How to Look Happy (12 page)

I’ve always operated with a plan—setting goals that fit my idea of happiness and success and then working hard to achieve them. And until now life has always
gone
according to plan. Pass the test.
Check.
Make straight As.
Check.
Get into first-choice college, graduate with honors, land the great job.
Check, check, check.
Land the perfect guy, plan the perfect wedding, buy the perfect house, and be the perfect mom to the perfect number (two) of perfect kids.

Um…

Where did I go wrong?

I feel like I’m drifting in space—not like an aircraft out of orbit, but like the crew member who’s fixing the aircraft, only to find that the line tethering me to the ship has come loose, and I’m drifting, airless, weightless, into the empty vastness of an unknown sphere. The list has blurred in front of me, and I feel like I’m about to come apart at the seams. I squinch my eyes shut, clamping down on the tears that are suddenly threatening to spill over, and take a deep breath. Then I open my eyes and focus on the words on the screen, which feel like a cross between a soothing balm and a rescue mission.

Without my plans, without my goals, I’m lost. I’m nothing.

One foot in front of the other.
I glance down over my list. Tomorrow, first thing, I’ll work on step one and begin setting up meetings with all my clients—just to make sure they’re still confident in my competence and abilities, even if Candace isn’t.

This includes Brewster, I think, though my stomach tightens at the thought. Even though it’s sure to speed up the confrontation I can feel coming with Candace, I need to start inching back into my territory and fighting to get my client back. Candace hasn’t asked me to do any more grunt work on the project since that first meeting after the incident, but that doesn’t make me feel better—it just makes me feel like Brewster is more out of reach.

I’ll call him tomorrow. He’ll be the first client I call.

Already, operating according to plan, I feel stronger.

To get my life back on track, to find my way back to the ship, I’ve just got to keep moving.

Out of Control

The next afternoon at work, I lean back in my chair, feeling satisfied with myself. Not only have I sent emails, left voicemails, or actually spoken to every single client I’ve worked with in the past two years, I’ve landed two new leads from my efforts. I’ve already followed up on both, and I have a consultation next week with a couple—a young doctor and her husband—who are building a five-thousand-square-foot house in the ‘burbs.

I also finally followed up with Marc Rasmutin, and it turns out the financing hit a snag, and they haven’t started reviewing the proposals yet for the bicycle-factory condo conversion. So I’m still in the running for the job.

The one client I haven’t called is Brewster, and I scroll through my contact list until I reach his name—again—and stare at it for a long moment before clicking back out of the contact list and setting my phone on my desk with a thud. Ellie Kate’s head pops up.

“Everything all right?” she asks in her honey-soft voice, which holds strong traces of a Southern Mississippi accent— Ellie Kate grew up in Vicksburg, down in the Delta. Her accent is a little slower, a little less sharp than Memphis’s, though both accents are genteel in their own way.

Everybody in the office has been shooting me strange glances this afternoon. I don’t usually work the phones like I’ve been doing today. None of us do. We all stay pretty busy, and honestly, by soliciting more work, I’m a little worried I’m going to overload myself. I’m already working five projects at the moment, from my big bakery client all the way down to a one-session paint consultation I have scheduled for next week. This business is always a little bit hurry up and wait, and I’ve learned I need to keep about a half dozen projects running at any given time to keep my income in a steady range. I’m in the waiting phase on the bakery right now—waiting for the contractors to finish the floors, waiting for the electrician to finish wiring for the lighting, waiting for the pastry cabinets to ship.

I’m good at the balancing act, which is partly why this job is perfect for me. Designers have to be detail oriented and at least somewhat organized despite our right-brain tendencies, and my system of Post-its hasn’t failed me yet.

I realize I’ve left Ellie Kate hanging for a beat too long.

“Everything’s fine,” I say, drumming my fingers on my desktop and not looking up at her. Out of the corner of my eye I see Rachael rise from her desk with her purse over her shoulder. As soon as she rounds the corner into the lobby, on her way out of the office, I make a decision. I push back my chair with a loud scraping sound and stand, still not looking at Ellie Kate, though I can feel her eyes on me.

I smooth down the front of my skirt and take several steps toward Candace’s office. And then I stop short, swivel on my heel, and walk back to my desk, losing my nerve.

I’m at a loss with the Brewster account. I don’t really know what to say to him if I call
—“Um, yeah, hi Emory. It’s Jen Dawson… You know, the interior designer you hired to redesign your hearth room and study? I, um, well, I’m wondering if you still want to work with me even though I don’t put out like my boss does…”

Clearly, I’m not ready to deal with this.

I sit down again and finally turn my head to meet Ellie Kate’s gaze, a sheepish smile on my face. I decide to do the next best thing to dealing with my professional problems like a grown-up. I clamor for company gossip. I point to my computer screen, and then I type Ellie Kate an instant message:
Do you know if it’s true that Candace asked Rachael to go to Paris?

I don’t trust the news coming from Quinn, but I’ve yet to hear confirmation from anybody else, including Candace or Rachael herself.

As I study the purse of Ellie Kate’s lips over the lip of her computer screen, I know I have my answer.
That appears to be true
, she types and looks up at me with a trace of pity in her eyes. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s being pitied.

I’m careful not to change my own facial expression as I type back,
What did you hear?

Honestly, we could be having this conversation out loud because I realize now that we’re the only people left in the office besides Brice and Carson, who are both too far away from us to hear. Carson’s at her desk behind the partition that separates the workroom from the lobby, probably with her headset at her ear. And Brice is in the back room, cataloguing a shipment of new upholstery fabrics. I have no idea where Quinn is, but that’s not unusual. And even though I’d been about to storm into Candace’s office, I’ve remembered that she’s not even here. She breezed out after lunch announcing something vague about a client appointment.

I can’t believe I forgot this, because after she left Brice cracked, “That’s code for Botox,” and the rest of us fell apart.

My screen bleeps with a new message, and I look down to see that Ellie Kate has typed,
I overheard Rachael asking Quinn for advice on what to wear to shop for antiques.

I guffaw. The closest Quinn has been to a buying trip is the merchandise mart in Atlanta, where we all go twice a year. But still, she
is
the first person in the office I’d ask for fashion advice, so Rachael’s got me there.

But what I keep wondering is, why hasn’t Rachael asked
me
for advice if she’s going on this trip? Though Carson books the travel, I arrange all the details of the actual shopping in France and on any other bigger buying trips I’ve been on with Candace. Before me, Caroline, Candace’s old partner, did it. There’s a lot of research involved even when you’ve done it a few times. Rachael’s got to be flying blind.

This situation with Candace just keeps getting weirder and weirder.

What she wears will be the least of her concerns
, I type back.
Though I hope Quinn told her to pack comfortable shoes.
I think I’ve put in a collective total of about five hundred miles of walking on my foreign buying trips.

I hope Candace knows what she’s doing
, Ellie Kate types, and then, clearly realizing, like me, how silly it is that we’re typing this conversation while sitting four feet from each other in an empty room, she gets up from her chair and walks over to me, perching on the edge of my desk.

“I wish
I
knew what she was doing,” I say. “I mean, I get it. I crossed a line with that Facebook status. But she crossed me first.” I pause, staring straight ahead and reliving the moment when I walked in on Candace in flagrante delicto with my client—or on her way there, at least. “And the question I haven’t examined closely enough is, why did she do it in the first place? What was she doing there with Brewster?”

Just then a door bangs shut, and both Ellie Kate and I jump. She stands quickly and spins around, but it’s just Brice, walking into the workroom with his arms full of gray-tone fabrics. He dumps them unceremoniously on a table and half-skips over to my desk. “What are we talking about?” he asks in a sing-song, conspiratorial tone.

“What do you think?” I say dryly. “The fact that I’ve practically been demoted to intern, at least in Candace’s eyes.” I pretty much avoid her at all costs now, lest she try to remind me how she takes her coffee.

Ellie Kate leans on my desk again, and then Brice drags over two of the rolling chairs that surround our communal worktable. They each sink into one, and Brice sits with his tall, gangly frame hunched forward, his elbows on his knees. He reaches up to swipe a hunk of his albino blond hair (bleached, not God-given) from his forehead.

“You heard about the France trip, I take it,” he says. It’s a statement, not a question, and I’m wondering how long ago Candace committed this latest treachery, and how long everybody else has known about it. I nod once, my lips set into a thin line as the thought of that pisses me off all over again. “I don’t know what she’s thinking,” he continues. “Taking a baby over there to do big girls’ work.” He pauses. “I mean, I love Rachael. Don’t get me wrong. But she’s what, like two years out of undergrad? I have socks older than that girl. And she’s never even called in a fabric quote, let alone ordered anything for the shop.”

His voice is surprisingly sour, and I glance up, pondering that. Age is a touchy subject for Brice—he turned forty last year, and on his birthday Ellie Kate, Quinn, and I went out for drinks with him and his partner, Ken, after work, listening and offering soothing words as he agonized over the fact that he’d yet to do anything big with his life.

After that he started taking design classes part time at the University of Memphis, and every once in a while when we’re not in intern season, Candace brings him in to serve as design assistant on a project. Now that I think about it, he’s got a point—
he’s
more qualified for the buying trip than Rachael is. He’s worked at Greenlee Designs longer than I have, and he’s received, catalogued, and expertly overseen every order that’s come through the shop’s doors for at least seven years. Plus, he has excellent taste, an encyclopedic knowledge of furniture styles and design periods, and an inherent ability to recognize what’s on-trend and what’s out. But because he doesn’t have letters behind his name, he’s deemed less qualified than a staff member fifteen years his junior.

Funny how we’re all harboring our own brands of bitterness, without even realizing we’re not the only ones whose dreams become smaller and harder to attain every single day.

“I wish Rachael would talk to me about it,” I say. “I’d help her figure things out.”

Ellie Kate looks at me sadly while Brice stares at me like I’ve just sprouted purple hairs on my chin.

“Let Candace fix her own mess,” he says. “I swear that woman’s gonna drive her own business into the ground while we all sit here and watch, just because she’s too damn proud to give up an ounce of control.”

“What do you mean?” I ask. I don’t handle the books, but I’m pretty sure the firm’s profit margins have been flush for the past several years, at least since the real estate market started moving again. I’ve brought in enough on my own to make that happen for the past three years in a row.

“I mean,” he says, pausing for dramatic effect, “I think the firm’s in trouble. And I think that has something to do with why Candace went after Emory Brewster.”

Both Ellie Kate’s and my jaws go slack at this statement, but before we can press him further, the bell dings to signal the opening of the front door, and a few seconds later Rachael rounds the partition into the main room of the studio. She strides across the room and plops her purse on her desk before she finally seems to notice us, and then she cocks her head in our direction. “What’s up?” she calls out as she rounds her desk and touches her mouse pad to wake up her computer.

Brice is already out of his chair and dragging it back over to the worktable as I think,
Be obvious, why don’t you.
It’s clear we’ve been gossiping without her, and therefore, about her.

Ellie Kate gives me a look that says her thoughts are echoing mine, and she says, “Nothing. Just taking a goof-off break.”

“Mmm.” Rachael’s head is already buried in her laptop, as if she doesn’t care in the least what we’re up to. That has the effect, once again, of making me wonder what
she’s
up to. It occurs to me that she’s been awfully quiet in the office lately. Normally she and I hang out together outside of work a bit, and although I’ve noticed that she’s shied away from that, I’ve sort of chalked it up to her feeling uncomfortable that Candace has picked her to replace me as her right-hand woman. Until now, I haven’t really thought about the fact that she doesn’t seem to be talking to Ellie Kate, Brice, or Quinn as much as she used to either.

Before I can put much more thought into that idea, my phone screen flashes with a Facebook notification, and I glance down automatically to check it.

Brandon Royer has sent you a new message,
flits across the screen and then disappears. Instantly my cheeks grow warm, and my stomach jumps with a twinge of something between nervous anticipation and dread.
Why is Brandon trying to reconnect with me?
I click to open the Facebook Messenger app and see his message highlighted. I almost click on it, but at the last second I jerk my finger back, realizing he’ll be able to see that I’ve opened and am reading the message. He
just
left it, and I don’t want to seem too eager.

Instead I torture myself with the five words that show up in the preview screen:
Hey Jenny, I just got…

Automatically my eyes roll at seeing my name written as “Jenny”—I went by Jenny all through elementary, middle, and high school, but as soon as I left for college, I shucked the nickname as if it were an adolescent shell. From day one of freshman year, I was Jen.

He just got what??
I think. He just got word about my Facebook screw up? He just got married? He just got diagnosed with a debilitating disease, and he’s contacting everyone he ever wronged in the past to make amends?

I groan out loud, unable to stand the suspense. “Ah, screw it,” I mutter and click on the message.

Hey Jenny, I just got back in town and I see you’re still in Memphis? Wondering if you ever see Tyler or Chip or any of the old crowd. Want to meet up and get a drink sometime?