Holding Out for a Zero

by Wardell, Heather

  “Valerie, I’m so sorry. I haven’t been getting you sugar-free coffee syrup. The workers are always so busy and it seems to annoy them, and I didn’t think 40 calories mattered enough to make such a bother over. After our talk this morning I do, though. I’m sorry. I’ll do it right from now on.”

  Forty calories. I took in forty extra calories every time she got me a coffee. Which was multiple times, most days. I’ve never once had only two hundred calories on a work day.

  No longer aimless, I stalk the four blocks directly to the office, letting rage bubble up in me and fuel my exhausted body, and storm into the first elevator. As it rises, I wish I’d waited for my favorite one, my lucky one, then push that thought away. Luck has nothing to do with anything. I don’t need luck. I’ve been wronged and I’m going to fix it. Wronged twice, by Andrea and by Elle, and I won’t let them take control away from me. Not when I’ve lost it everywhere else.

  I deliberately keep my eyes from the elevator’s mirror, not wanting to surprise myself with the sight of my body again like I did at the hospital, but when I stomp out of the elevator on my floor and toward some woman I don’t know behind the reception desk her shocked face tells me I look dangerous. Good. I feel dangerous.

  “Can I help—”

  “Where’s Andrea?”

  She blinks. “She’s gone home. Not feeling well.”

  More like not feeling brave enough to face me after what she did to me. Well, I’ll deal with her later. I spin around, ignoring the dizziness the motion causes, and am back at the elevator before the woman manages to finish asking me who I am. None of her business.

  As I rush out of the elevator on the executive floor, a receptionist looks up, her eyes widening at the sight of me, and says, “You can’t go in—”

  Too late. I’m past her and into the open area around which all of the executives have their offices. Where I should now have mine.

  “Listen up!”

  The receptionist gasps behind me, but I ignore her.

  “Listen up, you idiots!” I expand, even louder than before. “You damned fools!”

  Drew the chief information officer comes out of his office, and so does the human resources director and the VP of sales and everyone else, and then George and Jaimi out of his office, which will be hers tomorrow. And finally Elle, her eyebrows raised as much as the Botox allows.

  “What on earth—”

  For the first time ever, I cut Elle off. “You don’t even know what a big mistake you’ve made. Jaimi’s a nice kid, but she’s a kid. I taught her everything she knows. You could have had me but instead you took her and you’re… you’re fucking idiots!”

  “Valerie!”

  Elle sounds like she’s never heard anyone swear before, and that amuses me though I don’t want anything to. “What?” I say, fighting off the giggles that will make me look weak and silly. “Truth hurts? Go on, give me one reason other than that she’s young and cute and these old bastards want to stare at her.” Hearing my own words angers me even more and blasts away the inappropriate giggles, and I scream at her, “Give me one reason why you promoted her instead of me.”

  Drew begins to speak, but Elle gives him an imperious hand wave and he subsides. “I’ll give you several, Valerie,” she says crisply. “First, she gets along better with everyone than you do.”

  “Because she’s young and these guys are lecherous—”

  “With everyone,” she says over me. “Not just the board of directors. Receptionists, delivery people… she connects with everyone. You, on the other hand, were strange with Robert, and I’ve seen how you interact with your coworkers and those beneath you. In general you’re cold and distant.”

  “Like you,” I say, shock wiping away my fury. “Just like you.” Elle’s reserve is legendary, and I’d taken her as my role model from the beginning. Why isn’t she pleased with how I am? “And Robert reminded me of—” I cut myself off. She doesn’t need to know. “But the receptionists… Andrea’s a bitch… she gave me regular coffee syrup instead of sugar-free.”

  Several of the men laugh but Elle doesn’t. I see understanding and sympathy in her eyes, but I still wish I didn’t say that. I didn’t mean to, the words just fell out.

  As if I hadn’t spoken she goes on with, “We could have worked around your lack of connection with the staff, but the bigger issue is your insistence on having everything your own way. To be blunt, you make me look easygoing.”

  A man snickers then stifles it. Elle doesn’t seem to notice. She takes a step toward me, her expression softening. “I know things are hard for you right now with everything that’s going on, but this isn’t a new problem. You can’t handle it when things don’t go your way, when you’re not in control. I’m sure it affects your personal life as well. You need to work on that. It’s not healthy.”

  I stare at her. Isn’t the point of a chief financial officer to have the finances under control? “I won’t discuss my personal life with you,” I mumble, then say more firmly, “Anyhow, none of that is relevant to work. You haven’t given me any real reason—”

  “And finally,” Elle says, stepping back and resuming her usual icy air. “Jaimi’s proposal was perfect. Yours contained multiple errors. We were willing to cut you some slack due to the situation with your sister, but we simply couldn’t cut this much slack. And, as you say, we didn’t need to cut any slack at all since your personal life isn’t relevant to work.”

  I blink. “Errors?”

  She nods. “Mostly minor calculation problems, although one incorrect estimate you included would have cost us millions.”

  I tried so hard to make my proposal perfect. I went over it and over it. I caught a few errors, but… I left more in. Big ones. How did that happen? After all my work? I worked so hard. So incredibly hard. I did everything I could do while still losing weight and trying to help Gloria. I did everything I could do. None of it was enough.

  At the worst possible time, exhaustion fills me, and to my humiliation I have to grab hold of a nearby planter to keep myself upright.

  “But you said,” I almost whisper. “You said I was exactly what you wanted in upper management.” I gesture at my body in my tiny dress. “I look the part now, I’m smart and strong… Elle, please…”

  “Get her a chair,” she snaps, and someone pushes one up behind me. I refuse to sit for a moment but my legs are shaking so much I eventually have to collapse into it. Letting everyone see that loss of authority hurts so much I can’t breathe. Like Gloria.

  “Please,” I say again, then wince at the whimper in my voice.

  “Valerie, I—” Elle cuts herself off and looks around at the others. “You can go back to work now,” she says firmly. They begin to depart, the men shooting half-embarrassed-half-amused looks at each other and Jaimi looking at me like she’s going to cry before following George back to her new office, but the HR director says, “Perhaps I should stay?”

  Elle glances at him and nods, then turns back to me. “Look, the executive is more of a democracy than you probably know. Are you smart and strong? Yes. No question. Do you look the part? Absolutely. But it wasn’t all up to me, and even if it had been I would have been concerned about your singlemindedness and your lack of connection to others. Everyone, from receptionist to CEO, needs to be on the same page, and by your own admission that’s not happening.” Her reference to Andrea’s betrayal sends a snap of fury through me, partly at her but mostly at myself for telling her about it so she could use it against me, but she keeps talking. “We all work together here to make decisions, and I simply don’t see you doing that.”

  The finality in her voice wipes away the last of my resistance. I stare down at my aching feet in the expensive high heels I have just realized I hate, then I let my eyelids close because they’re too heavy to hold open another second. Without looking up, I say, “So you don’t run your own company. You don’t make the decisions. You just let them push you around.”

  The HR guy c
lears his throat, but Elle doesn’t wait for him to speak. “I am the designer, the visionary. No, I don’t make all the decisions. Sometimes I wish— but in this case, Valerie, I have to say I ended up being in agreement with them. You have a lot of work to do before you’ll be ready to be management.”

  Work that apparently Jaimi doesn’t need to do. Elle can talk all she wants about my attitude, but the truth is the men want Jaimi because she’s young and sweet and pretty and has never had a care in her life and will bow down and kiss their feet or whatever else they want kissed. I’m not any of those things. Those aren’t the things Elle values either, but she was overruled. She must hate this as much as I do.

  Eyes still closed, I reach for my anger and it returns to me and gives me the strength I need to try once more to get through to her. I stand, grabbing the back of the chair to keep myself upright, and look into her eyes. “I won’t work under her, Elle, I can’t. I know she’s just here for these guys to leer at, and I won’t work under her. You wouldn’t either, I know you wouldn’t. We’re alike. We need to stick together. I did everything you could want, I lost weight, I’m just like you… please….”

  Elle studies me for a moment, and I see something hideous in her eyes. Pity.

  I sway with a sudden horrible exhaustion, knowing what I’ve done even before she says, “We may be alike, but that doesn’t mean there’s a place for you on the board. And since you can’t work under Jaimi, I’ll have security escort you to your office so you can clear out your desk. I’m sorry it came to this.”

  I feel sure she is sorry. Not that it matters. I briefly consider backpedaling, but I’d told the truth. I don’t respect the board’s decision and I never will, so this is clearly no longer the place for me.

  I don’t trust myself to speak, so I turn and stalk away, trying not to show the pain in my feet or my heart.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Out on the street with a small cardboard box that contains all I took from the office, I stand for at least a minute trying to get my head around what just happened.

  Then I drop the box of crap on the sidewalk and walk away from it and my job and everything I’d worked so hard for. I gave it everything I could. I was working the night Gloria was attacked instead of out with her. And for what?

  Gloria. She didn’t look good when I was there, and I need to tell her I’m sorry for bothering her about her whereabouts.

  And, I realize with a certainty that makes my chest clench, I have to tell her how awful I feel about Anthony. We’ve never discussed it, none of us in the family have, but that nurse made it sound like she might not make it and I have to let her know I’ve never forgiven myself for taking our brother away from us.

  I make it into the hospital without incident this time, though if my feet get any more painful I might need a doctor myself, and go up to Gloria’s floor and down the hall to her room.

  Though they both have their backs to the door, I know it’s Mom sitting beside the bed, holding the sleeping Gloria’s hand, while Dad stands looking out the window.

  “Hi,” I say, “how’s she—”

  They both turn tear-stained faces to me.

  I freeze, my mind wiped blank. “No,” I whisper, backing away until I bump into the doorframe. “No.”

  Dad comes toward me. “Honey,” he says, his voice rough, “she’s gone.”

  “When?” I manage, wanting to hit him for saying it. Until he spoke the words, it wasn’t real.

  He puts his hand on my shoulder. “About half an hour a—”

  I don’t hear the rest. I jerk away from him then turn and run down the hall. Halfway to the elevator I trip in my stupid heels and fall hard to the floor on both knees, but I feel nothing. I get up, kick off my shoes, and keep moving, ignoring him and Mom calling me.

  I can’t stay there another second.

  What is the point, with Gloria gone?

  I should have been there. But instead I was fighting for a promotion to let me work with a bunch of people I hate. If I hadn’t been trying to force Gloria to tell me where she’d been, I wouldn’t have run off and I wouldn’t have been at the office and—

  And maybe she wouldn’t have died. Maybe I stressed her so much that she couldn’t—

  Again, again, I focused on the wrong thing, and again a sibling is gone forever.

  As I burst out of the hospital, I hear a child say, “Mommy, why doesn’t she got shoes?” but I don’t wait around to hear the reply. I take off down the sidewalk, bare feet on New York concrete, half hoping I catch some horrible disease. I deserve it.

  I only have the strength to run for a few seconds but after that I walk and walk, keeping my mind blank by making my body keep moving, and I don’t know where I’m heading until I end up there.

  I sink onto the pavement outside the ferry terminal, ignoring the quickly averted eyes of the people around me, and stare at the area where a random attacker changed the course of Gloria’s life. If she’d been five minutes earlier, or he’d been five minutes later, maybe the whole world would be different right now. I wouldn’t have gone after the size zero thing so maybe I would have been thinking better and wouldn’t have screwed up my presentation, and maybe I’d have received the promotion I’d been working toward since the day I started at the company.

  Maybe maybe maybe.

  I can’t bear the maybes. I’ve been seeking control since the day Anthony died, and I’d thought I had it, but now I know just how fragile that illusion is, how tiny and lost and alone I really am, how little I can do to make anything work right.

  I know, and the weight of it presses me to the ground so I can’t move.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Are you all right, Ms. Malloy? You seem… distracted.”

  I shake my head then wish I hadn’t as dizziness fills me with its sick sparkles. “I’m fine. It’s just been a challenging week. Please, carry on.”

  The recruiter studies me, then looks down at my resume for a moment. “Am I reading this correctly? You were employed at Elle Warhol until yesterday?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you’re already looking for another executive position?”

  I try to smile. “I need a job, of course.”

  “But the day after—” Her eyes widen. “And wait, I’ve heard your family name lately. On the news. You’re not the sister of—”

  I bite my lip. I’d been so hoping she wouldn’t make the connection. I can’t let her finish the sentence so I blurt out, “Gloria Malloy. Yes, I am.”

  She looks like I spoke in a foreign language she’s never heard before and she’s desperately trying to translate. “You’re… job-hunting? Today? The day after… that happened?”

  I’d actually emailed her yesterday, the day it happened, the day Gloria died, after I finally managed to drag myself off the pavement and go home, but reminding her of that won’t change her opinion.

  I didn’t have a choice. I walked into my apartment, saw my little pile of Gloria’s stuff to be investigated which had gotten me—and her—nowhere, and knew I couldn’t be unemployed. It felt wrong, dangerous. I don’t need a job right away financially since my savings are good, but I need something to do, something to occupy me. Something to keep me from thinking of the mess I’ve made of everything. So I looked up the recruiter who’d emailed me last year and arranged to meet her today.

  “I need a job,” I say again, snapping the rubber band on my wrist beneath her desk to keep myself calm.

  She keeps frowning and straightening out her face and frowning again, like she almost manages to understand then loses it again. “Don’t you have… things you need to do? Today, I mean, for your sister?”

  Arranging the funeral. My parents are handling all of that. I emailed them last night, because I couldn’t bear the idea of hearing them speak, and told them I could only help with the arrangements after work. They don’t know I got fired and I’ve caused enough grief for them that I don’t want to give them any add
itional worry. Mom’s reply was one sentence: “We will take care of it.”

  They don’t need me.

  They probably don’t want me either.

  My empty stomach clenches and I say, “No. Look, I’m only here to find a job. I don’t need your sympathy. Don’t want it either. Do you have something for me or not?”

  There’s a new emotion on her face. I can’t quite read it. But it doesn’t matter because her words are all too clear. “I do not. Take care, Ms. Malloy.”

  I give a single nod and walk out of her office, and I’m halfway to the subway when my exhausted mind finally interprets her expression.

  Disgust.

  Well, that’s understandable.

  I’m disgusted with me too.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Mom holds out a granola bar to me. “You need to eat. You had nothing at lunch.”

  I shake my head. I haven’t taken in a single thing but water and sleeping pills in the two days since Gloria died, and I can’t start now. Even the idea of food feels wrong. I went on the original diet to save her, and though I can’t see how not eating now will help anything it still seems like the only thing I can do.

  “Valerie,” Mom says, sounding tired and defeated.

  She sounded like that after Anthony died, and the awful memory tightens my throat so I wouldn’t be able to eat even if I wanted to. I take the granola bar, though, because I can’t stand being the cause of that voice, and she gives me a tiny smile.

  “Good. You’ve got a few minutes before the… the service starts, so eat it now, okay?”

  I nod, and she turns to go.

  “Mom.”

  She turns back. “Yes?”

  I don’t know. I don’t know why I called her back. “I… Mom, I’ll still do your anniversary party.” Words fall from me as I listen in shock. “I will, it’ll be great, you’ll see, we’ll—”