Catherine McKenzie - Hidden

“Damn. If only I’d gotten here a few minutes earlier.”

She looked away from the television and grinned. “One-track mind.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

I walked toward her to give her a kiss, but her attention was drawn back to the screen. I followed her gaze. Anthony Bourdain was biting into what looked like a raw sea urchin, plucked from the crystal ocean behind him.

“Where is he this week?”

“Sydney.”

“Australia?”

“Yes.”

I watched the screen for a moment, listening to her breathing, feeling the stillness expand between us.

“It’s beautiful,” I said eventually. “No wonder Tim loves it there.”

“Shouldn’t we get to that cocktail party?” She stood, hugging the towel around her tightly.

“You’re right, we should.”

I walked past her to the bathroom and showered quickly, trying not to think about Claire and Australia and Tim. Eventually, I shifted my thoughts to the driving range as a distraction. And it worked, after a fashion.

I told Claire about John as we dressed.

“He’s a jerk,” she said. “But you shouldn’t let it bother you.”

“Wouldn’t it bother you?”

“Of course. But a lot of the old guard are like that. You have to roll with it.”

“Are you saying you get treated like that?”

“I used to. Sometimes.”

“By who? And why haven’t you told me that before?”

“Because I knew you’d want to beat the crap out of them, and that wouldn’t have been good for my career, now would it?”

“I might’ve taken some pleasure from it, though. Seriously, who talked to you like that? Was it that Ed guy?”

“It was no one in particular; part of my old life. Now come on, we’re going to be late.”

I stifled my annoyance and finished tying my tie.

Outside, we walked along the path to the clubhouse. It was dusk, and as we walked, a set of lanterns stuck into the lawn snapped on, illuminating the path. Bugs and birds buzzed and twittered in the trees above us. The air smelled like freshly mown grass and new paint. Venus was rising, bright above the horizon.

Claire curled her fingers into mine. After a moment’s hesitation, I squeezed her hand.

“Is this going to be excruciating for you?” I asked.

“Of course not. I’m sure I and the other wives will spend the night talking about our kids.”

I laughed and felt lighter because of it. “I do work with a few women.”

“Maybe I’ll talk to them, then.”

The clubhouse had a long wraparound porch. Little white lights were strung through the balustrade, and the din of cocktail conversation spilled into the night. We collected drinks from a waiter and spent the next hour winding through the crowd, having those brief exchanges you always have at these types of events. “Where are you from?” “What department do you work in?” “This is my wife.” “This is mine.” “Isn’t this place great?” “It really is.” “Do you work for the company too?”

Claire kept an eye out for the waiters passing with canapés, and by the end of the hour we had a good drink-to-bite-sized-food ratio going.

When the Milky Way was a streak above the now nearly invisible golf course, a gong sounded, calling us in to dinner. We searched the seating chart for our table and found out that we were sitting with John and his wife. I knew Claire actively disliked both of them, and I was pretty sure she’d hate John by dessert.

Hell, we might both hate him by dessert.

When we got to the table, John and Cindy were already seated, making inroads into a bottle of red wine. His face had a florid, other-side-of-sober look to it. He patted the seat next to him when he saw Claire. She sighed, and I whispered to her that she didn’t have to sit there if she didn’t want to. She told me she could handle it and sat down, her shoulders squared as if for a fight. I took the seat next to her, introducing myself to a middle-aged woman in a cocktail dress who was the chief operating officer’s wife.

The COO was deep in conversation with a very pretty, very young woman, the newly acquired wife of our sixty-year-old CEO. She was the talk of the company, her “modeling” photos circulating around the office. Some of them had been enhanced and/or captioned. You can imagine. I hoped the guys behind it weren’t on the outs with IT.

The seat next to hers was empty, for the CEO presumably. I couldn’t for the life of me understand how we’d ended up sitting here.

“What are we doing at this table?” Claire murmured.

“I was wondering the same thing.”

“I see big things in your future, young man,” she said, squeezing my thigh under the table. “Big things.”

The thought of that possibility made me nervous, and I decided to switch to water. Drinking as much as I wanted to seemed like a bad idea in the circumstances.

The first courses of salad and soup passed slowly. The COO’s wife was very nice, but we had less than nothing in common, and I began to regret my no-drinking decision. When the waiter came to refresh our drinks, I decided to allow myself a glass of wine. One glass with each course ought to keep things reasonable but bearable.

The main course was set up as a buffet against the back of the room. As we rose to take our place in line, Claire told me to go ahead, she’d meet me back at the table. I suspected she was going out for a smoke, but I didn’t call her on it. We had a sort of don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy with respect to her smoking.

I tucked into line behind a woman whose long, wavy black hair hung loosely over her bare shoulders. We waited next to each other at the turkey station, while a man in a chef’s hat carved to order. The woman glanced at me when I asked for a large helping of dark meat.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said.

“Do we…?”

“You were with that John guy, right? On the driving range?”

“Still am.” I nodded toward my table. “Sorry about that.”

“Forget it.” She rolled her eyes. They were a dark green, the color of the dress she was wearing. It was a kind of loose, flowy thing made out of a fabric I didn’t know the name of. “I assume he’s not a friend of yours?”

“God, no,” I said.

The chef handed her a plate of juicy white meat with a crisp brown layer of skin lying across it. She waited for me to accept my own plate, and we moved down the line.

“Which branch do you work at?” she asked.

“Springfield.”

“Me too.”

“You new with the company?”

“Nope.”

“Then how come we don’t know each other?” The office was big, but not that big.

“You must be at the other Springfield.”

Johnson Company had recently acquired another company, located about five hundred miles away, in another town called Springfield. The name duplication was already causing problems. Mail had gotten lost, emails misdirected. There was a rumor that the CEO had tried to get the other Springfield, as we’d taken to calling it, to change its name.

The actual town.

Seriously.

“That’s too bad,” I said.

“How so?”

“It’d be nice to have another golfer in the office.”

“There must be tons of guys who play where you are. Isn’t it some golf mecca?”

I rolled my eyes. “Three courses and counting.” I leaned in so I wouldn’t be heard. “They’re mostly a bunch of duffers, to be honest. But you, Christ, you really schooled that flagpole. You taught that flag a lesson.”

I stopped, realizing I might be speaking through one too many glasses of wine.

“That wasn’t my intention but…thanks.”

“Did you play professionally?”

“College.” She paused, considering. “Scholarship.”

I spooned some stuffing onto my plate. She took a generous helping of cranberry sauce.

“And after college? Sorry, I don’t normally ask this many questions.”

“It’s okay. I wasn’t good enough to take it anywhere, so I gave it up.”

“You could’ve fooled me.”

“Lots of people can hit it at the flag on the range. It’s bringing it together on the course that matters. Besides, you should see me putt. I suck at putting.”

“I highly doubt that.”

She shrugged as she ladled gravy over her meat. “You’ll never know, right?”

“How’s that?”

“You live in your Springfield, I live in mine. Never the twain shall meet.”

“But we’re meeting now.”

“One-time thing. I have it on good authority these types of shindigs are going to be cut in the next budget.”

“That’s too bad.”

We’d reached the end of the line. I searched for something else to say.

“What department do you work in?” I asked lamely.

“HR. You?”

“Accounting.”

She raised her eyebrows, two dark slashes in an alabaster face. “The two most hated departments in the place. Anyway…”

“We should be getting back.”

“We should.”

“It was nice meeting you…I never got your name.”

She shook her head. “Nope. Never the twain shall meet, remember?”

“All right, then. It was nice not meeting you, whoever you are.”

“It was nice not meeting you too.”

Tuesday morning, and Beth is insisting that I get out of bed, out of the bedroom, out of the house.

“Out of the house?”

“Yes. The great outdoors. Have you forgotten about it?”

“Fuck off.”

“Finally.”

“What?”

“That’s the first emotion I’ve seen you express since I got here. Those pills Dr. Feelgood has you on are too strong. I think some anger is what you need.”

I tuck my knees under my chin. “What I need is for this all to be some sick joke.”

“But that’s not going to happen, so what are you going to do about it?”

“Hiding in here seems about right.”

“I had another plan in mind.”

Beth’s plan involves shopping for a dress to wear for Jeff’s service, and some secret mission she won’t let me in on. And because she’s my older sister, and I’ve been programmed all my life to follow her instructions, I get up, shower, and come downstairs to face the rest of my family in the bright daylight streaming through my kitchen.

My mother and father are sitting at the breakfast table with Jeff’s parents. Our house seems to have become Grief Command Central, and I don’t think there’s anything I can do about it. Thankfully, the other onlookers or well-wishers or whatever I should be thinking of them as have left, back to their lives, leaving only their Tupperware behind. God knows how many casseroles there are in the freezer.

The one person missing is Seth, who’s gone to school again. He wouldn’t tell me how it went yesterday when he got back, simply grumbling that it had been “fine.” This seemed like a good sign, a pre-Jeff-is-gone kind of behavior. But his troubled sleep continued, all thrashes and moans, and I held him like a baby, rocking him until he finally quieted.

After rising to hug me and tell me how glad they are I’m going out, my parents start bickering over the sections of the newspaper, as they have all my life. I feel a wave of embarrassment at their lack of tact in front of Jeff’s parents, one of those couples who give the impression they’ve never had an argument. But they act oblivious, hug me, and start on the dishes, Mr. Manning washing, Mrs. Manning drying, their grief etched in their faces, their meticulous movements.

I slump into a chair next to my mother, resting my chin in my hands, and stare out the window at the sunny day. Beth plunks a bowl of cereal in front of me, Seth’s special-occasion Froot Loops. I eat them, my hunger emerging after a few bites. Froot Loops are better than I remember.

“Josie called for you again,” my mom says.

“Okay.”

“Are you going to return her call?”

Josie’s one of our closest friends, but I haven’t been calling anyone back.

“Eventually.”

“Jesus, Mother,” Beth says. “What kind of question is that?”

“It’s a normal question. Why do you have to be so harsh all the time?”

Beth mutters something under her breath about her that, thankfully, only I hear. Or maybe my father hears it too. I notice a smile creep onto his lips, which quickly disappears when my mother gives him a quizzical look.

I eat the rest of my cereal, then bypass Jeff’s parents and put the bowl directly into the dishwasher. I always have to (had to, damn it, had to) remind Jeff to do the same, part of our normal married banter, the little rubs of everyday life.