Break in Case of Emergency

by Jessica Winter

  “It’s beautiful. And it’s so big,” Jen had said after Meg and Marc finished renovating the loft, when Meg was seven months pregnant with Millie. Jen had cringed inside, wishing she’d stopped at “It’s beautiful.” Pointing out the size of Meg’s home veered too close to talking about money; or, more precisely, it veered too close to gawking. Or maybe gawking was just what Jen was doing—because Jen’s gaze was, arguably, empirically stupid; this was not a value judgment but simply a statement of fact in re: Jen’s lack of money, lack of knowledge of money, lack of upbringing in any remote proximity to money, lack of experience discussing money, lack of a conversion table for translating what someone like Meg meant when she referred to “a lot of money,” lack of comprehension of what it was to have money, spend money, or invest money, lack of understanding of what it might mean to point at a giant empty space in one of the most expensive zip codes in the country and not only call dibs but think it a shrewd and even excessively reasonable choice given other, pricier options that were nonetheless also tenable.

  “Eh, we’ll all be practically living in one room like savages,” Meg had said, rubbing her belly with one hand and rapping her knuckles on the counter with the other. “The girl-child will see unspeakable things.”

  Was the counter—soapstone? Silestone? Jen couldn’t remember.

  “Seriously, it’s ridiculous,” Meg was saying now. “You have to come out at least for a few days. I can’t imagine the Mrs. Bluff staying in the city in August.”

  “She’s not; Leora is gone all month,” said Jen, who was crowning her elephant with a tiara made of honeysuckle. Honey sucko. “But she’s working from her summer house and has to sign off on everything. The others are gone for a week or two at a time, but they check in, supposedly.”

  “So why can’t you go away and check in?” Meg asked.

  “It’s complicated,” Jen said. “It’s partly because this stupid video project fell in my lap. Is that a house, Millie?”

  “Behwuh,” Millie replied.

  “A bear, huh—that’s a big bear. Is the bear a boy or a girl?”

  “Guw.”

  “Does she need a house in the storm?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, let’s build the bear a house to keep her warm and dry in the storm,” Jen said. “I’m hoping things will be calmer after we launch this—whatever it is.”

  “This all-media motivational thingy,” Meg said. “Could Jim come first and you could join us later?”

  “Well, Jim has all this administrative stuff to get done ahead of the school year that he didn’t have last year,” Jen said. This was true, and also irrelevant to the question of whether or not Jen and Jim could spend some time at Meg’s summer rental.

  “But Jim—” Meg stopped.

  “But Jim has the whole summer off and could have gotten it done anytime?” Jen asked. “I’ve thought the same thing. I wish he—” This time Jen stopped herself. To verbalize her wish that Jim—who spent his summers reading and running, running and reading—would seek out tutoring gigs or freelance writing assignments or anything that might monetize his yearly three-month sabbatical would also veer too close to talking about money.

  “Whatever, I still don’t get it,” Meg said. “Anything you have to do, you can do at the house. And it sets a bad precedent that you’re chaining yourself to your desk like this—they’ll come to expect that of you, and you have to nip that in the bud.”

  “You’ll have to pardon me, ladies,” Jen said.

  Jen shut the door behind her in Meg’s downstairs bathroom, where she always half expected a man in a tuxedo to hand her a towel, and sat down on the edge of the built-in stone tub. She had lied to Meg, and had erred in predicting that her lie would land clean, would speak for itself, would not demand explanation or amplification.

  She tried to remember a time she had ever lied to Meg before, and couldn’t.

  Every year since college, Meg had invited Jen and Pam—and, later, Meg and Marc had invited Jen and Jim and Pam and Paulo—to some kind of summer retreat: Meg’s parents’ lakeside house, Marc’s parents’ place upstate, and for the last few years, a beach house that Meg and Marc rented for the month of August. The first year of the beach house, Jen had tried to pay for herself and Jim, to extract from Meg the price of one-third of one-fourth of the rent—because they only ever stayed for one week, anything more would be too much of an imposition, although Pam did not share this view—and when Meg refused either to provide the sum or to entertain the notion of accepting any money from Jen whatsoever, Jen went online to research comparable rents in the area and, a few stunned minutes later, ceased her online research and silently accepted Meg’s generosity.

  In each year since, Jen’s palpable sheepishness about the rental house and its estimated price tag had channeled itself into monetary overcompensation: a $250 surprise grocery run, a stream of screen-printed hand towels and homemade soaps and other desperate purchases from the quaint little shops in town, and constant, keening offers to buy gas or pay for gas or offer cash for gas up front.

  “Basta, Jen,” Meg said once.

  Jen understood Meg’s exasperation. She was aware of how her behavior turned what should have been a gift into an off-balance and embarrassing transaction. And still, some coagulated recess of Jen’s mind resented Meg for acknowledging her missteps. And when Meg had mentioned the house this year—at this point, it was less an invitation than a reminder—Jen felt a sinking column open inside her like a plunger, trapping a pocket of air at the top of her sternum, and as Meg rattled off dates and times and ideas for day trips, Jen blurted out that she was really sorry, but they probably couldn’t come this year.

  Jen rose from the edge of Meg’s bathtub and saw thick horizontal streaks of charcoal and intestinal pink swipe past her; she gripped the side of the sink until the streaks receded into pinpricks of light and the nausea receded with it. She inhaled through her nose and exhaled through her mouth three times each, flushed the toilet, palmed some water from the faucet, and opened the door.

  “Do you need help with anything?” Jen asked Meg, who was still grinding.

  “Yeah, I need help with the fact that I want you to come to the house,” Meg said. “Just come to the darn house.”

  “Next year,” Jen said. “When things have calmed down. And thank you so much, as always, for—”

  “Jenfa. Jenfa.” Millie was rubbing Jen’s leg and staring plaintively into the middle distance. “Jenfa,” she whispered.

  “What is it, my love?” Jen asked.

  “Sucko,” Millie said to a lost horizon. “Wan daw sucko.”

  “You want to draw a circle? I bet you can draw a circle, sweetheart,” said Jen, kneeling down and leaning over a fresh sheet of paper, her lower abdomen touching the tops of her upper thighs. Jen slowly drew a big red circle.

  Holding the crayon in her fist, Millie approached the page with the same patience and caution with which she would greet and pet Franny whenever she and her mother paid their infrequent visits to Not Ditmas Park (infrequent only because Jen was constantly deflecting the visits; infrequent because Meg and Millie “shouldn’t have to go to the trouble to come all the way from SoHo”). Millie even coached herself using the same mantra she used with Franny: “Jenta, jenta,” Millie whispered to her fist.

  “You don’t have to be gentle,” Jen whispered, rubbing her nose against Millie’s ear to make her giggle. “You can attack.”

  Millie stuck out her tongue in concentration and pushed her crayon across the page in what was intended as a swooping motion. The completed mark was an off-kilter kiss between greater-than and less-than signs. She tried again and again, layering the page with disembodied Pac-Man maws. Millie squawked admonishments at the page, lowering her head until her nose almost touched the paper, as if she could intimidate it into showing her not the marks her hand actually made but the perfect interlocking rings her mind could see.

  Jen reached over to grab an antique miniat
ure globe off a coffee table and showed Millie how to trace around the circular pewter base.

  “You know, I never thought about this before, Millie, but it’s really hard to draw a circle,” Jen said. “You have to know exactly where to start, which is also exactly where you have to end, and you can’t really stop to check your work.”

  Millie teethed her lower lip and turned to Jen, her eyes round. “Fanny,” she said, in a grave, confessional whisper. “Fanny.”

  “Franny’s at home with Uncle Jim,” Jen said. “But she misses you, and is hoping to see you soon, and she told me to give you this special message. Are you ready?” Jen pressed foreheads with Millie and rolled her tongue against her teeth in a loud purr, and Millie laughed.

  “That is pretty funny, Millie,” Jen said, looking up for Meg. But Meg had laid down the pestle and padded silently across the great room, where she was fast asleep on a sofa.

  Jen had looked up too quickly. She ducked her head back down and closed her eyes, waiting for another rushing foam of nausea to recede.

  “Daw Fanny, daw Fanny,” Millie was saying, laughing and rubbing Jen’s arm.

  “That’s a good idea, sweetie,” Jen said, opening her eyes and taking the crayon from Millie. “If we draw Franny, then she’ll be here with us.”

  We Talked About Seven

  There was a young rabbi who had rediscovered her dormant faith after the death of her father. There was a medical resident whose elective mastectomy at age thirty-two had turned her into a health-food nut and ultramarathoner. There was a successful real estate agent whose house burned down and sent her into a surprising state of quasi-Buddhist bliss at the loss of her material possessions. There was a young electronics heiress whose brief, DUI-related jail sentence brought her into contact with women serving harsh sentences for minor drug offenses, which led the electronics heiress to enroll in law school to become an advocate for such women. There was an event planner who found her fiancé in bed with a circus performer she had hired for a four-year-old’s birthday party, which inspired her to start a popular new dating site.

  And there was, to Jen’s profound sorrow and regret, a wealthy retired friend of Leora’s who had outsourced her favorite horse’s daily exercise to a groom because she was so busy with her garden and memoirs, and shortly thereafter the horse had died of colic, which taught Leora’s friend an important lesson, as she wrote in an email to Leora, “about the value of remembering to take a breath and look around you so you don’t miss anything.”

  “We’re so hard on ourselves. And that’s what makes us women great. But it also hurts us sometimes. What doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger, and vice versa,” Leora once said.

  “What kills our horses only makes us stronger,” Daisy once said.

  For the video project, they had, in Jen’s assessment, a decent if not excellent spread of ages, ethnicities, and cultural backgrounds. Geographical diversity among the interviewees wasn’t as good, but Donna wanted to do all the interviews and did not wish to travel. Jen had presented photos of each woman to Karina, who often said, “Even if it’s weird to talk about it, we always need to think about optics. It’s just a reality.”

  They’d booked a video crew and blocked out studio time. Donna had a script for all six interviews that she wouldn’t share with anyone else. “It is down on paper,” she said, “but it’s not yet in the air. The conversation needs to breathe and fly on its own. Ink and tree mulch can’t contain it.”

  For weeks, Jen had been trying to get the roster and budget in front of Karina for her approval. But whenever Jen caught her in person, Karina would ask her to put her questions in an email, which Karina would then ignore, no matter how many times Jen forwarded and forward-forwarded the email to her.

  Then Karina had gone on vacation; on her return, she was perpetually “slammed” with other work. In the last few days running up to the shoot, Jen had given up, assuming Karina had given her tacit approval, or her approval-by-forfeit.

  Karina—LIFt

  Monday, Sept 14 11:14 AM

  To: Jen

  Subject: Shoot tomorrow

  Priority: High!

  Jen, as discussed, do not proceed with tomorrow’s shoot until you have my sign-off.

  Jen—LIFt

  Monday, Sept 14 11:56 AM

  To: Karina—LIFt

  Subject: Re: FW: Shoot tomorrow

  Priority: High!

  Of course—just switching this conversation to my work email. (I don’t see messages as quickly on the other email!) I’ll be right over with lots of cool stuff for you to check out. I’m excited for you to see what we’ve cooked up—be there in five.

  Karina—LIFt

  Monday, Sept 14 11:59 AM

  To: Jen—LIFt

  Subject: Re: FW: Shoot tomorrow

  Priority: High!

  Come by in an hour or so instead—I’m swamped right now

  “We talked about seven,” Karina was saying, head shots and biographical sketches fanned out on her desk before her. It was four-fifty-five p.m., the day before the shoot.

  “That’s true,” Jen said, who wasn’t actually sure it was true, “but we have a very strong crop of six.”

  Karina continued to scowl at a head shot of the crusading socialite. Jen’s face burned and itched. She wished she’d remembered to bring her can of ginger ale to Karina’s office, imagined pressing the cold, damp metal to her cheek.

  “So Petra has dummy screen shots from the six videos in a grid on the landing page for the whole package—I can show you on my computer, if you want.”

  “Is Petra the one who’s always carrying the bag around?” Karina asked.

  “Petra is—”

  “—I don’t know how to make this clearer to you,” Karina said. “We talked about seven.”

  “And we have six,” Jen said.

  “Seven is Leora’s number, and last I checked, I’m pretty sure this is Leora’s foundation.”

  “We shoot tomorrow and we have six.”

  “Look, Jen, it’s up to you whether you see this as a collaboration or not, but that’s what it is. Collaboration. Communication. Give-and-take.”

  “Uh-huh,” Jen said.

  Karina shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you,” she said. “You have work to do. Close the door behind you as you leave.”

  Who Is “We”?

  Jen was sitting at her desk. She couldn’t remember how she had gotten from Karina’s office to her cubicle. Daisy was on the phone.

  “They don’t want any of the money to go toward salaries,” Daisy was saying into the phone. “Only toward the programs. Yes, I’ve explained that the salaries are part of the programs. If you want Leora’s money, you have to take it for free.”

  Jen’s immediate visual ken had narrowed; the periphery was a retching taupe spatter of molding mushrooms and crusted-over oatmeal and curdling cream. A wheee of tinnitus rang in her ears and struggled to harmonize with the background whhooooossshhhhh. She sipped from her can of ginger ale, held the soda in her mouth for a moment before working up the courage to swallow it.

  She took a saltine from its package, wetted and worried one corner of the saltine with her teeth, returned the saltine to its package.

  She watched her hand pick up the phone. She watched her fingers dial Pam. She knew three numbers by heart: Jim, Meg, Pam.

  “You sound upset,” Pam was saying.

  Jen touched back into the conversation. She’d missed the ringing sound, the exchange of salutations. What had she said beyond hello?

  “No, not at all,” Jen said.

  “I’m sorry that I kind of closed the drapes on the world after the show,” Pam said. “I mean, you know this—I always get kind of depressed after an opening. Not depressed, just low. Like, the comedown.”

  “I know,” Jen said. “You just need your space after something so big like that. It’s understandable.” Unstanbull. Jen had to concentrate not to slur her words.

/>   In fact, Pam had scarcely crossed Jen’s mind lately. Jen felt a momentary gratitude that her carelessness happened to have synched with Pam’s customary spell of post-opening hibernation.

  Thanks for no one

  Thanks for nothing

  “I think it was especially intense this time, maybe because the show was kind of personal?” Pam said. “I haven’t really come around to how I feel about that.”

  “Well, you should feel great about the show,” Jen said. She placed her elbows on her desk and her face in her palms, phone jammed between her ear and shoulder. Inside her palms, Jen’s vision pulsed red and brown, with flickers of narrow bluish-yellow light.

  “Is everything okay?” Pam was asking.

  Jen had fallen into her palms and crawled out again. “Totally fine, sorry, I’m just being a space cadet,” she said. “I haven’t been feeling so well.” Feesowull.

  “I’m sorry, lady. That sucks.”

  “Thanks, I’m okay,” Jen said. “I—um—I meant to tell you—I’m—”

  “I think there’s some weird bug going around,” Pam interrupted. “People who usually get colds in winter are getting them now.”

  “I—” Jen stopped. Not now.

  Say nothing thanks for nothing

  “Maybe that’s it,” Jen said. “I’m getting a jump on flu season.”

  She tried to remember a time she had ever lied to Pam before, and couldn’t.

  “Yeah, makes me glad I’m a shut-in,” Pam said.

  “You’re not a shut-in. Hey, I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”

  “I can try.”

  “So we’re doing this video series about women who have overcome adversity—”