What had she done? What was she doing? Why was she here? These were vast questions that had become horribly small and specific to her. It was hard to remember exactly what she had done earlier in the day. It was hard to focus on what she was doing at that moment. It was hard to understand why she was in this windowless, airless closet.
She tried to concentrate on the report on the air quality necessary for new display cases. She pulled a bottle of water from one of her bags, but she could not unscrew the cap. She glanced at a study of formaldehyde in enclosed environments. She wondered if she was breathing formaldehyde in the enclosed environment that was her office.
She leaned back and looked up. There were several missing ceiling tiles near the light, as well as some wires left hanging from a wall socket. She had filled out all the forms for maintenance, but then she’d been told it would take weeks for anyone to get to it. “Volatile Organic Compounds,” she typed, a term for hydrocarbon gases.
When a workman passed she went to the door and hailed him like a cab. He was a lovely man, happy to help her, very sympathetic, even when he had to go and get a ladder. The room had such high ceilings—it was higher than it was wide, higher than it was long. He came back and set up his ladder and fixed everything just like that, one, two, three. He had a daughter in high school. They chatted about the cost of college as he hung her posters.
Then Miss Georgia whisked by the open doorway and, like a character in a cartoon, backed up, demanding to know what was going on. The workman, whose name was Marlon, winked at Joy and slid out the door. Miss Georgia watched him go with a disapproving look, then turned to Joy. “Chop-chop,” she said. “We have work to do.”
“Excuse me?”
Miss Georgia clapped her hands together like a kindergarten teacher. “Chop-chop.”
“Chop-chop?” Joy said, thinking of all the years she had worked to get her master’s degree and then her Ph.D., thinking of her training and all her experience, all the years she had worked at this museum before Miss Georgia even knew how to spell museum. Chop-chop? “I’m sorry, but what is it you think I’m doing if not working?”
It was the slight smirk that appeared on the director’s face that pushed Joy over the edge.
“Why don’t I just stick a broom up my ass and sweep the floor, too?” she said.
Now she lowered her head to the shiny white top of the drawerless desk and did not move for what seemed like a long time. She pictured the director’s face after her outburst: truly shocked. Joy wanted to laugh, but she was too tired. The surface of the table was cool and soothing on her forehead. When she lifted her head, the windowless room spun around her like a merry-go-round and the director seemed to be back in her doorway, a file in her hand.
“I’ve been knocking for quite a while,” Miss Georgia said.
Joy stared at her.
When Joy still did not speak, Miss Georgia added, “Yes. The less said the better.” Miss Georgia held up a hand, traffic-cop-like, then dropped a thick manuscript on Joy’s desk. “Your recommendations for the photographic collection.”
Joy pulled it toward her.
“Because you were ill,” Miss Georgia said, “we decided to help you out.”
Joy started to ask why they thought she needed help on that particular report, which was, after all, finished.
“No, no, don’t thank me,” Miss Georgia interrupted. “Not necessary. We got some excellent outside help on the project.”
“But I—”
“Say no more.” Miss Georgia put her finger to her lips.
Joy flipped through the manuscript, a comprehensive guide to protecting the museum’s photographs in their new location that she’d worked on for months before the move.
“We read your report, of course,” the director said. “But under the circumstances, we felt it would be prudent to hand the project over to outside sources.”
Joy’s bags were even heavier going home. The report was hundreds of pages long. She put it in the red bag and clutched it to her side. When she finally got a cab, the thought of going home to her empty apartment was too grim. She got off at the coffee shop wondering if they would force her to sit at one of the sad little tables against the wall where all the old widows and widowers sat. She wanted a booth. She wanted to be near a window. She was breathing heavily. It was from anger, of course. Unless she was having a heart attack.
“Joy!” a voice cried out when she got inside, and it was Karl.
She hadn’t seen him since before Aaron died. He had been so kind, sending a lovely note on thick creamy stationery. Beautiful old-fashioned fountain-pen handwriting. It had disturbed her, that familiar handwriting from long ago.
“Joy, I’m so sorry about Aaron. I lost a good friend,” he said when his attendant had lurched out of the booth, offered her seat to Joy, and disappeared into the night. When her waffle came, Joy pulled a brown glass bottle out of one of her bags.