Nathan Palm misses both his wife’s voice and her breasts. He has to admit that.
He can’t call his wife so he calls Denise, an old friend. He has known Denise (or rather Denise has known him) since he was a baby. Their mothers liked to drink white wine, smoke cigarettes, and listen to classical records together in the afternoons, and he and Denise would play. She was older by two years, and Nathan remembers that Denise always acted uninterested in him but never left his side. More often than not, they didn’t talk but played quiet games. The games changed according to age, and when Nathan turned fifteen, the game became sexual. At sixteen, their mothers had a falling-out (Nathan believes there was an infidelity somewhere), but he and Denise kept in touch. Denise is his oldest friend.
“I think my wife left me,” he says over the phone.
“You think? Did she take the kids?”
“No. She told them she was visiting her friend Shelley in the Hudson Valley.”
“So?”
“So Shelley doesn’t know anything about it. And she hasn’t shown up there. And it’s weird. It’s fucking weird. Marion took the kids out of school and left them in a CVS on Montague.”
As he tells his story, the story becomes a story and not something that happened. He is aware of choosing the correct details and leaving certain ones out, to best illustrate his point in the shortest amount of time. He does this for everyone, and he supposes that his honed details might be what people like about him. For Denise, however, the abandonment story might not work. Denise considers the workings of upper-middle-class marriages hopelessly boring, and while she appreciates details, they have never impressed her.
“Denise, I don’t know what to do.”
“What do you think happened?”
“I think Marion left me.”
Denise pauses, then: “What did you do?”
“Nothing. Nothing.”
“That’s probably not true.”
There is a woman in Dumbo that lately I sometimes sleep with. And I may have told my wife. This is what Nathan thinks. But he asks, “Do you think Marion is unhappy?”
Denise doesn’t answer. If she answered, she would say, If I were Marion, I would be unhappy. She’s expressed this sentiment before.
“Would you come over?” Nathan asks, aware of the tightness in his chest and that if someone isn’t in the house with him soon, he may lose it. He cannot ask the woman in Dumbo. He can never see her again. Besides, she’d say no.
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
Denise says she will come in an hour.
When Nathan Palm hangs up the phone, he does not feel better, as he expected he would. He feels that something needs to be discussed, and that he has done something wrong. He has made another misstep; he is sure of that.
Up Front
The Days Inn is predictably depressing. When Marion pulls open the glass door, a young woman exits, and Marion wonders if the young woman is a prostitute. She chastises herself: she is guiltier and more illegal than the prostitute.
She books a room for two nights and asks boldly if she can pay in cash. The man behind the desk doesn’t care, just barks, “Up front.” Marion kneels down to the knapsack and opens the zipper three inches. It is the first time she has dared to open the knapsack, and she wishes she didn’t have to. She fishes out five $20 bills. It takes a long time, and the man behind the desk grows impatient. She snaps at the man, says she will be one more minute, okay?
Straightening up, she gives the man behind the desk the money, and they glare at each other. He hands her a room key and her change, briefly explains the complimentary breakfast buffet, and gestures to the elevators.
When Marion opens the door of her hotel room and sees the bed, she cries in relief and for her children and for herself, and as she cries, she tucks herself in. Under the comforter and sheets, she takes off her shoes, her pants, her shirt, her bra, her underpants. She’s naked with her clothes in a bundle beside her. She holds one of her breasts and goes quickly to sleep.
Board of Trustees
Daniel, during a mild panic attack in the third hour of his first working day without Marion, sends an email to every employee of the school. The email includes a casual yet thorough transcription of Daniel’s conversation with Nathan. He explains that Nathan used the word missing to describe Marion, but this must be metaphorical or ironic, because how does a woman from Carroll Gardens go missing in this day and age? Daniel asks this, but then writes, Of course, I may be wrong. Perhaps women do go missing. Perhaps this is my privilege speaking, but we also need to address the fact that Marion has been crucial to Deb, just crucial, and that she’s left behind a gaping hole of functionality and competence, not that Deb isn’t crucial or competent, but what with her absences and numerous doctor appointments and light sensitivity, it’s really Marion who would have been helpful in an auditing-type situation. Which is what we are facing now. Today. Not that Deb isn’t helpful. Also, has anyone noticed that the petty cash fund is curiously low?
After several reply-alls, which briefly crash the school email server, Daniel receives a text message from Anna Fisher, a member of the board of trustees, inviting Daniel to the founders’ conference room later that same day. Daniel is briefly thrilled at the prospect of a one-on-one with such a powerful figure. It is well documented by the staff that Anna Fisher has been essential to the refinement of the school’s brand. In fact, she may have been the first person to use the word brand, and the school is grateful for her contemporary forward thinking. However, Anna’s subsequent texts make it clear that Daniel will be facing the whole board. Also, she adds in the next bubble, if he is to send any emails in the future, they need to be approved by her first.
Even Daniel is able to surmise that this will not be a good meeting for him, so he is early for the meeting as a gesture of his repentance, and is able to help set up the coffee and bagels with the food-services staff.
A group of pleasant-looking people enter the room, all late but with excellent excuses. Anna is the latest. After pulling off a knit hat and dragging her fingers through her soft blond hair, she leans forward and asks Daniel to summarize his email in a few short words. Daniel speaks until Anna leans forward even farther to interrupt him.
Then you don’t know where Marion is?
No, not per se.
And Marion has been filing the school’s quarterly tax returns for the past five years.
Well, it has been a group effort, but one that Marion primarily handled. Led.
And there have been accounting discrepancies?
I’m not sure if I’m qualified to call them that, but there do seem to be some…well, irregularities, maybe.
Thank you. Have you had a bagel?