Second Time Around

by Christine L'Amour

  “I was a child,” Valerie said, looking at Monica like she hated her, too. “You were not my responsibility, your fate wasn’t on me, you had no hold on me!”

  Wasn’t that the saddest thing in the world, that her words were true?

  “Fine,” Monica said, swallowing tears. “Fine. Let’s be civil and occupy the same room at the same time. You’re right. It’s been nearly fifteen years, anyway, why should any of it matter? You’re right.”

  She wrenched the door open and left.

  ***

  Monica spent the rest of the day in a daze. She worked, of course, she answered those emails and spoke softly to Sharon and then went to pick up her son from the day-care, but she didn’t quite feel all there. She needed some time alone, some mindless TV, and about five bottles of wine, though of course life was not fair and she would not get it.

  “Mom you’re weird!” David shouted. He would have shouted right in her face if he could have, but thankfully his car seat bound him tightly enough that he couldn’t do it. Small mercies, Monica thought.

  “Sorry,” she said blandly, because really there was absolutely no way she could or would explain any of this to her son.

  “What happened?” he demanded to know. “You’re quiet and weird and you didn’t hug me when you got me and you didn’t say anythin’ when Amy told you I spilled ink on the shirt and you didn’t even tell me hello!”

  Monica winced, then tried to parse out what exactly his rapid-fire shot of words had meant.

  “Sorry,” she said, guilt making her voice softer. “Your Mom just isn’t having a good day, Dave. I’ll hug you lots when we get home, okay?”

  “No,” he said. She looked at him through the mirror and almost smiled at his over-dramatic scowl. He even had his tiny arms crossed.

  “Then no hugs for David.”

  His face contorted in confusion, like he couldn’t tell how his actions had made her say that.

  Thankfully, they got home before he could start shouting his confusion loud enough for the neighbors to think she was murdering him. She quickly got out of the car and took him from his car-seat. He refused to hold her hand and wouldn’t let her give him a hug but looked up at her, wounded, like he was upset she hadn’t done it yet anyway.

  Monica contained a sigh. Children were just not meant to be raised by just one person, she felt, not because she believed any nonsense about children needing a mother and a father, but—it takes a village, that was how the saying went. It takes a village, but Monica was all alone, and it meant she didn’t get a second of rest.

  He grabbed her hand as soon as she opened the front door. He wasn’t actually strong enough to pull her, but Monica was too tired not to follow when he brought her to the living room, not leaving her time to lock the front door.

  “Movie,” he said imperiously, and sat her down on the couch.

  “Ah,” Monica said, because she had forgotten she had promised him they were going to watch a movie. “Dave… I had forgotten, and I’m just… I’m just so tired, baby.”

  “Watch movie,” he said even more imperiously instead of growing upset with her, which was the reaction she had expected. She blinked at him, confused. She wasn’t sure what to do now he had thrown out their script. He stared at her with her same eyes and pointed at the TV like the problem was that she had somehow forgotten they had one. “We’ll watch a movie and then it’ll be okay, Mommy. You’ll be happy and I’ll hug you even though you were mean. And tomorrow we’ll have ice cream for breakfast.”

  Amusement rose through the fog of exhaustion and guilt in her mind.

  “Oh, will we?” she asked him, lifting one eyebrow.

  “Yes,” he said firmly, and sat himself on her lap.

  Monica felt a bit like crying. Her guilt was a ball of lead inside her stomach—she really didn’t deserve her son. She wrapped her arms around him and bent down to bury her nose in his mess of brown curls. She had no right to feel so tired, so downtrodden, so sad all the time, not when she had him. He really was a great kid.

  “Where’s my hug?” she asked.

  He sighed dramatically, and it made her laugh. He turned to give her a proper hug with a grin on his face, and she knew he had done it on purpose.

  Chapter Four

  “Tell me what on Earth happened,” Sharon demanded the next day.

  Monica looked blankly up at her and cursed the fact that the thing that bonded them was their lack of social decorum, because it meant Sharon was a friend who was not afraid of point-blank asking things that Monica so obviously wanted to keep hidden. Monica deflected by shrugging and not looking away from her computer screen.

  A cup of coffee was set in front of her. It was a huge cup brimming with coffee black enough to curl the hairs of Monica’s nose. It smelled wonderful. Monica looked at it with a wounded face.

  “Talk,” Sharon said evenly, “and it’s yours.”

  “You’re evil,” Monica muttered, only barely restraining herself from picking up that cup and downing it in one gulp. David had kept her up so late yesterday; she hadn’t been able to tell him that it wasn’t the right thing to watch the same movie nearly three times in a row.

  Sharon sat down beside her, dragging her chair over so they wouldn’t sit so far apart, even though their desks were right by each other. She nudged the cup closer to Monica.

  “Something happened yesterday between you and the new hire and I wasn’t going to pry,” Sharon said. “I gave you some space, like you probably needed. But you also looked like a zombie yesterday and I couldn’t stand it. So, I’m here now, shoving my nose into your business. What’s up?”

  Monica lifted her eyes. Valerie’s desk wasn’t so close to hers, sitting in a corner on the other side of the room, and it was still empty; if she really focused, she could hear laughter in the little kitchen area, where Clarice and Valerie were lingering over coffee.

  “Monica?” Sharon asked quietly. “I really won’t pry if you don’t want me to, but I really don’t want you looking like you did yesterday. It was awful, I don’t think you would have looked as bad if Dawkins had actually physically stabbed you with a knife.”

  Monica picked up the coffee and gave Sharon a dirty look. She was unable to resist a bribe like this.

  “Bribery is immoral,” she muttered.

  “And very effective,” Sharon said with a grin. “Come on, I don’t have much time! I have that online meeting in ten minutes and I still have a few things to check before it starts, so chop, chop.”

  She’s my ex-girlfriend, Monica thought about saying, but Monica was tight-lipped about her personal life on a good day, about much less important and potentially career-damaging things.

  “We just… don’t get along,” Monica said.

  Sharon gave her a skeptic look.

  “I won’t let it affect me so much anymore,” Monica promised her. “Sorry I worried you.”

  “Is she, what, the former best friend your husband cheated on you with?” Sharon asked her, crossing her eyes.

  Monica laughed. Sharon’s eyebrows rose in surprise. Monica couldn’t not—it was just so far away from the truth, it was hilarious. The thought of Valerie and Julien in the same room made her giggle; they would probably murder each other.

  “No, that was the neighbor, and she was hardly my best friend,” Monica said with an eyeroll. And it had all been her fault, anyway; she couldn’t blame Julien for finding love elsewhere when she was the gay woman who tricked him into marriage, as awful as his betrayal had been.

  “So, she was your neighbor,” Sharon said.

  “No, Valerie is not my neighbor.” Monica took a big gulp of coffee. “I won’t let you turn this into office gossip, Sharon, I won’t tell you anything else! Go have your meeting. I… I’ll be fine.”

  “Yeah, that hesitation brought me a lot of comfort,” Sharon said, but dropped it. “Whatever, I’m here for you either way, even if you’re a tight-lipped bastard. What do you think Valerie’s doing for the co
mpetition, anyway?”

  Monica blinked. “I thought she wasn’t going to participate, you’re right that no one’s promoting her so soon.”

  “But she’s still participating,” Sharon said with a shrug. “It was either starting her baby project like we’re doing or get hooked into the festival thing with the private school, and apparently she gave Jerry a few good ideas for projects during the interviewing process. I haven’t heard what those ideas were, though.”

  “Huh,” Monica said.

  So, Valerie was going to be part of the competition. She wouldn’t win, not when winning meant a promotion she couldn’t get, but she was going to be competing. Her performance still mattered, especially since she had just started.

  “Why’re you glaring at her desk?” Sharon asked, curious. “She’s not even here.”

  “If she’s in on the competition,” Monica said evenly, even as she felt resolve harden into diamond inside of her, “then I’m not letting her win it.”

  “We just said she’s not winning either way,” Sharon pointed out.

  “No,” Monica said. “She’s not, because I’m the one who’s going to win. I’m going to crush her.”

  “Uh oh,” Sharon said.

  ***

  Monica glared at her computer screen like it had offended her.

  The brightness was hurting her eyes, but she barely even blinked as her hands flew over the keyboard. She was writing mostly random thoughts, typing down ideas she had had and polishing old drafts of her project. It was a bold project, for the scope of what Jerry was asking of them, but she was sure she could win with it.

  The purpose of this organization was to bring art to children, but people got lost in their fancy ideas—thinking about classical music and embroidery and the Renaissance and post-modernism and another billion other things. Monica wanted to be simple. She wanted the feeling she had as a child, back when things had been quiet and soft and exciting in her childhood, when her Dad took her to their backyard with a gaggle of cousins and they shouted in joy as he let them go wild with paint; they painted the papers he gave them and also each other and the walls, and it had been amazing.

  So. that was Monica’s idea: to bring them paint. To bring them canvases and bright colors and to tell them about the history of painting, of course, but mostly to let them fall in love with it on their own terms.

  But it required space and canvases and volunteers to keep them from going too wild and all the paint and all the cleaning afterwards. She would make it happen, though. She would.

  Occasionally, she looked away from her computer and at Valerie, who sat so far away. That had been an incredibly complicated time of her life, but it had been suffused with joy, too. The years that had followed hadn’t been complicated, but by god they had been hard.

  Her phone ringing startled her out of her thoughts. She looked down at it where it was lying beside the computer mouse. It was her mother. Monica felt something twist her heart. She had worked a lot and deserved a break, either way, so she picked up the phone and moved to the kitchen.

  She passed by Valerie when she went, who glanced up at her with curious expression on her face.

  “Hello,” she said in a low voice, getting herself a cup of water. Thankfully the kitchen was empty.

  “Hey, Monica,” her mother said vaguely. “Just checking in on you… How’s Dave?”

  Monica pinched the bridge of her nose. “Mom, I’m at work and Dave’s at day care, why call right now instead of when we’re both at home?”

  “Well, you’re the one who answered,” her mother said, annoyed. But when she spoke again, her voice had softened: “I just wanted to invite you to lunch this weekend, if you’re free. You said you weren’t last week, but maybe you’re freer now, who knows?”

  Monica’s mouth thinned to a line. She stared down at the counter in front of her, glass of water in one white-knuckled hand.

  Things had settled between her and her parents as much as they ever would. She had calmed down, stopped rebelling, gotten married and given them a grandchild, and it meant they couldn’t complain. But now Valerie was here and Monica couldn’t stop herself from remembering her awful teenage years.

  She remembered with sudden, awful clarity, some things she had vowed to never forget. How they had threatened to throw her out. How they had threatened her with conversion therapy. The things they had called her. How they had treated Valerie.

  She hung up.

  She stared blankly at the phone in her hand, surprised at herself: but there it was, the screen was black and she had indeed hung up on her mother without a word. She didn’t know what she felt about it. Almost immediately, the screen lit up again: her mother was calling again.

  Monica pondered answering, then turned her phone off and went back to work instead.

  ***

  Two hours later, Monica was rubbing at her eyes and finding it nearly impossible to keep on staring at a computer screen. Thankfully, relief came in the shape of Jerry leaving his office and heading to the break room to get himself some coffee. Monica stood up and made to go after him. A part of her felt a bit guilty about cornering the man as soon as he left his office, but another part of her remembered that time she had walked up to talk to him and found him playing minesweeper on his phone.

  “Jerry,” she greeted. “If you’ve got a moment, I wanted to talk to you about that volunteer thing.”

  “We’re not paying them, Monica,” he told her without looking at her, wiggling a finger like a disappointed teacher. “Your project already needs a lot of materials, too.”

  “Yes, all right, but,” Monica said, “none of us are going to easily get unpaid interns, Jerry. The company’s too small, no one will work for free for little prestige. I’m just thinking ahead, thinking long-term. What if we hire them through the finances department? You know they have too few people there, and participating in a project like this would be a wonderful way to test them, wouldn’t it?”

  He blinked at her, surprised.

  “I’ll have to think on it, Monica,” he said, but he sounded considering, and Monica contained a smile.

  “What about the materials?” a vaguely curious voice piped up from behind Jerry.

  Monica tensed. Valerie was looking at her with too-wide eyes, too innocent. Jerry frowned remembering the materials, because Monica’s project did indeed ask for a lot of things to be bought. Monica wanted to scowl. Why would Valerie sabotage her like this when she had been the one to tell her to be civil?!

  “Have you thought up anything to cut down on costs there?” he asked her.

  “Not yet,” Monica admitted. “I was focusing on the volunteers for now, but you know I’m working on it, Jerry.”

  “You know, I think any project that needs a lot of outside people like volunteers or interns maybe won’t do so well,” Valerie said vaguely, like she wasn’t trying to fuck with Monica in front of their boss. “I mean, I wouldn’t trust outside people that much.”

  “What about you, Valerie?” Monica asked with a too-sharp smile. “How’s your project going? You’re so new here after all, speaking of outside people. Have you even had an idea for a project yet?”

  “I started here with some good ideas,” Valerie told her, crossing her arms.

  “Valerie did show some creativity during the hiring process,” Jerry said, looking from one of them to the other with a strange expression on his face.

  “Your project seems to be floundering a bit, though,” Valerie said a bit too loudly.

  Monica’s grin sharpened, her knuckles going white around her own arms. “I’m working on it,” she said, “after all, any and all projects will need a lot of work if any of us want to win. Well, not that you will, being so new.”

  “Nice talking to you two,” Jerry said, too distracted with work to care about what they were really talking about and fled the kitchen.

  Monica’s eyes followed him as he went, though Valerie’s stayed fixed on her.

  “Y
ou’re the one who told me to be civil,” Monica said coldly.

  Valerie chewed on her bottom lip, eyes going to the floor, and it was so—so dear, Monica had seen her do this so many times when they had been young, when they had been together, it broke her heart. She didn’t wait for a response and left. She didn’t want to know, suddenly, why Valerie had decided to bother her.

  Chapter Five

  Valerie sat at her new desk at her new job and cursed, like she had been cursing for two weeks now, the fact that her desk was turned to the wall and didn’t give her even a smidgen of a view of Monica.

  She shouldn’t look at Monica. She shouldn’t want to look at Monica. She so desperately wanted to look at Monica at all possible times, it was infuriating. She caught sight of her sometimes, when for one reason or another the screen of her computer blackened and she could see the room behind her reflected off of it.

  Monica had grown so beautiful. She hadn’t expected it, had never thought of Monica as anything other than the rail thin white girl with the feverish blue eyes she had known for so many years in school. She had never thought to imagine Monica any different. She looked—strange.

  She had grown heavier, she looked soft. Her hair was very long, though usually braided or pulled in a ponytail, so very unlike the short, wild rat’s nest she had known. But Monica looked… Valerie didn’t really know what to call it. She looked sad, and too quiet. She had lost her angry spark, her rebelliousness.

  Valerie wanted to hit whoever had taken it from her, except she couldn’t shake the thought that she had been the one to do it; that she had taken it with her when she left, leaving Monica bereft.

  “So…” Clarice said quietly, not looking away from her screen. “What’s up between you and Monica? I think the entire office noticed how tense things are between you two.”

  “Nothing,” Valerie lied, also not looking away from her screen.

  “It’s ok if you don’t want to tell me.”

  Valerie wanted to tell someone so very, very badly. Valerie was bursting with it, with wanting to let this out, to not be the only one to hold this in—but she couldn’t just go and tell her new coworkers that she was gay. That was how people lost their jobs and maybe their wallets and their lives, depending on where they lived.