A Clean Slate (26 page)

“Well.” I had to pause for several moments after that, still trying to process all she'd said. I tried to be mad at her for it, but how can you be mad at someone who loved you, who took care of you despite everything? “Lane, it's okay. Really. I don't blame you at all. In fact, I'm still grateful.”

“Listen, I'm no saint. I've got to be honest with you. I tried to sabotage your job.”

“What?”

“I didn't really know I was doing it at the time, but do you remember that night we had drinks with Cole?”

I nodded.

“I asked him why he'd been run out of New York. I made some ridiculous toast about taking it up the ass. I was try
ing to get you in trouble, Kell. I was jealous, I think, that you had this new job you were so excited about.” Her voice nearly broke. “I'm a bitch, and I can barely stand myself.”

“Honey, it's okay.” I reached across the table and stroked her shoulder, thinking about that night. I'd assumed it was just the vodka that had made her tongue so loose, but ultimately there was no harm done, so I hadn't given it another thought. Besides, I loved her like a sister. Still did.

“It's not okay.” She shook off my touch.

“Sure it is. We're always okay. It's me, right?” I leaned forward and peered at her downcast face, but she wouldn't meet my gaze. “Let's just forget it. Call it even.”

“No. I need to figure this out. I'm messed up. I think I need to start seeing someone. Do you have Ellen's number handy?”

We both laughed—rough, short laughs that quickly ended. I wasn't sure if she was serious.

“I have to be by myself for a while, all right?” As she said this, Laney looked at me with pleading eyes. “Can you understand that and just give me a little time?”

“Isn't that what this last week was for?”

“Yeah, but I still need time to sort it out on my own.”

“How much time?”

“I'll let you know.”

“When?” I had to stop her from leaving, had to stop her from doing this, because it felt very much like she was breaking up with me.

“I'll let you know,” she repeated.

I felt a surge of anger in my gut then. How dare she just cut herself off from me, from our relationship? You didn't walk away from fifteen years of friendship and say,
I'll let you know,
like they do at the end of a job interview.

I opened my mouth to tell her this, but Laney took a deep breath and said, “Okay, Kell, I'm sorry, but I've got something else to tell you. I can't believe I didn't say this earlier, but Jess called me this morning. She was looking for you.”

I gave a curt nod. There'd been a message from Jess on my machine, too.

Laney's eyes took on a pained expression.

“What?” I said. “What is it?”

She reached out and rubbed my leg. “Oh, honey,” she said, and she sounded like she used to, when we were friends forever, always.

“What?” I asked, letting myself feel annoyed in order to block out the flutter of panic.

She squeezed my knee. “Ben got engaged to Therese. She's pregnant.”

I
sat on the couch in my apartment, stacks of unopened mail on the coffee table in front of me. In my mind, I kept repeating Laney's last words—
Ben got engaged…. She's pregnant
—in the hopes that the repetition would give them meaning. But instead my brain only answered with a dull pain in my temples. Another one of my goddamn headaches.

Had Therese gotten pregnant on purpose? Was that all it took to make Ben change his mind about marriage and kids? Was that all I would have had to do? Just chuck my little white birth control pills instead of swallowing them dry in the morning? The thought of intentionally getting pregnant made me sick. It seemed so horrifyingly retro, so fifties. And then another thought dawned on me. Wasn't I supposed to get my period today? Because of the pill, I was like clockwork nearly to the minute, so that I could always expect my period by ten in the morning on every fourth Monday—this
Monday to be exact. I looked at my watch. It was 6:30 p.m. I ran to the bathroom and dropped my pants. Nothing.

No, no, no, no,
no,
I thought. There was no way I'd gotten pregnant from my night with Sam. In addition to the pill, we'd used a condom. It would be some kind of freak medical miracle if I'd gotten pregnant. But then what was the explanation? Flying? Wasn't it true that air travel could mess up your cycle? Unfortunately, it sounded to me like an old wives'tale.

I moved back through my darkening living room and sank onto the couch again. I tried to imagine myself pregnant, but nothing came, no images of my bloated abdomen, of the discomfort, the joy—nothing. Shouldn't I be able to picture myself in a filmy romantic daydream with a flowing dress over my ripe belly, traipsing through a flower garden to meet my smiling husband? Maybe it was because I wasn't involved with anyone right now. Maybe that was why it was so hard to envision. Strangely, this was the first time I'd ever actually attempted to imagine myself pregnant. It had always been a goal of mine to have kids, one I'd held since high school at least, but in actuality, I saw now that it was more of an assumption than a goal. I'd always
assumed
I'd have kids. I'd taken for granted that I would get pregnant eventually, after I got to a certain stage, a certain age. And yet now I couldn't even picture it. What was wrong with me?

I thought about Ben then, experiencing a shot of pain with the realization that he was getting married, that
he
was having kids. Ben, the one who wanted to travel, to have fun. Was he happy about it? Was it what he'd wanted all along, just not with me?

I picked up the phone and dialed my mom's work number. She wasn't someone I usually turned to in a time of crisis, but there seemed to be no one else.

“The Biz,”
she answered in a world-weary voice.

“Hey, Mom, it's Kelly.”

“Sweetie!” Finally, someone who
wanted
to talk to me.

“How's work?” I asked. It was a safe question, one I'd gotten used to leading with since Dee died.

“Complete craziness. Madonna's becoming a master yogi, so you can imagine the press.”

“Yeah. Wow,” I said, although, as usual, I couldn't imagine why anyone cared.

After a few more minutes of celeb gossip (Michael Jackson had bought a gorilla; Nicole Kidman was going brunette) I filled my mom in on everything—my job with Cole, my thoughts that I should find another analyst position, the way Ben and I had been seeing each other again and the fact that he was now a husband-and-daddy-to-be. I skipped the issue of my memory loss, not wanting to dump too much on her. I hadn't confided in her in so long for fear that she couldn't handle it after Dee's death, but it struck me now that maybe I was the one who couldn't handle it. Maybe I didn't want to talk about what was wrong in my life and I'd just used my mother's allegedly fragile mental health as an excuse. Because she responded emphatically, immediately and with definite opinions and advice, just as I'd hoped she would.

“Ben,” she said, her tone strong and dramatic, as if she was making an official proclamation, “is a complete schmuck.”

I laughed despite myself.

“And as for your photography job, Kelly, I think you're right. It was a diversion, something you could do because you had a little extra money in the bank, but it's not going to last you for the rest of your life. You have to be able to take care of yourself. You can't assume you'll meet someone and get married and that he'll do it for you.”

I knew she was speaking from very personal experience, but I also knew there was truth in her words. My mother was the hardest working person I'd ever met. She'd single-handedly raised two kids, with no financial or emotional support
from anyone, and although I'd always wanted a different life than the one she'd had, I respected her opinion immensely.

She had confirmed for me the conclusion I'd been drawing all along, and it made the steady thump in my temples hurt all the more. When I hung up, I remembered the pain relievers in the cabinet. Maybe just one wouldn't hurt. In the kitchen, I stared at that cabinet for a few seconds before I finally swung the door open, pushed past the cans of tuna and the bottles of Wellbutrin and found the one with the pain relievers. I didn't recognize the name of the medication. I opened it and peered inside at the long blue pills that looked potent enough to tame a wild boar. Before I could analyze it too much, I shook one out and popped it in my mouth, taking a swallow from my water glass. I put the bottle in my purse.

Next, I picked up the phone and called Cole. Fifteen minutes later, I was on the El, headed for his studio and the conversation I'd been dreading.

 

“You are not quitting, you silly bitch!” Cole's eyes flashed angrily at me, and he wielded his bulky black address book like a weapon, waving it around my head as I sat—
slumped
is probably a better word—in his beanbag chair.

“I have to,” I said. “I've loved working with you. Mostly, anyway.” I tried a smile to lighten up the situation, but he only scowled deeper. “I just can't live on this money.”

“I'll pay you more!” He said this with a pleased smile, as if he'd just discovered the cure for cancer.

“Do you have any idea what I was making at Bartley Brothers? Do you know what I could probably make right now when I get back into the field?”

He shook his head.

I told him. It was a sum well into the six figures, a sum that was much less, I'm sure, than he'd been making in his heyday, but enough to be impressive just the same.

“Well.” He looked troubled at this bit of information. “I could give you a few dollars more an hour,” he said pathetically.

I did the math in my head. “That still would give me barely $24,000 a year. It's not enough to buy a house in this city or even get a decent apartment.”

“Bollocks!” He slammed the date book down on the butcher-block table.

“It's true. If you figure that a down payment would be at least—”

“That's not what I mean! You've got talent,
real
talent. Surely you know that.”

I felt a flicker of pleasure at his compliment, but was immediately struck by the thought that ultimately it didn't matter. Practically speaking, talent didn't pay the bills; it didn't bring you any closer to fulfilling your goals. You could be the best photographer in the world, and it wouldn't mean you could make a living at it.

“Look, Cole, I told you about my memory loss. It's been a whirlwind for me since I realized it, and working with you has been the best part. I'll never regret that, but I have to be realistic. I'm already over thirty, and I want to be married and have kids someday.” I thought about the way I'd tried, and was unable, to imagine myself pregnant that afternoon, and added, “I think.”

“What does any of that have to do with your being a photographer? You can be a mommy and a photographer, too. If you just keep working at it, you could make a name for yourself.”

“But you don't know that I could ever make any money at it. I'd like to pretend that money doesn't matter, but it does. I want other things in my life, too. I've always wanted a house somewhere and a nice car and nice things….” It sounded so lame and shallow to my own ears that I let my words die away.

I brushed my bangs away from my damp forehead. The room was getting warm. Too warm.

I thought about asking Cole to turn the heat down, but he spat out his next words. “Don't you think I want that, too? Do you think I like living in the same place I work? Do you think I like having to struggle now when I used to have anything I wanted? Don't you think I want to send money to Josie?”

“Yes. No. I mean…” Again my voice failed. The strength of his emotions had startled me. Cole had always seemed the type who could live happily in the room over someone's garage. I'd never really thought about what he'd had to give up after Manhattan.

He crouched before me, taking one of my hands in his. Up close, I could see the lines etched around his eyes.

“You've got something,” he said. “You've got an eye that takes most photographers years to develop. The way you look at a shot, it's brilliant, totally new, totally you. If you keep working on it—”

“Can you guarantee that I'll make it someday?”

“I think it's a real possibility.”

He was making this so much harder than it had to be. I wanted to quit and move on. I wanted to stop thinking about this job, about being a photographer; I wanted to stop thinking altogether. Once I got another analyst position, I could slip back into the comfortable confines of that day-to-day life, the one I knew so well, the one that came with enough money to let me do whatever I wanted. Of course, I would never stop taking pictures. I'd always have photography—it wasn't like I was giving it up. But this job was a hobby, just as Ben had said.

So why was it so hard to leave?

“You don't know that I'd make it on my own, Cole. No one can say if I'd ever make money at this, so don't pretend you can.” My voice rose a little. It was too hot in here. It was time to go.

“Kelly Kelly.” The way he said my name twice like that, in a tone so tender, made me feel like crying.

This was embarrassing. I pushed myself awkwardly to my feet. “I've got to go.”

“Don't do this.” He rose so that we were both standing now.

He was too close to me, then he seemed far away. I couldn't get enough air. I was confused for a second. What was I doing here? And then in the next instant, I remembered that I'd quit, that I was leaving. I took a step, but one of my knees gave way and I staggered slightly before I righted myself.

“Are you all right?” Cole dipped his head down, his face near mine, his eyes concerned. Too close again, and yet in the next instant he zoomed away from me, then back again, as if he were a human rubber band.

I couldn't breathe. I took a step back.

What was I supposed to be doing?

The light in the room became blindingly bright, then faded, then burst back to full strength. Something in my head started to pound. I felt a rise of nausea in my stomach.

Finally,
I thought faintly. I was getting my period. I wasn't pregnant, after all.

I welcomed a tiny wash of relief before my knees quickly buckled again. I felt the muscles of my face go slack, the tension in my shoulders loosen. I sank to the floor, past Cole's arms, which shot out a second too late. I felt the side of my head strike his hardwood floor.