Going in Circles (10 page)

“No, I'm okay,” I say. “It's Petra's party. I can make it through a party, can't I?” This is how my life goes now: asking a near stranger to tell me if I'm going to be okay.

“I'm sorry I weirded you out in the break room earlier,” she says. “I should've told you I brought you that Happy Meal.”

When she realizes I'm too shocked to say anything, she shrugs, blushing. “I thought you needed some Happy.”

•   •   •

Petra's standing at her dining room table above a massive display of crafts materials. Markers, glitter, poster board, and stacks of magazines cover the middle of the table. “Come on, everybody,” she says. “I thought we'd all have fun doing this.”

Everybody has their own notion of what makes up a party. For some it involves alcohol, mingling, and music. For someone like Petra, it's bonding and soul celebrating. She tells us that we're each to take a poster board and create a “Wish Collage.” She's put out all these magazine clippings and leftovers from her scrapbooking phase to make us goop together a visual representation of all that we haven't yet accomplished in our lives. Bright side: at least I won't be the only one focused on what's missing from her life. It's a real good thing there's booze at this party.

We sit at the table, most of us reluctantly. But
twinkle-twinkle
Suzanne dives right in, holding up a bridal magazine, laughing. “I don't need this one anymore!” The heavy tome bends around her knuckles as she looks for someone to congratulate her. But the only sound is the rapid-fire snapping of pages and pages of glossy magazines flipping in deter
mined focus. A blonde eating from a bag of popcorn snatches the magazine out of Suzanne's fingers without a word.

Petra pastes a magazine cutout of a hammock onto the poster board. “This year, I will focus on being relaxed,” she says. “I'm going to put this up in my office, and I'm going to remember this year that peace is only a mental decision away.”

Only the rich can have this kind of impossible, selfish life wish.

I watch these women scratch their heads, staring at advertisements of happy women, thinking, “
Do I want that underwear she's wearing? Would that make me happy? Getting new underwear this year is a realistic goal.
” With one well-intentioned project, Petra is undoing years of collective therapy.

I recently heard that 40 percent of Americans say they don't worry about anything at all. I don't understand how that's possible. There are things to worry about everywhere. Fine, get past the major things, like health or traffic or the sudden changes in weather or wars or the possibility that one day there will be no such thing as TiVo. Maybe most people don't spend time worrying about the personal decisions their friends and family have made, or about when to do laundry, or what's for dinner, or if they remembered to lock the back door when they left to do laundry. Almost half of America says they never spend a second worrying about why they can't fall asleep or what will happen when they do fall asleep and end up sleeping through the alarm because they're so tired from staying up late worrying about not being able to sleep. Then what do they spend their time thinking about? Do they just walk around all day with dial tones in their heads?

I'm worried about what to put in my wish collage, and I'm worried about what
not
to put. If I focus on one thing, something else is going to suffer. If I layer a ton of pictures
on top of each other, something's going to get smothered. What if one picture being bigger than another makes it more important? What if one font grabs the universe's attention more than another? What if I can't find a picture of the thing I really want?

And if I knew what it looked like, wouldn't I have figured out a way to have it by now?

I can worry about all of this and 40 percent of Americans don't even come close to thinking about these kinds of things? Well, then I'm really worried about
them
.

I've got Monkey's Paw–level anxiety over this wish collage. It has become the most important series of decisions I'm being forced to make, and even doing nothing is doing some damage to my future.

After half an hour, my wish collage contains only one image: a bottle of sunscreen.

A skinny girl I recognize from the break room looks over my shoulder. “That's so great,” she says. “A very simple message to your spirit. ‘Take me out of here.' ”

Skinny girl, you are reading my mind.

The women around me are clucking and chuckling to each other, trying to make jokes about their unfulfilled needs. At some point there was a shift in which the women began focusing on tangible things. Objects. New cars. Shoes. One girl plastered a picture of a laptop to the corner of her poster board. “This is the year I'm going to change jobs. And maybe write a book.” Then, realizing she has just announced her desire to leave the company to a room filled with coworkers, she adds, “I mean, once I write the book, maybe I can change jobs. Otherwise, I'm so happy getting to hang out with all of you every day.”

Francesca elbows me, peering out from under her dark
hair. “I wanna hide the word
herpes
in all of their wish collages. So a year from now, they have the man they want, the house they want, the job they want, and raging, fiery herpes.”

This makes me laugh. “See, I'd rather hide a surprise pregnancy in there,” I tell her. I switch to a ditzy voice: “Well, I got everything I wanted, but then I got this baby, so now my carefully planned life is over.”

“What are you two giggling about?” Petra asks suspiciously, glaring over her bottle of glue. “Don't make fun. Some of us take this seriously.”

“So do we,” Francesca says, turning her wish collage on edge so it's on display. “Extremely seriously. I made sure to include everything I want to happen for me in the next year.”

She's assembled a sentence, ransom-note style:
MAKE SURE LUNGS AND HEART KEEP DOING THEIR JOBS
.

“I've never been very ambitious,” she explains.

Suzanne clicks her tongue against her teeth. “This thing really works, you know,” she says. “Last summer, I swear to you, I wish-collaged Robert into existence. He wasn't there, I made the collage, and two days later I saw him on Match.com, saw he was looking to get married as well, so I asked him out and now we're getting married.”

“Romantic,” Francesca murmurs under her breath, but a couple of the other women near us also hear her, and they are unsuccessful at stifling their giggles.

Suzanne's face falls into something that seems like disappointment but is probably more like pity. “I would think that you two, of all people, would want to give this a try. I mean, no offense, but you both could use some help.”

Petra lifts her head from her project, trying to decide whether or not to intervene.

Francesca says, “I didn't see the porno magazines on the
table. But I guess you did, since you clearly put a picture of a vagina on your wish collage.”

The shocked sound that comes out of me is so sudden and uncontrolled, I think I just barked.

Francesca raises both of her fists and shakes them in celebration. “And hey, look, Suzanne! It does work! Your wish came true! You're a total cu—”

I clamp my hand down onto Francesca's arm, forcing her to change her curse word into a yelp.

The other women quickly dip their heads back into their work, a silent ring of brown-rooted blond crowns moving in unison, as Suzanne's face flashes crimson with fury.

“Just be careful,” I hear myself say. “What you put on there, I mean.”

Now the eyes in the room are back on me.

Charlotte Goodman should probably shut up right now, but unfortunately she hasn't even filled that Lexapro prescription yet, so she's completely on her own here. Let's watch as she ruins yet another night of her life using only her voice and her complete lack of self-control.

“Because you could get everything you want and then realize it all came at a cost. Like, by the time you finish renovations on your bathroom, your husband is having an affair. That might sound a little extreme, but I'm warning you. You don't get something for nothing. Make sure that car is really something you want, because you could end up being very alone driving in it.”

It is remarkable how Charlotte Goodman can condense what would appear to be the entire series of “Monologues from Emo
tional, Pathetic Women” into one speech. This isn't amateur hour, folks. She's quite advanced in her ability to be her own worst enemy. All we have left now is for Charlotte to run from the table, crying.

And there she goes.

I excuse myself and run to my car with the familiar, unstoppable tears streaming down my face. I am upset mostly with myself for being unable to hold it together in public yet again.

“Ghost Girl, wait!”

I stop in my tracks, surprised the nickname worked on me. Francesca is quickly by my side.

“I can't believe you were going to ditch me back there,” she says, putting a hand on her hip. “With the crazy bitches. I don't want to be at some work birthday party. Take me with you.”

“You don't have a car?”

“No, my boyfriend dropped me off. He's out and won't be picking me up for hours. Please, Ghost Girl. Save me from this place. If I have to collage my future I will end up gluing a gun to that thing.”

She lights another cigarette and I watch her, small and smiling, the moonlight making her look like a teenager. Yesterday I never thought of her, and now she's the girl who put a Happy Meal on my desk and is running away with me from Petra's crap birthday party.

“Where do you want to go?” I ask her.

“Anywhere there's coffee.”

“Get in.”

F
our cups of coffee and two plates of fries later, Francesca has a diagnosis.

“You need to go outside.”

“It's cold out there. It's November.”

“I mean with capital letters. Go. Outside.” She makes jazz hands in front of me, like the world is dazzling.

I've told her as much as I can handle in the hour and a half we've been inside this diner. Other than repeatedly leaning over to check the time on her cell phone, she has listened without the patronizing pity face. Whenever she has interrupted me, it was only to say, “That sucks.” Just like I've always wanted to hear.

“I am outside right now. With you. And I went to Petra's party.”

“That was a work function. Going to the apartment of your sorta-ex-husband's best friend's wife who also happens to be your boss is not a normal party. That's fulfilling every obligation at the same time. I mean go out and do things. Act like a single person.”

I wrap my hands around my coffee mug, wishing it were warmer. “But I'm not a single person.”

“Kinda, you are,” she says. “And if you don't try it, you'll never know if you don't want it.”

“Sounds like no fun.”

“And definitely don't take the Lexapro. I think drugs are a last resort.”

“This isn't my last resort?”

She drops her head into her arms. She's got her sleeves pushed up, and I notice a bruise near her elbow, on the top of her forearm. It's one that's been there for a while, swirled with shades of green and yellow. “Trust me,” she says, “you are not there yet. I know what that looks like.”

I believe her. There's something in her eyes that makes her seem like she's lived through something I am only starting to understand. “You okay?” I ask.

She pulls herself back in her chair, arms folded at her chest. “What if I told you I knew how to get you on the other side of this, but you'd have to do exactly what I told you?”

“Oh, really? You can do that?”

“I can.” She hands me the straw from her drink. “Can you make something out of this?” she asks. “Make me a miniature, like you told me about.”

“What do you want?”

“I don't know. You're the artist.”

“I'm not. I haven't made anything in months. Not since my gallery show.” That's a lie. I made things after that. I stopped after Matthew left. I put everything away one morning and didn't touch it again.

“See? You were a real artist. When are you doing another show?”

“I'm not. It kind of messed things up in my marriage.”

“I thought you didn't know why he left.”

“It's complicated.”

“I like hearing about complicated things.”

Francesca's cell phone lights up, buzzing so fiercely that the table hums. She lunges for it, opening it like it's Christmas and the phone holds the one present she's been waiting for all year. She reads a message, nodding and smirking.

“Sorry,” she says to me. “Just a second.”

“No problem.” I start bending the straw in my hands, trying to figure out what it wants to become.

As she types a reply, I'm impressed with how quickly she's got her thumbs flying. Her mouth forms half words as she types, smiling. After a few seconds, her phone buzzes in her hands again. She silences it with a button and quickly writes something back.

“Boyfriend?” I ask.

She scrunches her nose. “I feel like an asshole doing this in front of you. I'm just going to tell him I can't talk to him right now, as I'm busy saving the life of my new friend. I mean, I'm just guessing I'm your friend. Don't tell me I'm not. You might decide you want to be friends, and Jacob will be happy if I tell him I have a new friend, so don't say anything that'll make my boyfriend sad, and I'm sorry that I'm gushing like this, but it's kind of new and still very exciting and not messed up yet, so cut me some slack and then we'll get back to your mess of a life, okay?”

I can't believe how much more animated she got from a shot of attention from her boyfriend, and it makes me ache a little, missing the way a message from someone you love can instantly make everything seem brighter.