The Intermission

by Elyssa Friedland

  “What do you want to do, Cass? Fire her because you feel sorry for her?” He gave an exasperated sigh and hoped she heard it. Hoped it made her feel as ridiculous as she sounded. “You could just leave for work earlier.”

  “That’s not the point. You know what Percy says. He’d be mad if I showed up before I was my best self.”

  Don’t I deserve the same courtesy as Percy? Jonathan wondered, though he wouldn’t want his wife to treat him with any kind of forced consideration, the kind that could make her feel any more distant than she already felt at times. At least he knew when he got the moody side, she was letting him in.

  “The Wentworths need a cleaning lady. I’ll give them Manuela.”

  He had to laugh, even if only on the inside. Did Cass hear herself? She was knee-deep in her high-and-mighty routine, saying it bothered her to watch another woman clean her toilet, and then in the same breath she’s suggesting “giving” Manuela to their neighbors like the woman was a bag of sugar.

  “Do what you want, Cass. Just make sure Manuela doesn’t lose out on work.”

  “Of course,” Cass said, the implication being, Duhhhh! I’m the kindhearted one.

  He had to hand it to Cass, she did her research. Found a group of undergraduates and masters students at NYU called PhD Housekeepers, the cleaning equivalent of College Hunks Hauling Junk, and hired Luna over text message.

  “Jonathan, she’s at the Tisch School of the Arts. How great is that? Down the road, maybe she’ll be interested in doing some babysitting for us.” He could tell Cass could barely contain her excitement, like she had landed some fabulous intern to work at PZA for college credit. It was clear she’d already invented the scenario where they came home from dinner to find Luna and their toddler putting on an elaborate puppet show together, employing the Strasberg method. He just didn’t understand the fuss. So the girl who would sweep away their granola crumbs and clean their Nespresso machine was college educated, could even hum a tune. Who cared?

  The fact was that he’d grown up with two uniformed housekeepers tending to his family’s every need—dusting the baby grand every other day and climbing precariously on stepladders to make sure the picture frames on the highest shelves gleamed—and his wife had known nothing of this type of life. They were coming at this argument from totally different places and he felt obliged to back down. It was better to acquiesce when the consequences were this minimal and save up reserves for when truly needed.

  And that was how they came to have Luna Spiegel, heiress, daughter of Hollywood royalty, mediocre cleaner at best, working in their home. Luna was obviously going through a phase where she was hell-bent on establishing her own identity, something he could relate to, but in a far more attenuated form. For their cleaning lady, proving herself meant accepting nothing more from her father than college tuition and having a lot of tattoos, including one of those “lights, camera, action” slate boards on the inside of her wrist, leading one to question how serious she really was about distancing herself from her heritage. Esperanza, one of the caring and meticulous housekeepers he’d grown up with and who still worked for his parents, had a sister in Queens. He kept Pilar’s number in his phone in case Luna stopped showing up altogether, or for when Cass came to her senses.

  The whole crazy situation of Luna, their perpetually messy home and Manuela displaced to the Wentworths was made so much worse when Cass chose to do what she had done that morning—telling him how to load the dishwasher. How the hell would she know? He was nothing if not methodical, whereas Cass’s underwear drawer made him break into a cold sweat. When her aunt died, the one she used to spend Christmas with before his family’s traditions took over, she called him at the office and asked him to pack an overnight bag for her so she could leave for the train station straight from work. He agreed, even though it meant him having to leave work too, because Cass always had a weird thing about packing. It was all the moving around as a child—not that she’d ever said so, but he’d deduced it. No emotional intelligence, my foot, he thought, recalling something Cass had once accused him of. The truth was he preferred to do the packing anyway. Filling the shoe bags, preparing the Dopp kit, fitting L-shaped boots against bras shaped like camel humps. It was a little bit like doing a 3-D puzzle.

  The entire bureau under the TV (yes, they had a TV in the bedroom, which did not signal defeat as far as he was concerned, even though they originally put it in saying it’d only be for porn and now it ran nothing but Netflix series) was claimed by Cass the minute she moved in, and in searching for her underwear that day he’d found crumpled receipts, cell phone chargers, her rolled-up diploma and about six years’ worth of Filofaxes, which he doubted she ever used past February. How could this be the woman who was going to tell him how to arrange the coffee mugs? It didn’t matter, though, this growing pile of grievances, because they amounted to nothing more than a molehill when compared with how much he loved Cass.

  The night before he met Cass in the city, he’d felt particularly low. It had been a shit day at work—Jerry was pouty about an unflattering profile of him in Hedge Fund Weekly and he was taking it out on everyone. And while Jerry could be on the thin-skinned side (yet still do nothing toward keeping a low profile), Jonathan couldn’t help but feel sorry for his boss and mentor. Jonathan was one of Winstar’s first hires—the firm was only two years old when he joined—and he took the negative press personally. Winstar wasn’t quite his baby, the firm most certainly belonged to Jerry, but Jonathan was at least a devoted custodian of it. The work crap coupled with the fact that dopey Russell had gotten engaged the night before to an ex-model and was walking around the office with his chest puffed out (so much so that he actually looked constipated) put Jonathan desperately in need of a drink.

  So he had slipped out of work a bit early, poured himself a small scotch in front of the TV and started diddling around on his laptop. He wasn’t really active on social media, but every now and then he’d mosey over to his computer and start looking people up. That night he checked in on a few friends, mostly rowing pals from college, before typing in Brett’s name.

  He gasped at her profile picture. There she was: smiling, sitting on the deck of her dad’s sailboat, with a baby bundled in her arms. When, exactly, had his ex-girlfriend grown up? Why did he still feel like the horny kid prone to reaching under her shirt in the Cheshire game room while she’d gone all adult on him and started a family? Jonathan refilled his tumbler on autopilot so many times he lost count.

  And then he saw Cass, less than twenty-four hours later. And everything changed. He became obsessed with the concept of fate—the idea that a single change in the day they reconnected could have meant the difference between Cass being his wife and not. It was the opposite of the way his mom and dad were strategically seated next to each other at the country club Memorial Day barbecue by their coconspirator parents. His parents’ marriage was a loveless one, serving purely functional purposes: procreation, joint filing on tax returns, someone to share the driving with on long trips. Far worse existed, and he’d believed that if that’s what was in store for him, he could still lead a fulfilling life. He was lucky that he really loved his job. Marrying for love would be gravy. Cass was gravy.

  Betsy didn’t take to Cass in the beginning, that much was obvious. “Rogers,” she said, chewing on Cass’s maiden name like it was a tough piece of steak. “I don’t know any Rogers from Michigan.” This was followed by a larger than usual sip from her martini. A gulp. His former girlfriends, including Brett, the field hockey girls from boarding school and even most of the girls he hooked up with at Brown, all had the “of” attached to their last names. Melanie Clark of the Main Line Clarks; Theodora Whitley of the Greenwich Whitleys. He was Jonathan Coyne of the Boston Coynes. They were a family of functional drunks and low-level depressives, but they had lineage to spare. Open the New England Registrar and there they were: Dorothy and Edward Coyne had settled in Bosto
n in 1712. In some ways, his mother was obsessed with the past; in other ways (like when it would cast a shadow on her children), she was awfully quick to forget it. She suggested, not too subtly, that Cass might not be interested in her son for the right reasons. He knew Cass wasn’t like that and tried to tune out the noise.

  His point to his parents was that it shouldn’t matter that Cass’s dad, Dick Rogers of Troy, Michigan, was a ne’er-do-well carpenter who left Cass’s mom high and dry. Dick had a reputation in their town for skimming off subcontracts and padding his materials bills. He still got jobs because he was always the low bidder, and there was inevitably a steady stream of customers who believed they couldn’t be fooled. At the time Jonathan reconnected with Cass in the city, Cass’s mother, Donna, was giddy about her much younger and unemployed boyfriend, who was later mistaken at his and Cass’s wedding for a waiter.

  Betsy tolerated Dick and Donna with the chilly forced courtesy she offered to outsiders. Dick was largely MIA, and if Donna noticed his mother’s coldness, she didn’t seem to care. She was more than happy to let Jonathan’s parents take over wedding planning, though you’d think she’d be full of insight after three marriages—Vegas or city hall, prime rib or shrimp scampi? Cass didn’t talk much about her father and treated her mother with a resigned embarrassment, barely rolling her eyes when Donna said, when visiting their apartment for the first time, “Sheesh, they press the elevator button for you here? I’m going to call them when I need someone to wipe my ass.” There were three half siblings from Dick, all of whom made it to the Vineyard for the wedding, and Jonathan noticed that Cass handpicked everything they would wear down to selecting the nail polish on the girls. This wasn’t out of bridezilla tendencies. It stemmed from fear.

  Cass was nothing like the other girls he’d taken out in the city, whose names always started with J and ended with an a sound. She didn’t ooh and aah over his apartment’s posh address, or the swanky bachelor pad furnishings, even when he bought his first real piece of art. It was a Damien Hirst print that cost him 25 percent of his bonus that year. All the other guys at work were starting to talk about “collecting” after Jerry toured them around his Hamptons home at the company retreat, dropping the name of every artist whose work they passed as his protégés trailed behind. It felt like a class trip to the MoMA. It was funny, truly, a group of binge-drinking former frat boys bragging about their Sotheby’s specialists. He felt compelled to get in on the action, and chose the blue-and-bronze butterfly print because he thought Cass would like it. Correction: he thought it would impress her. She didn’t say a word when she saw it, and you couldn’t miss it because it hung right over the headboard. In that moment, he had to admit, he missed the sycophantism of the Jessicas and Jennas. Cass’s middle name was Jessica, but she hated it. When she changed her name after they married, she legally dropped the Jessica and left only the J. That move said it all.

  Cass was generally stingy with praise—prided herself on it too. “At least you know when I say I like something, I really mean it.” He nodded his head vigorously when she told him that (it was a third-date confession of hers). He was still besotted with her then, intoxicated by the way she clubbed her pen like a preschooler, gaga watching her rub her forehead with the back of her hand before she answered a question, smitten by those slightly overlapping front teeth. These, among other minutiae that together added up to a near-perfect Cass, were driving him wild. If she were to say it to him again, what she said to him at Masa on date three, he’d respond: It’s not the worst thing in the world to make someone feel good just for the hell of it. Trust me, I do it all the time. But what you say on a third date and after six years of togetherness rarely have much in common.

  “Mr. Coyne?”

  It was Laurel, popping her head into his office. There was something noticeably different about her demeanor, the way she hesitated before tapping on his door. Apprehension. The fidgety hands reminded him of Cass, at least the Cass of late. He needed to get to the bottom of what was eating at his wife, but not until he finished his report on the Brazilian petroleum company that had been kicking his ass lately. Until then he lacked the energy it would take to probe Cass about what was bothering her; the conversation would probably involve hours of late-night questioning and denial before she finally confessed the root of her malaise. She wasn’t sleeping well, but that shouldn’t have to cut into his precious eight hours.

  “Everything all right? Have a seat,” he said, wondering what made him extend the gesture. Some parental instinct, he hoped. Brotherly, he corrected himself—they weren’t that far apart in age. There was no harm in mentoring the new kid, telling her not to feel bad that Liz, the head of investor relations, picked on her and the other girls for sport. Liz was fifty (he knew this because Russell had dug up her eHarmony profile), a good thirty pounds overweight, sardonic to a fault and agitated the minute her caffeine high wore off. Her job at Winstar was to supervise Laurel and the other pretty young things in investor relations who flitted around the office in short skirts giving all the analysts hard-ons.

  Laurel slumped in one of the chairs opposite his desk, took a handful of auburn hair dangling from her ponytail and twirled it around her finger. It was the first time he noticed it—the engagement ring that was now catching the light and casting a rainbow across his papers.

  “It’s all going to sound very silly to you, but . . .” she started to say. He wanted to tell her not to qualify her words. Men never did that; women frequently did. You’re going to laugh when you hear this . . . Call me crazy, but . . . Even Cass did it at times, and that’s when he knew she was feeling vulnerable. It went along with her rolling her eyes back into their sockets, her unique way of avoiding eye contact.

  “My fiancé and I had a big fight last night,” she said, twisting the ring around her finger. It was small, round, set on a diamond band. Reflexively, he started winding his own yellow band around his finger. They sat there in silence for a prolonged moment, working their rings in infinity loops.

  “About?” he asked, when he should have said, I’m sorry to hear that. Shoot him for it, he was curious.

  “Nonsense, really. My fiancé, Walker, wants to have a DJ at the wedding. He says bands usually butcher the music, but I think DJs look cheap. And my parents are paying anyway, so it should be up to them, which means me. He says I’m being a control freak.” She looked down at her lap, adding, “I know, it’s dumb, and you’re busy.”

  He had to admit, he was a little disappointed after she shared. Something a bit more psychologically complex, like His family makes me feel like I’ll never be good enough for him, or I don’t think she understands the difference between constructive criticism and emasculating, something a bit more Jonathan and Cass, that could have been interesting. He might have been able to give some real counsel. A tiff over wedding planning was child’s play.

  Laurel looked up at him from under heavy lids, as if she knew she’d let him down. Quietly, she added, “Besides, how can I be expected to be with one person for the rest of my life? I’m only twenty-two. That’s like child bride age in New York City.”

  Now we’re talking. He reclined deeper into his office chair.

  “I can’t really talk to Liz about this, and I don’t have many friends in the city yet. Plus, my entire family is in Mississippi. If my parents suspected I had cold feet, it would put them into early graves. They got married at eighteen. Any advice? I know you’re married.” She eyeballed his encumbered finger. “Your wife is really pretty,” she added, looking over at his framed pictures.

  He straightened up, pleased to have the chance to be an authority on something, though he wouldn’t have figured marriage would be the topic where his expertise would be called upon.

  “She is. We just had our five-year anniversary—been together six years total. Guess that means we’ve got the seven-year itch in the not-too-distant future.” That was definitely not what he had int
ended to say, especially just as Liz was passing by. She peered into his office suspiciously and stalked away with a disapproving snort.

  “What did you do?” Laurel asked, both of them pretending not to have noticed Liz.

  “For what?”

  “Your anniversary.”

  “Oh—um. Hmm, I guess we did nothing.” He hadn’t even realized until now that he and Cass did nothing to celebrate. Should they have gone on a trip? Or was a piece of jewelry meant to be purchased? They must have at least gone out to dinner. He couldn’t remember. Was it on him or on her to plan something? He really needed an instruction manual: How Not to Fuck Up Your Marriage in Three Easy Steps. While Laurel sat across from him, he googled the traditional gift for the five-year wedding anniversary. Wood. For some crazy reason, the first thing that came into his head was a baseball bat.

  “I’m kidding, of course, about the seven-year itch. Cass is great. I know what you’re saying about being with one person for the rest of your life. It’s scary. I was nervous too.” He actually hadn’t been, but it seemed like the right thing to say to an engaged person with cold feet. “But if it’s the right person, you make compromises to make them happy.” Like reloading a perfectly organized dishwasher. Like sleeping with a gas mask on while a bunch of lab technicians record your breathing. Like firing a competent cleaning lady and hiring an irresponsible heiress to clean your toilets. Like giving up on having sex three times a week. Cass and Jonathan actually shook on that number. It was during their engagement, when they were up late drinking Dark ’n’ Stormys on the beach after an exhausting day of hashing out table seating and finalizing the wedding playlist. He didn’t say it to Laurel, but he agreed with Walker. DJs were better. He and Cass had a band—a seersucker-suited quartet making sorry attempts at “American Pie.”