BETSY WAS SURE the other parents had heard about her lurking and crying in front of the school. She was so humiliated by Elodie’s admonishing leer out of the window, the way she’d been chastised for stalking the school and had to have Gavin swoop in to save her from herself, that she had decided that going back for a college reunion, a hastily organized gathering around a few of her pledge-sisters’ fortieth birthdays, might not be a terrible idea. Or it might, in fact, be a terrible idea, but it was her only idea. She was surprised that she had even been invited. Betsy pictured the women she went to college with riffling through old photos and memorabilia and thinking, with blurry and faded memories, “I wonder what ever happened to Betsy Young?” Betsy’s memories, on the other hand, were permanently etched, and they stuck to her skin like wax. Going back to Gainesville to reconcile with her past, to see how tiny the buildings looked, how small the town felt, and how hundreds and thousands of students had shuffled sleepily through that campus since she left, might be her only way forward. In the meantime, she repositioned herself on a different stoop, a few doors down and out of Elodie’s sight, set her timer for twenty minutes, and accepted that those tortured moments in front of the school were part of her morning routine until she could sort herself out.
By the time she made it to midtown, an hour late to work, and into the austere white marble lobby, she was fully aware of all of the people she was disappointing. When she breezed past the front counter, past the latest crop of fresh-faced Client Services and Catalogue girls, she envied their youth, their utter lack of real responsibility. The more academic of the specialists liked nothing more than to poke fun at them, wondering what kind of “special” client services they really offered behind closed doors. But Betsy remembered enough about being that age to understand that they had more on their minds than waiting to pounce on the next eligible bachelor to walk through the door. Life was never as simple as it seemed. She caught her own distorted reflection on the polished brass doorframe, which looked as twisted and tortured as she felt.
Betsy remembered how she worried at that age, and how she was always concerned about the type of mother she’d become. Back in college, Teddy had given her his dog-eared copy of Geek Love, the Katherine Dunn book about circus freaks that college kids flocked to in the early 1990s for its combination of gore and commentary about the damage parents inflict on their children in order to better their lives. When one of the characters, a dwarf-like creature, becomes pregnant in the book, she gives up her daughter to be raised by nuns and watches her blossom into adulthood while posing as a strange but kindhearted neighbor. She didn’t want her child to grow up thinking she was a monster, or even the daughter of a monster. At the time, Betsy thought it was pure, twisted fantasy. Now she knew better.
Her potential return to Gainesville, which would be the first time she’d spend more than twenty-four hours away from Remi, was still on her mind when she made it to her corner of the office—not the corner office, just an office near the corner—cutting through a center hall to avoid walking past the regal-looking women in the Jewelry department and the trendy, angular specialists in Asian Contemporary Art, with two nonfat lattes, one for herself and the other for the department assistant, Nina, who thanked her with a woozy smile.
“Rough night?” Betsy asked, marveling at the way last night’s mascara and three hours of sleep could look so perfect on her twenty-five-year-old face. “You were here so late! Did you go out after?”
“Is it that obvious?” Nina asked, without the apology that Betsy would have been compelled to offer back when she was in those shoes. Betsy felt that the twenty-five-year-olds owed a world of debt to the forty-year-olds who made showing up at work reeking of last night’s tequila shots without retribution possible.
“Sadly, no. But I know you,” said Betsy, stashing her bag under her desk, feeling generous, considering that Nina was in early and obviously had been covering for her. “I used to be you,” she mumbled, under her breath.
“Oh, Liz, I should tell you, Jessica came by to see if you might be free for lunch,” Nina said, eyebrows raised. Nina was the only one who called her Liz, and Betsy was weirdly OK with it. At work, officially, she was still dignified, aloof Elizabeth. Jessica had left to start her own highly lucrative business as an art consultant to aesthetically challenged tech entrepreneurs, but she still breezed down the halls like she ran the place.
“Uh-huh,” said Betsy, trying out her best nonplussed expression, turning on her desktop, sorting through the marked-up catalogue copy before her. “What time?”
“She was here to check out the pre-sale. I think she’s buying for a new client or something? I don’t know. She was here about a half hour ago,” said Nina, who straightened up in her chair, shoved the last bite of her bagel into a balled-up napkin, and tossed it into the trash. “And again now. She’s here now.”