Domestic Violets (19 page)

Chapter 26

A
nna is supposed
to be home in two days, but it’s impossible not to wonder if that’s going to happen. When she left with that overstuffed bag, was she . . . leaving? I was just lying there, half conscious in our bed. Was she looking down on me, her husband, one leg kicked out from the comforter, and moving on with her life?

I called her an hour ago, breaking my own rule, and it went to voice mail. I didn’t know what to say, and so I said nothing. In the rooms adjacent to mine, Allie and my dad are in their beds, and downstairs Gary is asleep on the couch. Instead of going to Johnny Rockets or anywhere else, we ordered pizza, and my two dads and I drank whatever we could find in the house while Allie watched
The Lion King
twice.

There’s a young starlet on
Letterman
—one of those celebrities who’s famous even though she’s never really done anything. She’s dressed like a prostitute and talking about how all of the things they say about her in those magazines aren’t true and that she’s just a totally normal girl. If Anna was here, we’d be making fun of her and bitching about the downfall of popular culture.

For the last half hour, I’ve been taking inventory, focusing on the things she’s taken with her and gauging their importance. Her favorite jeans are gone, and so is the shawl she takes to restaurants and movies in case she gets cold. If she were leaving, she’d take them with her for sure, along with the orange headband she loves, which I can’t seem to find, either. Her important jewelry is here, and so is her passport, and her flip-flops and the blue sweatpants she wears when she’s feeling bloated. And, of course, Allie is here, too.

When the phone rings, I know that it can only be her. Still though, I let it ring a few times, like a teenager trying not to seem too anxious.

“Hi there,” she says.

I wonder if he’s there. Or maybe he’s gone to get ice, agreeing to leave her alone for a few minutes. She tells me that I sound miserable and asks if I’ve had a tough day.

“You don’t even want to know.”

There’s a knock at my door and Allie appears, smiling. “Is that Mommy?” She bounces over to me and snags the phone, flopping onto the bed next to me.

“Guess who’s sleeping on the couch. No, Grandpa Gary! I think Grandma is mad at him still. He ate a whole pizza all by himself—the whole thing!—and Grandpa Curtis drank all of your guys’ wine. I drew a picture of a helicopter. Grandpa Curtis took me for a ride in his car. He went soooo fast. Ashley gave Grandpa Curtis a naked picture of herself as a present. I saw her boobs. Today at school, Stephanie was sick and so I didn’t have anyone to work on my art project with. Mrs. Rosemary helped though, so it was OK. Do you like Boston? Is it cold there?”

And so on.

She hasn’t mastered the phone yet, and she forgets to breathe sometimes, which ends up making her sound like she’s having a conversation in the middle of a set of wind sprints. Who does she like more, I wonder, when it comes right down to it? Anna or me?

“Gary’s staying at the house?” Anna asks me. Allie has run back down the hall to bed.

“He’s not
staying
at the house, he’s just here for the night. He stopped by, and I didn’t have the heart to send him home. My mother isn’t being very nice to him.”

She asks about work, and I tell her nothing about Greg. Nor do I tell her about visiting my mother or breaking into my dad’s house, or about seeing Ashley lurking on the street with binoculars. I don’t say any of this because the only thing I can think about is Anna naked in her hotel room. The sheets are pulled up between her legs and over her breasts. This is how it goes in movie scenes when actresses have no-nudity clauses. Her hair is a tousled mess from bed. It’s the worst kind of fantasy.

“How’s your
conference
?” I ask, hitting the word a little harder than would be natural under normal circumstances.

“It’s pretty much the usual. It’s basically a bunch of librarians talking about getting kids to read. There’s this education company in the Midwest working on turning kids’ books into video games, like for PlayStation. They turn the pages with their controllers. This is what it’s come to, tricking kids into reading with video games.”

“Anna,” I say, and I feel sweat emerge on my forehead.

“Yeah?”

I say her name again, stalling, hoping to be interrupted or proven wrong. “Allie drew a picture of something.”

“Oh? Of what?”

“It’s of you and someone else. You and a man and a little boy, actually. She told me his name is David.”

“OK,” she says. It’s a small, simple word, but her tone has changed, dramatically so, along with the temperature of the world.

I stand up and start pacing, my thoughts are all heavy and blurred from drinking all night. “Anna, who is David Anderson?”

My dad told Charlie Rose once that when writing dialogue, it’s not necessarily the words that are important, but what happens right before or after those words, and for a two full seconds she doesn’t say anything, and that’s all I needed to hear. My heart squeezes in my chest, a clenched fist. “He’s a guy from the gym. And Conner is his little boy. We see them there sometimes. Tom, what is this . . . what’s going on?”

“You were all together in the picture, the four of you. You were holding hands, like a family.”

“Tom, she’s a little girl. I think she has a crush on Conner. They play together.”

“I know that he’s there. In Boston. I went to his office today and they told me. I found his business card in your bag. And the book he gave you. I found that, too. Gotta admit, it’s a pretty good move.”

Silence.

“Tom, it’s not what you think. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but it’s not that. OK?” She’s talking fast, like Allie, breathless on the phone. I can’t believe how quickly this has happened.

“Well, what is it then?”

“I didn’t invite him here.”

“What?”

“I didn’t invite him. He surprised me. He just . . . showed up.”

“He
surprised
you?”

“I promise you, OK? I had no idea. He just showed up at my hotel the first night I was here. Tom, you have to believe me.”

“If someone was going to lie in this situation, Anna, do you know what they’d say?”

“Tom.”

“Exactly what you just said.”

“Tom.”

“Is he there now?”

“No.”

“Did you—”

“God, no. Jesus, Tom. I told him to leave. I told him to go away because I couldn’t see him.”

For a while we’re silent, and I know that she’s lying. Not because of how she’s acting, or because I don’t trust her, or because in a million years I ever thought we’d be having this conversation. I know that she’s lying simply because I can’t imagine it. If I were in a hotel room by myself and Katie showed up unannounced, and I was far from my real life—my other life—there’s no way I’d be able to tell her to leave.

Anna’s crying now. “I’ve been lonely,” she says. “It’s been hard with us, Tom, you know that, right?”

There’s another knock at my door, smaller this time, and Allie’s head appears. She’s holding one of her books, the one about the boy and the penguin again. I hold up one finger and she disappears. How does a conversation like this end? In movies, difficult conversations, the life-changing conversations that mean so much to the characters and their stories, simply fade to black.

“Tom, are you there?”

“Did you read my book at least?”

“What?”

“My novel, Anna. You weren’t supposed to call me until you’d at least started it.”

“I know I was supposed to. But I haven’t yet. I just wanted to talk to you. I wanted to hear your voice.”

“Jesus. Why does nobody wanna read my fucking book?”

She’s sitting up in bed, her book on her lap, smiling. “Hi, Daddy. You wanna read?”

“How about we read something different tonight?” I say.

Allie hugs her book, her thumbnail moving to her lower lip. “Why? I wanna read this one. It’s about the penguin. Remember?”

I sit down next to her, the small bed sinking from my weight. “Honey, we’ve read that one a hundred times. The boy and the penguin sail back to the North Pole together, and then they realize that they miss each other because they’re such good friends, right?”

“Yeah. That’s OK. Don’t you like it?”

“I do like it. But I was thinking that for a change maybe we’ll read a
new
book.” I set my manuscript on her lap, which to a child must look like nothing.

“That’s not a book.”

“It is. Well, it’s a book before it becomes a book.”

“What’s it about?” She looks so much like her mother that I look away, and it scares me a little that I’ll be looking at this beautiful face for the rest of my life and that it will always look like Anna’s.

“It’s about a boy. He goes on a long car ride all by himself to find his dad because he thinks he’s lost him. And he doesn’t know who he’s supposed to be. He goes through a personal crisis.”

“Did Grandpa Curtis write it?”

“No. I did. It’s my secret book.”

She scoots closer, leaning into my shoulder, and I love the way she smells, like things getting better. “OK. We can read your book if you want to.”

As I read the first sentences aloud, and then the first paragraphs, and then the first pages, it’s as if I’m hearing them for the first time. It’s as if they are someone else’s entirely and I’ve just stumbled across them here with my daughter, and I trust the way they sound. I believe them. And so I keep reading and reading, even after Allie has drifted off and the sound of her slow breathing falls in time with my own steady voice.

Chapter 27

W
hen the alarm
goes off, I feel like I haven’t slept at all. And maybe I haven’t.

After reading roughly two hundred pages to my sleeping daughter, I stumbled back into my room and lay down to watch the ceiling, analyzing how the light looks at various points in the earliest moments of morning.

Today is the first day of Osama Bin Gregory’s unholy rule, and I’m already running late. The office is the last place on earth I want to be, and so, in the shower, I look at the oncoming water for a long, long time. Outside, the sheer injustice of Greg’s promotion is profound enough to have affected the jet stream, and so it’s raining like it’s the end of the world.

By now he’s probably sitting in his office in another Brooks Brothers tie, drumming his fingers, and perhaps I should swing by Walmart and pick up a hunting rifle. As the shampoo runs into my eyes, though, I’m struck with a less violent fantasy. I’m sleep-deprived and edgy and a little hungover, but I’m not afraid to admit right here in this tiny shower that I have come up with a brilliant idea.

I’d planned, of course, on
not
wearing a tie today. But what kind of protest is that—doing the same thing I always do?
That’s
insanity. No. This particular day calls for something new, something truly stupid and childish—a futile gesture of which I can be proud.

Downstairs, I find Allie already dressed for school. She’s gently poking my stepfather with a LEGO block. Gary is snoring as he spills over the couch from every conceivable angle.

“Wake up, Grandpa Gary,” she whispers.

“I think it’s gonna take more than that, hon,” I say.

“Is Grandpa Gary gonna live with us now, too? Two grandpas in the same house?”

The thought hadn’t crossed my mind until now, and I consider it. It’d be like a terrible, terrible sitcom. Or worse—it’d be
Three Men and a Little Lady
, but instead of Magnum, P.I., Sam Malone from
Cheers
, and that guy from
Police Academy
, it’ll be my two dads and me, drinking until one of the neighbors calls Social Services. “No,” I say. “I don’t think he’d fit in the house.”

“He seems kinda sad. I could tell last night. He watched
The Lion King
with me for a while, and I think he almost cried, but it wasn’t even at the sad parts.”

I distract her with cereal, which I prepare in her favorite bowl. Once she’s settled in the kitchen, I head for the basement to execute my brilliant idea. It takes a good ten minutes of digging, but eventually I find the box marked “Halloween Costumes.” In there among the masks and wigs is a long, stringy cowboy tie from a few years ago. The shiny metal knot is engraved with a scorpion. It is the most dreadfully awful thing ever.

Back upstairs, I look at myself in the mirror. Against my light blue oxford shirt, the tie makes me look like an extra from
Brokeback Mountain
. It is exactly the right amount of stupid-looking, and I can’t wait to show Katie.

“Yeehaw,” my dad says. He’s at the table next to Allie now, rubbing his temples.

“I hear prop comedy is making a comeback this year,” I say. “Wow, you look awful, Dad.”

He rests his chin on his hand, picks a marshmallow character from Allie’s bowl, and pops it into his mouth. “That gigantic man over there can drink,” he says. “I felt like he was challenging my masculinity.”

“Well, you’re awake first, so I guess you win.”

“It wasn’t worth it.” Curtis is thin, shaken, old, and tired. The hollows under his eyes look drawn on by a makeup expert.

“You’ll get Allie to school, right?” I ask.

He sips his coffee and squeezes the bridge of his nose, considering this. “OK. But she’s going to have to drive. I think I’ve got vertigo.”

“That’s a silly tie, Daddy,” says Allie. She’s looking at me the way people look at you when they’re not sure whether or not you’re joking. I have some experience with this look.

“I know it is, honey. But your daddy has a very silly job, and sometimes that means he has to do very silly things for reasons he doesn’t quite understand.”

“Should we wake Sleeping Beauty over there?” asks Curtis. “I don’t think that sofa is going to survive much longer.”

Gary’s legs hang over the armrest as though he’s been dropped there by a passing helicopter. Hank is investigating now, torn between sniffing from a distance or just getting it all over with and jumping on his chest.

“Pop! Hey, Pop! You want some coffee?”

But Gary remains perfectly still, and Allie can’t keep her eyes off of my awesome tie.

“Be honest? Do you think it’s funny?” I ask her.

She thinks for a moment, and then, eventually, she admits that it is. I take this to be a good sign. Because if a seven-year-old thinks it’s funny, then surely an office full of miserable adults with all-but-worthless 401(k)s will, too, right?

Instead of going directly to my office, I opt to head immediately to Cubeland so I can parade my anti-Gregory wardrobe to the troops. My plan is to pop into Katie’s cube and stand there quietly until she notices me. “Ma’am,” I’ll say, tipping an imaginary hat like an idiot. She’ll laugh, a sound I’ve heard far too little lately, and I’ll forget, if just for a moment, the rest of my life.

Several of my colleagues are out wandering about the office, en route to wherever. None of them seems to want to look at me, though—in fact they’re avoiding looking at me. There isn’t a single acknowledgment of the fact that I’m here at work dressed like a hillbilly. I turn into Katie’s cube, smiling, and I actually yelp when I see that the person there isn’t Katie. Instead, it’s someone from HR, Judy maybe, or one of the other five interchangeable middle-aged women who work in HR. She’s stacking Katie’s things into a cardboard box.

I’m a child knocked from a tree, his breath pulled from his lungs in one painful heave.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Tom,” says Judy. She looks sad holding Katie’s
I’M A PEPPER
sign.

A few sets of eyes and foreheads pop up over the gray cube walls around me. “Where’s Katie? What’s going on?”

“You have to talk to Janice, Tom.”

“Jesus, what the hell? She’s my direct report. Where is she?”

“Janice’s office. But you can’t go in there.”

“Oh yeah?” I say, and with the two strings of my novelty tie swinging like little arms, that’s where I head in earnest. A few more disembodied heads appear, but vanish fast, off to send IMs or e-mails to friends in other departments. I pass the kitchen, copiers, supply closet, and fax machine in a blur. I told her that she was going to be fine, that she had nothing to worry about. Without even knocking, I throw Janice’s door open hard, and it thuds against the wall. Janice looks up, unimpressed. Katie looks up, too, and so does one of the pasty assistant lawyers. Apparently Katie didn’t even warrant a full pasty lawyer. I can see that she’s been crying. The young ones—the girls—always cry.

“Tom, I need you to leave,” says Janice. “We’re in the middle of a private meeting.”

The streaking rain drums against the window, distorting the world outside. “What the hell, Janice? This is ridiculous. I’m her boss for Christ sake, and she didn’t do anything wrong. Why didn’t anyone talk to me about this?”

“You weren’t here to be notified, Tom. Now, I need you to leave immediately.” Behind her there’s a framed picture of a Dalmatian puppy. This is the fucking world I live in—a world where villains have pictures of puppies and smiling babies in their cramped, dank offices.

“Is this Greg? Is this his bullshit?”

“Tom, this is a private, budgetary matter, and I need you to leave. I
will
call Security.”

I laugh out loud at this. Our security team consists of two old retired cops at the front door of the building reading
AARP Magazine
. “Jesus, go right ahead. Katie, this isn’t right. This is
my
fault, OK? This is my fault and I’m gonna fix it right now. I promise.”

She’s bewildered, staring up at me. She has no idea what’s happening—that there’s a process, and it’s going on right now while she sits here. Fat Judy is cleaning out her desk while IT deactivates her entry keys and disables her passwords from the network. She sees my tie, and for an instant there’s realization there, maybe even the slightest smile, and my heart breaks.

“It’s gonna be all right,” I say.

“OK,” she whispers. But for all the things in the world she doesn’t know, she knows enough to know that I’m completely full of shit, and that there’s nothing I can do to help her.

“Tom,” says Janice. “This is neither the time, nor the place.”

I close Janice’s door as dramatically as I opened it and head toward Greg’s office. A few of his minions have come down to HR to see what’s going on, and I tell them to get the hell out of my way. My heartbeat is louder in my ears than my own footsteps on this horrible, trampled industrial carpeting.

His door is partially open, and so I shove right on through to find him sitting, smiling at his desk, waiting for me. They’ve discussed this—the Tom Factor—and set up a plan for how to deal with it. “What do you think you’re doing, you asshole?”

“Good morning, Tom,” he says. “I was actually reviewing this brochure copy you wrote yesterday. Not bad at all—once we cut the contractions out.”

“Don’t be a dick. You know exactly what I’m doing here. You can’t fire Katie. She’s my direct report.”

“And now, Tom, you are
my
direct report. Were you not at the meeting with Ian? I stopped by your office last night to discuss Katie’s removal, but you weren’t there. We should probably talk about your attendance one of these days. It’s not very good. Pretty unacceptable actually.”

“This isn’t right and you fucking know it. What did she ever do to you, Greg?”

Greg wheels back from his desk and I see that he’s wearing a fucking pin-striped suit—I shit you not. “This isn’t personal, Tom. This is the real world. Do you think I’m a child? We’re in the middle of a financial meltdown. We have to cut costs to the bone. It was a business decision. Two copywriters is just one too many.”

“Well then fire me. Because that’s who it’s about—
me
—and you’re taking it out on a twenty-three-year-old girl. Why can’t you just admit it?”

He smiles still, as big and awful a smile as I’ve ever given him. “Well, don’t think I didn’t considering firing you. But, despite our differences, you’re good at your job. I think we can give this a go, you and me. Especially now that you’ve come on board with the dress code. It’s not exactly regionally appropriate, but a tie’s a tie, right?”

“Fuck you,” I say, and then I heave my stupid tie across Gregory’s office, burying the scorpion into the drywall and sending chunks and chips of white dust to the ground. I turn to leave, but then I turn back. “Oh, and just so you know, Ian offered me your bullshit job first, and I turned it down. So, have a good time with that, you fucking empty-suit, jargon-spilling, worthless corporate prick.”

His little smile deteriorates, and the fact that I’ve said this loudly enough for anyone within two hundred feet to hear leads me to believe that these might be the last words I ever say to Gregory Steinberg.

My exit line.

I crash around my office for a while, knocking some things to the floor and pacing around.

Before coming back here, I tried Cubeland, but Katie and the contents of her desk were gone. By 2 p.m. the office vultures will have come and gone, peeling away whatever staplers, business card holders, or tape dispensers remain. She’s gone, and there’s a chance I’ll never see her again. Of all the people who’ve left this place, fired or otherwise, I’ve never seen any one of them again, even by accident.

“This is Katie,” says her voice mail when I dial her cell phone. It’s a happy, chipper version of Katie. “Just leave a message and I’ll call you back.”

What I’m feeling now, sitting at my desk, goes beyond emotion into the realm of physical pain.

Many of the items atop my desk are on the floor now, except, somehow, for my plastic in-box. There at the top sits a copy of a press release I wrote the other day—some trumped-up bullshit about our clients in Asia. Gregory has made his awful little notes in red, and so have a few other stakeholders. It’s due to Lyle over at the
Post
this afternoon, and I consider just ripping it up, knowing that I probably won’t last that long anyway.

And then I’m hit with my second brilliant idea of the day. “Mother . . . fucker,” I say.

The tie was brilliant, but it failed. I see now that is wasn’t bold enough, and certainly not stupid enough. This idea though, potentially, could be my masterpiece.

I’ve spent five years writing a coming-of-age novel that may very well never see the light of day. I’ve spent more than seven years writing corporate propaganda and bullshit so hollow and meaningless that it has haunted my dreams. Today though, I’m going to make up for all that. Today, I’m going to win my own fucking Pulitzer Prize.