Will You Won't You Want Me?: A Novel

by Nora Zelevansky

  Marjorie grimaced. “Is it bad?”

  “Is it bad?” Tina repeated. “No, woman, it’s apocalyptic! I was hoping you’d been delayed for a real reason: maybe a sprained leg or a tiny car accident.” She emphasized the smallness of the hypothetical crash, holding the purple, bedazzled synthetic nails of her thumb and index fingers an inch apart. “Didn’t you get my calls?”

  Marjorie lifted her useless phone. “It’s dead.”

  “Well, girl. So are you.” Tina gestured toward the inner offices. “Might as well have at it. She’s not getting any less mad. Crazy bitch.”

  Normally, Tina disdained harsh language, not for fear of Brianne’s disapproval (the woman couldn’t survive without her) but to practice the good manners she preached to her two daughters. Today’s exception did not escape Marjorie’s notice and, instead of bolstering her, it made her more nervous: The situation must be nuclear. She took a step toward Brianne’s office.

  “Wait!” Tina yelped. “Your skirt is tucked into your drawers.”

  Marjorie closed her eyes, decided not to review the number of people who had peeped her underwear that morning, and untucked herself.

  She marched like a condemned criminal toward Brianne’s door and knocked. Herb, the intern with whom she’d joked about Snow Lite the day before, whisked it open from inside. Sunlight reflected off his greasy forehead. (Brianne had taken to calling him “Slick” behind his back, a nod to his oily skin.) Marjorie was relieved to see a friendly, albeit unattractive, face. But when she tried to make eye contact, he averted his gaze. She was too toxic to acknowledge.

  The lady herself sat behind an enormous desk, head bowed over a magazine spread. A selection of beauty product samples with floral packaging were clustered in front of her beside a transparent canteen of ominous green liquid. Apparently, Brianne was on another juice cleanse; her mood would be exponentially foul from food deprivation.

  Some happy client had sent a “good luck” bamboo plant, plucked from a Canal Street stall—a perfect gift for Brianne, who considered herself “spiritual” because, once in a blue moon, she paused mid-venom spew to do Downward-Facing Dog. An unused yoga mat dotted with peace signs leaned below a closed window; the air reeked of sage.

  Brianne wore the usual meaningful jewelry: an eighteen-karat-gold breast cancer ribbon, Peace dog tags, a diamond hamsa prayer bracelet hung with charms of the Chinese character for truth and the astrological symbol for Taurus: a bull. And yet the concept of karma conveniently escaping her grasp. As was the fashion, to manifest success, she believed she need only proclaim her desires out loud.

  Not long before, Brianne had attended a group meditation led by Amma, “the Hugging Saint.” (Gwyneth Paltrow was supposedly a fan.) Receiving the first genuine embrace after years of air kisses, she pronounced herself a devotee, espousing wisdom but never bothering to attend another gathering. On her desk’s corner was a framed quotation attributed to the guru: “Bliss is not to be found outside of us; it exists within us.”

  Bliss was nowhere in sight.

  The door banged shut. Marjorie glanced back: Herb appeared to be blocking her exit, the world’s puniest bodyguard.

  “Look who decided to grace us with her presence, Heeeerb.”

  “Marjorie finally showed—”

  Brianne shot him a menacing look: This was her show. He pressed his lips shut. She pulled off her reading glasses, smudged with bronzer. Supposedly into “natural beauty,” she fried herself at tanning salons, then spackled her hide with crusty foundation. The aesthetic was left over from a mournful adolescence spent wandering Akron’s Summit Mall, staring longingly after popular girls with high bangs on movie dates with boys named Chip.

  In fact, the PR bigwig tortured Marjorie as proxy for her Ohio high school’s prom queen, Krista Midvale. Brianne had been an obese teenager. She had not been tormented, but she still resented the kids who thrived as she sat at home on her couch, watching reruns of Remington Steele. At graduation, she swore success-based revenge. Unfortunately, Krista aspired only to have a loyal husband, two or three nice kids, and a part-time real estate career—all of which she had quickly achieved. At the one reunion Brianne dared attend, clutching an Hermès bag as a shield, Krista flashed the former fat girl (whom she barely recognized) a pageant smile, wishing her all the best. Bitch.

  “Brianne, I’m so sorry I’m late,” began Marjorie. “I was out last night at Mac O’Shea’s new place, DIRT. I thought maybe he’d let us throw some events there…”

  Brianne shook her head sharply. “Nope.”

  “So, there was this plumbing issue and…”

  Brianne wasn’t listening. She clicked an icon on her computer, and the printer sputtered to life, sucking a virgin sheet of paper into its jaws.

  “Um.” Marjorie said. “Um. Um.”

  Brianne signaled to Herb, who scurried to extract the page. She took it from him, then held it out to Marjorie, before dropping it “accidentally” to the floor.

  “Oops, oops, oops,” Brianne cackled.

  Full of self-loathing, Marjorie bent down, picked up the document, and skimmed it. As she read, horror set in.

  “It’s all set to send out as a mass e-mail,” said Brianne. “But the printed letterhead added something special for the presentation to you.”

  The letter read:

  Dear Colleagues,

  It is with great regret that I am writing to inform you of a rift within our Bacht-Chit Public Relations & Events family.

  Many of you have had occasion to work over the last seven years with an employee of mine named Marjorie Plum. I’m afraid there is no positive way to express this:

  Effective June 14, I was forced to terminate Ms. Plum’s employment, as a result of unsettling and erratic behavior, the exact nature of which I am not at liberty to divulge. Suffice it to say that our support and thoughts go out to her family during this trying time, and to Marjorie, as she seeks the lifetime of treatment she clearly requires.

  I want to take this opportunity to apologize for any unseemly or unprofessional interactions you may have had with Ms. Plum. I took her under my wing originally as a special mentee and felt it was important to give her several chances to right herself before closing our doors to her. I suppose I may have shown poor judgment in that empathic act.

  Most important, should Ms. Plum try to contact you, for your own good, I strongly urge you to ignore her calls and e-mails. Do not engage or reply. She is unpredictable, and I would never want to feel responsible for any negative or even dangerous occurrences.

  If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to be in touch.

  Yours in Peace, Love & Harmony,

  Brianne Brianne Bacht-Chit, Founder & CEO

  “I particularly like the part about your family,” said the demon behind the desk. “Good touch, if I do say so.”

  Marjorie was stunned. “I don’t understand.”

  “Then you’re even dumber than you look.”

  “Why would you do this?”

  “Well, you’re fired, if that isn’t obvious.” Brianne smoothed her overprocessed mop. “I could have let security escort you out; the prospect is amusing. But I can’t risk you badmouthing me. Unfathomably, people seem to like you. It’s probably a pity thing … Where was I?”

  “She’s fired!” yelped Herb.

  “Right. You’re a waste of oxygen, Madge. You may now leave. And if you say one nasty thing about me, I’ll send this out.”

  Panic and rage coursed through Marjorie. “You can’t do this.”

  “Actually, I can. You gave me ‘cause’ yesterday. BTW, kudos for taking absurdly long bathroom trips, so that Herb could hop on your computer and resend that e-mail to Snow Lite’s CEO from your account. What do you do in there?”

  Marjorie knew she hadn’t e-mailed the client. But her gut instincts had been undermined long before.

  Her face pulsed with adrenalin and shock. “You’re questioning my sanity? You’re the one who’s lost your
mind! You can’t just make things up. It’s called ‘libel.’”

  “I’m not so worried about that.” Brianne cracked her neck, side to side. “You’re a shoddy employee. Now you’ve shown up in yesterday’s dreary clothes, hours late, reeking of alcohol, so it’s plausible that you have a drinking problem—only a hop, skip, and a jump to a psychotic break.” She grabbed her green juice, captured its straw in her mouth, and sucked, eyes smiling above the dredge. The liquid had tinged her tongue black.

  Brianne nodded to Herb, who crossed the room and reopened the door.

  “Leave, please. Thanks.” She returned to her magazine.

  Fury rose in Marjorie’s chest. “Drink up, Brianne. You’ll still look like a giant rotting pumpkin. I hope you choke to death on your LOVE pendant.” She turned and stalked out of the room.

  “Did everyone hear that? Herb, please take note. The crazy girl threatened me.” Brianne shouted, “Madge, darling! Just FYI. This is me hitting Send.”

  Marjorie didn’t stop at her desk. She walked back down the hallway, past a wide-eyed Tina at reception, down the elevator, past security and out onto the street, then she threw up in a garbage can atop three empty Starbucks cups. Only then did she realize that her skirt was still caught in her underwear.

  5

  An hour and two minutes later, more by instinct than design, Marjorie found herself riding the elevator up to her parents’ apartment, thanking the doorman gods that she didn’t recognize the guy on duty. He had put aside the New York Post sports section and greeted her with formality.

  Her parents had bought their place decades before, when middle-class families could afford Manhattan living. Longtime members of the building’s staff were like distant uncles, offering wisdom and kindness as Marjorie grew up—helping her stash uncool wool hats pre- and postschool and warning her when yellow “alert” forms arrived from school reporting her misconduct.

  The day she got accepted to NYU, her father had shared the good news with their favorite doorman, Tommy, who dubbed her “Smarty Pants Plum.” She couldn’t have faced him today. The smell of the lobby alone—a familiar combination of Mr. Clean, honeysuckle, and Hungarian food—threatened to undo her.

  At the front door, Marjorie pulled out her keys and let herself in. No one was home. Her parents wouldn’t be surprised to see her anyway; they all had plans for dinner together that evening. She was exhausted, having walked from Midtown, the subway tunnels seeming too close to the depths of despair.

  She pulled an extra phone charger from a junk drawer in the pantry, then walked down the hall to her childhood bedroom and plugged it in. She stood at center, taking in her surroundings. A million years had passed since she painted one wall red and thumbtacked up pictures of Jared Leto in My So-Called Life and Scott Speedman in Felicity. Where was she when everyone else was getting a life?

  Marjorie crossed to a gray speckled bookshelf, filled with children’s staples like Encyclopedia Brown and Judy Blume’s Forever, classics like Pride and Prejudice and Little Women, comics from Archie to The Adventures of Tintin. The shelf’s disorganized twin bookended the bed. On the bottom was a defunct record player, and records from Marjorie’s early childhood—not cool enough to be dubbed “vinyl” by baseball-capped DJs—leaned against the side: Free to Be … You and Me, Really Rosie, Hans Christian Andersen.

  Behind that teetered a tower of small rectangular books. Marjorie felt a pang. When she was seven years old, her father bought her a black-and-white flip book of Charlie Chaplin duck-walking down the street, nearly beheaded by a passing lady in an enormous feathered hat. Despite the simple story, Marjorie had been taken by the still images launched into motion. She started collecting flip books, even making her own. She pulled out an original now: a roughly drawn flower growing from a seed. Flip. Flip. Flip.

  Random objects and loose papers cluttered the shelf above. (No one ever accused Marjorie Plum of neatness.) Lime green brocade peaked out. Curious, Marjorie plucked the item from beneath the layers and turned it over in her hands: That’s right! She and her fourth-grade classmates had written their own books. For the cover, she had chosen a material fit for a nineteenth-century English manor’s drapery. “Oh, my God,” she said, laughing.

  Suddenly, she felt like she’d fallen through a wormhole. She could distinctly recall crafting some story about a girl stuck inside a flip book (what else?). She’d left indelible teeth marks in many a pencil while her mother suggested big words like “imperceptible” and then instructed her to “look them up.” Now she thumbed to the book’s back, finding an About the Author written in her then unpolished hand (clearly ignoring any editorial guidance from the teacher, since the story itself was without mistakes) beside a Polaroid of her ten-year-old self in a flowered sundress and clunky New Balance sneakers.

  Marjorie Plum is a riter and artist. She will one day live in a big blue glass house, where she will rite storys for movies and books. She will have two cats named Bimpy and Bop, and a million freinds will visit to do art projects together. She will be very happy. She will never eat cooked carrots, EVER.

  Marjorie could hardly bear the innocence.

  Next, she excavated a blue leather coin-collecting kit with slots for pennies, their open mouths waiting to be fed. Mac, she thought, would relish this proof of her inner geek. Mac, Mac, Mac. Had he cornered the market on contentment? Was that the secret: spending nights tanked, mornings alone drinking high-end espresso, your only guiding principles anonymous sex and a good personal trainer?

  Marjorie’s phone finally sprang to life, a flurry of bings, bongs, and whooshes. Picking it up, she scrolled through: mostly texts from Tina, before and after the insanity.

  Massaging her aching head, Marjorie pulled her hair out of its bobby pins. Amid the nausea and upset, she realized with alarm that on some twisted level she’d been disappointed that the messages were not from Mac. She allowed herself for the first time that day (and she hoped the last time ever) to think about the night before: how they’d laughed after Vera left, how he’d looked at her after that first kiss, how they’d lain drifting off to sleep, pillow to pillow, his hand warm and comforting on her lower back. What felt right under the cover of night now seemed so misguided.

  She shook her head clear and looked around. She had been a child with interests beyond her own complexion and next vodka tonic. Where had she gone wrong? (One might point to a certain day in June 2002, when—in a silly maroon cap and gown—she accepted her diploma but never actually left the auditorium.)

  As if in response to her question, a photograph fluttered from the messy bookshelf onto the floor: A sixteen-year-old Marjorie sat on a neighborhood stoop with Vera and their other friend Pickles, swigging from a forty-ounce bottle of Olde English malt liquor. Pickles blew smoke rings, in challenge, at the camera. Marjorie’s crimson-smeared lips pushed against the bottle’s mouth. She looked like a child playing dress-up, cheeks full, eyebrows unplucked, free.

  Marjorie had distance from most of her teenage memories, which dropped away with her baby fat and abandon. But, for an instant, she was inside the picture, feeling the rough concrete under her thighs, smelling chocolate croissants baking at Zabar’s, nearby. And it was too painful. She dropped the photo, walked to the bed, and lay down on her side, exhausted. Tucking her legs up toward her belly, she pressed her hands together at her cheek, as if in prayer.

  6

  Marjorie awoke, disoriented and creased, to the smell of garlic sautéing in olive oil.

  Her outlook after a rare midday nap—when she rose to find the sun slipping away—was bleak, even on a good day. Now, as reality set in, she was miserable. What was she going to tell her parents? Should she wait until the end of dinner? Until second glasses of wine? Shit. She should have come armed with unemployment statistics and complaints about “big business!” (That was a thing, right?) Was it too late to occupy Wall Street? She never did like camping.

  She walked to the bathroom and looked at her disheveled self in th
e mirror. The Tiffany necklace she’d worn since high school graduation had left a red indentation on her chest—a scarlet heart. She borrowed white jeans and a slouchy French blue button-down from her mother’s closet, showered, dressed, then crept out into the living room. The Plums were nowhere in sight. The family feline, Mina the Cat—a Siamese with grace but not poise—leapt off an antique chair. She rubbed her spindly body against Marjorie’s legs and let out a gravely grunt, more smoker’s cough than mew.

  “Hi, Goof!” Marjorie scooped up the runt, who began grooming her human pal with her sandpaper tongue. “Okay, okay, okay. Thank you, but that’s enough.” The cat settled against Marjorie’s chest, a purring, kneading fur ball.

  Taking a deep breath, Marjorie crossed the spacious living room into the open exposed-brick kitchen: sweet potatoes baked in the oven, a roast chicken cooled in its juices atop the stove, a pot of artichokes steamed.

  “Mom?”

  “Marjorie?” The voice originated from a small adjoining office, once the maid’s quarters, typical in a classic eight New York apartment. “Is that you, sweetie?”

  “Well, I certainly hope so. Otherwise someone’s broken into your house and is kidnapping your cat.”

  Mina the Cat, unconcerned, snuggled in closer.

  “Coming, coming! Are the sweet potatoes ready?”

  “How would a person know that exactly? You know I burn water.”

  Barbara Plum appeared from around the corner, looking surprised—as she frequently did—by the delight she felt at seeing her daughter. Marjorie had not been a “miracle baby” per se, but she was a last-minute decision and the couple’s only child. Barbara had never liked babies and thought she wouldn’t want one, but, as she was fond of quipping, her biological clock simply ran slow.

  For dinner’s sake, she opened the oven with a checkered mitt before greeting her daughter. “They’d be brown and crispy, almost caramelized.” She had changed from workday clothes into a black T-shirt, yoga pants, and shearling-lined L.L. Bean slippers. Her gray-streaked, chin-length hair, once auburn like Marjorie’s, was tucked behind her ears. “Everyone burns everything until they learn to cook. You have to be bad to get good.”