I have trouble deciding how to sign it too, whether I should say Love or Best or Regards. I settle on XO, though I spend a lot of time with XOXO, and then XOXOXO, and then just with X and then just an O. I forget which means hug and which means kiss, and I am not sure if I want to give Andrew both or just one. More than one of each seems excessive, desperate even. One without the other, weird. Love is too warm, too confident that he will forgive me.
I finally just hit send on my original draft, tap the key hard so I can’t take it back. And my e-mail is off somewhere, out of my control, en route. I picture it like a tangible thing, the letters pushing through wires under the city in a neat row, making suction sounds; as it goes from my apartment to Andrew’s uptown, it moves faster than the 6 train.
People like to say that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. There tends to be a whispered reverence around the expression, as if it has magical healing powers. Better to be hated than ignored by that angry ex of yours; better to be hated than ignored, generally.
Otherwise, you may spend your life staring straight down the barrel of the opposite of love.
But I think that’s bullshit. Nonsense print copy for a paper towel. A sound bite to needlepoint on a throw pillow. Could indifference really be worse than hate? How depressing to think we could be spending most of our days surrounded by people who feel something worse than hate toward us.
I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it. Because if I did, I wouldn’t be able to pick up the phone right now. Instead, I would have to deflect indifference with indifference and not call my father back.
But, of course, I do. Of course, I pick up the phone and dial his cell for probably the sixth time in twenty-four hours and wait for the click over to voice mail. As I practice my message in my head—something slightly angry, but not overtly confrontational—I hear my dad’s clipped voice pick up.
“Hello, this is Kirk Haxby.”
“Hi, Dad,” I say. “It’s Emily.” I clarify as if he has more than one child.
“Hey, sweetheart. How are things going over there? You find my father yet?” He chuckles at his joke, as if Grandpa Jack gets lost all the time, as if I were making a fuss over nothing. I feel myself start to lose it, my body letting me down as usual by producing tears when I am just angry.
“Dad?” My voice starts to shake, and I fold myself over. I rest my head on the kitchen table, feeling its coolness against my forehead. I can’t decide if I should ask my father to come to the rescue, to make sure I’m doing all the right things by Grandpa Jack, or if I should go it alone and tell my father to go to hell. Leave him to run Connecticut instead of our tiny family.
“Dad, yesterday was really serious.”
“Excuse me a second, Emily.” I hear my dad cover the phone and talk to someone in the background, something about a fax and six copies. His tone is harsh, and I imagine the people who work for my dad find him intimidating. I wonder if some of them have murderous fantasies about him, like I do about Carl. “I’m back. Sorry about that. I’m all yours. What happened?”
“Grandpa Jack wandered off. Ruth and I found him in a random diner. He was disoriented, Dad.” The tears start now, one by one, a slow progression down my face. I don’t wipe them away. And I don’t let them creep into my voice. “He didn’t recognize us.”
“Damn it,” he says. I hear him brush another aide away, saying in a warning tone “Not now.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” he says to me. My father has switched over to political mode, his voice in control and in charge. In a way it is a relief, and I feel my body surrender the responsibility.
“Apparently he has been getting worse for a while. Last time I visited he seemed fine, but I don’t know. Ruth tried to tell me, but I didn’t listen.” I say this like a confession, though I know my father is as guilty as I am. He hasn’t been to Riverdale in months.
I tell my father everything in detail—Ruth and I looking for hours, my grandfather not recognizing us, the doctors saying he will only get worse; I leave out that Grandpa Jack mistook me for my mother.
“Okay. Well then, we are going to have to get him nurses, full-time care, move him to that other wing. We need to check into his insurance. Let me get my assistant on the line. She can help.” As usual, detail before emotion.
“It’s all done. You didn’t call me back yesterday, so I did it myself.” That is my only dig, a small one, but I can tell by the pause that follows, he notices. It might be cruel of me, but I hope he feels the impact of his absence.
I give my father the rundown. The Blue Cross Blue Shield, the floor switch, the PCP’s telephone number. I, too, stay with the details. Like my father, I find them soothing, one of the few ways in which we are alike.
“He has a neurologist appointment next Thursday. I’m hoping to go, but I may get stuck at work,” I say.
“I’ll go,” my father says, surprising me. “Of course I’ll go.” I hear some more noises in the background, as my father tells his assistant to rearrange his schedule. He is coming to New York.
I lift my head up and rest my neck on the back of my chair. I close my eyes and don’t say anything for a few seconds. My tears leak horizontally now, bleeding into my hair.
“Emily?” he says. “You still there?”
“I’m here, Dad.”
“Emily, I’m sorry. I’ll be there soon.”
“I know, Dad.”
“I’m glad you were there yesterday. I…I didn’t know.”
“I know, Dad.” Better late than never, I think. A cliché for a belated birthday card, but I hold on to it nonetheless.
“I love you, you know.”
“I know, Dad,” I say, which is, of course, a lie. What I want to say is I know, Dad. I know you don’t hate me.
Fourteen
I do not say good morning to Marge when I pass her at the security turnstile on my way into the office. For the first time in my five years at the firm, I don’t say “Hello,” or “Good morning,” or “How are you,” or even nod. Fuck you, Marge, I think instead. Fuck. You. I direct all of my rage at her, by not even glancing in her direction, by not acknowledging her existence, revenge for every time she has ignored me. Today, Marge is everything that is wrong with my life, and I feel all of it at once, a rush of anger aimed at an impenetrable target. I hate Marge for a million reasons, but mostly because I know she won’t notice my slight. And so my hate just slides to the floor like a puddle at my feet, a fucking yellow puddle that I step in as I walk by. Fuck you, Marge.
As I get into the elevator, an ugly man in a beautiful suit runs to catch the door. Carl. I immediately press the close button, but Carl is too fast for me. He sticks his hands between the doors as they slide shut, and when they reopen, he shuffles into the glass box. He flashes a triumphant smile, and it is clear to me that, as with everything else he does, he sees this as a victory. Fuck you, Carl, I think, as he takes up space in my elevator. Fuck. You. But I don’t say that, and when Carl says, “Good morning,” I don’t have the luxury of ignoring him. He is still, dick notwithstanding, my boss.
“Morning, Carl.” I leave off the “good” intentionally, my tiny act of rebellion. I don’t want him to have a good morning, and in fact, I’m not so sure he even deserves to have a morning at all. I know plenty of people who deserve it more.
“Emily, I’m glad I ran into you. We got some boxes in on the Synergon matter, and I need you to do the review.”
“Some boxes?” I keep my voice calm, though I already know what’s to come. I can tell by his mock casual tone that he is about to drop a shitload of work into my lap. A document review, no less. Which means a shitload of the most tedious work you can imagine, work that can drive you to drink or to masturbate in the bathroom, work that is normally done by someone far more junior than me. Work for someone who has yet to pay their dues. I have paid my dues. For five fucking years. Fuck you, Carl.
“Yeah,” he says, prolonging the agony on purpose. “Six hundred
and seventy-eight boxes, to be exact. And they need to be reviewed by next Monday.”
“Impossible,” I say. “We need to bring in some juniors, then. There is no way I can look at all of that stuff by next Monday. Six hundred and seventy-eight boxes?” I cross my arms in defiance, which has the unintended effect of drawing Carl’s attention to my breasts.
“Nope. Emily, I want you to do this. You know this case better than anyone else. I don’t want a stupid junior associate screwing this up. I trust you.” I know Carl is attempting to spin this assignment as a compliment, and although it may have worked on me a couple of months ago, today I’m not biting. I refuse to spend twenty hours a day for the next week in a conference room, doing nothing but reading page after page for Synergon.
“No way, Carl. I can’t do it,” I say, proud of myself for standing up to him. Maybe I can change, I think. Maybe I can finally be someone who gets the right words out.
“Yes, you can do it.” Carl looks me up and down, seemingly evaluating my worth, evaluating whether he wants to be sharing this elevator with me after all.
“And what’s more, Emily,” he says, as he steps off at his floor, “you will.” His timing is perfect. The doors close behind him, like a period at the end of his sentence. And when I respond, I am left talking only to myself, my image reflected in the mirrored doors, half of me on each.
“Fuck you, Carl,” I say, out loud this time, anger forcing me to enunciate each and every sound, my mouth enjoying the sharpness of the letters. But what I really mean to say, again, is not what comes out. What I really want to say is Fuck you, Emily. Fuck. You.
When I walk into my office, the first thing I do is check if Andrew has e-mailed me back. He hasn’t. I tell myself that he will, that eventually words from him will be on my screen. At this point, I don’t think so much about what he might say. I only worry a response may never come.
“Where were you Friday night?” Mason says, as he walks into my office without knocking. He sits down in my guest chair, crosses his legs, and peeks at me through sleepy eyes.
“You look like crap, darlin’,” he says, before I have a chance to answer his question. His voice is tender, and I can tell he does not mean it unkindly.
“Fuck you, Mason,” I say, but without any force behind the words. I smile at him to show that I’m kidding. I make a mental note to work on improving my language, because you never know when there might be children around. That’s just what I need to add to my conscience these days. Corrupting a minor.
“Seriously, you okay?” Mason asks, though his tone sounds more curious than concerned.
“Hanging in there. Rough weekend.”
“Wanna talk about it?” Mason leans forward in his chair, as if to say You can talk to me, but then he sits back again, as if to say Or not.
“No, not really. Sorry, I had to leave the party early. I would have liked to hang out.”
“You missed my fantastic costume,” he says, as my phone rings. The caller ID tells me that it’s Carl. I ignore it and pull some tape from the dispenser and start wrapping it around my finger. I make a transparent Band-Aid.
“Really? What were you?”
“I was a prom king.” A prom king? I stop fidgeting for a moment and take a long look at Mason. He has always been handsome, of course, but today I notice for the first time his long eyelashes and how they curl upward at the end, like the special effects in a mascara commercial. Perhaps Mason and I were meant to be, like the Burger King and the Dairy Queen. Maybe he has been in front of me all along.
“Seriously?” I visualize Mason’s latest girlfriend, Laurel, and try to remember if, the one time I met her, they looked happy together.
“Nah, I’m kidding. Heard your costume was great, Em.” Maybe not. I banish the thought of Mason and me having sex wearing matching tiaras.
“I would have liked to have gotten a good look at your purple dress, though,” he says, and winks at me. My phone rings again. Carl, a second time.
“Do you need to get that?”
“No, it’s Carl. Maybe if I ignore him, he’ll go away. What were you really, Mace?”
“Ah, nothing special. I took the easy way out. I wore my old Texas gear. The cowboy hat, the cowboy boots, my too-tight-for-New-York Levis. I looked hot.”
“I’m sure you did, darlin’.” I give him my best Southern drawl.
“You have no idea, sugarplum.” He winks at me again, and I laugh, because only Mason can pull off winking at a girl twice within five minutes. “So, I saw Andrew and Carisse chatting up a storm at the party. They seem to have become fast friends.”
“Yeah? I didn’t notice.”
“Really? Because I thought that’s why you rushed out.”
“I didn’t rush out.” He gives me a look that says Come on, I saw you, I saw you and your purple dress. “All right, I rushed out. But not because of that. To be honest, I don’t really want to talk about it.”
“Fair enough. But just tell me this, are you okay, Emily? I’m starting to get a little worried. You’re like a walking zombie these days.”
“I know. I’m fine, though.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“You swear on your mother’s life?” One question is all it takes for me to realize that Mason doesn’t know me very well.
“I swear,” I say, and he leaves my office, satisfied.
Ignoring Carl does not make him go away. He leaves me three messages and sends me six e-mails over the next half hour. I need to leave my office to take some time to consider my next move. I refuse to review Carl’s six hundred seventy-eight boxes. I can’t do it. I won’t do it. I think about getting back onto the elevator, imagine pressing the button for the ground floor and walking out of this job and into the anonymity of Park Avenue. Letting my body feel the fall weather, its crispness a welcome slap in the face. Maybe I don’t even have to clean out my desk. I can leave the old me and its stuff behind. The Synergon files. The picture on my desk. Start over. Maybe I can take on a new name, an alias, one with transforming powers. A better, stronger, articulate me. Just keep walking, I will tell myself once I hit the revolving doors. Just keep walking.
But I don’t have the courage to walk away like that, and I actually quite like my name, to tell you the truth. Instead, I take a left out of my office and go straight to the ladies’ room, keeping my head down as I walk. Once inside, I feel an immediate sense of relief, even before I empty my bladder. I love the APT restroom, with its black marble countertops and platinum faucets that reach up and over in an elaborate arch. The sink basins come out of the walls in defiance of gravity. And the best part of all, the stalls are huge, larger than the dressing rooms at Bloomingdale’s. It is the kind of place, barring the attack of unpleasant smells from a coworker, where a girl can go and get away for a moment. I hide in here often, in the second stall from the right, and watch the parade of indistinct black high heels move under the door.
I sit on the toilet and squeeze my eyes shut. Maybe if I can’t see anything, I will be able to block out the images that keep flashing in my head. Andrew’s eyebrows crunched together in confusion when I broke up with him and then spread out again in a tight straight line at the party. Carl’s plaid boxers in the hotel room. Carisse’s triumphant smile. Grandpa Jack looking right through me. Grandpa Jack seeing my mother instead.
I feel my body begin to relax, and I let my head roll to the side. I conjure up the Sounds of the Ocean CD I sometimes play late at night, and I find it easy to re-create, because, after all, I am in the ladies’ room. I listen to waves crashing and receding away, picture hot sand between my toes. My mind wanders away, and I drift off.
I’m not sure how long I sit like that in the stall, but based on the stiffness of my shoulders and the drool on my face, it’s been a while. I wake up to the sound of my secretary calling my name and knocking loudly on the door.
“Emily, are you in there? Are you okay? Emily?” she asks.
“I’m fine. I’m fine. I’ll be out in a second,” I say, and prepare myself to leave the safe confines of the stall. You can do this.
“Carl is looking for you. He’s been calling every five minutes, and he swung by your office a couple of times. Not for nothing, but you should probably call him back.”
“The man is out of control.” I pull myself together and try to make it look like I wasn’t just sleeping in the bathroom. I straighten out my pantsuit, pray that I don’t have marks on my forehead from resting it against the metal toilet-paper holder, and walk out of my stall.
As if on cue, I hear myself being paged over the loudspeaker.
“Emily Haxby. Emily Haxby. Please dial extension 670. Please dial extension 670. Emily Haxby, please dial extension 670.” Carl’s extension.
“He is going to be the death of me,” I say to Karen. Her eyes are sympathetic, and she reaches over and touches my head. A maternal gesture, and I feel a rush of love for her and lean into her hands. At least I have Karen. At least my secretary loves me.
“Honey, you have a little piece of toilet paper in your hair.”
I stomp down the two flights of stairs to Carl’s office. The clacking of my shoes against the cement creates a loud drumbeat. I can’t even go to the bathroom in peace. How dare you, Carl?
I don’t knock when I enter Carl’s office. I just push the door open and walk in, like I own the place. I am livid. Fuck you, Carl. Fuck. You. I sit down in his guest chair, and he looks up at me, surprised at my impolite entrance.
“You rang, you stopped by, you paged. What can I do for you?” The sarcasm drips from my words. I cannot force myself to be civil. I take a couple of breaths, hoping it will take the edge off, but the oxygen only inflames me further. I want to hurl my legal pad at Carl’s head. I want to punch him. I want to poke him in the eyes. I want to knee him in the nuts.
The Opposite of Love Page 12
