The Night I Got Lucky (3 page)

My mother was another. I loved the woman so much. She had raised three girls on her own, for years taking in stride the ridicule of a smal Il inois town that gleeful y watched as her rich husband escaped to the glitz of the west coast; a town that somehow enjoyed the carnage my father left in his wake. Much later, she final y moved to another suburb and found some peace with Jan, but he’d suffered a stroke while standing at the barbeque on a warm September day. Now she was alone again. Alone, and way too invested in my life. She needed one of her own.

On the other end of the parental spectrum was my father. I’d never gotten over him leaving. At seven, I was the youngest, and for some reason I’d always assumed it was his disappointment in me that had pushed him to flee. I wanted desperately to get over that notion. To be done with him.

My husband was the remaining piece of the anger puzzle. My clichéd attempts at seduction were too painful to recount—feel free to insert stereotypical woman wearing lingerie waiting with cold dinner image—and so I’d given up trying to entice him, trying to figure out what was wrong with him. With us. With me. We were roommates now. Roommates who occasional y,
very occasionally,
scratched an itch.

When I was in one of these black moods, there were two things that would help—throwing myself into work or hitting a bar and seeing some good, loud live music. The Hel o Dave show was coming up, but Chris didn’t like seeing bands as much as I did, and we’d committed long ago to visiting my mom. I hated to disappoint her. So work would have to be it.

I went and spoke to Roslyn about my press release. When I came back, I opened the computer file that read
Odette Lamden.
Odette was a local chef who occasional y went on the news shows as their cooking expert. Odette’s restaurant, Comfort Food, was one of my favorites, because it served just that—comfort food, stuff like mac and cheese (with four cheeses), overly buttered mashed potatoes, bread pudding, gooey with caramel, and fudge sundaes as big as your head. I’d met Odette on a TV set one day when I’d gone to visit a publicist who’d enlisted us to handle extra work. Two days later, Odette hired me, or I should say hired Harper Frankwel , to publicize her cookbook, also cal ed
Comfort Food
. Her own publisher had done little to promote it, and she wanted to get the word out there. It was the type of client I loved—someone who needed help with a product I truly liked.

But Roslyn had been less than thril ed. “It’s not even ten thousand dol ars worth of work,” she’d said, scrunching her mouth disapprovingly. This was Roslyn’s main complaint with me, and why she asserted I wasn’t ready for a vice presidency—I wasn’t pul ing in any big fish, and I was wasting the firm’s time on the smal stuff. “It could turn into something big,” I said.

“Doubtful,” Roslyn answered.

“I think we owe it to the community to help certain people once in a while. People who can’t afford big campaigns.”

“We owe it to this company to make money, don’t we?” Roslyn looked down at her desk, my cue to leave.

I understood her protests, but I believed in the smal er clients I brought in. There was something rewarding about helping shed a little media light on products and people you believed in.

And Odette and I had such fun working on her cookbook. I’d stop by the restaurant after she closed early on Sunday nights, and we’d huddle in her colorful office, eating leftovers and brainstorming about how to get her on
Oprah.
Odette, a forty-five-year-old black woman, whose family original y hailed from New Orleans, had become a friend as wel as a client during this process. I wanted to get her book the best possible PR, no matter what Roslyn said.

But I wouldn’t think about Roslyn now. I wanted to work on a press release for
Comfort Food,
one that would land Odette interviews with newspapers and spots on radio shows. I started writing.
Sick of the Atkins Diet? How about the South Beach Diet? Tired of eating boiled chicken breasts and dressing-less salad? Renowned Chicago chef, Odette Lambden, owner
of the acclaimed restaurant, Comfort Food, introduces a cookbook to soothe us all.

Once I’d begun, I barely noticed the beige wal s of my cubicle that had seemed tighter and more constricting lately. I ignored the ring of my phone, the beep from the bottom of the computer announcing an instant message. Instead, I tapped away at the keyboard, waxing poetic about Odette’s book. I reread sentences, mul ed over words and dialed up certain sections. This was what I loved about my job—generating excitement about a product or person, the imaginative use of words to reflect a given tone. The ability to create.

I was just rereading the press release for grammatical errors, feeling pleased with myself, content with my job, when Alexa appeared, leaning on the frame of my cube.

“Hey, Bil y,” she said. Alexa always said, “hey,” never “hel o” or “hi.” She looked like a prep school princess, but she didn’t always talk like one.

Alexa was one of those timeless women who could have passed for any age between twenty and thirty. Although I assumed she was twenty-seven or so, about five years younger than me, she possessed a haughtiness and a coolness that made her seem older. I supposed it was this confidence that had swept Alexa through the ranks at Harper Frankwel ; unfortunately, with her cutthroat attitude and with her nipping on my heels, I couldn’t appreciate it. My fear was that she would make vice president before I did, causing me to die of shame and jealousy.

My contented mood waned.
“Hey,”
I said back, drawing out the word.

Alexa gave me her patented you-are-such-a-fool smirk. “What are you going to do about the stud finder headlines?”

“What am
I
going to do?” This was a team project, after al , and she was on the damned team.

“Wel , Roslyn seemed to want you to handle it, so I just want to respect that and ask you where you’re going to start.” She smirked again.

“It’s supposed to be a team thing, Alexa. And let’s make sure we take credit for our work, okay?”

I usual y got along great with other women, but since the day Alexa had started, wearing her black cashmere twinsets and high, patent leather pumps, she had irked me. Her arrogant condescension got old quick. I’d tried to show her who was boss, so to speak, but I wasn’t real y her boss—just ahead of her in the food chain—and Alexa couldn’t be shamed into submission. If anything the pressure made her more confident. If I had liked her even a little, I might have grudgingly approved of her don’t-mess-with-me attitude.

“Oh, I’m not suggesting that you handle this project on your own,” she said, laughing a little. “God, no.”

See what I mean?

“What then?” I said, my voice flattening.

“Wel …” She trailed off and crossed her arms. She was wearing the sleeveless part of one of her usual black cashmere twinsets. Since it was May, the cardigan would be thrown over her chair, waiting for the moment when the booming air-conditioning system kicked in, but meanwhile her movements showed off lean, sculpted arms. Alexa and I were around the same height—five-four—and we were both relatively thin, but her body was more toned, her skin more smooth, her black hair as shiny and pencil straight as my sisters’.

“I know this project is important for you, Bil y,” she said, the condescension as thick as fog.

I crossed my arms now. “What do you mean?”

She laughed again. I was beginning to think that if she laughed once more, I might launch Odette’s cookbook at her head.

“Wel , you know,” she said coyly. “You’re not getting any younger and you’re certainly not getting promoted…” She shrugged.

And you’re not getting any cuter and you’re not getting married,
I wanted to say. Instead, I remained silent, fixing her with a steely stare.

“So anyway,” Alexa went on, “I was thinking, why don’t you try rewriting the headlines, then e-mail them to me, and I’l go over them for you.”

“You’l ‘go over them’ for me? That’s so nice of you.”

“I thought so.”

The truth was, I’d rather do the headlines on my own—I actual y liked that kind of work. It was the meetings and the busy paperwork I disdained. But I wouldn’t let Alexa get away with a monumental buck-passing.

“Fine,” I said, “but I’d like you to make the media list.” In our world, making the media list—the rol cal of different targets for a PR blitz—was a bottom-of-the-barrel job, something an intern usual y did.

Alexa let out a little puff of exasperated air and seemed to be ready to protest, but I knew she wouldn’t. She was smarter than that. She had passed off work to me, but she’d have to handle something on this project or Roslyn would figure it out eventual y.

“Fine,” Alexa said, mimicking me.

I uncrossed my arms and swung back to my desk. I wished desperately I was a vice president right now. Not for the professional splendor of it al , but because if I was a VP, I would have an office and if I had an office, I would have a door. And if I had a door, I would slam it hard in Alexa’s darling little face.

C
hris was at our condo when I got there, which was surprising. He’d already gotten his big promotion—partnership at one of the city’s top law firms—but he worked harder now than he did before.

As I dumped my bag on the wood floor of our foyer, I saw that he
was
working, sitting in front of the computer, which we’d set up on the dining room table. (We rarely had people for dinner anyway, and we usual y ate on our own or in front of the TV.)

“Hi, Bil ,” he said, when he heard me come inside. He didn’t turn his tal frame from the computer. His big hands kept clacking awkwardly at the keyboard.

“Hel o, Marlowe.” Marlowe is Chris’s middle name, after the playwright Christopher Marlowe. His parents, a couple of academics from the University of Chicago, are staunch proponents of the theory that Marlowe was the real author of Shakespeare’s plays.

I patted Chris absently on the shoulder, a pat very similar to the one Evan had given me that day. “I got your flaxseed.”

“Thanks.”

“How was work?” I asked. “What’s going on with that health care merger?”

“Nothing much.”

I ruffled his short brown hair.

And that was about it. That was the extent of our marital affection. Not so different than any other day.

I went into the kitchen and put Chris’s flaxseed oil in the stainless steel fridge. When we’d bought this place shortly before our wedding, we’d fil ed it with top-of-the-line appliances, gleaming granite countertops and shiny hardwood floors. It was as promising as our relationship. Now, God knows why, the only things luminous were our furnishings.

“I’m going to see Blinda,” I cal ed to Chris.

This made him twist around from the computer. “You’re stil seeing her?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you said the therapy wasn’t doing much.”

“It’s not.”

“So—”

“So, I’m giving it a shot.”

He nodded. “Wel , that’s good.”

“How about coming with me?”

“Bil y, you know…” He turned back to the computer, and I couldn’t hear the rest of his words.

Chris didn’t believe in therapists. He believed, like his parents, that Wil iam Shakespeare was a myth, but he didn’t believe in therapists.

Blinda’s office was on LaSal e, only a few blocks from our condo. I’d never noticed the place until one day while I was walking back from the gym. The building was a brick three-flat that appeared to house luxury apartments, like so many on the block, but that day I saw a smal black sign with gold letters in the window of the basement unit. Blinda Bright, M.S.W. the sign read. For Appointments Cal 312.555.9090.

I’m not sure why I stopped and stared at that sign for as long as I did. It was nearly April, a capricious time in Chicago, and although it had been a lovely sixty degrees the day before, it was in the forties. Despite my optimistical y light coat and the fact that I’d begun to shiver, I stood in front of that brick building, staring at the gold lettering and the gold light that glowed from behind the curtains. M.S.W. meant masters in social work, right? So this Blinda person must be some kind of therapist. I committed the number to memory.

I had considered therapy for a while. I knew I was messed up about my father, I knew Chris had pul ed away from me after we got married and I knew it was wrong that I coveted my coworker. Over the past few months, I’d col ected referrals from friends, and I had five therapists I could try. But it was that sign in the basement window that, for some reason, made me realize now was the time and she was the one I should cal .

At the initial appointment with Blinda, I decided to attack one issue at a time. I explained that the main reason I’d come to see her was, as I put it, “to get over the abandonment issues I have with my father.” I thought this sounded rather intel ectual and valid. Wasn’t there a reverse Oedipus complex or something? But Blinda didn’t approach it quite like that.

“He just took off, huh?” she said, shaking her head like she was pissed off. I told her what I knew about my father and how he’d left our house one morning and never came back.

“At first he told us that he had business in L.A.,” I said. “He was an importer of goods from Germany, and he had a brother who ran things from overseas.”

“What kind of goods?”

“Tiles, pots, earthenware.”

“Ah.” She sounded disappointed.

“Anyway, he said he had to go to Los Angeles for business, only he never came back. My mom spent lots of money looking for him and trying to enforce child support decrees, but he kept disappearing.”

“Bastard,” Blinda said under her voice.

I blinked a few times, studying her. Where were the sage comments about the father/daughter Oedipus complex or whatever it was?

“Right,” I said. “Wel , my mother eventual y realized she had spent more money trying to find him than she’d likely ever get from alimony, so final y she just had to make do. Before he left, we had a great house with white columns. I always thought it looked like a wedding cake. We lived in this little town about an hour and a half northwest of Chicago.”