Every morning before work Emily straightens her hair and curls her eyelashes. She alternates between Sparkling Lilac Mystic and Sea Breeze Clean Burst antiperspirant because she can’t decide whether floral or fresh scents best express her authentic self. Around her neck she wears a tiny gold heart on a thin gold chain. She irons her clothes every Friday night, even the jeans she only wears on weekends. Everything in order. People often ask her to speak up.
Emily has two friends. Both are ceremonial holdovers from elementary school. Friendships as dutiful and potentially pointless as washing dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. Emily wants more. She wants a friendship that’s a perpetual scooping of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. One long pillow fight. A continuous revelation of secret crushes. The kind of friendship with inside jokes, with whole days spent texting smiley faces to one another. But there doesn’t seem to be room in her friends’ lives for this kind of friendship. Both her friends have boyfriends. When Emily calls them, she can sense their hesitation. They make excuses, drop her for incoming calls. It’s obvious she’s become a burden. And it’s not as if they’re exactly her first choice for bosom buddies, but what other option does she have?
Emily has more namesakes than friends. Her mother named her after three Emilies, specifically: Brontë, Dickinson and Davison. Two of them, literary recluses. The other, trampled to death by a king’s horse. All beloved by feminists and all single, like Emily. Probably virgins like her, too. Whenever Emily is stuck in some expanding moment of socially induced panic—her breath coming on faster, the inner voice goading speak up, you’re sweating, touch him, hug her, do something for fuck’s sake—she tells herself not to worry; it’s just a case of the Emilies. The naming of this awkwardness consoles her, makes it pathological, flings the blame out centrifugally, away from the self of herself. A self best expressed with deliberation over what she can control: clothes that flatter her mildly pear-shaped body, the perfect shade of blush, periods every twenty-eight days on the dot. Despite her virginity, despite the fact that she’s only been out on one date and never even kissed the guy, Emily has been on birth control since the eleventh grade. She couldn’t bear the uncertainty of irregular menstruation. The body is untrustworthy, full of potential mutinies.
Emily works at Phil’s Consulting, a small firm in downtown Ottawa that specializes in strategic planning for non-profit organizations. The other four employees are Tony, Roger, Mary and Lydia. Phil of Phil’s Consulting is short not for Philip, but for Philanthropic, an abbreviation that Roger says makes the company seem “more approachable” and Tony claims makes it sound “snazzier.”
Lydia, the employee closest in age to Emily, has been working there for two years, a year and a half longer than Emily. Lydia’s business cards are gilt-edged and read, Assistant Project Improvement Officer. Emily’s are plain white and read, Assistant Project Enhancement Officer. Emily has been promised she will get gilt-edged cards after she’s been there for a year.
When Emily first started her job, she enjoyed the work. All she did was copy-edit reports before they were sent out to the clients, yet she derived satisfaction from her association, however tangential, with the important philanthropic work being done. Lately, though, the routine of it, the tedium and isolation of spending so many hours editing and re-editing a single sentence, has strained her. Even more than the work itself, the office environment has stoked her Emilies.
On her first day, wishing to give the impression she was someone with a vital and fulfilling personal life, she’d brought a framed picture of her and her girlfriends from prom: their hair curled and, beneath their dresses, their stomachs sucked in. She’d placed it on her desk before noticing that Mary was the only other person with photos on display. She was about to hide it when Roger ambled over and picked it up.
“Looking pretty smart,” he said. “College?”
“High school.” Emily tried for nonchalance. “My best friends.”
“You haven’t changed a bit.”
Roger put the frame down. Emily cringed at the coarse, curly hair on the backs of his fingers.
“Better pretend I work here,” he said.
He winked and walked over to his corner of the office. Following this exchange, Emily worried that it would be too conspicuous now to remove the picture so she left it where it was.
Later that day, she attended a short introductory meeting with the rest of the employees. Emily took an empty seat beside Lydia. She found Lydia intimidating, though she couldn’t have specified why. Definitely wasn’t her looks. Her hair was part greasy, part frizzy. She did have a striking face: huge, protruding eyes and small, heart-shaped lips. She didn’t wear makeup. At the meeting everyone was boisterous and friendly. They were all dressed casually, more casually than Emily had expected. Roger wore wrinkled khakis and a bulky light blue sweater. Tony wore black jeans and an open, plaid, button-down shirt with a black T-shirt underneath. Mary wore tapered charcoal trousers—polyester with a slight sheen—and a lime green, short-sleeved shirt, untucked.
But it was Lydia who struck Emily as the most egregious case. Lydia’s knee-length jean skirt was hemmed unevenly with safety pins. Her faded, black cardigan was too small, buttons popping open across her breasts. Emily would never show up to work looking so unprofessional. Her smugness dissipated as banter buzzed and spun around her like a swarm of bees. She had trouble concentrating on individual voices.
The majority of the meeting was spent sharing anecdotes about the previous Assistant Project Enhancement Officer. Emily didn’t remember all the details. Mostly she remembered the ironic look on Lydia’s face, the easy flow of words from her mouth.
“Remember those fruit leathers she used to eat?” Lydia said. “She would lick those things like a cat.”
“I’m just glad I won’t have to smell her perfume anymore,” Roger said. “Awful stuff. I’m allergic, you know.”
“We know,” Lydia said.
“She had the nicest penmanship,” Mary said. “You can’t teach penmanship like that.”
“She had other assets,” Tony said.
“Oh please.” Lydia looked disgusted. “Can’t you recognize a padded bra when you see one?”
Listening to Lydia talk, Emily was struck by a need to align herself with her. She’d never known someone so audacious and self-assured. Emily’s desire for Lydia’s recognition was overwhelming. It seemed to condense the room down to the two of them. Emily wished that she’d known this previous employee so she could gossip about her, too. Gossip viciously, like girls do. Like friends do, drawing a boundary between themselves and everyone else.
“Jealous?” Tony challenged Lydia.
Emily tried to cut in, her mouth open, poised, but couldn’t find an opportunity.
“You got me,” Lydia said sarcastically. “What more could any woman want out of life than a D cup and a dunce cap?”
“Children, children,” Roger said. “Can we please try to stick to the agenda?”
By the end of the meeting, Emily noticed that she’d chipped off all her nail polish. She’d stacked the thin sheets of discarded varnish on top of each other. Looked like a hunk of mica.
Emily sat with her new colleagues at the round table in the small kitchen nook. She fumbled at the microwave, trying to figure out which setting to use to heat up her portion-controlled cayenne pepper and celery soup.
Tony sidled up to her. “Need a little help defrosting?” he said, draping his arm on her shoulder.
Emily winced. She prefers to be warned before anyone touches her. Taken aback, Tony removed his arm and muttered, “Sorry.”
“Don’t mind him,” Lydia said dryly. “It’s not called Philanderer’s Consulting for nothing.”
Mary smiled. Roger guffawed. Tony groaned.
“Oh,” Emily said.
Routine insulated the relationships at the office. Agendas, reports. Emily continued to admire Lydia’s confidence and to question her taste. Memos, clients, coffee. Fridays, the plate on Mary’s desk began with baked goods and ended with crumbs. Photocopier jams. Roger told Emily that she’d “mastered the fine art of punctuation.”
One day after Emily had been there five months, Mary called Lydia, “Emily.” Realizing her mistake, she said, “Sorry, I always get you two mixed up.”
Emily smiled and looked over at Lydia, who frowned.
Emily puzzled over that frown. What did it mean? The Emilies volunteered theories. You’re too awkward and shy. She thinks you’re ditzy. A kinder Emily suggested, Lydia doesn’t know you yet… she doesn’t like being compared to anybody. She thinks of herself as unique, one of a kind. An iconoclast like us, a Brontë or a Dickinson or a Davison.
That was exactly what made her so attractive.
Emily is eating her container of ten raw almonds when Lydia whirls into the break room. She is wearing jeans, a white T-shirt and a navy blazer with the sleeves pushed up to the elbows. She doesn’t look at Emily, concentrating instead on pouring herself a cup of coffee.
“What you up to tomorrow afternoon?” Lydia asks.
Although she’s alone, Emily is unsure whether she is being addressed. “Me?”
“What?”
“I’m free.” Emily can’t believe this. She holds her hands still in her lap, tries to keep her smile small.
“I assumed so. Can you come with me for this procedure thingee?” Coffee spills over the rim of the mug. Lydia stops pouring but doesn’t bother wiping the puddle.
“Sure. What—”
“A routine abortion. Tomorrow after work then?”
“It’s a date,” Emily says, immediately regretting her eagerness.
Lydia nods and exits, leaving the full coffee on the counter, steam rising.
That night Emily, flattered by the afternoon’s conversation, tries to imagine how Lydia must be feeling. How Lydia must despise the tampon ads on television. The white-clad women twirling around, cooing about absorbency and freshness, spilling blue liquid everywhere. And of course, she wonders about the guy, if he’s ever shown his face around the office and if he knows about the pregnancy or not. But mostly she wonders about Lydia. Is she lonely, too?
“At least there aren’t any protesters today,” Emily says as she and Lydia walk up the front stairs of the Morgentaler Clinic.
A pair of teenage girls are leaving. “So you won’t tell anyone?” Lydia whispers. One of the girls leans heavily on the other.
“Of course not,” Emily says. She’s promised three times in the past forty-five minutes.
“Who would you tell, anyway?” Lydia smiles.
Emily brushes the question off as another example of Lydia’s biting humour. “Right.”
Emily had imagined that this experience would be intimate and vulnerable, like an after-school special, that it would cement a bond between them. But now that she’s here, part of her wants to flee. All those bodies in there, leaking their secrets. Spilling their guts. She pictures a bedpan brimming full of miniature organs, secreting, throbbing, uncoiling and uncoiling. She climbs the steps ahead of Lydia and opens the door.
Inside the air is solemn. As they walk down a hall, Lydia’s flip-flops come down in smacks, Emily’s heels in clicks. They walk to the front desk. On the counter Lydia holds her left hand over her right to stop it from trembling. Emily notes Lydia’s bitten cuticles. When the nurse asks for Lydia’s name, she looks lost, so Emily answers for her.
“Please take a seat,” the nurse says.
Another pair of girls sits in a corner. Their voices are low, sloshing against each other in a gentle rhythm. Lydia takes a seat and hunches behind a Times. As there’s no available chair next to Lydia, Emily sits across from her. She reads a Sass from fall 2002. The words sexy, secret and diet are used among photos of elfin celebrities with prominent collarbones. After a few minutes, a wiry nurse with a stiff clipboard calls, “Lydia Mayes!” from across the room.
Lydia and Emily stand up and walk toward the nurse. Emily gets there first.
“Lydia?” the nurse says.
“No,” Lydia says. “I’m Lydia.”
“You’ll have to stay here then,” the nurse tells Emily.
“I’m coming, too,” Emily says, emboldened by the dread in Lydia’s eyes. “She needs me.”
“I’m sorry,” the nurse says. “That won’t be possible.”
“It’s okay, Emily.” Lydia doesn’t look at her. “I’m fine.”
“I’m right here,” Emily says.
The nurse escorts Lydia to the back.
Sass recommends a hotel where you can shower in champagne and flounce around all day in bright dresses with low necklines. It says that Grey Goose martinis are fabulous and that purple crocodile, elbow-high gloves are both luxurious and demure. Right now, Emily thinks, Lydia is probably putting her feet into stirrups. Soon the doctor will guide a tube into her uterus.
When Lydia returns to the waiting area, Emily leaps from her seat, only to find that her arms won’t open into a hug. It’s time to console her, the Emilies declare, to acknowledge Lydia’s grief and introduce it to a sample of Emily’s own. Instead, she pictures Lydia entwined in ropes of blood, an umbilical cord crown on her head. Mimicking Lydia’s briskness, Emily follows her into the corridor.
“Just wait a minute,” Lydia says, ducking into an alcove. She leans against a wall, hanging her head. Lydia’s cheeks are so blatantly and disastrously white that it occurs to Emily that she can help her by just acting like everything’s normal. She offers her some blush.
“My whole universe got better when I learned to apply blush properly,” Emily says. She thinks of the words as a kind of self-parody, compressing her personality down to something bite-sized, easily digestible. Expected. She retrieves a massive brush from her purse. “Ripe sunset, the perfect shade for you.” She wants to give Lydia back the control of her body. To make her impenetrable again.
Lydia doesn’t protest. With shimmering peach powder, Emily sculpts a cheekbone onto the left side of her face, careful not to touch her skin directly with her fingertips. Before she can start on the right, Lydia pushes Emily’s arm away.
“At least let me make it symmetrical,” Emily says. The thought of Lydia walking around only half-finished panics her. Everyone will notice something is wrong.
“I just want to get out of here.”
With a movement as abrupt and necessary as a sneeze, Emily hugs Lydia. She feels the pain shivering through Lydia’s body and she’s prepared to share it. To let its unruliness pass from Lydia’s body into her own. Lydia is hot and smells of soap. This isn’t so bad, Emily thinks, this is what being a friend really is. Handing over control. Supporting them on their own terms. Emily hugs and hugs her. She moves her hand in circles on her back. Lydia’s hands hang by her sides.
Emily is alone in the glow of her television, painting her fingernails pink with white crescents at the tips. She looks back over the afternoon, returning each time to the hug. In the throes of it, she’d been free from the clutter and slap of the Emilies’ judgment. She’d barely thought. It wasn’t until Lydia was out of sight, the bus door wheezing shut, that Emily noticed the mucus on her shoulder. She wiped it off with a Kleenex.
The hosts of the show are in a woman’s house, guffawing in front of her open closet. There are T-shirts with Disney characters on them. There are purple polyester pants, long sheer dresses with fur trim and paint-stained stonewashed tapered jeans. All in the same closet! Sequined tube tops, floral frocks and rainbow suspenders. On shelves to the side, fishnet tights and holey toe socks. The hosts want the woman to get rid of it all. The woman sags. She objects.
All seems lost until, suddenly, miraculously, the woman is throwing things out. She realizes nothing in the closet fits. There is fast, frantic camera work. Music blares. It’s religious. She is converted. A close-up shows her clenching wads of fabric and cramming them into garbage bags. Black plastic distends and stretches clear. The music develops a steady electronic beat. The hosts smile with their inhumanly white teeth. The woman sways with unfocused frenzy. Everything is too big or too small. Everything is stained or see-through or clings to her love handles. She has seen the truth! She wants to change! Everything she owns pops open at the boobs or is slack in the crotch. Nothing is her! God, who is she? She is someone who could become someone else if she bought new clothes and got her hair cut in jagged layers and learned how to apply highlighter cream just below her eyebrows!
Emily doesn’t get an opportunity to speak to Lydia all morning. Lydia appears to be swamped with work. She has a frazzled, do-not-disturb expression on her face. Emily is surprised—almost dismayed—to see Lydia wearing the same old outfit: black cardigan, corduroy skirt. How could anything stay the same? When Emily looks at the picture of her high school friends, she barely recognizes their faces. They have nothing to do with her. She lays the frame down flat on her desk.
In the afternoon, there is a goodbye party for Tony. He’s leaving the office for a job at an office down the hall. As far as anyone can tell, his new job is more or less identical to his current one. It’s no improvement or enhancement. Nevertheless, to celebrate his moving sideways in the world, they decide to eat grocery store sheet cake and drink sparkling grapefruit juice.
Lydia puts Bob Marley on so loud it’s hard to think. No woman, no cry. Mary turns the music down so low it’s a murmur, a suggestion of ocean waves. Tony and Roger swap statistics. Baseball or hockey. Roger produces a flask and pours something clear into Tony’s cup, then waggles the flask at Lydia who rolls her eyes and extends her cup. This worries Emily. Lydia shouldn’t be drinking in her condition, still fresh with grief.
Between mouthfuls of pastel icing, Mary tells Emily about her son’s peanut allergy. Emily nods and asks appropriate questions about EpiPens and food labelling, thinking only of Lydia’s presence, where she is in the room, how she’s feeling. She breaks away from the conversation when she notices Lydia in the corner alone, cutting herself some cake.
“That looks great,” Emily says, pointing at Lydia’s slice decorated with lopsided baby blue rosettes.
Lydia sighs and turns to Emily. “Nice necklace,” she says as though she is talking to a seven-year-old. “Is it new?”
“Sort of,” Emily replies. It’s a gold heart on a gold chain. Before Lydia can interrupt, Emily adds, “So do you want to maybe go see a movie this weekend? Or go shopping?”
“I can’t,” Lydia says. “I have a date.”
Emily tries not to look disappointed.
“Honestly,” Lydia says softly. “I do.”
Although Emily understands that Lydia is lying, that—like Emily’s other two friends—she is trying to brush her off, she can’t help herself from pursuing the issue, however desperate she might seem. “What about next week?”
“We’ll see,” Lydia says.
She’s still wounded and recovering, Emily tells herself. We went through something big together and that has to mean something.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Lydia says. “I need to take a piss.”
Waiting a minute to make it less obvious, Emily follows Lydia to the washroom. Would they ever be the kind of friends who go together, who hand each other tampons or extra squares of toilet paper underneath the stall?
Lydia is at the sink washing her hands. “Hey,” she says, without looking up.
Water rushes sloppily out of the tap, the sound amplified in the small space with its humid, pre-breathed air, its dim sour smell of gastric juices and sweat.
“Why me?” Emily blurts.
Lydia rinses the soap off her hands and wipes them once on the back pockets of her skirt.
“I didn’t want my friends to know,” Lydia says. “But I do appreciate it. I couldn’t have done it on my own.”
On her way out, Lydia squeezes Emily on the shoulder, her fingers, still damp, leaving splotched prints on Emily’s silk blouse.
After Lydia is gone, Emily stays in the washroom and cries in big ugly gasps, mascara-thickened tears dribbling down her cheeks. She doesn’t care if someone walks in. Let them. Let the whole office see her. The worst part of it is that Emily understands—even empathizes with—Lydia, who just wants to control the narrative of her life, to make it coherent and intelligible. And who doesn’t want that?
They have so much in common.
The Emilies, who have been quiet all day, now chime in, tentatively, with slow reassuring voices.
“I feel sorry for her,” Emily Brontë says.
“Imagine not being able to trust your friends with your secrets,” Emily Dickinson says.
“What kind of a friendship is that?” Emily Davison says.
Emily, smiling a fragile smile, nods at the Emily in the mirror. “We tell each other everything.”