Time of My Life Read online

  I also live in continual fear of giving myself away.

  Never once do I consider blurting out my secrets, even to Megan, who has entrusted me with hers, or even to Jackson, who has proven a kinder boyfriend than I remembered.

  So I catch myself from spilling the endings of movies or snapping at Jack that he’s already told me the story about discovering that his boss was sleeping with a coeditor or lacking patience with my team at work because I’d long ago memorized the steps to creating a masterful Coke campaign, whereas this is their first time at this circus.

  I am contemplating fate, and the role that I might play in it, one Tuesday morning on the bus on the way into work. It is an oppressively muggy day in late August, one in which the swampy air clings to your sticky skin and a bolt of air-conditioning from a store that you pass by feels like salvation. A water main has broken in the bowels of the subway line, and thus, swarms of New Yorkers are huddled on the corners at bus stops and are fanning themselves with their newspapers while waiting for their rides.

  My CD player hums in my ear (no iPods! I’ve made a mental note to invest in Apple), and I’m reconnecting with music that ties me to memories of former days, only those days are now. When I was thirty-four, in my future life, “If You’re Gone” by Matchbox Twenty would occasionally filter over the airwaves of my Range Rover, and I’d stare out the window, watching the graying buildings coast by, haunted by the reminder of Jack, and how I played the song over and over and over again when we split. But now, it’s nothing more than a song that jolts a memory of something yet to happen, something that might not even happen if I can grab the gears and shift them away from my destiny.

  I am listening to Matchbox Twenty, and I am mulling over that very destiny, when the doors of the bus open at Twenty-eighth Street, and a wave of passengers presses forward. Bodies clog the car, which wafts with a mixed scent of fresh cologne, hot coffee, and body odor, and I tuck my legs underneath my seat to make way for the tangle of people. A heavyset woman who has sweat pooling behind her ears elbows me on the side of my head, then glares when I don’t apologize.

  After watching her move beyond me, I shift my eyes back toward the front and brace my weight for the lurch of the engine as we start again. Looking forward, I see masses of bobbing heads, swaying in rhythmic time to the clanking and churning of the bus’s wheels. I’m examining a tight French braid on a girl who appears no older than thirteen, and flushing away thoughts of the mornings I’d spent parked on Katie’s floor braiding her hair meticulously over and again until she and I would concur that she was the embodiment of follicular perfection, when I feel someone’s eyes, heavy and direct, gunning toward me like a spotlight.

  I refocus my attention to return the gaze, and right as the jolt of shock and recognition runs through me, the bus careens to an abrupt stop, and the masses are hurled off balance. Everyone reaches for a pole, a neighbor’s arm, or a hardened blue plastic seat to steady themselves. The doors squeak open, and just as quickly as the wave pushed forward, it now ebbs; the hurrying people rush on toward their offices, their days, their lives. Though it’s not my stop, I stand urgently and follow them, getting caught in the flow, so I’m ushered down the steps of the bus before even realizing that I’ve consciously moved. I turn and look, perplexedly at first, then frantically and more fervidly. Halfway down the block, I spot a sky blue shirt and hair the color of damp sand, and I weave through the foot traffic to try to reach him in time.

  But when I finally land at the corner, breathless with both anxiety and anticipation, he is gone. I spin around and then around again, staring up the avenue and down the perpendicular streets, but there is nothing. So, reluctantly, I head uptown toward my office, toward the route that I was carving out for myself, for my future.

  Henry, I think. It was Henry.

  Had we done this before? I wonder. Had a water main break steered us on to a bus on which we’d noticed each other in passing, only to let the tides of commuters pull us away? Were we fated to meet, regardless of this map that I was intent on following?

  Another bus roars by me and blows a hot blast of exhaust as it goes. With heavy feet and a racing heart, I plod on, turning back one more time, though I know that there is nothing there left to see.

  Henry, I say to myself once again. But then I realize that if he isn’t my destiny, there isn’t much use in saying his name at all. I wash it from my mind and watch the buses barrel up Madison Avenue until they reach the horizon line, and then, it is as if they were never there at all.

  HENRY

  Henry proposed almost a year to the day after we met. And like just about everything else about him up until that point, his proposal was perfect. So quintessentially him, and still entirely perfect. Planned but not rushed, poignant but not effusive. Unexpected but not a surprise. Perfect.

  We were on vacation in Paris and everyone—Megan, Ainsley, Josie—was certain he’d do it then. “Right under the Eiffel Tower,” Gene suggested one day when we were splitting turkey sandwiches at my desk. “Or at twilight along the Seine,” Josie sang out from the hall when she overheard the conversation.

  I was so swollen with anticipation that I’d nearly ruined the vacation—every meal, every site was a potential landmark to highlight the culmination of our love. And yet, there was nothing. Because, of course, I understood in retrospect, Henry realized that I’d already envisioned the entire Parisian proposal in my mind, and that there was little he could do to catapult his efforts above my imaginary ones. That’s how well he knew me.

  On the plane ride home, just as I was stewing in disgruntled bitterness and thinking of excuses to offer Gene and Josie and the entire office crowd who had nearly started a pool on how Henry would propose in the City of Lights, Henry pointed out the window into the dark, starry sky and said, “I know that we can’t see the moon from here, but I feel like I can.”

  “I don’t follow,” I answered.

  “What I mean to say,” he flustered on, “is that wherever we are, it’s as if I’m blessed with the moon and the stars on my heels because I’m with you.” His cheeks reddened. “I know it’s cheesy, and I know it sounds like a Hallmark card, but it’s true.”

  “Thank you,” I said, brushing my lips to his, and reaching for his hand beneath our blankets. It was as close to soul-searching posturing that he’d ever come.

  “So this, my moon and stars, is the only way I can think to repay you.” He slid something velvety and hard into my hand, and when I popped the box open, there it was: the ring that ensured that we’d be happily ever after for the rest of our days.

  The flight attendant brought us champagne, and I raised the armrest between our seats and tucked myself so close to him that not even a sliver of space divided us, and I was, for a moment at least, so soaked in contentedness that I could have pocketed up that feeling and coasted on it for years to come.

  Chapter Nine

  I stare out my office window, peering at the view, but mostly seeing the images of Henry and my former life. I try to shake them from my brain but they’re stuck, refusing to budge, and they’ve been firmly planted there for the three hours since Henry unknowingly met my eyes on the bus and subsequently sent me tripping, spiraling down memory lane.

  “Sorry to disturb,” Gene says as he knocks lightly on the door and pushes it open. “Mail’s here.”

  “Thanks,” I say distractedly, swiveling around in my chair and reaching for the pile.

  “Bad morning?” he asks.

  I like Gene. Liked him last time around, and like him this time around, too. He’s a twenty-five-year-old high school graduate who discovered that being the best graphic artist in your senior class doesn’t guarantee that the art world will fling open its doors for you at graduation, and so, after six years of making espressos at a West Village coffee bar, he enrolled in college at night and interns with us during the day. I’ll occasionally ask him to peruse my storyboards, and almost inevitably, he’ll hone in on tiny details that I overl
ooked. While Henry excelled at the fine print, I did not, at least not until I swirled myself into an unrelenting perfect housewife in which I mastered the art of the finest print, and thus, I was always surprised at how much Gene could highlight what I’d missed.

  “It’s nothing,” I reply to him now, standing to close my blinds.

  “If you don’t mind me saying so, you’ve looked better.”

  “Thanks, Gene.” I smile. “I always appreciate the backhanded compliment.”

  “Problems with the Coke account?” He sits, even though I haven’t invited him to do so.

  “No, no problems with the Coke account at all.”

  “Yeah, I hear you’re kicking ass on that, actually.” He folds his hands underneath his chin and rests them there.

  “You do? Spill.”

  “You know, people talk when the interns are around because they think that we don’t have ears. Or exist. Or whatever.” He shrugs and reaches up to scratch a piercing on his left upper lobe. “But word on the street is that you’re being groomed as the next big thing.”

  “Ooh la la,” I say, popping a Coke-flavored Jelly Belly in my mouth. “Sounds fancy.”

  “So if it’s not work, what is it?” he presses.

  I sigh. “I saw . . .” I pause, mulling over how to define this. “I saw an ex on the bus this morning, that’s all. Threw me off a bit, I guess.”

  “Ah, gotcha. Made you feel all nauseous and nervous and all of that?”

  I nod and feel queasy just at the thought of it.

  “Well, it might mean something, and it might mean nothing,” he continues. “How are things with your current man?”

  “Good,” I say firmly, because they are.

  In fact, things with Jack are smoother, more fluid than I remembered them to be. Unlike in my life with Henry, there are no niggling demands, no dinners to prepare, no obligatory company cocktail parties to attend, no expectations to cater to. There is no push to make amends with my mother, Henry’s favorite way to prod, no pull from Katie to give more of myself. Simply, now, I feel liberated, unburdened. If I work late, Jack, free-spirited and game, treks uptown to a Yankees game or gathers coworkers to attend a restaurant opening. And when I find a moment to break away from the chains that now bind me to my desk, I join him: no guilt that I work too often, no reprimands that we’ve ordered pizza or Chinese four nights running, no problem if he’s the one who has to haul our laundry to the basement when it’s piled so high that it resembles a foothill, not a hamper.

  No, I think, today with Gene, things are humming along as smoothly as anticipated, no potholes, no land mines to throw us off course. Maybe it’s because I’m able to anticipate those land mines before they go off. In our previous life, I’d hoped that with some encouragement, Jack would discover the inner writer that Vivian so believed lay hidden in his depths. I nagged and I nudged and I elbowed him into his fiction, despite his flat interest and nearly obvious lethargy at the subject. In my previous life, I eventually wrote him off as lazy and unambitious, a trust-fund kid who kicked up his heels and coasted on the wave he’d had the good fortune to ride in on. But with hindsight, I let all that go: Jack’s enthusiasm for life was infectious, and damned if I didn’t want to catch his fever.

  With Henry, I knew ambition, I knew the straight and narrow, and seven years later, it felt choking, claustrophobic almost. So this time around, I pushed aside those lingering doubts about Jack, which, in days past, would spiral into needling nit-picking, which would escalate into full-blown arguments, which would culminate in one of us sighing in sarcastic relief at the fact that we weren’t in this relationship permanently. And then we’d apologize, and wash, rinse, repeat at least once a week.

  But now, yes, thanks to a slight adjustment in my expectations, a tactic on which I was certain Redbook would surely frown, things were indeed going well. It doesn’t feel like too much, I’d tell myself every time I made one of these tiny tweaks. One day soon, it might, but for now, it doesn’t feel like too much.

  “Okay, so if things are cruising with your man, then why worry?” Gene says now.

  “I’m not worried,” I point out. “You’re the one who told me that I looked worried.”

  He crunches his brow. “You do though. You do look worried. Which means one of two things.” He reaches over some papers on my desk to grab a piece of Coke-flavored licorice, then gnaws on it ponderingly. “That either things aren’t going as well as you think with your guy—and you’re just kidding yourself—or else this ex has left such a mark on you that you and your man could be in high heaven and it wouldn’t matter. He’d still rattle you.”

  I feel the color drain from my face and rather than offer a firm answer, I say, “What are you, my shrink?”

  “I wish,” he says, rising to leave. “Then at least someone would pay me around here.”

  “Ha ha,” I answer. “You know that I’ve put in a good word for you to be my executive assistant. I’m hoping it will happen any day now.”

  “To God’s ears,” he replies, already halfway down the hall. “Enjoy the mail.”

  I laugh to myself, as I reach for the stack of letters that he’s placed on top of even more stacks of letters and files and folders. Three envelopes slide from the pile and coast off my desk, bouncing off the wastebasket and nose-diving to the blue rug that came straight from Corporate Rugs “R” Us.

  The first envelope contains a coupon pack from my neighborhood’s Better Business Bureau, and the second is just my cell phone bill. The third is cream colored with an Elvis stamp, and fills me with that sense again, the sense that I’ve held this envelope before, that it’s fallen into my life in some way though not exactly in this way at one point prior, and as I flip it over to slide my fingers underneath the flap, a surge of adrenaline courses through me.

  I unfold the lined paper and recognize the handwriting with a start. The words are eerily familiar but only like a mirage might be: I remember them from long ago, but they were never committed to memory—years ago, after reading this same note, I fled the office for a gasp of air, then balled up the monogrammed stationery and angrily threw it into the garbage on Seventh Avenue. And then I pushed the words from my mind and vowed that I wouldn’t retrace either them or the meaning behind them again.

  Child-sized beads of sweat form on my brow, and I allow myself to read, knowing that I’d both hate myself for doing so and regret it with a full heart if I didn’t. Her handwriting curves and loops just like an elementary-school teacher’s might. It is flawless, as if her penmanship might be a testimonial for her character.

  Dear Jillian,

  I hope that this letter finds its way to you. I have been holding on to it for many years, trying to find the right time to send it, but failing to do so each time. But now, the time feels right. So I hope that this finds you, and I more hope that you accept the intrusion.

  I realize that it has been nearly eighteen years, and that I left your father and your brother and you without explanation, and that—I realize this more than ever now—was terribly unfair.

  I would like to find a way to explain myself. I’d like to be able to tell my side of the story, though I do know that this is a lot to ask of the daughter who has been without me for most of her life.

  But I am writing nevertheless to ask this of you: If you could find it within yourself to meet me, to, perhaps, listen to my apologies. Because I would like to be able to offer them to you. And I’d like even more so to get to know you.

  If you’d be amenable to this, please do call me at 212-5253418.

  All of my love,

  Your mother, Ilene

  I reread the letter three times; each time, it brings something new back to me from when I read it the first time—seven years ago. Calling my father and listening to the heartbroken shock of a man whose ghost just came back to haunt him. Trying to contact my brother, trekking through some godforsaken manure-filled pasture in the remote regions of Asia to let him know that our mother ha
d resurfaced. Coping with the boiling, furious shards of rage that her audacity inspired in the angry circles of my mind.

  Today, with a quick jerk, I push my chair back and rise to tear out of the building. To circle Seventh Avenue until I find the quasi serenity I need in that moment, serenity that would be so fleeting, so temporary that I’d remain incensed at my mother’s actions for the next half decade plus. To curl up her letter in the balls of my hands until it is solid enough to be used as a weapon, and to hurl it into the trash so I can’t call her, even if I am tempted.

  But instead I sit as quickly as I stand.

  I press the paper against my desk and smooth the creases in it, over and again, until they are nearly invisible. My pulse drums loudly in my neck, and I exhale, trying to push it all, so much, away. Then I open my desk drawer and tuck the letter inside. It might be, I decide, something worth hanging on to for the future.

  Chapter Ten

  The upper tier of advertising’s elite is sandwiched together at the Coke extravaganza, and true to Josie’s word, it is quickly evident that my invite might catapult me to the hallowed halls of our industry’s high society. The taxi pulls up to the looming stone structure that housed Cipriani, and as I step out, I barely avoid a pigeon that is grazing on a stray crumb from an abandoned bagel. The skies had opened up that afternoon, turning the color of steel, and furiously unloaded on the city, so the air, still bursting with heavy humidity, blew over us, and felt more like early October than late August.

  Jack swoops around from the other side of the cab and grabs my hand, a tacit symbol to move beyond the argument we’d been having on the ride down. The same argument we’d had seven years back, only last time, it had been over pasta at our favorite local Italian restaurant.

  I hadn’t meant it to happen, of course. I’d been so adept at dancing around our hot coals that when it slipped out, my unintentional comment, I didn’t even realize what I’d said. I literally had to mentally rewind the conversation, like a VCR, to see where we might have jutted off course.