The Fainting Room (22 page)

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Authors: Sarah Pemberton Strong

BOOK: The Fainting Room
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“Sweetheart, I have to go in to work.”
Evelyn looked up from dishing out green beans. “Right now?”
“There’s a mistake on some drawings we have to present tomorrow morning. I have to do them over.” He took a swallow of wine and set the glass on the table, sorry to let it go. “Well, that’s what I get for drawing on vellum.”
“At least eat first.”
Ray glanced at the meal his wife had made, frozen green beans with slivered almonds, Pillsbury Fast Bake rolls and a disjointed chicken that appeared to have been baked in pink slime, which he supposed was the can of tomato soup. Definitely
Redbook.
“I’ll eat when I get back,” he said. “That will give me incentive to hurry.”
Evelyn shook her head. “Anyone would think you had to go deliver a baby or something.”
“I don’t know nothin’ about birthin’ no babies, Miz Scarlett.” Ray kissed her cheek. “I’ll try to be back before too long.”
“You’ll be there half the night.”
No I won’t. I’ll just
veni, vidi, vici,
and then vamoose.”
Evelyn made a face. “Stop with the Latin—we all know you went to Yale.”
“Vamoose is not Latin,” Ray said, and went out.
Ingrid took a large bite of green beans and looked at Evelyn. “I’ll keep you company,” she said.
Evelyn nodded absently. “You’re sweet.”
Ingrid watched Evelyn, first from the corner of her eye and then, when it became clear Evelyn was a million miles away, looking straight at her. Ingrid noted how, as Evelyn ate, her coral-colored lipstick grew fainter, and the real color of her mouth, a dusky rosy pink, began to emerge. Ingrid wondered where the lipstick went, if it got mixed in with the food so that Evelyn actually ate it, and if it had a taste. She noted how Evelyn’s blaze of hair seemed to grow darker as it began to get dark outside, and how one heavy lock of hair burned its way free from her barrette and lit up her cheeks.
Say something, Slade. Say something.
“These are good rolls.”
“Thanks—it takes a lot of skill to peel the Pillsbury can away from the dough,” Evelyn said.
Ingrid laughed at this, then stopped when Evelyn didn’t join in. She looked around the table for help. Ray’s empty place setting, the chicken glistening in its weird tomato sauce, the green cloth napkins—all regarded her with inanimate indifference. But the wine bottle might save her. She looked at Evelyn. “Want some more wine?”
“Oh why not,” Evelyn said. She sounded tired.
“Can I have some too?”
“I guess so, sure.”
“Cool.” Ingrid reached for Ray’s abandoned wineglass and took a big mouthful, then made a face and coughed.
Evelyn looked at Ingrid. “You don’t like it.”
“Sure I do,” Ingrid lied. “It’s good.”
“Oh, come on. I don’t like it either, actually.” Evelyn reached for the bottle and read the label. “Cabernet Sauvignon something or other. Well, it’s so dry, it’s like licking a dusty window pane.”
They both laughed this time. Then Ingrid said, “So why are you drinking it?”
“Good question. Ray likes it, I guess.”
Ingrid fiddled with the safety pin in her ear. “Hey, want me to make you a drink you’ll like?
Evelyn hesitated. “Okay, sure. Yeah.”
Ingrid went into the kitchen and came back a minute later with two tall glasses filled with ice and something fizzy. Evelyn sipped. It was sweet.
“What is it?”
“A wine cooler—white wine with Fresca in it. My friend Jessica and I make them sometimes. Much better aftertaste.” Ingrid swallowed half of what was in her glass and held it up in front of her. “A bright opening bouquet, with long sparkling lemon notes and a pleasing saccharin finish.”
“How do you do that?” Evelyn asked.
“Do what?”
“Just rattle off all that wine stuff—fruity notes, pleasing finish, you know. Ray does it, too.”
“I dunno—I guess I’ve heard my dad talk about wine.”
“But did you
learn
it?”
“Well, I guess the same way you learn anything, you just hear people doing it and then you copy them.”
“My mind doesn’t work that way,” Evelyn said. “I’m not good at that kind of thing at all.”
Ingrid laughed. “Good at bullshitting about wine? Who cares? Besides, you’re good at other stuff.”
Evelyn looked at the table, the green slivers of beans congealing in their butter sauce, the chicken they’d only picked at. “Actually, I’m not good at other stuff,” she said.
“Come on—you were in the circus and all. You trained tigers.”
“I did not train them. I got fired from being a cage boy after I was dumb enough to get my hand cut open.”
Ingrid reached for another roll. “And then what? You did the high wire thing—that’s something.”
“My parents and my sister did the high wire thing. Not me.”
“But you know how. You said you did.”
“I can do practice rope height, that’s all. The one time I tried the real wire, under the tent, I almost got killed.”
“Falling?”
“That’s usually how it happens.”
“In front of an audience and everything?”
Evelyn cocked her head. “You ask too many questions, you know that?”
Ingrid groaned in exasperation. “God, you’re secretive! Are you gonna tell me about it, or do I have to beg you?”
Evelyn looked up at Ingrid, struck into really looking at her: the dyed-black hair whose light brown roots had a greenish tinge where the colors intersected; the brown eyes that always looked a little bloodshot, as if her eyes were older than the rest of her; the skin, dotted in a couple spots with acne but full and supple in a way that Evelyn’s was beginning to not be. The orthodontist-straight teeth, marred only by a vague yellowishness from smoking. That mouth that smiled only on one side. A good kid. A weird kid—the latest weird thing was that she’d painted over her fingernails with what looked like white paint—but a good kid nonetheless. Who seemed to want to be actual friends.
“You really want to know how I fell off a high wire?” Evelyn asked. That was safe enough, she could tell Ingrid about that.
“Yeah, I want to know already. I really want to know, okay? I’m telling you I want to hear about it.”
“All right, all right. But another wine cooler first, maybe.”
“I’ll make it,” said Ingrid, already out of her chair.
In the kitchen she hastily lit a cigarette on the stove, took two drags to calm herself, extinguished it in the sink and then poured mostly white wine and very little Fresca into their glasses. Then in a burst of inspiration, she added two maraschino cherries from a jar in the fridge. The cherries looked like they wanted company, so she opened a can of pineapple rings, then stuck a soda straw in each glass. Then, pleased with her efforts, she carried her concoctions back to the dining room.
“Now that,” said Evelyn, laughing at the pineapple rings hanging over the sides of the glasses, “that is a drink.”
 
While Evelyn and Ingrid slurped Soave and Fresca, Ray drove toward Cambridge worrying. He didn’t often make drawing mistakes, but the timing of this one was particularly bad: the day before, Joanne, the receptionist, had handed him a note from Dunlap, summoning him to the corner office. It was typical of Dunlap that he didn’t just walk down the hall and ask Ray to stop in for a few minutes; he had to call Joanne and have Joanne give Ray a note—it was more officious that way.
Ray found Dunlap standing at the window, gazing down at the Charles River. Ray cleared his throat to announce himself and his boss nodded his silver head but did not turn around. Ray craned his neck to see if anything was actually happening down on the river that merited Dunlap’s refusal to look at him, a boat race perhaps. He could see nothing. He studied the back of Dunlap’s head, his upright patrician bearing. Evelyn always said Dunlap walked like he had a stick up his ass. In fact, he had learned from Joanne, Dunlap suffered from an old back injury he had received falling from a horse. In any case, the man still wouldn’t look at him. What I should do, Ray thought, is turn around and walk out of here right now. Leave him standing there with an empty office behind him.
“You wanted to see me?” he asked instead.
“Ah. Well.” Dunlap sighed, turned as if he were very tired. “I am concerned.”
“About what?”
His boss began studying the Kandinsky print on the wall opposite the window.
Ray waited. Dunlap’s concern could be anything at all—the Weber project, the Goldstein job, the zoning meeting next week; a smudge on the vellum. Finally Dunlap turned from the picture and gestured at the chair opposite his desk. Ray sat, and Dunlap went behind the desk and sat down himself, stiffly.
“I am concerned—” Dunlap drew out the word, let it hang in the air—“about you, sir.”
“About me?” Ray was taken aback. “How so?”
“Despite your considerable talents,” Dunlap said, “and despite our having bent over backward to accommodate your preferences for certain kinds of jobs, you seem not to be enjoying your work here.”
Ray felt relieved: it was the aesthetics discussion again. He pushed back his chair, forcing Dunlap to look across at him rather than down. He was not going to let himself be bullied.
“I don’t enjoy being asked to violate the basic principles of contextual architecture,” he said, “and I don’t enjoy being asked to design Brutalist structures. You hired me specifically because I don’t do those things, and now you act surprised that I don’t want to do them. So why are we having this discussion, really?”
His boss moved a dish of paperclips to one side of the desk, regarded it, moved it back again. “You’re a talented architect, Ray. I wouldn’t want to lose you.”
“Is that a threat?”
Dunlap looked pained. “You’ll only stay here if you’re happy, obviously. And you won’t be happy continuously bucking the rest of the office. That’s not a threat, it’s a fact—one I hope you’re aware of. No one doubts your talent. But we are not operating in a vacuum, however much we might wish otherwise.”
Then he stood up, and Ray followed; the meeting was over.
Now, driving back to work to correct the mistake in the drawings, Ray went over the conversation again. He did not know if Dunlap knew about the error—it had been a junior draftsman who had called—but if Dunlap did know, he would take it as further evidence of Ray’s unwillingness to play by the rules—he’d drawn on vellum, which almost no one used anymore despite its being a superior medium, because you couldn’t erase on it. It was too bad their relationship was coming to this—petty arguments and veiled threats; Dunlap was a man Ray had admired, a man he’d imagined himself being something like in twenty years—partner in a successful and respected firm, a man of intellect and insight in his field. But now? Perhaps it was time to think about leaving Dunlap and Scott, opening his own small firm, where he could leave behind corporate architecture and focus on residences.
Ray took the Route 2 exit, and as the ramp curved around, he noticed the sky, complicated purples and pinks from the setting sun. He glanced at his watch. It was already 7:30; Evelyn was right, he’d be lucky if he got home before midnight. If
Victorian Architecture: a Treatise
sold, that would be the moment to go into business for himself. That was where he should be putting his time and energy. He needed a deadline, more structure. He’d force himself to give Ingrid ten pages a week to type up; that should be doable. He pulled into the parking garage feeling considerably more cheerful. He’d tell Ingrid about this plan, so that she’d be expecting at least ten dollars a week in wages. That would add to his initiative—she’d be counting on him to produce. Yes, that would be good all around.
 
Ingrid and Evelyn took their third round of drinks out to the back deck, where Evelyn had set up Ingrid’s Westinghouse desk fan on the porch railing to keep the mosquitoes away.
“I would never have thought of doing that,” said Ingrid admiringly. “Now go on. We’ve established that you can walk on a tight rope well enough to fall off one. And you fell off it how?”
“What is this, twenty questions?”
Ingrid set her glass down with a bang. “Look,” she said. “
I
grew up in the Death Valley of suburbia, where the entertainment choices include joining cheerleaders, lying around a country club swimming pool with valley girl airheads, or possibly caddying for golf, if you can talk them into hiring a girl—I never could. I’m asking because I’m
interested
in you. That’s what friends do, right? They tell each other stuff.”
Evelyn leaned back in her chair. The word
friend
felt as sweet and as lightly intoxicating as the soda pop wine. She rolled it silently around in her mouth, swallowed and felt fine.
 
After being fired from her cage boy position, Evie was put on security detail, a particularly humiliating job for the daughter of two star performers. One Saturday morning before first call, she sat alone on a stool just inside the entrance to the big top. She had finished her magazine and now she was hot and bored. The lot was empty of curious onlookers and there was nothing for her to do, no one to chase away or even talk to. She glanced around to see if anyone would notice if she sneaked away for a while. An electrician was doing something on the far side of the ring with the asbestos sheathing, and two of the clowns sat high up in the bleachers smoking dope—Evie could smell it. No one was looking at her.

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