Emma Rathbone - Losing It

But I was so distracted by waiting to hear back from Jack that all I could do was offer the necessary nods of agreement and incredulity when required. She finally floated away.

At a certain point, to route myself from staring at the screen, I actually took the initiative of dusting off the crystal clocks. That took all of twenty minutes. I sat back down and checked my e-mail and my heart fell. Nothing yet.

I swiveled to the minifridge and got a minibottle of water and savagely twisted the top off and was about to start tearing off a bunch of warrant-in-debt sheets from a thick pad when Elliot appeared at my desk.

Sometimes it’s as if we’re all operating together in a collective consciousness where we just know, implicitly, some things about another person without being told. Or maybe this thing with Jack happened to coincide with whatever sea change in my favor was already happening between me and Elliot, in our dynamic. But he was nervous, solicitous, in a slight posture of rejection even before we’d said anything to each other.

“Hi, Julia,” he said. He was holding something in a brown paper bag. His hair was tied back in its daily ponytail and looked greasier than usual. His smile was overeager.

“Hi,” I said.

“I brought you this.” He started carefully trying to withdraw something from the bag he was holding. I had a feeling of dread about what I knew was now going to happen, and wished terribly that I could go back and prevent this series of events from being set in motion — that I would never have given him a gift and compelled him to return the favor. That I could have just trusted the summer to bear up an appropriate suitor, as it had with Jack, who eclipsed Elliot in every way, and showed him for what he was all along: a stranger, a middle-aged fluorescent-lit guy at a law firm with whom I was now and then forced to interact. He was having a lot of trouble withdrawing this object from the paper bag. He was stooping over it a little, trying, it seemed, to reach his hand down and scoop something from the bottom without upsetting the packet at all.

It was a little cactus. A little office cactus. The kind with old-lady hair coming out of it, surrounded by pebbles in a small red pot.

It was way off base, and I now had an inkling of the feeling Elliot must have had when I gave him the sandscape and he must have wondered just who the hell I thought he was that he would possibly be appreciative of such a thing. But then the more I thought about it the more I realized that this cactus actually fell pretty squarely into the persona I’d endeavored to project about myself — someone vaguely interested in Southwestern shit.

I smiled and said, “This is really cool,” with what I hoped was the appropriate amount of warmth and authenticity, which was really hard, like putting on a wet bathing suit.

“You could put it on this prime real estate,” said Elliot, pointing at a gap at the front of the desk between Jeannette’s calendar and a jar of pens. I think he meant for what he said to be inflected with a little bit of self-deprecating humor, but then somehow the moment became very grave.

“Yes, I could,” I said, and we both watched with great seriousness as I slowly pushed the cactus, a few paper clips caught in its wake, into the gap on the desk.

I stared at it for a second too long, and then looked up at him and smiled what must have not been the right smile—“Did you get it at the ol’ cactus emporium?” I said — because he now seemed a little resentful, as if this had not gone at all like he planned and he was sick of the whole thing and wanted to minimize any fallout by just getting on with it and going up to his office.

“No. Nope,” he said. “The nursery. On Ivy Road.”

“Oh, okay,” I said, nodding deeply, as if this was filled with really interesting texture and shading. “Well,” I said. “Thank you. I really like it a lot. It gives this desk a more laid-back feel.”

He laughed, and then nodded, and then turned around to walk up the stairs, only to bump into Allison, who was on her way down, spilling some papers she was holding. He bent down to help her pick them up.

None of this really mattered to me, though, because when I turned back to my computer I saw that Jack still hadn’t written back.

It was three o’clock. I had two and a half endless hours to go. I rummaged around for some candy I might not have found before. I opened and shut the desk drawer to see how much force it would take for the paper clips in a little compartment to slush over. I practiced making a suction cup sound on the desk with my hand. I sighed, got something caught in my eye, and the truth was I really just wanted to start my life over.

—

After work I stood in my bedroom, in my underwear, in an unshowered, humid torpor. I’d come home in a black mood and lain facedown on my bed for an hour. Then I’d called Grace.

“It feels so rare, you know? That that would ever happen.” I’d told her about him, the reception, everything. “That you would ever actually just meet someone. It’s like, oh, okay, this is possible.”

“But just because you meet someone— I know it’s kind of thrilling that you hooked up so fast—”

“Think about it. Think about all the people you meet, the guys. I know you’re with Chad, but, most of them. Talking to them, it’s like, this immobile, fluorescent-lit conversation, and it does not pave the way for— Nothing would ever happen. So, to have it happen so fast like that, it means something. It means it works. There was some mechanism there.”

“We are talking about a twenty-one-year-old, remember?”

“If that.”

“Just because you guys kissed in a shed—”

“A basement. And then an office.”

“Doesn’t mean there’s some inherent special thing there. He’s a college guy. He was attracted to you. You were drinking and he was emotionally distraught and you hooked up. Simple as that.”

“But it’s not that simple.”

“I’m not saying he won’t write you back.”

If it didn’t work when two people crashed together like cymbals on a summer afternoon, and then couldn’t stop talking to each other, then when would it? I had a vision of the bright grass underneath the swing Jack and I were gliding on. My hands were sticky from wine I’d spilled. He’d separated a lock of my hair and placed it in his mouth.

“You have to remember,” she said, “his mom just died.”

“I know,” I said.

I was trying not to let my voice tremble with emotion. Everything was hanging by a thread. I’d been yanking the pull cord on the summer and this was the only thing that had caught and I couldn’t imagine going back to, where? — Arlington? Texas? — without having accomplished my goal, and what was I going to do? I thought of myself sitting in another office. Get a job showing people houses? Make my own jewelry?

I pawed at a rug on the floor with my foot, trying to get a wrinkle out.

“Did I tell you about my mom and dad?”

“No, what?”

“They’re getting separated.”

“What?”

“I know.”

“Hilary and Doug?”

“Yup.”

“Why?”

I sighed. “I can’t really tell. I think they’re just— The way my mom puts it, I think they’ve just grown apart.”

My parents used to entertain a lot. My mom wore these blue button earrings. I had the clearest picture of my dad pouring a boozy drink from a pitcher into her glass, she’s laughing, her hair soft and curly and graying around her face, he’s looking at her with admiration, as if she’s just said the most perceptive thing in the whole world.

“Jeez,” said Grace.

We were quiet for a few moments.

“How are you doing about it?” she said. “I mean, how do you feel?”