|
She approaches the easy chair in the corner of the room where her elderly neighbor rests unconscious, mouth open, tiger-striped robe gaping apart. Marcy studies the bony chest for signs of life, unsure if it's rising and falling. She catches a glimpse of Mrs. Esserman's nipple, and the words "brown as a dried leaf" occur to her, appearing vividly in twelve point type. She thinks she hears a faint snore, barely audible over the TV, which now blares final Jeopardy. She lowers the volume.
"Mrs. Esserman?" She pulls the old woman's robe closed and taps her shoulder. "Mrs. Esserman? Are you okay?"
The octogenarian's eyes flutter open. "Oh, hello dear."
"You left the door open again."
"Heh?"
"The door," Marcy shouts, pointing. "You left it open again."
"Guess I dozed off. Are you hungry? Sit down. I'll get you something to eat."
"No thank you, Mrs. Esserman. I was just on my way home from work. I have to get dinner started."
"What?"
Marcy pauses to fill her lungs. "I have to cook dinner. For me and my husband."
"How's that cute husband of yours?"
"Still frisky." She grins, thinking Mrs. Esserman would appreciate this if she could hear it.
"Can't I get you something? I bought those cookies. What do you call them? The ones in the bag."
"Pepperidge Farm?"
"No, no. Come, I'll show." Mrs. Esserman makes an effort to rise from the chair.
"Don't bother, please. I have to leave." Marcy shouts this as loudly as she can and nods toward the door so the old woman is sure to get her meaning.
"Okay dear. But if ever need to borrow anything, an egg, whatever, knock on my door."
It is her standard parting line to Marcy, who smiles. "I sure will, Mrs. Esserman. Good-bye."
She leaves her neighbor's apartment, an egg in her hand and a song in her heart. Does she need the egg? No. But the old woman thinks she helped someone out and is happy. This makes . . .
Marcy puts the key in her front door and pauses, still searching for the perfect name for her main character.
This makes Veronica smile.
Veronica? Ugh. She opens the door and steps inside, but stops when she hears the voice of her neighbor, Robbie Reilly, from the hall behind her.
"Hey Marcy." He is taking out his trash. "How was your meeting?"
As they frequently did, they had run into each other on the way to work this morning, and she had told him about a meeting she was having with her editor. She writes for a small trade magazine serving the home sewing industry. It's boring, she tells people, especially since she doesn't even sew, but at least she gets to write. What she doesn't say is that there are moments when she actually feels like a real reporter and turns out paragraphs she's proud of. Unfortunately, her boss is one of those people who is only comfortable with that which is mediocre. So when he feels the need to put his imprint on her work, these are the passages he chooses to circle in red. He'll scribble something in the margin like "arcane" or "obtuse," when the writing in question is no such thing. This used to drive her mad enough to march into his office clutching her copy and defending her work. But it never got her anywhere, and she came to realize that he had no idea what his own comments meant. Now she amuses herself by rewriting the paragraphs to fit his objections, actually making them arcane or obtuse. When she gets these back with "better!" printed boldly at the top of the page, she feels smugly satisfied knowing that it is, in fact, worse. And that Dennis V. Leonard, former advertising sales manager and now Publisher/Editor-in-Chief, is patting himself on the back for offering such expert guidance.
"Sucked," Marcy says to Robbie, summing up her meeting in one word. "Mean and stupid is a bad combination." She's talking, of course, about her boss.
"Dennis the menace? I have this fantasy about kicking the shit out of him for you."
"Me too. I'll see you later."
Marcy waves good-bye and shuts the door to her apartment, not wanting to give Robbie Reilly any encouragement. He makes no secret of the fact that he has a crush on her, and Marcy is beginning to think she needs to exercise some caution. She's getting a creepy feeling that she is running into him way more than mere happenstance. And then there's that business about him seeing her all the time. Like this morning, he mentioned that he had seen her across the street last night going into the grocery store. She thinks there might be something odd about that. She never sees him from a distance.
Lucinda picked through the apples in the outdoor bin of Mr. Wang's Tasty Produce 'n More. As she placed one in her basket, she became aware of someone watching her. She turned, but no one was there. Then she glanced at the fourth floor windows of the apartment building across the street, counting three from the left, and saw the curtains quickly close.
Later, while Marcy and her husband, Gordon, are finishing dinner, she tells him her suspicions about Robbie.
"I don't know," he says, spearing the last green bean on his plate. "I think you're being paranoid. It's probably just an innocent crush. Like you and Richard Lalor."
Some months back, she had written a long, gushing fan letter to her favorite novelist, and made the mistake of reading it out loud to Gordon, who thought it was the funniest thing he ever heard. Humiliated, she balled it up and threw it out. But alas, it was a copy. She had already mailed the original, along with his latest book and a request to sign it. She tells herself over and over that maybe the letter wasn't really that bad, and feels her heart race every time she checks the mail for his response.
"Stop," she protests. "I do not have a crush on Richard Lalor."
This is a lie. Her infatuation with the author runs so deep that she imagines him by her side throughout much of her day. Sometimes it's him writing the sentences that narrate her life. Sometimes it's her, but he is reading over her shoulder and thinks she's brilliant. Other times she imagines him saying the very things to her that Robbie Reilly says. Where did you get those amazing eyes?
And even if her letter to Richard Lalor did go a little overboard, pulling out her favorite phrases from his book and going on for paragraphs about them, he would know she poured her heart and soul into that letter, wouldn't he? Maybe he would even feel just a tiny bit of the connection that she does.
But she would never admit this to her husband.
"Besides," Gordon continues, "he has a girlfriend."
Marcy is confused by this. How on earth would Gordon know if Richard Lalor has a girlfriend? Then she realizes. He's talking about Robbie.
"Still," she says dismissively. "I think there's something . . ." she searches for the right word, "disquieting about the whole thing. I mean, it seems too coincidental that he leaves the same time as me nearly every day."
"You think he's watching out his peephole to see when you leave?" He makes this sound like it's most farfetched idea he can imagine.
"I don't know," Marcy says, but is pretty sure she does. She decides that she will try an experiment in the morning, leaving late for work. If she still runs into Robbie, she'll have her proof.
The next day, she carries out her plan. Sure enough, as she is exiting the lobby of the building twenty minutes behind schedule, Robbie comes bounding down the stairs.
"Marcy! Wait up."
She turns. "Did you oversleep, too?"
"My alarm didn't go off." He rubs his eye with one finger. "Just got up and jumped into the shower."
Robbie says this so convincingly Marcy wonders for a moment if maybe it is just a coincidence.
"So how are things with Sharon?" she asks, referring to his girlfriend. It's a topic they discuss every now and then.
"Good, I guess. Fine. She brought up the ring again."
"And?"
He sighs. "I don't know. Sometimes I think we should get married. Other times I still think it would be a mistake."
"Eight years is a long time to still be deciding," she says, referring to the tenure of his relationship.
"I know."
They hurry down the steps of the subway station to catch the train they hear pulling in, and jump inside just before the doors close. Robbie directs Marcy to the middle of the car, where straphangers tend to get less jostled. They hold onto the metal rail overhead and Marcy delights in its coolness.
"You know what I think?" she says. "I think you should set a date and marry her already. Or break up with her and find someone right for you. But make a decision."
"Problem is, I found the right girl for me but she's already taken." He touches her shoulder with his knuckle.
Erica poured sunscreen in her hand and smoothed it onto her long, tan limbs. "You know what I think?" she said to Richard Lalor, who reclined in the lounge next to hers. "I think you should find the right woman and get married."
He turned to face her. "I found the right woman," he said, reaching over and stroking her neck with the back of his hand, "but she's already taken."
Marcy thinks this is a good time to give Robbie the speech she has planned for him, the one where she tells him she knows he is obsessing about her, and explains why it would be best for both of them if he accepts reality and moves on. But she hesitates and misses her chance. He's talking now about the car he plans to buy, referring to it by numbers and letters instead of a name. Marcy assumes this is an expensive model and that she is supposed to be impressed. She feigns interest, and realizes that Robbie Reilly has no idea who she truly is. He is in love with a fiction.
She listens to him talk, waiting for a chance to steer the conversation to a place where she can work in her speech. When they are nearing his stop, he gives her the opportunity, mentioning something that he has said before, that he wishes they met when she was single.
Marcy looks at Robbie and shakes her head. "What you need to realize," she begins, "is that you like me because I'm happily married, not in spite of it. If I were single, you'd be scared to death to feel this way."
"Maybe. But I'd buy you a ring anyway." He grins.
They hold on tight as the brakes screech and the train stops. He kisses her cheek, something she has never done to him. Not once.
"See you later," he says, exiting to the platform.
The doors shut and Robbie looks back at her through the window, stopping to blow her a kiss. She swirls her finger around her ear and points at him to indicate that she thinks he's crazy. He shrugs and smiles.
At work, she is supposed to be writing a story about a new designer line that one of the pattern manufacturers is launching. Dennis would be happy printing the press release word for word, but she wants to at least make it sound like reporting. This should be easy for her, but she keeps losing focus, thinking about the rest of the speech she wants to give Robbie Reilly to set him straight. Marcy is staring at the screen, trying to anticipate his reaction to her words, when Jay Needleman, Sewing Monthly's national sales manager and fellow Dennis-hater, appears at her door.
"Did you hear?" Jay says, smiling like someone who just found out the trunk in his attic contains an original Dutch master.
"Hear what?"
"Oh God, you didn't. He was canned."
"Who?"
"Him. Dennis. Accounting irregularities. Turns out he was inflating sales figures to boost his bonus."
"No shit."
"Kichler wants to see us." He is talking about the president of the publishing company that owns Sewing Monthly and several other small trade magazines.
Her eyes widen.
"Don't panic," he responds, "I think it's good news."
It is, indeed, good news. Instead of hiring a replacement for Dennis V. Leonard, Kichler is reorganizing the magazine and promoting the two of them. Jay will be publisher, and Marcy editor-in-chief.
Although it's not exactly a dream come true for her, she's excited by the promotion, and spends much of the morning calling family and friends to share her happy news. The extra pay is welcome, of course, but it is the idea of no longer answering to Dennis that makes Marcy feel like she hit the jackpot.
Then someone asks her about Dennis, if she knows what his plans are. She hasn't thought about that until that very moment and, though he is a crook and a creep, feels a wave of pity. She cannot imagine him shamed and humiliated. When a man is all ego and you strip him of it, what's left? She sees him standing naked and defenseless on the harsh streets of Manhattan. It is too cruel, Marcy thinks, and in her mind provides him a loin cloth for protection. He must have at least that, she reasons. In fact, now that she thinks about it, she is sure that is how he is coping with his fall from grace. The fragile core of his ego is shielded by an armor impenetrable to anything that would damage it. Dennis, she figures, convinced himself he did nothing wrong.
She imagines him moving on. But her inner eye is still focused on that busy street corner where he stood. Only now Robbie Reilly is there, grinning like an idiot as she hurls the hard stones of truth at him. No, she thinks, I won't do that. I'll let him down gently. After all, it was probably just my anger at Dennis that I wanted to take out on the poor guy.
When Marcy returns home that evening, it is the confident hand of an editor-in-chief that feels around the inside of her dark mailbox for today's delivery. An editor-in-chief who still thinks Richard Lalor is a writer who speaks straight to her soul. She finds something bulky and her breath quickens. Could it be? Marcy pulls out the package and looks at it, immediately recognizing the self-addressed stamped envelope as the one she sent to her favorite author so that he could return her book with his signature. What a day! Too impatient to wait until she gets upstairs to her apartment, Marcy drops into the musty chair in the corner of lobby and tears open the parcel.
Sure enough, there is Richard Lalor's novel with a handwritten note clipped to the front of the dust jacket. It says, simply: "Thanks for the kind words! --Richard Lalor" Marcy wants to be thrilled. It is, after all, a real response written in his very own hand. But disappointment bears down on her. Is that it? Is that all he has to say after she went on for pages and pages about his genius? She opens the cover to see if he wrote something swell inside. Maybe that's where he acknowledges her letter. But what she sees makes her throat constrict. Above his signature are the words, "To Mary with Best Wishes." He didn't even get her name right.
Marcy puts her face in her hands and swallows hard against the lump in her gullet, so unyielding it hurts. If only she had read the letter to Gordon before she sent it. If only she had written a better letter that didn't expose so much of herself. If only Richard Lalor wasn't such a goddamned . . . The book falls from her lap onto the floor. She considers kicking it across the room, but instead bends to pick it up. As she does so, she sees Robbie Reilly out the window chatting with some neighbors. She gets up and dashes for the elevator, hoping to make it to the safety of her apartment before he catches up with her. She doesn't want to run into him. Not now.
Marcy pushes the UP button impatiently and considers taking the stairs. She glances at the front door, knowing that she will be unable to control her fury if Robbie approaches her. She wants to hurt him. She wants to rip away his fantasies unmercifully. Why should he get to keep his now that she no longer has hers?
The elevator finally arrives and Marcy steps in. While waiting for the doors to slide shut, she hears a familiar elderly voice call out, "Hold it, please!" It's Mrs. Esserman. Marcy tsks and lets her finger hover over the close door button, but she relents and holds it open.
To her surprise, Mrs. Esserman is nicely turned out, with coiffed hair and a pretty blue suit. Marcy realizes that the old woman was one of the neighbors she saw talking to Robbie Reilly outside.
"Mrs. Esserman, you look lovely," Marcy says, not meaning to sound so surprised. She pushes the button for their floor.
"Thank you, dear. I was visiting with my nephew today."
Marcy forces a smile. "How nice," she yells.
Mrs. Esserman points to her hearing aid. "New batteries. You don't have to shout. "
"Ah." Marcy can think of nothing else to say. She wants the elevator to hurry up and reach their floor so she can shutter herself into the safety of her apartment.
"That young fellow was looking for you," Mrs. Esserman says. "The one with the freckles."
"Robbie," Marcy says, and breathes a sigh of relief. She understands now that he won't be rushing upstairs. He is standing around outside chatting with neighbors because he thinks she's not home yet and is hoping to catch her on her way in.
"He's sweet on you, you know."
Obvious even to Mrs. Esserman, Marcy thinks. "I know," she admits guiltily. "I have to set him straight."
Mrs. Esserman looks at her own reflection in the rounded mirror mounted high in the corner. She touches her hair admiringly. "Why?"
"Why?" Marcy repeats. "Because I'm married."
"Eh," Mrs. Esserman says, dismissing Marcy's concern with a wave of her hand. "What harm?"
This stops Marcy cold. What harm, indeed. The doors open at their floor and she realizes something about self-deception. It's what people do with the lies they tell themselves that makes all the difference. A man who beats his wife for overcooking the spaghetti and convinces himself she deserved it is not the same as a young man who thinks he is in love with a woman he barely knows. And a sleazy executive who believes he's justified in stealing to pad his bank account--and belittling people to bolster his ego--is not the same thing as a wanna-be writer daydreaming that her favorite author thinks she's magnificent.
"Would you like to come in for a cup of tea?" Mrs. Esserman asks, as she steps off the elevator.
"No thanks," Marcy mumbles automatically, "I need to get home."
"Okay, dear. But if you ever need to borrow anything, an egg, whatever . . ."
"You know what?" Marcy interrupts. "Come to think of it, I really could use an egg, if you don't mind."
Mrs. Esserman's eyes brighten. "No, not all. Come in, please. Are you sure you just need one?"
Marcy follows her neighbor into her apartment. "Two would be great, actually. If you can spare them."
"Delighted, dear. Delighted."
In the kitchen, Mrs. Esserman pulls a sheet of paper towel off the roll and carefully places two eggs in it. She hands it to Marcy, who thanks her and says good-bye.
Later, Marcy knocks on Robbie's door to tell him about Dennis and her promotion. He congratulates her with a hug, which she lets linger a few seconds longer than it should. She tells him, then, about the package she got from Richard Lalor, and shows him the inscription.
Robbie shakes his head. "I have an idea," he says. "Give me the book."
She does what he says, and Robbie disappears inside his apartment. When he returns, he opens the book and shows her what he has done. There, between the last two letters of the word, "Mary" he has inserted a "c" using the same kind of black felt-tip pen.
Marcy smiles and closes the book, holding it to her heart. Robbie shrugs and blushes.
"Thank you," she says, and means it. What she does next surprises even her. Before turning to leave, Marcy leans in and kisses Robbie Reilly softly on the cheek.
Please send us your comments, including the name of the work you are commenting on.
| Welcome |
Contents |
Submissions |
Contact |
Privacy |
About |
Copyright © 1999-2003 by Amarillo Bay. All rights reserved.
Individual works are copyrighted by their authors.
|