Fairy Tale Blues (15 page)

“Are you there?”

And answering, “I'm here.”

“Are you there?”

“I'm here.”

This time, no answer from Jess.

He wasn't there.

Jess

 

 

I
stared out windows so often at work lately that several times a day Hadley tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention. I was going to have to give her a raise for adding one more job to her list of duties as store manager. If I was correctly reading the footsteps approaching my office door, she was about to catch me daydreaming again.

She said, “Jess, I'm sorry to bother you.”

“When I'm this busy,” I added, and conjured up a smile for her, as I sat stretched out in my desk chair, feet on the overturned wastebasket. She and I were the only grown-ups, as I jokingly called us, who worked in the store this ski season. The rest of the staff was college kids taking the semester off to winter in Jackson Hole or kids who did that last winter and still hadn't left.

Hadley shifted a pair of new skis that were about to fall across the doorway. Then she faced me.

“Lizette is crying in the washroom. She's dropping heavy hints to the others that it has to do with a love affair she must keep secret.”

“Really? What's that about, do you suppose?”

Hadley gave me a stern look and stepped closer to my desk, where I sat with my chair cocked back in order to see the ski slopes out the window. She said, “Jess, it's none of my business.” She stopped and propped her hands on her hips. “But I do believe Lizette intends on
making
it my business and everyone else's business who works here. I thought you could use the warning.”

“I don't get it.” Maybe the window staring was dulling my wits, but the past few weeks since Annie left, I hadn't been too sharp; no one's words seemed to come through clearly the first time around. Annie used to accuse me of using stupidity to relieve myself from responsibility. What-I-didn't-know-couldn't-hurt-me kind of idea. Once she got angry and she said, “You know, Jess, your IQ could rise to intimidating heights if you didn't try so damn hard to keep yourself uninvolved.”

I asked Hadley, “Warning about what?”

Hadley stared straight into my eyes for a breath—in, out. Then she stepped forward to the edge of my desk. Hands braced on my desktop, she leaned toward me. “Jess, if you're not having an affair with Lizette, you're in big trouble.”

“I thought the opposite would've been true.” My voice sounded sulky, like the voice of a little boy who had missed out on extra candy due to a misunderstanding of the rules.

“Well, I mean . . . either way.” Hadley stood straight. “She's intent on making trouble. Either way.”

I had imagined having an affair with Lizette so many different times, in so many different ways and places, I felt guilty enough to question myself: did I lick that shiny round shoulder, or hadn't I actually seen Lizette's bare shoulder? Her pubic hair was light brown, wasn't it? Or was I just assuming that her natural coloring was three shades darker than her light-catching curls piled so carelessly on top her head?

“Trouble, Jess.” Hadley pulled me out of my immobile, blank-eyed stare. “Either way.” She raised herself to her usual abbreviated but dignified stance, tugged the bottom of her wool vest over her hips and added again, “None of my business.”

“But you'll kill me in my sleep if I've cheated on your angel friend AnnieLaurie.” I sounded a bit sour to myself. I wondered if I was mad about being accused of something I hadn't enjoyed.

“Kill you with your eyes wide-open . . . if you've gone against your own best self.” Hadley took a breath and softened. “We can't really understand somebody else's bad spells. None of us acts our best during them.”

“This is a bad spell, all right. But I'm clear on this one, Hadley.” I sat upright, kicked the wastebasket aside. “I know where I want to end up. Annie and I . . . we'll be okay in time.” I brought myself fully into the moment and stood. “What's up with this Lizette deal?” I took a swig from my water bottle.

“You have to admit purple emanations have throbbed from this office since Lizette walked into the store last month. No one has been unaware of that, so this looks bad for you. She could turn into very big trouble, Jess.”

“Big trouble? I haven't done a thing. The office door has always been open. Everyone should have been aware of that, too.”

“If you have no need to shut her up, Jess, then fire her.”

“Fire her? For crying?” I sat back down in my desk chair. That didn't sound fair; besides, I needed Lizette to fantasize about. I'd go nuts if I couldn't exchange purple throbbing emanations with Lizette. I swiveled my chair away slightly, folded my hands and pressed my lips with my index fingers. God, did this mean I was sexually using Lizette? She was a kid in her early twenties; I was a grown man in my late forties.

To give me time Hadley evened up the edges on a pile of invoices on the desk. I swiveled back toward her.

“Take a look at that one,” I said. “We never received those ski helmets.”

While she read the invoice, another thought hit. I stood back up and walked to the window. I was Lizette's boss; this was the workplace. Men have been alerted to cringe in terror at that certain phrase: “Sexual misconduct in the workplace.” Shit, was I a depraved older man using young Lizette's presence in the store like some guy might use a model in a porno magazine?

I wanted to hole up with a strong drink and think about this. I looked back over to Hadley. She laid down the invoice and raised her eyebrows at me. I wasn't going to get that chance. I nodded. Hadley led the way out the door, and I followed her to the employees' washroom.

Lizette sat on the edge of a bench with her face buried in a cloud of toilet paper held scrunched in her hands. Four other employees stood inside the washroom, watching her, and two others sat beside her on the bench, patting her.

“What's wrong here?” I said, bracing myself in the doorframe. Nobody volunteered an answer, but six employees offered less than respectful looks toward their boss. Lizette had won their hearts with her muffled mewing. Hell, mine, too. I felt like beating up the guy who had done this to Lizette.

“Lizette?” I spoke gently.

“You know what's wrong.” Lizette lifted her face long enough to shoot me an accusing glare from her pink-rimmed eyes, her upper lip swollen into a sweet pout. The six others glared with her. Saundra, darn close to being obese, was in her usual process of twisting one strand of her brown hair into a thin rope, which she kept tightening until it stiffened like a spike and stood straight out from the side of her head, before unraveling into limpness. She sat on the bench rubbing Lizette's back with the hand that wasn't busy twisting hair. On the other side, Molly sat patting Lizette's knee and Tawnya leaned against a wall with the three guys. Hadley stood beside me in the doorway, her short, slender body just fitting under my left arm, which was raised level with my own head and gripping the doorframe so hard I could hear it creak, unless that was Lizette squeaking when she breathed.

I took a big intake of air myself and I cursed the day Lizette walked into my store and I cursed the day Annie walked out of it. Then I heard Annie accuse me of avoiding everything unpleasant in my life by blaming it on something else, or refusing to notice it, or diminishing its importance, or forgetting about it altogether.

I ran through that list one more time to see if any of those responses might work here.

I had to hurry; the silence felt lethal. If this had been a movie, huge Japanese drums, big as a house, would have been resounding throughout the theater.

Finally, I decided I'd better just grab ahold of this one and see if I could bring us all out the other side. What other choice did I have?

“Lizette, we don't know what's wrong. You're troubled. How can we help?”

“We,” she said, the sneer loud enough for all of us to hear, and I thought, Heck, there goes my first bright idea: to make this a community problem. But maybe I wasn't forced to drop that position yet.

“Can you tell us, Lizette?” I used my best grown-up, man-in-charge manner, measuring carefully my warmth and distance.

“I can tell you privately.”

Trap, trap,
my brain hollered. I shot a look at Hadley and her eyes yelled back at me,
Trap, trap.
But I read another thing in Hadley's eyes as well. Hadley wondered if I was willing to step into this trap. I wondered a moment myself. Holding moist, limp Lizette in my arms behind the closed washroom door. Practically legitimate, because, heck, there was no sneaking here, everybody knew for God's sake. I was Lizette's boss; she needed my private authority. You heard her ask.

A noise came from the front of the store.

“Is there a customer out there?” I said. I thought about who to send. Saundra, twisting her hair? Nah, she didn't have much fun in her life. She was practically in the spotlight right now; it would be cruel to remove her. One of the guys. Todd. He had a big crush on Lizette. No, that was mean, too. Rafe, he had a crush on Todd. Who didn't have a stake in this? Casey. He didn't have a stake in anything, even his own life, just rolled with whatever. “Casey, tell whoever‘s out there that we're closed. Then lock the door and come back.”

Whether I wanted to or not, I had to get on with this problem, and I had to move from my safe place in the doorway, where I was neither in nor out of the room, if only to let Casey through. I dropped my casual stance of arms supporting my weight against the doorframe, like a coach leaning into the locker room to wish his players well, and I drew myself together and stepped farther into the washroom.

I said, “Lizette, this is about as private as we get around here. Periodically, we all scrunch into the bathroom together and talk things out.” I looked around with smiling eyes, stupidly expecting support in the form of laughter to my witticism. My humor was not appreciated. Neither was my position of spokesperson for “us workers.” This was
my
problem, those faces said. I felt like firing the bunch of them. Start over.

Maybe keep Lizette.

Hold it, buster, I counseled myself. This is serious stuff. Besides, at the actual thought of touching Lizette, not in the fantastical future but now and here, I felt a great resistance rise in me. I bought time to sort out this surprise piece of news by pretending we were all waiting for Casey.

Annie can rub her snot all the hell over me, but please don't make me have to deal with some other woman's snot. In fact, I didn't want to deal with another woman, period. Not her snot, not her emotions, not her sexuality. And now I understood how I had messed up. I had not treated Lizette with the dignity deserving of a real person, but rather had used her as a receptacle for my imagined longings, and it was no more right than if I had dishonored a woman by paying for sex with her. Maybe that was putting it harshly, but Lizette clearly felt abused and I needed to try to fix that, if I could.

Casey returned, took his place, leaning against the wall. “Locked up, but we're losing money, boss.”

“We've got a different kind of business to attend to here.” I moved to the bench. “Molly, could I trade places with you?” I took her seat beside Lizette. “We could use some more toilet paper here.” Todd handed me a wad and I gently removed the damp scrunched-up mess from Lizette's hands. Now that I saw her as a real woman, I didn't mind Lizette's snot as much as I had thought I would. I'd still rather have been dealing with Annie's snot though. God, how I ached for Annie. Suddenly it seemed as if my own emotions surfaced along with Lizette's. I felt my upper lip begin to swell, and I wondered if everyone in the room was feeling especially close to sad parts of their lives.

I never handled personal problems with employees or even our sons, if I could avoid it. Annie did that. The only way I was going to get through this deal was to imagine what she might do. I'd watched her enough over the years. Often she began by stating the situation; so I did, too.

I tipped Lizette's face up with my forefinger to meet her eyes. “Lizette, you are a very pretty woman. I like to look at you. I have been looking at you a lot lately.” I took the new bunch of toilet paper and dabbed at Lizette's tears and held it to her nose. “Blow.”

Someone handed me more toilet paper. I got Lizette to blow again.

“I've been rude about it, this looking at you.” I fought back the excuses that flooded to my defense, the remarks that suggested this was not typical behavior of mine, that it was prompted by my loneliness for the woman I really wanted to stare at. I came close, but I heard Annie's voice tell me to grow up and own up. I heard her accuse me of slippery behavior, of hiding behind a “nice guy” persona. I felt such a powerful pull to slide into those old slots that I dug in my mental heels and forced myself to resist.

In the disturbed ground that resulted from the struggle, new thoughts surfaced that promised to serve us all better.

“I regret how I have treated you, Lizette. I haven't learned who you are.”

More than that. I
avoided
knowing information about Lizette. I was afraid it would blow my fantasy. She would hate fly-fishing or rodeos or beer or mystery novels. I just looked at her and let her see me looking at her and that was all I wanted from her. I felt full of regret for my refusal to know who this young woman was. And disgust. I had told myself it was okay to think anything I wanted, just not to act on it. Well, it was not okay, because all thought begat some kind of action. And because I was responsible for what I put out in the world . . . even thoughts. I did a disservice to this young woman and to Annie and to myself.