On the Verge (35 page)

“And, Eve, I had to say, ‘working at Medieval Times doesn’t make you an actor.”’

“Wait! What? That’s what he did?”

“Yes, can you believe it? How embarrassing! I really liked him, too.”

“Apparently not that much.” She sits back a little in her chair.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, you couldn’t have liked him that much if you just nixed him because he wasn’t a serious thespian. Everybody’s scraping by.”

“Are you out of your mind? There is no way I was going to go out with someone who told me those kinds of lies.”

“Lies? Tabitha, how many lies did you tell him?” She shakes her head. “None? Give me a break, Tabitha. Give me a fucking break! How many lies do you tell me? I don’t know the first thing about you! Do you realize that? Doesn’t it seem strange that you never talk about anything real?” I’m yelling now. I’m losing it.

“Eve, it’s fucking New York. Everyone’s got a story. You’re from New Jersey. The Big C’s a dropout. Roseanne had an eating disorder. What difference does it make?”

“None, unless you work at Medieval Times and your girlfriend breaks up with you because you can’t take her to only the finest establishments. None, unless your friends wonder why you never talk about Texas or why you always have so much money or how come you buy tons of underwear once a week.”

“You want to know what, Eve, you’re ridiculous. That’s why Adrian won’t talk to you! That’s why Rob broke up with you! You are out of control! Keep judging everyone else from your dreamworld. Keep wanting to be a writer and not writing anything.
This is New York, you know. College newspaper writing just doesn’t cut it. Check, please.”

“So that’s it, Tabitha? We’re getting the check and going. You think I’m ridiculous, too.” I’m getting too upset.

Tabitha doesn’t say a word. She starts fishing out her Dunhills and puts her sunglasses on. This is it, she’s writing me off. I can’t believe it. Of all the blows. Now, I’m going to have to avoid her elevator bank, too. I leave the restaurant. Fuck her!

I go back up to the office. I can’t believe it! My heart is pounding and I feel like I am going to start crying and never stop. I need to go cry in the handicapped person bathroom, but I stop at my desk to leave my stuff. There is a huge bouquet of flowers. I can’t believe it. Could it be Rob? He’s got perfect timing, but how could he know? Todd? No, he’s wooing a Georgia peach. I read the card.

I can’t stay here. I shut down my computer. I don’t know who to tell that I’m leaving. There is no more Lorraine. I e-mail Herb that I don’t feel well and I have to leave. I don’t bother to spell check it before I flee the building.

I’m running through the streets crying. I feel ridiculous. I am trembling when I get to the apartment. I lay on the couch and cry. I haven’t cried like this in so long and I’m not sure how long it lasts, but I must fall asleep crying. When I wake up, Roseanne is hovering over me in her blue suit, looking concerned.

“Eve, it’s okay.” She’s hugging me. She’s bringing me soup.

So it finally happens, that fateful night. I have my breakdown. I cry all through the night and into the next afternoon. Roseanne sleeps in my bed and keeps smoothing my hair and telling me it’s going to be okay. She calls Herb in the morning for me and actually gets him on the phone. She tells him I have bad stomach flu and haven’t been able to leave the bathroom. I hear her laughing and I can only imagine what asinine thing he is saying to her.

“He doesn’t seem like a bad guy,” Roseanne says when she hangs up. This makes me cry harder. Somehow, I manage to assure her that I’m all right being alone. It’s not like I have to go on suicide watch or anything, I just can’t seem to stop crying. I tell her that my period is on the way. I want to believe that’s all it is.

I spend the next two days on the couch; crying and watching trash TV. It’s liberating, really. I smoke cigarettes in the house, knowing Roseanne isn’t going to say anything. She is still in the midst of her audit, so she gets home real late and is working through the weekend. She tries to make me eat when she’s home, but I’ll only have soup and tea. I should have done this long ago.

Yep, I’ve been going along too easily, no more trying to be nice to anyone else. From now on, it’s all about me. All about Eve. That’s right. Just me and my bed and my sofa and my comfort TV. Happy together. I could stay like this forever. I check my messages at work. There’s one from Chuck.

“Hey, Eve, it’s Chuck. I just wanted to call and leave you my number, in case you wanted to talk. I’m around. I know you haven’t talked to your sister and you probably don’t really feel comfortable talking to me, but sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger than anyone else, and anything you say to me is totally between us.” That sounds creepy, right? But, it’s not, he sounds sincere (not like Mabel sincere, like kind sincere). I write down his number and delete.

I start to cry again. I know I should call my mom, but I don’t need her to worry about me on top of everything. Besides, if anything were really wrong with her, someone would have called me, right? Maybe not.

When Roseanne comes home Monday night she stands over my bed with her hands on her hips. I assume her audit is over because she is home at five-thirty. “Eve, you smell. Do you realize that? This can’t go on. You have to get up.”

“I’m having a breakdown, Roseanne, leave me alone.”

“You are not having a breakdown, Eve, no one has breakdowns anymore. Everyone takes Prozac, which I know you don’t want. You are just feeling sorry for yourself and it has to stop. Stop the drama. Now, get up, take a shower, tweeze your eyebrows, do your hair and eat some solid food!”

“Don’t you yell at me!” I scream as snot flies out of my nose.

“That’s real attractive, Eve.”

“I don’t care, I don’t have anyone to impress. I liked you better when you had your audit.” Roseanne sighs and then the doorbell rings. I sit up in bed.

“Who is that? Who did you invite over? Your new sane roommate? I don’t want to see anyone! Do you understand? Shut my door!” I hear Roseanne talking to Tabitha on the intercom. “I especially don’t want to see her! Shut my door!”

“Shut it your damn self,” says Roseanne, sweet as pie. She opens the door for Tabitha. “She’s in there and she don’t look pretty.”

“Fuck off, the both of you!” I scream and roll over to face the wall. I hear Tabitha come into my room. I pull the covers over my head. She sits down on my bed.

“I’m sorry, Eve.” I wish I couldn’t hear her. “I was really pissed that you questioned my life. Wanna hear something funny? The Big C is leaving at the end of May. She wants to devote her time to writing crime novels. Can you imagine? That’s so not her. One fucking stint of jury duty and she thinks she’s John Grisham.

“She called me into her office to tell me. It’s what she always wanted to do, she says, and she feels like it’s now or never. Want to hear something funnier? She said she wanted to take care of me before she left. I thought she was going to offer me her position because I had done such a bang-up job while she was out. Not quite. But she did offer me a coordinator position. She went on and on about what a good position it would be for me and how much room there would be for advancement. She told me I had a lot of potential and that she trusted me and how important trust is.

“I kept thinking that the Big C doesn’t really know too much about me, although I knew so much shit about her. I believed her when she said that she trusted me. She even said she thought of me as a good friend. Then, I couldn’t help but feel bad for her. I think she really does think I’m a friend. It’s sort of lonely, I mean it sucks when you’ve got to think of your employees as your friends, especially when they’re really not.

“When I left her office, I was psyched, kind of about my promotion, even though it wasn’t the big one. I wanted to call all my friends and tell them, all the people I trusted. Who should I call? Adrian? Okay, yeah, he’s a friend, but what does he know about me? Nicole, come on, she’ll start thinking of even more ways to get her clients in
NY By Night.
And I couldn’t stop thinking about you and what you said. I guess you just wanted me to trust you, and that pissed me off for some reason.

“All this time, I’ve been trying to be this person and that’s fine, I mean it’s New York, you know, but you need to have someone whose going to get your back, whose going to like you, no matter what.

“I’m from somewhere worse than Jersey. I’m from a little town upstate that you’ve never even heard of.” What? “And while
I’m giving this Oscar speech, I might as well tell you that my family has like no money and there were times I could barely support myself. So I set up a Web page, which I bet you didn’t know I could do. I sell my underwear on the Net. It’s sort of sketchy. You would never believe how much money you can make doing it. That’s it. That’s me. Now you know. Now I guess I can trust you and Roseanne, who’s been listening to this whole thing. Hi, Rosie.”

“Hi,” says Roseanne from my doorway. “Wow!”

I sit up in bed and turn to look at both of them. Tabitha is in sweats and has her hair up in a scrunchee. I can’t believe it. She looks so different all of a sudden. Not any less glamorous or anything or trashy in lieu of what she just said, but less like a Tabitha and more like a friend.

“So that’s my story, Eve. What’s yours? Why are you like this, right now? Why are you crying and snotting all over yourself in a way that is so unlike you?” I’m a little shocked by everything Tabitha just told me, I have to admit. I figure I might as well just talk to her and see what comes.

“I honestly don’t know. I feel like if I start talking I might never stop.” Roseanne comes in and sits down on my bed, too.

“So what is it? It seems like you’ve got a million reasons to be upset.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” I can feel my lips trembling. “I’m sure all the reasons you can think of are probably true, but to single any one of them out would be an excuse. I don’t want to use my mom as an excuse.”

“So, what is it?” Tabitha is being so matter-of-fact.

“It’s me. I guess it’s everything. It’s how I’m becoming. A lot of what you said the other day was true, Tabitha. I know I should have done this long ago. I should have gotten out this good cry years ago. Maybe I should have planned for this in college, but this is it. This is my life.”

“Eve, what are you saying? I don’t think we understand.”

“On top of everything, my mom, my shitty sister, the end of the whatever I had with Rob, ruining a five-year friendship with Todd, in addition to all that, I’ve come to a shocking realization. This is it, guys, I’m going to be an assistant for the rest of my life. I got fucking flowers for Secretaries Day. There are worse things I guess, but I just can’t stand that I’m defined that way.

“Do I want to have my life, my emotions, ruled by these stupid meetings and decisions other people make based on how things
look on paper? The highest I can go is to become a Lacey, a Mabel or a Big C who thinks that this is it. And for what? For some stupid sports magazine?”

“Eve, you’re not even twenty-four, this isn’t your life, it can’t be! You won’t let it be!”

“Why the fuck not? I am letting it be! I have gotten so complacent! I’ve been sitting there playing hangman, surfing the Net, slowly losing any ambition I ever had to do something else. Something that I don’t even know. I am like a pseudo slacker. I am a slacker on the down low! I am the worst!”

Tabitha shakes her head and looks around the room. It’s really strange to see her with so little makeup. Roseanne rubs my foot and says, “Shoot.”

“Why don’t you quit?”

“Tabitha, let’s not go crazy, she’s in a bad state as it is.” I am sure Roseanne is thinking about the rent, too. “It doesn’t seem like this staying at home stuff is working.”

“Besides, I’m never ever going to be able to find a better job. Part of me really believes that’s my in. I don’t want to leave my foot-in-the-door position until I’ve actually gotten in.” Tabitha rolls her eyes at me.

“I’m not talking about getting another job. I’m talking about taking a risk. I’m talking about really doing it. Starting a magazine, giving it a go.”

“Oh, right, the magazine tree that grows outside this window is due to blossom anyday now, all this rain is going to do it.”

“Do you have any savings?”

“I have about four thousand dollars, I started saving it in like kindergarten. That would last me maybe three months. Maybe.”

“Listen, maybe it’s time we all took a risk. I’ll give Eve money. I’ve saved fifteen thousand. I’ll invest it, I might as well.”

“You’ve saved that much from selling your skivvies?”

“Your used panties?”

“Yes, and sometimes—” she covers up her face “—yours, too.”

“Eww!” We both scream in unison, hitting her.

“I definitely want a cut of that!” I say. “Honestly, though you’d be out of your mind if you gave me fifteen thousand bucks for a pipe dream that I haven’t even fleshed out. You were right when you said college newspapers didn’t mean anything.”

“Eve, flesh it out a little. It’s New York, anything can work. Sorry about what I said. You’re young, you’re hip, I have imparted
a great deal of fashion sense onto you. This is the way it works here. Look at the Styles section! Who are those people? They are just people who got a good spin! They have got no more luck or talent than you do.”

“Probably got a hell of a lot more discipline than I do, though. I have barely turned on that computer since I got it and if I did I’d probably surf the Net. Maybe, I’d check out your site.” Roseanne and I laugh; I still kind of can’t believe this.

“I’ve come clean now, and I feel better,” Tabitha says. “Skeletons out of the closet. You both know where I stand.”

“Yeah, we got your back, girlfriend,” Roseanne says like she’s a hip-hop sistah.

“True that,” I say, mocking.

“So, what are you going to do, Eve? You going to do it or not?”

“Tabitha, I feel a little bombarded, right now. I’m not going to make this kind of decision with any sanity.”