other there, they’d laugh and say, “Funny seeing you here,” and then they’d discuss whether it was better to get walnuts or pecans on your salad, or to leave them off altogether since nuts were so packed with calories.
“I don’t need a whole week,” Claire said, but Amy held up her hand.
“Take it. This is your life and this is important. There’s a lot for you to figure out. It wouldn’t hurt to rest and be kind to yourself for a few days.”
Claire was forever grateful for this. She hoped that one day she could show the same kindness to someone who worked for her. But she was also deeply embarrassed and when she finally did return to work, she couldn’t look Amy in the eye. It was like she’d taken all her clothes off in front of this woman and then expected it not to be awkward. It was awful, really.
Claire had spent the whole week in her apartment. She didn’t leave once. She called her mom to let her know about the engagement and refused the suggestions to come home to Philly, and screamed, “No!” at the idea of her mom coming to New York.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Really. I just need to sort things out.”
“Oh, Claire,” her mom had said. And Claire had to get off the phone before she started crying, because those two words coming out of her mom’s mouth were the worst. She’d heard them so many times before—when she got a D in calculus, when she crashed the car in the high school parking lot, when she got arrested at the shore for underage drinking.
Claire e-mailed her friends, but didn’t take any phone calls. She made it seem like she wasn’t in New York. I’m sorting things out, she typed. I’m doing fine.
That whole week, Claire took baths at night. She soaked in the tub, filling it with water as hot as she could stand. When the water started to cool, she would let some of it drain out and then turn on the faucet to let new, steaming water pour in. She emerged from these baths pink-faced and dizzy. She would wrap a towel around her head and another around her body and stare at herself in the mirror. She looked like a newborn hamster before it got its fur—a doughy pink blob of see-through skin, unrecognizable and delicate.
Claire hoped for some revelation during these baths. She thought that soaking in the soapy water would clear her head. But it didn’t. Mostly she just tried to figure out where she’d gone wrong. Sometimes she wondered what would happen if Doug were still there. Almost always she replayed the moment in her head when the actual breakup happened, when Doug said he was going to move out, and Claire said, “What am I going to do now?” She hadn’t meant to say it, didn’t even realize it was coming out of her mouth until she heard it, and immediately she was ashamed. She didn’t want to be that person, didn’t want to hear her teary, pathetic voice in her head, admitting that she was lost, saying, “What am I supposed to do now?” like she couldn’t figure anything out for herself. And so she soaked in the water and hoped that somehow the words would steam out of her.
During the days, she watched talk shows. On Tuesday, the guest was a kidnapping specialist, who talked the audience through gory details of women being dismembered and raped. Claire forced herself to watch as a reminder that things could be much worse. More than once, the man looked at the audience with serious eyes as he repeated his most important advice: “Never let them take you to a second location,” he said. He pointed at a different person with each word.
Apparently, the odds of being killed went up enormously when you let an abductor take you somewhere else. Claire let this thought run itself over in her head. She ordered takeout every night, and figured she was safest in her apartment.
Claire returned to work without one thing figured out. She had considered moving, but the thought of finding a new place that she could afford seemed impossible. And so she stayed put and dipped into her savings to pay rent after Doug stopped sending her checks. She told herself that it was actually less expensive this way, because to move she’d need money for a deposit and a broker fee and a moving company. It