Emmaline Waters, This Is Your Life Read online

  On that appetizing note, we all—including Dad, who has apparently eaten already—head to the kitchen, where I devour (and Angie picks at) the aforementioned egg dish, which turns out to be even more scrumptious than Dad let on. “Is this a new recipe?” I ask with my mouth full.

  “Actually, it’s an old one,” Mom responds. “From your Grammie Mae. I found a box of her stuff in the storage unit while I was searching for some insurance papers.”

  I raise my fork. “Kudos, Grammie Mae.”

  “Can I have some lemonade?” asks Angie.

  Dad shuffles to the fridge and pours a couple of freshly squeezed glasses, while I quash the urge to intercept him. I mean, if he thinks he’s up to a task, who am I to tell him otherwise?

  I’m halfway through my lemonade when Mom ushers Angie off to the bathroom to “get cleaned up,” as if she’s been wrestling wild boars for the last thirty-plus hours. I seize the opportunity to probe Dad’s medical situation further. “So, when’s your next doctor’s appointment?” I ask, trying to sound casual.

  He settles on a stool beside me. “A week from Thursday, I think. You’d have to ask your mother for sure, though. She’s the bureaucrat in this house.”

  What Dad means is that Mom handles all the pesky paperwork and red tape of life. “Dr. Lucas doesn’t want to see you sooner?” I inquire.

  “Watch your mouth, young lady.” He cracks a smile. “What’re you trying to do, hex me?”

  “Of course not.”

  Like an unexpected gust of wind, Mom’s voice blows into the kitchen. “Emmaline, come here, please!”

  I shoot Dad an inside glance. “Oh-oh. Am I in trouble?”

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I mutter as I move for the hallway. Outside the bathroom, Mom puts a finger to her lips. “What?” I whisper, furrowing my brow. Through the doorway, I glimpse Angie, neck-deep in a foamy bubble bath.

  Mom pulls me by the arm to her side. “We need to have a little powwow.”

  If she only knew. I mean, it’s high time I told someone about Mark Loffel. As far as my parents are concerned, Angie is the product of a drunken tryst (sort of true) between me and a man whose name I can’t remember (a lie that makes me look like a lowlife tramp, but has been an effective cover-up). “Okay . . .” I say. “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, Em,” Mom says, the words coming out like a sigh. She squeezes my arm, and a bunch of Tasmanian devils start whirling around in my stomach.

  “What is it?” I ask again, my eyes already stinging with tears.

  She cranes her neck to check on Angie, who is having a splashing good time with her collection of pink, pinker, and pinkest—including another Barbie figurine?!—tub toys. “Sorry to do this here,” Mom says, gesturing at the bathroom, “but I didn’t want to get your father all riled up.” She pauses, but words escape me. “See, the thing is, we can’t pay for your apartment anymore.” She cringes, as if the news that she and Dad are cutting the financial cord is physically painful—which it could be, for me.

  I am dumbstruck.

  Completely.

  Struck.

  Dumb.

  I mean, it’s not like I expected them to support me forever, but a few months of forewarning would’ve been nice. As far as pay goes, the newspaper job is at the bottom of the barrel. Not that I’m complaining. Everyone has to start somewhere. I just figured I’d have a roof over my head while I was launching my ship into the current. “Um . . .”

  “I’m sorry,” Mom says, frowning. “But our medical expenses are through the roof. We might even have to remortgage the brownstone.”

  This does sound bad. Since Dad’s retired and Mom’s self-employed, I guess their insurance—and mine, since I’ve been piggybacking on them in that realm too—isn’t quite up to snuff. I want to tell her not to worry. That I’ll be fine. But the truth is, without Mom and Dad’s help, I can’t even afford my student loans (they have no idea how much I owe, my college-era spending habits more in line with those of a Rockefeller heiress than Ebenezer Scrooge), much less feed, clothe, and house myself—or Angie, as Mark Loffel’s surprise reappearance has led me to start dreaming about. Under the circumstances, my response is: “Oh.”

  Mom puts on a cheery face. “Not to worry, though. Everything will work out. It always does.” With a chuckle, she adds, “What’s the worst that could happen? We all end up nestled in here, like the good old days?”

  The horror.

  Even though Mom is speaking metaphorically—and my childhood was, by most people’s standards, idyllic—I have no desire to repeat it with my daughter in tow.

  Speaking of Angie . . . “Mom!” she’s suddenly yelling. “Help!”

  My mother and I squeeze through the doorway simultaneously, in response to what turns out to be a Barbie-overboard emergency. Mom looks on proudly—and, if I’m not mistaken, a little nostalgically—as I scoop the doll off the bath mat and return it to Angie’s slippery hands. “Disaster averted,” I say as we hit the hallway again.

  Picking up where we left off, Mom asks, “So, do you think you can manage? We might be able to take care of your cell phone bill—or your Internet connection, maybe—but the rent is out of our reach right now. I hope you understand. Oh, and don’t bring this up with your father. It would shatter him to know how far we’ve fallen.”

  Should I tell her the truth now or wait for cold, hard reality to slap me in the face? “Sure,” I say, trying to channel her optimism. “I think I’ll be all right.” In the back of my mind, I wonder how low I’ll have to sink—specifically, should I get on the phone with Jimmy ASAP and grovel for my old job back?—to cover my financial ass.

  As easy as that, Mom believes me. Or maybe she just doesn’t want to know. “Great,” she says, plucking a towel from the linen closet and pushing the bathroom door open. “Want to help me braid Angie’s hair?”

  Her offer stirs a warm, fuzzy feeling in me that (for the moment, anyway) eclipses the panic squiggling through my nervous system. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  * * *

  In no particular order, my reactions to learning that my life is about to unravel:

  smoking my last eight emergency cigarettes (all in about two hours)

  leaving a number (six or seven, I lost count) of irrational messages on Trent’s cell phone, even though he’s incommunicado, his job having once again taken him out of town—or was it out of the country?—for the weekend

  cleaning the apartment from stem to stern, as the saying goes, with emphasis on spider eradication and readying my room for the inevitable: my soon-to-be departure

  My follow-up to all of the above? Passing out and sleeping for, oh, twenty hours, give or take.

  For some ungodly reason, I awaken to Jung standing over my bed with a concerned look on her face. Now if she talks to me . . .

  “Oh, good, Emily. You’re getting up.”

  Motherfucker. Did she really just call me Emily? I grind my knuckles into my eyes. “Hmm?”

  “There’s been some kind of, uh, mix-up,” Jung’s quivering, disembodied head tells me. “I thought you’d want to know before . . .” The head stops bobbing and comes into focus, revealing Jung’s ashen—and lip-bitingly nervous—face.

  What kind of mix-up could have my roommate rousting me out of bed at the crack of 4 p.m.? “Um . . . huh?”

  In addition to gnawing her lip and adopting the complexion of a corpse, Jung is, I realize disconcertingly, wringing her hands. “I don’t know if anybody . . . But they must have, because it’s in the paper.”

  I spring to a sitting position. “In the paper?” I say in a raspy version—thanks a lot, nicotine!—of my normal voice. “What’s in the paper?” It dawns on me that she might be referring to my article on The Olive Branch, which was set to hit the presses this morning.

  “Oh, well, uh . . . just a . . .” On that illuminating note, she ducks out of my room to—what?—send me an e-mail instead of getting all tangled
up in this face-to-bobble-head communication?

  Or not.

  Almost immediately, she reappears with a swath of newsprint—not the whole sheet, but an expertly snipped section the size of a famous person’s obituary—brandished in her trembling hand. She studies the floor and passes it to me, saying nothing.

  As soon as I lay eyes on the thing, my mind starts shrieking (internally, of course, not out loud like some sort of freakish genetic party trick) at a pitch only dolphins—or seriously panicked women whose apology letters to their babies’ daddies have been printed in a major newspaper—can hear.

  “Can I do anything?” Jung asks as I continue to stare bug eyed and slack jawed—I mean, they printed my phone number in the fucking newspaper?!—at what must be some sort of sick joke Sharon “Bitch Face” Fleming has decided to play on the newbie food critic. If this is the kind of welcome-to-journalism hazing I can expect, I shall collect my toys and exit the playground, posthaste.

  Back to reality, though.

  “Yeah,” I reply, my tone indignant. “You can tell me what the hell you’re doing with all these gorgeous men. I mean, you go however long we’ve been living together without a single date and then bam! You’re a sexual butterfly all of a sudden? How am I supposed to process that?”

  Jung’s private life is none of my business, but since my dirty laundry is splashed from here to Timbuktu, I could use the miserable company. “Pardon me?” she replies, looking confused—or pissed. I can’t tell which, our emotional connection a casualty of our standoffishness.

  “Forget it,” I say, shaking my head. “Don’t mind me. I’m just a little . . .” There’s no good way to describe the mixture of horror, relief, and embarrassment I’m feeling, so I don’t bother. Instead, I brush past her for the bathroom. “Thanks for trying to help, though. It really was nice of you.”

  Chapter 15

  I slam the Green Goblin to a stop—literally—crunching the bumper of the flaming-red BMW that is once again parked in front of the newspaper building. Cue the Armageddon response: alarm bells, flashing lights, strangers rushing out of their offices to gawk at my misfortune.

  One such cubicle deserter is Lawrence Wasserstein, the greasy receptionist from The Times, whom I ought to be referring to as Larry by now. Or even Lar. Hey there, Lar, I should be saying as he strides across the sidewalk in my direction, his face flushed and—is my imagination working overtime here?—steam billowing out of his ears like in a Saturday-morning cartoon?

  He pulls up short beside the Green Goblin, which I’ve reluctantly exited amid the cacophony, and shouts, “What the hell are you doing?!”

  I step around him. “Call me when the cops get here. I need to discuss something with Ms. Fleming.”

  His jaw drops. “You’d better see Mitch”—he gestures at the newspaper building—“before he finds out about this.”

  “What business is it of his?”

  “Um, duh,” he says with a cluck. “You hit his car.”

  It figures. Not that I care, really. No job is worth the trial-by-fire initiation my she-devil editor has cooked up for me. “If you ask me,” I say, “I did Mitch Heywood a favor.”

  I leave Larry circling the boss man’s car and zoom for Sharon Fleming’s office with one thing—and one thing only—in mind: revenge. I mean, if my life has begun an inexorable spiral toward homelessness, joblessness, and complete and utter pariahdom, I might as well get a few digs in on my way down.

  With Larry still outside, the reception area of The Times is empty, the multiline phone ringing with impunity. I can’t help laughing as I breeze by—hell, it’s not my job to answer!—and march straight for Sharon Fleming’s hoity-toity office. “Ahem,” I say from the doorway, to alert the devil-woman—who, for the record, is busy painting her nails instead of attending to the editorial duties for which The Times compensates her handsomely—to my presence.

  She pretends not to hear me.

  Which leaves me no choice but to storm right up to her desk. “Excuse me,” I say, my voice vibrating with rage, “but we need to talk.”

  You’d think my tone would’ve stopped her polishing midfingernail, but you’d be wrong. Without looking up—and with irritation in her voice—she responds, “Whatever you want, it’ll have to go through Mitch. You’re his”—she clearly wants to say “problem” here, but catches herself—“subordinate from now on.”

  “Mitch Heywood isn’t the one who sabotaged my article and printed a personal letter in the newspaper for the whole world to see. So I’d like . . . no, I demand—I DEMAND!!!—an apology. From you.” There. I’ve put my cards on the table. So why do I feel like a saber-toothed tiger is nipping at my ass?

  Her face lifts. “You’re accusing me of . . . ? You think I’d bother to . . . ?” She laughs sardonically. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’ve got more pressing things to attend to than backstabbing and petty office politics.” She blows on her freshly manicured nails and flashes me a mouthful of glistening teeth. “Is that all?”

  “What did you think of my review?” I ask, hoping to bait her into an argument, my anger still roiling.

  “It was adequate,” she says in a monotone, “for a first attempt.”

  On second thought, it’s hard to argue with an opinion. And “adequate” might be high praise on Sharon Fleming’s perpetually-dissatisfied-bitch scale. “Oh. Glad to hear it.”

  We lock eyes for a moment, me with my indignantly puckered eyebrows and haughty hand on my hip, her with that icy stare and unflappable confidence. “That letter was tragic, by the way,” she mews. “I felt a little sorry for you.”

  My jaw must be grazing the floor. “Excuse me?”

  The shoulders of her military-style blazer drift upward. “All that stuff about your daughter?” She grimaces. “Who wouldn’t feel a twinge of sympathy?”

  “I don’t need anyone’s pity, thank you very much.” I huff. “My daughter and I are just fine.”

  Her lips purse. “If you say so.”

  “Well, I do.” Case closed. The fat lady may sing.

  At my back, she says, “You know, you really should be thanking me.”

  I shake my head. “How so?”

  The wheels of her office chair screech as she rises. Before I know it, she’s beside me. “Printing that letter was a mistake,” she claims in a whisper. “But the publicity this story is going to get—is already getting—is a goldmine. Bill Gates couldn’t buy that kind of attention.”

  I’m pretty sure Mr. Gates can buy anything (and everything) he damn well pleases, but whatever. “What kind of attention?” I ask, imagining the nutjob e-mails that must be flooding my inbox as we speak.

  She shrugs. “You’d better talk to Mitch.”

  “Good idea,” I respond with a chipper smile. Before I have the sense to reconsider, I zip out the door.

  * * *

  “You. Are. Brilliant,” Mitch Heywood’s voice booms down the hallway, paving the way for his Paul Bunyan-esque frame. “I knew I hired you for a reason.”

  Is he talking to me? I look over my shoulder, in case the real object of his affection is rolling up behind me.

  Negativo. It’s just me and the Mitchmeister. “Um, hi,” I respond warily.

  He claps a meaty paw over my arm, his other hand swinging a rolled-up newspaper at my face. “You know, you could’ve told me you’re a marketing genius. I wouldn’t’ve held it against you.” He clutches the newspaper to his chest. “I swear.”

  A nervous smile takes over my face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “C’mon, Waters,” he says, smirking. “This kind of headline-grabbing shit doesn’t just happen.”

  In my universe, apparently it does. “Honestly, that was a mistake. I don’t even know how . . . I mean, I sent the right copy; I know I did.”

  He steers me by the shoulder to his office, where, instead of intimidating me from behind that beastly desk, he saunters to the windows and waves me over.

  “
That’s okay,” I say, balking at the idea of overlooking the street, a.k.a. the scene of the crime I’ve just committed against his luxury automobile.

  His arm churns the air like a propeller. “Come here, Waters,” he insists. “I want to show you something.”

  My feet refuse to move. “I can see from here,” I say (a complete and utter lie), getting on my tiptoes to convince him.

  “Is something wrong with you?”

  Isn’t it obvious? “Um . . .” I begin, planning to launch some preemptive damage control by confessing to smashing the Beemer, then throwing myself on his mercy while he still holds me in high regard.

  But then . . .

  Good ol’ Larry bursts in on us, shooting me a smug glare before sidling up to Mitch. He cups his hand to Mitch’s ear and, presumably, ends my journalism career just as it was getting started.

  I should slink out of here now and save Mitch the trouble of disemboweling me. I mean, my innards would definitely clash with the mellow tones of this oriental carpet.

  Mitch cranes his neck and peers over the street, his face twisting with an incredulous scowl; meanwhile, Larry’s self-satisfied gaze molests me. “Waters, get over here,” Mitch orders, in a tone that makes disembowelment seem like a spin on the Coney Island Ferris wheel.

  Again, my feet refuse him.

  No matter. Soon he’s closing the gap between us. I hunker down in the nearest armchair to endure the shit storm of cursing headed my way.

  Larry winks—WINKS!!!—as he lopes for the door, his job as stool pigeon complete. As his baby-blue polyester slacks swish over the threshold, I get the urge to throw my arms around his legs and either 1) hitch a ride to freedom or 2) take him down with me.

  Out of nowhere, Mitch thrusts a cell phone at my face. “Think fast,” he says, laughing.

  My hand betrays me by popping up and putting the device to my ear. “Hello?” I say, before realizing Mitch has dialed someone’s number and, instead of talking, I should be listening to the ringing that is counting down the seconds of my employment at The Times.