I'm So Happy for You (16 page)

“But it’s a large responsibility, Wendy,” said Lincoln. “You can’t come waltzing in here an hour late every morning. And you’ll
have to generate stories as well as edit them. Which means keeping up with the papers on a daily basis. And by papers I don’t
mean celebrity gossip Web sites.” His eyes locked punitively upon hers.

“Of course,” Wendy said, wincing.

“We can offer you a raise of five thousand dollars.”

“Great.”

“And you’ll get Shirley’s old office.”

“Fantastic!” The raise was nice. But it was the prospect of having a door to close that excited Wendy most of all. Now even
Lincoln would be forced to knock before entering.

Wendy was busy transferring the last of her Bic ballpoints into Shirley’s old office—rollerballs fell outside the limits of
the magazine’s budget—when the first knock arrived. It was accompanied by, “I’m so sorry to bother you, but I just wanted
to introduce myself. I’m Alyson? Oh, and that’s with a Y. My parents got kind of creative when I was born.” She laughed. Wendy
didn’t. It seemed that Lincoln had forgotten to tell her that in addition to a raise and a door to close, she’d also be receiving
her own college intern to boss around. And not just any intern, but a New York University senior who seemed guaranteed to
make Wendy feel old and irrelevant.

Her shiny hair was cut in an insouciant shag. Her high breasts flopped beneath some complicated jersey top with dolman sleeves.
Her legs were so long that she appeared to be wearing stilts. That she was wearing ballet flats seemed, somehow, like the
final insult. At five foot eleven—or whatever she was—she didn’t need the extra height. “Nice to meet you, Alyson with a Y,”
Wendy said, smiling brightly. Now she’d have to worry about what she wore to work every morning, she thought unhappily.

“It’s great to meet you, too,” said Alyson. “And I just want to say, I’m so completely stoked to be working for my favorite
magazine on the planet that I really don’t mind what you give me to do. Like, if you want me to get your lunch for you or
something, that’s fine.”

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” Wendy said, laughing. “But you can do some research for me if you want. We have a little
library here in the office, but it doesn’t have all the periodicals we’re interested in. For some stuff, I might ask you to
go to the public library on Forty-second.”

“Ohmygod, I would love to go to the library for you!” declared Alyson. “That’s such a cute idea. Also, you should know that
I’m very left-wing. I grew up privileged, I guess you could say, in Rye, but it really sickens me to know that my parents
are getting tax breaks on their capital gains income while millions of hardworking families struggle to put food on their
tables every day. Also, I’m really, really opposed to the war in Iraq. I mean, people are, like, dying over oil! It’s so wrong.”

Wendy was seized by a sudden desire not only to be chilly and ungrateful, but to come to the defense of the Bush administration,
attack poor people for being lazy drug addicts, and possibly even advocate the expansion of America’s military presence in
the Middle East. She stopped herself by recalling the boredom and alienation that had accompanied her own college internship
(at a travel magazine, where she’d done nothing but fact-check room rates). Besides, it wasn’t Alyson’s fault she had nice
breasts. “Well, we’re glad to have you here,” said Wendy, attempting to rise above her base instinct—to kick the girl in the
shins. Then she rolled her chair into her desk and hit the space bar on her recently reinstalled computer so Alyson would
get the hint and leave.

“Ohmygod, you still use email?” she said, taking note of the software on Wendy’s screen. “That’s so adorable!”

“You don’t use email?” asked Wendy, confused.

Alyson shrugged. “I guess I just text, really.”

“You probably don’t have a home phone, either.”

She squinted quizzically at Wendy. “What do you mean by ‘home phone’?”

“Never mind.”

Finally, Alyson left Wendy to contemplate her various outmoded methods of communication in peace. But the pleasure proved
short-lived. As the morning progressed, one after another of
Barricade’
s roster of middle-aged male editors—some, like Lincoln, with pockmarked skin; others with more superficial cosmetic defects
like nose hairs that needed clipping and twenty-pound tires around their midriffs; all of them unattractive in some irredeemable
way—began to poke their large heads through Wendy’s door. Ostensibly, they came to congratulate her on her new position.
Actually
was another matter. “A well-deserved promotion, Wendy,” they’d say while pivoting on one orthopedic lace-up to face the cubicle
at which Alyson now sat, just outside Wendy’s door. “And you must be—”

“Alyson.”

Hand extended. “Welcome aboard, Alyson. I’m Ralph/ Don/Ed ___.”

“Nice to meet you Mr. ___!”

“Please—call me Ralph/Don/Ed. And let me just say, it’s a pleasure to have some young blood around these parts for once.…”

Wendy felt as if she’d just charioted in from ancient Greece.

Glancing at her feet, she couldn’t be sure that, beneath her boots and socks, her toes hadn’t turned an even deeper shade
of purple than Lois’s.

Wendy arrived home from work that evening to find her husband playing his acoustic guitar. “ ‘He’s sure got a lot of gall,’
” came the yodel-like cry from the bedroom, “ ‘to be so useless and all. Muttering small talk at the wall while I’m in the
hall.… ’ ” Wendy proceeded to the kitchen, only to find that the faucet wouldn’t turn off. Standing over the sink, she didn’t
know which of the many sounds filling the apartment she found to be the most grating—the metallic hum of the highway traffic
outside, the Bob Dylan impersonation coming through the wall, or the drip-drip in her face. There was nothing she could do
about the first one. As for the second two, in the interest of preserving her marriage, she decided to tackle the faucet,
stuffing a paper towel up the spigot. She knew it was a temporary solution. On the other hand, it was unlikely to cause ill
will. And Wendy had begun the new year trying to be more supportive of Adam, if only because nagging and berating him to go
back to work and have sex with her more often seemed to get her nowhere.

At the very least, they were getting along better now. Ron’s accident seemed to have made Adam more sentimental about family,
too. He’d attached a photograph of his nieces ice-skating in duck costumes to the door of their refrigerator. And the previous
month, around the time that Wendy was ovulating, he’d consented to having intercourse twice in a forty-eight-hour period without
first mocking her single-minded focus on reproduction.

Soon, Adam appeared in the kitchen, guitar in hand. “Hey, managing editor!” he said. (Wendy had called him that morning to
tell him the good news.)

“Hey, Bobby,” said Wendy.

“Bobby?” said Adam.

“Dylan.”

“Oh.” He laughed. “Just keeping the old fingers limber, you know?”

“Of course.”

“So, how’s the new job?”

“Great,” Wendy told him. “Except Missing Linc forgot to tell me I was getting assigned a ridiculously beautiful NYU intern.
I almost had a heart attack when I saw her.”

“Cool!” said Adam, his eyebrows jumping.

“The worst part is—she’s really nice. Though she did make fun of me for having a home phone.”

“Oh, come on.” Adam took Wendy into his arms and twirled her, his guitar behind her back. “You’re the sexiest editor
Barricade’
s ever had.”

“What you mean is, I’m the only female editor at the magazine now, my competition being a bunch of middle-aged Marxists with
visible butt cracks.”

“Aw—you’re too hard on yourself. Not to mention on the Marxists. They’re people, too. Listen—what do you say we go celebrate
tonight?”

“And blow some of my raise?”

“Exactly.”

“I thought I’d send the extra money to Visa every month.”

“Come on, you have to have fun sometimes.”

Easy for you to say
, Wendy thought but refrained from uttering out loud. Then again, Adam had a point, she thought: they hadn’t been out to eat
in weeks. What’s more, leaving the house would get him to put his guitar away. “I guess we could take a car service to Blue
Ribbon Sushi or something. There’s nothing around here.” Wendy couldn’t stop herself from pointing that last fact out—and
in doing so reminding Adam that she was still bitter about having to live on “No Prospect Avenue,” as she’d recently dubbed
the block.

Over the previous few months, she’d done her best to cheer the place up—painting the walls of the living room pale yellow,
hanging wooden blinds, bringing home fresh flowers from the grocery store whenever she remembered. But nothing seemed to work.
Home was supposed to be a retreat. The new apartment felt more like a highway rest stop. (Arriving home, Wendy always half-expected
to find a food court at the top of the stairs, raising the tantalizing question: the Nachos BellGrande at Taco Bell or a slice
of pizza from Sbarro?)

“There’s always the White Castle on Thirty-second,” offered Adam.

“Can you please not depress me!” Wendy was suddenly livid. That he could joke about such things!

“I don’t see why you hate it here so much,” said Adam.

“Because it’s depressing,” said Wendy.

“Maybe
you’re
just depressed and taking it out on the neighborhood.”

A part of Wendy longed to escalate the dispute—to tell Adam that if she was depressed, it was because he was depressing her.
But again, she stopped herself. “What do you say we drop this conversation?” she asked.

“Fine with me,” he answered.

“Good. I’m going to go get changed.” As Wendy exited the kitchen, she called back to him, “How’s your dad today?”

“Good, thanks,” Adam called back. Ron was at home now, with a round-the-clock nurse attending to him. He and Adam spoke on
the phone every day. From what Wendy could gather, the conversations meant a lot to both of them.

Wendy had also begun the new year trying to be more appreciative of Daphne’s friendship, if only because she suspected that
the resentment she increasingly felt toward her best friend had more to do with her coveting of Daphne’s house, ring, and
husband’s earning power than it did with Daphne’s arrogance, insensitivity, egocentrism, or insincerity. (Though the latter
attributes were arguably at play as well.)

Renovations on Daphne’s brownstone had begun the second week of January. The second week of February, Daphne called to invite
Wendy to come see the progress. Wendy knew she’d be racked with jealousy. She was also curious to see the splendor in which
Daphne would soon be living. And would Daphne take the living room in a midcentury modernist direction, with Saarinen womb
chairs and brushed-steel tripod lamps with oversize white shades and maybe even a Warhol lithograph or two? Or would she veer
in a more traditional vein, with Persian carpets, potted ferns, and burgundy leather club chairs with brass nail heads angled
sportily against the hearth? And what about the kitchen? Would it feature country-style glass-front cabinetry or something
sleeker and more opaque, perhaps with elongated horizontal pulls in brushed nickel, or maybe even no hardware at all? Wendy
agreed to visit the following Saturday.

“I’m so happy you’re coming!” Daphne declared. “I desperately need your help decorating. You’re always so good at stuff like
that.”

“Please,” protested Wendy, who knew for a fact that Daphne’s statement was false. “I have no talent for anything visual.”
Even so—and even as Wendy reminded herself of Daphne’s propensity for spewing utter flimflam—she felt flattered by the suggestion.
It had always been like that, she thought resignedly: the grasping, aspiring side of her brain winning out over the level-headed
one.

The day before Wendy was due to visit Daphne, which happened to be Valentine’s Day, yet another unwelcome menstrual period
greeted her in the salmon-colored ladies’ room that
Barricade
shared with the Youth-net student exchange office down the hall. (On occasion, gorgeous Estonian teens could be spotted shuffling
toward the elevator in skin-tight stone-washed jeans.) Wendy had been trying to conceive for twelve cycles. According to modern
medical science, she was infertile. Devastated by the verdict, she teared up on her way back to her office. Just outside the
door, Alyson tried to intercept her—something about not being able to locate the current issue of
Dissent
—but Wendy gave herself permission to be rude, if only this one time, and kept walking.

She shut the door behind her and sat down at her desk. On the upside, she thought, after work she and Sara were making their
annual pilgrimage to the circus. One look at the lady who hung by her hair always filled Wendy with awe and wonder at the
mysteries of the world. Still fighting off tears, she dialed the number of her new ob-gyn, Dr. Wendy Kung. (Wendy Murman’s
old ob-gyn, like her old therapist, had stopped accepting
Barricade’
s bare-bones insurance policy, CarePlus Medical, after the company announced it would no longer reimburse for the removal
of any cysts or growths unless they were already cancerous; but they couldn’t be too cancerous, because that meant you were
already going to die, so why bother trying to save you.) To Wendy’s further agitation, however, Dr. Kung’s secretary announced
that Dr. Kung’s next available appointment wasn’t until late July.

Wendy could feel her internal stopwatch ticking even faster than usual. “It’s actually an emergency,” she told the woman.
“I can feel some kind of hard mass in my pelvis.”

Dr. Kung’s secretary sighed testily before squeezing Wendy into Dr. Kung’s schedule for Monday.

Wendy hung up the phone feeling more relieved than she did guilty. She found an email message from Gretchen waiting for her:

wen, thanxs for the sweet note! i know, it’s RIDICULOUS that you still haven’t met the twinnies. but, sadly, afraid it will
have to wait another week, as i’m actually on a plane headed to new guinea. but let’s definitely schedule something for when
i get back. if you can stand take-out, maybe you could come over for dinner one night?? though if you want to see/meet the
babes, it might have to be on the early side. though, to be honest, am not entirely sure what time they go to bed these days.
to be even more honest, have been so busy at work lately that i’ve hardly seen the babes myself; all i can say is: THANK GOD
for our nanny, dorothea. she just might be the greatest human being alive today. i’m dying for her to move in. actually, she’s
staying over six nights a week already, but i’d love for her to do sundays, too. unfortunately, she has her own family to
look after. shit, am being told to shut off all electronic equipment. have a great week. luv u, g