“Look, I don’t know what is going on with you these days, but your head is not in the game. And not that it’s my business, really, but as a friend I have to tell you that I hear your approval rating around here is at an all-time low. I mean, you were never Miss Popularity, but it’s worse than ever.”
“Well, I’m a little preoccupied, but I wouldn’t say I am loathed, exactly,” said Betsy, taking a swig of her latte with what seemed, immediately, like too much panache.
“Hmm, actually, I might. I might almost say loathed. If you’re not going to do your job, trust me, there are a dozen people here who will. This isn’t France, Betsy. You’re not grandfathered into permanent semiretirement just because you’ve worked here for nineteen years,” said Jessica. She folded her arms, which were toned from boxing and Pilates and, Betsy often chuckled to herself, pushing away all of that food, across her chest. “I’m just worried you’re closing yourself off from the world. Name one actual friend you have in the building, now that I’m gone.”
“Nina!” said Betsy. She could see from the corner of her eye that Nina was leaning far forward on her desk trying to hide behind the half wall of her cubicle.
“That doesn’t count. You’re her boss. She has to pretend to like you.”
“Oh, then I guess your former assistants didn’t get that memo, as they say. A couple of years ago, I was grabbing a yogurt out of the fridge one day and I heard one of them say that she was going to take the new Paul Smith shirts you made her order for your husband and have the letters ATM monogrammed on the pocket! That doesn’t sound like something a ‘friend’ would say, does it?”
“Which assistant was it? Alexandra or Sam?”
“Oh, please, why does that matter? They don’t even work for you anymore. What are you going to do, have them fired? I was just saying that to . . .”
“Absolutely. I can make one phone call and have them fired by someone else. And by the way, if the assistants find out that you were the one who shared that little story, that wouldn’t be the fast track to likability and redemption around here.”
“Whoa. Is that a threat?” Betsy asked. “Fine, Jessica, you’re right. I have no friends. I have no friends because . . .”
“Because why? What is wrong, Betsy? All these years and sometimes I feel like I hardly know you.”
Betsy sighed. “Jessica, the truth is I am a terrible, terrible friend.”
Jessica, for once, was speechless.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do. I don’t want to slip even further out of the game, right? Miss the second half? Insert your favorite sports metaphor here.”
Betsy stood up to emphasize her point. She watched Jessica walk out of the door and down the hall, listening to the hollow knocking footsteps of her platforms get softer as she strode away. She glanced back at the sticky note again.
“The last thing I need is to go to a reunion,” she said to no one in particular, suddenly mystified, remembering her bitter fights with Caroline, the ruthlessness of her sorority. “It’s like I never left.”
“Have you got a reunion coming up?” asked Nina, desperate to change the subject, as she picked through her garbage to see if she could salvage the remains of her breakfast. “Man, those are tough. But you don’t have anything to worry about. I swear, Liz, from some angles you don’t look a day over thirty-seven.”
CHAPTER 22
KUMQUAT TREE
September 24, 2010
Betsy saw Ginny sitting on the porch, barefoot, in the same beat-up Levi’s she’d had since college. Her hair was shorter now. It grazed the tops of her shoulders and was a duller shade of brown with a few grays sprouting up from the top, coarse as electrical wire. She’d heard voices coming from inside the house. Boys, two of them, ran through the open doorway and into the yard with a wiry, black-and-white terrier trailing behind them. The dog came up to inspect Betsy’s shoes, barking to announce the presence of a stranger.
“Fletch? Is that you?” said Betsy, crouching to scratch the chin of the tiny stray dog Ginny found in high school and gave to Nana Jean. “How are you still around?” When she got closer, she could see the accordion lines around Ginny’s eyes, the same high, angular bone structure, but speckled with a spray of faint age spots the crept up from her cheeks. She was watching the children play and she was laughing, that same, short, sharp laugh, head thrown back, mouth gaping. Catching flies, as always.
“Come here, you little scruff,” she called to the dog, scratching his bony head. Ginny started peeling oranges for the boys’ snack, wiping the juice on her T-shirt.