Mrs. Fletcher(12)
Eve didn’t cry for long. She’d never liked feeling sorry for herself, and knew there were worse fates to endure than three sunny days with nothing in particular to do. She thought of George Rafferty, with his dying wife and brain-addled father, and knew that he would have traded places with her in a heartbeat.
Enough of this bullshit, she told herself. You have nothing to cry about.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t quite pulled herself together when Amanda Olney, the Center’s newest employee, opened the door and poked her head into the office.
“Quick question,” she began, and then froze, taking a moment to register the dimness of the room and her boss’s forlorn posture. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Eve sniffled, dabbing at her nose with a crumpled tissue. “Allergy season.”
Amanda opened the door a little wider. She was short and buxom, with Cleopatra bangs and multiple lurid tattoos that she made no effort to conceal, despite the disparaging comments and disgusted head shakes they never failed to elicit from the old folks. They were particularly horrified by the cobra winding its way around her left calf and shin, its forked tongue flicking across her kneecap.
“Can I help you with something?” Eve inquired.
Amanda hesitated, overcome by a sudden shyness.
“It’s not about work,” she explained. “I was just wondering if you were doing anything tonight. I thought maybe, if you were free, we could get a glass of wine or something?”
Eve was touched, despite her irritation. She liked Amanda and could see that it had taken some courage for her to reach out like this, however awkwardly. She was fresh out of grad school, recently broken up with a longtime boyfriend, and probably a little lonely, looking for mentorship and reassurance. But the first lesson Eve needed to teach her was that she was an employee, not a friend. There was a boundary between them that needed to be respected.
“I have other plans,” she said. “But thank you.”
“No problem.” Amanda shrugged, as if she’d suspected as much. “Sorry to bother you.”
“Not at all,” Eve told her. “Have a nice weekend.”
*
Her evening at home passed pleasantly enough, rolling along the usual track. First stop, dinner (Greek salad, hummus, pita), followed by way too much Facebook (a problem she was going to have to deal with), a couple of glasses of wine, and three episodes of Friends on Netflix (another problem, though she figured it would eventually fix itself, once she made it through all ten seasons). She kept meaning to start The Wire or Breaking Bad, but the time never seemed right to plunge into something so dark and serious. It was the same with books, always easier to pick up something breezy and upbeat than to crack open the copy of Middlemarch that had been squatting on her nightstand for the past nine months, a Christmas gift from her English professor cousin, Donna, who’d insisted that it was deceptively readable, whatever that meant.
Aside from the shock of Brendan’s absence—still fresh and omnipresent—the only real shadow on her mood was a faint but lingering sense of regret that she hadn’t accepted Amanda’s invitation. A drink and some conversation would have been nice, a little way station between work and home. It was true that she had an unwritten policy of not socializing with her staff, but that was more a preference than a hard-and-fast rule, based as much on a lack of chemistry with her colleagues (most of whom were married, and even more of whom were dull) as it was on some nebulous sense of propriety. In any case, it was a policy she probably needed to rethink, now that she was retired from parenting and had more than enough time to herself. At this point in her life, she couldn’t afford to be ruling out potential new friends on a technicality.
*
The phone rang while she was brushing her teeth, and the sound made her heart leap with pleasure—It’s Brendan! But when she hurried into the bedroom, wearing only pajama bottoms—because she couldn’t find the top, and what difference did it make?—she saw that it wasn’t her son at all.
“Ted?”
“Hey, I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“I’m awake. Is everything okay?”
“Just thought I’d check in. See how you’re holding up. Hard to believe our little boy’s in college, huh?”
Whose little boy? she thought, a reflex from angrier days. But it was true. Their little boy was all grown up.
“He seems happy there,” she said. “I think he really likes his roommate.”
“Yeah, Zack.” Ted chuckled like he was in on the joke. “I just talked to him. Seems like a good kid.”
“You talked to Zack?”
“Just for a minute. Little while ago. I called Brendan, and he passed the phone to Zack.”
That was Ted all over. Mr. Glad-to-Meet-You. Always looking for the next stranger to charm.
“How’s he doing?”
“Zack?”
“No, Brendan.”
“Pretty good.” Ted paused, recalibrating his response. “Pretty wasted, actually. But I guess that’s a given your first weekend at college.”
“I hope it’s not gonna be a problem.”
“College kids drink a lot. I know I did.” He sounded proud of himself. “I can barely remember sophomore year.”
“What a great role model.”