A Song in the Daylight. Paullina Simons

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4

       Jared

      Jared walked in, as usual, to an internal crisis. Well, why not? It was Monday. Crisis was a reaction to Monday. There was no crisis on Wednesday, Thursday, even Tuesday. Only right before a weekend, to sour things a bit, and right after, to let you know no one wanted to be back at work. This particular Monday, Jan showed up to the morning meeting smelling distinctly not of a double latte.

      It was one thing for Jan to be incapacitated at 9:30 on a Monday, but Jared had an analyst meeting to run, which involved not just Jan, but fifteen sober individuals. And there was Jan, belligerent, inappropriate and loud, interrupting measured voices.

      After the hastily aborted meeting, Jared called Jan into his office. His space at the Newark headquarters had a great view of New York City from floor-to-ceiling windows. Unfortunately they were always behind him, and the only time he allowed himself a glance at the Big Apple skyline was when he called Larissa. He would whirl his chair around and chat to her, dreaming of Sunday brunches at the Plaza, the violinist and the pianist playing Chopin’s Nocturnes. Just thinking about the music trilling in his ears made him want oysters and waffles. He shook his head to rid himself of melodies and wives.

      “Jan, it’s like this,” he said. “I’m not going to accuse you, and you will have nothing to deny. We’ve been through this before; the company has been more than lenient. It’s paid for your rehab—twice—and has given you three warnings instead of two, and put you on probation four times, not three. I don’t have to remind you that you’re still on probation. Which means, if you’re caught drinking on the job—again—you can and will be fired summarily, no more warnings, no more meetings, no more rehab.”

      “But I’m not drinking on the job,” said Jan. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She was thirtysomething, a single mother of two boys, almost well-dressed if you didn’t notice the fraying around the edges, the shirt not quite tucked in, the strap of one Mary Jane unbuckled, the hair not washed this morning. She was in a cavalcade of certain destruction and her breath was stinking up his paneled office, yet she sat saying she wasn’t drinking on the job.

      “I didn’t accuse you of anything,” said Jared. “But if I can smell it, other people can smell it, including Larry Fredoso, the CEO. If I can tell you’re not acting normal on a Monday morning, other people can, too.”

      They eyeballed each other, with hostility, with resignation.

      Jared lowered his voice. “I can smell it.”

      “I didn’t have any carbohydrates this morning,” Jan suddenly said. “That’s why my breath is bad.”

      “Your breath isn’t bad! It smells like vodka.”

      “Well, must be the Dayquil,” she mumbled. “I haven’t been feeling well. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

      Not feeling well. She’d been wired, jumpy, loud, straining to listen, to comprehend; she’d been leaving ostentatiously early with no explanation or defense. “The signs are everywhere,” Jared said. “There are no more chances.” He paused. “I want to help you save your job. For your kids. Who else do they have to depend on? You’re all they got.”

      “That’s right,” she barked. “I’m all they got.”

      “Right. So the responsibility is greater, not less, when it’s all on your shoulders.”

      Jan muttered something he didn’t hear, that sounded like perhaps too much responsibility on her sagging shoulders, and then asked if she was being dismissed. He didn’t know what she meant. Dismissed permanently? Or just out of his office? Jared turned away to the window so he wouldn’t see her stumbling out. After sitting for a few minutes, he dialed home. He wanted to talk to the mother of his own kids.

      The phone rang and rang.

5

       Jared’s Wife

      Iwant to be neither in pain nor terror, she thought, her palms out flat against the pane of wintry glass. That is the imperative of my existence: neither, nor.

      The day Larissa’s life ended, she didn’t even know it. The day it ended she was wearing sweatpants. And not Juicy Couture sweatpants, snug and velour, with satin accents, maybe a little heart appliqué on the buttocks area, embroidered in gold silk with little sparkly crystals to make a married woman’s rear-end moonlight as a young filly’s: maidenly not matronly. No. She was wearing her should’ve-been-thrown-away-ten-years-ago faded gray sweats, frayed at the hem, baggy, worn paper thin, procured at college where you either wore sweatpants or were naked and having sex.

      Two months ago in November, before Thanksgiving, it snowed. Ice cotton fell out of the sky, ruining all her plans for a bike ride, a walk, a stroll to the store. The winter coats were still deep in the attic, the gloves, the hats, the winter galoshes far away.

      But the dog was happy. Galloping like an overjoyed beast, Riot held in her teeth one of Emily’s stuffed cats, muddied, blackened, thoroughly mangled.

      Snow in November. Didn’t bode well for the winter ahead in land-locked Summit. That was the one bad thing about living here. Sometimes out of the sky came ice and didn’t stop till late March. New Yorkers were lucky: they were closer to the water. Water tempered everything.

      Oh yes, and when they lived in a walk-up in Hoboken, with two babies, an old car with no muffler and one tiny paycheck, like it didn’t snow? It snowed like they were in the Ninth Circle of Hell. And they had no money. It doesn’t snow only on the well-to-do, Larissa, she muttered to herself, limping to the storage room to get some book boxes. And all things being equal, better to be on a golf course in swank Summit than in a tenement in Hoboken. She used Jared’s tape gun to fix a half-dozen book boxes and then hobbled over to the bookshelves in her master bedroom, her glance toward the windows.

      Larissa pressed her face to the Arctic windowpane, her silent house behind her. Every day some form of freezing rain fell from the sky. Yesterday, warm weather came and turned all to slush, until today, when a freakish gale made it twenty below and a hockey rink. The coiffed blonde chick on the six o’clock news last night forecast that it would feel like forty below. Apparently not good for wet faces. And Larissa’s face every time she went outside was wet, because for some reason when the chill sun caught her eye, she would start to weep.

      The kids had barely got off to school in the morning. That was true for most mornings. By 7:00, Jared was already up and shaved and showering, all hummy and spring-steppy. So cheery. Damn him. Larissa opened the doors to the children’s bedrooms, made some noise to get up, stumbled downstairs, put the cereal bowls out, let Riot out, the dog bounding outside into the cold, full of exuberance for the day ahead. Everyone should be a dog. But Larissa’s kids, usually spectacularly unobservant, grumbled about how glum it was outside, and freezing, and refused to leave their cozy beds. Larissa almost let them stay home. What’s one day? What are they going to miss? The atomic weight of magnesium? The three branches of government? They should СКАЧАТЬ