DIRTY[COMPLETED]✔️

Chapter Nineteen

Marcy was wrong. I was not a martyr. At least, I didn’t think so. I did not want to parade my pain for all to see, to bolster myself with pity, to beat my breast and bemoan my sorry state. That was my mother’s agenda, not mine.
It was why I never spoke to anyone about what had happened in our house the years of my life between fifteen and eighteen, when Andrew died. I didn’t want anyone, ever, to be able to excuse me because of my past. I did not excuse myself because of it. Bad things happen all the time. Worse than what I endured. Everything in my past was a piece of my self puzzle, the punctuation in the sentence of my being. Without it I would not have become the woman I am today. I’d be someone else. Someone I might not recognize.
She was right, however, about pushing people away. I knew it. I had for a long time. So I pondered getting “someone” the way my brother had, and I decided, instead, to go to church. God didn’t reach down his hand and pull me off my knees. I’d abandoned religion for a reason. I didn’t believe God could solve my problems any more than therapy could or booze or drugs. Or sex. There was much for me to carry, and I had to let it go.
St. Paul’s was larger than St. Mary’s and a more modern church, advertising “folk Mass” and “contemporary worship” on the billboard in front. They did offer confession, however, and while I’d never believed it should be up to a man to decide if I’m worthy of forgiveness, the act of confession preyed on my mind so persistently that I at last decided to go.
Father Hennessy had a nice voice. A little rough, but quiet. He sounded kind and interested, at least, not bored, though I’d waited until the church was empty before I entered the confessional, and he was probably tired of listening at that point.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been a long time since my last confession.”
I spoke for a long time.
“Are you able to forgive yourself?” he asked at last. “Because you know I can forgive you and the good Lord can, but if you don’t forgive yourself it’s no use.”
I nodded, my fingers aching from being clutched together so tightly. “Yes, Father, I know.”
“Have you sought professional services?”
“Not recently, Father.”
“But you’ve had counseling.”
I laughed, low. “When it happened, yes.”
“And you didn’t find it helpful?”
“They could give me medication, Father, but…” My voice trailed off.
“Ah.” He seemed to understand. “You know you’re not at fault, don’t you?”
“I know. I do know.”
“And yet you can’t let go of the guilt?”
“I can’t seem to, no.”
We shared silence for a moment before he spoke again. “Like our Lord, you’ve been pierced with thorns and nails. You can take them out, but each leaves behind a hole. And you, child, have so many holes you’re afraid that’s all you’ll be. Nothing but holes. Am I right?”
I put my forehead on my hands and whispered a reply. “Yes.”
“When they pulled our Lord from the cross, he had holes, too. But he rose again with his Father’s love, and you can too.”
Hot tears leaked over my fingers, but a strangled laugh escaped me. “You’re comparing me to the son of God?”
“We’re all children of God,” the priest said. “Every one of us. Our Lord Christ died for our sins so you don’t have to. Do you understand?”
I envied those who could accept that answer, who could let the light shine in and let the blood of their Savior wash it all away. It seemed like another fairy story to me, but I didn’t tell the priest that. He believed it, even if I could not.
“I’m tired, Father, of feeling this way.”
“Then let our Lord take it away for you.”
He sounded so sincere. Genuine. Again, I wished I could do as he said. Open my heart. Believe in something that would make all the rest seem bearable.
“I’m sorry, Father, I just can’t.”
He sighed. “It’s all right.”
He sounded despondent, and I thought maybe the Church business wasn’t as satisfying as it had been years ago when Catholics didn’t question, they just prayed.
“I’m sorry, Father. I want to believe you.”
He laughed. “The fact you’re here says that. And if you don’t believe, don’t worry. God believes in you. He won’t let you fall away from him so easily.”
I’d never heard a priest laugh in the confessional before. “It’s not that I don’t know where to place the blame. Or that I think it’s my fault. I know it’s not.”
“But you’re full of holes.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re looking for something to fill them.”
I wiped my face with my hands, feeling my tears on my fingertips. “Yes. I guess I am.”
“It’s my job to tell you to find it in the Church,” the priest said. “I hope you’ll at least consider it.”
I liked Father Hennessy, who had a sense of humor. “If anyone could convince me, Father, I think it would be you.”
“Ah, that makes me feel better. Are you ready to finish your confession?”
“Yes.” I paused. “Go easy on me, Father, I’m out of practice.”
He laughed again. “Say one Act of Contrition, my child.”
“It’s been a long time. I’m not sure I remember the words.”
“Then I will say them with you,” said Father Hennessy, and he did.
There could be no point in continuing this way. I didn’t like it, didn’t want it, couldn’t stand it. So this is what I did.
I went to visit my mother.
Since my father’s death she’d redecorated the den. The big television still squatted in the corner like Shelob waiting for a tasty hobbit to devour, but all other signs of my father’s habitation of the space had disappeared. She’d replaced his chair with a love seat and stripped the striped wallpaper for a cheery yellow paint.
She showed me around the room, but didn’t actually let me sit in it. She took me to the kitchen, made us both coffee and pulled an apple pie from the freezer. I recognized it as one left from the wake and didn’t want any.
“I’ve got some boxes for you.” She lit a cigarette and held it between her French-manicured fingertips. “If you don’t take them, I’m giving them to the thrift store.”
“What’s in them?”
She shrugged. “Bunch of junk.”
I stirred sweetener in my coffee in lieu of the sugar she didn’t keep. “What makes you think I want a bunch of junk?”
“It’s your junk,” she said, like that made a difference.
If my visit surprised or pleased her, I saw no sign of either. She drew in the smoke and let it out, squinching her eyes shut in a way that feathered wrinkles around her eyes.
“Fine. I’ll take a look through it before I go.”
We sipped our coffee in silence. I’d never sat at her table like this, two adults drinking coffee. I waited to feel strange about it, and then I did.
If my mother did, she kept it to herself. “So, Ella. Where’s your friend?”
I gave her a look. She tossed up her hands. “What? What? I shouldn’t ask?”
“Do you really care?”
She took another drag. “It would be good for you to have a man.”
“You didn’t seem to think so when he was here.”
My mother has always been good at rewriting history to suit herself. “What are you talking about? He seemed very nice for a Jew.”
I let my head fall forward with a groan. “Oh, Jesus.”
“Not in this house,” she warned. “Don’t take the name of our Lord in vain.”
“I’m sorry.” I drank some of her coffee, which was too strong.
“You know I think it’s long past time you got married. Had some children. Had a real life.”
The rant was an old one, but for the first time I allowed myself to listen not only to her words but to the meaning behind them.
“I have a life. A real life. I don’t need to be defined by a husband or children to have a real life.”
My mother scoffed. “You need something other than those damned numbers, Ella.”
“Yes, because I’ve had such a good role model,” I retorted.
She stubbed out her cigarette and crossed her arms over her ample chest. Her expertly applied makeup couldn’t hide the circles under her eyes. “I wish you weren’t so smart with me all the time. I wish you took better care of yourself. I wish you saw I was only trying to look out for you instead of jumping down my throat every time we talk.”
I’d been holding both hands around my mug to warm them, but I put it down and spread them flat on the tabletop. I looked at her, trying hard to see myself in the curve of her jaw, the color of her eyes, the style of her hair. I tried to find myself in my mother, some thread of connection to prove I had once swum inside her womb and was not just an afterthought. That once upon a time she had looked at me with something other than disappointment.
“I wish I was fifteen again, and I had told Andrew no when he asked me if I loved him. And I wish he’d listened to me instead of getting into my bed.”
The color drained from her face, leaving two bright spots of blush high on her cheeks. For an instant I thought she was going to pass out. Or maybe scream.
Instead, she slapped my face hard enough to rock me back in my chair. I put my hand over the heat the blow left behind on my cheek. Then I looked her in the eyes.
“And I wish you would stop blaming me for it.”
I tensed for the next slap, or the coffee in my face, or the shrieks and accusations. I was not prepared for what she did next. She started to cry.
Real, fat tears welled in her eyes and left tracks in her foundation. They dripped off her chin and left dark marks on her navy silk blouse. She drew in a slow, hitching breath as her mouth trembled to let out a sob.
“Who else could I blame?” my mother said, the words striking me harder than her slap. “He’s dead.”
I wanted to get up but didn’t have the strength to do it. “You knew, didn’t you?”
“I knew.” She reached for a napkin and blew her nose, then took another to pat her eyes. Her mascara left half circles of black on the white paper.
“You called me a liar and a whore.” The words stuck in my throat before I forced them out. They felt sharp, like they left scratches.
I had never seen her look so bleak. So unconcerned with how her tears might have smudged her makeup and turned her nose red. My mother wiped her eyes again, removing more of the eyeliner, shadow, mascara. She looked naked without it. Vulnerable.
“Do you think I was a liar and a whore?” I wanted to sound demanding. I only sounded pleading.
“No, Ella. I don’t.”
“Then why did you say it?” I wept, too, but didn’t bother wiping my face. I kept my hands anchored flat on the table. “Why?”
“Because I thought maybe saying it would make it true!” She cried. “Because I didn’t want to believe he would do those things to you! I didn’t want to believe it, Ella, that my son could work such evil! I wanted to make you a liar because that would mean it wasn’t true. Because I would rather have a daughter who’s a liar and a whore than a son who raped his sister.”
“Like you’d rather have a son who is gay?” I asked, more gently than I had ever thought I’d be able to. “You’d rather have one son dead by his own hand and a daughter who doesn’t have a real life than a son who’s alive and well but likes men?”
It didn’t make me feel good to watch her flinch and crumble, shrivel like the legs of the Wicked Witch of the West when Dorothy took off those shoes. I had always thought confronting her would leave me more triumphant. It only left me sad.
“You don’t understand what it’s like, to have children. How they disappoint you. You don’t understand what it’s like to give another person life and watch them throw it all away. You don’t understand what it’s like, Ella, to be me.”
I studied her for another long, long moment in which she wept and my own tears slowed. At last I stood, not filled with triumph but with something else I had longed for. Acceptance.
“No, Mother,” I told her kindly. “I don’t. And I guess I never will.”
She nodded, focusing again on her coffee and her smoke, and I saw for the first time she was not a fairy queen I’d dreamed of as a child, nor the wicked witch I’d made her out to be later, but a woman. Just a woman, after all.
I hugged her, the smoke from her cigarette burning my eyes. At first she didn’t hug me back, but after a moment she did, patting my back. Her fingers tugged my hair.
We said nothing else, too fragile for words, and I left her there at the table. I thought maybe I would come back and see her again. I thought maybe we would talk again. But for the moment, what we had done was enough.
I didn’t get religion, though I did attend Mass once or twice. The contemporary service was nice, though not quite the comforting, mysterious ritual of my youth. I found it lacking, in the end, though I enjoyed Father Hennessy’s sermon about the challenges facing young people today. After, when I shook his hand as I left the church and murmured, “thank you, Father,” he pressed my hand with fingers gnarled by arthritis and looked into my eyes when he answered, “You’re quite welcome.”
I didn’t stop “not hating” my mother, either, and when she called I made more of an effort to pick up the phone and talk to her. Our conversations were strained, though. Distant and polite. She stopped asking me about Dan and started telling me more about her life. She’d taken up a membership in the gym and joined a reading group. If I found it odd to speak to her of such inanities, I’m sure she found it equally as strange not to rant and rave at me; but both of us were trying, at least, and I for one had accepted we might never have more than that.
I spent my nights the way I mostly had for years, alone. I read a great deal. I knitted. I repainted my kitchen and steam cleaned my carpets. I had a lot of time that had seemed insufficient before, when faced with all the tasks I wanted to accomplish, but which now, without anyone to share them with, seemed vast and empty and bereft.
I could have called him. I should have. Pride stopped my fingers from dialing, and fear, too. What if I called and he didn’t call back? Or worse, hung up on me?
I’d lived a long time without a Dan in my life, and there was no good reason I couldn’t get on without one, now. No good reason other than that I missed him. He had made me laugh, if nothing else. He’d made me forget myself.
The night my doorbell rang I went to my door with my heart in my throat, wishing I’d worn makeup instead of leaving my face bare and wearing my hair in a messy tail. The man on the other side of the door couldn’t have cared less, though. He swept me into his arms and squeezed the breath out of me, then knuckled my sides until I couldn’t breathe.
“Chad!” I wriggled out of his grasp so I could get some air in my lungs, then squeezed him again before holding him at arm’s length to look him over. “What are you doing here?”
“Luke convinced me I should see my big sister.” Chad grinned.
He looked good. My little brother, who’d been taller than me since hitting puberty. Blond to my brunette, brown eyes to my blue, tan to my fair skin, we didn’t look much like siblings except in our smiles. I searched him for the changes time had made and saw a few.
“I can’t believe it’s been so long,” he said.
“I can.” I took his hand and drew him inside. “I just can’t believe you’re here.”
Even as he sat at my kitchen table rattling off his latest adventures, I had a hard time convincing myself it was really him. He paused in his narrative to stare at me, his grin softening as he took my hand.
“What’s that look for, sweetness?”
/>“Just glad you’re here, Chaddie.” I held his hand, tight, and we shared another look.
Survivors.
I wouldn’t hear of him staying in a hotel, of course. I wouldn’t send my little brother to stay in a hotel when I had two empty bedrooms. It was nice, having him there. Having someone to share coffee with in the morning. To make eggs for. Someone who knew me so well I never had to explain anything. We went out to dinner at night, to the movies, I took him dancing. We spent hours on my couch talking. We watched episodes of The Dukes of Hazzard and argued over who was the hotter cousin, Bo or Luke. Chad maintained their hotness would only be magnified if they tongue-kissed, which made me laugh so hard I spilled the popcorn.
“I’ve missed you so much,” I told him over mugs of hot cocoa topped with marshmallow fluff. “I wish you’d think about moving back home.”
He rolled his eyes at me. “You know I can’t.”
I sighed. “I know. Luke.”
“It’s more than Luke. I have a job. I have a house. I have a whole life.”
“I know, I know.” I waved my hand. “You’re just so far away, that’s all. I don’t get to see you enough.”
“You could visit more often. Luke adores you, doll. We’d take you shopping.”
I raised a brow. “He says, as though I need a new wardrobe or something.”
Chad laughed. “You said it, not me. We’d put you in something other than black and white.”
“My clothes are fine.”
“Ella, baby. Honey. The world’s not made up only of black and white.” My brother looked around my living room. “This place could use some color, too. The dining room is fabulous. Spread some of that around.”
He wasn’t wrong. “I like black and white, Chad.”
“I know you do, muffin.” He reached for my hand and kissed it. “I know.”
“Are you going to tell Mom I’m here?” He set his mug on my coffee table.
I didn’t answer right away. “Do you want me to?”
He shrugged. It was a rare moment when Chad wasn’t smiling or cracking a joke. He looked up and our eyes met, and I saw myself reflected in them.
“I don’t know.”
I nodded, understanding. “If you don’t want me to, I won’t.”
He sighed, rubbing at his face. “Luke says I should. My counselor says I should.”
I took his hand. “Chad, I know better than anyone why you don’t want to. But maybe it’s time.”
He squeezed my fingers. “How about you? Have you kicked the ass of the past?”
I laughed a little. “Kicked the ass? No. Stubbed its toe, maybe.”
“Elle. What happened to your fella?” My brother stuck his fingers through the holes in my afghan and wiggled them.
“He went home with me when Dad died. He met Mom. She wasn’t nice.”
“He went home with you? To the house?”
I nodded. Chad sat back, impressed or shocked, I couldn’t tell. He rubbed his face again.
“You went back to the house.”
“It’s just a house, Chaddie. Four walls and a door.”
We shared another look, and he didn’t hesitate, he leaned over and hugged me. I didn’t mean to cry, but I did, wetting the shoulder of his shirt. It was all right. He cried, too.
“I didn’t want to leave you, Ella,” Chad whispered, holding me tight. “You know that. I didn’t want to leave you alone with him. But I had to get out.”
“I know. I know.”
I handed him a napkin to wipe his face, and I wiped my own. We talked so much our throats got hoarse and so long our stomachs started to rumble because we’d forgotten to eat. We cried. We screamed. We threw things. We cried some more and held each other, and sometimes we even laughed.
“There should be one good thing,” Chad said. “One good thing we can find to remember about him, Elle. So we can find a way to let it go.”
We’d ended up foot to foot on my couch, under the knitted throw. Tissues littered the floor and my pillows had suffered our wrath. The remains of sandwiches prepared between rants dried on the coffee table.
“He was good at sports,” I offered. “All-American Boy.”
“He didn’t let the bigger kids pick on me.”
“That’s two, Chad. We found two good things.”
He smiled. “My counselor would say that’s very good progress.”
I smiled, too. “He’s right.”
“It’s easier to remember the bad things he did. The drugs. The stealing. The other stuff.”
“You can say it out loud,” I told him. “It might be better if you did.”
My brother’s eyes welled with tears again. “I tried to get him to stop. That’s when he started getting mean. That’s when he told Mom I was gay.”
“I remember.” I lined up our feet, our knees bent in an old game. Choo-Choo train. Back and forth beneath the blanket.
“And even when you cut yourself, she didn’t listen. She just covered it up.” His fists clenched and my heart swelled with love for his love of me.
“I don’t blame you, Chad. Please don’t blame yourself. You were just a kid. You were only sixteen.”
“You were only eighteen, Elle.”
“And now we’re both older. And he’s dead.”
“I still feel guilty for being glad when I heard. When Dad called me at Uncle John’s place to tell me Andrew had killed himself, I laughed at first.”
I hadn’t known that. “Oh, Chad.”
He shrugged. “I should have come home then.”
“You couldn’t have changed anything. And she’d only have made your life hell, too.” I shook my head. “But listen, we’ve both made it through, and look at us. We’ve got great jobs. We’ve got houses of our own. Lives. You’ve got Luke. We’re making it, Chad. We’re doing all right.”
“Are we?” He asked softly. “Are you?”
“I’m trying,” I answered. “I’m trying hard.”
“Me, too.”
Being understood by someone who had been there did more for me than any amount of counseling could have. We had both survived that house and what had gone on inside it.
“He made Mom laugh,” I said after a moment. “And when she was laughing, she loved all of us as much as she loved him.”
“Yeah,” Chad said. “I guess that’s worth forgiving him for, then, isn’t it?”
And for the first time, I thought it might be.
I took flowers to the cemetery. Lilies for my father’s grave and sunflowers for my brother’s. My mother had buried them side by side, and the grass over both of them was soft and well tended. The carving on the headstones had their names, dates of birth and death. My father’s said beloved husband and father. Andrew’s said beloved son and brother. I knelt in front of them with my hands on my lap, shivering a little in the sudden fall breeze, and I tried to pray.
It didn’t work so well. My mind wandered as my fingers thumbed the rosary beads, and at last I put it away. I sat quietly in the soft, brown-turning grass, and I wept slow, effortless tears.
It seemed wrong, somehow. Incomplete. I had not attended the graveside services for either of them. I hadn’t been asked to speak. Now, faced with two slabs of marble and a bouquet of wilting flowers, with fall winds tugging my hair, I needed to find the words I had denied myself for so long. I told my father I loved him and that I forgave him for choosing distance and drinking instead of me, and I didn’t merely mouth the words. I meant them.
They didn’t come any easier than anything else ever had, and when I’d finished I still wasn’t done. I sat in silence for a while, trying to make a list of good things to remember. Something to hold on to in place of the bad.
And then I did it.
“You’re the one who taught me how to find the Big Dipper, Andrew,” I said aloud. “When I was six. It was the first time I looked up into the night sky and saw something other than numbers, something to count. You’re the one who taught me there could be beauty there, too.”
The trees lining the cemetery had already begun turning red and gold, and the wind rustled the leaves. I didn’t imagine it as something else, an angel’s touch or my brother back from the dead to accept my forgiveness. I was too practical for that. I watched the leaves ripple, their colors so vibrant and lovely and yet harbingers of death still to come, but I took solace in the thought they’d return to life in the spring and be renewed.
That’s what I wanted. To be renewed. Sitting in front of the graves of my father and brother, the two men who had most shaped my life, I thought maybe I’d be able to do it, too. Come to life again. Make my own spring.
I waited for something to happen. Like for the heavens to open up in beams of rainbow light, or a hand to thrust out of the ground and grab me. All that happened was the breeze blew, and my teeth chattered.
But I felt better. I had faced another demon and come out unscathed. How many more could there be?
I got to my feet, dusting off the crumbles of grass from my long skirt. I bent and arranged the flowers in a prettier fashion. I cleared away some weeds sprouting up at the corners of the headstone. I traced the letters of their names with the tip of my finger and thought how insufficient the inscriptions were to describe the lives of the men whose bodies lay beneath the ground.
“He loved British comedy,” I said aloud, my hand on my father’s headstone. “He loved Irish music. He used Old Spice cologne and liked to fish, and he always ate what he caught. He was born in New York City but moved away when he was three and never went back.”
There was more. Memories of my dad. My tribute to him, the best one I could give. The one for Andrew I thought would be harder, but maybe remembering about the stars had opened the way for me.
“He played games with us even when he was too old for them. He taught me how to ride a bike with no hands. He was the first one to tell a story about Princess Pennywhistle.” I spoke on, not caring if I sounded like a loon talking out loud to a grave. I wept again, the tears not so effortless this time. They wet the throat of my sweater and made me cold. “He was my brother, and I loved him. Even when I hated what he did.”
The something I’d been waiting for happened, though it wasn’t as dramatic as an angel chorus from above or a cheap horror movie thrill. I let go. Not everything, and not all at once, but I took in a breath of crisp fall air that didn’t weigh me down. I wiped my face. I took in another breath.
Then I walked away.
When offering an apology, it’s always better to bring a peace offering to smooth the way. For me it was a box of chocolate éclairs and a thermos of hazelnut coffee to replace the sludge we usually had in the break room. I knocked on Marcy’s door, the bright-pink box announcing the arrival of sugar-filled treats.
She looked up from her desk with a pinched smile. “Elle. Hi. C’mon in.”
She’d breezed into my office plenty of times and plopped into my chair. I wasn’t quite as relaxed, but I did slide the box toward her. “I brought you something.”
She leaned down to sniff the box, then slit the tape with one manicured fingernail. “Oh, God, you bitch. I’ve been on a freaking diet…”
The moment she called me a bitch, I knew things were all right between us. Coming from Marcy, it was almost a term of affection. I held up the thermos.
“I brought good coffee, too.”
“Oh, my God, I love you.” She twirled around on her chair and pulled down a mug from her shelf and held it out. “Caffeine’s supposed to slow weight loss, but I’ll be fucked in fudge if I can understand how.”
I’d brought my own mug and filled them both. “Wouldn’t that get messy?”
She gave me a blank look at first, then laughed. “It might.”
We raised our cups and she pulled out éclairs, one for each. She bit into hers right away and moaned so long and loud I laughed. A moment later, biting into my own pastry, I managed an enthusiastic echo of her exclamation. Together we stuffed ourselves with sugary goodies and strong coffee.
“Marcy,” I said when the feeding frenzy had eased. “I’m sorry.”
She waved a hand. “No big whoop, hon. I’m a nosy bitch. I admit it.”
“No. You were trying to be my friend, and I wasn’t being a very good one. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t fuss yourself!” she cried.
“Marcy, damn it! I’m trying to apologize, would you let me? Please?”
She laughed but nodded. “Yes. All right. I was a nosy bitch and you were an uptight shrew. We’re square?”
“Square.” I sat back in the chair. “I missed your gossip.”
She clapped her hands. “Oooh, and have I got some for you!”
She certainly did. A full half hour’s worth of time we both should have spent working, but instead spent giggling over speculation about the new guy who worked in the mail room. Marcy was convinced he was a stripper on the side. I hadn’t noticed him.
“What do you mean, you haven’t noticed him?” She crowed. “Are you blind? Are you dead? Are your legs glued together?”
“I thought you were getting married!”
“I am getting married, but I’m not dying. It’s okay to look, Elle.” She paused. “I wouldn’t tell Wayne, of course.”
“Of course not.”
She scraped some chocolate from the side of an éclair and licked it off her finger. “So…how’re you doing? Aside from tempting me with disgusting pastry and trying to make me so fat I can’t fit into my wedding dress.”
“I’m all right.” I reached for another éclair and bit into it. Yellow cream oozed out onto my fingers, and I licked them.
“Okay.”
I pretended not to notice what a good job she was doing about not being a nosy bitch, but after a moment I had to give in. “I’m good, Marcy, really. And no, I haven’t called Dan.”
She threw a wadded napkin at me. “Why not? Call him!”
“It’s too late,” I told her. “Some things aren’t meant to work. That’s all.”
“How do you know if you don’t try?”
I licked some chocolate and studied her sincere expression and thought back to when she’d told me she’d seen him downtown. “What, exactly, did Dan say when you saw him?”
“Just that you’d broken up.”
“Uh-huh. Was he alone?”
She didn’t say anything at first, then gave a too-casual shrug. “No. But that doesn’t mean anything.”
“Marcy, I’m sad to tell you, it does.”
“Elle, it doesn’t. He was miserable with that girl, I could tell.”
I wiped my fingers with a napkin and warmed my fingers on my coffee mug. “You don’t have to save my feelings. Dan and I broke up. He has the right to go out with anyone he wants to.”
“But nobody can make him as miserable as you can,” Marcy said with a wicked glint in her eyes. “Elle. Call him.”
“Marcy,” I said. “I can’t.”
She sighed and tossed up her hands. “Okay, okay, I’ll stop bugging. I can’t stand not having you to talk to around this place. Nobody else gets me.”
“I’m the only lucky one?” I gathered up the trash and tossed it in the pail, then grabbed my mug and the thermos. I left the other éclairs for her.
“I like you,” she said without a hint of teasing or mockery. “That’s something.”
I reached over to squeeze her shoulder. “I like you, too, Marcy. And yeah. It’s something very good.”
We smiled at each other. I slid the box toward her. “You keep these,” I said, and ducked out of the office with Marcy’s epithets following me down the hall.