Stories We Never Told Read online

  “Sure. One sec.” Nasira pulls up the file and angles away from Jackie, shifting her laptop so Gretchen can see the screen.

  Nasira’s phone is on the table; the screen displays a text exchange with someone named Rachel.

  Jackie glances at Nasira, who is absorbed in her conversation with Gretchen. Jackie’s heart beats faster, knowing she only has seconds before the screen goes dark. She drags the bakery box toward her until it rests between Nasira’s laptop and her phone. Jackie rearranges the remaining cookies with one hand and, with the other, touches the back arrow to show the list of recent texts. “Harlan” pops out at her, and she opens the thread, horrified by her audacity, her unscrupulousness. She should close the thread and salvage her integrity (what’s left of it), but now that the messages are right in front of her, she can’t resist. If her conscience had shouted in outrage a few seconds earlier, she might have listened. Too late now.

  Jackie reads while continuing to stack the cookies, blood rushing to her face.

  Harlan: Maybe it’s too soon, but the Blue Goose has a special on Tuesday night.

  Nasira: Never too soon for geese.

  Harlan: That’s my thinking. Meet there at 7?

  Nasira: Perfect.

  Harlan:

  Tuesday. Tuesday and Friday. Date nights. Their date nights.

  Jackie stifles a cry, hits the back arrow, and reopens Rachel’s thread.

  Nasira swivels. Gretchen is leaving.

  Jackie closes the bakery box, and wills Nasira’s phone to turn off. Will she notice?

  Gretchen speaks from the doorway. “See you later.”

  “Bye,” Jackie and Nasira say simultaneously.

  The phone’s screen is black.

  Nasira shuts her laptop, whisks the phone away. They are alone. Jackie feels Nasira’s eyes on her, but she cannot, will not, meet her gaze. Jackie’s face is flushed, she can feel it. Guilt rises inside her, leaving her nauseous.

  Does Nasira know about Harlan’s past with Jackie? For a moment Jackie thinks she might just tell Nasira that she was Harlan’s girlfriend for five years, five of her best years, five years carved out of the heart of her life, like a cancer, an alien mass that was her and yet was not her, sliced out and discarded. There is something she needs to tell Nasira about Harlan, Jackie is sure of it, but she doesn’t know precisely what to say, what the message should be. Perhaps “Don’t do what I did.” A cautionary tale? But it was Jackie who left; it is always Jackie who leaves. Maybe the cautionary tale is not to become Jackie. Talk about mentoring.

  She hears her thoughts as spoken words and recognizes them as a thought salad. No, what she wants to tell Nasira is that she cannot bear to see her succeed with Harlan, but it would be madness to say such a thing. They’ve just started seeing each other, and Jackie hardly knows Nasira. She shouldn’t concern herself with Harlan, either, especially his sex life. She’s married to a wonderful man, and yet she’s blowing up boundaries right and left and seriously contemplating giving unsolicited (and undercooked) relationship advice to her postdoc. What the hell is wrong with her?

  Nasira gets up and studies Jackie. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.” She says it too loudly, flustered. “Mondays . . .”

  Nasira nods as she inserts her computer into her gray wool messenger bag. She ducks her head and slips on the shoulder strap.

  Maybe Nasira will say something about Harlan, clear the air. Jackie waits, fiddling with her phone.

  Nasira takes the long way around the table, her steps soundless, and leaves without another word.

  Jackie sips her cold coffee. Her hand is trembling. What an unethical idiot she is, reading someone else’s texts. She doesn’t think Nasira saw her, but it was wrong regardless—and risky. And to what end? Now she knows they have plans for tomorrow, that the relationship is moving ahead full-bore. Did she expect Harlan to remain celibate to make it easier for her?

  She closes the bakery box and thinks of Miles. Maybe she’ll pick up something for him, his favorite, a lemon tart. Her conscience is urging her to correct her internal moral accounting, do something nice for the someone truly committed to her instead of becoming enmeshed in a relationship that has nothing to do with her. Well, almost nothing to do with her. After all, she and Harlan are friends, aren’t they? And Nasira is her postdoc . . .

  Jackie chastises herself for falling into the rabbit hole again.

  Let it go. Be happy with what you have. Make amends.

  Yes, a lemon tart for Miles. And tonight she won’t do what she’s done at every opportunity since the Dinner. She won’t swing by Harlan’s house or his favorite hangouts, hoping to spot him with Nasira. She won’t go by Nasira’s house, either, even though it’s practically on the way home. It’s humiliating, but satisfyingly so, the degradation of succumbing to jealousy, the weakness in being unable to control her curiosity—morbid as it is—and the desperate thrill of being a naughty snoop. She’s vowed to stop a dozen times, but has thus far given in despite her mounting guilt over betraying Miles in doing so.

  But today she crossed a bright line, reading Nasira’s texts, and there is no justification for it, not even a self-serving one. Everything she learns only makes her feel more pain and more guilt. It’s time to look away.

  CHAPTER 5

  Nine days later, Jackie finishes her office hours and heads to the faculty meeting. It’s only Wednesday, and this is her third administrative meeting of the week. How is she supposed to accomplish anything? She takes a deep breath and resigns herself to the unavoidable.

  Down the hallway, Ursula Kleinfelter is exiting her office. When she turns to close her door, she spots Jackie, waves, and waits for her. Jackie admires Ursula, a psycholinguist originally from Israel, for her take-no-prisoners attitude and would welcome a chance to socialize with her. Ursula splits her time with the Middle Eastern Studies Department and is intensely private besides, so Jackie has not yet found an inroad to friendship.

  “Jackie! I never see you.” Ursula touches Jackie’s forearm in greeting. Ursula might be nearly sixty, but her brown eyes are bright behind her ultramodern glasses with emerald-green frames. Her outfit is on point, too—wide-legged trousers and an embroidered blouse—setting her yet further apart from her dowdy academic colleagues. Jackie pays attention to her clothes but never feels half as put together as Ursula.

  “I was thinking that, too. Shame it takes a faculty meeting to bring us together.”

  “Everything about a faculty meeting is a damn shame.”

  Jackie laughs. As they set off together, she says, “Weren’t you in Jordan this summer?”

  Ursula nods. “Mostly. Also, Iraq—Mosul—and three weeks on vacation in Tel Aviv, although we’re talking family, so ‘vacation’ is perhaps an exaggeration.”

  The hallway spills into a wider area, banked on one side by elevators and on the other by the glass-walled entrance to the Psychology Department offices.

  “And what about you?” Ursula asks. “You were here, right? That big study?” She stops talking as her attention is drawn abruptly toward the office.

  Jackie follows her gaze. Next to the reception desk, at the entrance to the mailroom, Nasira leans against the doorframe, a package in her arms. She’s conversing with Harlan, who has his back to the entrance, but even from this vantage point Jackie notices they are practically touching. If it weren’t for the package Nasira is holding, they could be slow dancing.

  Ursula comes to a standstill. “Who is Harlan talking to? A grad student?” Her tone suggests she also notes their proximity.

  “A postdoc.”

  “Oh, well, that’s a bit different, I suppose.” Ursula turns to Jackie. “Do you know her?”

  “Nasira Amari. My postdoc.”

  Ursula arches one eyebrow. “I see.”

  Of course Ursula knows Jackie dated Harlan. The department is small, and five years is a long time, although in those five long years, Harlan never stood inside of Jackie’s bubble
in full view of anyone who might pass by. Not once. It was one of Harlan’s rules. At this moment, Jackie cannot recall whether that was an explicit rule or an implicit one. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Harlan is flaunting a three-week relationship—one with questionable ethics—in their workplace. Since she peeked at Nasira’s phone, Jackie has been trying to stuff her curiosity or jealousy or whatever it is back in the box it jumped out of. This PDA behind the glass wall is not helping.

  Ursula is calmly regarding her, awaiting a response of some kind.

  Jackie shrugs. “I’ll admit it is weird.”

  “Weird, yes, but perfectly understandable. He’s a man, and she is, well, stunning.”

  Here’s some salt, Ursula. Rub that into the wound while you’re at it. Jackie looks at her watch. “We’re going to be late.”

  As they start again for the conference room, Jackie thinks maybe Ursula wouldn’t be such a great friend after all. She’s a little too blunt.

  The departmental chair is Amy Chen, a social psychologist with a strategic fervor more suited to Capitol Hill than a university. Successful faculty members—the ones who cause money and prestige to flow into the department—make her look good, so her favor shines more brightly on them. Not surprisingly, she adores Harlan and, provisionally, tolerates Jackie.

  Chen opens the meeting with a detailed report of a university-wide technology initiative, the content of which was included in the email with the meeting agenda. Jackie skimmed it; there is nothing to vote on, and reviewing it now is a waste of time.

  From her seat near the back of the room, Jackie sees Harlan enter. He opts to lean against the rear wall rather than take one of several empty chairs nearby. Jackie crosses her legs, angling away from him, and directs her attention to the tall windows on her right. Rain is falling in gray sheets, obscuring the view of the treetops and the science center that this sixth-floor room normally enjoys. A chill comes over Jackie, and the skin on her neck prickles. Her first thought is that Harlan is watching her, but given what she has just seen, that is unlikely. He has found someone far more captivating.

  As Chen drones on, now about the ad hoc committee charged with assessing how space in Wolf Hall is allocated, Jackie conjures an image of herself, barely twenty-eight, lying in bed on a Saturday morning, Harlan’s arm folded along her side, holding her firmly, his hand on her hip as if they were standing on the deck of a ship pitching in high seas and he meant to keep her from falling overboard.

  Objectively, she wonders what drew her to him. Ursula’s summation that men have license to ignore a woman’s age is true enough, and Jackie has been aware of her ability to attract men since the age of twelve. No doubt Nasira is similarly aware. But this accounts only for Harlan’s choice of her, not vice versa. Lying beside him ten years ago, his graying chest hairs were plain enough and consistent with the maturity evident in every aspect of his life: his remarkable career, of course; his spotless house, where clothes discarded in passion never lingered past noon; his manners, practiced and authentic; his wardrobe, displaying quality over quantity but curated to include T-shirts—notably ones featuring the Doors and a boutique Maryland brewery—to stop him from appearing stuffy. Did she have a daddy complex that placed a halo around Harlan’s head, obscuring his silvery temples? Maybe, but she had no history of dating older men. Rather, she had a history of relationships that didn’t last as long as her shampoo.

  At first, Jackie didn’t mind that most of her time with Harlan was spent on his turf and on his terms. She was new in town, so it made sense to follow his lead. He had excellent taste in restaurants, and they usually agreed on which movie to see. If she wanted to see a play or visit a museum, she could do it during the remaining four and a half days of the week—or never, given her schedule. Staying at his place made sense, too, because it was larger and in a better neighborhood.

  Before Harlan, Jackie had accepted the cultural norm that relationships should go somewhere, progressing from less intimate to more, from dating to cohabiting to mating with purpose. The sense of stepping onto an escalator leading inevitably to a family (to becoming her family) was what kept Jackie from sticking with relationships. Jackie’s father left when she was nine, and her mother, bitter to this day, instructed Jackie to not allow men to ruin her life. The lesson stuck; Jackie kneecapped relationships before they could go anywhere.

  Jackie’s feelings about having children were thus confounded. In her early twenties she thought she wanted them, but the relationship hurdle seemed insurmountable. She could imagine cradling a baby or holding the hands of a toddler learning to walk, and feel the promise of joy; she just couldn’t imagine how to get there. When she chose developmental psychology as her concentration, Jackie told herself it was because she was fascinated by questions of nature versus nurture, but she was self-aware enough to recognize the sly hedge. Her career would place her adjacent to motherhood, where she could monitor the reality of it, knowing she could always, at some unspecified point in the future, decide to have a child outside the crapshoot of marriage.

  The relationship hurdle was further complicated by the fact that she went to college in Maine, graduate school in Philadelphia, and did her postdoctoral work in Baltimore. She struggled to sustain her female friendships, let alone a committed relationship with a man. But when she took the job at Adams, Harlan appeared in her life and offered a novel path; he eschewed progression in favor of leaving well enough alone. Satisfactory, as a relationship grade, was an achievement. She became convinced she wanted what he did: dating for life. They were aligned, so why change? Just to do what others did, usually not successfully? Jackie had a friend from graduate school, Constance, who “had it all” and was stressed out of her mind, resenting the demands of her job one minute and the demands of her husband and children the next. Each day was scheduled with the precision of a NASA launch, and explosions on the launchpad were common. Constance criticized Jackie for being in a relationship without commitment. But she and Harlan didn’t lack commitment; they were committed to a circumscribed relationship. All relationships were circumscribed in one way or another, she told herself; soul melding was claptrap. The only valid question was whether each person was getting what they wanted and needed, and for a time Jackie echoed Harlan’s resounding “yes.”

  After two years of the Tuesday/Friday/Saturday morning routine, however, Jackie’s relationship moxie grew. Maybe it was working with parents and children, witnessing daily how couples leveraged their love for each other to nurture the next generation, and often did so with grace. Maybe it was the radical notion that not all men were “useless bastards,” to quote her mother. Jackie had attended three weddings during those two years: those of her sister and two friends from graduate school. If other intelligent, reasonably sane people were taking the plunge, why shouldn’t she dip her toe in the water? She was happy with Harlan, warmed by the spotlight of his attention, awakened by his assurance in bed, lifted up by his respect for her work. If this much were possible, why not more? Her capacity for trust woke inside her like a small, blind, wingless creature.

  During a Saturday brunch, Jackie threw out the question with all the insouciance she could muster. “How about we go away together for a few days?”

  “As in a vacation? You know I don’t see the point of them. I have no need to escape my life.”

  “Not escape. Variety.” She almost used the word “adventure,” but that would be abhorrent to him.

  He’d been in a cheerful mood—that’s why she’d chosen the moment—but now concern clouded his features. “Aren’t you happy?”

  “Very. But a jaunt could be fun.” She resumed eating to show him how much it didn’t matter.

  “Wasn’t last night fun?”

  They had watched Modern Family, and she’d laughed so hard she had fallen off the bed. She smiled, thinking about it. “So fun. Big fun.” He was right. Why change a winning strategy?

  He grinned at her, eyes shining.

  The key t
o happiness, she realized, was rejecting the impossible, glittering romantic quest and embracing satisfaction. To want more was foolishness, and Jackie was never foolish.

  In Wolf Hall, Jackie stares out at the rain, lost in her reminiscences of her time with Harlan. She looks around the room at her colleagues and sees that her position among them is largely the result of accepting Harlan’s vision of her authentic self, the person she was destined to become. He was the authority on her, writing her definitive biography as she stood before him and absorbed the glowing smile he gave only to her, mesmerized by his calm, rich voice. She acquiesced to him, to his schedule, to his plans for her. The only reason they are no longer together is that she found—inevitably, in retrospect—that she did want more.

  Now she has Miles, who is nothing like Harlan, and she isn’t at all certain this is the marriage she wants or needs. The uncertainty itself is familiar, even reassuring. It was ever thus. If she were blissful, she’d check herself into a hospital. Her doubt isn’t about bliss; it’s about having children, the next step in the progression that until now seemed beyond her grasp. Before they were married, literally days before, Miles said he was happy to consider having a child with her. She’d brought up the subject twice since, and while he hasn’t said he’s changed his mind, neither has he raced to the bathroom to flush her birth control down the toilet. Both times he was unequivocally equivocal, and she didn’t push it. While he was away on one of his frequent trips, she’d resolve to talk to him about starting a family, but once he was home, she was loath to bring it up and spoil their time together. There was never a good time to talk, or maybe never a good time to hear the word “no.”

  Jackie watches rainwater spilling out of a clogged gutter and wonders whether, if she did a quick calculation, she might have averaged more time with Harlan than with Miles. She scolds herself for making the comparison and turns away from the window.