A Clean Slate. Laura Caldwell

You called me from work to say that you were looking good, feeling good and ready for your dinner with Ben. Then an hour later, you called again from your cell phone, and I could barely understand a word you were saying.”

      “I was crying?” I tried to jump-start some memory.

      “No, you were raging. You know how you get sometimes?”

      I nodded. It wasn’t something I was proud of, but I had an occasional flaring temper that I had no control over, which is why I’d wanted to strangle the dry cleaner this morning and the reason, a few hours ago, I’d been plotting ways to terminate everyone in my management company. Ex-management company, I reminded myself.

      “You told me that they’d laid you off,” Laney continued. “Budget cuts or something. They tried to give you six months’ severance, you railroaded them into nine and that was it. They said you could stay on for a month or so. They were going to assign you a desk and a cubicle so you could look for a new job.”

      “That’s insulting!”

      “Exactly. You couldn’t believe that this place that should have been making you partner was offering to put you in a cube so you could try and start over somewhere else. You told them to go to hell and just walked out.”

      “And so I wasn’t depressed yet?”

      “Oh no.” Laney chuckled. “Just pissed off.”

      “Okay, so then what?”

      “Well, naturally you went shopping.”

      I nodded. It made absolute sense to me. I was required to shop as part of my job because I was a retail analyst for Bartley Brothers, and it was my duty to keep up on trends, but I also used retail therapy as a pick-me-up. Laney did, too. It always did the heart good to spend money you shouldn’t on something that made you look or feel fantastic.

      “So you bought these great shoes to go with the black dress you were wearing for dinner,” Laney said.

      I was tempted to interrupt and ask for details about the fabric and the heel, but decided it probably wasn’t the time.

      “Anyway,” Laney continued, “you were actually fine by the time Ben came to pick you up. He took you to the Everest Room. He told you how sorry he was that you got laid off, how ludicrous it was for them to let you go. You were sure he was going to propose. You said besides being fired you were having a great day. Everything felt perfect—the candles, the champagne—and so when he said he needed to talk about something, you thought that was it. But instead, he started this spiel about how he thought he’d be ready, he wanted to be ready to marry you, but he wasn’t. He gave you that bullshit line about how it wasn’t you, it was him.”

      I crossed my arms and leaned back against the cabinet. “Please tell me I dumped the champagne bucket over his head.” If there ever was a legitimate time for one of my temper tantrums, that night sounded like it.

      “I wish,” Laney said. “You just told him to leave, and once he was gone, you realized that you had to pay the bill.”

      I tried to laugh, I really did, but Laney’s words sounded like a bad joke. A pathetic woman who’d given her man an ultimatum to marry her or else, sitting there with her “or else”—a full bottle of champagne and the bill. So instead of a laugh, my voice came out a groan, and then I couldn’t help it, I let the tears come.

      “Honey.” Laney jumped up from the stool and came around the bar to hug me. “It’s okay.”

      “I’m sorry,” I mumbled through my tears and Laney’s fuzzy sweater. “You’ve done this already, haven’t you?”

      “Doesn’t matter.” She stroked my hair. “Let it out.”

      How could Ben, the man I thought I wanted to marry, be so thoughtless? We’d been together for four years, forever it seemed. We were meant for each other. How could he just end it all when he’d given me the impression that he wanted the same thing I did?

      As I sniffled and cried some more into Laney’s sweater, I started to wonder about Ben’s desires, what he had really wanted. It wasn’t that I didn’t remember the talks we’d had about marriage. Those had happened in February and March after Dee died, a time I recalled clearly. But maybe he hadn’t really wanted a life together. Maybe he simply hadn’t disagreed with me when I said I did.

      “And so that was it?” I said to Laney, using a paper towel to wipe my eyes. “That’s when I got so depressed?”

      “Yes and no.” Laney picked up a stray pen, staring at it as if she was thinking hard. “You were down, don’t get me wrong. You’d taken two big blows in one day, and only five months or so after Dee died. You were crying a lot and acting a little weird, but something else happened a few weeks later.”

      “What?”

      She started tapping the pen. “I don’t know. You wouldn’t tell me. But you went from an I-need-to-sit-around-in-my-pajamas-for-a-few-weeks kind of mood to an I’m-taking-drugs-and-seeing-a-therapist-and-stalking-Ben kind of mood.”

      I jumped down from the counter. “I was stalking Ben?”

      “Well, that’s his word. I’d just say that you were trying a little too hard to get him back. You would often wait for him outside work and, a couple of times, you went inside his apartment and waited there.”

      “Jesus, that’s humiliating.”

      “It was so unlike you. You sold the town house next, which I couldn’t believe, and then you rented this place. There’s nothing much to tell after that. You’ve pretty much been holed up here for months. I can’t believe you don’t remember this.”

      “None of it. But you know what?” I started to clean up the kitchen, using a sponge to scrub a sticky, chocolatey-looking circle off the countertop. “I don’t want to remember. I feel like my old self, and why would I want to go back to that nastiness you’re telling me about?”

      Laney stood up and started helping me. “I don’t want you to go back, either, but you should visit Ellen or Dr. Markup or somebody.”

      “Dr. Markup? C’mon.” Dr. Markup is good for the basics like flu shots and such, but otherwise he’s a human prescription and referral machine. “You’ve got jaw pain? Here’s some codeine and the number of an oral surgeon. Something in your eye? Use these drops and go see my optometrist friend. Sore throat? Let me give you the name of an ear, nose and throat guy.”

      “Well, it can’t be good for you not to remember,” Laney said.

      “Maybe it is good, though. Maybe it’s my mind not wanting to be in that place anymore, wanting to get on with it.”

      “Maybe,” Laney said, although she didn’t sound convinced.

      “Look, I don’t remember what you’re talking about, being depressed and moping around this place, but I don’t want to. I’m hurt and pissed off as hell about Ben.” I took a deep breath and tried to shake him out of my mind. “And I miss my town house. Other than that, I feel okay—great even.” I was relieved to find that I was speaking the truth.

      As I was talking, I opened what looked to be a hall closet just outside the kitchen to see what lurked in there, but before I could concentrate on the contents I noticed a full-length mirror hanging inside one of the doors. I turned to face the mirror, and I could feel my mouth dropping open.

      “What is it?” Laney said from the kitchen.

      I couldn’t talk. I was too busy looking at myself—a drawn, unhealthy-looking, unfashionably dressed self that I barely recognized. My light brown hair, which I normally wore straight to my shoulders, was dingy and frizzy, with enough split ends to conduct electricity. My face was pale, almost gray, my cheeks sunken in, my mossy-green eyes red around the rims. I had on the leather jacket I’d bought last winter, which was a still-cute blazer style, but the jeans I wore were baggy and at least ten years old. My sweater