Whisper Network

by Chandler Baker

  She was an idiot, of course. She hadn’t been the first, she would learn. Women whose names she couldn’t even remember if she tried. She’d just been smart enough to keep her mouth shut. Mostly, anyway. The damage had been maintained. Sloane played by the rules of the game. And so she got to stay. She got to keep her seat at the table.

  But now, it was like her body was rehashing a decade’s worth of experiences with Ames, right up to the closed door she’d witnessed this afternoon, with Katherine somewhere behind it. Katherine who wanted to be just like her. Up until this point, when Ames had stepped out of line, Sloane could bring him back to heel with the subtle suggestion that she could, if she were so inclined, speak to Desmond. She wouldn’t, but … she could. Now Desmond no longer existed. And nothing felt fair. And yet Sloane felt she’d actually earned, and therefore deserved, this eventuality: Ames rising the ranks higher and, now, highest, while she watched on. Saying nothing.

  * * *

  Over the next forty-five minutes, Sloane channeled it all into sumo squats, dead lifts, burpees, and walking lunges until her time had run out and her trainer, Oksana, was congratulating her on one of her best workouts to date.

  Sloane did feel better. Emptier. Cleaner, even. This was the thing we all loved about exercising, the way it could push everything else out except for the one pressing, present matter—the hurt.

  It was only after Sloane chugged a bottle of water, cooled herself down under the shower, and had gotten dressed again that she pulled her phone out of her bag and checked for emails. There it was, at the top of her inbox, in bold type, an email from Elizabeth Moretti. Email chain, blind copy.

  B.A.D. MEN: BEWARE OF ASSHOLES. ASSHOLES, BEWARE

  Truviv Employee Statements

  13-APR

  Lucy Davies:

  Of course it started with the spreadsheet. That thing was a disaster from day one. Honestly, I told anyone who would listen. I said that it was a terrible idea. I did! Vigilante justice, and all that. But did anyone listen to me? No. And now look!

  Keith Tran:

  I don’t know. Maybe. If it was the spreadsheet, then I guess the takeaway is that what happened could have happened to any one of us. That’s what scares me.

  Angie Mann:

  Yes, we were aware of the spreadsheet that had been circulating and we took the allegations regarding those named seriously. However, I’ll add that we took the rights of our employees whose names appeared on the list equally seriously. There are two sides to every coin.

  Sophia Ventura:

  Yeah, we were all going a little crazy. Who wouldn’t be? It was like, okay, here’s this guy’s name on the list and he did God knows what and, oh wait, now I have to go into his office alone mind you and ask him if he’d like his pages collated? But, also, I mean, think of it this way: it wasn’t like this was going on in just our office. Men’s names were popping up from all over the city, but I bet you’re not going around asking questions at all those offices, am I right?

  Alexandra Souls:

  I think everyone needs to start taking responsibility for their actions and stop blaming an Excel file for this entire fiasco. I mean, we’re all supposedly adults here.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  23-MAR

  There were men in the office. They worked at desks alongside us. They populated the human resources department, accounting, compliance, and information technology, they worked above us and below us. But there was an invisible separation between the men and us. So we found each other. If the workplace was the traditional purview of the old boys’ club, we responded by forming a secret sorority. We recognized the secret handshake. We saw each other as sisters in arms.

  Of course, let’s not forget the good men: the ones who laughed at our jokes and asked our drafting advice, who didn’t think of motherhood as a handicap, who had wives that worked hour-intensive jobs, who handled their half of the housework, who were happily married or gay. They didn’t open meetings by complaining about female-cast movie reboots or ask us to take just-one-call during our maternity leaves. But even the good ones—especially the good ones?—pretended not to notice the lines: how much more deference they earned on the phone for having a male voice. Or how their height and stature and morning stubble gave an authoritative weight to their ideas that ours never had. If brought to their attention, the good ones would wave off such observations with humble embarrassment and tell us how much smarter and better we were than them. They were our colleagues and some were even our friends.

  But these lines did exist. And not only in our heads. No matter how expertly we pretended to be cool with dirty jokes, how convincingly we proved to be comfortable with confrontation without being confrontational, no matter how adept our impersonations of our male colleagues, there was often something in our performance of competency and belonging that the men in our offices didn’t quite buy into. They thought they could see right through us. They thought they knew us. They thought they could predict us. Especially someone like Grace, whose heart so often seemed written clearly across her face.

  Grace couldn’t remember the last time she’d told a lie. A real, bona fide lie. Until now.

  “I’m working late, Liam, an all-nighter, I’m sorry. There’s breast milk in the fridge,” Grace had said. Of course, her husband had been properly incensed on her behalf. How could they expect this of her? It was completely unreasonable. Hadn’t she explained to them that she was a new mother?

  People were always reminding Grace that she was a new mother.

  Three weeks ago, when she confessed to Liam that, actually, no, she did not think she could get up anymore to feed Emma Kate, that she would rather listen to the baby cry, he’d squeezed her shoulder and said, “You’re tired. It’s okay to feel this way.” And she had thought, along with the rest of us: how convenient to always have a man nearby to explain our pesky emotions! He kissed her temple, and told her she was an amazing mommy.

  Then she and Liam took Emma Kate to her four-month checkup—weeks late—and Dr. Tanaka had handed Liam a glossy, routine pamphlet listing the warning signs for postpartum depression: Prolonged sadness, helplessness, unexplained episodes of crying. An increase or decrease in appetite. Inability to sleep when tired. Concerns that the mother will harm the baby, herself, or others. It was all quite interesting, Grace thought. Very informative. But … not Grace. “You’re making motherhood look easy. Your daughter is right on track,” the doctor had said. So that was it. Everything was as it should be because if it weren’t, surely Dr. Tanaka would have noticed. He was the best pediatrician in Dallas. She’d made sure of it.

  The idea came to her a week earlier, when Liam had casually inquired as to when they’d start thinking about having another baby. Grace was no spring chicken, he’d said, though he’d used nicer words because, of course, Liam was a good person. Throughout her entire pregnancy, he’d been fastidious in assuring her how beautiful she was. He’d been the expectant father who went out at ten o’clock and came back with milkshakes like he was earning a merit badge for his efforts. Those late night food runs meant Liam’s own gut had grown during the nearly ten months she’d carried Emma Kate, and for a CrossFit devotee like Liam, it was, Grace thought, the nicest thing he’d ever done for her.

  But the talk of a second baby alarmed her. They hadn’t even had sex since Emma Kate’s birth. The doctor cleared her for “sexual activity” several weeks ago, but she hadn’t told Liam yet. Maybe she was more of a liar than she thought.

  Grace realized there simply wasn’t a clinical diagnosis for selfishness. And since that was apparently her affliction, she decided to fucking treat it herself.

  * * *

  The hotel room cost a whopping six hundred and fifty dollars for the night. A few days ago, she’d snatched one of the credit card offers from the mailbox, one marked “Pre-Approved” in obnoxious letters. She filled it out during one of her pumping breaks at the office, then slid the card into her wallet. At that moment of crucial betrayal, he
r baby had woken up six times the previous night, seven the one before that. She read in a Post article that it was sleep deprivation not waterboarding that ultimately got Al Qaeda members to talk. The promise of a nap. She understood. She gave up. Her baby had broken her.

  Her brain had felt like cotton and ached between her temples. So exhausted was she that Grace had been queasy, the contents of her half-eaten breakfast swimming in the pit of her stomach. Coffee only sparked an uncomfortable buzz coursing beneath the thick, milky coat of fatigue. She now craved sleep more than she ever had cupcakes.

  It was a gorgeous hotel, with an infinity pool, a celebrity-chef restaurant, and free champagne in the lobby. She hadn’t seen a point in doing it halfway. If Grace Stanton were going to hell, it wouldn’t be over a night at a Holiday Inn.

  Last night, Grace padded around in the downy hotel slippers and thought: so this is how people begin affairs. At first she’d promised herself it would be a one-night stand. But by the time she’d opened a bottle of chardonnay (she didn’t skimp here either, leaping straight for the $75 section of the room service menu), she fully intended to continue this sordid tryst with herself.

  I will leave my husband for you, she’d told the aromatherapy treated bathtub. We’ll run away together. We’re soul mates. There’s just this one issue of my breasts keeping my child alive, but, just give me a couple months to sort things out. You’ll see. I promise. I love you.

  This morning, she woke up as the sun curled around the edges of the blackout curtains. She pulled the sheets up to her nose. They were store-bought white and smelled like expensive French parfum. A shiver of satisfaction curled her toes as she thought of how much Liam must have missed her when he was changing diapers and feeding bottles at two, then three-thirty, then five A.M.

  At last, she sat up and ordered room service—a croissant with butter and apricot jelly and a cappuccino. Her breasts ached. Small knots had formed in the tissue. She pressed on them gently and winced.

  She would be late to work, very late. Burn it all to the ground, she’d thought last night when she hadn’t set an alarm. But as she got out of bed, she was feeling less rebellious. And as she got dressed, a clean black sheath and pearls, she felt fresh darkness spreading inside her stomach, like oil.

  Grace tried to picture Emma Kate.

  Her child’s eyes were still strange to her. Two marbles encased in a wrinkly alien head. Constantly staring, constantly expecting the love to which she ought to be entitled. A reasonable expectation, Grace conceded, for a child who had been born into a stable family with a healthy mother in her mid-thirties. It wasn’t as though Emma Kate had been a surprise. Grace kept her calendar meticulously. Even having a girl was preordained. Liam had laughed, but Grace learned all the tricks: she committed to an ungodly amount of Crystal Light and yogurt during those fertile days. And Sloane, who of course had Abigail, advised her to orgasm after Liam, which had taken some doing. After one ultrasound, when the doctor delivered an envelope to Grace, she already knew it’d be a girl. Liam had dreamed of a little girl, too, and he had actually teared up when she told him the news. And when Grace had slid the ultrasound envelope over Sloane’s desk for her and Ardie to see, they had literally shrieked. Well, Sloane had, anyway. And there were immediate plans to raise girls together, use Abigail as a babysitter, and for Michael and Emma Kate to get married someday. It had all been perfectly lovely. Exactly as she’d always planned.

  All this and still, sometimes she wanted to stare back at Emma Kate and caution her: don’t get carried away. Against all indications, Emma Kate had most surely not won the parental lottery.

  If it was any consolation, nothing had exactly been as advertised to Grace, either. In college, she’d been treasurer of her campus’s TriDelt chapter and, ever since, she’d missed the natural connection shared with a large group of women. When she’d given birth to Emma Kate, she wept happily along with Liam, and even secretly rejoiced. Finally. She’d be admitted into the biggest, most important sorority of them all—motherhood. She imagined stroller exercise classes and Mommy & Me yoga. Easter egg hunts in April. A gorgeous christening gown and Grace standing at the front of the church, cradling her baby’s bonneted head. The perfect family.

  But Grace instead felt separated, cut off, from virtually all other mothers. She stared at the happy, loving mothers at church, holding their adorable children’s hands, sweet little girls in stockings and patent leather shoes, and tried to figure out what the hell she was missing.

  What was so worth it? Because from where Grace was standing, she couldn’t square her big, saggy boobs, pudgy stomach, leaky urinary tract, dark circles, sporadic mastitis, and cracking nipples, coupled with the fact that it now took her legitimately two hours to get out of the house with her baby in tow, and she had to listen to screeching cries whenever she stole into the shower, and she was no longer welcome in restaurants with tablecloths, with the baby who was skinny, eczema riddled; she dribbled cloudy liquid from the corners of her mouth and barely even smiled. She wanted to feel that connection, but the closest she’d come was the first time Emma Kate had gripped her finger and it had lasted only that long. Grace felt like an idiot for believing that there was some magic to the math. Some alchemy that made this all, as everyone had told her, worth it.

  If Grace felt a kinship with any mothers at all since Emma Kate’s birth, it was with the ones that drove their minivans into a lake.

  * * *

  Grace only had a canvas tote bag stuffed with yesterday’s clothes, along with makeup and toiletries and her manual pump. She gave a final glance to the fluffy bed, the clean, folded towels, and the assortment of Lavazza coffee inserts, dreading the return to her own house where dirty diapers clogged the genie and spit-up stained the throw pillows.

  At the end of the hall, she pressed the button at the elevator bank, walked into the roving glass case, and was startled to recognize the other woman in the elevator.

  “Katherine?” Grace felt a hint of delight, as if she’d run into an acquaintance at the airport or at a far-off vacation or in Target. An amusing life juxtaposition.

  Katherine stood with her back to the glass, looking stiff. A spark of recognition flashed in her eyes. “Hi,” she said.

  “Grace,” she filled in the blank for her. “Sorry, I’m sure you’ve met a thousand people in the last few days.”

  “Oh, no, I wasn’t—” Katherine waved the end of the sentence away. Her skin was face-wash-commercial fresh, her hair parted neatly to the side. She wore only studs for earrings, which seemed daringly sparse and editorial amid the sea of swinging Kendra Scott jewelry, in vogue among Dallas women these days.

  The elevator dinged at the lobby floor. A tame, babbling stream ran from a marbled buttress and trickled water into a glimmering blue pool filled with koi fish. The atrium smelled like an upscale Vegas casino, all recycled air and manufactured fragrance.

  “What are you doing here?” Katherine asked.

  Grace considered another lie, but none came readily to her. “I needed a night off,” she admitted. “I have a baby who has taken up arms against sleep.” A couple sleepless nights back at home with Emma Kate and Grace knew she’d again be lost in the quagmire of exhaustion, trying to bump and feel her way through her days.

  The corners of Katherine’s mouth curled up. “What’s her weapon of choice?”

  “Lungs of steel. It’s obvious but ruthlessly effective.” Grace paused before the sliding glass doors that led out to the valet and the city beyond. Outside, the sun blazed. “Sometimes I just can’t with her. It’s like I—” Grace shuddered.

  “Hate her?”

  “I sound horrible.” And she did feel horrible—like a horrible, horrible mother—but she probably didn’t feel horrible enough, and that made her feel even worse, though again, not as badly as she should feel. She had the thought that if she didn’t like being a mother—and she could nearly admit that to herself now—at least she could excel at how awful she’d feel about
it. She could compete in the Guilt Olympics. Maybe even medal. But, in truth, she was usually too tired even to attempt that. “I didn’t exactly tell my husband,” she added, sheepishly.

  Katherine looked impressed. “That you weren’t coming home?”

  Grace flattened her hand against her cheek, partially embarrassed, partially not. “No, I told him that part. But”—she squinted one eye closed. “I might have said I had to pull an all-nighter at work.” Which was so far from the truth it was almost comical. Ever since her return, she felt like Sloane and Ardie treated her with kid gloves, spared from any work of urgency or interest, as if she must be desperate to return home to her newborn. Her precious, alien newborn.

  “Ah.” Katherine nodded, her mouth quirking mischievously. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

  Grace felt a pathetic tug at her heartstrings, enjoying the taste of a secret, which, when shared, in her experience, almost always portended new friendship.

  “And you?” Grace asked.

  “The condo that I’m moving into isn’t ready yet. It’s a new building. I have a friend who hooked me up. I’m crashing here until I can move in.”

  “The Prescott? Swanky.”

  “Yeah. It is. But they’ve put me in a room way up at the top.” She tilted her chin. The center of the Prescott was a gaping hole that shot straight to the sky-lighted ceiling. “I’m terrified of heights. Those glass elevators? It’s like I’m plummeting to my death.”