The New Order

by Karen E. Bender

  And I remembered the time, not long ago, a coworker called security on me. I had done nothing but wait in the office for a meeting that had never been scheduled. I just hoped that if I sat there long enough, it would begin. I had worked at the company for six years and the supervisor of my department, a man with a head the precise shape of an egg, had said a week before, looking down, shyly, as if he were asking me on a date, that they would not be able to pay me for my work anymore. They were tightening their budget. I had done nothing wrong. I thought of showing him my checking account, wondering if that would make him change his mind, but I did not. I thought about what he said and the next day, I walked into the office because there was no one watching and I sat in the conference room waiting for the meeting that I was not supposed to attend because I did not work there anymore. I sat with my files and presentation, waiting five minutes then ten, then fifteen, walking around the room and touching the black vinyl chairs, wondering who would be sitting in them, what they would think of me, then noticing the secretary watching me through the glass, walking in and asking, her voice trembling, “Are you waiting for someone here today?” She had put in my termination paperwork the day before. I should have said, “Arnold,” the head of the department, “I would like to meet with Arnold to discuss plans for the week.” Just saying that in a determined voice would have made them think yes, what idiots we are, we must promote her and fire these other three employees instead! But I did not speak up. I sat in a chair, waiting. A couple of flies began to buzz around me, as though I were dead. I swatted them away, but they kept coming, with a curious intent. The security guard, a man named Henry, came into the room, examining me with a puzzled expression, for he had seen me walk into this office many times before, but now I was not supposed to be here. And the security guard stared at me in shock with, I thought, the same expression as my sister; perhaps he, like Janine, running into my room many years ago, had seen something peculiar and troubling in me.

  I still felt the guard’s hand, firm, on my shoulders as I walked out. He had a large hand, and his grip was oddly paternal, but it was just firm enough to tell me I was not allowed there anymore.

  That was another time I had not spoken up for myself.

  I thought of, years ago, the time I drove around, looking for the person I thought I loved. I was too embarrassed to ask him the location of the restaurant where we were supposed to meet. We knew each other as classmates, at our university, where we both took courses in beginning French, and practiced ordinary conversations in which he was a shopkeeper and I tried to buy an orange, a baguette, and a chicken, and then I was a doctor and he tried to ask for a shot. This was a few months after my sister had been killed (a bike ride, rushing off from her job, wearing no helmet, the part I did not understand), and I was in a daze in which I did not want to converse in English, which was my language of daily life. It just felt wrong to say anything in this language at all; it described nothing precise about the world. I took French because I liked the way it sounded. I met a student there who wanted to practice with me after class. There was something in our fake conversations that made me feel ridiculously alive, as though we actually briefly became the shopkeeper or coffee shop owner or doctor or teacher in the study guide, even though we could barely sound out the syllables, though sometimes we would, and it made me think that our conversations in English would free me in the same way, that we would become larger and more beautiful versions of ourselves. The way his bronze hair gathered in the sun made me want to touch it.

  And then one day, after our semester had ended, he asked me to go to dinner, in French, and then he said to meet at this restaurant, at this time; he laughed in the way that made me think we understood each other, and I thought I understood all of it, but I was so full of anticipation and the hope that I would feel differently talking to him, I said yes, I would meet him there. But he was not at that restaurant, and when I called him he said,

  “I am here.” In French.

  But he was not there. I didn’t want to use English. I said I would be there soon. But where? I got in my car and drove around, but I couldn’t find the restaurant. And I was so set on not asking him in English, not revealing how much I did or did not actually understand in French, I called back and asked him, “Where are you?” in French.

  He sounded a little weary and gave me the address.

  So I drove around that night, making stops at the restaurants on the street he mentioned, and then other neighboring regions, but he was nowhere to be found. I just drove around the city, through the darkness, and felt the permanence of his absence, and of my sister’s, and that night, I felt a little bit of myself vanish. I never saw him again.

  I didn’t speak up the right way, or in a way that was at all effective, when my mother asked me to find out what had happened to my sister. The accident happened when Janine was riding her bike from the optometrist’s office where she worked. We had many questions about the accident. Why was she riding away so fast? Where was she going? Why was she not wearing a helmet? Did something happen at the optometrist’s office so she was rushing away in fear? Or was she just, more boringly, not looking where she was going? My mother sat at the kitchen table and repeated these questions, every day, her longing a shovel, digging into air. She wanted to scold my sister, but there was no one there to scold. Here I was, with my mother, in the sour light of the den; Janine was not in the other room, and never would be, and we sat, waiting and not waiting, in that peculiar frozenness of the living after a death. I listened to my mother ask, in a circular way, what had happened, for we did not know how to think, neither of us. I wanted to do something. One day she said,

  “You.”

  “What?”

  “You should go ask,” she said. “Go to the office. Find out.”

  She wanted this from me, so I did it. I am a shy person, so this assignment was not easy for me. I went to the office and pretended I was making an appointment for a new prescription. But my eyes were 20/20, and had always been. My sister was the person in the office to help you choose frames. She was excellent at figuring out how frames would transform your face.

  I remembered when we were maybe in our twenties, looking for Janine’s first pair; she was strangely excited by the idea of getting glasses. She thought they were a form of self-revelation. Janine’s face was small and delicate, and most pairs we found were too big for her face. Finally I found a pair that seemed completely unlike her—a pair of circular plastic frames, in burgundy—but when she looked at herself in the mirror, her face lit up. “Yes,” she said. “Yes! I love it.” She looked at me, setting the frames evenly, and she did seem somehow transformed, older. She looked happy to be who she was.

  “Now you,” she said, and though I didn’t wear glasses, she picked out a pair of frames that were blue and fancy in a way I would never choose—“This.” I put them on, and the glasses revealed in me a sweeping authority; others would certainly now listen to me.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. I appreciated the fact that she could see this in me. She bought her glasses and we walked out.

  Where was that moment now? I missed her, terribly; how I wanted to stand with her on that moment, a floe of ice.

  It seemed impossible that the office was open and operating as usual, though that was their right. Janine had worked in this office less than a year. When I walked in, the receptionist greeted me as though I were simply a patient; she saw nothing similar between my sister and myself, even though we shared the same eyes. With that greeting, I felt not just the finality of Janine’s absence, but the ephemeral nature of the receptionist herself, the potted palm in the corner, all of us. It was a cold slap. The receptionist showed me into the examination room.

  Who did it, I thought, as I met the optometrist’s assistant, who put drops in my eyes, and the optometrist, who peered at my eyes through the metal contraption. I was a few inches from their faces. Their eyes resem
bled eyes. They simply went about their business, asking me which letter I could see more clearly. This or this.

  This or this.

  Neither.

  What was the explanation, I thought. What happened to Janine? Why did she bike off that way? I pushed away the optometrist’s machine and sat forward.

  “I don’t need these,” I said.

  They looked at me, wary and surprised.

  I said my sister’s name. I said, “What happened? We want to know what happened. Why did she ride off so fast? Do you know? We want to know.”

  This was, of course, the first problem. I was not strategic or smooth or intelligent; I did not have the time for it, I just blurted this out, in this ineffective way. The optometrist and assistant glanced at each other; I could not penetrate their expression, whether it revealed fear about my sister or about me. They said Janine’s name.

  “Oh, that was terrible,” said the optometrist. “She took her bike and my god.”

  “We were just talking about her shoes and where she bought them,” the assistant said. “And then. Oh. I’m sorry. That was such a shock.”

  They stood, perplexed and human, mouthing sympathy, but they didn’t have an answer for me. I peered at them, looking for evidence of knowledge or wrongdoing, but I saw nothing in their faces that would tell me more.

  “I wish I had known her better,” the assistant said, wistfulness in her voice.

  This was her answer. More questions pressed into my throat and I wanted to ask the one that would shake them, that would give me some bit of information on anything, for my mother, about what had happened. I wanted to ask them why I had not been able to help her that afternoon when we were children, why I had been so poisoned by my own shame. I wanted to ask it all. But I didn’t, as they seemed sad, too, standing there, rumpled, hands empty.

  I drove home, and wanted to pick up something on the way; I rushed into the supermarket and bought some apricots; I was halfway home when I remembered that this was Janine’s favorite fruit. When I walked into the house, I saw my mother on the couch, gazing at me with a dreadful hope. I handed her an apricot, and she held it in her hand for a moment, feeling its softness. Their sweet orange fragrance floated into the air.

  I didn’t like the silence between us, so I said, “They said she was in love.”

  My mother’s face shifted slightly, a little bit awake. “With who?”

  “They didn’t know.”

  We sat together in this flimsy, manufactured shelter—of what? This wouldn’t solve anything; there was nothing to learn. My mother slowly ate her apricot; she seemed a little bit comforted. Each day melted into the next.

  But I was aware of my failure in finding out why my sister had ridden off that way. I felt that curdle within me.

  That was years ago; I wasn’t sure why I was thinking about this now. But here we sat, the stranger who had hair like my sister’s, and I waited for her to follow the pilot’s instructions so that we could all continue to live. The plane was poised at the runway, about to take off. She still texted, sending off messages.

  The flight attendants were chatting; one had flown all night from Madrid.

  The inside of my palms were a little wet.

  I imagined myself making a joke about her phone; perhaps that would make her stop. “Hey, don’t want to send us off to Antarctica, do you?” I could say, referring to the plane’s navigation system. I was not, despite my obsessions, a weirdo; I could be funny. She would laugh and nod and instantly turn the thing off.

  I watched her fingers move across the phone. I wondered whom she loved and who loved her, and whom she wished she could talk to, and whom she could not.

  Which tweet, which word would lead to the plane malfunction? To our end?

  She glanced up at the window and then back.

  “Please close the window,” she said, flatly.

  I was surprised by her voice. Clipped, like a substitute teacher’s. She had no problem asking me for anything.

  I took a breath, but the words wouldn’t come.

  The aircraft parked at their gates, the dark windows along the sides, the people peering out at the dingy air, the large men on the asphalt waving them to their futures. What were they eating, I wondered.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Can you?” she asked. “I don’t like to see the plane take off.”

  I quietly processed this request. This was what she feared. How could she be afraid of that while willfully ignoring the pilot’s instructions? Everyone’s fear was its own intricate and rule-bound world. None of it made sense.

  I tried to think about how to respond to this.

  “No,” I said.

  She stared at me.

  “And why not?”

  “I want to see us take off,” I said.

  “Seriously?” she asked. She twisted around, with some difficulty, in her tiny seat.

  The stranger beside me had no idea that she looked familiar, or dangerous. I couldn’t stand it anymore—I wanted to grab the phone and tell her: don’t bring down the plane. Let it float to its destination. Let me out.

  “Stop texting,” I said, quickly. “The pilot said to stop.”

  There.

  She looked at me coolly, the way a person does when she can suddenly see all the way through you, to the booming raw heart of yourself. I tensed.

  Then she laughed.

  “They always say that,” she said. “Don’t believe them.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s silly.”

  “We’re about to put this thing in the air,” I said, curtly. “It’s not natural. I always believe them.”

  “It’s how the airlines maintain power,” she said. “It’s totally fake. But they make us afraid and dependent and then we pay exorbitant fees for our luggage.”

  She appeared cheerful and resolute in these theories. But why? How were these issues connected? Was this in Consumer Reports? She had clearly thought about this; she delivered all of this with an earnest face.

  “I don’t believe it,” I said. “And I want the plane to stay in the air.”

  She regarded me with a long, gooey gaze of pity; then she sighed and pressed her thumb against her phone. It shut off.

  She had done what I had asked. The phone was off and the plane was perhaps safe. Relief rushed through me like sweet air. Perhaps I would get to my destination. I would have another day.

  The plane began to rush forward, with a purpose. We held still in the solemn way that passengers did when the plane was about to lift off the earth. My teeth trembled.

  Then I thought—why had I been so afraid of this texting? Why did our fear land any particular place? And, finally, more to the point, what was wrong with me?

  “Thank you,” I said. I loved her, immensely, for a moment. This feeling leapt out of me briefly, a leopard that had been caged.

  “Now,” she said. “Can you close the window?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I will.”

  I glanced out the window. The plane was coasting. What else could I ask for? How much could I ask for?

  I held the little foil bag of pretzels the flight attendant had tossed to us. I wanted a pretzel at that moment, so I tore open the bag and chewed one, noisily. The texter looked at me, with a mournful expression, and I realized she was hungry. Her pretzel bag was nowhere to be seen. I silently held out my foil bag and shook a pretzel into her palm and we sat beside each other, crunching the pretzels. It was a pleasant sound. We sounded exactly alike.

  Bright light came through the curved square windows and shadows trembled on the inside of the plane. The sun fell upon all of us, trapped in our seats, the light lovely on our hair. I could feel the speed in my jaws. The stranger beside me closed her eyes. I put my hand on the window shade, but before I shut it, I looked outside. There was the world, below me. It was endless and silent as we rose. The mountains looked like islands in the ruffled, white-clou
d sea.

  The Department of Happiness and Reimbursement

  The first time I went to 140 Standard Street, the location of my new office, I walked slowly, observing the many people in business suits moving through the skyscrapers’ long cool shadows, and I wondered, passing by them, which workers were real. There were messengers on bikes, weaving around the pedestrians. There were people carrying large cardboard boxes out of trucks and into stores. The general sense of noise and activity made it seem that our country was productive and busy. I was surprised at the activity, because I had been told that many of the downtown buildings were empty, that lights were set on a timer to wink on and off to simulate people inside these offices. There were rumors that some were hired to pretend to walk into and out of buildings, to make it appear that labor was ongoing. I tried to guess who had a job, and who was only wearing a costume. I wondered if the newness of their suits would tip me off, or the way they clutched their cups of coffee, or the vacant quality of their stares. We all regarded one another, warily, wondering who here had a purpose and who was imitating those who did. But the distinctions didn’t matter; all of us were, I knew, glad to be allowed downtown. It was better, we thought, than the alternative, and we walked across the sidewalk, swiftly, faces set in expressions that did not reveal our fear.

  The Department of Employment Services was enclosed in a large, boxy, concrete building that, in its impenetrability, resembled a face with eyes shut. It was a few miles from the Capitol. No one in the office wanted anyone to know where we were located, so the building was not marked and the windows, from the street, appeared dark. Inside, the structure was old and in need of repair. The fluorescent rods on the ceilings sometimes flashed and went out forever, the plaster in the wall by the water fountain was discolored as though someone had once punched a hole in it, doors fell off hinges, the carpets emanated an odor of stale donuts and death, and there was a general dimness in the building; we operated, at all hours, in dusk.