Things Withered (3 page)

My face would get nearly red with it, and there was always the same, easy—which was not to say, undeserved—target: Richard Maynard. The devil in my eyes.

I still had a friend in the upper ranks, Oscar Barns. Unlike me, he’d benefited from time and merit and occupied the position under Richard. Of course it had been many years since we were in the pit together, but at least he remembered me as a young thing, attractive and ambitious, and hopefully, more than a few nights of boozy flirting from the days before Kevin and I were married.

I waited until the end of the week and tapped on his door near the end of the day.

“Well look who’s stopping by,” he said, with what seemed like genuine affection. “Haven’t seen much of you these days, how are you? How’s Kevin?”

“Well, you know, I’m still in the pit. I suppose our paths rarely cross.”

He had the decency to colour at that point, but his smile never wavered. “Come on in, Anita. Let’s catch up.”

By the end of our meeting, I was so grateful that had it been even three years earlier, I might have cried. Which was strange to me, because the result of the meeting was not entirely positive. Not entirely. But I felt heard, I felt stronger for it, as though forcing the issue without wavering was a bit of magic. But throughout my tenure in that chair, what I felt was that tingle of anger. My hands closed into fists just before I closed the door behind me and stayed that way for a very long time.

I was clear in my words: I wanted to move up. It was time. I resisted using the word “fair,” since that smacked of girlhood fights on the playground and I wanted to stick with merit and seniority as long as possible before I played such a card. To my benefit, he agreed with me. We went over my numbers and when he raised an eyebrow over the last few months, I bristled and told him my side of things.

Without getting too detailed, I told him how time and again new territories were split up among all the brokers, how in that system I was no more valued than the newest broker. I tried heartily to keep the bitterness from my voice when I told him about Richard’s heavy-handed demand that I train the newest girl, and his insinuation, real or imagined, that she could be my replacement.

All the while, my hands were rolled into fists, my fancy, silly, fake fingernails digging into my palms in a way that felt oddly, painfully good. When my voice rose or wavered, my blood pressure climbed and I felt as though my face were getting red and puffed with buried resentments and anger, I would take a deep breath and smile and repeat in my head,
Oscar is not the enemy.

It worked. To a point.

The unfortunate ending to our visit was Oscar telling me, “If I could do something more, I would Anita. The best I can do, is to put your name forward when the time comes again.”

“With emphasis,” I pressed.

“As much as I can,” he said. “Richard is not a . . . malleable man.” I understood this to be true. I was grateful and I said so. There was a long enough pause at the end of the conversation that I knew it was over.

It dragged me home. The best I could do had been done, and I had been grateful for Oscar’s
as much as I can.
I disgusted myself as much as I was terribly thrilled with the feeling of that anger. Once home that afternoon, I ate the rest of Kevin’s takeout of roast beef from several nights earlier. Ate the whole thing, standing at the fridge.

Delicious.

I went to the memorial service for the Bramleys, held a few weeks after the tragedy. The memorial was for their New York friends, since their children lived all over the country.

Kevin and I arrived almost late; I had been showing an apartment on the upper East side that I felt quite good about. The block was mid-range for the area, and my commission wouldn’t be very high, but I’d hit it off with the couple I’d shown it to, and they were young and in their thirties, just the perfect age for moving up on the real estate ladder. I was expecting that they would recommend me to their friends when the time came. I planned to leave several business cards with them when we completed the paperwork.

We walked into the memorial hall and up to the front of the pews. We slid in to sit next to the Turgots, who lived in the apartment directly below ours. We said our hellos and caught up a little bit on whispered gossip about the cruise ship disaster and the Bramleys in general, when I glanced back and happened to catch a row of beauties in a back pew.

It was Tracy, Stephanie and Lily, the full trio of new girls from the building. The three of them sat with a fourth girl, whom I didn’t recognize. They spotted me the same time I spotted them and as I raised my hand in a discreet, but rather pleased wave, the three of them smiled back at me, in unison. It threw me a little.

White. Toothy.

Identical. My hand dropped and I turned back to the front. The memorial was starting.

Requiem eternam dona eis, Domine.

It was a lovely service, with lots of tears, which is all one can hope for at the end of one’s life. Afterwards Kevin and I were going to dinner with some friends. I waited outside the hall while he got the car.

He was only gone a moment when the girls stopped to say hello. We exchanged a few pleasantries and then Lily introduced the fourth girl.

“Anita, I’d like you to meet Gwendolyn.” I smiled and shook her hand, soft as flower petals, but strong.

“How do you do?” I said, watching for Kevin out of the corner of my eye. She was very nice.

“We’re old friends—” Lily started.

I interrupted with what I hoped was a light tone, “From college?” The girls all laughed.

“I think you’ve found us out!” she said. And then nearly in the same breath, “I’m sure this is very bad time to bring this up—” her tone apologetic and at the same time, firm.

“What’s that?” I said. The other girls stood very close, Mona-Lisa-smiling with their lips together.

“I know it’s soon, but of course the Bramleys’ apartment will be coming up for purchase soon, and we wanted you to know we think Gwendolyn would be a
perfect
addition to the building. She wants very much to see it. Don’t you, Winnie?”

“Very much. It’s a lovely building.”

I had nothing to say. I was quite shocked. My mouth opened but nothing came out. I tried to say
pretty name
but it . . . wouldn’t come out.

“We know it’s soon,” Stephanie said.

“We just want to get in line, really,” Lily said. Gwendolyn—Winnie—held her smile, confident and poised.

“You’re lovely to consider her,” Tracy said. She touched my hand and bent a little in my direction, mindful of her heels. “We’ll be in touch soon.” She turned and looked at the crowd, still congregating around the doors of the hall. “Wasn’t that just the nicest service?”

It had been.

Kevin pulled up and I excused myself. They all waved.

I had forgotten all about the Bramleys’ memorial a few days later, when one of the Roberts announced he was leaving the firm. There were two Roberts, they had been so shortly at the office, that I had never learned to tell them apart. They had become the Two Roberts in my mind and that was how they stayed. When I got the intra-office email stating his resignation, my first thought was to scroll down to the bottom and see his title.

Junior Partner, Senior Broker.

My second thought was that I would now be able to tell them apart.

I didn’t reply to the email, but I did quickly jot one off to Oscar, saying how
nice
it had been to catch up recently, and wasn’t that just so sad about Robert.

I felt pretty big in my shoes; it felt like a bold move and the right one.

Leaving Robert’s last day was the following Friday and there was a little send-off, a glass of champagne in the pit, as though he’d suddenly realized those of us on the bottom rung would miss a mentor and benefactor. As far as I could tell, the most popular part of the reception was not Leaving Robert at all, but the champagne, which people seem to over-consume. I limited myself to a single glass and sipped daintily. Not that anyone noticed. I remained invisible.

So better to see things.

Bunches and cliques are common in any office, and I happened to note them, perhaps for the first time. Except for Leaving Robert and two of the other office-dwellers, there were no senior staff on the scene until ten minutes to quitting time. They came into the pit en masse and got drinks and ate a bit of the leftover cheese and crackers that had been laid out for the send-off.

Oscar was among them, as was Richard. I thought about wandering over to their group, knowing the names only of those in my division, my colleagues, some of years, some of months, such as The Lacey Thing, my shadow that long month now well past.

I just couldn’t. I attempted simple eye contact with Oscar, a smile and a nod, and went home. Enough.

It was strictly due to nerves, when I couldn’t sleep that night. I was overwrought with the idea that I wouldn’t be getting that office. That, after all this time, I wouldn’t be moving up. That I would be retiring in ten years at the same desk I was at now.

To calm myself I was cleaning. It was after midnight and I had yet to go to bed. I was in my good robe because I had recently begun a campaign to try and look my best. The diet had topped out at about six pounds and it was beginning to feel like I was wasting my time, that there would forever be six pounds out there with my name on it, and no matter where I dropped it, it would find its way home to my arse.

Instead, I was using makeup, hair and clothing tips to camouflage my problem areas. It was a great deal more work and rather than the scale, it required much more mirror gazing than I was used to.

Worse, I wasn’t sure it helped.

I began cleaning a junk drawer that had plagued us for years. It was amazing how many odd things accumulated. For instance in that drawer were no less than three packages of birthday candles and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the last time a birthday had been celebrated with cake in this apartment, let alone candles. They went into the garbage.

It just so happened that I ran across a spare key in the drawer too, with a rubber Marge Simpson on the fob.

Aw.
The Bramleys’ old key. I held it a moment, remembering how very long ago Marg had given it to me, back when her children were younger, and I kept plants, and the occasional time conflict that required one or the other of us to unlock doors for school-aged children, or water something.

Oh the days.

I took the key up to the Bramleys’ apartment. I would put it inside for her older son to find. The fob at least, was a nice reminder of his mother, who could be quite a funny woman when she wanted to be.

I slid the key into the lock and it worked smoothly in spite of gunk clinging to the grooves on the key from years in a junk drawer (likely source: birthday candle wax). I stepped inside and stepped onto something. The floor was gritty.

I looked down. Along the edge of threshold, there was white something. It took only a moment to figure out what it was.

Salt. It ran in a line across the doorway, except for where I had stepped and disturbed it. I frowned, stepped more carefully with my other foot, not to disturb it.

Curious. And oddly familiar.

There was more I saw. There was salt on each window sill and what might have been more in the bottom of the light fixture in the dining room.

I put the key on the counter in plain view and went out the way I came in, careful not to disturb it any more than I had.

Oddly familiar.

Just after Clara had died, I had gone into her apartment to take a few measurements, to look the place over, since I would be brokering the place. Of course out of curiosity, I went to the window where she’d done the high dive and leaned out as far as I could to see the trajectory. I put my hand on the far corner of the sill to do it, holding on lest there be some kind of wild, unknown wind tunnel that yanked women out apartment windows to their death. And when I did, I put my hand into a kind of . . . grit.

Which turned out to be salt. More or less undisturbed in the corners of the window by police and investigators (which makes you wonder, somewhat).

Curious then, too.

It was only after midnight. I took a chance and went up the elevator to seven. The building was old, the walls thick, but if you had very good hearing, you could hear the murmurs of folks going about their business behind the closed doors.

7A was no exception. Behind that particular closed door I could hear a kind of singing, a
kind
of singing. I tapped on the door, very lightly, uncertain and yet completely convinced. In just a moment, Stephanie answered the door.

Even in the middle of the night, she was lovely, fresh as morning. Wasn’t that nice. Perfect, really, except for her confused look.

“I’m sorry to disturb you so late,” I said.

She didn’t answer, and I sensed, or maybe heard something, from the back of the apartment, in spite of the hour. I had a horrible moment when I thought maybe I had interrupted a moment with a boyfriend and felt my cheeks getting red, my resolve fading when she said, “Not at all. Would you like to come in?”

I did. She led me to the living room of the apartment, which looked so different from when Clara lived in it, for a minute I was rubbernecking, almost forgetting why I had come. Then in the living room, I saw it was true, Stephanie had not been alone at all. There were the two girls, her friends, Lily and Tracy, and Gwendolyn. Winnie.

“Nice to see you all again,” I said.

They smiled.

I frowned, “It’s nice that you’re all here. I have some possible bad news. I’m sorry to say that I’m obliged to show the Bramley apartment to someone else. He had dibs on it, if you will.” Their faces were very serious.

I shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry, girls. There’s not much I can do. Of course, if something comes up and he can’t take the apartment, I’ll happily show it to your friend,” and I nodded, smiling, at Gwendolyn.

I looked at my watch, “Oh my,” I said, “I can’t believe it’s this late. I’m sorry again to have disturbed you. I heard singing.”