The Power of Astrid

by Dianne Rees

Conclusion

* * *

The second time it’s vengeance.

At the office, sitting at my cubicle, I look at the inbox. The asshole attorney I work for has piled a stack of letters and files in it. They lean dangerously in my direction. Each item is flagged by a post-it, marked by instructions in his tight script. John must have stayed pretty late last night to have generated this stack. He’s trying for partner. Sometimes I seem to be all that stands in his way.

You can see his irritation building as you read the Post-Its. The first series say “Please” and “Thank you” or “Thx!” But as you reach the top of the pile, items deposited in the waning hours of the night, the comments become more terse, speaking to my careless errors (“Proofread please!”) or my lack of common sense (“Do Over! Or worse, “Get it Right!”). The exclamation points become more sinister, dug into the yellow or violently pink paper like wounds. I have learned to start at the bottom of the pile.

John’s in his office with the door half-way open. He’s on the phone with a client, he’s got that “let me tell you I’ve got it covered you’re in good hands” voice he uses when he hasn’t even reviewed a case but has started billing nonetheless. I wonder if he talks to his wife this way. From the open door, I seem him leaning back in his chair, rocking, looking out the window, his tie flung over his left shoulder. It’s an affectation that all the younger male attorneys seem to have adopted.

I grab a draft of a letter from the bottom of the pile, open a shared drive. Breathe.

I stare blankly at my screen long enough for the screen saver to come on.

I push back from my desk and smile at Leeza, my cube mate. She watches me, even though she pretends not to. She’s been here for over a year. That’s four years less than me. But she fits in. She’s cracked the coffee and birthday cake clique that I can barely get a nod from. I can tell she thinks I’m not a team player, that I’m someone who doesn’t know how to be grateful. I smile at her brightly, forcing eye contact. I smooth my rayon skirt, which clings to my stockings.

I walk down the corridor and past the floor receptionist who also watches me, to my manager Rebecca’s office. Rebecca looks up at me from a long Excel sheet which lists our exception reports (these are not a good thing). I am hoping that my name is not by the row with the longest series of X’s but I suspect that I am pretty close.

“Do you have a minute?” I ask. I hate the way my voice has dropped. Deferential. Respectful.

She waits a beat of thirty seconds. “Sure,” she shrugs.

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” I say. “My sister’s in the hospital.”

We stare at each other.

“I was wondering if I could work some overtime,” I ask. “I’d like to work weekends. And some nightshifts. If I could. Anything would be great.” The words come out too quickly.

Rebecca purses her lips. She waits another thirty seconds and sighs theatrically. “I’d love to, you know, but we have a list.” She taps the Excel sheet as if it were the list. “The more senior girls are ahead of you for the overtime pool.”

“But,” Rebecca continues, her eyes glinting maliciously, “you could always ask John. You know if your manager asks for you specifically, that’s another thing.” She smiles.

I picture John, leaning back from his desk, smirking at me when I ask. He’d make me wait in his office while he’d consider it, his hand flying restlessly to pat his belly like a child, a gesture that always repulses me. But then he’d say no. He prefers Betty, who’s always at the head of the list. She flatters him. Laughs at his jokes. Mesmerizes him into coming out of his office to lean over her desk, to watch her type, her long red fingernails flying over the keyboard.

He likes Betty.

Me, he doesn’t like.

I tug at my shirt. I can feel that it’s wrinkled, stained, though I hadn’t noticed when I’d gotten dressed. I have a habit of not looking at myself in the mirror these days.

“Well, uh, that’s okay,” I say to Rebecca. “I mean that’s too bad. But keep me in mind. For the list I mean.” I turn and leave. I can feel her watching me as I walk away.

Leeza is on the telephone when I get back. It’s another personal call, but no one will ever say anything to her about it.

The door to Jim’s office is closed now. Every one and a while you hear him laugh. Once he says, “That bitch!” and it echoes down the hallway. Everyone pretends they don’t hear.

I pick up a file from the top of the stack by accident. I read the Post-It. I try to breathe. It’s like I’m submerged in water. I push to move my fingers to the keys of my keyboard. I push to get my lungs to take in air.

The air conditioning seems to have kicked in and lowered the temperature about ten degrees. I start shivering. I look again at the Post-It note on the file. I remove it. There’s astonishingly little resistance. If it were a bandage, there’d always be that bit of flesh, that stain of blood. I want to throw it in the trash but I suspect that Leeza would comment. I put it in a small candy dish by my computer where a small mountain of Post-Its is accumulating.

When I go out at lunchtime, I blink from the intensity of the sunlight. Everybody’s walking purposefully to some lunch spot or some midday errand. I’m just wandering aimlessly. Then I see this poor woman coming towards me, tottering in high heels in a cheap knockoff of designer business suit and I feel a stab of pity to see someone sorrier-looking than me. Maybe it’s a job interview, God help her.

She’s almost by me when out of the corner of my eye I see a blur, as a young boy in navy sweatshirt runs past us. He grabs her purse. She gasps and just stands there, mouth gaping open.

“Oh, no,” she whispers.

She stands there blinking.

Watching her and the fleeing boy, my skin feels electrified. As he runs, I see the cement sparkling with millions of tiny pieces of glass.

I am Astrid’s weapon, I think.

The boy falls to the ground as if someone has yanked a carpet out from under him. His chin hits the cement, and there’s this unnatural clicking sound as his neck snaps back. The woman’s purse flies out of his hand. The woman starts walking rapidly to get it. A crowd gathers around the boy, who doesn’t get up.

I go to see Astrid that night. A new doctor is standing in front of her door with Dr. Pal. He nods when Doctor Pal speaks. Occasionally, he nods in the silences between them. I move, an uneasy presence interjected between them. They don’t look at me.

I clear my throat. “How is my sister? Astrid?” I say, more loudly than I intended, when they stare at me blankly.

Dr. Pal nods at the new doctor, who introduces himself as Dr. Manfreet. Dr. Manfreet looks at me with sorrowful eyes and tells me that they my sister has had three more seizures today. They think that if this continues, she may lose her ability to function.

“What do you mean ‘function’?” I ask. “You mean she won’t know when I talk to her?” She hasn’t recognized me in a while, but she still likes to be talked to, to be told stories. To be touched.”

Dr. Manfreet looks at me pityingly. He starts to say something but stops.

Dr. Pal cuts into the silence a bit impatiently. “She’ll be little more than a vegetable,” he says.

I shake my head and push past them. I walk to Astrid’s bed and put a cool hand on her forehead. I know she feels it. I tell her a brave story. I imagine that she smiles.

* * *

The third time is easy.

I quit my job. It isn’t who I am, after all. Now that I’m different.

Well really, I’m fired. For unexplained absences. I’ve snuck away to see Astrid in the middle of the day too many times. It gets to be “unacceptable.” I was on a short leash anyway.

I grab my coffee cup, a magazine. All my things fit into a small box. A security guard stands at my side watching what I do.

“It’s just routine, dear,” Rebecca says, smiling brightly, looking away.

Leeza sneaks a look at Ann Marie in the cubicle next to her.

This is a scandal they’ll talk about. How HR thought I was a risk, someone who would destroy files. I long to tell them that I quit, not that I was fired. Rub it in their faces, that they’re stuck here, while I’m free. My credibility is shot though, by the security guard at my elbow waiting to escort me out.

A blast of cold air surrounds me, as the air conditioning comes on again. I am not wearing stockings today. Even worse, I am wearing open-toed sandals, the most forbidden of office footwear. This in a last act of defiance on my part.

“We won’t contest if you file for unemployment,” Rebecca calls out.

I hear Leeza titter.

As I leave the building, the security guard shed at last, I see May and Nick smoking by the revolving doors. They have on occasion spoken to me, so I make eye contact. Nick grimaces as if in sympathy. I stop myself to make some conversation. I’ve worked with them both for five years after all.

But something in Nick’s eyes let me know that the next time he’s out here with someone, he’ll talk about me. A flicker in his glance. A voyeuristic glint. Is there a hint of smile playing on his lips now? May looks at me, coldly, impassively.

I adjust the weight of my box tucked under one arm. Nick inhales deeply on his cigarette. I make a small wave, curse myself for acting like a retard.

“Once upon a time,” Astrid tells me in the dark room, brushing my hair back with her gentle hand, “there was a great fire that consumed the world.”

I turn my back on them. I walk away. I don’t look back, even when I hear Nick screaming.

* * *

The fourth time it’s fun.

I need money. I am ravenously hungry. I need to see Astrid. I need to get out of the Bronx. Find a place closer to the hospital. I pace back and forth in my small apartment, clenching and unclenching my fists. I need. I take a drive across the bridge to the hospital.

In the parking lot, I see them. Two older doctors. You can tell they’re doctors because they’re laughing. We’re all funny to them. A light rain has started to fall. They both wear expensive-looking raincoats. They would never be caught in the rain unprepared. They flick their umbrellas open at the same time. They also find this riotously funny.

I sniff.

I can smell the money on them.

I bare my teeth.

It’s not dark but they won’t see me.

A wind begins to gust and they start to run to their cars. Suddenly, a torrential rain begins to pour. As the men run, a wallet drops out of the taller one’s pocket.

I walk towards it with measured steps.

In my mind, I see the streets turn black and oily with the rain, the men’s tires skidding as the deluge turns to ice. Maybe they’ll be safe.

But it takes some caution, some care, to be safe.

I smile.

Maybe safety eludes them today. Maybe today, they’ll be the less fortunate.

* * *

When I visit Astrid now she tells me things. Never mind that no one else can hear her. She’s my sister, and when she speaks I listen. Sisters do tend to know you better than most, after all, even when the lights of other worlds are shining in their eyes.

* * *

“It’s a shame,” Dr. Manfreet says to Dr. Pal.

“Yes,” Dr. Pal tssks. “No progress. There’s no progress.”

“No, Dr. Manfreet says, “I mean it’s a shame that she is all alone. That no one visits her.”

Dr. Pal looks at his younger colleague and wonders when he will stop noticing such things. Really, sometimes he wants to slap the back of the young man’s head. Stop your foolishness he wants to tell him. The world is full of such shames.

“Yes,” he says instead, sighing as he leaves the room.

Dr. Manfreet stays in the room for a few minutes longer and draws the drapes, the lurid floral pattern some designer’s ill-conceived way of bringing cheer.

He turns off the light.