Hot Desk: A Novel - 13

Jane walked across Central Park from Mimi’s to the East End town house. It should have taken about forty-five minutes according to Google Maps, but she slowed down as she got closer. The long blocks of wide sidewalks were familiar, and she remembered the flustered trek of her first day at the East River Review . The image of that black-haired girl in her carefully chosen “professional” outfit of velour top and pointy boots had come into her head as soon as she had heard about Teddy’s death. She examined the photos and read the praise, the reassessments, the pages of biography, all with a practiced distance. It wasn’t until Rebecca had called her with news of Rose’s request that Jane’s seemingly impenetrable self-protection ruptured. She had ended the call and left Sam behind in the kitchen. As she walked out the front door, Jane’s thoughts were buzzing, each interrupting the next; as she walked around the block she wondered if she had always known that Teddy’s death would, like a fairy tale’s broken spell, bring back Rose. When she returned to the house, Sam was waiting in the foyer. He held her as she cried, murmuring words of comfort into her hair, but Jane’s tears weren’t sad tears, no, not at all. They were tears of relief.

The street emptied into a cul-de-sac with a cobblestone terrace overlooking the river. Jane sat on one of the wrought iron benches under an old-fashioned streetlamp. She had thought that maybe, after all these years, the town house would seem smaller than it had loomed in her memory, but that was not the case. Still imposing, still museum-like, its stone balconies and manicured evergreens in large pots signified generations of uninterrupted wealth. The unmistakable blue of the magazine’s door drew her roving gaze. A young woman strode purposefully toward the town house, then past the iron gate and down the stairs, disappearing. Jane couldn’t help but think of the building swallowing her; she imagined following and stepping down into the darker, cooler space of the office with its long, narrow aisle and desks lining the walls on either side. They would all have computers now, of course, and nobody had been allowed to smoke inside for years. A man in a fedora came out, letting the gate slam behind him and talking loudly on his phone. The office had never lent itself to discretion, Jane thought, and there was certainly no space for a pod or whatever it was Rebecca had described to her. All those times the phone cords were stretched across the way, all the personal calls they had made and been made to listen to, the cacophony of typewriters not enough to assure anyone’s privacy.

The last time Jane had sat on this very bench she was with Rose; she didn’t remember what they had been talking about, but it was soon afterward that everything had happened with Teddy. Jane thought about the phrase “everything had happened.” A few hours, not even—really only a few minutes, if you wanted to be exact—and everything had changed , not happened. It was hard to imagine Teddy as an old man even though she had seen photos of him over the years, watched interviews, award shows. Through the screen or on the page, Teddy’s charisma was obvious, but for Jane, the only real Teddy was the physical one, the one who had shaped her life like a natural disaster. He was forever in his prime, towering like a tsunami. (Here Jane revised her image; he was less water and more air, a centrifugal force that spun them all around his center.) Her son Ethan had done a junior high science project on tornadoes, and Jane remembered videos of cows and trucks being sucked up into the spirals. It wasn’t inside the tornado that hurt you, Ethan explained; it was the ejection. Inside the tornado that was Teddy ( I’m really doubling down on this metaphor , Jane thought, but I’m going to follow it through ) there was chaos and excitement and access to everything she wanted. It was the ejection that changed everything. Was it banishment or self-exile? Even now, Jane couldn’t say.

After the shock of Rebecca’s phone call, it was unexpectedly easy to leave her contact information for Rose at the East River Review . And then to see the unknown New York number flash on her phone—not to answer, but to wait for the message, to hear Rose’s voice for the first time in so long, telling her Teddy had written a book. They had arranged through short texts that Jane would come to the town house to read this book, that they would have dinner together with Rebecca. The terseness of planning seemed necessary in the face of the reality that they were going to see each other again.

The gate clanged, and Jane watched the man in the fedora reenter the office. She had the sudden memory of Parker arriving one day wearing a tennis visor, and the tension that had built among the interns: Would anyone say anything? Were they all just going to accept this sartorial statement? After the first incredulous eye contact, they were unable to look at each other. Parker was not as senior as Jonathan, not as intimidating as Ellen, not as confident as Paco, not as shameless as Deedle; nor was he one of them whom they could tease. It was impossible to concentrate, and Jane could still remember the dangerous giddiness threatening to spill over. Then Teddy had flung open the blue door, his arms full of books and papers, his broad shoulders blocking the light as he perused the room with avuncular fondness. “Why, Parker!” he exclaimed in astonishment. “Has Wimbledon come early?” First Rose, then Drew, then Jane had fled up the back stairs, trying and failing to stifle their helpless laughter. Smiling, Jane wondered what Parker was doing now. Many years ago, she had attended a reading for his well-reviewed, scarcely sold second collection of stories at the Penn State bookstore. She had waved at him from the back but hadn’t stayed to have him sign her copy. His pink pants were adorned with lobsters.

Jane’s phone buzzed in her bag, and she took the call from Sam.

“You picked up.” He sounded surprised.

“I haven’t gone inside yet,” Jane admitted. “Rose doesn’t know I’m here.”

“How are you feeling?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know,” Jane answered honestly.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” he told her. “You don’t have to go inside if you don’t want to. You can see Rose somewhere else. You don’t even have to see Rose if you don’t want to.” Sam, who was often distracted and not particularly good on the phone—he preferred speaking in person and was disinterested in all technology—was focusing carefully, Jane could tell.

“I want to see Rose.”

“Of course,” he said mildly. If Teddy was a tornado, Sam was a ballast , Jane thought. All those years ago, when she needed refuge, Sam—slightly disheveled, brilliant, kind—had given her that and more; she trusted him absolutely. They had built a family together. Still, here she was on a bench outside the town house, the blue door in sight, on the phone with her husband in Philadelphia. “Well, you’ll let me know how it goes?” Jane could hear running water and Fergus whining.

“I’ll call you later,” she said. “Love you.” It was almost 12:45; she didn’t want to be late. There was an earlier, unanswered text from Rebecca. She would give her daughter a quick call just to let her know she had arrived at the town house. It was difficult to keep putting her off, and Rebecca was rightfully frustrated. It was just that Jane had lived for so long with the past submerged in a deep part of herself. She was protective of that girl she once was; it was painful to hold her up to scrutiny. She was so young, and she had thought her choices, if they were even choices, were the right ones. It was foolish to imagine how it could have been different because it wasn’t different. The call went straight to voicemail. Jane didn’t owe anything to anyone. Except to the one person who was left.

She stood up at the same time as the town house’s door opened. And there was Rose, framed in the doorway. “I thought that was you,” she called out. Rose. Willowy, pale, striking. Jane took a few steps toward her and stopped. She brought her hand to her throat, where she could feel her pulse quicken. There was a moment when the old Rose would have rushed forward to hug her, but this Rose was still, composed in her elegant, tailored clothes. “Would you come in?” this Rose asked politely. “I hope it wasn’t insensitive of me to invite you here. We could go somewhere else?”

“No,” Jane answered. “It’s all right.” The moment of the reunion—the possibility of an embrace, the expected relief—passed, and somehow they were going to move forward in this formal, awkward dance as if they were strangers. Were they strangers? Jane had worked at a number of jobs; she had married; she had raised Ethan, Andrew, and Rebecca; she had thickened in the middle; her hair was silvery gray; she had reading glasses in her bag. Silently, Rose turned and Jane followed. The town house foyer hadn’t changed: masses of flowers, light from the long windows falling across the graceful statues, the wide staircase curving upward. When they entered the enormous living room, Jane stopped at the pool table while Rose continued on. She hadn’t played since she left New York. This one was a beauty. It must have been custom-built, judging from its size and polished walnut, its deep green felt unfaded. When she looked up, Rose was sitting on the window seat, and Jane had a moment of powerful, disorienting déjà vu.

“I found a manuscript in Teddy’s desk after he died,” Rose began directly. “I was in the process of gathering papers for the lawyers and collecting his unpublished stories and letters as part of the estate; I’m moving everything from PK Publishing to another house. His work could use younger, fresher eyes, as you can imagine.” Jane could imagine. There had been a story of Teddy’s published years ago that had kicked up enough controversy that even Jane had been aware of the social media backlash. “It’s the only copy,” Rose continued. “And before it’s destroyed, I want you to read it. Not all of it.” Here, her expression was wry. “I wouldn’t put you through that. But there are a few relevant chapters.”

“Is it a memoir?” Jane could see the stack of yellow papers held together with a rubber band. She remembered the lined notebooks she had filled. They were shelved next to the old East River Reviews in the guest room. Someone, most likely Ellen, had subscribed her to the magazine: she had received copies sent to her mother’s house for years until, without her really noticing, they had ceased or hadn’t been forwarded after her mother had moved into assisted living.

“Most decidedly fiction,” Rose answered, with a flash of her old fire. “But as with all his work, it’s based on his life. And ours.” Jane wasn’t sure if she meant hers and Teddy’s or hers and Jane’s. “I didn’t want to copy it and I couldn’t bear to read it over the phone. I don’t even know the right questions to ask you. All I could think of was to figure out a way you could read it yourself.”

“Through Rebecca,” Jane said.

“Through Rebecca. Who is lovely, by the way.” For the first time, Rose smiled, and Jane, just as she could always see the babies in the faces of her grown children, could glimpse the sparkling young woman behind Rose’s sad eyes.

“How did you make the connection?”

“Ellen had your mother’s name, and I occasionally googled it—after googling became a thing. When she died, I saw your married name and the names of your children in the obituary. I kept tabs on everyone. I knew Rebecca worked at Avenue. I promise I wasn’t a stalker. I was hurt and angry for so long, but somehow it was soothing to me, just to know a little bit.”

Jane felt a pang. “You were easier for me to track, of course.”

“I did try to contact you, you know,” Rose said. “Early on. But it was clear you didn’t want that.”

“I wanted to disappear,” Jane admitted. “I wrote you letters, though. Instead of a diary, I suppose. That slowed down when I had the twins. But I still did. Write you, I mean. A few letters every year. There’s a folder on my laptop.”

“Jane.” Rose unfurled from the window seat, her eyes shining. “I wrote you letters too!”

Jane gave a startled laugh. “You did? You didn’t hate me for leaving like that?”

Rose tapped her chin in a gesture that Jane remembered fondly. “I didn’t say that the first few years of letters were particularly forgiving, did I? I looked over some of the early ones last night. Textbook stages of grief at your abrupt rejection. At some point, maybe acceptance?”

Did Rose mean that she accepted the loss? Had Jane ever accepted it? But it must mean something that Rose had written her letters. Jane stepped closer. “I couldn’t see a way forward. Either you knew what happened, and I couldn’t bear it, or you didn’t know, and I couldn’t bear it!” She stopped and put one hand on the edge of the pool table for support. An image of Teddy—his booming laughter ringing in her ears, his blue shirt open at the neck, his dark eyes—flashed into her head. What would Rose think of her outburst? Teddy had—it was almost unbelievable—died. He had loomed so large for so long. And Rose had been his wife. Jane gave her head a little shake to clear it of him. All those years, it had been Rose and Teddy, and after so much time, who was Jane to need something from her? This Rose was a widow.

“When I read this”—Rose held the manuscript out toward Jane—“it confirmed some of what I had imagined. But of course yours is the story I need to hear. Not his.”

Jane hesitated. It was as if her flare of emotion hadn’t happened. They stood facing each other, and it seemed to Jane that Rose was holding the book between them to ward her off. What had Teddy written? What did Rose think? Jane flushed with a sudden twinge of guilt, of the long-suppressed shame. But she wasn’t that girl any longer. She had her own story to tell. Jane took the yellow papers carefully. “How should we do this?” she asked.

“You sit.” Rose gestured to the window seat. “I’ll get us some lunch. As I said, you can skim it. You should skim it… or just read the pertinent sections. Prepare yourself.”

There was a burst of animated talking from the kitchen. Two young people barged partway into the room, then stopped abruptly, mouths agape.

“Upstairs is closed today,” Rose said firmly. “I thought I made that clear to Tom.”

“We’re so sorry! We just got here! He’s at lunch!” one of them squeaked, while the other, face reddening, backed up hastily until he bumped into a chair.

“It’s all right,” Rose relented. “Please close the door at the top of the stairs. I should have locked it.”

“Sorry! Sorry!” They darted away, chastened.

“Interns,” Rose explained. She cocked her head and raised an eyebrow in an expression that reminded Jane, piercingly, of Drew.

“Interns,” Jane repeated.

“Later, interns,” Rose said.

“Gotta bolt,” Jane replied. The air between them was charged with the memory of laughter and the laughter still inside them, swelling closer to the surface. But there was also the manuscript, heavy in Jane’s hand.

“Read.” Rose turned toward the kitchen. She looked over her shoulder at Jane as if she might disappear. “I’ll be back,” she promised.

Jane settled on the window seat, leaning against the window’s cool glass, the spectacular view spread out behind her. She read quickly and kept reading even when she sensed Rose dipping into the room and back out again. A long time passed before she skipped to the end, then reread what Rose had called the “pertinent” section. She stood up and stretched. God, she was thirsty. Wandering over to the pool table, she couldn’t help running her fingers over the smooth balls in the rack. Pushing and pulling the rack as the balls clacked against each other. Pushing and pulling until Rose came over and stilled her hands by taking them in her own.

“Tell me everything,” she said gently, and Jane did.