The Smart One (3 page)

EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE,
Claire went to craigslist to look at apartment listings. She scrolled through them, clicking on the pictures of the tiny studios, usually in Brooklyn, or else so far up and so far east on the island, she wasn’t even sure it could be considered Manhattan anymore. She looked at the pictures of the empty rooms, clicking through the bathroom photo that showed a bare toilet, naked and exposed in the empty white space. She’d click, click, click along, each one uglier than the one before, until she felt like she was going to throw up.

Even scarier were the apartment shares. She’d gone as far as
e-mailing with one guy who was renting out a bedroom in a three-bedroom walk-up at York and Seventy-sixth. Claire set up a time to meet with him, got to the building, and then kept walking. She just couldn’t face it. She knew what she’d find: a tiny place with thin walls, where she’d be able to hear everything her roommates did and said, would have to run into them in the kitchen while eating cereal, and wait her turn for the shower in the morning.

No. Sharing a place with randoms was out of the question. She was too old for that. Maybe a few years ago, it wouldn’t have seemed so bad. But she was twenty-nine and she didn’t want to have to negotiate refrigerator space with strangers.

What she wanted was to stay where she was. It wasn’t fair that she had to leave. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d always had a job, had worked hard, had been responsible. Why was she the only one being punished? None of her other friends had to deal with this. Even the dumb girls she’d known in high school seemed to be capable of living as adults. How had they all ended up fine and she’d ended up like this?

Claire loved the apartment that she and Doug had shared. It was a teeny bit run-down, but it was clean and in a beautiful old building. It wasn’t big, but it was certainly the biggest place she’d ever lived in New York—a proper one-bedroom, with a kitchen that opened up into the living room with a counter and stools. What more could you want? Sure, she couldn’t afford it, but maybe something would happen, maybe her circumstances would change.

CLAIRE’S PHONE HAD BEEN RINGING
all weekend, which was really annoying. It was one thing to have to talk to people at work, but on Saturday and Sunday, she wanted peace. The first call was from her sister, Martha, reporting that a meth lab had been busted on the Upper West Side. Martha assumed that the meth lab was right next to Claire’s apartment, possibly in the very same building. Martha left messages like this a few times a week. It was almost as if she searched for bad news to share, almost as if she liked it.

Her mom had called twice more, asking about the shore. Claire
didn’t even have to listen to the messages to know what they were about. Weezy wasn’t going to stop until she got the answer that she wanted.

Her friend Lainie had also called three times, but hadn’t left any messages. Lainie never left messages; she got too impatient waiting for the beep to come. Claire wasn’t that concerned, because if it was a real emergency, Lainie would text her. But when her number came up a fourth time, Claire answered.

“You sound miserable,” Lainie said. She didn’t even say hello. She was never one to sugarcoat things. Once in high school, when Claire was obsessing over a giant pimple on her forehead, searching for some sort of reassurance that it wasn’t as bad as she thought, Lainie had said, “Yeah, it’s huge, but what are you going to do? Stay in your house until it’s gone? Everyone knows you don’t normally look like that.”

“Well, hello to you too,” Claire said now.

“Hi,” Lainie said. She spoke quickly. “So what’s going on? You sound awful.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. You sound like someone died. Katherine thinks you’re depressed.”

“Katherine thinks everyone’s depressed.”

“Fair enough.” Lainie knew this was true. Katherine loved therapy, thought everyone should be in it, and had encouraged Lainie to see someone after she gave birth to each of her children, just in case she developed postpartum depression.

“I’m fine,” Claire said again. She felt awkward on the phone with Lainie, like they were dancing on the offbeat of a song. They hadn’t talked much since Doug moved out. Lainie had her third baby the month after, and was available only for quick calls, in which she often mentioned that her life was full of poop and that she sometimes forgot to brush her teeth. Claire was used to this, the way Lainie disappeared for a little while when each of her boys was born. She wasn’t surprised by it anymore, or even hurt. It was just the way things happened, and Lainie always resurfaced after a few months. Just because this last baby had come at an inconvenient time for Claire, a time when she could
have used her best friend, there wasn’t anything she could do about it, except wait.

“Are you sure?” Lainie was saying.

“Yeah, I’m just … You know, trying to adjust, I guess.”

“It’s been six months.” Lainie didn’t say this unkindly, but it still made Claire’s throat tighten up.

“I know. It’s just weird, okay? It just sucks.” Claire heard a baby crying, and Lainie sighed. Claire could tell that Lainie was picking Matthew up and bouncing him around, trying to get him to quiet down.

“I know, I know,” Lainie said. But she didn’t.

“I just have to figure a bunch of stuff out. I just never feel like doing anything. I have to move, I have to do tons of things, and I just feel like I can’t.”

Lainie was silent for a moment. “Maybe I’ll come up to see you this weekend.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. That’s what we’ll do. I could come tomorrow and stay the night. It’s a three-day weekend and Brian can watch the boys. We’ll figure it all out. We’ll find an apartment, get you signed up for online dating.”

“Funny,” Claire said. But then she did let out a little laugh.

“I’m serious. We’ll get it all figured out.” Claire knew that Lainie was only half kidding. Lainie liked to solve problems and she probably thought she could come up for one weekend and easily sort out Claire’s mess. Which was just a little obnoxious, but Claire didn’t mind.

“IT’S AMAZING, REALLY,”
LAINIE SAID,
“that this place hasn’t driven you crazy yet.” She dropped her bag on the floor and looked around at the apartment. Claire had to admit it didn’t look good. When Doug had packed up all of his stuff, it became clear that almost everything in the apartment was his. They’d both known this, of course, but somehow it was still a surprise to see him take it all with him.

He’d taken all of the framed pictures from the walls, the big TV, the dresser, the desk, the big couch, and most of the stuff in the kitchen. He’d left her the bed to be nice, and so Claire had insisted he take the duvet and pillows, which he had (except for one pillow), and now the
bed looked like it belonged in an insane asylum, stripped down except for white sheets and an old knitted afghan that Claire had stolen from home years ago.

The only things left in the main room of the apartment were an old loveseat, a side table, a small TV, and a lawn chair that she’d found in the closet after Doug left. There were a few things in the kitchen, enough to get by, anyway—a couple of plates, a bowl, some silverware, a pot, and a skillet. She knew Doug had felt bad for leaving her with so few things, and he kept offering to leave more, but she insisted he take his stuff. “It’s yours,” she kept saying. “You should take it, it’s all yours.”

Doug probably assumed that Claire had waited a few days and then gone out to replace what was missing, that she’d moved things around, hung new pictures, or at least covered the holes that were left. But she hadn’t done a thing. And now the whole place was practically empty, like she was in the middle of moving in or out, like the whole situation was just temporary.

That night, she and Lainie decided to just stay in and order food and when the deliveryman came, Claire realized that she wouldn’t be able to charge it to her card. She hadn’t paid the bill and there wasn’t enough credit left.

“Oh shit,” she said. “I forgot, there was some security thing with my bank and they canceled all my cards. I was supposed to get new ones, but they haven’t come yet.”

“That’s okay,” Lainie said. “I got it.”

“Thanks,” Claire said. Her heart was pounding with the lie, but Lainie didn’t seem to notice anything.

AFTER THEY ATE AND DRANK WINE
and went to bed, Claire lay on her back for a long time and stared at the ceiling. Her room never got all that dark, since the light of the city came in through the blinds and she’d never taken the time to get curtains or a shade to block it out. This never bothered Claire, because when she woke up, she could always see everything in the room and never had to turn on a light to go to the bathroom, never tripped over a pair of shoes or walked into a wall.

“I have no money left,” she said. She wasn’t sure if Lainie was awake or asleep, and she figured that was her gamble, that she could just say it out loud and if Lainie heard, then she’d have to deal with it.

But then she saw the pillow move, and then Lainie was squinting at her. “What?”

Claire considered lying for a minute, or telling her that she was just exaggerating. But then it seemed too hard, and Lainie always knew when she was lying anyway. “I have no money left,” Claire said again. “I’m broke. And I don’t mean, I’m broke, like I normally mean it. I mean that I’ve spent all of my savings and have been living on my credit cards for months and now there’s no more room left on them, and I don’t think I can pay rent this month. Not after I pay the minimum on the cards, and I seriously don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Oh shit.” Lainie was sitting up now.

“Yeah.”

“Can you borrow some money from your parents?”

“Yeah, I guess. I mean, I’m going to have to. But I don’t know what good that’ll do. Even if I get through this month, I’m going to have the same problem again next month.”

“Well, you need to move.” Lainie sounded firm, like moving would solve everything.

“I know, I know. I know I need to. I just put it off for so long because I didn’t want to live somewhere shitty, and it costs so much to move—to pay the movers and put down the deposit and all of that. At this point, I’d have to borrow ten thousand dollars from my parents to move and that probably wouldn’t even be enough. And I’d end up in some dungeon in Brooklyn.”

Claire felt her nose start to run and knew she’d be crying soon. Lainie patted her knee, got up, turned on the bedroom light, and went into the kitchen. She came back with Kleenex and two beers. She handed one to Claire and sat cross-legged in front of her.

“I’m so screwed,” Claire said.

Lainie nodded. “We’ll figure it out,” she said. “It seems impossible, I know, but it’s not. We’ll figure it out.”

There were times in college when the size of a paper she had to
write would overwhelm Claire. She’d sit there in front of the computer and try to get herself to start typing, but all she could think about was how much she had to do, the enormousness of the project. It would paralyze her. People sometimes said that fear was a motivator, but she never found that. Instead, she’d sit, all night, staring at the screen and not typing a word.

And it was happening again. The amount of her debt was too big, the size of her fuckup was too large. To act on it would be to acknowledge it, to start trying to fix it, and it just didn’t seem like there was any way to do that. And so she sat, paralyzed, and waited.

The next day, Lainie left and Claire sat on her couch. She was exhausted. She and Lainie had stayed up almost the whole night talking, and right around five in the morning, Lainie had said, “Look, don’t freak out, okay? But maybe you should think about moving home.”

“Lainie. I’m not moving home. That’s ridiculous.”

“Okay, that’s what I thought you’d say. But listen, people do it all the time to pay off debt. You don’t even like your job, and it would be an excuse to leave it. You could live rent free, get a random job, pay off all your credit cards, and then move back when you’re more settled. You could take your time looking for a job and find one that you really want.”

Claire was annoyed at how rational Lainie sounded. She wanted to offer up another plan, another idea for how she could get herself out of her situation, but she didn’t have one. From her calculations, after next month, she was done.

“You could even temp,” Lainie continued. “So it wouldn’t even be like you were staying there. Temping is just that. Temping. Temporary. Beth used an agency that loved her, that’s always e-mailing her for referrals. They’d die to get you. I think most of the people that go there are sort of weird or something, but whatever. It would be easy. It would be like a break, and you deserve a break after this year, you really do.”

When she’d left today, Lainie had said, “Think about what we talked about. I think it’s the best plan.”

Claire had hugged her and closed the door, thinking there was no way in hell that was going to happen. But now here she was, alone
in her apartment, and she felt trapped again, but this time it wasn’t because the Hamburger Helpers were outside—it was because she had no money. None. This was it. Lainie was right. She couldn’t stay, and her only option was to move home.

Last night Lainie had said, “Look at it this way—at least you have this option. At least going home is a possibility.” Claire knew she should feel grateful for that, even if she didn’t right now. She’d tell her parents at the shore, she decided. How bad could it be? It couldn’t be worse than telling them her engagement was called off, could it?

And so, knowing that she couldn’t get out of it, knowing that she had no better alternative anyway, Claire pulled her bag out of the closet and began putting together her clothes for a week at the shore with her family.

The woman that Katherine saw jump in front of the subway was named Joanne Jansen. It was a cute name—catchy and poetic, sort of like Claire Coffey. There were a few people on the subway platform that day that insisted Joanne Jansen had just fallen, that the whole thing was a horrible accident. But Katherine told Claire that wasn’t true. “She jumped with her arms in front of her,” Katherine said. “She jumped like a superhero, like she wanted to make sure she got to where she was going.” Claire thought of that now as she packed, how Joanne Jansen had put her arms straight in front of her, determined and sure of her decision. She wished she didn’t know that detail. It made it worse somehow.