“I’m sorry,” Jen said into Jim’s hair.
“I’m sorry, too,” Jim said into the sleeping bag.
“The answer is yes again,” Jen said.
“I think I knew that,” Jim said.
“I think the answer has been yes again for a while,” Jen said, “and I ignored it.”
“I think I knew that,” Jim said.
“I shouldn’t have,” Jen said. “I’ve drunk alcohol. I’ve ingested hundreds of milligrams of central-nervous-system stimulants. I’ve been on a dangerous boat. The boat was very bouncy. I got a sunburn. I was obliquely threatened with an antique machete.”
“It’s okay,” Jim said. “Early on, it’s okay. You can do pretty much anything. It’s a locked box.”
“I want to forget,” Jen said.
“Yolk sac,” Jim said. “Hermetically sealed.”
“I want to forget,” Jen repeated. “Until we know for sure.”
“Okay,” Jim said.
“Until we know everything.”
“Okay,” Jim said. “We’ll never know everything. But okay.”
They exchanged more apologies and affirmations, and rose to brush their teeth, and returned to the room.
Let It All Hang Out
Re: Contact Jen!
Not to sound like a stalker and I know this isn’t quite your aesthetic. But what if I gave you some photos of my ex and you did a Dorian Gray–style portrait of him? Rotting. Syphilitic. A corpse stuffed in a crawl space.
Only I want it for my walk-in closet, like a “skeleton in the closet.” Like a dreamcatcher or a gargoyle, warding off harm and evil spirits. The scarier the better. Hope I’m not freaking you out!
Re: Contact Jen!
Hey Jennifer, it’s Brian from Politics + Psychology magazine. We’re doing a special issue that’s a mash-up of history and contemporary psychology, where we’ll try to answer the question “Who was the happiest President?” We thought you could revise iconic portraits of commanders-in-chief to happyfy them: G-Wash flashing those wooden chompers, Tommy Jeff saying “Cheese,” Honest Abe cracking a grin for once in his life! If the idea appeals to you, I’d love to discuss further…
Re: Contact Jen!
3 questions 1) Do you do famous/fictitious people 2) Do you do site-specific work 3) Are you at ease in the spiritual dimension??!!? For my kitchen backsplash I would like a grid of painted “head shots” of hearth goddesses through the ages, Hestia the Greek, Frigg of Norse mythology, Julia Child, Martha Stewart, et al. I want the portraits to have a kind of dark pagan/Gothic feel. Do you know about the tradition of Slavic animism?
The words began to bob and weave on whitecaps of teary lethargy, and Jen, perched atop a closed toilet lid in a bathroom stall at LIFt, set her phone down on the tissue dispenser and rubbed her eyelids with her thumb and forefinger. During low-traffic intervals in the ladies’ room, Jen could eke out a micro-nap in relative privacy and comfort, with elbows on knees and head in hands and immediate access to at least two viable receptacles for the contents of her stomach. Jen had been hunched in this position for twenty hazy minutes or more, her nauseated trance unbroken by Petra’s wheezing breast pump or slamming stall doors or Donna’s chatty bangles or the stifled cries of a freshly humiliated intern.
The fatigue had returned just as the Animexa had to be withdrawn, of course, transforming Jen’s brain into a sulfurous swamp, wisps of anesthetic steam rising and veiling the half-submerged trees and clotted vegetation, curling in yellowish plumes around her head, then fragmenting and reassembling in an illegible typography of acid-rain skywriting.
MURFLE
MMMMPPHHHAH
MRRRGING
MTEETNNNGN
“Oh!” Jen blurted, the vowel bouncing against the stall walls and smacking her in the face as she stood up and scrabbled for the top of the door, clinging hard until the vertigo dissipated. She’d forgotten a mandatory all-hands meeting that had started a half-hour ago, a presentation based on LIFt-funded surveys demonstrating the negative psychological impacts of “emotional labor” on women. Jen pushed the stall door open, drank in the havoc in the mirror—the pink lab-rat eyes, the tetracycline-gray teeth, the tubercular pallor-and-flush—offered herself a queasy little salute, and pushed out the door onto an office floor denuded of people. The lack of their ebb and flow upped the volume on the whhooooossshhhhh and heightened the treble frequencies on Jen’s general sense of irreality, but it was only when she reached the conference room that she knew she was hallucinating.
There, gesticulating before a fully staffed and stocked conference table in a sharply tailored three-piece suit, clean-shaven and bright-eyed, holding not a machete but a PowerPoint laser wand, was Baz Angler.
“What these surveys are telling us is that organic honesty is the only answer,” Baz was saying as Jen slipped through the door, the downward momentum of the closing statement in his voice. “It’s a universal answer—everyone has access to organic honesty, no matter what stage of life. That’s what’s so empowering about it: There’s no price tag or barrier to entry, no group you have to join. Everyone can benefit. I know I can. But nobody can benefit more from the organic-honesty concept than working moms!”
Baz Angler began tossing his pointer from palm to palm. Jen expected him at any moment to reveal its retractable blade.
“Let’s be real for a moment. And don’t think even a regular guy like me hasn’t noticed. Society expects working moms to be happy, upbeat, positive, and uncritical at all times, in the workplace and at home and at all points in between,” Baz Angler was saying. “And if the inside matches the outside, more power to you. But women are carrying a burden heavier than the child in their belly or on their hip, heavier than the paperwork and baby bottles spilling out of their handbags, and that burden is the burden of the lie.”
A comic stock image appeared onscreen of a business-attired woman at a computer, looking down in dismay at her mouse mat to see her hand gripping not her mouse but a supine sippy cup.
“When you smile and don’t mean it, that’s a lie. When you swallow your frustration or your disappointment, that’s a lie. And when the lie becomes the habit, that’s the boulder on your back and the chip on your shoulder. The lie can bend your spine and pull your muscles and corrode your insides. The lie wants to infect you!”
He paused, licked his lips, breathed in and breathed out. Just for a second, Jen could espy the blade-wielding-homesteader Baz beneath the smooth corporate friend-of-a-good-cause Baz.
“We have to fight back,” Baz continued. “So let’s stop lying to ourselves. Let’s stop lying to each other. My God, let’s stop lying to our children, above all. This is where you women have the edge on us men, because there’s nothing like motherhood to make you honest. I’m no expert, but I’ve got a hunch that nobody ever told a lie in the throes of childbirth.”
“Ho, ho,” Karina said, as a discreetly pixelated image of a woman in active labor appeared onscreen.
“Motherhood—fatherhood, too, in its way, but especially motherhood—strips you down to your instincts and builds you back up again, and you’re powerless to front and feint in the face of that love and that pain and that ultimate test of your endurance. That primal instinct—it can see right through you. Motherhood is labor enough, so stop taking on all this extra emotional labor. For women’s sake, for men’s sake, for children’s sake. Let’s stop trying to keep track of all these lies we’ve told. Let’s set ourselves free.”
Baz Angler held the laser pointer in a benedictory spirit toward Leora. “Leora, what have I missed?” Baz shrugged and grinned in a confident performance of diffidence as he took his seat.
“Now,” Leora said from her seat, “this isn’t opinion. This is all based on our own research, not to mention our own lived experience. We have the empathy gene. We have the nurturing gene. We have the gene of emotional openness. That’s what makes us mothers, each and every one of us. Those are the essences of femininity, the roots and wellsprin
gs of womanhood. Organic honesty helps us feel those roots and helps us draw from that wellspring. Organic honesty is an organic kindness that will break those chains that make us front and feint. Organic honesty will shatter that happy façade that becomes a prison. When you push down your true feelings, they rot and fester inside you, which can negatively impact not only your emotional health but your physical health, too.”
“Don’t invite that kind of negative energy into your life!” Baz added. “Don’t seal yourself up and sicken yourself inside a prison of lies. Organic honesty. It’s up to us to live a real life.”
“Just let it all hang out!” Sunny said, widening out her eyes and wagging her head approvingly. “Ayy-men, brother. Finally, it’s like”—Sunny exhaled hard—“such a load off!”
“These ideas and thoughts should shape everything the foundation does going forward,” Leora said. “They are the rock beneath our theory of change.”
“So thought-provoking, Baz, really,” Karina said. “We’re so fortunate to have your perspective on this. And nice to hear these kinds of affirmations from a man for once, am I right, ladies?” Karina added, casting the rest of the room a roguish sidelong glance. The rest of the room tittered and cooed in abashed affirmation.
“My dear friend Baz and I have been talking about this concept of organic honesty for as long as we have known each other,” Leora said. “But one of the many reasons I called upon him now is that we were starting to feel a bit—a bit sequestered.”
“Haha, boys don’t have cooties!” Sunny giggled. Baz was staring at his phone.
“It’s such an interesting perspective,” Karina added. “I mean, we’re out here living these truths every day, and—”
Leora was staring at her phone.
“We should open the floor for discussion,” Karina said. “What’s on everyone’s mind, gang?”
Whhooooossshhhhh
“Wonderful, Baz, just wonderful,” Leora said to her phone.
“Baz, looks like you got the first word, the middle word, ay-and the last word,” Sunny said, shaking her head in amazement.
“But aren’t you—we—basically talking about overthrowing the social order?”
Jen, subsiding against the wall, was as surprised as anyone in the room to find herself speaking. She leveraged her shoulder blades to push herself off the wall and inadvertently flipped off all the overhead lights.
“There’s a difference between honesty and disclosure,” Jen continued, one hand flapping behind her to switch the lights back on. “Just because I don’t tell you everything I’m thinking at every second doesn’t mean I’m lying to you. Privacy doesn’t make you sick. I mean, Baz—”
“I remember you!” Baz exclaimed, fluorescent lights flickering on and off his face. “Julie!”
“Yes, it’s me, Julie!” Jen said to the wall as she swatted at the light switches.
“Now this,” Baz said to the rest of the room, his eyes wide with secret-disclosing excitement, his arm fully extended to waggle two proprietary fingers toward Jen’s back, “this is a woman who tells it to you straight. Julie here is a role model for the kind of organic honesty that we’re proposing.”
“Such a role model she thinks she can just swan in and out whenever she feels like it,” Donna said, not quite under her breath.
“But wait,” Jen said. “If we were to do everything that you’re proposing, Baz, could we even be sitting in this room with each other right now? We would kill each other!” Bertha Mason rattled weakly at the door, then retreated.
No one replied. Baz Angler’s arm retracted in a dying fall. But she had begun, and she couldn’t stop.
“Also, I’m wondering—kind of a more big-picture issue—when we say all these things about how women are more this and less that, even if we’re praising women, isn’t that kind of counterproductive?” Jen asked. “To say that women are categorically one thing or the other? Part of the whole point of ‘empowerment’ or whatever we’re going to call it—I know we’re not on board with the word feminism as an institution—but the general idea is that women don’t have to conform to prescribed roles. I mean, being empathetic and nurturing and emotionally open are great things, but I don’t think a woman should beat herself up if those aren’t her super-strongest qualities. Not every woman has to be a mother, you know?”
“You’re misunderstanding the research,” Sunny broke in. “What we mean is that the maternal instinct is a metaphor for—”
“But even in saying ‘instinct’ we’re saying that motherliness is hard-wired into us,” Jen interrupted. “Right? I don’t think a tough, unmotherly woman is necessarily acting like a man or compensating for being a woman—maybe she’s just a tough woman. I’m rambling, but it’s just—feminism, sorry, I mean, empowerment isn’t about backing ourselves into a corner with compliments, and it’s not about anybody telling you who you’re supposed to be or how you’re supposed to act or policing your affect in order to win entry into the womanhood club. We’re all already in the club. It’s over. I mean, you’re not in the club, Baz—”
Bertha Mason tapped one ragged fingernail against the door. Baz watched Jen impassively, chin cupped in palm, one finger tapping his temple.
“But the club—the club that matters is who has power, and—and um, sorry, I lost my train of thought—and people who say whatever they want, whenever they want, probably have power already,” Jen said, her voice quavering and dipping steadily in volume. Her heart clapped at her throat, as if to dislodge the choking words. “Power and money and status. Saying exactly what’s on your mind isn’t empowering. It’s just symptomatic of power.”
Donna stared at the conference table with her head slightly cocked, as if she were receiving repeated blows to the skull and contemplating the best words with which to articulate the pain. Sunny was trying to make eye contact with Donna by drumming her fingernails on the table. Karina was wince-gazing over Jen’s shoulder. Daisy’s brow was knotted and she was nodding pensively. Leora and Baz scrolled their phones in tandem.
“Well,” Donna said.
Leora, stirred by Donna, looked up from her phone. “You know, I agree with the group—that word, feminism, it limits us. I prefer humanism.”
“Toe tally,” Sunny said, headbanging.
Karina smiled. “Shall we wrap up?”
Jen walked back to her desk, cheeks ablaze, heart kickboxing. She sat without seeing at her monitor until a surge of nausea overtook her. She looked around wildly, saw that she would not have time to reach the ladies’ room, lunged forward, and heaved into her wastepaper basket. Daisy appeared beside her with a half-full bottle of water and, over Jen’s feeble protestations, draped a puce beach towel of unknown provenance over the wastepaper basket, replaced it with the basket from her own desk, and turned toward points unknown to deposit the contents of the used basket.
“It’s going to be better this time,” Daisy said to Jen’s back a few moments later.
Jen twisted around to look at Daisy, hot cheek pressed against the open top of the water bottle. Daisy met her gaze. Jen knew that eye contact was hard for Daisy.
“I didn’t know for a while, this time,” Jen said. “Or I did but I didn’t. I wasn’t hoping. I wasn’t paying attention. I should have been paying attention.”
Daisy finally looked away as she arranged a stray strand of hair behind Jen’s ear.
“How did you—how long have you known?” Jen asked.
Daisy shrugged. “I sit two feet away from you all day, every day,” she said to Jen’s earlobe. “You are the closest person in the world to me.”
Statement of Accounts
Re: Contact Jen!
My girlfriend and I were just talking about how cool it might be to have our portraits painted, but instead of from the front, they could be done from the back—head/hair/back of the neck. It would still call on your amazing technical abilities, but the viewer of the portrait could project his/her own ideas onto it.
Re: Contact
Jen!
Would you ever consider a commission to paint people’s dreams? Not like people would describe their dreams to you. I mean, what if we hooked up sleeping people to a brain-wave scanner that decoded their dreams? Or maybe you could make a diptych of the dream and the scan?
Re: Contact Jen!
Hi, Jen, your payment should have come through via direct deposit by now. Please do let me know if there is any issue with the transfer. As always, it has been a pleasure for Mrs. Durbin to work with you. Warm wishes, Dakota
Jen tabbed over from email and opened her online bank account. Her lungs filled themselves with a muffled shrieking effort, and she clapped her hand over her mouth, her breath wooing back again through her fingers.
She folded her hands on her desk. She was comfortably seated in a still pocket of time, no turbulence, 70 degrees Fahrenheit, pH balance of seven. She had no idea when this pocket of time would expire.
Inside this space, as her amygdala dozed, as the volume and resolution of the world whirring around her faded out, Jen could not discern whether she was about to make a strong decision or was merely succumbing to impulse. What nudged her out of her seat and propelled her across the LIFt floor to Karina’s office was the same prod that pinballed her back and forth across that floor hundreds of times before: a helpless sense of obligation.
In this case, though, the sense of obligation was to the idea that Mrs. Flossie Durbin had initiated a transaction and that it was up to Jen to complete it. Mrs. Flossie Durbin had rented the pocket of time for her.
Jen entered Karina’s office and sat down without asking permission.
“So I just wanted to tell you, and this is such a hard thing to tell you, but that I’ve decided to leave the—”
“Bummer, we’ll miss you,” Karina broke in.
“—the foundation—oh! Yes, it’s a difficult decision, obviously, but I—”
Break in Case of Emergency Page 26
