Page 26 - Vol. VII #7

Condolences (continued from preceding page)
before her—but we somehow felt this to be more sincere. There was a purity of expression in Emily’s words, in her brevity. We were moved.
That was the Emily upon whom everything hinged. ~
~
Neither Emily was present the following Monday when we arrived at the office. Without meaning to, some of us glanced over throughout the day at what had once been her desk. We weren’t sure what we were looking for or why we felt displeased at not finding it.
Here, three months is an eternity encapsulated within the smallest of instants—the snap of a finger, the blink of an eye. The office is an enchanted place in that sense only. So when Emily’s internship came to an end, we were both surprised and not. There had been some more chatter about taking her on full time, but it hadn’t amounted to any concrete deci- sion. We would be sad to see her go, we said, and in
a sense we meant it. Warren’s absence had agitated something in the atmosphere of the office, something imperceptible but fundamental. Like a frame hung
in such a way that it tilts ever so slightly—some days you don’t notice it at all and on others it drives you insane, consuming every ounce of your attention. Emily’s departure, we understood, constituted a realignment.
We seldom spoke of her after that. A month later when Eric couldn’t find a report he’d been assigned, he explained he’d last seen it when he gave it to Emily to proofread. Molly asked, “Who’s Emily?”
Somebody brought chocolate chip cookies. They were from the bodega on the corner and were tooth- shatteringly stale, but still everybody took one and spread out around the multipurpose room. Emily seemed embarrassed.
On the one-year anniversary of Warren’s death, Nina, who had finally been promoted to coordina- tor two months prior, was one of the few to take note; it was also her dog’s birthday. She brought it up, a nugget of trivia, and we all nodded meaning- fully, trying to conjure the grief we were sure we had felt at the time. What does one do on the an- niversary of a coworker’s death? We weren’t sure. Ron lifted his paper cup full of coffee and said, mostly jokingly, “To Warren.” We followed suit. What more could we do?
“You didn’t have to do this,” she said.
“Of course we did,” we said. “It’s nothing.”
We dispersed. Some yawned, though it was only noon. Others lingered in the kitchenette, manufac- turing conversation to fill the minutes. Eventually, though, we all returned to our various cubicles, shut the doors of our offices, and once again we were, each of us, alone. All throughout the building, separate hearts thudded, keeping our individual bodies alive. Each, for the moment at least, steadily ba dum, ba dum, ba dum-ing, proclaiming, I am, I am, I am. It would be impossible to hear all of them at once, of course, muffled by layers of skin and muscle and ligament and bone as they are—but if you could, they would together be impossible to ignore, a sweet swell of raw discord, loud and rap- turous and beautiful beyond all comprehension: we are, we are, we are.
But truly, it was nothing. We did no more or less than we had done or would do in the future for an intern. Cheap baked goods purchased at the last minute. Feigned interest in future plans. The vague promise of references we hoped we’d never have to make good on. Perfunctory, all around. And yet she thanked us, again and again, both for the going away party and the internship as a whole.
“I learned so much,” she said, which we couldn’t imagine was true.
Was she playing the game as well? Just following the predetermined script? The same one from which we’d been reading for years? If you didn’t deviate, if you said what you were supposed to say when you were supposed to say it, you continued to move along the conveyor belt, rewarded with promotions and raises and more responsibilities you never wanted in the first place. But Emily, she was above all this, wasn’t she? We returned to the sympathy card, to the genuine emotion we’d read into it. That was the Emily we wanted. The Emily who felt so deeply, who wept for a stranger’s death.
Spencer lives in New York City, where he works in book publishing. He holds a BA in English Literature from Pepperdine University. His writing has appeared in Arcturus and on Adolescent.net.
He paused before answering. He had to think about it. ~
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