Everybody Has Everything - By Katrina Onstad Page 0,72
of practice, the Saliman name was second on the firm’s stationery, right after the dead McGruger.
“Rick,” said James. Ana swooped over the waitress walking by and grabbed a glass of white for her, red for James.
“She does everything for you, is that right, James? Even gets the drinks these days?”
Ana tried a laugh.
“Only the things that matter,” said James, raising his glass for emphasis.
Ana left his side, beckoned by a wave from Elspeth, who stood with two young associates, new hires. One was blonde, breakably thin beneath feathery hair; she reminded Ana of Woodstock, Snoopy’s friend. The other was tall, taller even than Ana, and less pretty but exuded a kind of burnt anger: her eyes narrowed when offered Ana’s hand.
“Jeanine is working with Steven’s group,” said Elspeth, and the tall one gave an exhausted sigh topped by a world-weary smile that Ana found falsely mature for her face.
The blonde one gazed sleepily around the room as if looking for a place to nap.
Ana felt a pull in the back of her head, an interior whisper – How’s Finn? Who’s in her home? – and she wondered if it was like that for Elspeth all day every day. Elspeth had three children, boy-girl twins and a boy. Ana only discovered these children after the two women had worked together for a year, when she saw Elspeth waiting for an elevator at 9:30 in the morning, her eyes teary, her jacket on, clearly hovering in the shadows hoping to be unseen.
“What’s wrong?” asked Ana, who hadn’t sought out this moment but was merely on her way to the washroom.
“My son’s sick,” said Elspeth.
Taken aback, Ana said: “You have a son?” And the son was sick, which could mean a cancer boy, bald in a ward somewhere being entertained by a volunteer clown. “Is he all right? What do you mean, sick?”
“Oh, he’ll be fine. But the school sent him home and my day nanny is having day surgery, and of course Tom can’t take a day off. I tried to get our night nanny to come early, but she sees our number on the phone and doesn’t pick up. And I have a conference call at eleven …” And off she went in a gnarled, furious voice entirely unlike her calm, measured self at meetings. Ana stepped back a foot or so, overwhelmed by a mixture of sympathy and disgust. Ana had taken to heart the two tenets she learned early on from a female professor in law school: “Never cry, and always take credit.” And at the same time, Ana was mortified to recognize in front of her exactly the situation she, who considered herself a feminist (right? didn’t she? had it really been that long?), knew was disastrous, unfair, a shivering, pathetic creature of inequality flushed out into the light.
She put her hand on Elspeth’s arm, and offered a Kleenex from her pocket. She rode down in the elevator with her and put her in a cab. The look of sheer gratitude on Elspeth’s face when she glanced back through the glass filled Ana with self-loathing. Why was there so little altruism in her? She thought about those workplace surveys that get published in national magazines and newspapers once or twice a year: Is this a good place for women to work? In truth, the firm was not, but Ana liked the idea of working in a place that was, and decided this was a moment in which to pretend otherwise.
Since that day, Elspeth had confided in Ana from time to time. Shutting Ana’s door behind her, she gingerly showed her photographs of the kids. Ana nodded and murmured and Elspeth relaxed into it eventually, growing more familiar, bitching about this and that family matter, presenting Ana with a picture of a life that was torturous in many ways, all drop-offs and pick-ups and nanny extortions and infected mosquito bites and exorbitant hockey fees. But sometimes, once in a while, great pride over somebody’s triumph at school. A picture painted. A report of a surprise cuddle from the eldest late one night.
One time, she forwarded Ana a family photo from a weekend vacation to an amusement park. The kids tumbling off Elspeth’s lap in front of a fiendish cartoon mascot, and Tom, Elspeth’s husband, at the edge of the picture with half his body sliced away. This was the image Ana saw in her mind’s eye whenever Elspeth spoke of her family, whom Ana had never actually met.