Ten Girls to Watch (31 page)

“What a clever distraction,” I said, kissing him back. I unbuttoned his shirt and kissed his neck, then his shoulders, then moved down to his chest. I kept my face pressed against his curly chest hair, surprised that for a flash of a moment I thought I might cry. I hadn’t written anything in months and months, other than TGTW profiles and my one night with the Sound of Music story. This despite the fact that Helen’s new book had arrived, and that I’d read it, and that I’d meant to work on my own stories the second I finished it. This despite the fact that she’d written “Can’t wait for
your
book! Love, Helen” on the inside cover. This despite the fact that being a writer was supposed to be my reason for living. Didn’t Elliot know, this was
my
dream?
I
wanted to call someone and tell him
my
stories were being published. If I’d dared say so aloud, I was sure he’d tell me to just wait, I was still so young. But I didn’t want to hear about how young I was.

I pulled Elliot down so he was lying next to me on the bed. “Remember how uncomfortable that bed at the Black Swan Inn was?” I said. We laughed, we tumbled along, soon it was just his body pressed against mine, my whole body pretending I wasn’t jealous.

_________

I woke up the next morning in Elliot’s bed, the first time I’d spent the night there in weeks. The clock said 6:16, and when I couldn’t fall back asleep I sat up. It was only a minute or two before Elliot roused and nuzzled me with his head.

“Morning,” he said, barely opening his eyes. Then he yawned and said, “Did I tell you I’m going home this week?”

“You didn’t,” I said, nuzzling him back, in part to cover my surprise.

“I decided to bump up my Thanksgiving ticket,” he said.

I asked when he was leaving, and he said, “Actually, I think I leave tomorrow.”

I gave him a wide-eyed look, and he said, “I’ve got to write. And I think better out there.” In what was supposed to be a feather-deruffling offering, he added, “I’ll be back the first week of December.”

December?!
I screamed in my head, amazed that he was heading to Nevada for two weeks and hadn’t thought to mention it. I wasn’t going home for the holiday. Tickets were stupidly expensive, and since I didn’t get paid vacation days, every day off was money forfeited. I was hitting the road to interview TGTW winners of yesteryear right after Thanksgiving, so add that to Elliot’s surprise time away, and I’d probably never see him again. But that was all inside. Out loud I said, “That’ll be great for you to have a solid chunk of time out there.”

I tried to imagine that we’d call and e-mail, and everything would be fine. Reality on the telecommunications front was that Elliot’s phone was now sometimes off for days at a time. Voice mail pals didn’t work one-way. Then it wasn’t voice mail pals, it was just me, marooned on a desert island, throwing message bottles into the waves and watching the stupid bottles wash right back up onshore. The answer was to stop tiring out my arm with all the pointless throwing. I was going to wait for him to contact me. He needed to be the one hurling messages for once.

That night, after a day spent nonstop calling and e-mailing TGTW winners, all so I wouldn’t dwell on Elliot, I took two steps through the door of my apartment and smelled something off. Swiveling my nostrils toward the living room, I immediately identified the source: Sylvia, draped all over the sofa. I hadn’t seen her since the morning she wrote her check. In fact, I now realized I hadn’t seen any of the usual roommate debris around the house, which meant she may well have not left her room for days.

But Sylvia was clearly out now, complete with body odor and the sickly sweet smell of dried sweat and unwashed sheets. Her hair was past greasy to the ratty, matted stage that takes a lot of work for white girls. And then there were the clothes. Rodney’s NASCAR boxer shorts (I’d seen him wearing them on a morning I still try to forget, since they didn’t quite contain all of him) and a yellowing Old Navy T-shirt all stretched out at the collar. The television, tuned to a juicer infomercial, murmured indistinctly in the background. I watched while she picked up a pint of ice cream from the coffee table, dipped her fingers in, and completely sans utensils scooped out a mouthful.

I put my bag down and asked if she was okay.

“Fine,” she said, wiping away tears. She was past the point where they were a fresh spring. They were an old river that had been running steady for what had obviously been some time. And thus began the roommate intervention.

Rodney was an A-hole. There was some girl in Toledo. She hadn’t slept in days or showered or changed clothes, or, I detected as I pulled up a chair next to her, undertaken any sort of dental hygiene. She was broke (sadly, I already knew this—after the first check bounced she’d written me another one, which hadn’t gone through either). She’d quit her job, and she was too depressed to even get out of bed. How was she going to find another one? What was she going to do?

I said a shower was always a good place to start, went and turned on the water, then returned, took her arm, and led her to the bathroom. “Use one of my towels hanging on the back of the door,” I said. “The one on the right is clean.”

Maybe I should have let Sylvia deal with her own problems. Maybe this was a slippery slope and I should have stopped sliding the second she failed to present her check on time. But clearly, Sylvia was in need. While she showered I turned off the TV, put away the ice cream, and opened the windows to air things out a bit. Next stop, Google. “Free psychotherapy Brooklyn” turned up some surprisingly decent options, as did “temp agencies Manhattan.”

“Next on the agenda is real food,” I said when she returned to the couch wrapped in my towel, her hair dripping every which way. She wiped away more tears but nodded yes when I suggested Thai.

After another hour or so of talking we finally got around to therapists, temping, and calling her parents. Just for a little help to tide her over . . . and pay her rent so we wouldn’t get evicted. After she finally got dressed I helped her change her sheets (a task that taxed my mouth-breathing abilities). I sat outside her door while she called her parents. Then I told her everything was going to be okay, brought her a glass of water, and turned out her lights for the night. After a half hour or so of quiet cleaning, listening to make sure she was all right, I left the apartment with my phone in hand. Maybe I should have called Elliot, or my mom, or Helen, or tried to track down a phone somewhere within a day’s walk of Abigail’s village. Instead, I called Robert. He was the person I’d called in emergencies for years. It didn’t make sense to call him now, it really didn’t, but somehow I just couldn’t help myself.

Lily answered.

“Dawn! Hi, it’s Lily. Why haven’t we seen you lately!”

“Oh, hi,” I said automatically. “How are you?”

“Great! How are you?”

“Okay,” I said, more feebly than intended.

“You want to talk to Robert?” she asked.

“That’d be great,” I mumbled.

“Hold on, let me get him.”

A few seconds later, Lily was back on the phone.

“Sorry, Dawn. He’s in the middle of something. Can he give you a call back in a bit?”

I could picture the exact scene, Robert silently mouthing “Tell her I’m busy.”

“No, tell him no worries. I was just calling to say hi.”

“Well, don’t be a stranger!” Lily said.

“Take care!” I said with as much cheer as I could.

Lily answered Robert’s phone now? It was okay, I didn’t need to talk to Robert. I knew exactly what he’d say anyway. He’d say call the police if she’s suicidal. Otherwise, don’t get involved. The last thing you want to do is get involved.

Why would I want to hear that when “involved” was exactly what I already was?

I spent the weekend frantically cruising the Craigslist ETC section looking for gigs where I could, say, dress up on Saturdays as a penguin and hand out frozen yogurt samples or taste four varieties of orange soda and tell the committee which I preferred, all the while feeling incredibly grateful for overdraft protection and aware that I was awfully close to the point where even that couldn’t help me.

Monday morning, Sylvia showered, put on pants and a bra (at my timid suggestion), and accompanied me to midtown, where I dropped her at the office of Hunter, Inc., Professional Staffing Services. And then, at last, I went back to the safety of the archives, a nice, insulated basement where no one was crying. At least not at that very moment.

That week at work I scrubbed the address list for invitations and started the process of pulling in archival footage of winners for the video. Every time one of the gals had appeared on the
Today
show, which gave the contest a regular slot for years, we wanted the clip. Every time one of them made the local news, we wanted the clip. We wanted clips from the debut episode of Gerri’s talk show, clips from Jane Novey’s testimony before the senate on Plan B and women’s reproductive rights, clips from Marcy Evans’s movie, photos of Robyn Jackson’s
Charm
cover, the pencil drawing of her they used whenever she appeared in the
Wall Street Journal.
We wanted it all, and finding it fell to me. To start, I reached out to ABC, CBS, and NBC, then I followed the trail to affiliates around the country.

My work phone was busy, but my cell phone was free as can be—Elliot didn’t call. Nor did Robert, who must have still been “in the middle of something.”

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Regina came back with her picks for the ten new winners. I’d sent my fifty along to XADI, and she’d sent twenty to Regina, and Regina had made the final selection. XADI sent the briefest of missives: “pls interview each and write profiles for the mag and event program.” I’d get to it after the holiday. Elliot still hadn’t called. I deleted his number, thinking that would show him.

When one thirty hit—the official close of the half day—I put on my coat and trudged toward the elevators. On the main floor, just as I was about to exit to the lobby, Ralph (in a navy blue cardigan) came from the other direction, as if he’d been monitoring my position on a security camera, just waiting for my arrival. It would have been creepy, except he was holding a pie.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” he said, handing the cellophane-wrapped tin to me.

The sudden appearance of this gift made my eyes well up.

“It’s pecan,” he added, in case all the pecans on top weren’t a giveaway.

“Thank you,” I said. I thought of hugging him, but I didn’t. I just said thank you again and wished him a Happy Thanksgiving too. But even though I’d restrained myself, inside I was overflowing with delight. Ralph had baked me a pie?

Although I’d deleted it, of course I still remembered Elliot’s number, and out on the street I opened my phone and texted: “Ralph just gave me a pie.”

“What kind?” came his immediate reply. Ah, here was the responsiveness I was looking for.

“Pecan. Rich, gooey pecan,” I wrote back. “Any pie for you yet?”

And then I waited, waited, and waited for a reply. The waiting didn’t entirely wipe away my feelings of shock and gratitude at Ralph’s pie presentation, but it did dull the shine. The next day I got the generic “Happy Thanksgiving” message Elliot sent out to who knew how many people. Disappointing. But what didn’t disappoint was the pie. The filling, not too sweet. The pecans, lightly browned so their flavor pushed forward in my mouth. The texture of the nuts, not soggy at all, the perfect resistance, then give, as they splintered with each bite. And then there was the goo. Soft, smooth, brown sugary perfection. Ralph could bake!

Sylvia’s parents had graciously paid for her flight home—though they had yet to graciously pay for November’s rent. The Wests, minus Dawn, were all in Oregon. Without Ralph’s pie, I might have felt pitiful being alone, but with it, I tried to convince myself I felt urban and independent.

When I did call home, my mom rattled off the names of all the cousins who’d driven down to Milldale for the day, and my sister quietly griped about the way Aunt Belinda jumped into the kitchen and started bossing everyone around, as if it were
her
kitchen. For my part, I was grateful that I’d missed Aunt Belinda’s Thanksgiving special and that come Monday, I’d be on a flight to California to kick off the interviews for the TGTW video with Rebecca Karimi.

I knew my dad was spending the holiday with his brother, my uncle Larry, and his family in Portland. I was planning to call in the evening, when he’d be back home, but he called me midday.

“Just here with everyone, and we were all talking about the big New Yorker,” he said, landing on “big New Yorker” with a don’t-get-too-big-for-your-britches sort of inflection.

Apparently, cooking was still under way, but he slipped away to Uncle Larry’s study to talk. He’d just finished the latest Theodore Roosevelt biography. “Did you know Theodore Roosevelt was shot point-blank in the chest at a campaign event and he survived because the bullet was blocked by the folded-up text of his speech? Powerful words!” he chortled.

He asked what I’d been reading and I told him about Helen’s book and about the interesting history of women’s suffrage in Oregon. “Did you know voting rights for women were on the ballot in Oregon six times before they were finally voted in?” I asked. “The first time was 1884, and it didn’t pass until 1912. That’s forever.”

Dad said maybe he’d put Helen’s new book on the extra-credit reading list for his Advanced Placement US history students. I could hear his voice switching into wrap-up mode, but before he could end the call I jumped in. “Hey, Dad, have you ever thought about writing a book?”

It was actually something I’d been thinking about for a while, and Helen’s book seemed like as good a segue as any. If my parents’ stories weren’t over yet, maybe the next chapter of my dad’s involved an exciting new project. No one loved American history more than he did.

He laughed. “No. I like reading them, not writing them.”

“So you say, but I don’t know. Coolidge and Hoover both need better biographies!”