Goodnight Nobody

by Jennifer Weiner

  Janie and I had met nine years ago, when we'd both landed interviews to be fact-checkers at New York Review, the nation's preeminent literary magazine (at least, that's what the masthead said).

  "In here," whispered the mousy woman administering the test. There were two desks in the stuffy little room. The one closest to the door was occupied by a slender girl in a chic black suit that, unlike mine, probably had not come from the clearance rack at Century 21. She was bent over her pages so that I could only see the tip of her nose and her beautifully streaked hair.

  The woman handed me five paper-clipped pages, two blue pencils, a dictionary, and a thesaurus. "Use standard proofreading marks, please," she whispered. "You have thirty minutes."

  I sat behind the desk on a chair covered in stained gray fabric, tucked the novel I'd been reading on the subway into my purse, and tried not to be disappointed. I'd majored in English at Columbia and then, because that didn't make me quite unemployable enough, I'd picked up a master's degree in American literature and done all of the course work toward a Ph.D. Ever since leaving Columbia, I'd been temping in law offices, living at home, sending off resumes to any magazine that I thought would have me, and dreaming of writing a book of my own without actually doing any writing. On Friday nights I'd go to the library and take out a dozen novels from the new release shelf to last me through the week. On Sunday nights my father and I, and Reina, if she was home, ordered in Chinese. I'd date every once in a while--an SAT tutor I'd met in the video store, an MBA candidate whose mother played bassoon with my dad. It was a quiet kind of existence, not unhappy, but not particularly exciting. Sometimes at night I'd turn off my lamp and lie motionless in my bed, in the darkness, listening to the sounds of buses and taxis on the street, the sound of voices calling and laughing, and I would think, I am waiting for my real life to begin.

  I wiped my hands on my skirt and looked around the Review's offices. I'd expected something more impressive from the magazine that had published some of the most important fiction of my lifetime: a cozy, dimly lit sanctuary with mahogany desks and secret nooks, hidden corners and shabby armchairs where the geniuses would sit with their deep thoughts and their tumblers of whiskey. Instead, I'd found a falafel cart guarding the door on Forty-fourth Street and, up on the seventeenth floor, grids of humming fluorescent lights and cheap-looking blond wood desks, which lent the space all the romance and mystery of a podiatrist's office.

  The test turned out to be an essay on the geography and climate of a place called Pago Pago. Was that even a real place? Was this story something the Review would publish? Had published?

  The girl with the great hair pushed her chair back from her desk. "In Beauty and the Beast," she asked, "did Beauty ever sleep with the Beast?"

  I was nonplussed. "Is that what your test is about? Beauty and the Beast?"

  "Nope. Pago Pago. I was just wondering. Do you know?"

  I set my pencil down. "The fairy tale or the TV show?"

  "TV show." She was petite, I saw, with close-set hazel eyes and a lower-case letter C of a nose that I recognized as the work of Dr. Kornbluth, an Upper East Side plastic surgeon who'd performed nose jobs on at least half a dozen members of my high school's graduating class. The nose was set in a lively, mobile, intelligent face, with a flashing grin that promised mischief.

  "Sorry, I never watched it."

  "Oh, well," she sighed. She kicked her crocodile pumps onto the floor and cracked all the joints in her toes. I gave her a look that I hoped combined cordiality and please be quiet and let me concentrate. I still couldn't believe I'd landed this interview, and I wasn't going to let myself get distracted. A few minutes went by. "In Pago Pago," I read, "the median temperature is seventy-two degrees." Median or mean? I wondered, grabbing my dictionary. And was that different than average?

  "If you had a gay bar," the other girl mused out loud, "what would you call it?"

  "I. Um. I'd have to give it some thought."

  She twirled a lock of honey-streaked hair around her blue pencil. "I'd call mine The Glistening Pickle," she said.

  "That's a good one."

  "Or The Bent Whisker," she said. "That'd be good too. Or--"

  "Okay!" I said heartily. "Well, listen, this is very interesting, but I really need to concentrate."

  "Why?"

  I set my pencil down and took a deep breath. Maybe this was part of the test. Maybe there were cameras hidden in the ceilings. Maybe this weirdo was a plant, and somewhere down the hall, the Review editors were watching to see how I'd respond. If I handled the situation with dignity and aplomb, I'd be whisked through a secret passageway to the real offices, where John Updike and Philip Roth would offer me whiskey and congratulations, and two first-class tickets to Pago Pago.

  "Because I really want this job," I said, speaking slowly and distinctly, in case the ceiling was listening.

  "Really?" she asked, as if the concept of wanting a job was novel to her.

  "Yes. Don't you want to work here?"

  "I guess," she sighed, twirling more hair around the pencil. "My father thinks I should find something. He says it's a disgrace that my only job's been my nose job," she said, touching the feature in question. "But the way I see it, any job I get is just a job that's been taken away from someone who really needs one." She smiled at me brightly. "Like you!"

  "Yes. Right. Well..." I bent back over my pages. Tuna canneries provide the principal employment in Pago Pago.

  "He's the Carpet King," said the girl.

  I looked up with my hands balled into fists.

  "My father," she said, and cracked her toes again. "Sy Segal. The Carpet King."

  My hands unclenched as the name registered. "Doesn't he own this magazine?"

  "I think so," she said. She'd slipped her pumps onto her hands and was making them dance a jig across her desk. "Or maybe it's that he owns the company that owns this magazine. It's hard to keep track."

  "So he could just tell them to give you a job."

  "And you too!" She grinned, pulled her hands out of her shoes, and wheeled her chair over to my desk so we could shake. "I'm Janie Segal."

  "Kate Klein," I said. "And I should really get back to work."

  "Oh, sure. Of course. Go right ahead," Janie said.

  There was silence. I picked up my pencil again. Tutuila's harbor is surrounded by dramatic mountains which plunge straight into the sea.

  "But first can I ask you a question?" Janie inquired. "Why do you want to work here?"

  "Please! Are you kidding? It's..." I breathed the name with the reverence instilled by nine years at Columbia and an equal amount of time spent poring over its annual Young Fiction Issue with alternating waves of jealousy and awe rolling over me. "It's the Review!"

  "Feh," said Janie. "I'd rather read People. In fact, I'd rather work at People." She fixed me with her hazel eyes. "Do you think they're hiring?"

  "Um..."

  "Wait!" She stabbed one finger in the air. "Idea!" She crossed the room to my desk and picked up the telephone with her manicured, long-fingered hand. "Yes, in New York City, the editorial offices for People magazine." While she was holding, she grabbed a memo pad. "Write down your phone number," she whispered. "Managing editor, please," she rapped into the telephone, and then paused. "Voice mail," she stage-whispered to me.

  "You know, I really don't think we should be--"

  She silenced me with one upraised hand. "Yes, hello, I'm calling from the offices of the New York Review. I've been working with two very fine researchers who, regrettably, we won't be able to hire. They're both experts in popular culture and modern celebrities and, as you know, we at the Review pride ourselves on never writing about any celebrity who isn't a politician or a dead transcendentalist."

  "Oh, my God," I groaned, clutching Pago Pago to my breast.

  "Their names are Jane Segal and Kate Klein, and their home telephone numbers are..." She recited our numbers. "Thank you in advance for your help," she said, and set the phone
down. "There!" she said, looking pleased with herself. She picked up her purse and her coat.

  "Aren't you going to finish?" I asked, pointing toward Pago Pago. A random sentence jumped off the page. Until 1980, one could experience the views from the peak by taking an aerial tramway over the city harbor. Was tramway one word or two? I didn't know. I wasn't sure I cared.

  Janie gave me a pitying look that encompassed the dingy eggshell paint on the walls, the disreputable light brown carpeting, the water cooler gurgling in the corner like an old man with indigestion. "I think I'd rather die than work here."

  "But...," I spluttered. "Norman Mailer! Tom Wolfe! Saul Bellow! Jerzy Kosinski!"

  There was a framed copy of the first two pages of The Scarlet Letter on the wall, the sole literary touch in the room. Janie stood on her tiptoes and used the reflection in the glass to reapply her lip gloss. "Last time I checked, they're all married."

  "Jerzy Kosinski's actually dead."

  "See? That's even worse." She smoothed her hair and picked up my coat and purse. "Come along, grasshopper. Let's blow this taco stand."

  She reached for the doorknob. I sat back down defiantly, picked up my blue pencil, and circled the word tramway. "No," I said. "No thanks. You go ahead. I'm going to finish this."

  "Kate," she said. Her voice held an edge of impatience, but her eyes were kind. "Look around. Ugly cubicles, pretension, and no single men. Do you really want to work here?"

  I thought about it. All of my professors had spoken about the Review the way believers spoke about heaven, the way country music fans talked about Branson, the way my mother described the Met. My father would have been thrilled if I'd landed the job. But did I want to work as a fact-checker? I wasn't sure I'd ever considered the question, and when I did, the answer surprised me.

  "No. Not really. No, I don't."

  "Then come on!"

  "I can't," I told her.

  "Oh," she said. "Okay." She slowly buttoned her coat and started humming.

  "Good luck," I said.

  "Good luck to you too," she said, and started humming louder. Then she started singing. "When I was young...I never need-ed anyone. And making love was just for fun..." She shook her head sadly. "Those days are gone."

  "Excuse me?"

  "All by my-sellllf," she sang. Not softly. "Don't wanna be...alll by my-self."

  I couldn't help it. I started laughing. Her voice was beyond terrible, and she was loud, loud, loud. "Janie--"

  "All! By! My! Self!" she sang at top volume. Someone knocked softly at the door. I doubted it was either John Updike or Philip Roth. "Excuse me. Could you keep it down in there?"

  "All by myself," Janie sang mournfully. I put down my pencil, picked up my coat, and followed her out the door.

  In my living room, years after we'd left the Review together, Janie stared at me with a familiar look of mischief in her eyes. "So where is Ben?"

  "In California," I said. "Business trip. Home tomorrow." I picked her glass up and took a hasty swallow. Janie lifted her eyebrow. I looked back at her defiantly and drank some more.

  "Is that post-murder-discovery nerves or something else?" Janie inquired.

  "It's..." I cleared my throat. "Um. Evan McKenna."

  Janie's expression darkened. "I thought we pinkie-swore never to speak his name again."

  "We did, and while it pains me to break a pinkie swear, the thing is..." I held the little pillow against me and told her everything--how I'd found Evan's name in Kitty's kitchen, how the police had found his number on Kitty's caller ID.

  Janie got so excited that she shoved herself out of the couch and started bouncing in her high heels. "Oh my God! What if he's the killer! Then he'll get the death penalty!" She whipped out her cell phone. "Does this stupid state even have the death penalty?"

  "I'm not sure. But Janie--"

  She shushed me and started to dial. "Sy knows someone in the governor's office." She stopped dialing and stared out my window. "I think it's the governor, actually. Maybe we can be the ones to pull the switch, or give him the lethal injection, or whatever!"

  "Janie!" I grabbed the phone away from her. "Listen! I don't think Evan killed her."

  "Oh." She frowned. "Then who did?" She sat back on the couch. "Maybe it was that Marybeth woman." She nodded, looking pleased with herself. "A woman who'd raise a child without diapers is capable of anything."

  Sam and Jack came racing into the living room with Sophie wailing behind them. The boys, I saw, had used a bungee cord to strap Uglydoll in his western wear to the top of one of the cars. "Chapter two hundred and thirty-eight," growled Janie, "in which I am hijacked by a band of pint-sized ruffians."

  I freed the doll, consoled Sophie, and sent the boys into the Uncooperative Corner, then glanced at the clock. Somehow, it had become five thirty, and I'd forgotten dinner.

  "There's more. Kitty was a ghostwriter for Laura Lynn Baird."

  Janie's eyes widened. "You're kidding me!"

  I shook my head. "It was all over the Internet this morning."

  "But not the magazines yet, right?" She scrambled for her phone again. "I shouldn't be surprised," she said. "Everyone's been saying that there's no way Laura Lynn could be doing everything she's been doing unless she cloned herself. Every time I turn on my TV, there she is, yap-yap-yapping about affirmative action or something. I always figured she was outsourcing her columns to some twenty-three-year-old in a think tank in Madras, not some mom in the suburbs." She caught her breath.

  "Because no mom in the suburbs could string two sentences together," I said dryly.

  "Present company excepted," said Janie. "God, this is a fabulous story. Fabulous." Her bobbed nose wrinkled as her editor's voice mail picked up. "Segal. Call me." She got to her feet, fingers already flexing for the keyboard. "Where's your computer?"

  "Janie, listen to me." I pulled her back onto the couch. "Do you think you could get me an interview with Laura Lynn Baird?"

  "Huh?" She gaped at me. "Why?"

  "Because..." I took a deep breath and tried to think of what to tell her that would get me what I wanted. "Because if Evan's involved in this somehow--"

  "Oh, no." Janie held up her hand and shook her head. "Oh, hell no. You wasted enough of your life on that man-shaped pile of dog poop. If it turns out he did it, I will lead the parade. And I'm making you be grand marshal." She paused thoughtfully. "Grand marshals get the good hats."

  I tried again. "Maybe Laura Lynn knows something that she hasn't told the cops. And Kitty was my friend."

  She glared at me. "You told me you didn't have any friends out here." She sniffled. "You said I was your one and only!"

  Strike two.

  "It's my community," I finally said. "My neighborhood. It's where my kids live."

  Janie placed one hand gently on my shoulder. "When the pod people took over your body," she asked, "did it hurt?"

  "Okay, you know why? Because there's a murderer running around, which even you have to admit is a little alarming, and you know what else? I'm bored." I stared at her defiantly, knowing that I'd just spoken the dirtiest word in the Upchurch lexicon. As far as my fellow mommies were concerned, saying you were bored was admitting to being about two steps away from drowning your babies in the bathtub, something so sinful and forbidden you could never 'fess up to it. But here I was, 'fessing. "I'm bored, and this murder, while horrifying, is also the single most interesting thing that's happened here since the Langdons next door broke ground for their guesthouse and cracked their septic tank. It's interesting, and I want to find out more."

  Janie sat back, looking satisfied at last. "That's my girl," she said.

  Seven

  Once upon a time, there was a woman who'd lived in New York City, then moved to Connecticut with her baby and her husband--a woman not too different from me, or Kitty Cavanaugh. Except Laura Lynn Baird was famous, and she didn't have to deal with boredom. When her son was born, she'd kept working (although, paradoxically, much of that work se
emed to involve flying around the country or appearing on television to tell other women that they were bad mothers if they had jobs that took them outside of the home).

  I parked my minivan in front of 734 Old Orchard Lane in Darien, Connecticut, checked my lipstick in the rearview mirror, and tucked my bangs behind my ears. Janie had worked her magic, getting Laura Lynn on the phone with me. "H-hello," I'd stammered. It had been years since I'd interviewed anyone except a potential babysitter. I'd fumbled through the basics: I was working on a tribute to my departed neighbor and colleague, and I would be deeply appreciative if Laura Lynn, busy though she must be, could possibly spare--

  Laura Lynn cut me off. "Ten o'clock, tomorrow morning. I can give you twenty minutes." Click.

  The dashboard clock said 9:54. I pulled a sheaf of papers out of my bag. I'd printed every single one of "The Good Mother" columns, and I'd highlighted pertinent passages the night before, after I'd put the kids to bed. "Feminism's Big Lie is a two-headed Hydra, a snake that whispers into the modern woman's ears that her own happiness is primary, that having it all is possible, and that both can be achieved without her children suffering, or even noticing," Laura Lynn Baird-slash-Kitty Cavanaugh had written. "The truth, as any woman who's honest with herself knows, is that children were meant to be raised by their mothers. In this case, and for a finite number of years, biology really is destiny. Shame on the woman who exchanges her role as the dispenser of good-night hugs, consoling kisses, and lullabies for the transitory pleasures and cocktail-party cred of the corner office and the fancy title. And pity the working-class child-care provider who doesn't realize that the real villain in her life isn't a stereotypical sexist pig, but the woman wearing recycled-fiber clothing, eating organic produce, and calling herself your sister even as she profits from your off-the-books, under-the-table toil."

  Heady stuff. It was hard to imagine Kitty, with her pleasant smile and inoffensive chatter, writing it. I tucked the pages back in my bag, called home to make sure that nothing was burning or broken, and exited the car, making my way up Laura Lynn's crescent-shaped driveway, stepping onto her pillared porch, and knocking on the green front door. At ten on the dot, a tanned, bony hand snaked out of the six-inch gap between the door and the jamb, grabbed my sleeve, and pulled me inside.