Sad Desk Salad (22 page)

P.S. I was so sorry to hear that your father, Jim Lyons, died so suddenly two years ago. It’s very rare for a man of his age and fitness level to have a heart attack like that. Perhaps your dear old dad had a taste for narcotics just like Becky West . . .

Now I am legitimately terrified. This has suddenly escalated from painful sophomoric prank to aspersions cast on the character of my
dead father
. For a second, I even wonder if BTCH knows something I don’t: Maybe my stern, moral daddy had some secret, sullied life that my mom and I never even imagined. I can’t believe that’s true . . . unless . . .

Suddenly, the notion that naked photos of me might be leaked online is the least of my troubles; a homemade-sex-tape reveal seems almost quaint (though I still hope there’s no soundtrack). What if Dad
had
been hiding some secret?

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do next. Do I call my mom and ask her about Dad? That’s going to really upset her, and possibly just for a psychotic bluff. Do I acquiesce to the hate blogger? I can’t. Even if I wanted to, my post belongs to Chick Habit and I don’t have the power to take it down.

How could Molly know all this stuff about my family? Unless Tina’s Internet ninja skills are propping up the whole enterprise . . . Are my coworkers really so competitive that they’d go to these lengths to ruin me? Am I just completely unraveling?

I decide to do the only thing that makes sense anymore. I owe Moira a post in about twenty minutes and I don’t want to mess up the one thing that’s actually going gangbusters for me. Chick Habit won’t stop for my drama.

The first thing I find that’s worth a few hundred words is a new study that shows that when you liposuction out fat, it doesn’t disappear forever—it merely redistributes. For instance, if you suck out that troublesome fat in your lower belly, it will find its way back into your arms or your upper abdomen.

I read an article a while back in one of the lower-rent tabloids (
In Touch
,
OK!
, or
Life & Style
—definitely not
Us Weekly
or
People
) about Kirstie Alley’s failed liposuction attempt. The tabloid in question had said that Kirstie Alley’s fat was too stubborn to disappear entirely. They used a singularly unpleasant photo to illustrate Alley’s immovable weight.

A minute or two of searching leads me to the story in question—I lift the photo, save it to my desktop, and use it to illustrate a post that I end up calling: “Sorry, Ladies, Liposuction Sucks.” I also make a joke about Kirstie Alley’s neck rolls. I know the commenters are going to go totally apeshit about this bit of unnecessary meanness. Any comment on a woman’s figure, even one that could be construed as positive, gets defined as “body snarking” by at least one sensitive soul. “I thought this place was above nitpicking on women’s bodies,” is a typical response to pointing out, say, Bristol Palin’s obvious plastic surgery.

Usually I won’t go there with my celebrity posts—after all, I’m no supermodel myself—but something about the hate blogger’s attempt to control me has pushed me over the edge. How dare she tell me what I can and can’t write about? Who died and made her queen of the motherfucking Internet? I will not be shamed into being “nice.” I just won’t. Especially not when she’s upped the stakes by threatening my family.

I file my lipo post to Moira at 10:10.

MoiraPoira (10:11:13):
Oooh you’re really getting nasty now. You’re really starting to sound like a hard-core Fleet Street hack. I love it.

Alex182 (10:12:01):
I’m glad.

MoiraPoira (10:12:43):
Since you’ve done two posts so quickly you can go take a break now. Have you eaten anything at all today?

Alex182 (10:13:32):
Just coffee this morning.

MoiraPoira (10:14:02):
Well off with you—go get some food in your tummy. You can even sit down and eat it away from the computer. That is my gift to you.

The second I stand up I realize how woozy I am. Probably from the three hours of sleep and the no food and the hangover. I find my sandals, grab my canvas bag, and head out into the daylight to get some sustenance. I’m not going to eat slumped over my computer, and, in fact, I’m not even going to have a salad today. I don’t even like salad. I just eat it because grilled chicken with greens is what girls eat for lunch. So it was decreed by the Girl Council sometime in the late eighties, and unlike the big floppy bow ties and the Easy Spirit pumps, that salad remains a dowdy staple of the working-woman crowd.

I march outside determined to get some real sustenance, maybe even pizza (secondary query: Can I find someplace to sell me pizza at ten in the morning?). If I find it, I’m going to have not one but two slices. I’m about to cross the street when I hear the cheerful
briiiiing
of my phone informing me that I have a text message. I pick it up with a sigh; it’s probably just Moira reneging on her promise to let me eat lunch untethered from a machine.

But when I look at the phone I realize that it’s not Moira at all.

Peter Rice (10:15 AM): My mom called. She saw you on the Today show. What the fuck is going on?

Oh shit. After all the intensity of this morning I had conveniently forgotten about my problems with Peter. Of course his mom would watch the
Today
show. I can just imagine her chagrin at watching me sass a “certified” Internet safety expert in front of millions of people. What will she tell the bridge club?

That unfairly snide thought is replaced immediately by a real fear: What if I actually do lose Peter in all of this? I’m pretty sure nothing is worth that.

Alex Lyons (10:15 AM): It’s a really long story. I promise I will be home and awake tonight and we can talk it out.

Peter Rice (10:15 AM): No. This is not waiting another minute. I am coming home now. I’ll make some excuse about a family emergency. I can’t take this shit.

Suddenly I’m not so hungry anymore. I decide go to back inside and get some more work done, just in case Peter and I have a blow-up fight. I duck back into the midget door and flop back to the couch, scrolling through my RSS feed halfheartedly.

It’s odd to get a furious communication via text. Even though Peter and I have fought more this week than in the entirety of our yearlong relationship, I can barely imagine what his voice would sound like if he had said those words aloud to me. When he gets pissed—like he did last night—the Long Island accent that’s been tamped down through years of fancy Catholic school comes out around the edges. He starts dropping his
R
 s and elongating his vowels when he’s truly enraged. I’ve only seen him that angry a couple of times, most recently with a representative from AT&T customer service.

I’m not sure how long it will take Peter to get home—he’s much thriftier than I am, so even in a so-called family emergency I’ll bet he’s taking the subway, which is on a non-rush-hour schedule. To bide the time and mask my anxiety, I find an article to post on, about Duchess Sarah Ferguson’s latest comeback attempt.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Duchess Fergie. She seems sweet, if terminally dim. And I appreciate that she’s never prim and proper and perfect, like the unerring Kate Middleton.

Fergie’s comeback 4.0 involves a new children’s book she’s written, which is meant to teach the pre-K set how to apologize. It’s called
Little Red Makes a Mistake
. I find a clip of her promoting the book on the OWN network and write a few hundred words about Fergie’s past struggles. I find a screen shot of Fergie looking truly abashed and call the post “Fergie Begs for Forgiveness: How Could You Stay Mad at That Face?”

I file to Moira around twelve. Just as I hit send on the IM notifying her that the post is ready, Peter bursts through the door, sweat dripping through his once-starched white shirt. His tie has been loosened to the point that it’s almost falling off his neck.

“What happened to you?” I ask, gasping. Peter not only never loses his temper, he also never looks this undone.

“The F stopped running at York Street and I had to walk the rest of the way in this fucking ninety-degree heat.”

“Jesus, Peter, why didn’t you take a cab?”

“Jesus, Alex, what’s
wrong
with you? I’m not here to talk about how I got home. I’m here to find out why the fuck you were on TV this morning and why you’ve been acting like a total lunatic all week.” He’s so angry that he’s breathing hard, and his shoulders are moving up and down in a jerky, uneven way, as if controlled by a drunken puppeteer.

“It’s a long story,” I say, shifting uneasily on the couch and trying to look away. “But you should already know part of it.”

“It had better be a long story. Why don’t you start from the beginning,” Peter says, taking his tie off completely and sitting down right next to me so I can’t avoid his face.

“Have you heard of the Genius Mom?” Even though Peter’s furious with me, it’s a relief to finally have the chance to tell him the whole sordid tale. He’s looking less angry now, more expectant.

“That lady with the quadruplets? Who had that crazy op-ed in the
New York Times
that all the moms in my office got pissed off about?”

“That’s the one. Well, on Tuesday someone sent me a video of one of her daughters snorting a ton of coke. And I published it. So that’s why I was on the
Today
show. To talk about it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I was furious at you,” I say, looking him right in the eyes.

“What are you even talking about?” He looks thoroughly confused now and a little agitated—his mouth’s hanging slightly open, and I can tell he’s anxious to hear the explanation.

“You left your Omnitown report on the kitchen table. I read it.” I try to say this as calmly as possible. I want to seem cool and collected—the superior ice queen that I’ve never been able to be.

I watch his face as he processes this information. It falls almost immediately. “Where do you get off reading that report? It’s confidential information. I could be fired if my bosses ever discovered that you saw a single page.” He’s so soaked with rage at this point that I can almost see it dripping from him. So much for keeping the frosty upper hand. I fire back at him.

“What, so your job is so much more important than mine that you don’t care that I could be laid off tomorrow? How could you not warn me! I published that video in part because I needed the page views so that I wouldn’t get canned!”

“I don’t think my job is more important than yours, but yours certainly isn’t more important than mine,” Peter says bitterly. “You’re not the one with college loans that you’ll be paying off for the next decade.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask him defensively.

“You could always find something else to do for work. And maybe you should. Publishing this Genius Mom shit is beneath you.” Peter leans back into the couch. I can tell he thinks he landed a harsh blow.

“And how would I support myself in the meantime? You know my mom can’t help me out anymore.” I want to scream that his principles can’t pay our rent, but before I can say that he replies.

“I would be happy to support you while you get back on your feet,” Peter says with a sniff.

“Oh, so with your big fancy job you can support your good little homemaking lady. I just knew you’d be on your moral high horse about this,” I say as I stand up, ready to launch into my own self-righteous tirade. “Where do you get off judging me about where I decide to work? You work in finance, for God’s sakes, not exactly the most morally impressive career. Who are you to tell me what’s wrong or what’s right when it comes to my job? My publishing that video might be bad for one family, but what you do almost bankrupted the country!”

Peter’s eyes become bloodshot and the usually delicate vein running along the left side of his forehead begins to pulsate. “Don’t you
dare
try to turn this around on me. What do you even
care
about the banking industry? You fell asleep halfway through
Inside Job
! Telling you anything about my report would have been illegal. I haven’t done anything wrong here.”

I snort with what I hope is an appropriate level of derision. “Nothing wrong? You care about holding on to that stupid Polydrafter job more than you care about our relationship.”

“Oh, because your job hasn’t caused you to lose any kind of perspective at all,” Peter sneers. “You seem to have forgotten the real me in your obsession with this website and your fake virtual drama. It doesn’t take a psychologist to see that you’re avoiding dealing with your dad’s death by immersing yourself in this frivolous bullshit.”

“How dare you bring my dad into this!” This is the most hurtful thing Peter’s ever said to me, in part because I know there’s a kernel of fact in his assessment. My shoulders droop and I feel like my chest is caving in.

“Because it’s true, Alex, and you know it. You’ve turned me into some two-dimensional heavy who doesn’t support or understand you. You’re not letting me in at all. You’re sneaking around, reading papers that don’t belong to you. All that’s real to you these days is what goes on the Internet and what happens in your crazy-ass skull.”

I open my mouth to try to argue with Peter, but I know that he’s right. I’ve been treating my entire life lately like some elaborate game of cat and mouse, searching for some jerk who says mean things about me, obsessing over some girl I’ve never met. My real life—the life with Peter and my mom and Jane—is happening without me, and I’ve been too self-absorbed to notice it.

My self-righteousness deflates and I hang my head. “I’m so sorry.”