Been There, Done That

by Carol Snow

  I crept over to her bed. Hardly breathing myself, I bent my ear next to her mouth. I thought I heard something, but I couldn’t be sure.

  “Tiffany?” I whispered. Louder now: “Tiffany?” Nothing.

  I grasped her arm, gently at first, then harder. “Tiffany? Wake up!” I was shaking her now, squeezing her arms and rocking her from side to side. She was warm, I noticed in some corner of my brain. Still warm.

  Hours later, at the small local hospital where Tiffany had her stomach pumped, they let me see her. She was still sleeping but noticeably pinker. On my way out, I recognized a guy from the emergency crew who had come to our room with a stretcher. I asked him what I’d said when I’d called. I honestly couldn’t remember. “You said your roommate had killed herself,” he told me.

  “I thought she had.”

  There should be a lot more to say: about the outpouring of sympathy, about Tiffany’s recovery, about my acceptance of responsibility or at least of deeper empathy. I should be able to tell you about a later encounter, a nice lunch, perhaps, when a more-mature Tiffany made her peace with a more-mature me. Maybe I should tell you how we became friends, with me acting as the big sister I never was and that Tiffany never had. But the truth is, I never saw her again. And though I was almost giddily relieved that there still was a Tiffany not to see, once I’d sent a short, sympathetic note to her parents’ house in Buffalo, where Tiffany was sent for “psychological healing,” I felt downright euphoric at the idea of a Tiffany-free future.

  Still, it is hard to put her out of my mind. There are times when I am driving, or grocery shopping, or trying to fall asleep, and the what-ifs shoot uncontrolled through my brain. What if she’d taken prescription sleeping pills instead of the over-the-counter kind. What if she’d used a razor blade. A noose. A gun. What if I’d driven away, or fallen asleep. What if I had simply been her friend.

  Statistics tell us that, while four times as many women as men attempt suicide, four times as many men actually succeed. I tell myself that Tiffany didn’t really want to die, that her act was a cry for help. The alternative scenario is just too cruel: that the botched attempt was simply one more of Tiffany’s failures.

  Most of the hall slept through the whole thing. It was Saturday morning, after all. When the emergency medical technicians had left, I considered crawling into bed. But if I’d hated that room before, now it was unbearable. I left behind my posters, the bedspread and some of the duller textbooks. The rest of my things I stuffed into my wooden crates, and, when those were full, into plastic trash bags. I hauled the lot out to my tiny car and sped away through the chilly morning.

  I got back to Boston in just under two hours, a new—and final—record. I found a parking spot quickly; Saturday mornings, the streets are emptier than usual. I hauled my stuff up the stairs in three trips. Once I’d locked the apartment door behind me, I made a final call to the local hospital to make sure that Tiffany was going to be okay. They told me that she was awake and that the college had called her parents.

  It was ten o’clock in the morning. Jeremy would be waking up just about now. He was the last thing I thought of before I fell into a dull, heavy sleep.

  thirty-six

  “I hate it,” Richard said. “I HATE IT.”

  I stared at him and took a few deep breaths to keep from crying. “It has everything,” I said, my sweaty hands gripping the sides of the molded plastic chair. “Youth, crime, drugs. Class warfare. A chase scene. Even a surprise ending.” My voice quivered like a little girl’s. “It has everything.”

  He stood up and leaned over his pretentious desk. His cologne assaulted my nose. His nostrils were so close, I could see the curly gray hairs that needed trimming. “It. Has. No. SEX.”

  I took another deep breath. And another. When that didn’t work, I chose a focal point: a lighthouse on one of the magazine covers that hung behind his desk. At least I’d taken something from all those childbirth discussions Marcy’s friends were always having. “Perhaps you underestimate the American public. Perhaps they want more than sex.”

  He collapsed in his chair and laughed meanly. He rubbed his hand over his face, then shook his head and stared at the ceiling in haughty bafflement. “No one ever lost money from underestimating the American public.” He leveled his gaze. “And you can quote me on that.”

  He pushed his speakerphone button, and the dial tone blared. He rifled through his Rolodex, hit the buttons, producing a series of high-pitched beeps. The phone rang once before being answered by a crisp, “Tim McAllister.”

  “Tim. Richard here.”

  There was a long, pained sigh on the other end, followed by a resigned, “Yeah.”

  “You got Kathy’s story,” Richard said, more a statement than a question, though I hadn’t actually told Richard that I’d e-mailed the piece in the early hours of Sunday morning.

  “Got it.”

  Richard narrowed his eyes at me. “And?”

  For a moment I held out hope. What did Richard know? The man only held a position of power because of smarter ancestors. Tim would come through, if not personally, at least professionally. Finally he spoke. “I don’t know what she was thinking. We never talked about any burglary story.”

  Richard leaned toward me and tried to hold my gaze. I picked a new focal point, this time a black scuff mark on the wood floor. Richard’s shoes were always too shiny. “And now that you’ve had a chance to read the final version, what do you think? Was it worth all that time and expense?”

  Tim’s laugh lacked mirth. “Maybe we can sell it to the Mercer Weekly Gazette for twenty bucks. If there is a Mercer Weekly Gazette. Seriously, Richard, I don’t know what to say. I thought Kathy could pull this off. Obviously, I made a mistake.”

  They said their good-byes, and Richard hung up. My breathing was completely out of control. I was hyperventilating. “I’m sorry that the crime I uncovered wasn’t tawdry enough for you,” I said, finally.

  “You were sent on an assignment, and you blew it.” For once, he spoke softly. It was far less wonderful than I’d always imagined. “Seven weeks, and you uncovered nothing.” He shook his head. “I don’t think you even tried.”

  “I tried.” My voice trembled, but not too badly. “I asked questions. I tailed people. I looked around dark corners. And I did uncover things. Dean Archer is banging half the girls in the senior class.” There. That got his attention. “His wife doesn’t have a clue. The administration doesn’t have a clue, or if they do, they’re pretending not to notice. Don’t you get it? There is no prostitution ring. There never was. That girl in Tim’s office was making it up.” I sat up as straight as I could manage and forced myself to look at Richard’s face. “The burglary was all I had to go with. I didn’t write about a sex scandal because there was no sex scandal.”

  He stared at me. I really, really wanted him to yell. Finally he hit that goddamn speakerphone button again. The blaring tone made me jump. He pushed another button, and eleven tones raced past each other: redial.

  “Tim McAllister.”

  “I’ve got Kathy here,” Richard said.

  “Kathy,” Tim said evenly.

  “I was here before. When Richard called you.” My voice did that preadolescent squeak thing again.

  He was silent, undoubtedly trying to recall the exact words he’d said. “Ah,” he said, finally.

  “Remember Dean Archer?” Richard asked.

  “Sure,” Tim said, slowly, watching his words. “I had to convince him to let Kathy in.”

  “What did you think of him?”

  “Where are you going with this?”

  “Just play along.” Richard’s essential smarminess was returning.

  “He was, you know, normal. Boring but nice.”

  “According to Kathy, he’s fucking half the senior class.”

  Tim was quiet for a moment, and then he laughed. It was not a pretty sound.

  “I exaggerated,” I said. “I only saw him with two girls. And o
ne may not have been a senior.”

  “Even better,” Richard said. “Two girls in, what? Seven weeks? Impressive.”

  “If such things impress you,” I murmured.

  “Tell Tim how you got your information,” Richard instructed.

  I should have just walked away. My career at Salad was over, that much was clear. But I still felt the need to save face, to show I’d done my job and dug my dirt. I still felt the need to prove myself to Tim, even if he was turning out to be a bigger shit than I ever imagined. “Once I was walking around the campus in the middle of the night—you know, to see if anything seemed out of place.” This was the time I was skittering home from the library, terrified of my own shadow and wishing I’d packed a rape whistle. “I heard some rustling in the bushes, so I hid in the shadows until I could see who it was.”

  “And it was Dean Archer?” Richard asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Pretty sure. It looked like him. It looked like his car. He was with this dark-haired girl. He kissed her good night.”

  “And the other time?”

  “There were two other times, but once was with the same girl. At least I think it was the same. I didn’t really get a good look at her the first time. I went to his house to drop off a book, you know, just to stick it in the mail slot when I thought everyone was out. As I got near the house, he drove up. I was about to say something, when I saw her come from the side of the house and scurry into the garage with him. She must have been waiting. The dogs barked like mad.”

  “They did it with dogs?” Richard asked, sounding positively gleeful. Honestly, the man is both a moron and a pervert.

  “The garage has a door that leads into the house,” I said. “It’s less obvious than the front door. And the dogs they keep in the garage are less psychotic than the dog they keep in the backyard.”

  “Did you look in the windows?” Tim asked.

  “No!”

  “Do you know who the girl was?”

  “No. But I saw her going into an upper-class dorm, so she must be a junior or senior.”

  “And the other time?” Richard asked steadily.

  “Brynn,” I said, my voice gaining strength. I could make it appear that I’d learned everything I had about Brynn through my unquenchable journalistic curiosity and not because she used to be hot and heavy with my boyfriend. My ex-boyfriend. That young guy who I’d gotten naked with against my better judgment.

  “Does Brynn have a last name?” Richard asked.

  “Spalding,” I said. “She’s from Pennsylvania. I thought she might be involved in the prostitution ring—before I discovered that there was no prostitution ring. So I tailed her until I found her waiting for Dean Archer.”

  “In his house?” Richard asked hopefully.

  “A restaurant, two towns away.”

  “Maybe he was just talking to her about her classes.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Where’d they go next?”

  “How should I know? I left after that.”

  Richard exhaled, clearly fighting the impulse to scold me for not being more of a voyeur. “Anything else?”

  “That’s already more than I ever wanted to see.”

  “How do you know the girls aren’t prostitutes?” Tim asked.

  “I don’t,” I admitted. “That was the first thing I thought of, but—I don’t think so. I saw nothing to indicate this was anything more than an affair. Well, two affairs.”

  “What about Archer’s wife?” Tim asked, his voice flat.

  “I don’t think she knows.” I’d always assumed Tim had been faithful during our time together; suddenly, I wasn’t so sure.

  “But what’s her story? She wife number one?”

  “Two at least. Possibly three. Younger than he is but a lot older than these girls. He’s got kids from previous marriages. She’s got dogs. The dogs get more attention than the kids from what I’ve seen. I have a feeling he left his last wife for her, but I don’t know that for a fact.” I finally recognized the gnawing feeling in my stomach. I’d been mistaking it for humiliation, but at some point it had morphed into fear. “Why are you so interested in Dean Archer?” I asked slowly.

  Richard shrugged. “Always enjoy a good bit of gossip.”

  thirty-seven

  Despite their original agreement to give New Nation the edge, Tim and Richard released the story on the same day, three weeks after I had cleaned out my desk and said goodbye to my co-workers. In lieu of the usual catboat or sand dune, Salad’s cover pictured university gates (not Mercer’s, I noted), along with the heading, “Sex on Campus: The Story of a Dean, Two Students, and an Undercover Reporter.”

  I called Tim the minute I got back from the newsstand, hating the fact that I still knew his number by heart.

  “You used me,” I said.

  “If you had done your job in the first place, I wouldn’t have had to.”

  “How could you stoop so low?” I asked, my voice cracking. “Do you know what this is going to do to his wife? To those girls?” In an afternoon on campus, Tim had discovered the second girl’s name: Missy. He had even gotten her to talk to him about the affair after telling her that she wasn’t Dean Archer’s only “little friend.”

  “The guy’s a slime,” Tim said. “He deserves to be exposed.”

  “Oh, he’s a slime? What about you? What the hell were you doing kissing me when you were going out with Jennifer?”

  “I wasn’t going out with her yet. And besides, I was drunk.”

  “That’s the best you can do? Because I was drunk?”

  “That’s the best I can do,” he said quietly.

  Finally, I took a deep breath and said what I should have said years ago. “Fuck you!” I yelled and slammed down the phone.

  Dennis and I were three and a half hours into a Home and Garden Television Network marathon when the doorbell rang. For the first time in two years, my gut didn’t cry out, “Tim!” I no longer dreamed that he would show up unannounced some night, begging for forgiveness. He was not the type to beg, I now realized. And I’d gone past the point of forgiveness.

  Had I been alone, I wouldn’t have answered the door. It was pushing eleven o’clock at night: too late for kids selling candy or missionaries selling God—not that I’d be inclined to let them in, either. But with Dennis, I felt safe. In the four weeks since I’d rejoined the adult world, we had spent a lot of time together. We talked about everything: men, upholstery, careers, shoes. He was recovering from an unrequited crush on his boss, John, while I, of course, was trying to repair my broken heart, though who had broken it was up for debate. Dennis was like a woman, only better because he could double as a bodyguard or wedding date. Also, he’d helped me redo my living room. Now the walls were taupe, the armoire and coffee table a flat, distressed black. We’d stuck some black and white postcards in oversized white mats and hung them in a straight line, gallery style. Dennis had even brought over his sewing machine—despite all my years of doling out decorating advice, I never did learn to sew—which he used to make denim slipcovers for my couch and chair and sumptuous throw pillows in red Southwestern prints.

  I was making the most of my unemployment.

  “You want me to get it?” Dennis asked. I looked at the door and almost said no, but curiosity got the better of me.

  “Do you mind?”

  “Of course not, honey.” I love this man. I really do.

  It was Jeremy. I stared at him from my perch on the denim couch. He stared back. Then he looked at Dennis, who gaped at him with naked lust.

  “Dennis, this is Jeremy,” I finally squeaked.

  Dennis turned his head to look at me, blinked twice and regained his composure. We had already reached an agreement about men. He got all the gays, and I got all the straights. The bisexuals, neither of us wanted to touch.

  “I was just leaving,” Dennis said breathlessly.

  “I’ll tape the end,” I said. We
were nearing “the reveal” on our favorite design show, and while I appreciated his quick exit, I didn’t want to push the limits of our friendship.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said solemnly.

  I nodded, speechless. Dennis was a true friend.

  After he had gone, Jeremy continued to stand by the door, looking around the apartment but not at me. I stood up but stayed near the sofa. In a larger apartment, we would have been really far apart. As it was, only a few feet separated us, but it felt like miles.

  “Nice apartment,” he said, finally.

  “Dennis is just a friend,” I said.

  Jeremy shrugged. “Well, yeah. It was pretty obvious that he was gay.”

  “Right,” I said. Clearly, mine was the weakest gaydar on earth.

  Jeremy’s hair had grown a bit in the past month, making it even curlier and more unruly. He wore a plain navy sweatshirt over frayed jeans and high-tops. At the college, he’d looked comparatively mature. Here in my apartment, he looked soft with youth. I wasn’t sure if my urge to take him in my arms was carnal or maternal. The confusion was unsettling.

  “Do you want to sit down?” I asked.

  He shook his head and looked at the floor.

  “Can I get you anything to drink?”

  He shook his head again.

  “Food?”

  “No.”

  I sank into my couch. He stayed rooted to his spot by the door. “I’m sorry I lied to you,” I said.

  He looked up. “I don’t take it personally.” He held my eyes. “You lied to everyone.”

  I willed myself not to cry. “I was doing my job,” I said without conviction. “Chasing a story that never came to anything. All that stuff about the dean—I didn’t write it, and I never meant for it to be printed.”

  He snorted. “Right. So you were just hanging with us for—what was it? A slice of life? To see if times had changed?”

  I shook my head. “That was the official story. Truth is, I was chasing a rumor. Turned out to be false. This girl who’d gone to Mercer said there was a prostitution ring on campus. I got this stupid idea that Brynn and those other girls might be involved. So I followed her.” I picked up one of my lovely red-patterned pillows and clutched it to my belly like a shield against guilt. “I never meant for anyone to get hurt.”