Chapter Twelve Lauren #4
She wandered past mock-ups of closets, of pantries, of bathrooms, until she found herself by a wall filled with clear plastic containers of assorted shapes and sizes.
All the empty containers in rows and stacks felt oppressive, like a mausoleum of emptiness.
She wasn’t just staring into the void, she was being swallowed by it.
Was life all about staving off emptiness by filling it with crap?
Did accumulating tangible objects somehow make the meaning of life—or the meaninglessness of life—easier to grasp?
Jane thought about a Porsche she’d seen with a bumper sticker that read HE WHO DIES WITH THE MOST TOYS WINS .
What did they win? Douchebag of the year award?
Why did a child need a roomful of clothing?
Why did anyone, for that matter? Was her life’s work shoving superfluous things into boxes so they could be stored and then forgotten?
More than one of Jane’s yoga teachers had referred to a body as “your container.” If Jane were a container, was she clear or opaque? And what was she filled with?
She was, perhaps, filled with sadness.
If only she could rent a storage unit somewhere in the Valley, off-load it, and lock it up.
Something was surging in her—she wasn’t sure what it was, whether it would be cathartic or catastrophic. She blinked back the tears she felt welling up. No. She was not going to have a breakdown in The Container Store.
“Say ‘thank you’ to these nice ladies for the wonderful job they did, Scotty.”
Scotty, Lauren’s son, stood by her side, leaning into her.
He was clearly a momma’s boy, sweetly shy, stocky with a shock of unruly hair, wearing shorts and a T-shirt with a smattering of stains.
Not at all the slick fashion plate Jane had expected.
Seeing this sensitive little boy with his mother precipitated an alien maternal longing in her.
“Thank you,” he dutifully said to them, then turned back to his mother. “Can I use my iPad now?”
“Sure, baby.” Lauren patted him on the head as he ran off.
The day was winding down, and Jane sensed they were all a little exhausted.
But what in Lauren Baker’s life would exhaust her?
Lauren Baker had everything. Shouldn’t she be ecstatic all day, every day?
Although, wouldn’t that, in and of itself, be exhausting?
Maybe Lauren sometimes felt like an empty vessel, a beautiful face onto whom people projected their own pathologies.
Maybe her lay-about husband aggravated her.
Maybe her chubby, dress-avoidant son disappointed her.
Kirsten, who had been lurking nearby, spoke up.
“Lauren, they’re telling me they need a decision today.”
“Then they should have sent me the options a week ago, shouldn’t they have?” Lauren answered with a tinge of peevish irritation that she might have thought was undetectable, but which Jane heard loud and clear.
“Yes, but—what do you want me to tell them?”
“What were they thinking? If I’m going to do T-shirts, they cannot be ironic! It’s so off brand. ‘Hey y’all y’all.’ What does that even mean?”
Kirsten looked flummoxed. This was a loaded question, so she went with the neutral, “I have no idea. So... what do you want me to tell them?”
“Nothing, I’m going to call them myself.” Without skipping a beat, she turned back to Jane and Esmé, all gracious and Southern again.
“Thank you so much, it looks wonderful. I hope Scotty will keep it neat—who am I kidding, he won’t—but we’ll do our best.”
“It was our pleasure,” Jane said.
“Kirsten will show you out, I have to jump on a call. Drive safe!”
“This was sort of a perfect last hurrah, right?” Esmé, standing by her car, glanced back at Lauren’s front door.
“Yes. You’ve got all my info—I want to hear how the new gig is going and everything.”
“For sure.”
“We should get a drink sometime and just, you know, let it rip,” Jane suggested.
“Ha, yes, that would be great.” Esmé stepped closer, whispering, “She was a piece of work, huh? Nothing like what I expected. Very... restrained. Sort of robotic maybe? And her assistant running interference all the time—ugh.”
“Celebrities have to build walls—all these people want a piece of her, and she’s so busy.”
“But she has people to do everything for her!”
“Yeah, and then she probably feels like an asshole for not doing it herself. I don’t know, I sort of liked her.”
“You’re a lot more generous than I am. I think this job has completely burnt me out on over-the-top bougies.”
As Jane drove home, she decided that if she were being honest, she mostly agreed with Esmé’s assessment of Lauren Baker.
You would hope she’d be flashing her million-dollar smile, laughing her robust laugh, dazzling you, rather than marching around her estate, with grim determination, from one task to the next.
America’s Sweetheart had turned into a ruthless businesswoman, promulgating her brand and raking in cash.
Lauren seemed intelligent, observant, and perhaps a little sad.
Maybe she had demons from her childhood she was still wrestling with.
Maybe she was self-critical despite all her success.
Maybe she was wounded and hardened by the inevitable misogynistic backlash that at some point all of America’s Sweethearts had to endure.
Maybe she hated being the custodian of her own brand, and the fact that the brand was herself made it feel like a kind of spiritual prostitution.
Or maybe she was imprisoned by the idealized version of who Lauren Baker was—a person Lauren herself never could be, maybe never wanted to be.
Or maybe Jane was doing that thing that people do to movie stars: projecting her own pathologies onto them.
The freeway traffic was clotting and as Jane slowed down, she realized she’d been so lost in thought that she’d missed her exit.
Now she’d have to quickly cut through three lanes of traffic to make the next exit.
As soon as she put on her turn signal, the car in the next lane slowed down, and the driver motioned for her to merge.
Jane waved a thank-you, grateful for little acts of kindness, these small graces.
Not everyone was an asshole. One could cling to a little bit of hope.
Teddy, hunched over the stove, tending his pots—one with his Irish stew, another with mashed potatoes—was in a kind of fugue state and didn’t hear Jane enter the kitchen.
This was one of the meals he made that he was most proud of.
It checked all the boxes: Irish, hearty, masculine.
The meat—beef rather than the more traditional lamb—was doused in Guinness, and Teddy was drinking a bottle of it as well.
“Hey, Teddy,” Jane said softly, so as not to startle him.
“Oh hey, Jane!” He was flushed and sweaty from the heat of the stove. Jane leaned in and gave him a light kiss on his cheek. He smelled salty, yeasty, cannabis-y. With the pungent scent of the aromatics and Guinness simmering in the stew, it was a heady blend.
“How was your day? Dinner is almost ready.”
This was so domestic. Teddy seemed to get pleasure from cooking for her, even when he wasn’t seeming to get pleasure from her company. Perhaps this was the sort of dynamic that cemented long-term relationships?
“It was fine. Big A-list rom-com star, initials LB.”
“Lauren Baker?”
“Maybe. Yes. She had us work on a kid’s closet that was borderline obscene, but you know, all the insanity is getting normalized for me.”
Teddy chuckled. “Oh, I don’t know about that, my Oppositionally Defiant Jane.”
“Yeah, you’re right... I’ll probably never get used to it. Esmé told me she’s leaving, going to work at a social media company.”
“She bugged you anyway, right?”
“I ended up liking her, actually...”
Teddy raised his eyebrows. “Really?”
“She was just hard to get to know. How was your day?”
“Eh.” Teddy poked at the mashed potatoes with a wooden spoon.
“What?” Jane rested her chin on his shoulder.
“Let’s talk about it over supper.”
As Teddy spooned a chunk of meat into his mouth, Jane noticed a bandage on the inside of his forearm, peeking out of his long sleeve.
“What happened?”
Teddy rolled up his sleeve, revealing a long strip of gauze and lots of medical tape. “I wanted a big reveal, but—I need to keep the bandage on for another couple hours.”
Of course. It was a tattoo.
Jane put down her fork. “What is it?”
“A saying... something I want to constantly be reminded of...”
“Which is?”
“You don’t want to guess?”
“ ‘Carpe diem’?”
“Oh god, Jane, it’s not that basic.”
“ ‘Hope springs eternal’?”
“Nope, but that’s a good one, and I’ve got plenty of real estate on my other forearm!” Teddy said, laughing.
“Or I could get it tattooed on my forehead.”
“I can see that for you, Jay. I love it.”
Jane speared a piece of meat. “Well, let me know what this one says first.”
“ ‘To thine own self be true,’ ” Teddy said, proudly.
Jane wasn’t sure exactly what she thought of this, but knew she needed to say something nice.
She was ambivalent about tattoos in general.
They seemed like corporeal clutter, clutter that required laser treatments and a lot of pain to get rid of.
Teddy had two other tattoos, both graphics: an hourglass on his arm, and a compass on his chest. They made sense, actually: a way to measure time, and a way to measure space.
A reminder to maximize every hour, and explore every acre, while in this world.
Jane had grown fond of them, and their message.
This new addition, To thine own self be true ?
Well, obviously he was in a place where he needed affirmation.
“I love it.”
Teddy grinned. “Really?”
“Yes, really. Can’t go wrong with Shakespeare, can you? And I like the sentiment.”
“It probably means different things to different people.”
Jane made indentations on her mashed potatoes with her fork. “Why did you decide to get it?”