“Beth!”
“Sorry. No filter today. What do you think Jeff would’ve wanted?”
“He never said, but something tells me he’d say something flip like ‘Lay me out like Darth Vader and light me on fire.’”
Beth smiles at me as if she’s seeing someone she hasn’t seen in a while.
“Pine box it is, then.”
CHAPTER 8
BackOffice
Lori helps me out of the bathroom and drives me home. She keeps glancing at me, slumped against the car door, as if she wants to ask what’s going on, but she doesn’t. Maybe she’s figured it out. Maybe she already knew. Something. But then why wouldn’t she have called me when she heard? Why didn’t she pull me aside before the meeting? Why did she let me listen to that stupid Safety Minute presentation if she knew the whole time?
She pulls up in front of my house, bringing the car to a careful halt. The neighbour’s four-year-old is playing on the lawn, pushing a dump truck around in the dirt, making beep, beep, beep noises. I watch him for too many seconds.
“You going to be okay?” Lori asks.
I don’t quite look at her. Eye contact doesn’t seem like a good idea.
“Thanks for driving me home.”
“I should’ve told you before. I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking …”
There’s a question in that pause. A chance to confide. But that’s the last thing I can do. I’ve already done too much.
“No, it’s okay. I only met him twice … it was … a shock. He emailed me recently for some advice, and I’ve been sick all weekend, and … I don’t know why I reacted like that …”
I’m babbling, producing the opposite effect of the reassurance I want to give, the downplay I’m attempting.
“I’ll be fine tomorrow, I’m sure.”
“If you need to talk or anything …”
“Thanks.” I unbuckle my seat belt. It flies into its slot with a zippery sound.
I hesitate before I get out. I want to say, “Please don’t talk about this at the office. Please don’t make me, us, the subject of gossip,” but there’s no point. I can’t stop what’s going to happen any more than I could stop what’s already happened.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I say.
I walk towards my front door, smile at the boy with his truck, feeling Lori’s eyes on me the whole time, her car idling like it’s midnight and she’s dropped me off in a bad neighbourhood. I pull my keys from my purse, turn the lock, and glance over my shoulder, giving her a wave. I slip inside, close the door behind me, and slide down to the floor, my back pressing against its hard surface.
And now the tears are coming. I’m not sure they’re ever going to stop.
I spend an hour on the floor, maybe more. It must be more because the shadows shift across me, flickering through the curtains that partially cover the window next to the door.
Time’s a funny thing. Yesterday, each second was a thousand, each minute an eternity. But now it’s slipping past me at the speed of light and I don’t know how to slow it down.
When I can’t stand the floor anymore, I drag myself up the stairs, climb into bed without taking anything off but my shoes, and pull the covers over my head. And in this half-suffocating environment, I eventually fall into a fitful sleep.
I wake suddenly when the front door bangs open in the way only Zoey does it. Her book bag crashes to the floor with equal emphasis. She clomps up the stairs as if she were punishing them. My daughter is not a heavy girl, slight even, but she’s always made more noise than she should.
I should rise, leave this oasis, greet her and ask her about her day.
But I can’t. I can’t. Oh, Jesus.
“Mom?”
“I’m in here,” I say, my throat scratchy and dry like I’ve been in the desert.
“Mom?”
“In here,” I say again, louder.
Clomp, clomp, clomp. My door crashes open and in comes the light from the hallway, illuminating Zoey, her hair in its end-of-day mess. She spends most of her classes hiding behind it, countless teachers have told us, we should really get it cut. When I ask her about it, she says she likes it back there. It helps her think. And since her grades are more than they should be, we smile and nod at the teachers, year after year, and let her hair be.
“Why are you in bed? Are you still sick?”
I prop myself up, hoping I don’t look like I’ve spent the last six hours crying.
“Yes.”
She walks over and launches herself into the bed on Brian’s side. It bounces up and down, making my stomach flip over.
“Easy, Zo.”
“Sorry.” She shuffles towards me carefully. “Is it your tummy?”
“Among other things.”
“I’m sorry, Mommy.”
This almost brings on the tears again. She hasn’t called me “Mommy” in a dog’s age.
“Thank you.”
She puts her head on my shoulder and rests her hand on my stomach gently.
“You look sad.”
“I am.”
“How come?”
“Mommy’s … a friend of mine died.”
“Today? Do I know her?”
“On Friday. And no.”
I’m not sure why I don’t correct the pronoun. It’ll come out eventually, but for these few moments with my daughter, a change of pronoun is the distance I need.
“How come?”
“How come what?”
“How come I don’t know her?”
“You don’t know everyone I do.”
“Yes I do.”
I shift so I can see Zoey’s angular face. She has these amazing eyelashes, dark and long. She’s had them since she was a baby. They were the first thing I fell in love with.
“Not this time.”
She shrugs. “Will we be going to the funeral?”
A shiver runs down my spine. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Oh well. I kinda like funerals.”
I let this one slide, not quite sure if she’s being serious, especially since the only one she’s been to is my father’s.
“Would you like me to be quiet now?” she asks.
“If that’s okay.”
“Course.”
So we lie there like that, my daughter and I, in the quiet, quiet house, and my heart feels a little less broken.
We’re still lying there when Brian comes home a couple of hours later. Somewhere along the way, we both fell into a half-doze, Zoey’s snores sometimes jerking me from sleep. I shake her awake when I hear Brian moving around downstairs, telling her to go greet him, I’ll be down in a minute. She obeys me without protest for once, and I change out of my wrinkled clothes into jeans and an old sweater. Then I wash the tears off my face, careful not to look at myself in the mirror. I feel light-headed from the lack of food, too much sleep, and grief, but somehow I make it downstairs, kiss Brian hello, try to act normal.
I pull together a supper made up mostly of leftovers, some pasta, some Chinese takeout, a salad, and the dinner hour passes away much like it always does. Brian tells a funny story about one of his hypochondriac patients, identity protected, though I’m sure it’s Mrs. Garland by the sounds of it. Zoey tells us about her day once we’ve asked sufficient questions to get her past her usual reluctance. I remember feeling the way she does, like it was my life and why did I have to be cross-examined about it, but it always feels as if it’s the right thing to do, so we do it.
After dinner, Zoey and Brian go to the living room to prepare for her upcoming competition. I clean every inch of the kitchen as if my life depended on its spotlessness. When I’m done, the room smells of disinfectant and the skin on my hands is cracking along the knuckles. I’m rinsing out the kitchen sponges when Brian wanders in for a glass of water.
He’s distracted and wants to get back to Zoey, so this is my chance. I take a deep breath and manage to tell him that a colleague of mine died, sorry if I’ve been in a bad mood
.
“You’ve been fine. Someone I know?”
“No. Unless you met at that corporate thing? You remember that getaway we went to a while back?”
“In Mexico? Two years ago?”
“Yeah.”
“What was her name?” He makes the same assumption as Zoey.
I wipe at an imaginary spot on the counter. “Jeff Manning.”
“Doesn’t ring any bells. He live here?”
“In the other Springfield.”
“Young guy?”
“About my age. Thirty-nine. Married. A kid.”
“Ugh. Was he ill?”
“Car accident.”
“That’s terrible.”
I think I might be sick.
“It is.”
“You know him well?”
“Sort of. We’d been … working on some projects together in the last year or so.”
Brian squeezes my shoulder. “Sorry.”
“Thanks.”
He’s expecting me to turn around, to face him, but if I do I’ll collapse against him, I’ll be sobbing again, and if there’s one thing I can’t do today, it’s rely on Brian for solace.
Another half an Ativan taken out of Brian’s sight helps me fall asleep, but I start awake with my heart galloping at two in the morning. Oh my God, I’m thinking before I’m fully conscious, the emails.
I bolt upright and move as quietly as I can. Brian twitches and turns over, but I’m not really worried about waking him. Doctors are programmed during their residencies to sleep deeply whenever they’re prone, and he’s never outgrown the habit.
I feel around in the dark for my clothes and take them into the hallway. Zoey’s reading light casts a glow along the floor. I should stop and put it out, but that might wake her and I can’t have that. I’ve behaved strangely enough today.
I tiptoe down the carpeted stairs, being careful to avoid the third from the bottom, which always creaks ominously. I throw on my clothes, slip on a pair of running shoes, and grab my car keys from the table by the door. The air outside smells wet and springy, like it does after a rain has come and gone in the night.
My heart starts racing again when I reflexively hit the automatic unlock button and my car chirps, too loudly for this quiet street. I ease open the door and close it behind me as gently as I can. More heart palpitations when I turn over the engine, but no lights snap on in the house as I back out of the driveway, almost hitting the garbage can that Brian dutifully put out. Maybe I should’ve parked my car ass-in, but I buck all company policies as often as I can when not on company property.
I drive through the 3-a.m.-dead neighbourhood, being careful to stop at the lights, obey the laws while getting to the office as fast as I can. I don’t bother parking in my space. I simply stop the car by the front doors and run towards the entrance. I swipe my pass and jerk open the glass door. Moments later, I’m seated in front of my computer, waiting anxiously for it to boot up. When it does, I click on the Back-Office program and start running the protocol we have for dismissed employees or ones who are under investigation. I wait impatiently for it to collect all of Jeff’s emails, then sort them by name. Sender: Patricia Underhill. Sent to: Patricia Underhill.
I scroll down the list, and there they are: the emails and emails and emails we’ve exchanged over the last year. I open one at random.
I think I need some more training, he wrote at 11:52 a.m. six months ago.
Uh-huh.
No, seriously, I can’t remember if we’re supposed to be compassionate and caring, or caring and compassionate. I need to do module 3 again.
I could explain it to you on the phone.
That wouldn’t be any fun.
I’ll see what I can do. The training centre’s pretty booked this week.
I have faith.
You gotta have faitha, faitha, faitha.
You have terrible taste in music.
I click it shut. I press the buttons to highlight them all, my finger hesitating over the Delete key.
I can’t do it.
I reach into my desk drawer and remove a USB key. I transfer the emails to it, then erase the originals from the server and then the offline backup, a real delete this time. The USB key has a lanyard attached to it, which I loop around my neck. The metal feels warm and dangerous against my skin.
Now I have one thing left to do. Because erasing the emails from the office’s system doesn’t affect whatever he’s kept in his personal account. Maybe there’s nothing there, but I can’t take the risk. I go to his email service, type in his address, and take a guess at his password. His middle name is Michael but that’s not it. I try his birthday in all combinations, his address, the name of his favourite football team. Seth’s birthday. Claire’s. Nothing works.
Then my eyes track to the “forgot your password?” prompt. I follow the instructions to have a password hint sent to [email protected], and wait the anxious seconds before the email arrives. It pings into place and I open it. I almost laugh out loud. Jeff’s password hint is fuck off.
It would be. I type fuck off into the password space, and still nothing.
Goddamnit. My only hope now is, if I can’t figure it out, maybe no one else can either.
A faint hope indeed.
Twenty minutes later I’m home again and crawling back into bed, though sleep is an impossibility. The lanyard is still around my neck. I clutch the USB key in my hand like it might contain some part of Jeff that’s still alive. His beating heart. His gentle brain.
Brian turns towards me, awake. “Did you go out?”
“I, uh, remembered I hadn’t sent a report to Mr. Keene that he needs first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Couldn’t you have sent it from here?”
“Something’s wrong with the remote server.”
“Sorry you had to go out.”
“That’s okay.”
“You know you don’t have to work there if you don’t want to.”
“I know.”
He pulls the covers up to his shoulders. “I should get back to sleep, and so should you.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
His hand snakes towards my thigh under the covers. “I won’t ever stop.”
PART 2
CHAPTER 9
Meet Cute
About a year ago, Johnson Company did a total software overhaul. Our new email program took its cue from Facebook. Everyone in the system now had a user profile that included a picture and a mini-bio that popped up on the side of the page if you clicked on their contact information or emailed them.
My name is Jeff Manning. I like sunsets and kittens and …
It was meant to foster “inter-office collegiality” or some such bullshit. As far as I could tell, it was mainly an opportunity for voyeurism and ridicule, particularly for the people—almost always women, almost always of a certain age—who took the whole thing too seriously. They’d strike “alluring” poses with their faces tilted to the side, their hair salon-perfect, and post bios full of their likes and dislikes. If they were stupid enough to mention their cats — or, God forbid, pose with one of them—they were done for.
I don’t know if it was spite, boredom, or low-level rebellion, but the minute the site went live, there was a small but persistent group — almost always men, almost always of a certain age—who started compiling lists.
Top Ten Most Likely to Have Their Corpse Eaten by Their Cats. Top Ten Trying Too Hard. Top Ten MILFs. And so on. If you can think of it, the list existed. While some of them were funny, those of us “lucky” enough to be management had the distinctly unfun task of trying to discover the perpetrators so they could be disciplined.
And that’s how I re-met Tish.
When a particularly nasty list went around—Top Ten Facial Blemishes That Ought to Be Taken Care of Immediately—I actually felt motivated to find the culprit. My own assistant was on it, and the mole on her chin wasn’t that bad, really. I had a pretty good idea who
the perpetrator was, a junior accountant named Evan. Since he was someone I’d been wishing I had something on for a while—he was a dick of the highest order, and marginally competent to boot—I did some skulking around and got the proof I needed.
My boss, Gerry, was all for firing him, so he took it upstairs and came back with the okay to give him the axe. An “example had to be set,” and guess who got to set it?
Yessir.
Gerry suggested I get some HR training before I did the deed, something about protecting us from liability if Evan went postal.
“I’ve found Tish from the other Springfield helpful. Plus, she’s number 5 on—”
I held up my hand. “Don’t say it. Then I’ll have to report you too.”
“Good luck with that.”
He did one of those high school bird-flipping manoeuvres that turned into rubbing the side of his nose before snickering his way out of my office.
I’m pretty sure Gerry’s the origin of more than one list.
I almost called after him to ask “Tish who?” but it occurred to me that Tish was a pretty unusual name. There probably weren’t two people named Tish in the HR department in the other Springfield.
So it proved. A couple clicks of the keyboard brought me to the contact page of Tish Underhill—real name Patricia—and I couldn’t keep my face from breaking into a grin.
I’d thought of her occasionally since that chance meeting in the food line. Fleeting thoughts, mostly when HR got mentioned, but I’d never made any effort to find her. Because what was the point? She’d made it fairly clear that she didn’t want to be found …
But when I pulled up her contact information, I admit I spent a long time studying it, her picture in particular. Not because she looked great in it—okay, not only because she looked great in it—but because of the whole attitude of the thing. Her dark hair tumbled over her shoulders, like she’d just released it from an elastic, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. She held her chin in her hand, a pose I usually would’ve found derisible, but in her case, it gave off the perfect mix of ease and I-don’t-give-a-fuck. This is me, her picture said, love it or hate it.
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