Robert Lennon - Familiar

“Sure,” he says, after a moment.

“What’s rule 2?”

The silence that follows is long.

Elisa says, “I just… I don’t remember the order. And I forgot my password, and rule 2 is the security question.”

“All right.”

“I’m sorry.”

Another silence. She can hear people talking in the background, perhaps in an adjacent office, and a truck rumbling by outside his window. He says, “Lisa, you understand that I am just… this is just completely baffling to me. I am just… going along with it now. Because I don’t know what else to do.”

“I’m sorry, Derek, I…”

“I know you’re sorry, I can tell, but that’s not the point. The point is…” There is the creak of his chair, an antique wooden office chair that his mother bought him when he accepted this job. “The point is you’re something else too, not just sorry, and I don’t know what it is.”

She whispers, “Neither do I.”

“That’s not a comfort to me. Or an explanation.”

Perhaps it’s best to say nothing. She says nothing.

Derek says, his voice deepened by resignation, “Rule 2 is ‘Blame yourself first.’”

She remembers Derek on the stairs, the way he closed his eyes, his anger giving way.

“Oh God, of course.”

“Uh huh.”

“Thank you, Derek.”

Again, silence.

“Nothing yesterday,” she says, “was your fault. But I can’t explain now.”

“I know it’s not my fault.”

“I’m not having an affair. There isn’t anyone else. It’s nothing that happened or anything you did, it’s just me. Do you believe me?”

He laughs. “Yes. Sure. We’ll just… sure.”

“We’ll just what?”

His breath catches; the chair creaks.

“We’ll carry on… we’ll just carry on.”

By nine thirty she has more or less worked out what she does for a living. Processes applications, deals with graduate student complaints, updates databases. Reminds professors how to do things: computer things. She has been reading the old e-mails, many hundreds of them, and in a spiral notebook she found in the desk has begun to take notes on each person she seems to have regular contact with. Her fellow office staffers; professors, students, the assistant dean. Every e-mail offers a few more small details, and each detail serves to confuse the overall picture of her job. She can see the parts but doesn’t know how they fit together. The job is both wildly intricate and completely boring.

By ten she is wondering if she should take a leave of absence. But after that, then what? The sooner she learns the better.

People have been moving around in the hallway for half an hour now. Female voices. She has never much liked other women. Derek had wanted daughters both times, but she was glad to have boys. Even when things got bad with Silas, when Derek reiterated his wish that they’d had girls (and in a tone that suggested it might be her fault, that her contrary desire had somehow expressed itself through her womb), she remained glad. If Silas had been a girl, it might have been worse.

She has known for an hour now that only women work in this office. And that every last faculty member is male. There are two female graduate students, both with foreign names — she wonders if she knows them, if she likes them. Probably not. Probably she likes the professors. She likes scientists. She is one.

And it occurs to her to wonder if the other her, the real one, has continued to live her life, her real life. She feels a moment of panic. She is living my life! Or perhaps they’ve changed places, that Elisa and this one, and the poor soft housewife, the woman bound to her husband by rules, is now panicking in that bony body.

Ruining it — ruining her body with excess. And grief. Because that Elisa has just discovered that her son is dead.

Her jaw tenses and her heels drum the linoleum floor. Then there’s a knock on the door and a woman’s head pokes in and says, “How was it?”

Judith. This must be Judith. She is page one of the spiral notebook — the single most e-mailed person in the sent box. And Elisa recognizes her. Late thirties, bespectacled, curvy and loud, this woman has hovered around the edges of her real, her remembered, professional and personal lives for years. People at the lab know her. She’s at the coffee shop or the supermarket, talking on her phone. Men Elisa knows like this woman, want to sleep with her. Larry knows her — she gets dumb art framed, pastel-colored prints of chickens and barns, old magazine covers. His gentle mockery of her that tells Elisa that he wants to sleep with her, too.

Of course Elisa dislikes her. Judith is one of those people you don’t know but know you’d hate. Which for Elisa is most people. But now, here, they are friends — the best of friends, to judge from the e-mails. She has read at least thirty e-mails she herself has written to Judith, all of them in a tone — one of sly, wisecracking cheerfulness — that seems utterly alien to her own sensibility. Somehow this woman has awakened some undignified part of herself: gossipy. Sassy.

“Boring,” Elisa says, and tries rolling her eyes.

Judith slips in, shuts the door behind her, flops down into the only other chair in the room. “Any hot guys?”

“Maybe a few.”

“And didya fuck ’em?”

“Ah… not all at once.”

Is this working? Elisa feels close to hyperventilating. She has the fingers of one hand looped through a drawer handle on her desk, and she is hanging on for dear life. Judith gives her a slow smile. “Does Derek miss it when you’re gone?”

What does this mean? Sex? “Oh, God,” she says, “I barely have time to put my bags down.”

Judith laughs. She appears relaxed, as though this has been a normal exchange. Her hair is short and dark and frames a pretty but undistinctive face. What is it that men like? What is it that she is supposed to like?

But then Elisa gets an inkling of what this is — what it’s like having a friend. This is something women, some women, need. This woman must know her secrets. This woman was her friend when whatever happened with Derek happened. Maybe she knows about the rules. Maybe she can tell her something about Silas.

Only an instant has passed, in which Elisa considers telling her everything. Listen to me, hear me out. Between friends. I’m not crazy. I’m someone else.

But when Judith says “What?” she changes her mind.

“What ‘What’?”

“You got a look.”

“Passing thought. I’m tired. I have a lot to do.”

Sage nodding. “We must change our wasteful ways.”

She is referring to the university-wide budget crisis. This is why she was sent to the conference, Elisa has discovered. She has been asked to cut corners. This means staff — consolidating jobs, firing people. It might have to be Becca — Becca would go, and someone from the back office would do her job at the front counter from now on. Callers would get a voicemail menu. In the long run, it won’t make much difference. But nobody wants to give up her private office and sit out in front.

“Yep,” she says. She ought to produce some witty banter, she knows, but the strain is too great. It’s been less than twenty-four hours, and every moment has been an effort. To pretend. Her throat tightens and she gulps air.

Judith seems to get the message. She gets up, smacking the arms of the chair. “Back to the grindstone! Lunch later?”

“Sure.”

Judith turns on the way out. Says, “Lisa.”

“Mmm?”

“When you’re ready. You can just go ahead and tell me whatever it is. Okay?”

She can only nod in response. When Judith is gone, she crosses her arms on the desk and lowers her head onto them.