The New Me Page 3
“Yeah, okay,” she says.
“I’m supposed to answer the phones, but they basically never ring. And I have to paper-clip these papers in this particular way. And the people there, oh my god.” I recount the conversation I overheard about the girl who was complaining about her friend complaining about her mother, and I try to articulate what was interesting to me about it. I tell her about the bathroom breaks thing.
“Yeah, you told me that already,” she says, as if she never repeats herself. As if I’m the one who’s boring. Maybe if I’d used more hand gestures and smiled at her, she would have found it funny.
“Oh, sorry. It’s just a really boring job. I feel really extraneous and insecure.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not forever,” she says. I wince, knowing that there’s some falseness in that statement, knowing that if it’s not this job, it’ll be the next.
Sarah asks if I’m being assertive and describes three occasions where she was assertive as a temp, and how each occasion led to an offer of permanent employment.
I nod throughout her advice and say, “You’re right, I could be more assertive. I just don’t want to be annoying.”
“It’s not annoying to ask to take on more. It’s worse if they think you’re lazy or incompetent.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” I say.
We finish our beers, go out front for a smoke, and then I order another round of specials.
She talks more about her job, I nod, I finish my shot, it helps. I ask her if she’s thinking about quitting her job, hoping it might lead to us quitting this conversation. She says she can’t afford to. I raise my eyebrows and nod.
I ask her if she’s seen a movie I just watched, and then I describe the movie to her. She says no and asks me if I’ve seen a TV show she likes. I say no, and she describes an episode to me. I try to flatter her by saying that the movie, the one I referenced earlier, is very intellectual and dense, and that’s why she might like it.
“Oh, okay, that sounds cool, but I haven’t seen it.” She seems annoyed, and then I feel annoyed, and then I order another round.
* * *
• • •
I don’t really remember how the night wrapped up, but I remember trying to put my keys on the hook by the door and tripping when I took my boots off. I’d read earlier that having a nightly ritual can help pull you out of a fog, and I lament not having the stamina to brush my teeth and put on night cream before making tea and reading, maybe rubbing lavender oil on my scalp to help me have nice dreams. I drink some water in the kitchen and have a punishingly nostalgic memory of James.
It’s 9:30 when I get in bed.
chapter 6
Kristin was lying on her back on the couch, staring up at the ceiling, reflecting idly on her day. She’d been partnered with Lindsey on a long project. It was fine. It would be fine. Lindsey had some concentration issues and a tendency to hijack the conversation and bring it around to her personal life, which seemed constantly frustrated. Today it was some issue Lindsey was having with her friend, because Lindsey’s friend’s mother wasn’t respecting her friend’s autonomy, and Lindsey was annoyed with her friend for venting about it so often. Whenever Kristin tried to redirect the conversation back to work, Lindsey would roll her eyes and say “Okaaayyy” and then pout for an hour. “I feel like a hostage negotiator!” was something Kristin imagined she might one day say.
Kristin had just learned that she could reverse the direction of her ceiling fan, and that if she did that, it would serve a different purpose. Clockwise, the fan cooled the room. Counterclockwise, it circulated air and kept the apartment fresh. Something about the angle of the fan blades.
Kristin tried to empty her mind. She watched how the blades of the fan strobed the overhead light. She tried to follow one of the blades with her eyes. She looked beyond the blades to the crack in the plaster on her ceiling. As her mind cleared, she got a tart feeling in her chest. She couldn’t identify its specific cause, but it was very strong. It wasn’t exactly a sad feeling, because sadness was more often located in the stomach—this was right at the base of the rib cage, stinging and tart. Its underlying texture was a feeling of connection with something larger, but since Kristin was clearing her mind, and just letting her body speak, she didn’t try to pin down the feeling with language or with an internal inventory of possible sources.
Ever since Kristin had started meditating, twenty minutes every morning, she got these sensations. Sometimes it felt like static when it happened in her face or hands, but when it was in her chest or solar plexus it felt bittersweet, tart, stinging. She didn’t know if these sensations were coming from within her—maybe some unaddressed melancholy she’d been carrying around—or if these feelings were being picked up from the atmosphere. Like maybe the meditation had unlocked level-5 empathy receptors in her brain, and as she moved through her day, grazing her hand along the banister up to the train platform, running her fingers along the fax machine panel at work, taking her coffee from the barista, edging through crowds on the sidewalk, she was picking up on some kind of collective, gentle human loneliness. The sensations weren’t bad. They were, at times, a bit sumptuous even. It was a new feeling. She’d thought the meditation would clear and calm her mind, which would help her focus on problem solving at work, but then, she reflected, on the couch, still in her work clothes, that she was a pretty even-minded person to start with—conflict averse, flexible in terms of perspective, not shy about taking responsibility for her errors, open and sympathetic even with difficult people—so, maybe what meditation did to a mind like hers was to open it up a bit, to let in other feelings, to give her some kind of larger perspective on humanity that others didn’t have.
And though she liked these feelings, she preferred to keep them private, as she thought of herself as a practical and pragmatic person on the whole. She’d mentioned her meditation practice to her friends but had withheld these side effects and simply told them that it had helped with her headaches and her diet, which, of course, was also true.
chapter 7
I wake up ill. I feel trapped in a loop. I stare at the big pile of clothing on the floor. I eat some dry cereal. I wash my armpits. I go to work. I think things on the train. I ride the elevator. I walk to Karen’s desk. I am either calm or hollow, hard to say. I ask, “Is there anything extra I can do today? The phones have been pretty quiet, and I finished those packets.”
Karen seems caught off guard. “Well, you can make more packets. We really need you by the phones. I’ll try to think of something for you if you’re bored, but I’m just trying to finish up all this work I have here.” She gestures to a slim notebook.
“Oh, okay, great!” My voice is weak. “I’m not bored, I just want to be helpful.”
As I walk through the showroom, I recognize my gamble. I make $12 an hour, the best-paying job I’ve had in more than a year. If I’m making twelve, they’re paying the agency at least fifteen, up to twenty, so in the middle let’s say eighteen, times thirty-five is $630 a week, times two weeks is $1,260, times two is more than $2,500 a month to have me, the idiot, sit in a chair, doing about four hours of work a week, sixteen hours of work a month, which puts the rate for my actual services at around $150 an hour.
I see a big brown vase shaped like a jug, rudimentary, meant to evoke some kind of tribal thing, filled with dried stems, sitting on a metal sideboard. If I could compress and stretch time at will, at $150 an hour, I could buy that jug just to make fun of it. At $150 an hour, I could probably even dress seductively enough to make new friends.
No donuts in the break room today, just stale bread, which I eat with gusto.
I say “Good morning” to one of the designers. She must think I’m talking to someone else, and that’s fine.
I liberate some bread from behind my right upper molar, and I realize I might still be a little drunk. I walk to my desk.
I turn on my computer and the phone rings, another angry person in the middle of a project that gives them the illusion of progress. I transfer her to the textiles department. She calls back and tells me there was no one in the textiles department. She seems very angry and asks if I could please connect her to an actual person. I apologize, a scream trapped in my chest, and say I’ll try someone else. She calls back, and when she hears it’s me, she sighs, mutters, and hangs up.
I wonder what it would be like if I handled things differently. I wonder what would have happened, when the woman called back, if I had said, “Jesus fucking Christ, are you fucking kidding me? I’m sorry, there’s supposed to be someone in the textiles department at all times. This keeps happening, I’m so sorry. We’re trying to run a business here, and it’s impossible to run a business when you have all these girls running around playacting like they own the place. Hold one second, I’m going to get someone on the phone for you. This is unacceptable.”
Would she have liked that? Would that have affirmed her set of life principles? If I had done that, would I have had the courage to use the PA system? Maybe you can change the way you feel by trying out new personalities. I meditate on this.
The designers in the office mill around, not chained to their desks like I am. I look at them, wondering who I should approach first. Today, I will find some work to do. I will be assertive.
Fear keeps me in my seat.
I check my email for any life-changing news. I’ve been sent another newsletter from the women’s shelter.
I volunteered there for two weeks last year as part of a misguided emotional remodeling. The job was frightening and difficult but also very boring, and I must have known I hated it because I overslept one day and woke around noon to five missed calls from the shelter, which I did not return, and they emailed me daily for a week or so, desperate, but I never checked the emails, and I never went back, and I tried to forget I’d ever done it, and I never mentioned it, except for one time at a bar with Sarah, trying to impress a stranger with my worldliness and sophistication, I said, “Well, I actually volunteer at a women’s shelter, so . . .”
I’m too humiliated to open the shelter’s newsletters to unsubscribe. They go out twice a month. A weird reminder of my failures.
The other email is from Credit Karma letting me know there have been some developments with my credit score, which, oh, who cares, what a plebian trifle.
I get up and think about my body as a tentative, vulnerable thing, clasping my hands in front of my crotch, and I try to act out “peeking” around the cubicle wall behind my desk. I knock on the corner of the wall and say, “Hey, I’m the new reception temp. The phones have been quiet, and I have extra time if there’s any busywork I can help you with.”
This woman has never registered before. She’s an actual adult, mid-forties with grayless shiny red-brown hair and thick baubles around her neck.
She says, “Oh no, sweetie, we’re all good here.”
I’m a thirty-year-old woman, and I smell like an onion pizza. I say, “Okay, let me know!”
Back at my desk I sit and slowly collect money that I can use to pay the rent on my apartment and on food so that I can continue to live and continue to come to this room and sit at this desk and slowly collect money.
More time passes, and I watch a subtitled video about an AI robot named Sonja who wants to help out in hospitals and in customer service and hopes to have a house and family someday, and I think, Yeah, right, Sonja.
The phone rings, I transfer the call. I sit. I make a gesture toward assembling a few packets. Karen comes to my desk, and I fear the worst. I turn to her in my swivel chair, my armpits wet with sweat, and I can feel how dry my lips and face are, how ridiculous I must look, how hungry I am from only having stale bread and dry cereal all day. I think she’s going to fire me. I’m not so much bracing for it as I am having a kind of paroxysm, adrenaline filling me up, and a loud, deep voice shouting yeah well fuck you too in my ears.
“So, I have some extra work for you,” she says.
“Oh, fantastic!” I say, really believing it to be fantastic in the moment. My expectations so fucked up that my relief at having more clerical work is real and strong.
Karen doesn’t smile, doesn’t react, maybe there’s a micro-flinch there like she thinks I’m a loser for being excited to do whatever it is she’s about to make me do.
“Come with me,” she says.
I stand to follow her, nervously eyeing the phone I’m about to leave. If it rings in front of her, I’ll pounce on it and maybe impress her with my agility and dedication, my ability to multitask.
In the copy room, she bends down and brings out a small document shredder and pushes it toward me with her foot. She looks at me like I know what this means, like she’s just shown me the lord’s chamber pot and I’m supposed to understand.
I push the thing back to my desk like it’s a tiny shopping cart, hands on both sides, and wait for her. She comes back with a ridiculously small stack of papers. I try not to interpret it too much.
“I went around and collected these papers from everyone in the office. Do you know how to work a shredder?” she asks.
“Oh, yeah, I’ve done a ton of shredding. I shredded a whole file room’s worth of documents at my last job,” I say, dying to impress. “This’ll be really quick.”
“Well, there’s no pressure to get it finished by the end of the day. Prioritize the phones, and let me know if you have any questions.”
“Sure, thanks,” I say. “And let me know if there’s anything I can do from my computer, if you need any filing done, or if there’s any other busywork that people need help with. I’m happy to multitask.”
She doesn’t react, she barely nods, and she tells me again to let her know if I have any questions.
I plug the shredder in and feed it a stack of about twelve papers. I pause, then put a few sheets in singly.
I get a few more calls. I text Sarah to let her know that the scheme worked, that I have been given an extra task. On impulse, I include the small image of the lightning bolt, the rainbow, and the most pathetic-looking face I can find. The worried one. It makes me feel old and uncomfortable. Sarah responds “nice” and includes the lightning bolt and a baby chick. We text a moment longer.
I put another piece of paper into the shredder and watch it jerk around before it disappears.
Most of the documents are copies of checks, invoices, credit card numbers. None of this interests me. I pause when I see the word shit on one of the documents. It’s a printed-out email, containing rich “I feel” language, exclamation points, heated opinions. For some reason, I don’t feel comfortable shredding it. There’s something dear about it. I put it in my notebook when no one is looking (no one is ever looking).
The hours pass.
I leave the majority of the shredding for tomorrow, even though I could have easily finished it in about fifteen minutes.
At the end of the day, I put my notebook in my bag, shut off my computer, and leave.
* * *
• • •
Karen was hoping that giving her an extra task would keep Millie out of her hair while she arranged for her replacement. She’d chosen the documents randomly out of a file in the back room marked “Shred.”
chapter 8
My building is so quiet that I have, a few times, thought I was the only one living in it, even though there are about sixteen units. I put my coat on the chair and hear footsteps coming up the stairs and I freeze.
The footsteps stop. I hear a door open and shut, and I take off my boots.
I turn on Forensic Files, and it seems like they have a new writer. I light a cigarette, not in the mood to eat yet. The narrator keeps saying “cut to the chase.” The detectives cut to the chase, asking Angelo if he’d seen Lydia on the day of her murder. When Dr. Andrews was cal
led in to take his polygraph, detectives cut to the chase, asking him if he had killed the little girl in Plaintown, Indiana. I walk through the apartment and turn on a few lamps. My preference is for dimmer light, somewhere between 40- and 60-watt bulbs and yellowish shades. Cozy.
I cry for a second, but I’m faking it. Waaaaaaahhhhhh. Poor me, poor me, who cares. This is what I wanted. To sit here and not have someone judging me. I’m fat, I smell, no one likes me, my clothes suck, I’ll never amount to anything, everyone around me is an idiot, self-involved, judgmental, stupid, too dumb to know the harm they’re doing, too dumb to know they’re not happy inside, not like me, I know. Ha-ha-ha.
I was right about it all, being alone is clarifying. And there I go, I’m crying again, but still faking it, half of me still unmoved.
I open my bag to take out the email I stole from the office. There’s a voided check in my notebook, too, an accident—whoops! I put the check on my refrigerator. I stare at the Chococat magnet’s mouthless face and wide eyes like a Mesopotamian idol hovering above the routing number. Longest eye contact I’ve made all month.
I find some old cheese and the stale butt of a baguette and eat this (dinner) at my table in front of my show. The victim’s mom says something like “I guess that was Lydia’s purpose in life. To get this man off the streets.” This is played over home footage of Lydia, eight years old, riding a pink bike in a driveway.
I usually don’t feel anything with these shows, and I don’t particularly feel anything now, but this statement makes me think.
I wonder if it’s a misunderstanding of life to look for purpose, or if the mom, then, following through, thinks that her purpose—the full sum of her own life—was to give birth to a girl who would get the sweater fibers of a child rapist under her fingernails. I selfishly and halfheartedly think about my own life’s purpose, then shift to thinking about Lydia, the girl, and what it would be like if she hadn’t been attacked and killed. Would she be sitting in her apartment thinking, idly, about the purpose of her life, until she met someone and had a child who would eventually sit, alone, in their apartment wondering, idly, about the purpose of their life? I’m annoyed by the mother’s need to find a positive spin.