A Clean Slate Page 2

  I froze. Something was wrong. Really, really wrong. But somehow my eternal optimism (or maybe my eternal stupidity) kept insisting there was a logical reason for all of this—something I would laugh about later.

  I couldn’t laugh now, though, couldn’t even manage a smile, just a simple question laden with trepidation. “Is Ben home?”

  “Kelly?” the woman said, clearly irritated.

  “Yes?”

  “Jesus. Not again.” A fizz of static, and then the intercom went silent.

  I stood chewing on my bottom lip once more, debating what to do—piss off this woman in Ben’s apartment by hitting the buzzer again or break in and kick her ass. After about fifteen seconds, someone appeared behind the glass door. I squinted and made out Ben’s small, lean frame, his rock-hard legs in blue jogging shorts. Raising my hand, I gave a half wave, then let it fall.

  Ben opened the door, but he didn’t invite me in or even come out on the front stoop with me. He just sighed, holding the door open with one arm, shoving his other hand through his damp brown hair. He’d obviously just come back from running. He had that pink flush to his cheeks.

  “Kell, you’ve got to cut this out.”

  I tried to get my mind around his statement. I forced myself not to rush inside and hug him. “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. Stopping by like this, calling at all hours. She wants me to get a restraining order.”

  “Who?”

  A chest-heaving exhalation. “We’ve had this conversation. Don’t make me go through it again. I love you. I always will.”

  Just like you’ll always love Toni, I thought.

  “But I’m with Therese now,” he continued, “and you have to accept that.”

  I put my head in my hands and rubbed at my temples. Another possibility came to mind—this was all an elaborate hoax. Laney would jump out from behind Ben at any minute and scream, “We got you!” The problem was Laney would never be that cruel, nor would Ben. He may not have been the most romantic guy, but he was always kind.

  “C’mere, Kell.” Ben stepped out and let the door close behind him. He grabbed me in a hug, just as I hoped he would. I could smell the clean, outdoor scent of his sweat and feel the muscles of his back beneath the long-sleeved T-shirt.

  “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t understand anything.” I squeezed him tight, hoping that this gesture would make it all go away, this whole horrible day, but too soon the embrace was over. He let me go, and I felt the cool air swirl around me again.

  “I know it’s been rough, but you’ll get through this. You always do.” He pushed his hair off his face and gave me a smile I recognized—the one he saved for his grandmother or the restaurant managers he would cajole into giving us a table.

  I opened my mouth to tell him what had happened this morning, how I suddenly couldn’t make sense of anything in my life, but he gave me that patronizing grin again.

  “You’re tough.” He punched me lightly on the arm like we were buddies, like we hadn’t been lovers for four years, like we weren’t supposed to be engaged soon.

  “Ben,” I said, trying to ignore his patent condescension, “something’s going on that I don’t understand. I don’t remember all sorts of things. I don’t remember us breaking up. I—”

  “Kell, I just can’t do this again. I can’t rehash the whole thing over and over, okay?” He cupped my cheek for a second, the way you would a child who had food on his face.

  I pulled my head away. “No, you don’t get it.”

  “I do. I get that you’re going to make it through this. You’re going to be okay.” He spoke these last words in a soft, hang-in-there-kid kind of way that infuriated me.

  I glanced down at a spot on the sidewalk that looked strangely like old blood, then back up at his pitying eyes. “You’re absolutely right. I’m going to be fine. Fantastic even.”

  “There you go,” Ben said in what was probably the smuggest tone I’d ever heard. “That’s the ticket.”

  Yeah, that’s the ticket all right, I thought. The ticket out of here. I didn’t have a clue what was going on, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me fall apart.

  “I’ll see you around.” I tried to sound flip, like I didn’t care, but I could feel the tears welling in my eyes. “See you,” I said again, then turned away.

  As I walked up the street, my head down, my hands in my pockets, I could hear Ben buzzing his apartment, and the woman’s voice say over the intercom, “Ben, is that you?”

  “It’s me, hon. Let me up.”

  I stopped at Chuck’s, the first bar I found. Inside, it was dark, with at least five different football games blaring from at least ten different TVs. The tables were full of people cheering and screaming, baskets of fries and pitchers of beer in front of them. I slipped onto a stool at the bar.

  “What can I get you?” the bartender asked me. He leaned forward and dried a spot of water on the wood with a quick flick of his towel.

  “Beer.”

  “Okay. Well, we have twenty-three different labels, so what kind do you want?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” I usually drank margaritas, but it seemed too festive a drink.

  The bartender stood there for a long minute, staring at me, before he moved toward a silver tapper and picked up a glass.

  What was happening to me? What had happened to my town house, to my relationship with Ben? I wished desperately that I could rewind the day back to that moment at the dry cleaners when I was being pissy about losing a pair of black pants and the fact that my job wasn’t so great. If I could just go back, I would truly realize how lucky I was right at that moment. I would appreciate it somehow.

  But my mind kept skidding away from the dry cleaners and rushing through the rest of the day. Why hadn’t I known that my place had been sold, that Ben and I had broken up?

  The bartender pushed a glass of amber beer in front of me without a word. I took a sip, and I made myself review what I did know about myself. Name: Kelly McGraw. That was correct, wasn’t it? Beth Maninsky seemed to know that Kelly McGraw used to live in her house, and Ben had called me Kell, so that had to be right.

  What else? Parents: Sylvie and Ken McGraw, who’d had me while they were married for a very brief period and living in Fort Myers, Florida. My father was a complete shit who took off a year after my birth, and my mom reverted to her maiden name, Sylvie Custer, even though she hated it. It was too close to custard, she always said, and made her sound like some sort of pudding.

  Childhood: my mom worked her way from being a secretary at a TV station to a production assistant there, and a few years after that, she married Danny Rosati, a local crime boss who was the subject of an exposé she’d helped put together. Danny wasn’t much of a dad to me. He always treated me more like a pet, patting me on the head and giving me treats when I was good. He did give me my first camera, though, and for that I’d always be grateful. My mom gave birth to my half-sister when I was six. She was named Delores after Danny’s mom, but except for Danny, everyone called her Dee. Dee was always a frail kid, but she had the greatest toothy smile and the loudest laugh you’d ever heard.

  After my mom divorced Danny, we moved to Atlanta so she could work for a better TV station, and we stayed there until after my freshman year in high school, when we moved to Chicago. I joined the yearbook staff at my new school because at least I could take pictures, even if they were of people I didn’t know—and that was where I met Laney. We’d been best friends ever since. We went to different colleges but visited each other constantly and shot up our phone bills. After we graduated, we got an apartment together in Lakeview and shared it until a few years ago.

  Laney is the most energetic person I’ve ever met. Sometimes she’ll call me at eight in the morning, before she leaves for her account exec job at a marketing firm, and she’ll tell me that she’s already done her laundry, given herself a leg wax and taken a kick-boxing class at the gym. Laney was the
person, other than Ben, who’d saved me when Dee died last year in a car accident. My mom and I couldn’t comfort each other; we reminded each other too much of Dee. My mom left Chicago—fled really—for L.A. last April to take a job with an entertainment news show, and Laney and Ben became my only family in town.

  What happened after April? I tried to think about stocks I’d researched at work, weekend trips I’d taken, street fairs I’d gone to over the summer. Nothing. I couldn’t remember anything from May up to now, the beginning of October, a span of five or so months.

  I took a gulp of my beer, hoping it would help, maybe induce some kind of alcoholic flashback. Nothing again. I had to talk to someone about this. Ben was out. Laney was my only support now, and she was in Palm Beach. Or was she?

  I sat up straighter on the stool and pushed my beer away, trying to concentrate. Laney had gone to a marketing conference in Palm Beach for a week. But was that this week? I’d been wrong about so many things today.

  I threw five dollars on the bar and took off for the pay phone. As I pushed my way toward the rest rooms, I noticed that everyone else in the place seemed to be having a fantastic time. People were slapping high fives when touchdowns were scored, pouring beer for their friends, throwing their heads back and laughing at stories from the night before. I’d had days like this, spent watching football and drinking in a smoky bar when it was bright daylight outside. Those times had always seemed simple, uncomplicated, and yet while they were happening I’d be drifting off about whether I’d make partner, whether I should ask Ben to move in with me. Once again, I wished I could hit Rewind and just enjoy that time, instead of letting my mind take me somewhere else.

  Luckily, there was a pay phone in the women’s bathroom, so the noise was dimmed. I dialed Laney’s number, thinking that even if her voice mail answered I could talk and talk, and she would pick it up eventually. Sometimes, when we got busy, Laney and I communicated solely by voice mail. We knew each other so well that we didn’t have to be on the phone to feel like we were talking to each other.

  I was starting to think of how I would phrase it, this strange, scary day, when I heard the chipper tones of Laney’s hello.

  “Oh, God, you’re home.” I was so relieved that I actually leaned my head on the dirty phone box. “You’re not in Palm Beach.”

  “Palm Beach? That was months ago.”

  A chilly feeling passed through me. “Lane, something’s wrong.”

  “I know, sweetie. Now hold on for a second, so I can sit down.” I heard Laney closing her refrigerator and, a moment later, her slight exhalation as she sat on the couch. “Okay. Shoot.”

  How did she know something was wrong with me? “Well, uh, for starters, apparently Ben and I aren’t dating anymore.”

  “Apparently? Honey, he dumped you months ago, and you’ve got to move on. Really. He’s just not worth this moping around.”

  “Months ago?” My voice came out tiny and scared.

  “On your fucking birthday, remember?”

  A group of women came into the bathroom, giggling and shoving past me.

  I ducked my head and cupped my hand around the receiver. “That’s just it. I can’t remember.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Chuck’s.”

  “The bar by Ben’s place?” Her voice went a little high. “You didn’t go to his apartment again, did you? Kell, you’ve got to—”

  “Laney, listen to me. I don’t remember.” I enunciated my words. “I don’t remember selling my town house. I don’t remember Ben breaking up with me. I can’t seem to remember anything about the last five months.”

  A small silence. “Are you kidding?”

  “Why would I kid about that?” My voice got loud and one of the women swung around, raising her perfectly arched eyebrows at me. I ducked my head again. “I need your help. I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “Whoa. Okay, look, I’ll jump in my car and be there in ten minutes. Wait for me outside.”

  Laney’s light blue, beat-up Mustang convertible screeched to a stop in front of Chuck’s. Before I could take two steps, she’d jumped out and was running around the side of the car. Her dark brown hair was in its usual perfectly messed style with a swoop of bangs over one eye. She wore a black miniskirt, black knee-high boots and a fuzzy orange cashmere sweater.

  She gave me a quick hug, then pulled back and held me at arm’s length. “You okay?”

  “Not really,” I said, but then I couldn’t help smiling. Laney did that to me. Just being around her made me feel better.

  “What are you grinning at, girl? You’ve totally freaked me out. Get in the car.” She gave me a pat on the ass and opened the passenger door.

  “So what’s going on here?” she said when she’d taken the driver’s seat.

  “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “First things first.” She lifted a cardboard coffee carrier, two white cups from Starbucks tucked inside, steam seeping from the openings in the top. “You sounded like you hadn’t gotten your fix yet.”

  “Oh!” I said. “White chocolate mocha?”

  She nodded.

  “Nonfat?”

  “Of course.”

  “I love you.” I took a sip, the warm, creamy concoction sweet on my tongue.

  I know that lots of people hate Starbucks. They complain that these little green-and-white stores are the devil’s work, the corporatization of the coffee world, but I just don’t care. I’ve tried the others, the mom-and-pop coffee shops, the trendy little tea places, and nobody—and I mean nobody—makes anything close to my white chocolate mocha. It’s comfort in a cup.

  Laney squeezed my hand, then put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb. “All right, tell me what happened today.”

  I went through the whole thing—the dry cleaners, my town house, Beth Maninsky, and finally my talk with Ben. As I spoke I stared at the hula girl that was stuck to Laney’s dashboard, the one that made swivels of her hips each time the car bumped or turned. For some reason, the movement of the girl’s tiny hips soothed me. Laney had owned the hula girl since high school, and it had been on the dash of every car she’d had since. It was a permanent fixture, something I could recognize.

  “Kell, I don’t get this,” Laney said. “Your memory was fine last week.”

  “Was it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Silence filled the car.

  “Jesus,” Laney said. “Are you telling me that you really can’t remember anything about the last five months?”

  “Nada.”

  She stared intently at the road. “What do you remember about your birthday?”

  May 3. May 3. May 3. I chanted the date in my head as if it might conjure up some images, but I could only remember my thoughts about my birthday in the weeks leading up to it. I’d been expecting Ben to propose on that date. I’d told him in February, a few weeks after Dee died, that I wanted to get married, that I wanted to be engaged by my birthday, and Ben had indicated he wanted the same thing. So as that day drew near, I made sure to have my nails done to perfection. I’d shaved and plucked nearly every stray hair on my body. I’d even bought a new black dress to wear to dinner. But the actual day of my birthday? I couldn’t recall a thing, and I told Laney as much.

  “Oh, boy.” She sighed.

  “What? What happened?”

  She gave me a sidelong glance. “Maybe we shouldn’t go there just yet. You should sleep, you know, then see how you feel.”

  “Other than scared shitless, I feel fine. Tell me.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Laney!”

  “Are you sure?” she said. “Do you really want to hear it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay, well, I told you Ben dumped you that night.”

  I felt my mouth form a tight line. “Yes, so you said.”

  “He’s a complete shit. Absolutely no sense of timing. But that’s not the only thing that happened.”

&nb
sp; “What,” I said, “is the other thing that happened?”

  Laney stopped at a light and gave me a look. “I hate to be the one to tell you this.”

  My stomach twisted. “Just get it out.”

  “Bartley Brothers laid you off.” She squeezed my hand. Someone honked behind us, and Laney gave the driver the finger before pulling into the intersection.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “Tell me that you are kidding.”

  Laney shook her head. “Sorry, hon.”

  “They fired me?”

  “No, no. You got laid off. Major difference.”

  “How so?”

  “They gave you nine months’ severance pay.”

  My mouth snapped shut for a moment. I didn’t know what to think about that. On one hand, I’d worked my ass off at that place, praying that it would pay off one day, that I’d be a partner eventually. To have that all washed down the toilet was maddening. But on the flip side, I’d been bordering on miserable there for the last few years, and I’d always secretly wanted to be one of those people who got axed with a golden parachute.

  Then the effect of what Laney was saying hit me. “Are you telling me that I got laid off on my thirtieth birthday?”

  “’Fraid so, sweetie.”

  “And Ben broke up with me?”

  “Pretty much.”

  A few seconds went by. The hula girl’s hips swirled and swayed as Laney turned a corner. “That,” I said finally, “has got to be the worst goddamned birthday on the planet.”

  The car was quiet for a minute, but pretty soon, a short, reluctant chuckle came out of my mouth. “It would almost be funny if it wasn’t so sad,” I said.

  “Right. Under different circumstances.”

  Another half chuckle, a sort of shocked cough, escaped me, and Laney followed with one of her own. And then I couldn’t help it—I did it again. A few seconds later we were both giggling, slowly and stupidly at first, until the sound caught a rhythm that rolled and grew louder, and soon our laughter filled the car. It felt like the first time I’d laughed in forever.

  I was wiping my eyes, trying to get myself under control, when I noticed that Laney had stopped in a circular drive of one of the Lake Shore Drive high-rises near Addison.