Jonathan Dee - A Thousand Pardons

Helen must have looked especially discouraged after Nevaeh walked out, because Mona actually broke character and tried to cheer her up. “One less salary to come up with every week,” she said, cocking her head. “That keeps us going that much longer. There wasn’t that much for her to do anyway.”

“You’re right,” Helen said, her eyes stinging. “Of course you’re right. Why can’t I just think of it that way?”

“Course, I’m looking around myself,” Mona said, turning back to her computer screen. Maybe she meant she was looking right now, Helen thought. “You should be, too. I mean it’s fine to hope, but when you’re responsible for others, you got to make sure they’re covered by something besides just hope, you know what I’m talking about?” Helen actually thought for a moment that Mona was talking about herself, that she meant to say that Helen was now responsible for her; but no, of course not, she was referring to Sara, who in Mona’s eyes, even though the two women spent eight hours a day together, was the single most real thing about her.

They were not overly taxed by the amount of work they had left to do. It was simple stuff, even though Mona had to explain to Helen a lot of the nuts and bolts of it: how to get out a press release for a nightclub that was applying for a license on a residential block in the West Village and needed some positive coverage; how to gratify a Korean merchants’ association out in Flushing that wanted some publicity for its modest charity work; how to talk patiently to a man in Floral Park who had bought up the trademarks for various boomer junk foods, such as Screaming Yellow Zonkers, and was convinced he could make a killing by reviving them. Mona and Helen took the train all the way out to Queens to meet that guy, at his pompous insistence, and then it turned out he was living and working in his married sister’s basement. But somehow, miraculously, his checks kept clearing. That contract had another four months to run. Each of these little short-term contracts expired in the same way: with a handshake from the client, a rueful “So tragic about Harvey,” and then done. No talk of renewal. Helen split each fee between payroll and the skeletal office expenses and Scapelli the lawyer, who emailed irregular updates on Harvey’s shrinking posthumous debt. That was satisfying, as was the thought of actually handing Michael a check when all was said and done. Still, there was something inescapably gloomy about winding the business down like this. It was like Harvey’s death all over again, only with a bedside vigil this time. Helen would have lowered her own salary for Michael’s sake, but there was just no way she could afford it. Mona spent about a third of every workday looking at online listings for other jobs; Helen knew she should be doing the same but somehow couldn’t rouse herself, those days, to think more than one step ahead.

At around four o’clock one Thursday afternoon, Michael showed up at the office, unannounced. He seemed shaken by the look of surprise on Helen’s face. “I thought maybe that website idea we talked about,” he said waveringly. “Of course,” Helen said, ignoring Mona’s indiscreetly raised eyebrows, and she showed him to the computer terminal on his father’s desk.

“He’s designing a webpage for the agency,” she whispered to Mona as she sat down again. “It’s something we really should have.”

“Why?” Mona said and then waved her hands in front of her as if to erase her own question. “What does he expect to be paid for his time?”

Helen made a zero with her thumb and forefinger.

“Like father, like son,” Mona said. “Well, I am leaving here at five either way.”

“Me too,” said Helen, “but he’ll be fine here, we’ll give him a key,” and then she had a brainstorm.

“Michael?” she said, leaning against the doorjamb between the offices. “I just had a thought. One of our last remaining clients is a nightclub that’s opening downtown. That’s a business I know absolutely nothing about. How would you feel about handling that account with me? Figuring out what past problems have been with license applications, how to avoid them, how to put the owners in the best possible light?”

Michael had been scowling at his father’s computer, which was less than state of the art, for most of this pitch. He blinked up at her. “What’s the name of the club?”

“Repentance,” Helen said.

He sighed. “That would be pretty awkward for me,” he said. “I know those guys. So no.” He began typing again, and Helen went back to her desk, more crestfallen than ever, not entirely sure what it was she’d been trying to make happen anyway.

She got home on time that night — there was nothing to keep her at work late, nor was there any real reason to take work home on the train — and when she rolled down the car window to pull the day’s mail out of the box at the top of the driveway, she found a plump, oversize manila envelope from the office of Joe Bonifacio. It had no stamp on it: he must have driven it over himself, to save the postage. Inside the dark garage she turned the engine off and opened the envelope, and there she found her divorce papers, ready for her signature.

“There is nothing to eat in this place” was how Sara greeted her when she walked into the vestibule. “And I did not think it was even possible to get sick of pizza but I cannot eat pizza again, like ever.”

Helen got back in the car and drove to the IGA for a chicken, thinking that they couldn’t really afford to be ordering out all the time anyway; on her way home she stopped at the liquor store and bought a bottle of Gewürztraminer, which she hadn’t had for years because Ben was a wine snob and couldn’t bear even the smell of it. She cooked dinner, and cleaned the broiler, and did the dishes, and then when Sara was in bed she took the Gewürztraminer out of the refrigerator and filled one of the big wineglasses to about a quarter inch from the top. She pulled the divorce papers out of her purse and told herself that she would set aside for reminiscence only the time it took her to get to the end of that glass of wine: when it was empty, she would sign and be done with it. At this point looking at her own past felt to her like standing with your heels on the edge of a subway platform: losing your balance was obviously a bad idea, but if you thought about it too hard you’d go over anyway.

She knew she’d fallen for all the wrong things in Ben — his confidence, his ease in social situations, the way she’d catch him staring at her, the life free from want that seemed like a lock in the company of the kind of man who knew exactly where he was headed. He was so smart. His mind was always going. He treated her more gently than any man, in her admittedly thin experience, had ever treated her. She used to ask him to tell her what to read, what to wear, what to order; if, later in life, she found this same sort of input from him invasive or condescending, that wasn’t really his fault — the change was in her. She had come to the city after college with the money left to her by her father when he passed away her senior year, money that would not last long, no matter how frugal she was with it. He was in his third year of law school, with a job offer already in hand, and she was working for Ralph Lauren. It seemed as decent a job as any other. She was not a shallow person by any means, but she had no sense of a calling. He was in the city for the weekend, and a friend of Helen’s fixed them up. The friend had been out with Ben once herself. “You will love him,” she said. “Personally I like them a little more malleable.” Helen did love him, and he found her worth loving too, and as clear and shameful as it seemed in retrospect that what had drawn them together was his self-regard and her naïveté, still, even on that foundation, they had been happy for many years.