“One second,” says Cleo, turning back to me.
“Do you … Did you think I was someone else?” I ask her.
“Cleo,” whines Quentin.
“I said give me a second,” says Cleo with the slightest edge in her voice.
She turns back to me. Watching Cleo compose her face is like watching a vase shatter backward. All the pieces suddenly zoom back together.
“I thought your name was Lee … I was confused.”
“Cley, can you come help me bring out the Secret Santa gifts?” interjects Frank. His face is all twitchy and tense.
“Please excuse me,” she says, following him away. She looks strangely dazed.
“Typical,” spits Quentin and storms off to smoke out the open window alone.
And so I am left with Anders. He is looking at the Christmas tree, blinking one eye, then the other, in time to the flashing lights.
*
I take the elevator down to the lobby. A group of accounts people come in from smoking outside. I don’t want them to see my face, so I bend over like I’m trying to lace my shoe. Their laughter bounces off the floors. I take out my phone. It only rings once.
“Ma,” I say quietly.
“What’s wrong?” she says.
“I have to tell you,” I say.
“What is it?” she says. “Do you need me to come get you? I’m getting my keys.”
I shake my head, even though she can’t see me.
“He’s married, Ma.” I say. “He’s married to someone else.”
I put my hand over my mouth to quiet the little choking noises I’m making.
“Myke’s married?”
“No, Frank’s married.” I laugh in spite of myself and rub snot on my sleeve. “Myke’s an idiot.”
There is silence on the other end. I hear her exhale.
“Oh, Ellie,” she says. “I thought you were going to tell me something really terrible, like you were moving back to LA.”
*
The next morning my mother makes me pancakes before work while I lay my head on my arms and moan. Outside, it is snowing. I try to inhale the flakes as I walk to the train. I need something pure inside me. Finally one lands on my tongue. Nothing.
*
“How’s your day going?” Jacky asks me.
I lift my head up from my arms.
“It’s no double dolphin kiss,” I say.
Jacky roars with laughter.
“Nothing is, hon,” she says.
*
It’s the day before the office closes for two weeks. Frank and I are walking to lunch when an Orthodox Jew approaches us. He asks if we’re Jewish. The wrong half, says Frank, but I tell him I am. He smiles and wishes me a happy Hanukkah.
The wrong half. I keep repeating the phrase in my mind as we walk. I want to tell Frank that there is no wrong half, no halves at all in fact, that if there were, we’d be busy halving ourselves again and again until we got to the little square of us that was good and then we would all be free to love and be loved.
“Let’s go through the park,” says Frank, nudging me in the direction of the gates.
I squint into the icy sunlight. The path sparkles with a thin layer of frost. Everything is hard and bright, like I’m looking out from inside a diamond.
“So, you’re Jewish?” Frank says.
“You couldn’t tell?” I say.
“My mother always wanted me to marry a Jewish girl,” he says.
“I just realized that marriage is the definition of temp-to-perm,” I say.
“What?” says Frank.
“Temporary to permanent,” I say. “That’s what I am.”
“Oh, you’re perm,” says Frank. “You’re about as perm as they come.”
A breeze filled with light and ice circles us. A police officer sitting on a bench unwraps a silver Hershey’s kiss. Children scream in ecstasy on a playground out of sight. We stop walking. Frank is looking at me. I am looking at Frank. This is a place of exquisite beauty and extreme danger.
CHAPTER NINE
January
She’s not happy,” said Frank.
He was in his office overlooking Madison Square Park, which was covered in patches of dirty ice. The sky was a flat slate gray. It was the time of year when winter had ceased to be festive and become a test of endurance lasting until spring. There was maybe an hour of daylight left. Over the phone, he could hear the click of his mother’s lighter, the first inhale.
“I don’t understand this obsession with happiness,” she said. “Happiness is like the Hollywood sign. It’s big, it’s unattainable, and even if you do make it up there, what’s there to do but come back down?”