Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [55]
“So I take it the boyfriend problems have been resolved,” Gene asks, nearly blinded by the glare from my beaming grin.
“You can take that correctly,” I say, bending over to smell the literal roses.
“Well, that’s good news,” he says. “Because I didn’t want to say it back then, but I can say it now. Ex-boyfriends are always trouble.”
“Not always,” I answer. “Just most of the time.”
“Always,” he says firmly. “Always since the beginning of time. Don’t go thinking otherwise.”
“I wasn’t,” I say, as Gene heads out the door with a perfunctory glance. Until I realize that I was thinking that exactly, but that indeed ex-boyfriends are always trouble, and a wave of gratefulness passes over me, as I recognize how closely I’d been tiptoeing to throwing it all away. And now, with Jack present and accounted for, how I wouldn’t have to think of Henry again. Trouble he was, and trouble he would be no longer.
“CONSIDER YOUR CRISIS solved,” I say, walking into Josie’s office.
She holds up a finger and mouths “hang on,” while pressing the phone into her ear, so I busy myself perusing her bookcases, which are sunken down with shiny plaques of industry awards and dozens of books on marketing, branding, and consumerism.
Josie’s isn’t quite a corner office but more of a junior suite. She was the most recent partner, and this was the only space they had left. Unlike my own office, which resembles the shambles of undetermined wreckages, Josie’s is angular, tidy, and virtually spotless. I run my hand over her pine shelving and wonder if she stays late, just to make sure that everything is in its place as it should be, rather than heading home to her kids. But then I remember my own life, my own old life, where my house was the embodiment of perfection, as if starched linens and bursting, bright flower beds somehow symbolized a robust soul, and it creeps over me that Josie and I might share more than just a knack for advertising.
“I’m sorry,” she says, setting the phone back in its cradle. “Art.” She shakes her head, and I’m unsure if she’s referring to a problem with the art for the Coke campaign or to her husband. She runs her hands over her face and smooths her fingers over her eyebrows and exhales. “He’s been offered a full-time position in San Jose.”
“Oh . . . that’s great” is all I can think to say, though she doesn’t seem to hear me.
“So what? So what now?” she says, and I realize that, in fact, she hasn’t heard me. “Am I supposed to resign from this fucking job so that Art can be the full-time art director of the San Jose fucking Opera? Are you kidding me?”
“I . . .”
“No, seriously, I mean, do I sound like a horrible wife? That my husband has finally gotten a permanent job, after, I don’t know, two goddamn decades, and I’m not even happy about it?”
“I don’t know, Josie,” I say softly. “But I’m pretty sure that doesn’t make you a horrible wife.”
“I don’t know, either,” she sighs. “I’ve sacrificed so much for my family, and now, after years of working my ass off so my kids wouldn’t have to worry or so that we could send them to college without scraping by, he lands this, and it’s like, ‘Well, thank you very much, I appreciate you putting in your time, but now I can handle it, so pack up and move to San Jose!’ ” Her voice singsongs. “San fucking Jose!”
I think of Henry and my pangs of isolation—how he whisked me off to the suburbs without much of a second thought to what I might be leaving behind, how he prodded me to reacquaint myself with my mother without considering the reasons why I just fucking couldn’t—and it’s easy to understand Josie’s crest of resentment.
“But enough about my problems,” Jo says, with a wave of her hand. “Which crisis is it that