by E. C. Frey
My department is the entire tenth floor, far from the street. The Vice-President and the other officers are on the highest floor, the sixteenth floor, with a floor in between—a huge, cavernous, windowless affair anchored by a large desk. Prime real estate. A lone receptionist protects the higher floors from unauthorized invasion, from the lower floors and especially from others, those from the outside.
It is on the top floor that I will be giving a status report in three hours. Three hours to prepare for the top floor. Bob wants to know my progress on the Saxton matter. What about the OFCCP audit and all the other cases on my docket? Yes, he wants those too. But he didn’t want them until I asked. Why? Saxton, the CFO, is important, but the other things have as much potential for exposure for the company as his situation. What makes Saxton stand out to the exclusion of all others? Brown-nosing, I suppose.
Something flutters in my stomach. I didn’t have time to eat. That was a strategic mistake.
“Hi Heather. Back from lunch? You have several messages.” My secretary, Sharon, hands me a fistful of messages. Everyone has been at work while I’ve been wasting my time.
By the time I return the last of the calls, the sun has moved from my office window. Rain clouds hover. It reminds me of the shadow. The cold has settled, and I tug the cashmere sweater hanging on the back of my office chair from its place and pull it around my shoulders.
The cold leaches the warmth from my bones.
Was there an intruder?
Reality is a murky affair. I’ve been called crazy so many times, but maybe it is everyone else who teeters along that line between sanity and madness. Maybe sanity is something constructed to keep people in line, force them to conform to an idea of acceptable behavior that is only really right for those who wield the power. After all, people in power get to do whatever they want. It doesn’t really matter that there are rules everyone else has to play by. Those below the sixteenth floor own corporate rules books to remind them at all times. One sits on my desk. I even helped write it.
I am breaking my own rules now. I should be preparing for the status report, but I don’t want to. It is better to dream about that which is good instead of prepare for that which has the possibility of being bad.
I bought new paintbrushes this past weekend. I miss my old paintbrushes, but I like the new ones. I had to buy them to do an art project with Shannon. A memo was placed in her cubby at day-care. Dragonflies, birds, and flowers danced around the edges of the directions. They were making spring creatures with construction paper, grommets, and string to create a puppet show for an Earth Day picnic. Parents were invited to the 4:00 p.m. show next Tuesday. At the bottom was a cutoff section requesting an RSVP stating how many would be able to attend and whether anyone would be able to provide refreshments or paper goods.
I lifted Shannon into the seat of the grocery cart that day and we discussed the project as we worked through the produce section. Funny how she understands me better than anyone else. By the time we rounded the corner and headed down her “fun” aisle of cards and toys, we had decided on making a purple and pink polka-dotted spring dragon. He would be a kind dragon who would sweep us through the heavens until he landed on an island clothed in sweet-smelling flowers.
I threw everything we needed, including snacks, into the grocery cart.
Shannon clapped her hands and giggled. “Mommy, what’s our dwagon’s name?”
“I don’t know. What would you like to call him?”
“Sir Galahad and we’ll cover him in daisies, polka dots, and forget-me-nots.”
I smiled. “What do you know about Sir Galahad and forget-me-nots, funny girl?”
“Miss Cohen told us. He’s cute like Daddy.”
“Ah, the wondrous tales of Sir Galahad and King Arthur, who drew the sword from the floating stone,” I said. “Our dragon will be of pure heart and gallant mind.”
“Yep, and he’ll give all of us flowers, because we share.”
“Well, we’ll have fun, and we can plant daisies in the fields and forget-me-nots along the banks of the fruit punch stream.”
“Mommy, you’re so silly. The daisies and forget-me-nots are on Sir Galahad.”
“Well, maybe he rolled in them when he was playing on the island.”
I grabbed five bleach containers and placed them into the cart. A row of gloves dangled alongside the shelved bottles. I unclipped a pair.
By the time I hooked Shannon into her car seat she had solved everything. “Sir Galahad is a polka dot dwagon who wolled in flowers so he could wear lotsa colors. Sir Galahad is pwetty just like you, Mommy.”
Her joy was raw and honest. I hugged her.
I had tried to have children for years, had tried to give Brandon something for which he could be proud of me, but the doctors kept saying there had been too much damage. Damaged goods. All I could remember was the perpetual knot in my throat, like a noose tightening and shrinking against my dying body.
Then I was pregnant. It was a gift, a reprieve from disappointment and guilt. The doctors clucked. My advanced age and damage made it “unlikely” I could see it through. But nine months of anxiety later, I gave birth to a perfect baby.
Shannon made me visible again.
“Not nearly as pretty or as special as you.” I whispered the thought into the air, alive with nothing and everything. For a moment, I was of the world and engaged with it. It could all be taken away so easily. It always was.
“What did you say, Mommy?”
My daughter’s question reminded me which world I belonged to and I knocked the crown of my head against the car roof. Stars swam against the interior of my eyelids. Shit. My momentary dance with joy was exacting an unequally vast amount of pain. It always did.
“Oh, poor Mommy.”
The light of the parking lot was too much to bear. The dance was over. Perhaps it was no more than a walking dream, a dragon of my imagination. I slid into the driver’s seat and started the car.
“Mommy, Sir Galahad will fix it when we make him.”
“Thank you, honey.”
We spent the better part of that Saturday afternoon creating Sir Galahad. Shannon covered herself in string, glue, and glitter. I watched her with her tongue tucked between her lips. I didn’t care about dishes or any of the other things that would make the coming workweek bearable. I didn’t really care about anything but my beautiful little girl and her vision of a great dragon of sweeping power and beauty. My skin felt calm.
Brandon smiled as he watched us, but by dinnertime he had changed. “Don’t you think that project is starting to look a little too sophisticated for Little Steps Day Care?”
Shannon sighed. “Daddy, he’s not a pwoject. He’s Sir Galahad and he’s supposed to be special because he’s a dwagon.”
Brandon ruffled her hair. “I didn’t mean he’s not special, Shannon. He’s just a little sophisticated.”
“What’s sophisticated, Daddy?”
“It’s grown-up, Shannon.”
“Oh, like Mommy.”
Brandon’s cell phone rang. He looked at the screen as he moved toward the door. “I expect some perspective on your part, Heather.”
“Go answer your phone, Brandon.” I stuck out my tongue as he left. He always took up too much space. Shannon sucked in her breath and looked at me, wide-eyed. “Shhhhhh,” I said. We covered our mouths and giggled.
We ate snacks, and by bedtime we had made a dragon with multiple moving parts dressed in forget-me-nots, daisies, and polka dots. His head was a crown of expertly rendered tufts, his nostrils delicate but strong, his toes and nails defined, and his tail long and playful. Submitting him to my Fine Arts 101 class at Georgetown University would have been an easy A if I had been allowed to pursue such folly.
Shannon, clapping with joy, wanted to sleep with Sir Galahad. For those brief hours, a little girl and her magical dragon kept the demons away.
It never lasts. The shame is always there. I gaze out the window. Dotted with p
icnic tables, the patch of grass next to the parking lot remains barren of flight, birds or insects. Unnatural. The milder temperatures of April have initiated the sprouting of brush and tree. The branches and new leaves have fashioned together to form a perfect rendition of the daycare director’s disdainful look the morning we delivered Sir Galahad.
“Mrs. Collings, I believe the instructions were quite clear. The spring creature was to be designed and crafted by the children. That means we expect work equal to that of a four-year-old. You were merely supposed to be an aide or a guide. Since you’re older than the other mothers, I would’ve expected you to know better.”
What did age have to do with it? Her pinched face made her look older than me. “Shannon designed and crafted Sir Galahad and we were both immersed in his creation,” I said. “We had a wonderful time together. He’s the result of us working together. Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that what you’ve been saying to me? Spend more time with Shannon?”
The daycare director moved in closer, her voice lower. “I think perhaps you don’t understand what I’m saying. This dragon is more your creation and will therefore stick out when compared to the other children’s whose younger mothers followed the instructions. How will Shannon feel when she realizes how different her dragon is from all the butterflies and birds?” She straightened. “Come along, Shannon. I’ll take you to your room. Your mother has to go to work.”
I watched her back as she moved away. “A child should be able to shine,” I called after her. “We shouldn’t have to bend to everyone else’s idea of what we should be our whole lives.”
The director shook her head and, keeping her back to me, continued to walk down the hall.
Shannon turned, smiled, and waved.
The telephone buzzes. I am no longer watching my beautiful child.
Alone again.
The coldness of the office reflects the darkening day.
The room spins and I grasp the desk.
I don’t understand. How did he get here? I have not seen him in years, but I would recognize him anywhere. He has the same dark eyes. His hair, wild and unkempt, reeks of motor oil and decay. And fingernails that have shriveled with overuse, encrusted with the grime of a life unheeded and uncared for.
He sneers. I scream but no sound leaves my lips, my vocal chords freeze. He lunges and my papers fly from my desk.
In my scramble to free myself, my foot catches under the carousel of the chair. Propelled backwards, I hit the floor hard. I cannot move. There is no air. Quiet engulfs the room. If I only I could make my lungs work. In and out. My own exhale startles me.
God, help me.
I have to know.
I have to look.
I peer over the desk rim, but an empty chair and the remnants of the horror, a tornado of white paper strewn to the farthest reaches of the office, are all that remain. Where has he gone?
The telephone buzzes again. My hand approaches the air he occupied moments ago. I feel him. I know because I still remember after all these years. Sometimes you can’t forget things. Especially those things you wish you could. “Yes.”
“Are you all right?” Sharon asks.
“Yes. I dropped something, and when I went to retrieve it, my foot got caught in the wheels of my chair.” I try to project my voice, but it trembles. Sometimes Sharon makes me feel like an idiot, too. “Did you send someone in earlier?”
“No. No one has been to your office. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
Is Sharon lying? She must have let him in. There is no other explanation. She’s trying to drive me crazy, too.
“Do you need me?”
“No, I’m fine.”
I lie.
I put the phone down.
3 Eve
Time is running out and I’m still pacing the floor like that’s going to give me more space in my head to sort everything out. My apartment, small even by Manhattan standards, is murderously hot. The wood floor, old and well worn by the thousands of footsteps that have crossed it, reeks of fetid feet and shoe oil today. I tear off my camisole and hair and dust stick to my skin; I know there isn’t a chance in hell I’ll be able to get the camisole back on. The man in the apartment window across the street will get a good look when I pass by the bedroom window.
There is so much to accomplish before I leave for Africa. The things I have to get and to accomplish keep running into each other in a circular, chaotic fashion and I can’t seem to nail anything down and I’m not accomplishing anything at all and time is still running out and it’s running out even more than when I first realized there isn’t enough damn time. Worse, Jerome has stopped pressuring me to stay and has become silent and unavailable. He has abandoned me in every way but physically.
And before I get to Africa, there is Charleston. That is the sticking point with Jerome. How can I make him understand? I meet my childhood posse every year. Besides, I never lied to him. Well, maybe I never leveled with him either. But he wouldn’t have gotten it anyway. What was the point? It’s not like I could’ve told him when we first started dating, and now it’s just too damn late. The things that bind us as a sisterhood are not something I could have casually mentioned on a first date, or even a second date for that matter, and I’m not sure it’s something I can mention even now. If ever. Not if I want him to stick around.
Either way, he knew we were moving toward this point. We both put our cards on the table when we first made the leap and moved in together. I would be meeting my best friends in Charleston on the way to my job in Africa. Understood. And mind you, he laid down a few cards of his own and I’ve honored them. Like giving him time with his crew, for one. It’s not my fault he wants to change the rules.
I can’t and I won’t.
Especially now, with everything happening to Heather. Not after our last phone conversation. Heather has always been fragile. I knew she would need protecting the first time I saw her. She was the reason we banded together in the first place, and now she needs us. Someone is watching her. Stalking her. Her voice was frantic, her words disjointed. She couldn’t tell me if it’s a real person or a ghost. A ghost? A ghost showing up in her house. A ghost showing up at work. My girl, our girl, is losing it.
And then there is Africa. Africa looms, and there are not enough hours to do everything. How do I extricate myself from all these conflicting obligations without disappointing someone? Worse, I’m needed here. For the first time in my life after Sunny Hollow, I am rooted in a single place that does not include an escape plan.
I can’t breathe. I open the window, but the air is still and close outside. Car horns and sirens battle the air and crash against concrete and glass fortresses. Someone yells. The smell of piss and trash melting on steaming tarmac blasts my nostrils. Naked but for my jeans, sweat trickles between my breasts. Someone whistles. Yeah, that ought to get everyone’s jollies off. They are breasts, for crying out loud—just skin over a gland. Getting a hard on over a gland? Go suck a milk carton.
So, how the fuck can I go straight from Charleston to the Darfur-Chad border anyway? It’s impossible. My clothes for Charleston would be ridiculous in the refugee camp and I can’t send them to Jerome. We still can’t agree on whether he’ll keep my apartment or move elsewhere. We avoid the subject by sparring around it.
The phone is shrill and interrupts my thoughts. My worries ain’t goin’ anywhere anyhow anyway.
“Eve? Are you ready?” David’s voice is soft and musical—a contrast to his passion for development issues, different from the man with whom I have shared so much of my life, including an intense love affair in the heat of the Congo. But that was a long time ago. Jerome doesn’t know about David and I plan on keeping it that way. Jerome’s mental pictures of the jungle seem to grow more menacing as the day of my departure nears, and they only add fuel to our already difficult relationship.
“Almost. How bad is it?”
The satellite connection crac
kles.
“Bad. We’re not ready for so many refugees. There are around 25,000 already. Conditions are going downhill fast. We have to set up the emergency water system before the rainy season. Livestock are already dying. There’s no place to dispose of them or the human waste.”
If anyone can figure it out, it’s David. A water engineer for our aid organization, he was contacted to help with the emergent crisis in Darfur. Still, it surprised me when I found out we would be in the same camp.
Or perhaps I wasn’t. There was a certain inevitability to it.
I wrap the telephone cord around my finger, but it does little to root me to the safe, knowable space of my apartment. The memory of foul smells and corpses swelling in the breezeless heat twists a knot in my stomach. There is no greater injustice to the senses than a dead body surrendering to the excesses of a tropical sun. I put my hand to my mouth to catch my vomit, but it rests partway up and burns my throat. Well, that sucks.
“Great,” I say. “I guess we’re needed.”
David chuckles nervously. “We’re always needed.”
I close my eyes and begin to tip. The burn in my chest grows. “Yeah. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.”
“We were hoping you would come sooner.”
I knew this couldn’t be a social call. “I can’t. I have several loose ends here. I have to tie them up.”
“Loose ends? That sounds . . . complicated. A love interest? That’s unlike you.” David’s voice holds an edge.
I won’t play. It would only get his knickers in a twist. “Yes, but it’s not the only loose end. I can’t come yet.”
“We’re getting older. I guess I miss you. Us.”
I close my eyes. Please don’t do this. “That was a long time ago.”
“Maybe. We were different people then. Younger. I’ve changed.”
“So have I. I’m sorry, but I can’t go back.”
“Well, we’ll see. Go take care of your loose ends. We’ll be here. Be prepared. Rainy season’s going to be a bitch. We have a limited supply of cholera kits. I’m hoping more will come. Soon.”
