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 "Go
clean yourself off," he said. "And do that letter again."
I stood slowly, and felt my skirt fall over the sticky gunk. He briskly
swung open the door and I left the room, not even pulling up my panty
hose and underwear, since I was going to use the bathroom anyway. He closed
the door behind me, and the second unusual thing occurred. Susan, the
paralegal, was standing in the waiting room with a funny look on her face.
She was a blonde who wore short, fuzzy sweaters and fake gold jewelry
around her neck. At her friendliest, she had a whining, abrasive quality
that clung to her voice. Now, she could barely say hello. Her stupidly
full lips were parted speculatively.
"Hi," I said. "Just a minute."
She noted the awkwardness of my walk, because of the lowered panty hose.
I got to the bathroom and wiped myself off. I
didn't feel embarrassed. I felt mechanical. I wanted to get that dumb
paralegal out of the office so I could come back to the bathroom and masturbate.
Susan completed her errand and left. I masturbated.
I retyped the letter. The lawyer sat in his office all day.
When my mother picked me up that afternoon, she
asked me if I was all right.
"Why do you ask?"
"I don't know. You look a little strange."
"I'm as all right as I ever am."
"That doesn't sound good, honey."
I didn't answer. My mother moved her hands up
and down the steering wheel, squeezing it anxiously.
"Maybe you'd like to stop by the French bakery
and get some elephant ears" she said.
"I don't want any elephant ears." My
voice was unexpectedly nasty. It almost made me cry.
"All right," said my mother.
When I lay on my bed to take my nap, my body felt
very dense and heavy, as though it would be very hard to move again,
which was just as well, since I didn't feel like moving. When Donna banged
on my door and yelled "Dinner!" I didn't answer. She put her
head in and asked if I was asleep, and I told her I didn't feel like eating.
I felt so inert, I thought I'd go to sleep, but I couldn't. I lay awake
through the sounds of argument and TV and everybody going to the bathroom.
Bedtime came, drawers rasped open and shut, doors slammed, my father eased
into sleep with radio mumble. The orange digits on my clock said 1:30.
I thought: I should get out of this pantyhose and slip. I sat up and looked
out into the gray, cold street. The shrubbery on the lawn across the street
looked frozen and miserable. I thought about a period of time a year before
when I couldn't sleep because I kept thinking that someone was going to
break into the house and kill everybody. Eventually that fear went away
and I went back to sleeping again. I lay back down without taking off
my clothes, and pulled a light blanket tightly around me. Sooner or later,
I thought, I would sleep. I would just have to wait.
But I didn't sleep, although I became mentally incoherent for long, ugly
stretches of time. Hours went by; the room turned gray. I heard the morning
noises: the toilet, the coughing, Donna's hostile muttering. Often, in
the past, I had woken early and lain in bed listening to my family clumsily
trying to organize itself for the day. Often as not, their sounds made
me feel irrational loathing. This morning, I felt despair and a longing
for them, and a sureness that we would never be close as long as I lived.
My nasal passages became active with tears that didn't reach my eyes.
My mother knocked on the door. "Honey, aren't
you going to be late?"
"I'm not going to work. I feel sick. I'll
call in."
"I'll do it for you, just stay in bed."
"No, I'm going to call. It has to be me."
I didn't call in. The lawyer didn't call the house.
I didn't go in or call the next day or the day after that. The lawyer
still didn't call. I was slightly hurt by his absent phone call, but my
relief was far greater than my hurt.
After I'd stayed home for four days, my father
asked if I wasn't worried about taking so much time off. I told him I'd
quit, in front of Donna and my mother. He was dumbfounded.
"That wasn't very smart," he said. "What
are you going to do now?"
"I don't care," I said. "That lawyer
was an asshole." To everyone's discomfort, I began to cry. I left
the room, and they all watched me stomp up the stairs.
The next day at dinner my father said, "Don't
get discouraged because your first job didn't work out. There're plenty
of other places out there."
"I don't want to think about another job
right now."
There was disgruntlement all around the table.
"Come on now Debby, you don't want to throw away everything you worked
for in that typing course," said my father.
"I don't blame her," said Donna. "I'm
sick of working for assholes."
"Oh, shit," said my father. "If
I had quit every job I've had on those grounds, you would've all starved.
Maybe that's what I should have done."
"What happened, Debby?" said my mother.
I said, "I don't want to talk about it,"
and I left the room again. After that they may have sensed, with their intuition for the miserable,
that something hideous had happened. Because they left the subject alone.
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