What Nora Knew

by Yellin, Linda

  “I’m not smiling. And no eggs, thanks.”

  “Really? They’re excellent.” With one finger he pushed my computer lid down, then held out a forkful of eggs toward my lips.

  I took a bite, thinking maybe then he’d go away. They were actually really good eggs. “Happy now?” I said. “I tasted your breakfast. Maybe now I can do my work.” I raised the computer lid. He closed it again.

  “You know you like me, Molly Hallberg.”

  “Says who? You aren’t as charming as you think.”

  “You’re more charming than you think.”

  “Really?” I must have looked pleased. Too pleased.

  He smiled. “See how charming I am?”

  “I’m working.”

  “Would you like to have lunch?”

  I looked around. “Here? Like get a lunch menu? Or go somewhere else like we’re going to lunch? It’s nine o’clock.”

  “Your call.”

  “I have a boyfriend.”

  “He’s not your type.”

  “What do you know about my type?”

  Cameron patted his chest. “I know it well.”

  “Do you lie awake at night making up these lines?”

  “I mean every word I say, Molly Hallberg.”

  “Thanks, but I have a lunch meeting with my editor.”

  “Dear Deirdre.”

  “Ah, yes. You must be acquainted. From when you took over my article. Did you know your romance piece was originally my assignment?”

  For a moment he looked genuinely contrite; he sounded apologetic. “I knew it was somebody’s assignment.”

  “I especially liked the paragraph about feeling mesmerized by the journey. Very insightful.”

  “I didn’t know whose assignment,” he said.

  “Why’d you even want to write the piece? You’re a big-time author; we’re an online magazine.”

  “EyeSpy’s fun. Good-size audience. I used to write for magazines.”

  “Before you became a big to-do?”

  “I liked the topic. Who isn’t interested in romance?”

  I stared at him. He stared at me.

  “More eggs?” he asked.

  I shook my head no. He took a bite, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and sipped his coffee while I watched. I found it extremely disconcerting, the sexy way his lips curled in constant amusement even when eating scrambled eggs, generally not an attractive food for anyone to be seen eating. He looked good in a baseball cap. Better even; it hid his high hairline. And I let myself think, What if he really is sincere?

  He sat back in his chair; he seemed to be appraising me. “You’re like a fizzy beverage, Molly.”

  I asked, “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

  He called out to an imaginary waitress, “I’d like to order a Sprite, please!”

  The real waitress ignored him, too.

  He was acting like a man who liked me, and I didn’t want him to like me. No good could come of that scenario. But another part of me wanted to believe him. I liked how he saw me. That’s what it’s really about, right? Liking the you that someone else sees in you.

  “I have plenty of flaws,” I told him. He didn’t respond; he sat there waiting, I supposed, for me to regale him with my many flaws, so I started counting off on my fingers. “I steal Post-its from the office supply cabinet. I pay for one movie ticket, then sneak into a second movie to save money. I argue politics without knowing what the hell I’m talking about. I re-gift. I don’t wash the blueberries first. And I didn’t fly to West Palm for my cousin Frieda’s funeral. I lied and said I had the flu, but I didn’t. Don’t tell anyone.”

  “Our secret,” he said, easing forward again. “See, already we’re sharing secrets. That’s a positive sign.”

  “You tell me a secret.”

  “I’m afraid of heights.”

  “That’s not a secret. Tell me your flaws.”

  “I’m attracted to unavailable women.”

  “Married?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll ask. Are you married to your boyfriend?”

  That’s how it went. Scrambled eggs and verbal fencing. Lunge. Feint. Advance. Retreat.

  Cameron picked up my unused paper napkin, unfolded it, and started fiddling, rolling the edge and twisting it. Halfway down he fashioned a small rhombus shape. “What’s your goal in life?” he asked while focusing on his project. “What do you have your heart set on?”

  You’d think a question like that would be easy. And you’d hope your answer would be more profound than mine, but I told him about my column. How I wanted it. That it would mean I wasn’t a faceless writer. That I’d be Molly with a face.

  “You consider a column your big goal?” he said.

  “I’m not qualified to balance the national budget.” But then I told him about my essays, too. That’s the thing about writers; we’re often people other people find it easy to talk to. I count on that. But we’re the last people anyone should go divulging stuff to. I confessed to Cameron that I’d been working on a Wuthering Heights essay on how nobody brushed their teeth in those old romances and that’s the real reason Heathcliff and Catherine don’t have any sex scenes.

  Cameron played with the inner folds of the napkin. “Can I read some of these literary critiques of yours?” he asked. I said no. He said please. I protested. He insisted. With a final flourish he handed me a paper rose. I pretended to sniff it. How many napkins had given their lives on behalf of Cameron Duncan’s roses? He spun my laptop around. Typed something and swiveled it back with the screen facing me. “That’s an e-mail addressed to yours truly. Attach five essays. Or else.”

  “Or else what?” No one had ever asked to read my essays. Not my parents. Not Russell.

  “Or else something really bad. I’ll let you know as soon as I think of it.”

  “I’m shaking in my boots.” I attached the ones on Washington Square, Gone with the Wind, Pride and Prejudice. Seven of them. Then stopped as I was about to hit the send key. What if he hated them? What if he loved them and stole them? What if he never said anything? He pulled his chair around closer and pressed his finger over mine, the two of us clicking the send button.

  I know people are always saying things like my heart raced or my pulse sped up or there was this current of electricity, all of which I usually think is bullshit or bad writing, but that’s how I felt. The physical sensation of his finger on my finger pressing a simple computer key startled me. I had no idea I’d ever feel that way about e-mailing my essays.

  “The media portrays you as a player,” I said.

  “Good,” he said. “My publicist says the real me’s too boring.”

  “Why haven’t you ever married?”

  He moved his egg plate from my table and placed it back on his table, turned back toward me. Now he was counting on his fingers. “High expectations. I’m an idealist. I didn’t want to marry until I was thirty, and since then, a couple of women I might have married didn’t want to marry me. My writing. Book deadlines get in the way of dating. And, oh!” He leaned closer. “I have a shameful flaw. One most women don’t tolerate.” He sat back, grinned with the confidence of a man who knows he’s got a killer grin. “I don’t wash the blueberries first.”

  I closed down my computer, tucked my paper rose in my purse. “I can’t be late for my lunch meeting.”

  “That’s in three hours.”

  I said, “I have a boyfriend.”

  16

  Emily was out on vacation, which felt like my idea of a vacation. By the end of July the entire office slows down and remains that way through August. Readership dips, ad revenues shrink. Beach-bound employees disappear in droves. The ones who are still around leave early on Friday and return late Monday. Basically, we’re down to a three-day workweek.

  I’d requested the meeting with Deirdre. I wanted to plead my case with as few distractions around as possible, sit down mano a mano, womano a womano, and finally convince her why giving me a column
was for her own good and the good of EyeSpy, a way to increase loyalty, build a daily following, add brand value and create a unique property that only EyeSpy could offer.

  Those last two points were courtesy of my sister Jocelyn and her four years at Wharton.

  Gavin the assistant was also on vacation, so at 12:30 I stood in Deirdre’s doorway and tapped lightly, asked if I was interrupting, which clearly I was. Her desk was covered with wrapping paper and tissue and bows, and she was scolding her scissors. It wasn’t clear what the scissors had done wrong, but Deirdre was in a tizzy. She’s one of the bosses who need an assistant. I don’t know why she doesn’t get a substitute assistant when her regular assistant is out. She must figure training one’s more trouble than living without one. Or it may be her way of saying, See! I can live without you!—so that way the assistants never ask for raises. Which is pointless. Her assistants never last long enough to ask for raises.

  “Do you need help?” I asked.

  She looked up at me and frowned. “We have a meeting, right?”

  “Right.” I stepped into her office, but only two steps, in case Deirdre was in half a mind to throw that naughty scissors at my head.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with these Hallmark people,” she said, “but this paper’s impossible to cut, and it’s totally the wrong gift. Why am I even bothering to wrap this awful gift?” The gift was misbehaving, too. She held up a small box that had been hiding in her wrapping supplies, explained it was a gold money clip she’d gotten talked into by some evil salesman at Bergdorf’s. “Stephen won’t use a money clip! What was that salesman thinking?” She told me that Stephen and she, Stephen meaning Mr. Dolson, whose photograph graced the frame on Deirdre’s desk, were celebrating their twentieth anniversary that night and she’d be screwed if she didn’t have a decent gift for him. “So what is it you want to talk about?” she snapped.

  That was not a good opening for making my request, so I said, “Why don’t we chat on our way to, say, Tiffany’s?” Hopefully, no security guards would remember escorting me out. “A nice twentieth-anniversary watch or a jeweled tie clip? A leather desk set?”

  “They sell leather desk sets at Tiffany’s?” she said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who uses desk sets? Nobody uses desk sets.”

  “Desk set. Bad idea.”

  She grabbed her handbag. “We’ll buy a watch.”

  In the taxi, Deirdre called her publicist. A taxi, I must note, is an exceptionally small environment to share with a woman who wears heavy perfume. I envied our driver on his side of the divider. While I cracked a window, Deirdre asked the publicist if her anniversary was good for any PR angles. I found that touching. After she hung up, I asked why she didn’t make the Bergdorf’s salesman wrap her gift. She was back to normal Deirdre again; she laughed a throaty, low-decibel laugh. “I wasn’t putting money in that money clip.”

  I did not care to know what kind of IOUs for sexual favors or vouchers for carnal services Deirdre was wrapping for her husband. But they sure sounded more exciting than a watch. “Tiffany’s will do everything,” I told her. “Who doesn’t love that blue box?” Our cab stalled in a mess of traffic, a truck on one side, a bus on the other, two more cabs and a red light ahead of us. Deirdre banged on the divider for the driver to keep moving. She must have confused him with one of her assistants. “Twenty years,” I said. “That’s an impressive long time for a marriage. What’s your secret?” I was trying to engage Deirdre in conversation, keep her in a good mood before I went in for the kill. A more patient, rational person might have told herself, Gee, Molly, maybe you should table this discussion, come back another day, a more propitious, less-likely-to-get-your-ass-kicked day. But patience and I, we’re not such a good team.

  “Our secret?” Deirdre said. “Patience. One of the reasons I was hoping you could pull off Nora Ephron’s style on the romance piece was those couples in When Harry Met Sally. Not Harry or Sally or Carrie Fisher, but the other couples, the old ones. The movie came out the year I met Stephen. And when I saw it, I wanted to be one of those couples, build a life together and still find joy in each other years later.” This was a new side to Deirdre, a sentimental side. “One of the women said she and her husband met when they were counselors at camp; she said she knew right away, the way you know a good melon.” Deirdre sounded wistful, caught up in her memory. I had never heard her speak with such affection in her voice. Of course, I’d only heard her speaking to employees. She smiled. A tender-for-her smile. She said, “Stephen’s my melon.”

  I tried to dovetail the photograph on Deirdre’s desk with a rounder, more melonlike face. “That’s a lovely story,” I said. “A watch will be timeless.”

  Deirdre checked her own watch, slid open the little partition window, and barked at the driver. “Can’t you find a better goddamn street!” He shut the window and ignored her. Traffic began moving again. “Stephen’s a good egg,” she said, “a real peach; he’s my sugar.” Deirdre had just given me a recipe for cobbler. “I’d been dating someone else, but when I met Stephen, I could imagine myself as one of those couples.”

  In the men’s-watch section on the third floor of Tiffany’s, Deirdre reverted to executive decision-making Deirdre, scrolling across the glass display case, pointing and commenting, “Not the chronograph, nothing stainless steel, the gold one with the Roman numerals. . . . No, not that one. The one next to it. . . . Yes, that one!” She didn’t ask my opinions. I waited and observed, pretending I was Audrey Hepburn having lunch at Tiffany’s. The salesman in his well-cut suit with his well-cut manner presented Deirdre’s selection on a velvet tray. She picked it up, held the watch against her own wrist, handed the salesman an American Express card. The same woman who put a halt to lining the office garbage cans with plastic bags in the interest of saving money, who, when you asked her for a salary increase, responded as if the entire journalism industry would fold if the coffers were depleted of that extra $2,000 a year you sincerely felt you deserved, and who cut out free coffee in the office kitchen after the price of sugar packets went up, that woman was dropping $8,000 on a watch in under ten minutes. In my next life, I wanted stock options and a Christmas bonus.

  We were waiting for the salesman to return with a receipt and the blue box. Deirdre was busy straightening her wallet, arranging twenties with twenties, tens with tens. There no longer seemed to be an opportune time or clever segue to bring up my column. I’d blown my chance. Should have gone for it in the taxi when she was a captive audience. “Didn’t you want to see me about something?” she asked, zipping her wallet shut. So there I was at Tiffany’s talking about brand values and unique properties, tossing out whatever buzz words my sister had prepared me with, doing my best to convince Deirdre that a column called MyEye was an edgy, yes, daring concept, an advertisable proposition unlike anything Gawker offered; maybe I could even start it with my Thursday assignment; what a perfect example that would be! Of course, I’d need a headshot taken because columnists need headshots, but that could be arranged.

  “I know it’s a great idea,” I said. “I know it like a good melon.”

  * * *

  Thursday I jumped out of an airplane. It was an assignment, of course. I’m not someone who does that sort of thing casually. Gee, there aren’t any good movies this weekend; I think I’ll leap from a large airborne vehicle. But what better way to demonstrate my column-worthy daringness; and if things didn’t go well, I could always write an obituary column.

  The previous week Deirdre had left a note on my desk: This has potential!

  For whom? I wondered. A funeral director?

  Along with her note was a Groupon and an article torn from the Post about the booming interest in skydiving—3 million US jumps a year. No mention of how many US fatalities. A photograph showed two people wearing helmets and goggles and the kind of jumpsuits you usually see on gas-station attendants and prisoners. The people were strapped to one another with a harness that looke
d no sturdier than the straps on a backpack, their arms stretched out, their legs stretched out, like they were in the midst of doing jumping jacks when they happened to fall out of a plane one on top of the other, pancake-style. The image of a pancake is the main reason it had never occurred to me to go skydiving, the image of me as a pancake.

  The Groupon was for a company called Manhattan Skydive, so already I knew I couldn’t trust these clowns. If there’s one place in this world you won’t find a soft landing, it’s New York City, unless the sunbathers in Central Park don’t mind your landing on their towels. I checked out Manhattan Skydive’s website. I read about jumping from ten thousand feet and free-falling for four thousand feet. I read about not being allowed to wear sandals or high heels; they recommended running shoes. Made sense. Good for running away at the last minute. Drinking alcohol beforehand was also not advised. For me, it was going to be mandatory. When I made my reservation over the phone, I asked just how a company seventy miles outside Manhattan got off naming themselves Manhattan anything. The chirpy young woman—who was more interested in recording my charge-card number than answering questions—informed me that Manhattan Skydive did not refer to the location, but was meant to evoke the thrill and excitement of Manhattan. “Then maybe I should just stay in Manhattan,” I said.

  I rented a Zipcar for my seventy-mile drive. While driving through small towns and villages, past farmlands and cows, I imagined my funeral and my unusually flat, custom-made coffin with the one-of-a-kind lining supplied by Hallberg upholstery. My sister Lisa would fly in from Atlanta with the twins, making excuses for her husband, who had an emergency pool-equipment meeting in Asia. Jocelyn would keep checking her watch, complaining that the service was running long. My grandmother Shirley would carp about the folding chairs hurting her ass. Pammie would be busy rearranging her Memorial Day guest list, wondering who should get the Daisy Room next year.