What Nora Knew (26 page)

“Closure,” she said. “I thought you’d like closure.”

“I already had closure. Now I have to think about it some more.”

After we hung up, I thought about Russell long enough to realize I no longer thought about Russell. That made me feel guilty. Didn’t he deserve a mourning period? Apparently I didn’t either. I hoped he and his mattress saleslady would be happy together. She could hand out his business cards. He could tell clients their backs needed a firmer mattress and hand out her business cards. Russell could borrow her Bloomingdale’s discount. It sounded like a good match. I moved on from there to feeling sorry for myself.

Self-pity’s actually an excellent way to pass the time. You
don’t have to dress for the occasion. Makeup’s not required. Ice cream’s often involved. Nobody demands you hold up your end of a conversation. The only conversations you have are with yourself.

You realize you’re turning forty in two months, don’t you?

Oh, God, I’m turning forty.

You don’t like to think about it but it’s hanging there like a big casaba melon about to drop on your head. Single in your thirties? People cut you some slack, maybe you’re concentrating on your career. Traveling the world. Getting a grad degree. Single after forty? They start to wonder.

I’m not single. I’m divorced.

Semantics. Either way, you’re alone. You’ve turned into a cynic. You stopped believing in love. You’ve been using your divorce as an excuse for five years to choose men you don’t care about so you don’t care if they leave. What’s with that?

Unfair! Russell and I had some nice moments together.

We’re aiming higher than nice moments. How about someone who
gets
you? Makes you sparkle? Feel challenged, alive, adored? Brings some romance into your life! How about some
magic
?

I know who you’re talking about and I can’t trust him.

You admit you felt magic?

Yes. Maybe. Okay. Maybe magic.

We don’t decide to trust. We decide not to be afraid. Those movies you love—and while we’re at it, you can’t love Nora Ephron’s movies and be a good cynic—in every one, Meg Ryan trusts something within herself. How else does she get on that plane to Seattle or get past Tom Hanks ruining her bookstore? How else does she marry
Billy Crystal? She gets her happy ending because she tries something different and ends up with someone she didn’t imagine.

Well, Tom Hanks wasn’t a liar. He never stole Meg’s idea for a column.

Fine. Good luck curling up with your column. Hopefully your indignation will keep you warm at night.

*  *  *

I spent Saturday doing all the things you tell yourself you’ll do if only you had time to do them. I dropped off a pair of heels needing new heels. That was it. For weeks I’d been complaining I had way too many errands to catch up on, and they boiled down to ten minutes at the shoe repair. I organized my sock drawer by color. Then reorganized it alphabetically. Checked expiration dates in my medicine cabinet. Checked expiration dates in my fridge. Half my life had expired.
Forty, forty,
I kept thinking.
I’m turning forty.
My mother wanted to throw me a party. My father said he’d barbecue. They’d suggested a party while I was still dating Russell and could guarantee I’d have a date. I’d said, sure, okay, I wouldn’t mind a party. But a party when you bring a boyfriend is one thing. A fortieth birthday party with only relatives is pitiful. Just imagining that party made me sad. Which led to laundry.

There’s nothing like spending a Saturday night in a laundry room to underline you’ve screwed up your love life. I suppose some people have actually fallen in love in laundry rooms. Their eyes meet across a crowded folding table and there it is. Recognition. Simpatico.
You’re a mess? I’m a mess!
We’re in love.
I was embarrassed for Dennis the doorman to see me in the laundry room on a Saturday night. We have a security camera our doormen can watch from the lobby. So far it’s led to the discovery that the man in 5B steals women’s panties and the woman in 7A snatched another neighbor’s Tide. But otherwise it just makes you self-conscious that your doorman’s watching you do laundry.

I hunted down quarters, picked a book, stuffed my soap and dryer sheets into my laundry bag, and dragged it down the hall into the elevator and to the basement. I normally don’t drag, I carry, but I was in a draggy mood. To my surprise, Lacey and Kevin Gallo were downstairs, the two of them holding hands while watching the spin cycle on their dryer, like new parents gazing into a nursery ward. We greeted each other.

“Hello, Lacey.”

“Hello, Molly.”

“Hello, Kevin.”

“Hello, Molly.”

“Kevin and I are moving out,” Lacey said.

“You just moved in.”

“The walls in this building are too thin. We can hear your television at night.”

I didn’t point out that they were
two-way walls
. Not only could I not keep a boyfriend, I was driving away neighbors. Their dryer buzzer went off. Lacey opened the door and removed some of the most pornographic underwear I’ve ever seen. I wanted to swallow detergent.

At this point a judgmental outsider might note that I had no business pitying myself, that I was the one who broke up with Russell; I was the one who threw Cameron’s baseball cap in the Hudson; I was the one who married that no-goodnik Evan Naboshek in the first place. But it wasn’t my past decisions that were depressing me; it was the fear that I’d continue to make lousy choices in the future. What sign from on high did I have that I’d ever figure love out? What would it take to feel hopeful and optimistic, bullish instead of foolish? Hopeful people get on a standing-room-only bus and look around for an open seat. Hopeful people step on a bathroom scale and say it’s water weight. Hopeful people don’t carry umbrellas just in case or buy life insurance. Was I willing to go through the rest of my life not feeling anything, even if all I ever felt was hopeless hope?

Lacey and Kevin left with the x-rated undies. I started two washers—thankful that I didn’t have to compete for their availability. I settled into one of two orange plastic chairs, waved hello to the security camera, and picked up
Heartburn
. That same judgmental outsider might question why I’d want to sit in a laundry room rather than return to the comfort of my own apartment. Normally, I do that. But I’m hideous at timing laundry. I’m always zipping back downstairs and discovering there’s still fifteen minutes left on the washer, and I end up standing there twiddling my thumbs. Or I arrive late and somebody else has pulled my wet clothes out of the washer, not because that somebody else is a thoughtful and considerate neighbor, but because the somebody pounced on
the washer as soon as the buzzer went off. Leaving my clothes in a big soggy heap.

As long as nobody was around to force me into being sociable when I preferred being miserable, I’d sit and read and wait for my laundry and spare myself the stress of running up and down. I have long been an advocate of staying home with a good book over going out with a bad date. Not that any men, good or bad, had asked me for a date that night, but if one had, he would have found it impossible to compete with Nora Ephron. The washer tubs filled with water while a seven-months-pregnant Nora took off for her father’s apartment in New York after learning her husband in Washington, DC, was having an affair. She called herself Rachel in her novel and called her husband Mark, but everyone knew the story was true and whom she meant. Suds foamed, the washing machines did that agitator thing that makes them shake and ruin brassieres, and Rachel went to group therapy, used a kreplach joke as a metaphor, and wove in recipes for key lime pie and bacon hash. A robber followed her off the subway and robbed her therapy group at gunpoint. I held up the book toward the security camera and pointed at it for Dennis’s sake. The way my chair was angled, I was afraid he wouldn’t see I was reading, that he’d think I was some madwoman sitting alone in the laundry room throwing my head back in laughter while watching towels spin.

I’d read the novel before, of course, but that was years earlier, before I had my own husband cheat on me, my own heartburn. Evan liked to think he was a public figure, but
unless you were suing someone for divorce, you probably never heard of him. A famous husband cheating on you, your second husband in a row to cheat on you, while you were pregnant yet; this was a woman who earned her right to distrust men, to not trust herself or her instincts. But she kept believing, hoping, doing her best. During the bleach cycle Mark showed up and brought Rachel and their two-year-old son back to Washington. I was so engrossed in the book that I forgot to add the softener sheets. I stopped the dryers, added the sheets, and went back to reading about Nora—I mean Rachel—discovering Mark and his lover were looking to buy a house, and Rachel smashing a pie in Mark’s face at a dinner party.

Back upstairs in my apartment, I hung my T-shirts on the bathroom shower rod. I folded my towels and bed linens and left the rest so I could continue reading. Rachel went into labor, knowing her marriage was ending, asking Mark to talk about the birth of their first son, when Mark and she were both happy in the marriage; not just her. A vinaigrette recipe later, healing from her second cesarean, she left DC with her children and headed back to New York to start again. And she did. Of course she did. She had faith in love; she believed in romance; and she found the Nick to her Nora. A real-live Nick. A crime writer. Whose real name was Nick. You could sense her joy in
When Harry Met Sally
. You could see it in
Sleepless in Seattle.
You could feel it in
You’ve Got Mail.
Her dogged determination to create happy endings. We
can
get it right; we can surprise ourselves with our courage and heart. And when
we do, hearts will light up on the sides of buildings, Jimmy Durante will burst into song, kisses will be shared in flower gardens, and we’ll dance to “Auld Lang Syne.” And with time, we’ll find ourselves sitting beside our beloved on a red velvet love seat, sharing memories of how we first fell in love.

Except for those of us who are total idiots.

Monday morning I walked down to Gavin’s desk and asked to get on Deirdre’s schedule.

“You and everyone else,” he said. “Her day’s a nightmare.” He lowered his voice. “She’s a nightmare.” Deirdre never returned from her vacations relaxed.

“It’s important,” I said.

“To you or to her?” Gavin said he’d see what he could do. Juggling Deirdre’s schedule was Gavin’s only opportunity to exert power. Other than that, he was at her mercy all day.

I returned to my cube and my pretzel-cart article. I stared at my computer screen. It stared back. This would have been about the time Emily and I would be going at it. She’d have been tossing pretzels over the wall. Somehow, without her, the office was less entertaining. I actually kind of missed her.

Since her grand exit, her cubicle had been ravaged. As soon as anyone leaves or dies around our office, the vultures sweep in, swapping chairs, upgrading garbage cans, stealing notepads, Post-its, pens; prying filing cabinets and bulletin boards out with crowbars and sledgehammers. Keith and Brady were already fighting over Emily’s cube. Brady wanted it because it was larger than his cube, and Keith liked that it was closer to the men’s room. Nobody wanted to ask Keith why that mattered to him.

My office phone rang. I screened the caller’s name on the ID. Oh! Outside caller! I picked up the receiver and in my best journalistic voice said, “Molly Hallberg.”

“Good,” a woman said. She was either on a bad cell connection or talking into her hand.

“Good why?” I asked.

“This is Veeva Penney.”

“
Veeva Penney
Veeva Penney?”

“No. JCPenney.” She chuckled. “Old joke.” The phone broke up, crackling. I didn’t say anything. What if it was a crank call, Emily phoning from Idaho pretending to be a famous agent? “I hear you’re the new columnist for
EyeSpy
,” she said.

“Very funny!” I hung up.

The phone rang a minute later. An outside caller. I snapped up the receiver. “What do you want! You can’t live without me? I hope you’re enjoying your blouse!”

“I enjoy many of my blouses.”

The reception was excellent. I was not speaking with
Emily. Chances were quite likely at that point that I was speaking with Veeva Penney. “Oh, hello.” I was mortified. “We had bad reception before. Were you able to hear me?”
God, please say no.

“Perfectly,” she said. “I read your essays. They’re quite good.”

I’d had this conversation a million times. Except all the other times it was in my head. “My essays?”

“Cameron Duncan sent them. Ever consider putting them together as a collection?”

I said, “Every day of my life.”

“You’ll need at least twenty of them.”

“I have at least a hundred of them. Are you saying you want to be my agent?”

If hearts can stop, mine had just gone into a holding pattern.

“Cameron said you’re a terrific writer. With a terrible temper. You won’t be one of those pain-in-the-ass clients, will you?”

“Not at all! I had cramps one day. Made me testy.”

“I hear you, sister. We’ll talk. And congratulations. Nowadays everyone needs a platform.” Veeva rattled off her phone number, her e-mail address, her address address, and the name of her favorite flowers for some reason and hung up.

I had an agent? And a platform?

Hank Brandt, the ad sales manager, was passing my cubicle. “Hey, Hank,” I said. “Have you heard anything about our running a new column?”

“No,” he said, “but if we are, I am totally applying for the job.” He hurried off.

I walked down to Gavin’s desk again. He was studying his computer screen: Craigslist. Job openings. He hit his keyboard, made the screen go black. “Don’t tell Deirdre,” he said.