“Do I know you? You look so familiar.” Mindy squinted at Heather’s name tag.
Heather’s mouth went dry. She didn’t know how Mindy knew her. Heather didn’t go to the games because she worked. She was about to answer, My son is on the baseball team with your son, but she stopped herself. “No, I don’t believe so,” she answered, her tone polite.
“Oh, okay, sorry.” Mindy smiled, blinking.
“My pleasure,” Heather said again, like a CVCC fembot. The other women at the table kept chattering away, paying no attention to the conversation, which, to them, was Mindy talking to The Waitress. She turned to them. “Anyone else need a refill?”
“Uh, no,” said one, without looking up, and the others didn’t reply.
“Thank you.” Heather left, flustered. She didn’t know why she hadn’t told Mindy who she was. Mindy hadn’t demeaned Heather at all, so why had Heather demeaned herself? She didn’t consider herself less than Mindy, so why had she acted that way? Mindy was Winner’s Circle, but what was Heather? Loser’s Circle?
She practically fled the Lafayette Room, heading back toward the bar, and it struck her that the luncheon had just started, but Mindy was the only woman on her second cocktail.
Chapter Six
It was pouring outside, and Susan Sematov stood at her office window, her cell phone to her ear, dismayed to hear her call go to voicemail. Her older son Ryan hadn’t come home last night, and she was worried. He was nineteen, an adult, but that didn’t mean she didn’t worry about him anymore, especially after last year. Her husband, Neil, had passed away after a brutal battle with pancreatic cancer, and Susan, Ryan, and their younger son, Raz, were still reeling. Neil had gone from diagnosis to death in only two months, and Ryan had dropped out of Boston University, where he’d just finished his freshman year.
Susan ended the call and pressed REDIAL to call Ryan again, keeping her face to the window, so it looked as if she was surveying ValleyCo One from her window. Susan was Marketing Manager of ValleyCo, the biggest developer of outlet malls in Central Valley. The ValleyCo One outlet mall also held their corporate headquarters, a three-story brick box designed to coordinate with the brick outlet stores that lay outside her window in a massive concrete square.
Susan’s call to Ryan rang and rang, and she sent up a prayer, asking God to please let him pick up. Her older son had taken his father’s death so hard and felt lost at home. His friends were still at BU and their other colleges, and he was spending all day sleeping on the couch, and at night, going out drinking with God-knows-who.
Susan’s call went to voicemail again, and she hung up, scanning the outlet mall. At the top of the square, its north side, were the Vanity Fair outlets—Maidenform, Olga, Warner’s, Best Form, and Lillyette—which everybody in the office nicknamed BoobTown. To her right on the east side was Lee, Wrangler, Reef, Nautica, and JanSport—naturally nicknamed BallTown. To her left was Pottery Barn, Crate & Barrel, Lenox, and Corningware—or HousePorn. Behind her, out of her view, was Land of Shoes; Easy Spirit, Famous Footwear, Reebok, Bass Factory Outlet, and Gold Toe Factory. Susan had been hired straight out of Penn State as an administrative assistant in the Marketing Department and had worked her way up to running the department by the time ValleyCo Five was in blueprints.
Susan glanced at the clock—1:35. She didn’t want to call the police because she knew Ryan would throw a fit. She didn’t know where Ryan had gone because he’d left the house while she was on a conference call with the West Coast. Presumably he had told his younger brother Raz where he was going, but one work call had led to another, and before Susan knew it, Raz had gone up to bed without telling her where Ryan had gone.
Susan thought it over. The two brothers were thick as thieves, or at least they used to be before Neil had died, but her sons were each reacting to their father’s passing in different ways; Ryan, her mild child, had grown more inward, keeping his grief inside, but Raz, her wild child, had gotten more out of control. Raz had idolized his father, and they were both baseball fanatics.
Susan let her thoughts travel backwards in time, to those memories. Raz and Neil would hit balls in the backyard for hours, and Neil went to every one of Raz’s games, proud to see his son pitch for the Musketeers. Neil’s illness had derailed Raz emotionally, and she had gotten recommendations for therapists, but neither boy would go. She’d started therapy, and the plan was to try to convince them to come with her, but that had yet to come to fruition.
Susan scrolled to the text function, found her last text to Raz, and texted him: Honey, please call when you can. It’s important. Students were allowed to keep their cell phones with them, only with the sound off, and they weren’t permitted to look at them during class. It was a rule more honored in the breach, and Raz and rules were never on good terms.
She slipped the phone back in her blazer pocket and went to her desk, which she kept uncluttered except for her nameplate, a digital clock, a jar of pencils and pens, and family photographs of Neil and the kids. She sat down and scanned the photos, wishing that she were in at least a few of the photographs with Neil, so she could see them over time. They’d met in college, fallen in love, gotten married upon graduation, and been happily married almost every day since then. Susan couldn’t have asked for more. Except now, all she asked for was more.
Her gaze found her favorite photo, the one of Neil hugging Ryan and Raz at Ryan’s graduation from CVHS. They had been so happy then, and even she didn’t believe that they had had such a successful marriage, given their upbringing. She wasn’t perfect, nor was he, but they were imperfect in the same way, a union of two doers who loved nothing so much as checking off boxes on a Things To Do List.
Susan shooed the thoughts away, then checked her phone, but Raz hadn’t texted her back. She texted him again. Honey, please call. Worried about Ryan. She set the phone down, trying not to catastrophize, as her therapist Marcia said. Marcia had taught her to cope by occupying her mind, so Susan tapped the mousepad on her laptop. The screen filled with the red ValleyCo logo, a stylized mall nestled in the V of Valley, a branding decision made before Susan’s time.