Jessica Winter - Break in Case of Emergency

“I dream of the day that this board hears the parable of the sex worker and the cow,” Daisy was saying into the phone. “You know that one? There’s a sex worker in a developing country, and some well-intentioned charitable organization comes along and gives her a cow. ‘Hey, look, aren’t you excited about your cow, now you don’t have to be a sex worker anymore!’ Right? But it turns out she has to take on double the number of clients as she did before, because she needs more money to support the cow.” Daisy paused, listening to her caller. “No, I don’t know that this actually happened. The story may be apocryphal. The sex worker may or may not exist, and she may or may not have acquired a cow. But I do know for a fact that we are the cow.”

As Pam entered the vestibule of the Chinese restaurant where she and Jen were meeting for lunch, she pulled Jen into a full-body, hands-vigorously-rubbing-shoulder-blades hug. Jen felt the taut curve of Pam’s belly against her.

“Congratulations,” Jen said into Pam’s hair. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Pam said into Jen’s hair.

“I missed you,” Jen said.

“Me, too,” Pam said.

Pam stepped back from Jen, and they gripped the crooks of each other’s arms. Pam beamed for a long moment at Jen. She blinked languidly, as if punctuating the final sentence of a silent conversation that had settled once and for all the reasons why they were sorry and the causes for their having missed each other.

“So I’m doing this group show with Taige Hammerback,” Pam was saying after they’d sat down and ordered their food. “I’ll do a scaled-down version of Break in Case of Emergency, or whatever fits. He also let me know — regarding any inevitable press coverage of the exhibition — that he never smiles in pictures, ever, and that he strongly prefers that people not smile in pictures taken with him, if they can help it, because — he says — it’s physiologically impossible to smile during orgasm.”

“Ordinarily,” Jen said, “Taige Hammerback’s orgasms would be our main topic of conversation, but first we need to have a serious talk about that picture you emailed me.”

“Okay, but wait — I’m not stalling — I just wanted to make sure it was all right with you if I use some of your paintings again for the show,” Pam said.

“Of course it is,” Jen said, “and of course you are stalling.”

“Oh, good. Well. I haven’t even really told anyone yet — I can still get away with hiding her, all wrapped up for the winter,” Pam said, pulling absently at the midsection of her loose sweater.

“I’m so happy for you, Pam.”

“We told my dad and my stepmom,” Pam said, “and we told Paulo’s parents, and now I’ve told you.” Pam was turning her water glass in 30-degree rotations. She looked up at Jen. “I wanted you to be the first to know, along with immediate family, and Meg.”

“Thank you,” Jen said. They waited silently as the waiter set down their plates. Pam held her gaze until Jen looked away, blushing.

“So was this — something that had been on your mind for a while?” Jen asked, once their waiter had moved to another table.

“No. Completely unplanned. The sperm that got away.”

Jen smiled and nodded and opened her mouth to speak, but did not speak.

“But we knew we wanted to eventually,” Pam said, “and everyone says you’re never really ready anyway…”

“That’s wonderful,” Jen said. “I’m so, so happy for you.”

“Part of the reason I wanted to tell you as soon as I could was because you always trusted me with everything you were going through with — with this stuff,” Pam said. “That always meant a lot to me.”

“I don’t have any news on that front,” Jen said preemptively, smiling. “I kind of needed not to think about it for a while. Now I have to decide on next steps.”

Jen would tell Pam someday about the Thing That Happened. Not now.

“I want to hear more about the sperm that got away!” Jen said. “Seriously. I really do. It’s okay. I’m okay. I want to talk about it with you. If you want to.”

“Well, so,” Pam said, taking a deep breath, “you skip over one little bit of planning and suddenly you have a mountain of planning to do, and there’s a nonnegotiable deadline attached to all of it. There’s the show, of course. We have to move apartments, obviously.”

“You should move to Flatbush!” Jen said. “Or Not Ditmas Park. Big and biggish spaces for cheap. But I’ve given you and Paulo this speech before.”

“Yeah, that’s a good thought,” Pam said. “Right now we’ve got our eye on this place on, uh, it’s just a block or so from Meg, actually.”

The seam of dread began to open up inside Jen again, just below her breastplate.

“I mean, it’s not set in stone yet,” Pam said. “And, I guess this is the other piece of news — Paulo and I are getting married.”

“Oh my God! A baby and a new place and a wedding! This is insane, Pam! This is your year!”

The seam of dread was notching apart, tooth by tooth, like a zipper. Jen gripped her unused chopsticks in a fist, her nails digging into her palm.

“Well, the wedding is whatever. It’s mostly to please Paulo’s parents. They’re traditional that way. Luckily, they’re fine with waiting until after the baby is born, or at least they’re pretending to be okay with the baby being a bastard for a little while. We’ll probably do it in Bogotá next winter.”

“Oh, cool, a destination wedding! I haven’t been to one of those since Meg and Marc’s rendezvous in Paris.”

The seam of dread was tearing itself open as Jen’s throat was closing shut.

“Who has The Dress, you or Meg?” Pam asked.

Jen swigged her hot tea. “I do.” “Vacuum-sealed in my bedroom closet. Although Meg probably should have received sole custody of The Dress. With Meg it probably would’ve gotten its own cryogenic chamber and rotating team of attendants.”

The Dress was the exquisitely simple off-white silk gown — bias-cut, slender straps, what Jim called “the enchanted nightgown of the faerie world”—that Meg’s mother had worn to elope with Meg’s father nearly four decades previously. Jen had worn it to her own City Hall wedding, accessorized with strappy sandals, flea-market bangles, and honeysuckle twisted into a loose French knot, devised by Pam’s hands. Meg had worn The Dress to her own wedding, of course, barefoot, bare-necked, and bare-armed, face and nails unpainted, uncombed hair grazing her collarbone. No one — not Meg’s mother, not Jen or Pam — saw Meg in The Dress until minutes before she took her vows. Meg’s beauty on that day was flabbergasting, not least for its nakedness, and yet also for its aura of privacy maintained even in front of hundreds of people. Only a girl with unlimited resources for embellishment could decide to forgo all adornments with such transcendent results, Jen thought. That refusal was instrumental to the overall effect — but only if it were a true refusal, borne out of choice, not of necessity.

“It’s very important to me that I wear The Dress,” Pam was saying. “Paulo’s mother is already trying to talk us into this venue that’s just bananas and a wedding party the size of an armada, and I’m going to let her have her way on pretty much everything because they’re paying for it — I’m already getting emails about the bridal registry — but The Dress is not up for discussion.”

“You know,” Jen said, “I feel silly that I don’t know anything about Paulo’s family. I knew they were in Colombia, but not much more than that. What are they like?”

“They’re nice,” Pam said, twisting her napkin. “They’re nice. Paulo doesn’t like to talk about them much — I mean, he talks about them with me, but even that took a long time.”