at it. I can’t hide the utter disdain from my voice. “No.”

  “Tomorrow then?” Anne asks, her face open and kind. “I’m dying for someone to read it so I’ll have someone to talk to about it.”

  Fuck.

  Billy and Anne got married around two years ago. It was one of those outdoor weddings with Mason jars and sunflowers right here at the nursery. Maybe twenty people were invited. It was small and intimate. Everyone cried. It was perfect.

  And I missed it.

  I was following a lead for some story I don’t even remember. When Poppy was born, I was in Sacramento chasing down a lobbyist I thought could crack a story I was working on wide open. I was wrong. All he wanted was to spread rumors about a bill he was working on. He wanted to see if I would be open to planting some of them in my story. I was not. He was pissed. The meeting ended quickly.

  What seemed to soothe me, in those moments when I disappointed everyone in my life, was that I was killing it and I knew journalism wasn’t something I could take time off from, I had to be relentless. I was trying to make my mark. I was trying to be somebody.

  “I will crack it open tomorrow,” I say to Anne. I hoist the book high like some kind of call to battle. She gives me a big thumbs-up and says I’m really going to like it. I say my good-nights once again, hoping that my utter despair at carrying around that book for one more day will be hidden in the darkness of the hallway.

  I walk into my bedroom and close the door behind me. I take off my clothes, put on my pajamas, and crawl into bed. I plug my phone into the charger, answer texts from my friends. Yes, I’m so excited about my new job. Yes, it’s a great opportunity at a super-hot company. Yes, I’m lucky to have it. Yes, I’m so happy to be back to work. Yes, all of the millennials are ridiculous. Yes, the workplace is absurd. Yes, this does sound like a fun adventure. I don’t tell them about how dumb or how out of my depth I felt today. I don’t tell them I just want to feel like myself again and have my old life back, but I’m afraid there’s no future for me but one of middling okayness. They’re all so relieved. So happy for me. I make a joke about falling asleep on the bus, but I don’t elaborate on the emotional bloodletting it seems to have triggered. I don’t have the right. I was unemployed and now I’m lucky to have a job. I don’t get to have any other feelings about all this except gratitude. Unable to keep my eyes open, I sign off for the night.

  Journalism made me feel like a titan. Big, powerful, and someone to be reckoned with. So, however wonderful Bloom seems to be—even temporarily—I still feel small there.

  Lately, I feel small everywhere.

  8

  I Can Do This

  A fresh whipped coffee sits atop The Golden Notebook, now boasting an energy bar wrapper as a bookmark. Unfortunately, the energy bar wrapper is thicker than the pages I’ve read.

  A reminder email comes through at the end of the day. Something called Field is happening in ten minutes in the main area. Apparently, there will be beer and pizza. I take out my ear buds and spin around and all I see are empty desks. Thornton and Hani are gone and the people in the graphics department aren’t at their desks either. Immediately, I envision the entire Bloom workforce sitting together and listening attentively as Chris and Asher outline the importance of professionalism and being on time. Now in full panic, I throw my ear buds on my desk and quietly pick my way down the stairs.

  As I get to the bottom and step into the main area, I’m relieved to see that the rest of the Bloom workforce is milling around and casually sitting at desks, obviously in no hurry to get anywhere any time soon. The coffee machine bumps and whirrs on in the background—the main area’s own white noise machine. I walk on in the direction of where the meeting will be taking place.

  I see that a few employees are just finishing up setting up the rows and rows of chairs, the buckets of ice filled to overflowing with bottles of beer, and the card tables stacked high with greasy pizza boxes.

  From what I can gather, Field is a quarterly meeting where all of Bloom’s employees come together to hear announcements. And to ensure that their twentysomething workforce attends said important monthly meeting, Bloom’s set up the event like a house party, complete with plenty of beer and pizza, along with Caspian spinning loud club music.

  Now, this is the wacky start-up experience I was looking for on my first day.

  Two tall director’s chairs have been set up in the front of Bloom’s main area, with microphones set on each.

  I walk into the canteen, open one of the three glass-fronted refrigerators, and pull out a can of fancy club soda. I crack it open and head over to the back row and find a seat on the aisle.

  Without emails to edit, ad copy to write, or basic calendaring to master, I start grappling with whether or not I should tell Billy about The Dry Cleaning Story and what Tavia had to say about it. I know exactly what he’ll say, though. He’d probably just think I’m making excuses and feeling sorry for myself. I take a sip of my fancy club soda and get mad all over again about everything that Tavia said.

  But how can I be mad at Tavia for saying the same shit I say to myself every day?

  I may not have realized how bad things had gotten, but I certainly knew they weren’t good. I became obsessed with the notion that my work ethic and sheer passion for writing would make up for the skill and talent I feared I lacked. In other words, they owed me.

  So why did Matt get lunch while I only got lunch drinks?

  Matt got the lunch because Tavia values him and his talent. And Tavia values Matt and his talent, because he values himself and his talent.

  I cannot value something I don’t believe I have.

  I cannot expect others to put a high price on something I believe is worthless.

  I cannot blame Tavia for believing me when I yell from the rooftops that I am insignificant.

>   I’ve spent my time doing more than anyone else so no one would notice they’ve hired a fraud. That’s where the flood of gratitude comes from. I’ll make it worth their while, so they won’t be sorry they took a chance on me.

  Jolted, I realize all I got was lunch drinks, because that’s all I ever asked for.

  “You have your fun fact all ready?” Thornton steps over my legs and sits down next to me.

  “What?” I ask, shaken out of my chilling realization that the “inspirational” pep talk ending in my vow to prove Tavia wrong was nothing but the deluded ramblings of a talentless failure.

  “Fun fact? Do you have it all ready?” He hands me a bottle of beer.

  “Thank you,” I say, taking it. I set the empty club soda can on the floor and immediately kick it over. I stand up, bend over, and reach under the chair as the can anemically rolls around.

  “You got it?” Thornton asks. I swat at it, finally grabbing it.

  “Yep.” I fold back up, turn around, and hold the now crumpled soda can along with the bottle of beer Thornton just handed me. “What do you mean by fun fact?”

  “You’re definitely going to hate it,” Thornton says, taking a swig of his beer.

  “Hate what?” Hani asks, holding her reusable water bottle. Thornton looks over at me.

  “When you wear a romper and then have to use the bathroom, so you’re just sitting on the toilet completely naked,” I say.

  “Oh my god, I was just saying that!” As Hani launches into what sounds like a pretty well-rehearsed lecture, I see Elise threading her way through the crowd. The look on her face is a blend of bewilderment and annoyed amusement. I’ve never felt more connected to another person in my whole life.

  I try to catch her eye, but she’s too far away and too lost in the crowd of the Bloom workers who are sifting through the buckets of beer searching for that perfect IPA no one’s ever heard of. I shift in my chair. I raise my hand. High. High. Higher. I wave it a little. I bring my hand back down. Thornton and Hani look over, confused.