Joshua Ferris - Then We Came to the End

“Well, we have to find some way of getting her in,” Marilynn was saying into her cell.

Carl turned his attention back to the noble fools scouring the bricks. Another thing that would have sent him spiraling was how quickly he could come up with the advertising copy designed to sell power sprayers to those shit-brained managers. “Uniform liquid distribution guarantees remarkable scouring intensity for maximum coverage and time efficiency,” he thought to himself as he watched the men work, “while the high impact of our spray angles makes cleaning any surface a snap!” His quick command of that cloying and unctuous language, that false-speak, while his wife was next to him talking to Susan about mammography results or negative drug reactions, whatever — it would have been all too much to bear.

But not so much this morning, not so much somehow. Oh, he was still clear-eyed and sober about the day’s dim prospects. He knew he had affixed himself, by some accursed fate, to this massive, mind-boggling effort — to work, to the polishing of the turds. And yet, he was changed. For Marilynn was beside him talking on the phone, and he felt no need to call her and leave a voice mail. He was not inclined to undress in the car. Marilynn had picked up the cell phone, and this was a delicate morning — the first morning after the first night they had shared together in six weeks. She might have had the good sense to ignore its ring until he had gotten out of the car. But no, she answered it as she always did, despite its being a delicate morning — yet when Carl searched himself, he did not feel ignored or preempted, at least not cripplingly so. Why was that? Because Marilynn had a job to do. Was it not that simple? Just as those men had to power-wash an alleyway, just as he had to polish the turd of an ad, Marilynn had to pick up the phone at inconvenient times and discuss estrogen receptors with goddamn Susan. Realizing this, he did not sit in the passenger seat pouting and devising schemes to draw her attention toward him. That, as he measured things, was progress. That was the promise of those little pink pills in their proper dosage. That was some kind of miracle. And when Benny shambled up and banged on the car window, it wasn’t Carl’s first instinct to dismiss him irritably, but to half-smile and offer a little wave. Benny being Benny, he went over to watch the unexpected pair from the drop box.

“No,” his wife said, “I don’t feel comfortable bringing him into this.”

Just then Carl noticed a woman crossing the street. She looked familiar, even if he had a hard time placing who it was right away. Suddenly it dawned on him. Unbelievable! — she was completely transformed. Into a vision. A genuine beauty. No Genevieve Latko-Devine, but my god, thought Carl, who could have guessed such a thing were possible? It was Marcia Dwyer, and she had cut her hair. Gone was that flap that crested just above her forehead like a hard black wave, gone was that wall of glossy curls that hung between her shoulder blades like a cheap curtain of beads. In its place was now a delicate and textured cut, short in the back, curving under her chin in front and free to move in the wind. Its color was no longer tar black but a rich chestnut brown. She looked as fashionable as a model in a shampoo commercial. Carl was overcome by the change. “I cannot — will you — Marilynn,” he said, tapping his wife, “Marilynn, will you look at that?” He was pointing through the windshield. “Do you see what I see?”

Marilynn was preoccupied at the moment, but Carl’s excitement was alarming. “Susan?” she said. “Susan, can I ask you to hold, please?”

“Marilynn,” he continued, “do you see that girl there, that woman?” He was pointing through the windshield. “Look right there, the one that just stepped up on the sidewalk, you see her?”

“The one carrying the denim purse?”

“Yes,” he said. “But — ignore that for a minute, if you can. And look at her! See her!”

“What am I looking at?” she asked.

“That’s Marcia!” he cried. “Marcia Dwyer! Marcia cut her hair!”

“Oh,” said Marilynn.

The two of them watched Marcia enter the building. Marilynn peered over at her husband, waiting for him to say something more. But he was still watching the building, lost to his thoughts. Marilynn waited another beat before resuming her conversation with Susan, just in case there was something more Carl wanted to say.

With some maneuvering to obscure the fact that he had been spying, Benny came around again to the Garbedian car. Benny dropped to a squat, and Carl rolled down the window.

“Did you just see Marcia Dwyer?” asked Benny.

“She looks terrific!” cried Carl.

Benny looked toward the building as if to catch a final glimpse. “She does look terrific,” he agreed.

“If I had had to place odds,” said Carl, “I would have said Marcia Dwyer would have gone to her grave with that old haircut. I never would have thought, not in a million years, that she would wake up out of it and realize how crappy she’s looked all this time.”

Benny looked back at Carl, who was not really paying any attention to him while he spoke.

“Would you really call her crappy-looking?”

“Not in a million years!” cried Carl, ignoring the question. “But she did! She woke up, looked at herself, and said no, this is not working out.”

“She has a cute face, don’t you think?” said Benny.

“And who cares,” said Carl, “if it was some stylist who suggested it. She went with it. She said yes! She said let’s make a change. Benny, it’s inspiring! It inspires me to want to lose some of this weight — I mean, look at this thing,” he said, looking down at his belly as if it were something quite independent of himself. When he looked up, he found that Benny had stood and was walking away.

A second later, Carl got out of the car and tried catching up with him. “Hey, man, wait up!” he called out. He forgot entirely about Marilynn. The good-bye kiss that at one time had been so important to him — not in and of itself, of course, but as a gauge of Marilynn’s morning attentiveness to him, of her willingness to put him before the phone call — must not have mattered much now, because without even saying so much as a good-bye, he abandoned his wife to catch up with his coworker. Marilynn, surprised by this, thought who-knows-what about Carl’s sudden departure. She asked Susan to hold on again and honked the horn. Carl looked back, realized that he had forgotten about his wife — she had just slipped his mind! — and halfway between the two, asked Benny to please wait while he said good-bye to Marilynn real quick. Being curious about what Carl had to say, as much as he was about what might happen back at the Garbedian car, Benny put a foot on the first stair leading up to the building and turned back to watch. Carl leaned through the passenger-side window, a few words were exchanged, and then the separated couple kissed each other good-bye. When Carl emerged from the car and headed toward Benny, he did so almost at a gallop, as if skipping a step for the sake of urgency — and that, Benny said, that he had never seen before.

“Carl hurrying?” he said. “I’ve never seen that before.”

That’s where Benny ended the story. But we sensed there was more to it. So at lunch hour, finding Carl’s door open for the first time in eons, a few of us went in. He was at his desk eating a low-cal Subway sandwich and drinking a diet iced tea. It was astonishing. We asked him for his version of events.

“I had completely forgotten about his crush on Marcia,” he told us, sitting back in his chair, “and I had just called her crappy-looking. What an idiot. So I told him, I said, ‘Benny, I’m sorry if I offended you back there.’ But he just shrugged it off. ‘You didn’t offend me,’ he said. ‘You offended Marcia, I think, but not me.’ So I said, ‘I completely forgot about your crush, man, I’m sorry.’ And he said, ‘My what?’”