The Memo

Chapter 1

ANOTHER MONDAY MORNING, RACING AROUND THE APARTMENT, praying I wouldn’t be late for work. Hal was at our kitchen island, spooning gluten-free granola into his beautiful mouth while I lifted objects and slammed them back down in desperate pursuit of my keys.

“You sure you haven’t seen them?” I sounded frantic.

Hal gave one of his shrugs. “What do they look like?”

“They look like... my keys, with a fob.” The bright green, droplet-shaped entry device had been a fixture of our butcher-block countertop only ever since we’d moved in. “Forget it.” I flung open more drawers. We really needed to get one of those wall hook contraptions.

Hal and I had been in Pittsburgh for a little less than a year, covering the maintenance of a spacious if somewhat dilapidated loft that belonged to a distant contact of Hal’s. My boyfriend had a way of drawing interesting people to him, like a six-foot-two magnet. I’d never met the owner, an artist named Glen who was currently in Marfa, Texas, for reasons that were never made clear. Clarity wasn’t really Glen’s thing. I’d informed our landlord of the bedroom closet door that was falling off its hinges and the leak in the kitchen ceiling, but his stock response was “no problem,” as if I was asking for forgiveness and not help. Hal and I came up with our workarounds. We crammed our clothing into the hallway closet, and I placed a braided-trunk ficus tree beneath the source of the water drip. A housewarming gift from Geeta, the tree had been more valuable than my best friend could have imagined.

At last, my keys! They were on the shelf in the entryway, nearly obscured by a thicket of junk mail and receipts. At the top of the pile was a letter from my alma mater. I averted my eyes but not quickly enough to miss the words emblazoned on the envelope: “Attention Jennifer Green, Coleman College Class of 2007! Two Weeks to Go!”

Down to four days, actually. I was due to head out of town on Friday for a full weekend of catching up with a group of people who, based on their social media feeds, were all living their absolute best lives. I’d only been dreading this getaway for five years, ever since the ten-year reunion, which I’d managed to skip. Hal and I had not been getting along at the time, and I’d assured myself—promised myself, really—that I’d be in a better place by the time our fifteen-year reunion came along. Lo and behold, I wasn’t.

My two best friends from college, Geeta Brara and Leigh Sullivan, were furious with me for bailing the last time, and my absence had made Geeta all the more zealous that we all attend our fifteenth. I could hardly believe it myself—fifteen whole years since graduation. Leigh and I were no longer in close touch, but I doubted that she required the same type of hard sell I did. After all, Leigh had no reason to be reluctant. She could dazzle our classmates with her glamorous style, confident gait, and stunning success. But I couldn’t shake the conviction that, for me at least, the whole weekend would be a recipe for nostalgia and regret, not so much on account of all the stupid things I’d done, but for all the things I’d failed to see through. On the plus side, I had my keys.

I bounded back into the kitchen, waving the green fob in the air. “Mission accomplished!”

Hal’s mouth puckered in what I took for amusement.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing,” Hal said. “You’re just super cute when you get flustered.”

This statement only made me more flustered. Hal was super cute in all emotional states. He was textbook gorgeous to a degree that bordered on the comical. He had big hazel eyes and thick honey-colored hair just long enough to pull back in a low bun, and a tall, lanky body that never managed to put on any weight. Even more attractive, though, were the intangibles. Hal gave off a zero-fucks, no-stress energy that made putty of pretty much everyone. Everyone except for my mom.

Hal cocked his head to the side. “Jenny,” he cooed.

Oh lord. He wanted a quickie.

I shook my head. “I have to go to work, like, five minutes ago.”

“Come on.” He patted his lap.

“I gotta go,” I said.

I really did have to go. Probably in more ways than one. Hal was a good-time guy, the kind of dude you were meant to hook up with for one summer, in your early twenties—not stick with until you were in your mid-thirties. We’d met in Costa Rica, the site of my brother’s destination wedding. Hal was living in a funky treehouse on the edge of the luxurious but ecologically sustainable resort that my sister-in-law had chosen for their nuptials. He was working at the resort, doing some groundskeeping by day while reading philosophy books at night, thinking big thoughts and talking big talk, his specialty. It felt thrilling and preposterous to get together with this broke yet insanely intelligent guy who looked like a hot caveman.

I wrote epic emails to Geeta and Leigh about this dream man and all the treehouse sex we were having, sex that rang through the canopy for all the tourists, resort workers, and exotic animals to hear. What a week! But at the end of it, we’d ended it. I was going home. My destiny was not to cling to a guy who lived in a tree in Costa Rica like an oversized sloth. Then, a couple of years later, Hal and I ran into each other at my freshman roommate’s barbecue in Brooklyn. Hal happened to be her neighbor, living with three other guys in a one-bedroom with a tiny home office where he slept when he wasn’t on one of his crazy trips. We’d picked up where we’d left off, and I’d fallen so hard for him. By wintertime, we had matching travel backpacks. Hal and I stuck together through our thirtieth birthdays, an engagement, a disengagement, and a pandemic. Now the world was opening back up, and here we were, untransformed and static, petrified skeletons at Pompeii.

“What’s the deal with tonight?” Hal said in a matter-of-fact tone. He was over trying to seduce me, now reading his phone.

“The deal?” I repeated.

“You have singing, right?”

“A cappella is on Tuesdays,” I said, not taking the bait. My schedule in this city wasn’t that hard to follow. I had exactly one standing activity that didn’t involve Hal—the embarrassingly named Looney Tunes—and our group met on Tuesday every week. “I’ll be home at the normal time,” I said, going over to kiss him goodbye.

Hal didn’t need to start getting ready for hours, possibly not at all. He worked at a gallery located in a converted mattress factory on the north side of town. He was one of their art handlers, part of the team of strapping men responsible for setting up and dismantling shows and building the occasional display case. He particularly enjoyed philosophizing with his coworkers over their many coffee breaks.

“Oh!” I said. “There are muffins in the bread drawer if you want to bring them with you to work. Hazelnut crunch.”

Hal raised his eyebrows, his I-would-never look. He’d recently gone paleo, which I’d been trying not to take as a personal affront.

“Babe, you know I’m against the grain,” he said.

“I didn’t say you have to eat them,” I called out as I darted to the front door. “You can share them with your team.”

Back in the entryway, I gave myself a final once-over in the mirror. Dark shoulder-length hair, brown eyes that were neither excessively big nor small, a light dusting of freckles across my cheeks. And, of course, my prominent nose, a feature that I tried to think of as regal. I smoothed my hair and took a step back. I was bordering on presentable, if not more than the sum of my parts.

No wonder Hal’s attention had faded. After what I’d believed to be two fully monogamous years, my boyfriend had taken an interest in a swishy-ponytailed woman who had recently moved into our apartment complex. Brie—yes, that was her name, like the cheese—had a little toffee-colored dog and a bounty of yoga outfits that showcased her waffle abs. I tried to keep my suspicions to myself. I focused on staying busy, going on movie dates with my work wife, Sophie, and reconnecting with my love of baking, which I had neglected in New York. But no matter how hard I pounded the dough, I was never quite able to knead away the sense that I was committed to a guy who would never be fully committed to me.

Twenty minutes after Hal rejected my muffins, I was waiting in line outside SteelHaus, the coworking space where I spent most of my waking hours. Members had to go through an elaborate sign-in process at the front desk, like we were ticketed guests to a performance of our own work lives. I pulled out my phone and saw that three new emails had come in since my T ride over. They were all from Alice. Typical. A good portion of my maniacal boss’s ideas came to her during her morning workout, tossed word salads dictated while sweating it out on one of those Internet-connected stationary bikes that every upwardly mobile professional suddenly seemed to be into. I took a deep breath and closed my inbox. I deserved a few more minutes of peace.

As I inched forward in the line, I pulled up my most recent text thread with Geeta. The night before, she’d sent me an image of my face that an app that her company was developing had generated to reflect the answers that Geeta had selected (on my behalf) to a personality quiz centered on my “embodied self.” This was what rising tech stars did while nursing their twins, apparently: toy with technology that nobody needed yet everybody desperately wanted. My embodied self had huge Bambi eyes and a jawline that could cut glass. My nose looked the same, which made me feel a tug of warmth for Geeta. My mother had, apropos of nothing, offered to fund a nose job back when I was in college. Geeta had objected, maintaining that my nose made me look dignified, like a socialite in a John Singer Sargent painting.

I pinched the screen to expand the view. It was me and not me. I tried to imagine what this Jenny’s life would be like. The version of me who didn’t spend her Sunday nights consumed in dread about the coming workweek and her psycho boss. The Jenny who didn’t analyze hairs on her boyfriend’s jacket collar to see if they matched with the coat of the pretty neighbor’s dog (they did). The Jenny who didn’t have a slew of problems that she hid from her mother on their increasingly infrequent phone calls. This embodied Jenny. She would love phone calls with her mother!

“Hello? Are you going in?”

I spun around to see who sounded so irritated. Sophie smirked at me. “Goodness, Jenny,” she said. “You’d think you’re not psyched to clock in and rock out.”

Sophie was the best thing about my job, way wiser than her twenty-four years on earth. She was always good for a sympathetic side eye or a snack break. Today she was the portrait of Gen-Z perfection in her ironically adorable mom jeans and a cap-sleeve sweatshirt, every fiber undoubtedly sourced from a sustainable farm. A topknot sat on the crown of her head.

“Sorry, Soph.” I stepped toward the front desk.

“I didn’t think you would ever use FaceTune,” Sophie said, hot on my heels. “You’ve always been more of an au natureltype.” She gave me a playful smile and gestured to my outfit. I had thrown together a prairie skirt, a loose cotton sweater, and brown clogs that dated back to my early twenties.

“It’s a vintage look,” I said quickly.

“Right. Cool.” Sophie bit her bottom lip.

I really needed to take Sophie up on her standing offer to be my stylist and take me shopping. But that would require accepting the fact that my body was never going to resemble the limber figure I’d once taken for granted. The only thing about me that was getting leaner was my bank account balance. This skirt had an elastic waist and was getting a lot of wear.

Sophie brandished her ID card at the SteelHaus receptionist and consulted her watch. “We can do this. Three hours, then we get to order lunch.”

“Three hours of saving womankind,” I told her.

“We are heroes, Jenny. You know that, right?”

I pumped my fist in the air and followed my work wife inside.