Things Withered (2 page)

“Anita. How nice to see you.” Unlike me, Stephanie looked well put together considering the hour. Her hair was pulled back into a pony tail that looked chic and sporty, in a way that only very young, very pretty girls can pull off. I felt fatter.

“Yes. I guess I’m taking over. How is she?”

Stephanie shrugged prettily. “Poor thing,” she leaned in a little closer, like a girlfriend. “I think her and Barney were involved.”

“That’s the rumour. It
is
sad.” I opened my palm and showed her the tiny pill I had there. “I’ve brought her something to help her sleep.”

“How clever of you.” We awkwardly changed places, I held the elevator doors open for her to get in and stepped out.

“I’m sure she’ll be fine,” I said by way of closing.

“Of course she will,” Stephanie said. She held the door open a moment. I smiled and turned to head over to Myrna’s.

“Anita—” I looked back.

“I have a friend, Lily. She’s wonderful. I’ve known her since I was a girl. I don’t know when Mr. Kloss’s apartment will be ready to rent . . . but, I hope you’ll consider her. I hope this isn’t too forward.”

“Oh. Well,” was all I could say. I raised a hand in a half-wave and went to poor Myrna.

I managed to make two commissions through May, one impressively large, the best I’d pulled in for more than six months, sadly. I was copying some paperwork when I ran into Richard on his way back to his office.

“You barely scraped through this last quarter,” he said by way of greeting.
But I did.
I didn’t say it, but rather just looked at him expectantly, wishing he would go away. He didn’t.

“Can you stop by my office when you’re through here?” he asked. He offered no explanation as to why. I said I would. He turned to go and just as I was breathing, he turned back and said, “Way to sparkle on the Cavalier Street haul. That’s a good sale.”

“Thanks.” I took my time.

His door was partially open but I tapped lightly anyway. He called out for me to come in.

“Anita, I’d like you to meet Lacey Johnson, the newest member of our team.”

Standing next to his desk was a young woman, about thirty, in a well-cut suit which I noticed right off, since wearing such a thing was so far in my past I might have winced with longing if I’d been alone.

“Hello,” I said, attempting a smile. Her smile was electric and so white, like all the young people have now, those wonderful teeth, bought and paid for with pre-child disposable income.

Lacey
?
Really?
Lacey
?

“Very nice to meet you, Mrs. Lockwood.”

Richard leaned back on his chair, arms up over his head. He was in shirtsleeves, very relaxed for the middle of the day. As for herself, Lacey leaned against the edge of his desk. It was all very cozy. I wondered if I should slip off my shoes and sit cross-legged on the sofa.

“I want you to take Lacey around with you, show her how we do things,” Richard said.

“Oh,” I said. “I’m not sure I understand.”

Richard sat forward again. “Just take her on some showings with you. I need a senior to train her. She’s going to be a broker.” He smiled baldly at her, and I read into it. How could I not, it was written in neon.

“Of course,” I said.

“Thank you, Mrs. Lockwood.”

Richard said, “You can start tomorrow. Does that work for you? You’re showing something tomorrow, I trust?”

I was. I had a 10:30 with a couple from Germany. I didn’t have a great deal of faith in the first two apartments I would show them. The apartments were well-placed, but expensive and the couple would only be in the U.S. temporarily while the husband worked through a contract. The wife was along for the ride as far as I could tell.

“Of course,” I said, and managed to sound a little indignant.

“Great then, it’s all set.”

When I left the office, I walked the long hallway back to my desk, in “the pit” at the front of the building, same desk I’d had for twelve years. I had a window, and in fact could remember my argument with my previous boss, Don Marko, to get my desk moved to a window spot. My argument—unimpeachable—was that I’d earned it.

Between Richard’s office and the pit, there were five offices on either side of the hall. Most of the doors were open, and I could see people at their desks, heads bent over tidy Mac Books, plants on windowsills.

All new faces.

I realized that, back then, I should have argued for an office.

The Bramleys on ten went to the Caribbean at the end of May, and I dragged Ms. Lacey around by the nose for two weeks. The only showing I cut her out of was in my building, The Windemere, and it was as much out of spite as it was out of fear. I showed Stephanie’s friend, Lily, poor Barney Kloss’s apartment, vacant and not on the market officially, since paperwork was such a bitch in these sorts of circumstances. It was not premature, not really, although morally it might have been a jab to poor Myrna, but it wasn’t like I ran up to her apartment and started bragging about my big commission. It was all handled delicately and in the best of taste. And it put my numbers up for May.

I didn’t take Ms. Lacey on the showing with me because it was likely to be a done deal, a token showing. What I knew from Stephanie was that Lily was very keen to move into the building, and not at all squeamish about living in an apartment someone had died in. Those, of course, were Lily’s own words, from a telephone call. She said, “I’m not squeamish.”

I also didn’t take Lacey because she was young and looked much more like Lily and Stephanie and that sort, and I was secretly afraid that they’d hit it off. In my paranoid state, I had envisioned all sorts of betrayals—a refusal to use me as broker in favour of Lacey, was one of them—but also an exchange of business cards and secret handshakes and promises of lots of business from Lily’s friends.

It seemed prudent just to leave her out of it.

Lily moved in as soon as the paperwork cleared, which was thankfully quick. Someone out there at least, was on my side.

Blessedly before the month was even up, Richard decided that Ms. Lacey was ready to take on clients of her own and she was off my hands. I celebrated that day with a pulled pork sandwich, dripping with BBQ sauce, not my finest hour, although as glorious as a June day. I received no special thanks, but still considered it enough that it was over, my pro bono completed for the year.

Of course no good deed goes unpunished. Richard rezoned some territories and shifted a number of people about, explaining at meetings that a shake-up was always good, kept the blood flowing. I expected to hear a lot of bitching about it. For instance I was shifted so that part of my best grouping was split, and my new territory was a more down-market area. It potentially could cut my—occasionally soft—commissions by a significant amount in a bad year. I expected a lot of brokers would be feeling bitter. Hot young woman comes into the office, the gravy gets spooned a little thinner, so when no one said anything, I wondered if we had begun operating in an atmosphere of fear.

I brought it up with one of the brokers I knew a little bit.

“How about the new zoning, huh?” I said, running into Cathy at the copier. It was a little close to Richard’s office, but I’d lost about five pounds recently and was feeling the bravado.

To my surprise, she said, “I know. I’ve almost doubled my numbers this month. Brilliant.”

I think my jaw dropped, but I said, “Yes. Brilliant.”

The office distracted me. I went dutifully up to ten to water the Bramleys’ plants through the two weeks they were gone. I collected mail and it piled up on the island in the kitchen. Sometimes I lingered; the empty apartment was twice as large as mine and the cavernous silence gave me a kind of peace. The view was spectacular, of course. If I opened the kitchen window and leaned out, I could see clear down to the river, the quaint old-fashioned water towers surrounded by pretty park-like roofs with chaise-and-teak lounging stations on each one. It was nice.

I continued to struggle with sleep. I had my little helpers, but I tried not to overuse them. I knew too many stories of women my age getting dependent on chemical help for everything. When I went through menopause, I was the only one of my friends who did not succumb to the seductive powers of hormone replacement. My fear of aging was surpassed only by my fear of cancer and somehow when offered the choice between a young-looking corpse and dying alone in an assisted-living room, I decided the latter wasn’t so bad. You could always watch television. And if it got too lonely or undignified, I could take all the rest of my little helpers and end it all on a date of my choice.

I preferred a natural hell to a foggy complacency.

But sleep was often elusive.

I was having a cup of tea in the kitchen, the light over the stove the only illumination, since I didn’t want to disturb Kevin. I drank my camomile tea—a guaranteed cure for insomnia according to television—and flipped through the new
Vanity Fair
, staring at celebrity faces I didn’t recognize and political scandals I no longer cared about.

And I heard singing.

The window was open to the front street and I thought of course that it must be coming from there. I went over and peered out, but couldn’t see anyone outside. I checked the clock and it was well after three. Still, listening, it wasn’t the drunken frat-singing that you do occasionally hear on lovely summer nights when the college kids band together and walk over to the park to watch the sun come up. There was nothing mirthful or disjointed about it. It was more like
chanting
. Churchy.

I opened the screen and stuck my head out. It served no better to prove anything, except that it was coming from above. I twisted my head up as though that would vet something, and it didn’t.

The music faded in and out with the breeze and I decided someone’s radio was tuned to NPR.

I ran into Gig Morton a few afternoons later, at the front desk. I was about to collect the Bramleys’ mail and take it up, when she stopped me.

“Anita, have you heard?”

“Heard what? I’m just getting the mail, come with me.” We walked to the mailboxes and she kept talking in that breathless way of hers. With Gig everything is an exciting event or a horrible tragedy that had to be shared in great hunks of breath.

“It’s the Bramleys! Their cruise ship! Some horrible virus or food poisoning or something. Everyone is sick! It was on the news—oh are you getting their mail?”

I pulled their mail out. Bills and invitations to half-off sales. The Bramleys were America’s greatly appreciated tax bracket, the upper middle class and their disposable income was snatched at as often as possible, one half at a time.

“Are they ill? Have you heard from them? They’re due back day after tomorrow.”

“But they might be quarantined! It’s on the
news.
”

I begged off a longer chat and didn’t think about it again until Kevin got home and put on the news. I wasn’t listening at all. I was distracted. Things at work seemed to be getting worse, or I was getting paranoid. I was feeling isolated, between Lacey, the new territories,
sparkling
. Too many new faces at the office. I had never really thought about how often I had been passed over for promotion. Sometimes now, I felt almost a sense of embarrassment, like a cougar at the club. As if I was overstaying my welcome. Or at least that I should be in one of those offices,
dammit
.

I was obsessing over that when Kevin said something.

“I’m sorry darling, what?”

“I said—isn’t that the ship that Marg and Teddy are on?” I looked up and the video was of a cruise ship at a safe distance. The caption under the video was “Death Ship.”

“Oh my god, that’s a little dramatic, I hope?”

“Apparently twelve people have died.” He looked at me, concerned. “Maybe we should call someone.”

Later that night I couldn’t help but remember the thing the Queen of England had said the year after Diana and Charles had broken off their marriage, when affairs had been exposed, when her favourite castle had burned up, favourite paintings included, when her daughter-in-law was caught on tape discussing the family, when her son was caught on tape discussing feminine protection. She had said it was her “annus horribilis.”

So it was for The Windemere.

The Bramleys were dead. It took seven phone calls, but we reached Marg’s sister in Florida. They’d gotten news that afternoon. Marg had died the day before, and Ted that morning.

Their son-in-law would be picking up the keys from us in the next couple of weeks.

The Bramleys. Barney. Poor old Clara.

Horribilis. I hoped not
annus.

There were, unfortunately, several more bad nights after the news of the Bramleys. My poor sleeping habits became worse. The Bramleys had four children and six grandchildren. They had just begun a happy retirement. It was just a terrible thing that served to make me think too much and too often of my own mortality. And Kevin’s. What would I do without Kevin, should anything happen to him? Poor Kevin woke up more than once to find me staring at his chest, making sure he was breathing. He joked, was I waiting for him to die, or making sure he didn’t?

It distracted me at least as much as my other thoughts.

I had decided that it was time to speak up about a promotion. I had been much like a kid when these things were announced, trying very hard to be happy for the winning person, so to speak, and not too bitter over my own disappointments, especially since the disappointment belonged to me and me alone. I rarely if ever put myself forward for much at all, beyond tossing my name into the ring. I didn’t politic for these things, expecting instead to be rewarded on a system of, if not merit, then surely seniority. This had turned out not to be so.

Along with this morbid turn of thoughts and newfound gumption, I found myself more than once at the mercy of a terrible anger. It would rise in me unexpectedly and be a devil to put down again. I raged internally at my infernal co-workers, my pitiful desk by the window, the denial of new territory when a colleague left to join another firm.