Just Another Afternoon

Chapter 11

The ceramics studio smelled like wet clay and burnt coffee, the way it always did on Thursday afternoons. Corinne had her hands buried in a mass that refused to center. The wheel turned and the clay drifted sideways, stubborn, like a thought that won't fall into place.

"You're strangling it," Jade said from the wheel next to her. "Too much pressure."

"That's not it."

"It's exactly it."

Corinne lifted her hands and let the wheel slow down. The cylinder had become something shapeless, a lopsided lump that was no good anymore. She flattened it with her palm, no ceremony, and started over.

Jade was watching her. Not subtly — that wasn't her style. She watched straight on, eyebrows slightly raised, waiting.

"What?" Corinne asked.

"Nothing. I'm watching you work. It's relaxing. Like watching someone fail in slow motion."

Corinne smiled in spite of herself and wet her hands again in the bucket. The water was lukewarm. Outside, the Austin afternoon was settling into that golden tone of late September, the light coming in at a slant through the windows and lighting up the clay dust hanging in the air.

"You've had a weird smile for two weeks," Jade said.

"I don't have any smile."

"That one. The one you just made when I said the thing about failing in slow motion. You never used to laugh at my jokes. You'd hold it in, to be polite. Now it slips out."

Corinne didn't answer. She centered the clay — this time properly — and started opening it with her thumbs. The clay gave under the pressure, rose, formed walls. That she could do. That she controlled.

"Is it still the one from work?" Jade asked.

"Yes."

"Is it serious?"

Corinne kept her eyes on the wheel.

"It's moving fast."

"That's not what I asked."

"It's serious."

Jade set down her own piece — a crooked cup that hadn't made any progress all afternoon — and wiped her hands on her apron. She pulled her stool a few inches closer. Corinne's wheel kept turning, its low, steady hum.

"Tell me," she said.

"There's not much to tell."

"Liar."

Corinne laughed through her nose. She raised the walls of the piece a little higher, shaped it into a bowl — which she hadn't planned, but it was coming out well.

"She's smart," she said. "The smartest person I've met in a long time. And that's saying something."

"For you, that's saying a lot."

"She reads people in five seconds. Except me."

"Except you."

Corinne nodded slowly. She stopped the wheel. The bowl sat there, wet, gleaming, still alive in its symmetry.

"She doesn't know who I am," she said.

Jade didn't answer right away. Somewhere at the back of the studio, someone dropped a tool and let out a quiet curse. The day went on, indifferent.

"What do you mean she doesn't know who you are?"

"She knows my name is Corinne. She knows I work in admin. She knows I make pour-over coffee. She knows I live by the lake."

"Corinne."

"She knows what I've let her know."

Jade went very still. It was strange to see her still. Jade was noise, gestures, hands flying when she talked. But now her hands rested on her knees and she was looking at Corinne with an expression she hadn't seen on her before.

"She doesn't know about Ashford?"

"No."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

"You haven't told her you sold a company for a number with a lot of zeros and moved here to make crooked bowls?"

"The bowl isn't crooked."

"Don't change the subject."

Corinne stood up. She went to the sink at the back and rinsed her hands under cold water, watching the clay break apart and run down the drain in muddy threads. She took longer than she needed to. When she came back, Jade was still waiting, exactly as still as before.

"It's complicated," Corinne said.

"No, it isn't."

"Jade."

"It's one of the least complicated things there is. You say: hey, I used to be CEO of a huge company, I sold it, now I do this. Done. Thirty seconds."

"It's not thirty seconds."

"Why not?"

Corinne sat down. Not at the wheel. On the edge of the long table in the back, where pieces were left to dry. She picked up a dry sponge and squeezed it between her fingers without realizing it.

"Because she is what I was," she said.

Jade tilted her head.

"Explain."

"She runs a company. She built it. It's hers, it pulses in her, she can't separate herself from it. I've watched her talk about her work and I've seen my own face from ten years ago. The same intensity. The same way of never switching off."

"And what does that have to do with lying to her?"

"I'm not lying to her."

"You're lying to her."

"I'm not lying to her," Corinne repeated, and this time her voice came out firmer. "I haven't told her a single thing that isn't true. Everything she knows about me is true."

Jade looked at her for a long moment.

"That's what you tell yourself."

The sun had dropped a little more. The light wasn't coming in at a slant now but almost horizontally, and a golden rectangle cut across the studio floor to Corinne's feet. Outside, distant traffic hummed, the sound of the city she'd chosen and that still sometimes felt foreign to her.

"There's a difference," Jade said, "between not telling everything and hiding who you are. You know which one this is. You know better than anyone."

"I don't want her to look at me differently."

"There it is."

"What?"

"That. Finally something honest." Jade leaned forward. "You're not telling her because you're afraid she'll see you differently."

Corinne dropped the sponge on the table. She crossed her arms. It was a defensive move and she knew it and she didn't care.

"When someone finds out who I used to be," she said, "they stop seeing me. They start seeing the title. The number. The story. They stop asking me what I think and start asking me what a person in my position would do. Like I'm a job and not a person."

"She's not just anyone."

"That's why it's worse."

Jade frowned.

"Why worse?"

"Because she understands that world. She respects it.

She admires it." Corinne uncrossed her arms, crossed them again.

"If she finds out I ran Ashford, she won't see me as some curiosity.

She'll see me as an equal. And then everything changes.

Everything we have now — this slow thing, this no-baggage thing, this thing where I'm just Corinne — it stops existing.

It turns into something else. Into two executives.

Into strategy. Into the same old thing."

"The same old thing."

"The same old thing."

Jade stood up. She walked to the window, looked out at the street for a moment, hands in the back pockets of her jeans, and came back. When she spoke, her voice had dropped a notch.

"Do you remember Renata?"

Corinne closed her eyes for a second.

"Don't start."

"Renata. The one you were with for three years. From Chicago."

"I know who Renata is."

"Three years, Corinne. Three years dating a woman who thought your whole life was work, because that's all you let her see.

You came home late, you left early, you took calls at dinner.

And one day she told you she didn't know you, and you got angry because you thought she did — that you knew each other perfectly. "

"That was different."

"How?"

"Back then I was my work. There was nothing else to show. I wasn't hiding anything, there just wasn't anything else."

"And now there is something else," Jade said, "and you're hiding it just the same.

Before you hid the fact that you had no life.

Now you're hiding the fact that you have a past. It's the same move, honey.

The same hand. You give people the edited version and then you're surprised when they only love you halfway. "

Corinne said nothing. The sentence settled inside her, cold, like a swallowed stone. Her pulse was in her throat. She wanted to argue and couldn't find the argument, and the lack of argument made her angrier than the accusation itself.

"It's not the same," she said, but the conviction wasn't there anymore.

"Okay. It's not the same." Jade held up her hands. "But let me tell you what happens next. Because we've seen this before, you and I. Not with her, but we've seen it."

"Jade."

"You build it like this, on what you don't say, and one day she finds out.

Because they always find out, Corinne. Always.

The truth doesn't sit quietly waiting for you to be ready.

It comes out on its own, at the worst moment, from the worst source.

And then what breaks isn't that you were an executive. What breaks is that you hid it."

"I'm not going to hear how things end from you."

"I'm not guessing at the ending. I'm telling you what I already know."

Corinne turned away. She went back to the wheel, sat down, switched it on. The bowl was still there, waiting. She ran a damp sponge along the rim, smoothing, looking for something to do with her hands so she wouldn't have to look Jade in the face.

"It's early," she said. "We've only been doing this a few weeks."

"You let her sleep in your bed."

"That doesn't mean—"

"You make her pour-over coffee." Jade sat back down on her stool, across from her, the two wheels between them. "Don't tell me it's early. Early has never scared you. Something else scares you."

The wheel turned. The bowl spun, wet, perfect in its useless symmetry, and Corinne stared at it as though an answer might be in there.

"If I tell her now," she said quietly, "she's going to ask me why I didn't tell her sooner. Every day that goes by is one more day to account for."

"Then today is the moment. Tomorrow it's already worse."

"It's not that simple."

"I didn't say it was simple. I said it was straightforward. It's not the same thing."

Corinne stopped the wheel. The hum cut off all at once, and the two of them sat in the sudden hollow of it, the studio nearly empty now, the light nearly gone.

"There's something you don't understand," Corinne said.

"When she talks about her company, her eyes light up in a way I recognize.

And I know exactly where that light leads.

It leads to eating at your desk, working Sundays, waking up at three in the morning thinking about margins.

It leads to having nothing else. I lived inside that for forty years, Jade.

Forty. And I got out. Getting out nearly killed me. You know that."

Jade nodded, slowly. That part she knew. She was one of the few who did.

"And now I'm falling in love," Corinne went on, and the words came out without permission, and she heard them as though someone else had said them, "with someone who's still in there.

With someone who is what I used to be. And if I tell her who I was, I'm giving her a map.

I'm giving her permission to pull me back.

Because she'll want me to understand her, and I understand her too well, and understanding her means going back. "

"That's not hiding a past," Jade said. "That's hiding from yourself."

Corinne looked at her.

"You decide who you are now," Jade said. "Not the title. Not her. You. And if you're not sure who you are away from all of that, then the problem isn't what she's going to think. The problem is that you still don't believe it yourself."

The blow landed clean. Corinne's throat tightened, heat rose up her neck, and for a moment she hated Jade with the sharp, clean intensity you can only feel for someone who's right.

"It's late," Corinne said. "I want to put this out to dry."

"Corinne."

"I heard you. Okay? I heard you."

Jade looked at her a moment longer. Then she nodded, without pushing, which was her way of respecting a closed door. She took off her apron, hung it on the hook, picked up the crooked cup, and set it on the shelf of unfinished pieces.

"Just one more thing," she said, already at the door.

"What?"

"When you were in Chicago, back when everything happened with Renata, you said something to me. Do you remember?"

"No."

"You said, 'I didn't lose her because I lied. I lost her because I never let her know me.'" Jade straightened her jacket. "I'm giving it back to you in case it helps. Good night, honey."

And she left. The studio door swung shut with its little bell, and Corinne was alone with the wheel silent, the bowl gleaming, the rectangle of light already gone from the floor.

She stood up. She carried the bowl with both hands, carefully, to the drying shelf, and set it down among the other pieces. She looked at it for a moment. It was symmetrical, clean, well made. Not a visible flaw.

On the inside, though, she knew it was hollow. They all were. That's what they were. A vessel is just the shape of an empty space.

That night, in the apartment by the lake, Corinne poured herself a glass of wine she didn't finish. She sat in front of the window, the city lights trembling on the black water, and left her phone face-up on the table.

She thought about texting Vivienne. She really thought about it.

She composed the message in her head several times, word by word.

There's something I should tell you. Too dramatic.

Are you free tomorrow? I want to tell you about myself.

Wrong — it promised less than it would deliver. Before any more time goes by.

She picked up the phone. The screen lit up. She saw Vivienne's last message, from that same afternoon, while she'd been at ceramics: Meeting until nine. I think about you more than is reasonable. And below it, her own reply, sent hours earlier: That's not very professional, Ms. Hartwell.

Her pulse had spiked again. She held her finger over the screen, over the text field. The truth was right there, a couple of sentences away. Thirty seconds, like Jade had said. Straightforward, not simple.

She thought about the way Vivienne's eyes lit up when she talked about Helixare.

She thought about how that light would change when she knew.

She thought about the word equal, about no longer being just Corinne, about the map she'd be handing over — a map back to a place she'd escaped from at tremendous cost.

She turned the screen off.

She set it face-down on the table, and the glass made a dry little tap against the wood, and the room fell into shadow — just the city lights on the water and her own blurred reflection in the window.

Tomorrow, she told herself. Tomorrow or the day after. When the moment was right. When she knew how to say it well.

She knew she was lying to herself.