“If that’s what you want to do, I can’t stop you,” Jane says, looking truly chagrined.
I know that Jane’s advice is sensible and that she’s saying these things because she cares about me. But she doesn’t understand that I’m not good and strong like she is, and her fighting me on this like she’s my mother only makes me want to go upstairs with Caleb even more than I did before we started yelling. Maybe I want to torpedo my sanity—or at least test it. Maybe I’m not meant to have the staid life that I’m heading for with Peter. Maybe I’m better suited for something more debased and messy. I’m only twenty-five—is this really my forever? Being the wife of a finance guy, going to bed early, cooking chicken?
Besides, how dare Jane imply that I would just hop back into bed with Caleb before clearing things up with Peter? I definitely wouldn’t do that. I probably wouldn’t do that.
I walk back to Caleb, leaving Jane in the alcove, shaking her head.
“I’ll come up and see your new project,” I tell him.
“Good,” he says. “Come with me.”
Chapter Nine
Caleb’s room is in the attic. It has low, slanted ceilings. He’s so tall he can only stand upright in the center. The space feels familiar even though I’ve never been here: He has the same Blue Velvet poster, with Isabella Rossellini’s long white neck and Kyle MacLachlan’s cherubic face stretching across a background of purplish navy. He’s even got the same white sheets and comforter, though I notice he has a new clear plastic desk in one corner of the room with an enormous Apple desktop computer perched on top of it.
He goes right over to the computer, turns on a lamp, and sits down in an Aeron chair. Even though Caleb has been marginally employed since college, selling the occasional photograph or sculpture, he can afford expensive furniture because of monthly checks from his father, the East Texas oil magnate. Caleb doesn’t really like to talk about his background—I suspect he feels like it destroys his street cred. So when people ask about his childhood he just tells them that he grew up in Port Arthur, “like Janis Joplin,” which he hopes will make them think he had a gritty, unhappy past. He leaves out the McMansion he grew up in and doesn’t talk about his kind and generous parents, Bob and Leigh Ann.
When we were together, Caleb took me down south to meet them just once, for Christmas three years ago. I didn’t realize I was walking into a trap until I got there. Caleb always said that what his mother really wanted was for him to marry some boring blond cotillion girl who went to their country club. It turned out that, in an attempt to scandalize her, he had sent his mother links to a column I had written in college about anal sex and he had made a big deal over the family securing a menorah in addition to their customary tree and stockings, because he didn’t want me to feel “alienated by their Jesus love.” He ignored my protestations that my family hadn’t celebrated Hanukkah since I was twelve.
His attempts to pit us against each other backfired. Leigh Ann, a chain-smoking good old girl with hair bleached just a shade lighter than respectable, loved my column. “It reminds me of Jacqueline Susann, honey,” she told me, laughing. And she was perfectly happy to accommodate my fake cultural heritage with a lovely silver menorah. In fact, Leigh Ann and I got along so well that she still sends me e-mails from time to time, updating me about her online jewelry business (Leigh Ann’s Baubles) and keeping me posted on Bob’s golf scores. I’m wondering if Caleb knows that his mom still sends me e-mails every quarter when he pulls a stool close to him and beckons me over.
The only light in the room is coming from that lamp and his computer screen. The background on his screen’s desktop is a photo of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin gallivanting down a Paris street. Jane’s wearing hot pants, and Caleb clicks on a QuickTime file next to her slender left leg. “I remember when we were fighting toward the end,” he says. “You called me a snake once.”
I try to remember the specific incident, but I can’t. “I did?”
“Yes. And I thought a lot about that.” This surprises me. I always assumed that Caleb tuned me out when we were arguing.
“So I thought—what do snakes do? They shed their skin. And when we broke up I figured I had to shed my old self. So I decided to measure the surface area of my skin, and then I made a giant ball of masking tape that was the same size.” He gestures over to a three-foot-tall white ball that’s sitting in the corner of his dim room. Even without the overhead light on I can see that there are bits of dust and flecks of grime sticking to its surface.
“So then I had this giant ball of masking tape, and I thought to myself, what am I going to do with this giant ball of masking tape? And then it hit me.” He clicks the play button on the screen. An image appears of Caleb dressed all in white. I recognize the space—it’s his studio in Ditmas Park. I watch the screen as he rolls the enormous ball of tape back and forth across the long room. I wait for something else to happen. Is something else going to happen? Nope. Just more of Caleb pushing the ball back and forth, back and forth.
Caleb looks over at me expectantly, waiting for me to comment. What I want to tell him is that this is exactly what people hate about modern art. Instead, I muster the strength to say, “The sound of the tape against the floor is really . . . visceral.”
“Thanks. That’s exactly what I was going for.” He leans toward me and kisses me tenderly on the forehead. “I missed you, Alex. Nobody gets me like you. When I was doing that series with the taxidermied pigeons, everyone else dismissed it. But you were behind me all the way.”
I don’t respond—I’m still reeling from the white lie I just told and I want to avoid another one—but Caleb doesn’t seem to notice. He stands up and announces, “I want to show you another piece I’ve been working on. It’s down in the basement. Stay there. I’ll be right back.”
“Okay,” I say, not really sure why I’m agreeing but thinking it’s better than being downstairs at the party. As he walks away I lean forward to look once again at his computer screen. I was so angry at Caleb when we broke up that I forgot his good parts, and for a minute I wonder if I dismissed him too quickly when we broke up. Maybe he’s no longer the enfant terrible I remember. Lots of decent people don’t know how to handle sudden death—many of my good friends avoided me right after my dad died because they didn’t know what to say. It was just immaturity, not pure evil.
And Caleb was capable of some really tender moments when he wasn’t being an asshole: bringing me coffee in bed on weekend mornings from my favorite little shop near his apartment, buying me the perfect French journals from obscure stores in the Village, keeping me company late into the night when I couldn’t sleep.
“Ah, your little smiley face,” Caleb says wistfully from behind me, and I jump and turn around. “I missed that, too.” He smiles at me and walks out of the room, his upright carriage emphasizing the broadness of his shoulders.
It’s like a bucket of frigid water has been thrown onto my nostalgic reverie. Maybe it’s not Adam who sent BTCH the dirt on me. It’s Caleb. Caleb, who is in Brooklyn and not in a remote yurt. Caleb, who doesn’t believe in privacy. Caleb, who thinks of my body as an extension of his little art projects. Caleb, that bastard.
But what could he have sent? I definitely didn’t let him take any nude videos, photographs, or whatever when we were together. Unless he took them without my consent? When I was sleeping? Or maybe he did something more sinister: Maybe he altered an existing picture of me in Photoshop to make it look like I was giving someone a blow job, or something else equally lewd. Maybe he named it Alex Is Submissive and called it art.
I run to the door and look down the hallway. There’s no sign of Caleb. I go back to his computer and go straight to Gmail. Luckily he’s still signed in, and I can see all of his recent sent messages. I scroll down through pages and pages of sent messages. I see e-mails to Bob and Leigh Ann confirming a Labor Day trip back home. I see e-mails to a bunch of different girls, including one to Stacia, with a subject line that reads,
“Last night at your apartment.” I always knew he was fucking her! I see e-mails to several different galleries with a file of Caleb’s video, snake skin, attached. What I don’t see are any e-mails to Breaking the Chick Habit’s Gmail account, or to any other names that look like they could belong to the person who runs BTCH.
I glance behind me to see if Caleb is coming, and then I take to his hard drive. I look through as many photos as I possibly can in quick succession: dead pigeon, dead pigeon, dead pigeon, street sign, dead squab, dead pigeon dressed in a miniature postal worker’s uniform, dead pigeon dressed as a doctor, view from the Williamsburg Bridge. I’m not seeing anything here that is even remotely sexual or ominous. Now I’m really starting to sweat. How am I not finding anything?
I’m about to give up when I see a folder marked, ominously, “Alex.” Though he claims to have quit the Internet, Caleb is pretty tech-savvy when it comes to sending large photos into the ether. I bet he would have chosen a more secure connection than just e-mail to share this creepy business with that vile hate blogger.
I glance over to his bed. He always liked to draw when he was under the covers, so the sheets were always grainy with graphite shavings. I remember feeling them against my bare skin when I was trying to sleep. I picture photographs of me sprawled out on that bed, asleep on my side, my unconscious self so open and vulnerable.
But I can’t find out immediately whether my imaginings are accurate, because the folder is password protected. I try entering every combination that might have meaning for him: his name and birth date (Caleb423), his first pet (Fluffers, a finicky Siamese), his favorite artist (Twombly). Finally the nickname of his first car (El Guapo) gets me in.
Inside the folder is a single file. I click on it, feeling the whiskey rise in my throat, and open . . . a photo of me, smiling at the camera, fully clothed. I recognize the shot—it was taken during graduation week, during our first flush of love. My pixie cut had just started to grow out and for whatever reason I thought it was a good idea to bleach small chunks of it platinum. I’m not wearing any makeup but my cheeks are freckled by the sun and rosy from drinking.
At first I’m furious with Caleb: How dare he idealize the notion of me when he treated the real me so terribly? But then I realize: That’s how Caleb was, the whole time we were together. Of course he would rather look at a static photo from a happy time than deal with my actual self. Peter might not be the man I thought he was, but at least he has always appreciated me for what I am. He never tries to distance himself from my emotions or my work—he confronts them head-on.
Jane’s right: I am better than this. I don’t know for sure that Caleb isn’t somehow connected to BTCH, but the fact that I’d even violate his privacy shows how messed up my head is right now.
I close out of the image and the folder just as I hear him coming up the steps. I’ve just moved away from it when Caleb comes back into the room. He’s holding a preserved dead sparrow wearing a knitted cap.
“Thanks for showing me the video, but I have to run,” I say before he can begin to explain the dead bird.
“What? Why?”
“I just do.” I brush past him and hustle back down the stairs, stopping on the landing so I can scan the crowd. I have no idea how long I’ve been gone, but from the looks of it probably about forty-five minutes or an hour. The kitchen is not quite as packed as when I went upstairs with Caleb, but the party has not yet reached its tipping point, when groups of friends and couples start leaving en masse. I see Cheyenne and her bandmates, a clot of metal in a sea of blacks and plaids. They’re drinking from blue and red keg cups, and I see Chey throw her head back in laughter, a look of pure pleasure taking over her entire open face.
Standing there on the landing I am struck by the contrast between myself and my friends: I’m driving myself bonkers searching for something that doesn’t even exist in the physical world while they are actually living. How did I get so disconnected? Chick Habit, and all its attendant stresses and woes, is still just a website.
Then something else hits me: If Caleb isn’t connected to the hate blogger, I’m back to square one. I feel despair creep over me. It’s so much easier to parse something nefarious when you can understand the person and his or her motives. What if this is simply random Internet terrorism? Something that could happen again and again, for no reason at all?
I realize I need to find Jane immediately and patch things up. I can’t afford to cock up any more of my real-life relationships. I scan the crowd but I can’t see her anywhere, though I do see Julia and that skinny girl, what’s her name, still standing near the booze table, deep in conversation.
I push my way over to them. “Sorry to interrupt, but have you seen Jane?”
“I think she’s out on the stoop,” Julia says. What’s-her-name just stares at me. “Is she okay? She looked pretty upset when she was on her way out there.”
“I should check on her,” I tell Julia, nearly sprinting past her.
I run through the darkened main room, which is almost entirely empty, and throw open the heavy door. Sure enough, Jane’s outside on the stoop, talking to an acquaintance from college, Anna. I don’t know Anna that well, but she and Jane have been close since they played on an intramural soccer league together in college. Jane’s smoking a Camel Light. She only lights up when she’s had a few, so I know she’s pretty drunk. I’m hoping this means she is in a forgiving mood.
“Thank God you’re still here!” I say, testing the waters.
Jane regards me coolly. “Yep, still here.”
Ouch. So maybe not so forgiving. I turn to Anna. “Hey, Anna, good to see you.”
“Nice to see you, too,” Anna says cautiously. From the look on her face I suspect that I’ve just walked into a major bitch session about yours truly.
Since their conversation clearly can’t continue, Anna stubs out her cigarette and says to Jane, “Catch you later, J.” She pushes open the heavy door and disappears back into the party.
Neither Jane nor I says anything for a few minutes. I desperately want to beg for her forgiveness immediately, but I’m too nervous. She might still be pissed, and I don’t want to get another lecture, not now. Finally, Jane blows smoke out of the side of her mouth and says, “So, did you fuck up your life or what?” I exhale with relief. At least Jane’s still speaking to me!
“I didn’t. You were so right. I need to get a grip.”
“Damn straight I was right.”
“I’m so sorry, Jane.” She’s still got her face in a tight little grimace.
“Please tell me that you didn’t touch him, even a little.”
“I didn’t!” I hesitate and then add, “I did, however, read his e-mail.”
“Whaaaaaat?!?” She drops the cigarette from her fingers and she raises her eyebrows nearly off her face.
I explain to Jane about the smiley-face tattoo and the locked folder and the ordinary, not-scandalous photo of me, ending with, “So I realized that I was losing my mind, truly, and hightailed it outta there.”
“I’m glad,” Jane says, her tone still firm. “But I really do hope this is a wake-up call.”
“It really is. I’m going to go back home right now and have an honest, serious talk with Peter.”
“I’m not just talking about Peter.” Her concern face is back on.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re obsessed with this job in a really unhealthy way. You don’t eat properly, you don’t go outside. You wear that tragic muumuu all the time. You are neglecting people you love. I know that Chick Habit has been good for your career, and I’ve tried to be supportive because I love reading the site, but I think after all this hate-blog, Rebecca West nonsense dies down you should seriously reevaluate what it is you’re doing.”
“Wow, Jane, tell me how you really feel.” My head is spinning. How long has Jane felt this way?
“I’m just telling you what I’m seeing. It never seemed this bad before and I thought you would adju
st eventually. But after this week, I don’t think it’s right for you.” She says this gently. Her tone is completely different than it was during our first confrontation.
“Well, Jane, it’s not like I have a whole lot of other options in this business right now. And before this week everything was going pretty okay.” I say this bitterly, not because I’m mad at Jane for being honest or because I think she’s wrong, but because I really have no idea what to do—about the job, about Peter, about any of it.
“I’m not telling you to call up Moira tomorrow and quit your job. I just think you should think about your situation.”
All of a sudden I am very, very tired. I don’t have the energy to argue with Jane, and I certainly don’t have the energy to contemplate leaving Chick Habit and finding another job. We stand there in silence for a bit, not looking at each other. I can hear Jane sighing a foot away from me.
“Can we just go home now?” I ask.
Jane says, “Yes, we can just go home now. Do you have the number of the car service?”
“I do.” I take my phone out of my canvas bag and turn it on. Immediately I see that I have four messages waiting for me, but I ignore those for the time being and call the car. “Five minutes,” the dispatcher tells me, and just three minutes later a beat-up Town Car arrives.
Jane must be exhausted, too, because she falls asleep immediately upon sitting down in the big backseat of the car. I tell the driver that there will be two stops, Jane’s place and then mine. Against the background of muted techno music I listen to my voice mail, bracing myself for Peter’s sad disapproval.
The first voice coming out of my iPhone is not Peter’s deep one but Moira’s jaunty Irish brogue. “Love, where are you? I have news about tomorrow! It’s about nine P.M. Call me or IM me when you get this.”
The second message is from my mother. “Hi, Alex. I just wanted to hear your little voice. If you can give me a call tomorrow, I’d love to catch up.” I feel guilty for not calling her, but I don’t know how I’d explain the madness of the past few days.
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