Today I look at Patrice and I see two years of talking to a mannequin because I didn’t have the person I really wanted to talk to.
I cross the room in three steps and shove her. Hard. Both hands against her torso, the way you’d push a person if you wanted them to feel it. Patrice topples sideways, hits the corkboard, and crashes to the floor. Fabric swatches scatter. The copper gown crumples around her like a body giving up. Pins skid across the hardwood. The arm I was adjusting yesterday snaps off at the shoulder and rolls under my desk.
I stand there, breathing. My hands are shaking. The office is silent except for the sound of a pin still spinning on the floor, a tiny metallic whisper that winds down and stops.
Patrice lies on her side. One-armed. Draped in a ruined dress. Looking, for the first time in fifteen years, like what she actually is—not a creative partner, not a silent witness, not therepository of my best ideas. A mannequin. Fiberglass and cloth. Something I gave a name to because I was lonely.
My rage calming to a gentle simmer, I kneel down and pick her up. It takes effort. She’s heavier than she looks, the way grief is heavier than it looks. I set her upright. Smooth the dress. Retrieve her arm from under the desk and reattach it. She stands slightly crooked and wrinkled, the pins gone. I look at her and say, “I’m sorry, Patrice. That was beneath both of us.”
Then I straighten my own spine and make a decision.
Not the decision Karen presented. Not the columns on the screen. A different decision, one that has nothing to do with investors or intellectual property or the careful arithmetic of corporate dissolution. A decision about what I want. What I actually want, underneath the brand and the title and the manipulation of the man I once trusted to share my dreams.
None of it matters. The money, the fame, the success. None of it. All I want is my family.
I pick up my bag. I pick up my phone. I call the Thai place on Lexington that does the green curry Saylor likes and the pad see ew Ada asked about last week and the mango sticky rice that I’ve been craving since the ultrasound, when the stress of Eleanor’s revelation manifested as a very specific hunger for coconut and sugar. I order enough for three. I give them the Westchester address for delivery—then decide against the surcharge for the delivery area.I can pick it up tonight. I put it on the card.
Then, I get in my car and drive north.
The house is lit from inside when I pull into the driveway.
Every window is glowing. Saylor must have replaced the porchlight. The old one was a bare bulb, stark and unwelcoming, and this one is warm, amber, the kind of light that makes a front door look like an invitation instead of a barrier. I can see movement through the kitchen window. Two figures. Saylor atthe counter, Ada at the table. The ordinary choreography of an evening in a house that works.
I sit in the car for a moment. Engine off. Hands on the wheel. It dawns on me that I’ve driven more in the past few months than I have in the past ten years. How funny. Even though I still hate driving, it’s not as daunting when the destination looks like this.Like home.This is why people rush home. This feeling of relief and warmth. A novelty I’ve always skirted around, but have never really known.
The Thai food is in the passenger seat, the bags warm against the leather. The oak tree is a shadow against the darkening sky. The tire swing hangs motionless. This is so peaceful. How is it that although I’ve lost everything, I’ve gained everything as well?
I carry the food to the door. I don’t knock and the door is unlocked because Saylor is expecting me. Every night, I belong somewhere now.
“I brought dinner,” I announce, rounding the corner into the kitchen.
Saylor looks up from the counter where he’s been doing something with a screwdriver and a cabinet hinge. Ada looks up from the table where she’s reading a paperback with a shirtless man on the cover, which she makes no attempt to hide. The house smells like sawdust and tea and the lemon cleaner I bought last week that Ada has adopted as her own.
“Thai?” Saylor asks, eyeing the bags.
“Green curry, pad see ew, mango sticky rice.”
“The good place?”
“The good place.”
He grins. Sets down the screwdriver. Takes the bags from my hands and starts unpacking them on the counter with the efficient care of a man who treats food as a serious matter. Ada marks her page and closes her book. I pull up a chair.
We eat. For twenty minutes, we just eat. Saylor tells a story about the cabinet hinge that involved a YouTube tutorial, a stripped screw, and language Ada pretended not to hear. Ada tells me about the book she’s reading. “He’s a Scottish duke with a tragic past and enormous…lands. Very large tracts of land.” She pumps her eyebrows, thinking her innuendo is cleverly disguised for just us girls. Saylor nearly chokes on his curry. I laugh. That was somewhere between “awww” and “ewww.” For twenty minutes I forget to be stressed and distracted. The boardroom doesn’t exist. Greg doesn’t exist. The numbers on the screen are someone else’s problem in someone else’s life.
But once the food runs out, the silence that follows is the kind that knows something is coming.
“I need to tell you both something,” I say.
Ada sets down her fork. Saylor stops chewing. Two people who love me looking at me across a table, waiting for whatever I’m about to say with the specific stillness of people who have learned, through experience, that bad news doesn’t improve with delay.
“A few days ago at the ultrasound, Eleanor cornered me with some insights about my company. Today, I found out she was telling the truth. Celeste,the company, is bankrupt.” I say it simply because there’s no other way. “Greg has been mismanaging funds for a long time. He leveraged property we didn’t even have against unauthorized debt. The lines of credit are overextended, the inventory costs haven’t been reconciled, and the backers and brands have labeled our accounts as delinquent.” I take a steadying breath. “I have two options. Go public and give my company away, or declare bankruptcy and walk away.”
“What does walk away mean?” Saylor asks.
“About two hundred thousand dollars cash, in my pocket. Maybe a little less after debts, legal fees, liquidation of assets.” Ilet the number sit. I watch Saylor do the math—the same math I did in the conference room, the math that converts twenty years of a woman’s life into a figure that wouldn’t buy this house outright. “I think I’m going with bankruptcy. I’m separating from Greg entirely. The brand—” My voice catches. Just once. I clear it. “The brand will be gone. But I’ll be free of him. I’m not totally irresponsible. I do have money tucked away for savings. I have personal accounts with investments. There’s going to be a lifestyle change, but we’re going to be okay. I still have plenty to give this baby.”
Ada reaches across the table and covers my hand with hers. Her grip is warm and certain and her eyes are the same clear blue as Saylor’s and she doesn’t say anything because Ada seems to know that some moments need silence the way wounds need air.
