1. Two Years Later
one
Two Years Later
Noel
Violet: Let’s take today’s meeting out of the office, yeah?
I power down my laptop and shoot her a quick Sounds good!
in reply. Not that she was expecting me to counter.
Vi, my boss, likes to phrase her questions in a way that makes you feel like you’ve already agreed.
She does it with her edits too. Green would be a bolder choice, yes ?
The font’s a little understated for this client, wouldn’t you agree ?
It’s quirky in a pretentious way but I like it.
I like that the answer that will please her is served up on a silver platter.
Knowing how to please Violet has earned me a coveted permalance designer position at Brickstone Graphics.
Last year, she even submitted one of my projects—a branding overhaul for a non-profit counseling center—for a feature in Design Strides Magazine .
“Noel Kasey possesses a keen eye for the emotion of color,” they’d said.
Ironic , a little voice whispers in my ear as I kick off my leggings and pull a dress over my head, since you can’t feel much of anything at all these days.
Vi sends me the name of a coffee shop downtown that I can walk to, and I confirm with a thumbs up emoji.
This meeting was a last-minute calendar request, and I have no idea what she wants to discuss.
I shove both my laptop and drawing pad into a messenger bag, and lock the door behind me, happy for the sun that hits my face immediately.
I’m a little desperate for human interaction if I’m honest. My condo has been obnoxiously silent since Mom left.
This latest idea of hers—heading cross country to tour the West Coast in a converted Sienna with a man she met online—is her most chaotic to date.
Being roommate-less is great for remote work, even more so when the work takes me into the evening because I can’t seem to find inspiration.
But it’s not so great for the other hours, when the hollowness of empty rooms reminds me a little too much of myself at the moment.
The place Vi picked is small enough that when I walk in, she hears the bell over the door, turning from her spot at the counter. She waves before accepting two mugs from the barista, hers with a string hanging from the side, mine with a dollop of whipped cream melting on top.
“Sit, sit,” she says, tilting her chin toward one of a handful of mismatched tables where I recognize her coat on the back of a chair.
I make myself comfortable, stealing a glance at her while she finishes paying. Stilettos, palazzo pants wider than a four-lane freeway and the color of fresh pomegranate seeds. She’s choosing a chocolate croissant while wearing a stark white blouse because she is fearless.
I tug self-consciously at the hem of my floral skater skirt.
I don’t see Vi in person all that often, but every time I do, I find myself intimidated all over again.
Where I’m watercolors and script font, Violet Divine is jewel tones and slab serif.
She’s hard where I’m inherently soft. The modern, artsy Brickstone office in downtown South Norwalk, Connecticut is designed to invoke a seascape—aqua textiles and white couches—and I’ve always pictured Vi as an iron anchor in the center of it.
Vi finishes with the barista and joins me, handing me my mug of gourmet hot chocolate. “Thank you.” I dip my head in a nod.
She waves this off and takes the seat across from me, her face as neutral as the architecture firm’s logo I was working on when I got her text.
It’s odd, I realize—the lack of expression. I hadn’t thought to be nervous about this mid-day meeting until right now.
Vi sets her tea down after one sip, folding her hands in her lap. “Noel,” she says. “Are you happy with your work?”
I freeze, the chocolate burning my tongue before I remember to swallow. I can’t tell if she’s asking me if I’m fulfilled by it or happy with it in the sense that maybe it could be better. “If there’s something I could improve on…”
“It’s not your skill,” she says with a short shake of her head, and the pitiful smile that follows smacks me with the realization that, oh , I’ve been summoned to the principal’s office.
“It’s just that lately, I feel there’s a distinct lack of emotion in your designs,” she continues. “They’re a bit matte. No shine. No shimmer. I don’t have to tell you that art is… Well, it’s inherently emotional.”
“Of course.” I nod confidently, but I’m swallowing too much to pull it off.
Vi taps a nail on the side of her mug. “How are you feeling after your grandmother’s death?”
Matte , I think. Unemotional. But I have the good sense not to say that out loud after having just been accused of it in a way that sounded a lot like: You’re losing whatever value you bring me . Instead, I smile and give her a cheery, “I’m doing fine. Everything is fine.”
Her brows draw together, and I get the immediate sense I’ve given the wrong answer. I picture a surgeon studying an X-ray, exclaiming, ‘By God, there’s no heart in this rib cage!’
My stomach drops so fast I’m woozy from it. If Vi can see this little… problem I’m having, well, it’s worse than I thought.
It’s been happening a lot lately, the feeling of looking at a blank page where some emotion should appear.
The overwhelming urge to slap my cheeks to see if I’m awake or merely in the midst of a lucid dream.
The truth is I made it through Nana’s funeral without shedding a tear, zipping around like a robot, fixing flower arrangements, making tea and mini sandwiches for the guests.
Comforting Mom. When it was over, I slept for twelve hours and woke up feeling like it had been twelve years.
Thinking back on it is like catching the low hum of a siren in the distance.
A warning of things to come. That’s when Kate started calling more.
Watching me with an expression not unlike the one Vi’s wearing now whenever we’d Facetime.
Asking me if I was absolutely sure I didn’t need her to come stay with me for a while.
Of course I’d never put her out that way. But also, I wasn’t sure I wanted her close enough to see how off kilter I was. It’s much easier to sugar coat from three hours away.
Now this blankness I’ve been battling is affecting my job.
My mind immediately begins its monthly tally of all the bills Mom left me with when she took off, and a hundred lines of worry start to knot together in my belly.
Vi sets her teacup down and leans back in her chair. It makes an embarrassing squeak, but she’s far too sure of herself to notice. “Ned Majors is leaving,” she says. “He’s moving to New York January one to work for The Times .”
“Oh. That’s great for him.” Ned’s the only graphic designer on staff at Brickstone and very deserving of a gig like that.
We all have a favorite medium, and Ned’s in love with graphics the way I’m in love with paint.
The other three designers, including me, are varying degrees of freelance, which means I make my own hours, but I also buy my own health insurance.
Vi cocks her head, studying me. “I want to give you his job, Noel,” she says. “But I’m not entirely sure you want it.”
“I do,” I blurt, but I can hear how it sounds, hollow and reactionary.
Vi’s asking me a question that amounts to: Do you want to be able to pay your mortgage? Feed yourself? Of course I want it. Sound like you want it, Noel.
I force my smile bigger. “I definitely do.”
The span of time before Violet speaks again is the full gestation period for the anxiety forming in my chest.
Finally, she folds her hands on the table and says, “I want you to take some time off.”
“I… what?” Is she offering me a job or firing me? “Whatever is wrong with me, Vi… my designs, I’ll fix it.”
“This is not a punishment, Noel. It’s a gift. To you and the artist I know you are. And an investment in the designer I know you’ll be for me once you work out whatever has you blocked.”
My stomach sinks at that word, the acknowledgment that this is, indeed, a professional problem. An artist who’s blocked is like a pianist with broken fingers. Useless. She’s saying I used to be someone who deserved this promotion. Now I’m not.
My fingers curl into the skirt of my dress. Every one of them has permanent wrinkles in the same spot from this habit. “How long?”
“I won’t be assigning you new work until the end of the year.”
She must notice the way all of my muscles seize because she holds a hand up. “ But I’m asking Marj to process your final payment for all of your current jobs in advance to cover the time. Three months. You’ll come back and tell me if this is what you want.”
“I don’t need a break to figure it out.” But her patient smile tells me she’s made up her mind, and I blow out a resigned sigh. “Okay. Of course. If that’s what you think.”
“I do.” She squeezes my wrist, then stands to leave. “Keep the hands working, Noel. Your heart will catch up.”
“So she offered you a job, then rescinded it, then gave you vacation time as a consolation prize?” Kate kicks off her heels and tosses her keys. They land in a clatter somewhere I can’t see.
I Facetimed her as soon as I left Vi, and she answered on her way home for a quick change from pantyhose and a pencil skirt to ‘something sparkly and much shorter.’
She recently started a fancy job working for an environmental PAC in Portland, and though she’s not required to dress like a senator-in-training, she says it doesn’t hurt.
I look down at the leggings and fuzzy socks that I changed back into immediately upon closing my front door, and decide our respective outfits are a poetic vignette of our opposing lives.
Kate, a vibrant, social twenty-something.
Me, a woman deeply in touch with her inner house mouse.
“The job’s not off the table,” I say, rubbing at my temples. “It’s just on pause. And I don’t get vacation time.”