The Virtues of Oxygen (15 page)

CHAPTER 16

H
olly was fairly sure that her date with Racine would be a disaster. For one thing, their names were incompatible. Hers was solidly American and redolent of Christmas, while his seemed foreign and risky, with no trace of the Midwestern city from whence it came. She couldn’t see it on a party invitation: “Let’s watch the Super Bowl together—Holly and Racine.” They were like bologna and foie gras. But she had borrowed a dress from Marveen for the occasion—a simple black A-line that was probably the most boring thing Marveen owned—which meant that Marveen wouldn’t hear of it when Holly mentioned in the office that she mig
ht cancel.

“Oh no you don’t,” Marveen said. “He might be a player, but if you don’t go I will never let you f
orget it.”

“I haven’t had a date in so long,” Holly said, groaning. “I don’t even know how to act. Am I supposed to offer to pay for dinn
er? Half?”

Portia, who had come up behind them, offered her perspective as a young single woman. “If he asked you out, then he pays,” she said as though this were common knowledge. “Especially on a fi
rst date.”

Holly was relieved, since she didn’t think any of her credit cards were below their limits, and she had nothing in her wallet but so
me change.

Late in the afternoon, Marveen came into her office with a box of hair dye and a tote bag full of hair-related electric a
ppliances.

“This is an intervention,” Marveen said. “You cannot go on a date with your hair like that. You have some grays that have been driving me crazy for a year now, so I’m helping bo
th of us.”

Holly put a hand to the top of her head. “I know it’s bad, but I can’t afford the hairdresser anymore. I cut it myself when it gets
too long.”

Marveen dropped the tote bag. “Christ, Holly,” she said, “that is inde
fensible.”

An hour and a half later, Holly’s shoulder-length hair was dyed an even, dark brown, trimmed of its split ends, blow-dried, flat-ironed, curled, teased, and tousled to look as if she just woke up that way. Then the whole elaborate illusion was locked into place with industrial-strength hairspray. She almost didn’t recogniz
e herself.

“You’re good, Marveen,” she said into the small mirror in the office bathroom. “You could open your
own shop.”

“I just had the same thought,” Marveen said, gazing at her handiwork. “You look like a million bucks r
ight now.”

And Holly felt, if not like a million bucks, then at least like a hundred grand. She put on the dress Marveen had loaned her, black tights, heels, and some silver-toned hoop earrings she had found in her jewelry box while rooting around for gold. She was thinner than she’d ever been, due to obsessive fretting, which ironically may have been one of the reasons Racine found her at
tractive.

She felt put together but not beautiful, although she could remember two other days in her life during which she had embodied that coveted adjective. One was during college when she had left her dorm room in a new blue T-shirt that brought out the color of her eyes. Her hair had been freshly washed and dried, long and straight and shining, and she had just had her teeth cleaned the day before—the coffee and Tab stains polished away. She remembered turning into the sunlight on her way to an art history class, smiling at no one and for no reason except that she felt she had never looked better—a realization that arrived with the knowledge that she would likely never look that good again, except maybe on her wedding day, when a whole team of experts would be brought in
to assist.

But she did, in fact, look even better on a particular day ten years later when she was a young mother on a trip to the Bronx Zoo with Marshall’s preschool. She had lost her baby weight from Connor and had the postpartum boost in hair thickness. Both boys had slept through the night, giving her a burst of energy. They had stopped to look at the elephants when a photographer started snapping her picture with them. She looked toward the clicking noise, and he caught her eye. He said nothing, only smiled and nodded, but in that nod she knew that she had attained—in that moment, at that angle, in that particular light—some measure of loveliness that only visited normal people on rare occasions. She remembered wondering what it might feel like—the magic and the burden—of being beautiful all
the time.

“If Racine wasn’t taking you out, I’d date you myself,” Marveen said, stepping back to take in the whole picture. “Knock ’em dea
d, Holly.”

They met at the Bertram Corners Inn, which was housed in a historic home that dated back to 1789. Each room had a fireplace and a different damask wallpaper. Holly couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten there, though it had been her father’s favorite place. She ordered the salmon en croûte in
his honor.

“I can get a little spoiled sometimes by all the choices in the city, but it’s this kind of place that never dies,” Racine said, looking around. “Solid and
reliable.”

Holly wondered if “solid” and “reliable” really qualified as compliments, but she gave Racine credit for trying. She was finally starting to relax a bit around him as she discovered that he wasn’t as pretentious as a man with his looks might believe he had a ri
ght to be.

“Tell me about your boys,” Racine said as dinner neared an end and they both began pushing food around on the overly large plates. “What are t
hey like?”

Holly smoothed her napkin across her lap, wondering if this was just a polite question or he really wanted to know. She decided to give him the capsul
e version.

“Marshall’s a junior. He’s a pretty serious trumpet player, which means he’s always at band practice or on band trips or marching in a parade. I guess you could say he’s a band geek, but he’s just in love with his in
strument.”

“Good for him,” Racine said. “Girls love a
musician.”

Holly nodded, not wanting to hear what else Racine knew about what girls loved. She went on. “Connor’s in eighth grade. He’d play video games all day if he could, but he’s a sweetheart. He even lets me hug him once in a while. He’s the one who seems to miss my husband the most, maybe because they’re so mu
ch alike.”

Holly hadn’t meant to raise the specter of her dead husband in the middle of the Bertram Corners Inn, but there he was, hovering above them in the dusty draperies. Racine looked down at
his plate.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to bring
that up.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he said quietly. “I feel sorry for your boys. My father traveled all the time, but he was very important to me. A little distant, but i
mportant.”

It was Holly’s turn to look down at her plate. She tried not to think about what her boys were missing, because it could start a spiral of regret. “Thanks,” she said. “They’re strong kids. They’ll be okay in
the end.”

And yet, even as she said it, she realized that there was no “end” until they carried you out in a box like the purloined casket that housed Aunt Muriel. Maybe her boys would be more than okay during some adult phases of life and less than okay in others, just as she had been and was now. Much less than okay. She suddenly felt like she might vomit all over the white linen t
ablecloth.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not feeling all that well. Do you mind if
we leave?”

“You look white as a sheet. I’ll get the check,” Racine said, concern etched on his face. He signaled th
e waiter.

“I think it’s the rich food,” Holly said, and it was true that she had not eaten so much butter and cream in years. She wondered vaguely whether the rich had more sophisticated digestive systems so they could break down their overly complicat
ed meals.

Racine walked Holly to her car. “Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” he said. “I could take
you home.”

Holly, who was focused on keeping her dinner in her stomach, looked up for
a moment.

“I’m fine,” she said, not wanting Racine to see the exterior of her rundown house. “I mean I’ll
be fine.”

Racine gave her a chaste kiss on the forehead. “Go rest and fee
l better.”

Holly drove home and went to bed, feeling that Racine would simply cross her off his list and move on to the next option, which upset her more than she thought
it would.

Holly’s boss, Stan, was sitting in her office when she came in on Monday morning. Stan was middle-aged, a shrug of a man who wore a good toupee, though it wasn’t good enough to avoid looking like a toupee. Darla used to joke with Holly that she liked to run her fingers through Stan’s hair—even when he wasn
’t around.

“The news is not good, Lois Lane,” Stan said as Holly stowed her purse under the desk and took her seat behind it. Stan had called her Lois Lane from the moment she had started working for him, and she called him Clark Kent, although the joke, as they both aged, was wea
ring thin.

“What’s wrong?” Holly asked. “Did we have a typo on the front page again? I told you we shouldn’t have laid off the cop
y editor.”

“It’s not that, Holly,” he said. “It’s the ad revenue. It’s gone down so much in the last few months. I’m not sure how long we can keep publishing. They’re talking about closing down some of the weeklies, if not the who
le chain.”

Holly felt as if Stan were telling her that some mutual friend had died. Newspapers were never just a business. They were democracy’s lifeblood—even small operations like theirs that devoted a whole page every week to the school l
unch menu.

“But what’s changed? We’re at every school board meeting, every pumpkin-carving contest, every high school football game. What more c
an we do?”

“That’s just it,” he said, gripping his knees. “The news we print is not the issue. It’s the economy—layoffs, housing prices. Businesses are scared to spend a dime even to bring in more business. And that includes the outlets, which have been keeping us going f
or years.”

Somewhere inside Holly the tiny flame of hope that she could find a way to pay the mortgage, her bills, maybe even save some money, went out. She felt dull and hollow. Then she looked through her office window at Darla, who was on the phone laughing and talking as she took notes. She couldn’t see Portia or Marveen, and Les was almost always out covering a game or school event, but she knew they would be de
vastated.

“I don’t have a timeframe,” Stan said. “The owners are meeting next week. Maybe they’ll only close one or two. Nothing’s been decided, so don’t say
anything.”

“I won’t,” Holly said, even as she had already decided to tell them right away. They needed to know in case they had to m
ake plans.

After Stan left, Holly found Darla, Marveen, and Portia, and learned that Les was out covering a mock disaster drill at the high school. She brought them all into h
er office.

“I’m not going to sugarcoat this,” she said. “The paper’s in
trouble.”

The three of them looked at each other, their faces grim, then back at Holly, as if they had been expecting
the news.

“I can’t say I’m all that surprised, since I do the books,” Marveen said, crossing her arms. “The revenue’s way,
way down.”

“Stan didn’t want me to tell you, but you’re my friends, and if you have any connections I would completely understand if you want to start job hunting,” Holly said. “You can use me as a r
eference.”

Portia cleared her throat. “I think I speak for all of us when I say I’m more worried about you, Holly,”
she said.

Darla and Marveen nodded as if they had all discussed th
is before.