People Who Knew Me (18 page)

“Yes. Can you?”

She hesitated, so I blurted it out:

“I just got laid off.”

*   *   *

We met up at the Dive. For once, she was already there when I arrived, sitting at the bar, a drink in front of her. When I came in, she stood reverentially, the way people do for brides walking down the aisle.

“I'm so sorry, honey,” she said, putting her arms around me. She smelled like a women's magazine. I wanted to hug her for longer than would be socially appropriate. I hadn't hugged or been hugged in months.

“It's okay,” I lied, hopping up on a stool next to hers.

“What the hell happened?”

She took a long suck on her straw. She was halfway through some kind of brown liquor, on the rocks.

According to rumor, the partners—Mathers and James themselves, whom I'd never met—got a deal they couldn't refuse from a giant conglomerate who wanted to buy them out.

“Was it ICP?” Marni asked.

“Hm?” I didn't know the advertising world as well as she did.

“International Creative Partners. They're preying on every small agency in Manhattan right now.”

“Yeah, maybe it was them. I don't know,” I said. “They brought in their own people. They said there were ‘redundancies.'”

“How very British of them,” Marni said with a look of disgust.

“What am I going to do?” I asked. The bartender came by to ask if I wanted a drink and I waved him off. My stomach had been upset since I'd gotten the news. All I wanted to drink was Pepto-Bismol.

“Well, first you're going to be rightfully pissed off,” Marni said. “These companies don't care about people like you and me. I was hoping not to be jaded until my late thirties, but that's becoming a seriously unrealistic goal.”

“I'm not even mad,” I said. This seemed to disappoint her. She was ready to yell and scream and organize some kind of revolt.

“I swear you've gotten way too good at suppressing every emotion you have.”

“I don't have time to be mad,” I said. “I'm just worried.”

“You'll be fine. I'll investigate any job openings at my agency, though they haven't been hiring for a while. We lost a few big clients after the holidays. My entire life has been pitching new business lately and I'm just so sick of—”

She stopped abruptly, as if she remembered that I was the only one allowed to have problems. “Go on,” I said, trying to be a friend.

She said, “It doesn't matter. Let's just focus on getting you a job.”

“I don't even know where to start,” I said. “I haven't even looked at my résumé since I started at Mathers and James.”

“So that will be task number one,” she said. She took a pen out of her purse—a purple, sparkly pen with no cap. She drew inkless circles on a cocktail napkin until the purple showed itself, then wrote down,
1. Résumé
.

“You know what else you should do?” she asked. “Contact a recruiter. They'll do the hard work for you—find leads, that kind of thing.”

She wrote that on the napkin:
2. Recruiter
.

She finished her drink and then pushed the empty glass out of her way like its presence was bothering her. She put the end of the pen in her mouth, gnawing on it, eyes rolled up to the right, deep in thought.

Suddenly she took the pen out of her mouth and tapped it on her temple. “Duh,” she muttered to herself. She pulled the napkin close to her and wrote on it, not letting me see what she was writing. After she was done, she pushed the napkin to me.

3. Tell Drew to get off his ass
.

I wanted to crumple the napkin and throw it over the bar, into the overfilling trash can by the cash register. Instead, though, I folded it politely and put it in my purse.

“You can't be mad at me for bringing it up,” she said. “This would be the perfect time to lovingly encourage him to win some bread for a while.”

“You're forgetting his sick mother,” I said. “Which, hey, I understand. I'd love to forget her, too, but that's pretty impossible with her living in our apartment.”

The last time Marni saw me, I was doing a much better job of keeping my composure. She looked startled.

“Sorry,” I said, quickly. “I've become a total bitch.”

“Thank God. That just means we have more in common.” She leaned over and gave me a little kiss on the cheek.

“We'll figure something out,” she said. I appreciated the “we,” the insinuation that I wasn't alone in this even though I knew I was. I'd lost every sense of “we” in my life lately. Drew and I no longer felt like a “we.” He was “him” and I was “me.”

Marni looked at her watch. “I hate to do this,” she said, “but I have to get back to the office.” Her face was twisted into a look of sincere apology.

“No, go. We'd be in real trouble if you lost your job, too,” I said, using the “we” she'd offered.

She pulled a ten out of her bag and put it on the counter, along with a few quarters dug up from the depths of her purse. We walked out of the bar together, her arm around me, holding me close to her body. She was warm.

Outside, she faced me and put a hand on each of my shoulders, like a coach does with a pitcher before he takes the mound in a World Series game.

“You'll be okay,” she said. “Please believe me.”

“I'll try,” I said.

“‘Try' is a weak man's word.” When both of us worked together at Mathers and James, this was something one of the account guys used to say on a way-too-regular basis.

“I
will
be okay.” I tried to sound confident, but felt like I was making a false promise.

“I'll call you tomorrow, 'kay? I'll have some names of recruiters. You work on your résumé tonight,” she said. “And talk to Drew.”

*   *   *

During my walk from the DeKalb subway station to the apartment, I thought about how I'd announce my joblessness to Drew … and to his mother. I wanted her to know, too. I wanted her to understand that she was about to become an even greater burden on us than she already was. The announcement would be dramatic. For once, I would be the center circle, the most important according to support-group-Pam's stupid theory.

They were sitting at the kitchen table, with a man I didn't know. Drew looked up at me with a look of surprise and guilt, like I'd caught him cheating on me.

“You're home early,” he said. He cleared his throat.

“Yeah,” I said, keeping my eyes on the man I didn't know. He was in his early forties. His hair was gelled back and he was wearing a suit. He had papers spread in front of him on the table. He looked from me to Drew and back again, then took it upon himself to stand and stick out his hand.

“Greg,” he said. “You must be Drew's wife.”

“Right,” I said, not sharing my name. I shifted my glance to Drew. He wouldn't meet my eye.

“We were just discussing some comps near Ms. Morris's home in Newark,” he said, waving his hand over the papers on the table.

“Comps?” I said, taking a few steps closer to examine the papers. They were real estate listings.

“Comparables,” he clarified. “Properties comparable to hers that have recently sold in her area.”

“Why?” I said, already figuring out the answer for myself while the question hung in the air.

“We're just exploring some options,” Drew said, trying to make it all seem casual. It wasn't casual, though. It was gelled-back-hair-and-a-suit serious.

“You're selling her house?” I said.

“Just exploring options,” this Greg said, understanding where his alliances lay.

“Right,” I said.

Drew's mom whispered something into Drew's ear. He nodded and said to me, on her behalf, “It's just an idea. If we sell her house, we'll have some money for the three of us.”

“The three of us,” I repeated back.

There was a time when I thought of the three of us as Drew, Bruce the dog, and me. I looked at Bruce, stretched out on the floor in front of the couch. I wanted him to cry with me. I swallowed back what tears I did have, gave a polite, “Excuse me,” to Greg, and walked to the bedroom as fast as I could. I changed out of my pants suit and into sweats, grabbed my Nikes, laced them up, and left, slamming the door behind me. In my head, I could hear Drew apologizing for me to Greg, as if I were the problem:
Sorry, she's been a little emotional lately
.

I ran until my stomach growled with hunger for dinner. Two hours had passed. I knew Greg would be gone, so I ran home. When I got there, breathing fast and heavy, Drew was standing out front, chatting with neighbor Jim, this old guy who lived alone with two parakeets. Drew was smiling, making small talk. He was always better with people than I ever was. I waved to Jim with as friendly a demeanor as I could muster. When you're fighting with your spouse, you want anyone and everyone to realize it's not you who's the crazy one. Jim waved back, then stuffed his hands into the pockets of the same windbreaker he always wore and headed upstairs.

“Good run?” Drew asked.

“Yep,” I said. I bent at the waist, grabbed the front of my shoes, stretching out my legs. I didn't want to look at him.

“I didn't mean to ambush you like that,” he said.

“Oh, I know,” I said, still bent over. The blood rushed to my head with urgency. “You meant to meet with him while I wasn't here so I'd never know.”

“Em,” he said, with his let's-talk-about-this-like-adults tone.

I rose up. “Yes?”

“Look, I'm sorry.”

He'd started doing this a lot—delivering these blanket apologies, covering me with them, wrapping me with them.

I lifted my leg up to the building wall, letting the heel of my shoe rest in the grout between two bricks. I bent at the side, stretching out over my leg like a ballerina. My eyes were closed, my forehead resting on my shin. That's when I started crying, into my pant leg.

“Em?” he said. “Are you okay?”

He came to me, put his hand on my back. I could feel the boniness of my spine under his fingers.

I looked up at him, finally ready for him to see the reality.

“I can't do this anymore,” I said.

His jaw hung a little, making him seem more pathetic than I'd ever wanted him to seem.

I'd never said this, specifically, before—not to him at least. I'd said it to Nancy. Marni had said it to me:
You can't do this anymore
.

“I can't come home to this every night,” I said.

“The Realtor?”

He was dumb sometimes. This fact caused a small pain in my chest that could only be my heart breaking.

“No. Your mom. You. The whole thing. I can't do it.”

“What do you want me to do?” he said. He asked this frequently, knowing deep down that I wouldn't be able to come up with any solution; or that I wouldn't be cruel enough to suggest what he'd consider impossible. This time, though, I made my need known.

“Take her home,” I said. It was a relief to state it, out loud. I'd finally done it—requested that impossible thing.

“Em, she needs twenty-four-hour care.”

I arched my neck back. The sky was black, but I couldn't see any stars—a con of city life.

“I can't even tell you how many times you've told me that,” I said.

He threw his arms up toward the black sky. “It's a fact. I don't know what you want me to do. Perform a miracle?”

That's how he saw it, this caring for his mother—a duty that only a miracle could remove.

“Go live with her, then,” I said. “I'll stay here.”

He thought I was calling his bluff. He exhaled something between a laugh and a gasp. I took my leg off the wall and stood there staring at him. He expected me to say,
I don't mean that
, which was a lie I wasn't willing to tell.

“Are you serious?” he said.

“I don't see another option. She needs twenty-four-hour care.” There was satisfaction in using his words against him.

“We're
married
, Em,” he said.

“That's exactly my point—we're a married couple, not nurses.”

He took a deep breath and walked in a circle, just like Bruce did when he was nervous.

“You can take care of her there until you figure out something else,” I said.

He stopped his circle-turning and put his hands on his hips like a defiant teenager protesting a curfew violation.

“You're serious,” he said. “This is what you want?”

He wasn't angry. He was surprised, worried.

“I think we're months past considering what I want.”

I wasn't angry, either. I was tired. I crossed my arms across my chest, strummed my ribs with my fingers.

“Oh,” I said, “and I lost my job.”

With that, I went up to the apartment, ignoring his pleas that I come back to talk more. His mom was watching TV. I sat close to her and made the effort to ask how she was feeling. I never did this, but the prospect of her leaving filled me with the compassion Drew always insisted I try to have.

He took her home the next day. I wondered if she hated me until I saw her sad attempt to smile as they said good-bye, her bags slung over Drew's shoulders. She understood, better than Drew did. He wouldn't look at me.

I washed every sheet and towel and cleaned every dish in the apartment. This was for the best, I told myself. We'd settle into a routine of not seeing each other at all during the week. That was the plan. On Saturday mornings, he'd come home, with her in tow. They'd stay the night, then leave again after an early Sunday dinner. Drew and I would talk on the phone every day. Absence would make our hearts grow fonder. We'd say,
I miss you
, and mean it. We'd fall in love again.

At least, that was the plan.