his grandmother or the restaurant managers he would cajole into giving us a table.
I opened my mouth to tell him what had happened this morning, how I suddenly couldn’t make sense of anything in my life, but he gave me that patronizing grin again.
“You’re tough.” He punched me lightly on the arm like we were buddies, like we hadn’t been lovers for four years, like we weren’t supposed to be engaged soon.
“Ben,” I said, trying to ignore his patent condescension, “something’s going on that I don’t understand. I don’t remember all sorts of things. I don’t remember us breaking up. I—”
“Kell, I just can’t do this again. I can’t rehash the whole thing over and over, okay?” He cupped my cheek for a second, the way you would a child who had food on his face.
I pulled my head away. “No, you don’t get it.”
“I do. I get that you’re going to make it through this. You’re going to be okay.” He spoke these last words in a soft, hang-in-there-kid kind of way that infuriated me.
I glanced down at a spot on the sidewalk that looked strangely like old blood, then back up at his pitying eyes. “You’re absolutely right. I’m going to be fine. Fantastic even.”
“There you go,” Ben said in what was probably the smuggest tone I’d ever heard. “That’s the ticket.”
Yeah, that’s the ticket all right, I thought. The ticket out of here. I didn’t have a clue what was going on, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me fall apart.
“I’ll see you around.” I tried to sound flip, like I didn’t care, but I could feel the tears welling in my eyes. “See you,” I said again, then turned away.
As I walked up the street, my head down, my hands in my pockets, I could hear Ben buzzing his apartment, and the woman’s voice say over the intercom, “Ben, is that you?”
“It’s me, hon. Let me up.”
I stopped at Chuck’s, the first bar I found. Inside, it was dark, with at least five different football games blaring from at least ten different TVs. The tables were full of people cheering and screaming, baskets of fries and pitchers of beer in front of them. I slipped onto a stool at the bar.
“What can I get you?” the bartender asked me. He leaned forward and dried a spot of water on the wood with a quick flick of his towel.
“Beer.”
“Okay. Well, we have twenty-three different labels, so what kind do you want?”
“Doesn’t matter.” I usually drank margaritas, but it seemed too festive a drink.
The bartender stood there for a long minute, staring at me, before he moved toward a silver tapper and picked up a glass.
What was happening to me? What had happened to my town house, to my relationship with Ben? I wished desperately that I could rewind the day back to that moment at the dry cleaners when I was being pissy about losing a pair of black pants and the fact that my job wasn’t so great. If I could just go back, I would truly realize how lucky I was right at that moment. I would appreciate it somehow.
But my mind kept skidding away from the dry cleaners and rushing through the rest of the day. Why hadn’t I known that my place had been sold, that Ben and I had broken up?
The bartender pushed a glass of amber beer in front of me without a word. I took a sip, and I made myself review what I did know about myself. Name: Kelly McGraw. That was correct, wasn’t it? Beth Maninsky seemed to know that Kelly McGraw used to live in her house, and Ben had called me Kell, so that had to be right.
What else? Parents: Sylvie and Ken McGraw, who’d had me while they were married for a very brief period and living in Fort Myers, Florida. My father was a complete shit who took off a year after my birth, and my mom reverted to her maiden name, Sylvie Custer, even though she hated it. It was too close to custard, she always said, and made her sound like some sort of pudding.
Childhood: my mom worked her way from being a secretary at a TV station to a production assistant there, and a few years after that, she married Danny Rosati, a local crime boss who was the subject of an exposé she’d helped put together. Danny wasn’t much of a dad to me. He always treated me more like a pet, patting me on the head and giving me treats when I was good. He did give me my first camera, though, and for that I’d always be grateful. My mom gave birth to my half-sister when I was six. She was named Delores after Danny’s mom, but except for Danny, everyone called her Dee. Dee was always a frail kid, but she had the greatest toothy smile and the loudest laugh you’d ever heard.
After my mom divorced Danny, we moved to Atlanta so she could work for a better TV station, and we stayed there until after my freshman year in high school, when we moved to Chicago. I joined the yearbook staff at my new school because at least I could take pictures, even if they were of people I didn’t know—and that was where I met Laney. We’d been best friends ever since. We went to different colleges but visited each other constantly and shot up our phone bills. After we graduated, we got an apartment together in Lakeview and shared it until a few years ago.
Laney is the most energetic person I’ve ever met. Sometimes she’ll call me at eight in the morning, before she leaves for her account exec job at a marketing firm, and she’ll tell me that she’s already done her laundry, given herself a leg wax and taken a kick-boxing class at the gym. Laney was the person, other than Ben, who’d saved me when Dee died last year in a car accident. My mom and I couldn’t comfort each other; we reminded each other too much of Dee. My mom left Chicago—fled really—for L.A. last April to take a job with an entertainment news show, and Laney and Ben became my only family in town.
What happened after April? I tried to think about stocks I’d researched at work, weekend trips I’d taken, street fairs I’d gone to over the summer. Nothing. I couldn’t remember anything from May up to now, the beginning of October, a span of five or so months.
I took a gulp of my beer, hoping it would help, maybe induce some kind of alcoholic flashback. Nothing again. I had to talk to someone about this. Ben was out. Laney was my only support now, and she was in Palm Beach. Or was she?
I sat up straighter on the stool and pushed my beer away, trying to concentrate. Laney had gone to a marketing conference in Palm Beach for a week. But was that this week? I’d been wrong about so many things today.
I threw five dollars on the bar and took off for the pay phone. As I pushed my way toward the rest rooms, I noticed that everyone else in the place seemed to be having a fantastic time. People were slapping high fives when touchdowns were scored, pouring beer for their friends, throwing their heads back and laughing at stories from the night before. I’d had days like this, spent watching football and drinking in a smoky bar when it was bright daylight outside. Those times had always seemed simple, uncomplicated, and yet while they were happening I’d be drifting off about whether I’d make partner, whether I should ask Ben to move in with me. Once again, I wished I could hit Rewind and just enjoy that time, instead of letting my mind take me somewhere else.
Luckily, there was a pay phone in the women’s bathroom, so the noise was dimmed. I dialed Laney’s number, thinking that even if her voice mail answered I could talk and talk, and she would pick it up eventually. Sometimes, when we got busy, Laney and I communicated solely by voice mail. We knew each other
