The Seven Year Slip, page 23
Which meant that she had thought of something in the middle of the night that kept her awake, so she came into work early to get it done. Her entire life’s work was this imprint, she poured her entire life into it. Her hobby was reading, her downtime spent brainstorming new strategies for the next big book, her social circles peppered with the directors of other imprints. That should be me, too—I wanted it to be me, but there was an itch under my skin that was growing by the day. A feeling like I was in a box too small, a collar too tight.
And I was afraid of it, because I’d spent so long trying to find somewhere permanent to stay.
“By the way,” Rhonda went on, tapping her ballpoint pen against a notepad on her desk, “have you decided what to do about your vacation?”
“I think I’ll just be around the city,” I replied, knowing she was asking to make sure I was actually going to take it. I was—against my will.
She nodded, though from the bend of her shoulders, I could tell that she was relieved. “Good, good. With the transition, you might need to be on call.”
That made me pause. “The transition?”
“Yes.” She didn’t look at me as she spoke, neatly organizing her pens in her tray. “As I said, Strauss’s splitting my job into three—copublisher, director of marketing, and director of publicity. I’m nominating you for the director of publicity, but he wants to interview outside of the company as well. Something about healthy competition,” she added deadpan.
“Oh.” I nodded. “I mean, that makes sense. I’ve only been here seven years.”
Finally, my boss looked at me, and her face was pinched. I recognized the expression—she was angry. Not at me, though. “And you are one of the most talented people I’ve met in a long time. I will fight for you until the end, Clementine, if this is what you want.”
“Of course it is,” I replied quickly, hoping the words could be the salve for the itch under my skin. “I want this.”
Rhonda’s red lips quirked into a smirk. “Good. I expected nothing less. Strauss might want to hire someone else, but there are two people at Strauss and Adder, and I have just as much weight as he does. You,” she went on pointedly, “just have to nab James Ashton.”
“Oh, that’s all?” I asked, trying not to sound too panicked. “As easy as catching the moon.”
“Go get ’em,” she cheered.
I returned to my cubicle, where there was so little privacy I couldn’t even scream into my donut neck pillow I had tucked under my desk for days when I took cat naps in the stock room. I already knew the imprint and my career were riding on the acquisition of James Ashton. She didn’t have to remind me.
Breathe, Clementine.
If I wanted the career I had been working toward for seven years, I had to do this.
No matter what.
I sent a few emails and followed up on some podcast interviews, and slowly my eyes strayed to the landscape watercolors I’d painted years ago, hanging on the corkboard beside my monitor. The Brooklyn Bridge. The pond in Central Park. The steps of the Acropolis. A quiet tea garden in Osaka. A fishing pier. Snapshots of places I’d been, and the person I’d been when I painted them.
That restless feeling under my skin returned, more terrible than ever.
The painting of a wall of glaciers had hues of purple and blue, from the summer I turned twenty-two—the Clementine from Iwan’s time—fresh off a heartbreak with her boyfriend. I should’ve seen it coming, but I did not, and I was an utter mess afterward. I’d graduated, and went back to my parents’ house on Long Island, and holed myself up there to waste the summer away while I applied to curation jobs I wasn’t sure I wanted.
My boyfriend and I were going to go on a backpacking tour across Europe, but obviously that didn’t happen when he dumped me and decided to take a tech job in San Francisco, and I almost refunded my airline tickets—until my aunt caught wind of it and refused to let me.
“Absolutely not,” she said over the phone. I was lying in my bedroom in my parents’ house, staring up at the ceiling filled with boy bands from my youth. All of my things were in boxes in the hallway, moved out of my ex’s apartment in a whirlwind of twenty-four hours. “We are going to take that trip.”
I sat up, startled. “We?”
“You and me, my darling!”
“But—I didn’t plan for us to go. Half the hotels I have booked have one bed and—”
“Life doesn’t always go as planned. The trick is to make the most of it when it doesn’t,” she said matter-of-factly. “And don’t tell me you don’t want to sleep butt-to-butt with your dear old aunt?”
“That’s not what I’m saying, but you must have something else to do. That trip you were talking about, the one to Rapa Nui—”
“Nah! I can postpone it. Let’s go backpacking across Europe!” she said decisively. “You and me—we haven’t done it since you were in high school, remember? Just one last time, for old times’ sake. You only live once, after all.”
And whether or not I wanted to say no, Aunt Analea was the kind of force of nature who wouldn’t let me. I could have thought up any excuse, found any reason to stay home and wallow in self-pity, and it wouldn’t have mattered. My aunt showed up the next morning with her bags packed, in the blue coat she always reserved for travel, and large sunglasses, a taxi waiting on the curb to take us to the airport. Her mouth twisted into a smile so big and so dangerous, I felt my heartache break way to something else—excitement. A longing for something new.
“Let’s go on an adventure, my darling,” she declared.
And, oh, did I realize then, that I had the thirst for adventure sown into my very bones.
I missed that girl, but I felt her coming back now, little by little, and I didn’t quite hate the thought of something new anymore. The longer I sat here, in this small cubicle, the more I began to wonder what, exactly, I was working toward.
I thought it was the idea of Rhonda, a woman surrounded by framed bestseller lists and accolades, quite happy where she was, and I imagined myself in her orange chair. What I would look like. I’d need to throw my whole self into it. As many hours as I’d worked, I knew Rhonda put in more. Made herself available to our authors, to their agents, to her staff, every waking moment. She wore her job the way she wore her Louboutins. To be as good as I wanted to be, I’d have to do that, too. I’d trade my flats for heels, buy a set of blazers, be the kind of person everyone expected me to be—
Someone like James, I supposed.
I wanted that. Didn’t I?
My phone vibrated, and I glanced at the text message from Drew.
It’s in! Second and final offer!! Send good vibes, she said with a praying-hands emoji.
YOU GOT THIS BABE! Fiona replied.
James and his agent invited us to the soft opening of his new restaurant on Thursday. Move Wine & Whine to then and there?? Drew asked.
Sounds good, I texted, and Fiona gave a thumbs-up.
I turned my phone to silent, and went back to work. It was out of my hands. Whoever James chose was who he chose. There was nothing I could do about it now.
Everything would run its course—come into my life and then leave again, because nothing stayed. Nothing ever stayed.
But things could return.
That reminded me of something. I pulled out my phone again and added, Would you two like to go with me to deliver the letter?
33
What Never Was
Vera lived on eighty-first Street, between Amsterdam and Broadway, in a four-story walk-up the color of cream stone. According to the address on her letter, she lived on the third floor in 3A. Fiona and Drew stood on the sidewalk behind me for support, though Drew still believed I should just mail the letter back instead.
“What if she doesn’t want to see you?” she asked.
“I’d rather find out in person if someone I’ve written letters to over the last thirty years died,” Fiona argued, and her wife sighed and shook her head.
I understood where Drew was coming from—perhaps it would have been easier to just send back the letter. My aunt and Vera’s relationship wasn’t my business, but because I knew the story, I felt . . . obligated, I guess. To finish it.
I had heard so much about Vera, she almost felt like a fairy tale to me—someone I never thought I’d meet. My hands were clammy, and my heart raced in my chest. Because I was about to meet her, wasn’t I? I was about to meet the last piece of my aunt’s puzzle.
I took a deep breath and scanned the buzzer box. The names were smudged—almost illegible. I squinted to try to make out the numbers at least, and pressed the buzzer for 3A.
After a moment, a quiet voice answered, “Hello?”
“Hi—I’m sorry to bother you. My name is Clementine West and I have the letter you sent my aunt.” Then, a bit quieter: “Analea Collins.”
There wasn’t a response for a good long moment, so long I thought that maybe I wasn’t going to get a response, but then she said, “Come on up, Clementine.”
The door buzzed to unlock, and I told my friends I’d be back in a minute.
Then I took a deep breath, and steeled my courage, and stepped into the building.
Pursuing Vera felt like opening a wound I had sutured together six months ago, but I had to. I knew I did. If she and my aunt had kept in touch over the years, then why hadn’t Analea ever mentioned it? If they had stayed friends, why didn’t it work out? I thought Analea had cut ties with Vera, like she had with everything she loved and refused to ruin, but apparently there were more secrets to my aunt than I had originally thought. Things she kept hidden. Things she never let anyone see.
I used to want to be exactly like my aunt. I thought she was brave and daring, and I wanted to build myself like she’d built herself. My aunt gave me permission to be wild and unfettered, and I wanted that more than anything else, but ever since she passed I’d recoiled from that. I didn’t want to be anything like her, because I was heartbroken.
I was still heartbroken.
And now I had to tell someone else, someone who also loved Analea enough to write her letters thirty years after their time ended, exactly what I never wanted to hear again.
I stopped at apartment 3A and knocked on the door. My aunt had told me about Vera, about what she looked like, but when she opened the door I was immediately struck by how much she reminded me of my aunt. She was tall and thin, in a burnt-orange blouse and comfortable slacks. Her grayish-blond hair was cut very short, her face angular for a woman in her late sixties.
“Clementine,” she greeted, and suddenly pulled me into a tight hug. Her arms were thin, so it surprised me how strong she was. “I’ve heard so much about you!”
Tears prickled in my eyes, because she confirmed what I had wondered—whether this letter had been a fluke, or if it was another line of conversation in a long history of correspondences back and forth over years and years. And it was the latter.
Analea had kept in touch with Vera, and they had talked about me.
She smelled like oranges and fresh laundry, and I hugged her back.
“I’ve heard a lot about you, too,” I murmured into her blouse.
After a moment, she let go and planted her hands on my shoulders, getting a good look at me from beneath her half-moon glasses. “You look just like her! Almost a spitting image.”
I gave the smallest smile. Was that a compliment? “Thank you.”
She stepped back to welcome me into her apartment. “Come in, come in. I was just about to make some coffee. Are you a coffee drinker? You have to be. My son makes the best coffee . . .”
What my aunt had failed to mention, however, was that Vera had a very slight Southern accent, and her apartment was filled with pictures of a small Southern town. I didn’t look at them too thoroughly as I came into the living room and sat down, and she fixed us two cups of coffee and sat beside me. I was a little numb, everything a blur. After so many years of hearing stories about this woman named Vera, here she was in the flesh.
This was the woman Analea had loved so much she let her go.
“I was wondering when I’d be able to meet you,” Vera said as she sat down beside me. “It’s a surprise, though. Is everything all right?”
In reply, I reached into my purse and pulled out the letter she’d sent my aunt. It was a bit crinkled from battling with my wallet, but I smoothed it down and handed it back. “I’m sorry,” I began, because I wasn’t sure what else to say.
She frowned as she took the unopened letter. “Oh,” she whispered, realization dawning, “is she . . .”
There were things that were hard to do—complicated division without a calculator, a hundred-mile marathon, catching a connecting flight at LAX in twenty minutes—but this was by far the hardest. Finding the words, mustering them up, teaching my mouth how to say them—teaching my heart how to understand them . . .
I would never wish this on anyone.
“She passed away,” I forced out, unable to look at her, trying to keep myself tied tightly in a bow. Together. “About six months ago.”
Her breath hitched. Her grip on the letter tightened. “I didn’t know,” she said quietly. She looked down at the letter. Then up at me again. “Oh, Clementine.” She reached for my hand and squeezed it tightly. “You see, I recently moved back to the city. My son has a job here, and I wanted to be near him,” she rambled, because it felt better than lingering on those words—she passed away. She swallowed her sadness and said, after a moment, as she gathered herself back together, “May I ask what happened?”
No, I wanted to reply, but not because I was ashamed. I wasn’t sure if I could talk about it without crying.
It was why I didn’t talk about it at all—with anyone.
“She . . . she hadn’t been sleeping well, so her doctor prescribed her some medicine a while ago. And she just . . .” For all the times I’d rehearsed this, they all failed me now. I didn’t know how to explain it. I was doing a bad job. “The neighbors called for a wellness check on New Year’s Day when she wouldn’t answer the door, but it was too late.” I pursed my lips, screwing them tightly closed as I felt a sob bubble up from my chest. “She just went to sleep. She took enough that she knew she wouldn’t wake up. They found her in her favorite chair.”
“The blue one. Oh,” Vera’s voice cracked. She dropped the letter and pressed her hands against her mouth. “Oh, Annie.”
Because what else could you say?
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, pressing my nails into my hands, focusing on the sharp pain. “There’s no easy way to talk about it. I’m sorry,” I repeated. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, honey, it isn’t you. You did nothing wrong,” she said—
But I did, didn’t I? I should have seen the signs. I should have saved her. I should have—
And then this woman whom I didn’t know wrapped her arms around me and pressed me tightly into her burnt-orange blouse, and it felt like permission. The kind I hadn’t let myself have for six months. The kind of permission that I’d been waiting for, as I sat alone in my aunt’s apartment, and grief welled up so high it felt suffocating. The permission I thought I’d given myself, but it hadn’t been permission to cry—it had been a command to be strong. To be okay. I told myself, over and over, I had to be okay.
And finally—finally—someone gave me permission to come undone.
“It’s not your fault,” she said into my hair as a sob escaped my mouth.
“She left,” I whispered, my voice tight and high. “She left.”
And she broke my heart.
This woman who I didn’t know, who I’d only ever imagined in my aunt’s stories, held me tightly as I cried, and she cried with me. I cried because she left me—she just left, even as I chased her, her coattails fluttering, just out of reach. She left and I was still here and there were so many things she hadn’t done yet, or wouldn’t ever do in the future. There were sunrises she’d never see and Christmases in Rockefeller Plaza she’d never complain about and layovers she’d never catch and wine she’d never drink with me again at that yellow table of hers as we ate fettuccine that was never the same twice.
I’d never see her again.
She was never coming back.
As I sat there crying into Vera’s shoulder, it felt like a wall had suddenly come down, all of my pent-up grief and sadness washing away like a broken dam. After a while, we finally pried ourselves apart, and she got a box of tissues and dabbed her eyes.
“What happened to the apartment?” she asked.
“She gave it to me in her will,” I replied, then grabbed a few tissues and cleaned my face. It felt raw and puffy.
She nodded, looking a little relieved. “Oh, good. You know it was mine before she bought it? Well, not mine—I only rented it from this stodgy old man who overcharged for it. He passed away, so I had to move out, and his family sold it to your aunt. I don’t think they ever knew what it did.”
That surprised me. “They didn’t?”
“No, they never lived there, but the renters knew. The man I took the lease over from warned me. He’d figured out the hard way. He thought someone else had a key to the apartment and was coming in and rearranging his things! It was only after he got her name that he realized the woman who kept breaking in had passed almost five years prior.” She shook her head, but she was grinning at the memory. “I almost didn’t believe him until it happened to me, and I met your aunt!”
She didn’t seem much like the Vera in my aunt’s stories. This Vera was more put-together, wearing a string of pearls, looking as pristine as her simply decorated apartment. And if little things were different, maybe some of my aunt’s story was, too. “Why didn’t things work out?” I asked, and she gave a one-shouldered shrug.
