S
eeing Peter in jeans was almost as disconcerting as the first time I saw my mother in sneakers. We are not an athletic people. Peter was sitting on a soggy bench near a fountain in Central Park, wearing a baseball cap and two days’ stubble. The alarm bells in my mind should have gone off at five-thirty that Thursday morning, when I was awoken by his call. Peter wasn’t usually given to dramatic episodes. He had instructed me, without even so much as a
Good morning,
to meet him here within the hour.
I took a seat beside him, fixed my gaze solemnly on a man selling marijuana less than twenty yards away and whispered, “You’re pregnant, right? Okay, look, I’ll assume it’s mine. And I want you to know that I’m here for you. We can go to a clinic and have this taken care of today.”
“Is that supposed to be funny?” he nearly bit my head off. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
I was taken aback by the contempt in his voice.
“Peter,” I put a hand to my chest and said, “I’m sorry. I…it’s all this
cloak and dagger
stuff. You pull me out of bed at this ungodly hour and tell me to come here. You don’t even explain what it’s about.”
“I think you should be taking this more seriously.” He leaned on his knees, cupping his hands before him.
“Taking
what
more seriously, Peter? What’s going on?”
He tilted his head as if to force me to admit that we both knew what he was talking about. My mouth fell open. He rose to his feet as Sarah approached us, and I (feeling as out of place as if I were at church) rose, too.
“Peter. Vina. What’s going on?” she asked without looking at me.
“Look, guys,” Peter began, pacing on the damp grass. “I didn’t know what else to do. We’ve all worked together dayin, day-out for a long time now. I have to believe that means something. So I’m asking you to be honest with me. I really had a lot of respect for both of you…
have.
I
have
a lot of respect for you. I hope that I’m not wrong.”
Sarah and I glanced at each other, shrugging in mutual confusion.
“The reason I called you both here to talk,” he said then stopped and faced us, “was to tell you what’s been going on, and to see if I can get any answers from you. Yesterday I was contacted and interviewed by SEC investigators. They believe the company—our team in particular—has been making trades with inside information. It’s Alan and Steve, mainly. The SEC believes that both of you knew about the trades. And they have strong reasons to believe that you, Vina, were involved.”
“What? Why…why?” I stammered, the air having been vacuumed from my windpipe. “Why would they think that? Which trades? Did you talk to Alan about this?”
“I can confidently say that my record is spotless, Peter. But I cannot speak for anyone else,” Sarah testified, as if before Congress.
“Vina,” Peter said in a softer voice, like he was coaxing the murderer to reveal the location of the bodies, “I need to know why you fired Wade.”
“What?
Wade?
” I put a hand to my forehead. “Peter, I’m not supposed to discuss that. I was…told not to. But look, if this is between us, then I might as well. I fired him for sexual harassment.”
“Wade? Who was he sexually harassing? How
could
he sexually harass anyone? He was an intern.” He was now talking at me as if I were insane.
“A secretary,” I practically whispered.
“Which one?” Sarah demanded.
“I can’t tell you.” I was getting dizzy.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know, okay? Alan and Steve told me to do it. Look, what does Wade have to do with this, anyway?”
“That’s not why
he
thinks he was fired. He’s a key witness for the SEC. He claims that he walked in on Alan while he was on the phone with a source in Taiwan. That’s how they knew to make that investment in Luxor. Wade went to the SEC saying that we tried to buy him off. And now they have pressed charges against the entire team. You’ve been named in the suit, since you terminated him. Vina, as my friend, I am asking you to tell me what you know. This is my
career
here.”
I could see the fear in his eyes. “Well, his last check
was
larger than usual, but I was told it was severance.”
“Since when do we give interns severance?” Sarah asked. “And why didn’t this raise any red f lags for you, Vina?”
“It did.” I sank back onto the wet bench, trying to collect my thoughts. “But it wasn’t exactly severance. You see, Alan said he would take care of it.”
“I need to get home and think about what I’m gonna do.” Peter shook his head. “I was hoping to get some answers here. Apparently, all we were was coworkers. One last question, Vina. What was your bonus this year?”
I couldn’t look at them when I said it. “It was…thirty grand.”
Peter backed away from me as if he had just seen the blood on my hands.
Sarah, sensing that I was dangerously close to feeling sorry for myself, added her own two cents. “Vina, how the hell could you let this happen?”
Satisfied with the image of me dumbfounded, mouth agape and frozen in place, Sarah decided that she wasn’t interested in hearing my answer. She walked off into the midmorning chill.
Like bulldozers across a crime scene before you have had a chance to collect all the evidence, time rolls most aggressively when we are unprepared. I walked the entire thirty blocks home from the park, feeling more light-headed with every step. On the way, I left a voice mail for Cristina, attempting to explain, without the benefit of a clear mind or a complete vocabulary, that the SEC was investigating me for complicity in insider trading. Real friends are those with whom you can be incoherent.
When I got home, I couldn’t bring myself to take off my shoes or coat, to allow myself a seat on the couch, or even to pour myself a glass of water. Apparently, after so many years of accepting the authority of my parents, elders, teachers and everybody else, I had reached the point where I was nearly incapable of questioning it at all. As a professional woman it occurred to me that even with the best of intentions that kind of attitude meant I was a fraud. So I just stood inside my apartment, wondering at how unfamiliar it felt, wanting to be anywhere but inside my own life.
O
n the morning of her wedding day, my mother stood alone in the kitchen of the home where her parents had raised her. She was watching for the chai to boil and she was waiting for a sign. The astrologers and swamis had been consulted, her parents and in-laws-to-be had mutually approved and she had willingly consented to give her hand in marriage. Her groom was a tall, twenty-nine-year-old engineer from America; the son of a police chief and the pride of a Punjabi Brahmin family. During her one and only meeting with him a few weeks earlier, she had found something comforting in his ways, spied some evidence of affection in his face. Even though Hindus believe that spouses are linked karmically through seven lifetimes, this young woman, having left her fate in the hands of the gods when she nodded her consent, found herself feeling uneasy.
Motionless, she surveyed the contents of the room, inhaling the smells and memorizing the stillness of the air in the only home she had ever known. Silently, she stirred cardamom seeds among the tea bags in the pot of boiling water, and she began to imagine the shape her new life might take. Then, in the moment before her anticipation could round a corner toward dismay, the unexpected occurred. A salamander lost its grip on the ceiling above my mother and plummeted earthward, bouncing off of her head and then onto the floor. As the lizard scurried away from her imposing presence, she smiled. And she exhaled. She was confident now that today was an auspicious day.
I had never accepted the idea that everything happens for a reason; partially because Hinduism implies a far more complex web of causation, and partially because free will is so precious to me. In my estimation, things happen and we learn to carry on. Eventually, out of some need to make sense of our lives, we cite the good as proof that the bad was necessary, since it must somehow have made way for what came afterward. But I had yet to see any sign that things were meant to unfold a certain way. There were moments when my eyes refused to refocus a situation into any other, and when it became clear that there was no longer any point in trying to deny the obvious.
There aren’t too many ways for a girl to interpret waking up with her face on the cold, dirty tile of an elevator stuck between the twenty-second and twenty-third floors of the downtown office building where SEC investigators are anxiously preparing to depose her. I could say that I had no idea why all of this was happening to me, but that would be a lie. I knew that it was happening because I had the audacity to speculate aloud whether things could get any worse. And life prides itself on being ironic in only the most twistedly poetic ways. Curled around my purse on the floor of that elevator, it seemed as if for most of the morning I had been in a dream.
At six a.m. I had called my parents, hoping to explain what was going on, and to tell them I was likely out of a job.
“We know, honey.” My mother’s voice explained, “We saw it in the newspaper. Daddy and I are on our way to your apartment.”
The lines and edges of the world began to blur. I scanned the walls and then the ceiling of my apartment, wondering how everyone could remain so calm. My insides shivered and then resettled, and everything sprang sharply back into focus. I felt nothing. Methodically, I donned my robe, unlocked my front door, bent down and reached for the morning paper. And that’s when my legs went weak because there, staring back at me from page one of the business section, was a photograph of myself and all of my colleagues at last year’s company Christmas party. Drunk, merry and sporting matching Santa’s hats bearing the company logo, we were bloatedly toasting in front of the camera. From where I sat now, we looked as if we not only knew but were proud of what we were: cocky Wall Street fat-cats, high on champagne and corruption. Behind us stood an opulently decorated, forty-foot Christmas tree, and above us hovered a large, bold headline claiming “Their Greed Knew No Bounds.”
By the time my mother and father let themselves into my apartment, I was on my knees in the bathroom, clinging to the toilet bowl as if it were a lover who was trying to leave me. While I didn’t remember eating anything the night before, I felt confident that I had already vomited at least half of my body weight. But the physical reaction didn’t agree with the emotional. Inside, I could have sworn that I felt nothing. My mother knelt beside me and smoothed the spit-soaked hair from my face. Looking into her kind and eager eyes, I realized the worst part of it all; that the problem with compartmentalizing parts of your life so well is that when your life falls apart those who want to help you won’t even know where to begin looking for the pieces. And surrounded by people who want to help, you will wind up feeling that much more alone.
My lack of coherence stripped away my already shaky ability to censor myself. And that was when I made the mistake of challenging the gods, via my mother, by asking her whether things could possibly get any worse.
So it was fitting that after I pulled myself together, explained the situation to my parents and marched down to the offices of the SEC investigators, who had called and demanded my presence there that morning, the elevator would labor its way past the twenty-second floor before deciding that it was in no mood to go farther.
And then the lights went out.
Note to self: This might be a good time to look in to “random-anvil-falling-on-head” and perhaps “flying-pigs-inflicting-concussions” insurance.
Just after the elevator stopped, I decided that this was comical. It had to be. The universe was testing me. Perhaps this was the final hurdle, to see if I were strong enough not to lose it, right? Right. So I could beat this simply by practicing the deep-breathing technique discussed in the online chat room where I found the information about the St. Agnes Closeted Claustrophobes meeting. No problem. Piece of cake. At this point there was nothing left to do but laugh at myself.
Laugh at myself, and of course, press the emergency button. So I did. But it didn’t light up. Naturally, the cabinet containing the courtesy phone was locked. Not surprisingly, I was the only person in the elevator. Predictably, I had left my purse-size use-in-case-of-emergency crowbar at home.
Wait a minute, how did that breathing technique go again? Was I supposed to breathe through my mouth, or my nose? Was I supposed to hold in my stomach? Oh, my god, my pants felt tight. In fact, everything was starting to feel tight….
My heartbeat had broken into a sprint.
Don’t worry about it, Vina. Be reasonable,
I told myself.
I’m sure someone has noticed that the elevator is stuck. Help must be on the way.
The problem, however, was that oxygen was running out, and I was having trouble stifling the twitch in my right eye.
Don’t lose control, Vina. You’re better than that. Don’t make this a bigger deal than it has to be.
I backed myself into a corner, while reminding myself to remain calm.
It will be fine,
I heard voices resembling my parents’ telling me.
And this is no time to be dramatic or overly emotional.
Trembling, I clutched at my purse to rummage around inside for my cell phone. Things would be clearer, and I would be more reasonable if I could talk to people and make sure they knew I was trapped.
Trapped, but not alone.
I f lipped open the phone, and then realized that it couldn’t get a signal.
I was alone, and that was it.
I began banging furiously against the elevator doors, pounding and shrieking so that help might hear me. At some point, I know I must have paused to remove my shoe and used it instead of the palm of my hand, which was beginning to go raw.
After a minute, a day, or some stretch of time in between, there came a voice from above. “Hello, ma’am? Are you all right?”
I noticed that the cell phone on the floor provided just enough blue light to illuminate the ref lection of a crazy-looking woman in the steel doors before me. And once I saw her, I froze.
Who was that woman?
Whoever she was, she apparently felt the need to sound calm for the benefit of that voice from above because she answered, “Yes…y…yes. I am. It’s fine. I’m fine.”
“Don’t you worry about a thing,” he continued, “we’ll have you out of there as soon as the repairman gets here.”
“Um, okay,” she yelled back.
I marveled at how she could sound so steady while appearing so atrociously unwell. The dichotomy was frightening.
How can you act so serene when everything is so wrong?
I wondered.
How can you function at all?
“We’re doing everything we can, ma’am. Please remain calm,” he added a few seconds later.
And she did. She continued taking orders from above and proceeded to smooth her hair and take a seat there on the floor of the elevator, like a robot, never questioning anything. Never questioning anyone. Refusing even to react to the reality laid out before her, which was that breathing was getting harder, that her chest was feeling tighter and that she was beginning to feel dizzy. She just sat there like an idiot, letting it happen to her.
The lights suddenly flickered on. I blinked at my ref lection and thought I looked ridiculous. Why did I take the time to match my earrings with my shirt that morning? Or my pantsuit with those damned alligator shoes Jon had always adored? Why hadn’t I thrown them out a long time ago? Why hadn’t I thrown them at the back of his head? Why hadn’t I spoken up against my bosses’ firing Wade?
Who did I think I was fooling?
For all the effort I was willing to put into meaningless details like accessorizing this outfit, why wasn’t I willing to put in the effort to prevent myself from suffocating under the weight of everybody’s expectations? I backed away from my ref lection, sliding along the floor, trying to suck in some air. Finally, I steadied myself against the far wall. There was sweat on my forehead and a knot growing inside my chest. The elevator jerked. And so did something vital inside me. Like any rational person whose life had already been coming apart at the seams, emotionally, professionally and now mentally at the same time, I forgot myself entirely.
“Just relax. Please remain calm. Everything is gonna be fine,” the man from above yelled again. Maybe twenty seconds later, I was rocking back and forth with my face in my hands.
“Is everything all right?” the moron was now asking the woman who was trapped in an elevator dangling some twenty floors above ground. The air around her slowly depleted.
This would be the moment when she finally allowed herself to lose it. She was yelling and banging on her ref lection in the doors. She kicked the walls and yanked at the neck of her shirt, with tears and mascara streaking down her face. When finally she tired, she was gasping for air. And then she collapsed from the inside out, and sank straight down onto the floor. She was mumbling about how nothing was anywhere near all right. How she had managed to ruin everything, and how she had no one to blame but herself.