Content Warnings: Psychological manipulation, emotional abuse, gaslighting, relationship control, coerced life changes, self-harm, public self-harm, identity loss, professional loss.
“Holy shit,” I said, dream-images still swirling in my head.
Monica walked in and looked at me with surprise. “Are you just getting up? I’d have thought you’d have at least showered by now. We’re going to be late.”
I rubbed my eyes. I was having trouble getting my bearings. “For?” I asked, vaguely.
She stared, stage-slack-jawed. “Are you high right now?” she asked.
“No,” I insisted. “Just. Weird head space right now, I need a minute.” I tried stretching the confusion away with a yoga pose I couldn’t recall the name of.
“Well you’ve got about ten,” she said, “then we have to leave.”
I stopped stretching. “For the museum,” I said as the memory dropped into place. “My museum.”
“Yes!” she said. It sounded more like incredulity than sarcasm.
I looked around, still foggy. I’d have gotten my things ready the night before. There! Comfortable underwear, sensible but stylish shoes and dress. As I wriggled into them, I saw my accessories laid out on the vanity. Well at least Last Night Me had been on point; I’d learned something in the decades since college.
But something nagged. I wasn’t looking forward to today. Why? What was I planning to do? I think it was something I didn’t want.
I was putting my hair up when Monica came back. She seemed mollified as she looked me over. “Okay, I’m impressed,” she said, and started to turn back toward the door.
“With my togetherness or the outfit?” I asked as I worked a hairpin into place.
“Both.” She paused and said, reassuringly, “You look gorgeous, babe,” and turned again to the door.
I froze. “What did you just call me?” I asked without looking at her.
She stopped again. “What?”
“What did you just call me?” I repeated, trying to keep my voice level.
“Gorgeous. Is that a problem?”
“No,” I said, “the other thing.”
I heard her go over her words under her breath, “You… look… gorgeous…” Then to me, “‘Babe’?”
“Yes, that,” I said, lowering my hands. “When did you start calling me that?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “You’ve always been a babe. That’s why I said you’re gorgeous.”
I took a step back and hit the vanity as I thought back and hit a wall. “Where did we we meet?” I asked.
“Elle, we can do couples’ nostalgia in the car.”
“I can’t remember how we met,” I said, too loud.
“Wait, are you getting upset with me because you can’t remember how we met?
“No,” I said. “But why can’t I remember how we met?”
“Are you sure you’re not high? Because you sound really high right now.”
“How?”
She looked at me for a moment like she was trying to decide whether I was joking, and then said, “In college. It was at a protest.”
“What were we protesting?”
She looked exasperated. “Honey, I don’t remember every damn thing I protested twenty years ago! And odds are pretty good I was only there to get laid! And I did! And you were so good I decided to keep you! Now can we please get down to the car?”
She said it with conviction. And I seemed to be remembering now. I took my purse from the vanity and started to follow her downstairs.
We’d just left the house and Monica was almost to the car when I stopped and blurted, “Cornell.”
She stopped and turned perfectly on her heel, as thought she were on rails. “What?” she asked, seeming incredulous again.
“We went to Cornell. That’s where we met.”
She walked to me, took my purse, took out the keys. She looked me in the eye, dropped the purse back at my side, held up the keys, and said, “I’m driving.”
We didn’t talk much during the drive, though Monica glanced warily my way a few times with in a way that seemed part concern, part side-eye. Once I’d stopped panicking the memories came back. I remembered Cornell, remembered the quad, Dragon Day, and I remembered the day I’d met Monica. And found that, as hard as I tried, I couldn’t remember what we’d been protesting that day, either.
We filled the silence with NPR and a short detour for a drive through breakfast, and I ignored the majestic Hudson River Valley scenery in favor of turning the dream over and over in my head, trying to mine out coherent gems. I’d been me, but not me. Younger, sometimes my 30s, sometimes my 20s. There’d always been someone. And there’d always been pain.
The trip felt like another dream. It was a two hour drive, but we were entering the city before I’d realized it. I’d been lost trying to remember the dream. I hadn’t finished my breakfast coffee. As we passed over the bridge, Monica said, levelly in the way only someone trying hard to speak in a level tone can, “You did bring the speech, right?”
The speech. I trusted in Last Night Me and looked through my purse. There were sheets of folded copy paper. Yes. It was the speech. “Got it,” I said. I was supposed to have been studying it the whole ride and I’d forgotten. I tried to get a late start. The memory of writing it came back to me as I read it. Good morning friends, colleagues, press, etc. etc. Thank you etc.
I glanced at the GPS. I had only about ten minutes, depending on traffic. But the speech wasn’t until after the breakfast, so I had time. I went back to the papers. My decade as Director has been the most fulfilling time of my life. This is as glorious a day for me as it is difficult, as I… I stopped.
“I’m going to resign,” I said out loud.
Monica glanced at me, back to the road, nodded. “Yes. Very good! Set your intention.”
I said the only words in my brain. “I don’t want to.”
Monica did a sitcom double take and nearly stopped the car but managed to pull into a bus stop before she turned to me and asked, “Elle. This isn’t a surprise party, we’ve been talking about this for a year, you made the decision… what, two months ago?” She suddenly looked scared. “Are you having a stroke? I read about micro strokes or something, they’re slow bleeds and happen over hours. Is that why you’ve been acting weird?” She took out her phone and started to swipe it on.
“No,” I said, “put that away. That’s not a symptom of stroke.”
She didn’t put it away, but stopped swiping. “You know all about strokes all of a sudden?”
“Yeah,” I said, looking down at my hands as I held them, palms to me. Then more confidently, “Yeah, I do. And this isn’t how they work. This isn’t a stroke. It’s… it was sitting there all this time and I wasn’t thinking about it and now I am.” I turned to her. “I love my job. I worked hard for this job, and I’m good at it. It’s what I always wanted, all through grad school.”
“It’s two hours from home! And we don’t need the money! Elle, I can’t have this argument now, we’ve had it a hundred times, you’ve already quit!”
I shook my head as it all came back, “The trustees didn’t want me to, Derek tried to refuse to accept it. If I tell them I changed my mind they’ll tear it up, I know they will.”
Monica was about to say something when a bus honked behind us. She looked around and found no course but to put the car in drive and move.
“You cannot do this to me now, Elle. We agreed.” She was trying to talk slowly and pay attention to driving.
“You… badgered me to agree,” I said, remembering. Why had I ever thought of it as anything else? “You wore me down over a year, you didn’t care what I wanted.”
“I know what you wanted. I care about what you wanted. But I told you, I can’t be a suburban widow, I can’t just have you between 8 at night and 5 in the morning. I would never have married a flight attendant!” She was shouting now and nearly rear-ended the car in front of us.
“We can afford a place in the city!” I said.
“Not on your salary, unless it’s some crappy little apartment, and my clients are in Albany! You want me to commute four hours? For God’s sake, we’ve already had this argument a hundred times! It was finally over! God you’re being so fucking selfish even to the last damn minute!”
The memories of dozens of arguments came back to me. I remembered the wearing down. I remembered the resignation, just for some peace. This time that seemed lifetimes ago, but the pressure of it all coming back, haunting me from anther life, made a pressure build up, my blood ring in my ears. I realized we were stopped at a light. We were only a few blocks from the museum. Without letting myself think about it, I held my purse tight, opened the door, and stepped out and into a run.
The sensible shoes were a good pick, I decided. Couldn’t have done this in heels. I first ran back to the previous corner so Monica couldn’t follow me with the car, then up two avenues, then east again, the long blocks. I’d really only added a few minutes to the trip, maybe less if the lights were against the traffic.
I slowed to a walk to get my breath back as I got close to the museum. I was ahead of the door opening, but only just. I went in, feeling jumpy and excited, said good morning to Eloi at the counter, and went straight to the event. The Gladerheim wasn’t one of the big, touristy museums, but it was prestigious in its own way. Its collection of works by New York born artists chronicled the evolution of art through the city’s history back to New Amsterdam and the state’s back to some indigenous pieces over a thousand years old. It had its devotees and its donors, and we could afford a good sized event hall for things like today’s.
With the crowds still out on the street, I quickly found Derek near the stage.
He broke into a smile when he saw me. “Elle! You’re just in time!” his smile melted with confusion. “Did you run here? You’re all flushed.”
“Just excited!” I said. “I have good news! I’ve made a decision!”
He smiled again, “Oh? What is it?”
“You remember how you didn’t want to accept my resignation? Well. You don’t have to! I want to withdraw it!”
The smile faded again. He passed once more through confused, and into awkward. “Elle… I would have loved for you to say that a month ago, but… we’ve already hired a new director, you know that.”
“Yes.” I said, slowly, “I realize it’s a little awkward, but it’s an unusual situation. And between us and the rest of the board, I’m sure we have enough contacts to get Kurt another job somewhere else.”
Derek still looked awkward but his voice became more serious. “Elle. Kurt has a job. Here. It’ i’s too late to tell him he doesn’t.”
I nodded, and the words tumbled out almost on their own. “Okay, I get that. But, I’ve never had an Assistant Director. He can be that!”
“Elle,” Derek said again, speaking slowly, “The contracts have been signed. At noon today, Kurt becomes the Director of this museum. There’s no going back.” He paused, then finished, “I’m sorry.”
I nodded, a little stunned. I smiled, because that’s what I should do. “Alright,” I said. “It was just an idea.” I reached into my purse an pulled out the folded sheets of paper. “I… brought my going-away speech. Just in case! Better go practice!” I climbed the stage steps and ducked backstage.
Don’t know why I’d thought that that might work. Nothing was that ad-hoc with the board. I unfolded the papers with shaky hands but couldn’t focus the words, so I went back to the hall and found the seat on the stage with my name on it.
I sat there though the breakfast. At one point I saw Monica talking with Derek and both of them looking at me and my papers, but they didn’t come near. I think Monica looked relieved; it was finally over.
Eventually they started the ceremony and people drifted reluctantly away from the breakfast tables to the seats. When they were gathered, Derek welcomed everyone. He talked about the museum and its vision, all we’d done over the past year, and the past ten, and I applauded longer and louder than anyone. At points I was honestly jumping up and down with excitement.
Finally, at the end, he introduced me. He looked nervous, but I was so happy at that point that he must have decided I was okay to speak. And I was. I stepped up to the podium as he stepped aside, and there was laughter as he had to lower the mic enough for me to speak. I smiled at the crowd, and unfolded the notes, which were by then crumpled and damp. I started with the words on the paper. They were good words. Monica had helped me choose them.
“Good morning friends, colleagues, press, and patrons of the Gladerheim. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for supporting this museum as it grows and as it changes. My decade as Director has been the most fulfilling time of my life.” I had to stop because I couldn’t read through the tears. I smiled through them instead.
“I’m sorry,” I said, going off-script. “I told my wife that I wasn’t going to do this.” There was laughter and I used the time to try to wipe the tears away, but new ones replaced them.
I continued without the notes, repeating. “My decade as Director has been the most fulfilling time of my life. And now. It’s over.” I sniffled. The audience wasn’t sure how to react. “But that’s okay!” I said a smile. “As my friend, our chairman, Derek, said to me earlier, there is no going back! But… there is always a way forward!” Then the audience applauded, and Derek as well. When that had died down, I continued, “And I have a way to do that! Right now!” I put my purse on the podium on top of my notes and opened it. “I have it right here,” I said as I started looking through it, “if you’ll bear with me!”
I knew it was there, it was always there. Ah! I pulled out my little black manicure set, peeled the velcro. The audience was starting to mutter uncertainly as I opened the kit. No tweezer. But there, this would do just as well.
I lifted knocked the purse to the floor and held up the cuticle trimmer, still smiling. “If this doesn’t work,” I said, “I’m going to be pretty embarrassed. And I’m gonna make a mess!” My smile faded as I looked at the trimmer. I held up my forearm and said quietly, “But I think it’s gonna work.”
I cut.
I woke up.
(Part 6 next Sunday!)
Be First to Comment