by Lynda Curnyn
“I don’t know. Everything has just been…different between us the past few months. As if we’re only going through the motions of a relationship.”
“Maybe you’re just in a rut,” I said, desperate to find any reason why things had suddenly gone astray for the last two people in the world I was sure were Meant-to-Be. “I mean, isn’t Richard trying to make partner? He’s got to be under enormous pressure at work. And you’ve been working on that class action suit for quite some time….”
“Maybe.” Alyssa sighed. “But it’s like we don’t really even see each other anymore. I feel more like a roommate. The girl he shares the laundry hamper with.”
“You just gotta shake things up,” Jade said. “Do something to remind him that he’s living with a beautiful, intelligent woman who any guy would snatch up.” Then she arched her brows as sudden inspiration hit. “What you need is some serious competition to suddenly show up, give old Richard a run for his money.”
Alyssa immediately glanced at me with a guilty smile, and I couldn’t help but smile back, thinking of her vet and imagining how a man who probably spent a good deal of his day dodging dog feces was going to give Richard, a successful corporate lawyer who could probably eat him for lunch, a run for his money.
“What’s going on?” Jade asked, suspicious.
I looked at Alyssa, leaving the confession to her.
“Well…the truth is…I have met someone else.”
“You’re kidding,” Jade said, and I had a feeling she was wondering, as I had, how Alyssa always managed to keep the men coming, no matter what her circumstances. “Who? And most importantly, how?”
“You have to promise not to laugh.” Alyssa looked hard into Jade’s eyes.
“Laugh, nothing. If you’ve got some method I should know about, who am I to judge?”
“Okay. Well, I don’t know if this method would work for you, because it requires you to get a pet.” Alyssa paused, glancing at me for reassurance. “You see, Lulu hasn’t been feeling well lately, so I took her to the vet. And, well, the old vet retired, leaving his practice to a new, young…gorgeous…vet.”
“You’re sleeping with Lulu’s vet?”
“No!” Alyssa and I shouted in unison, the sound of my own anxious denial making me realize just how important it was for me that Alyssa didn’t do anything to jeopardize what she had with Richard.
“Then what? You’re sharing housebreaking tips? Flea baths? What?”
“Nothing is going on really,” Alyssa said. “It’s just…”
“She has a crush on him,” I said, butting in. “You know, puppy love.” Then I glanced at Alyssa. “Uh, no pun intended.”
“I don’t know if it’s just a crush,” Alyssa protested. “I mean, it’s just like you said you felt with Ted, Jade. I feel a real connection with him.”
“Yeah, well,” Jade said, “you can take that for what it’s worth, Alyssa.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—” Alyssa began.
“Look, no apologies needed, Lys,” Jade countered. “There’s just one thing you need to think about, and think hard. Just how important is this cute little pooper scooper to you? Enough to risk losing Richard for?”
When Alyssa didn’t respond, I turned to gape at her. “Alyssa!”
“Hey,” Jade said, lighting a cigarette and leaning back in a sort of blasé-about-relationships pose she’d adopted ever since Michael had torn whatever romantic streak she’d formerly had out of her. “If it means that much to you, I say go for it.”
“Jade, don’t encourage—” I began, but Jade leaned forward then, confidingly.
“But whatever you do, please do it outside of his office. I can’t imagine all those wee wee pads and antiseptics making for much atmosphere.”
“Ha, ha,” Alyssa said, lifting her drink to her mouth to try to hide her smile.
A smile, I might add, which said she was planning on doing just what Jade suggested, and with a man whose only distinction so far was in making Lulu’s most recent bellyache go away.
I had to face facts. Alyssa and Richard were truly on the rocks. And Jade, who I saw light up as our handsome waiter returned, had gone from Girl Who Couldn’t Get Enough to Girl Who Couldn’t Get It At All.
Then there was me, of course, who didn’t have a hope in the world of convincing the man I loved that he’d just made the greatest mistake in the world by moving across the country away from me, especially considering the fact that the creep hadn’t even taken a moment to call yet, even to say hi.
The question that was stuck in the recesses of my mind, wedged in tight by anxiety, suddenly wafted up, unbidden.
What would become of us?
Confession: Things could definitely get worse.
After an evening that ended with Jade—egged on by Alyssa—successfully securing our waiter’s phone number, I woke up the next morning resolved to make myself a smash success at Bridal Best. Maybe it was Alyssa’s encouragement, or maybe it was a rebellion against Jade’s utter disbelief in my decision, but I wound up spending part of Sunday preparing a presentation to make to Caroline on Monday, and giving myself a French manicure that I hoped would somehow raise me to some new professional level. On Monday I donned the only thing in my closet resembling a suit—a pair of black trousers that didn’t look too faded against the one black blazer I owned, and a white shirt that looked less than my others like your standard T—and headed for the illustrious midtown office where my new destiny awaited me. My intention was to discuss my decision with Caroline and get her approval to move on to the next step: persuading the Powers-That-Be at Bridal Best that not only was I the best candidate for senior features editor they could hope to have, but that I was, in fact, of one mind with the editorial mantra “Give me marriage or give me death.”
Once I arrived, I walked with purpose to my cubicle. I kept my gaze focused forward to avoid seeing any raised eyebrows over my sudden upgrade in office attire. “Confidence,” Alyssa had said as she hugged me goodbye after dinner. “All you need to do is show them how sure you are of your ability to do the job.” But all I could do once I sat at my desk in order to practice my seemingly unrehearsed speech was think about Sandra and Rebecca, sitting over lunch while Sandra dictated the surefire route to senior features editor to her protégée. How could I compete against that kind of inside track? Everyone knew what an incestuous business this was. It was as if the most coveted positions were carefully kept open for those chosen few who managed to emulate their superiors so perfectly that the Powers-That-Be couldn’t help but strive to make the little mini versions of themselves grow up to be the new Powers-That-Be.
Now one could argue that Rebecca, with her perfect boyfriend and her perfect bob and her stylish little silk blouses and knee-length skirts, did not even remotely resemble Sandra, who tended more toward a disheveled, layered look. But I was certain now that a bond had formed between them from the moment Rebecca had joined the staff. At the time, Sandra had recently joined the Happily Married, and I imagined her taking one look at Rebecca, with her pedigree schooling and her upwardly mobile boyfriend, and seeing enough of herself and her happy little life to reach out. After all, it had been only mere months since Sandra had landed her own financially stable husband and Upper East Side Duplex, and I’m certain she couldn’t help but see a dinner party with Rebecca and her beau as nothing less than a prime opportunity to bring out the Lenox china she had obsessed over and ultimately registered for in the months before she marched off to her ill-fated marriage. And despite the fact that Sandra had now, for whatever reason, just joined the Disastrously Divorced category, I knew that ultimately she had shared something with Rebecca that night—something that would only grow now that Sandra had given up her role as Successful and Married and needed to hand the mantle on to someone else. Someone as polished, as poised, as perfect as Rebecca.
How was I going to compete with that? Me, with my scuffed pumps pulled from the bottom of the closet and phantom boy frie
nd?
“Looking sharp,” came Marcy Keller’s voice as she popped her head around the wall of my cubicle and gave me a conspiratorial wink.
Feeling horribly grateful for the compliment, even coming from a woman more known for her calculation than her camaraderie, I actually smiled at her, which gave her just enough invitation to slide her spindly form into my guest chair.
“So you’re finally going to do it, huh?” she asked, in a kind of harsh whisper that suggested I was going to take a machine gun to my colleagues rather than go in to my superior to ask for a promotion.
“No better time than the present,” I replied with false bravado.
“I agree,” she said, nodding vigorously, eyebrows arched above her big black frames. “Especially since Rebecca has already put together her clips and her résumé and handed them in.”
“She has?”
“Of course.”
I glanced over the gaping “to be filed” box where I had stuffed everything of personal relevance, from bedraggled clips and old vacation memos to takeout menus for local eateries. “Do you think I should put together something before I go in to Caroline?”
Her gaze followed mine to the pile of papers, and I saw her eyes widen briefly. “Nah,” she replied, swatting her hand through the air in a gesture that suggested I was worrying for nothing. “That would take too long. You’re best off going in there and at least letting her know you are interested. Then, afterward, you could pull together something for when you go in to see Patricia.”
Suddenly I saw the benefits of befriending Marcy. She was a wealth of information on how to negotiate the politics of getting promoted. I hadn’t even thought of putting together my clips. I just assumed Patricia would have seen my work at one point or another. I mean, she is the editor-in-chief of this fine periodical.
“And I would probably try to include some clips outside of what you’ve done for Bridal Best,” Marcy continued, as if reading the unasked question that lingered in the back of my mind. “I think Rebecca included a bunch of stuff from that trade newspaper she used to work for.”
Panic began to invade me. Rebecca had other clips. What did I have, other than a few half-finished short stories and some self-deprecating poetry I had written during a previous post-breakup pity party? “Other clips?”
“You know, stuff you might have written freelance, or in a previous job,” Marcy continued, then sucked her cheeks in when realization struck. “Oh, that’s right. You’ve never had a previous job.”
She was right, other than my stint at waitressing and a run of office temp jobs that had resulted in nothing but callused feet and bad fiction. Even my illustrious career at Bridal Best was really a result of random luck and Caroline’s somewhat misguided belief in me.
“Have you ever done any freelance?” Marcy was asking now. She actually seemed really concerned for me, which I found oddly heartening. Maybe I’d had Marcy pegged all wrong.
“Not really,” I replied, my confidence slumping to an all-time low.
She studied me for a moment, as if trying to assign a promotability value to me and coming up short. Then she shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry about it,” she said, standing up. “I mean, after all, Rebecca was working on a trade publication anyway.” Her nose wrinkled, as if the idea that anyone would work for an industry newspaper that languished on the desks of some back office somewhere, rather than a magazine being prominently displayed on the racks at your local newsstand, was somehow distasteful.
“I guess,” I replied, unconvinced.
Glancing at her watch, she said, “Well, duty calls. Knock ’em dead, Emma.” Then after skipping somewhat merrily out of my cube, she popped her head back in, “Oh, and good luck.”
You’ll need it. The implication she had not voiced sped through my mind nonetheless as I stared at her retreating back.
Confession: My life has become some sort of inside joke—and I’m the only one who doesn’t get it.
“Come in, come in,” Caroline invited, once I finally gathered up the courage to actually go in and make my now somewhat pathetic-seeming bid for the senior features editor position. Thank God, I had Caroline to practice on first, before having to make my case to Patricia. Ever since I had come to Bridal Best, Caroline had been my champion, lavishing praise on my early writing efforts and encouraging me to go for the contributing-editor position when it opened up. Now, as I headed into her sunlit, plant-filled office, the shelves overflowing with everything from the international dolls she collected to photos of her and Miles, her husband, and their three picture-perfect children, I was glad she was my manager. But as I seated myself before her, it suddenly occurred to me that the theory I had recently constructed of the solid bond formation between Sandra and Rebecca didn’t hold water when it came to Caroline and me. There was no way I was the miniversion of Caroline, with her warm, loving home in Connecticut strewn, I was sure, with the hand-made crafts she excelled at and smelling of the fresh-baked cookies she tucked into her children’s lunch bags before sending them off to posh private schools carefully chosen according to each gifted child’s unique talents. Even her husband, a general contractor who was ever ready to build a new wing onto their already sprawling home to accommodate the next adorable addition to the Jamison family, seemed from some male mold I had yet to encounter in my own life. Not that I had ever been invited to said happy home or met the husband and kids, but I had gathered much from Caroline’s softly spoken stories at the communal lunch room table of the joys of family life. Even now, she was radiantly pregnant with Perfect Baby Number Four beneath her floral and feminine maternity dress. Everyone was always faintly amazed at how she returned to the office baby after baby, ever ready to do her part for the greater good of Bridal Best.
“I’m glad you stopped by,” Caroline said now, once I had made myself comfortable in the chair parked next to her wide desk, which was a maze of carefully stacked papers. Somehow, no matter how busy Caroline was, she was always prepared to offer you a chair and an ear to discuss just about anything that was on your mind, whether righteous indignation at your piece getting bumped from an issue, or dismay of a more personal nature, should you dare to share it with it a superior. Not that I ever did. And I wouldn’t dare share my recent Derrick Disaster with anyone in the office now that I was allegedly making so much progress in my life that a pro motion seemed like the next, natural thing. After all, whoever heard of a disgruntled editor and new member of the Recently Dumped making senior features editor at the nation’s most comprehensive guide to happily-ever-after?
“Did you want to talk to me about something?” I asked now, worried suddenly that Caroline, in her gentle way, was about to inform me that she had realized how seriously lacking I was in most areas of my life and work.
“No, no. Nothing specific. It’s just we haven’t really spoken in a while, and I was wondering how things were going. You know, sometimes with all the flurry of deadline pressures and, well, life, we forget to take stock of things. How are you?”
“Good, good. Great, in fact,” I replied, striving for the tone of a woman in charge of her life and ready to tackle any professional challenge that came her way.
“Wonderful.” She smiled, her hand going to her softly rounded abdomen and caressing it gently.
“How’s everything with you? Feeling okay, with the baby and all?”
“Oh, yes.” She laughed. “I’m an expert at this baby thing by now. Miles always jokes that I’m going to be given my own monogrammed paper gown by the maternity ward.”
My glance fell on the photo of Miles smiling out at me with the strong white teeth and tanned skin of a man designed to make a woman happy. “I bet you and Miles are just as excited about this baby as you were with your first,” I said, suddenly realizing I had forgotten the name of her first baby and hoping I would be saved from an awkward moment in this all-important friendly banter. After all, I didn’t want my seeming indifference to the children she loved more than life itse
lf to become glaringly apparent. It wasn’t that I didn’t care—her kids were actually quite adorable, at least in their photos. It was just that I couldn’t keep up with her output.
Fortunately Caroline saved me from disgrace. “Oh, we are excited. But my Sarah never lets us forget who is the oldest in the house. I swear the way she bosses her brother and sister around, I wouldn’t doubt she has a management position in her future.”
“Funny you should mention that,” I said, finding my segue and readying myself to take the plunge and launch into how I was verifiably the smartest, sanest and strongest candidate for a senior position with the magazine. Oh God.
“As you know—” I began, gripping the armrests in an attempt to take the tremble out of my fingers “—I was promoted to contributing editor two years ago.”
“Yes, and you’ve been doing a fine job,” Caroline said with a smile.
“Thank you,” I said, feeling a measure more confident and relaxing my grip. “During that time, I’ve been a solid contributor, often initiating ideas for articles and getting more involved in lay out. I even wrote a lot of the promotional copy on our most recent subscription contest.”
“Your copy was lovely, Emma, as always.”
“Thank you,” I replied once more and rather calmly, I thought, considering that my insides were shrieking I’m in, I’m in! “I think my writing skill, as well my strong knowledge of the magazine gained over the past four years,” I continued, “make me an excellent candidate for the open position of senior features editor.”
Caroline’s expression fell, eyebrows dropping down as surprise spread over her features. “Oh.”
Oh? My stomach plunged.
“Interesting,” she murmured, her brow becoming furrowed as she studied me.
Interesting? What did that mean, I wondered, my newly fostered hopes crumbling. “Um. I’m wondering. That is, I want—uh, what do I need to do to…uh, apply for the position?”
