Dear Republic,
Our parade of Short Story Competition finalists continues with a high intensity gem from Jennifer Kitses. Between this and that book you can't escape, Brooklyn just might be back.
-ROL
IT'S HARD TO BE LAST
They’d just stepped into the street when a sound exploded into life, cancelling out everything else around them. It was a scooter, its engine screaming. Caroline looked to the left, her heart rising into her throat, cutting off her breath. She was saturated with fear, a paralyzing fear that locked her legs in place.
At the last possible moment, she leaped out of the way, back onto the sidewalk. The danger was so close that exhaling would have put her right in its path.
Instead, the scooter struck Danica.
The sounds that followed were terrifying: the skidding of tires against pavement, the twisting and crumpling of metal, the shrieks of her coworkers.
Just minutes ago, they’d been celebrating. They were the marketing team of a healthcare startup that had recently received $165 million in investor funding, and the founders had taken them out to dinner at an upscale pizzeria in Brooklyn. The restaurant was the kind of trendy, raucous place that Caroline felt she’d somehow aged out of, though she was only thirty-four, the same age as Danica. Yet it was Danica, in her ivory and taupe business separates, who seemed to belong there—in fact, everyone on the team seemed to belong there, which left Caroline wondering why she didn’t. She chose her clothes carefully and tried her best with her hair. Was it just that she was a little wider, more unwieldy? At the table, she’d wound up next to one of the founders, who clearly wished he’d been seated next to one of her younger coworkers, like Tillie or Marlon, whose likely trajectories seemed so much more promising than hers.
After all the pizza and wine and beer, they’d funneled out of the restaurant and onto a semi-industrial Brooklyn avenue. Most of the others were gathered in a clump five or six paces away. Danica had separated herself from the group and was waiting for the Uber that would take her home to her husband and young daughter. That was when Caroline went over to her, moving fast to catch her before anyone else did. She never got a chance to talk to Danica anymore—not alone, at least. Back when they’d both started at the company, they were the type of office friends who always took lunch together and chatted all day long. Just a year ago, Caroline could still make Danica laugh until she cried with her impressions of the top managers. It was hard to believe how much fun they’d had and how close they’d been, considering how they’d diverged: Danica rising to team leader while Caroline remained exactly where she’d started, as if time had flowed around her, eroding her potential rather than carrying her forward.
But now Danica was facedown on the asphalt, her blood seeping across its oily, glass-strewn surface. Caroline stared at her until she couldn’t bear to look any longer. Forty feet away, on its side, lay the scooter that had plowed her down. The driver was sprawled on the ground beside it, yelling out in pain.
Then there were sirens, and EMTs were carrying off the driver on a stretcher. When they took away Danica, a cloth covered her entire body, even her face.
No one would confirm it; no one would say anything at all. But they all knew that she was dead.
An EMT came over to Caroline. In response to his questions, which she could only half-understand, a voice—it belonged to Patrick, next in line to Danica—said: “She isn’t hurt. She’s fine.”
Later, long after the EMTs had gone and everyone had talked to the police, they all stood together on the street, staring at the spot where it had happened. Everyone kept saying how awful it was, how they just couldn’t believe it.
Every few minutes, someone would look at Caroline. They kept doing it, all of them. Looking at her like they were thinking…something.
Caroline shifted on her feet. She couldn’t find a way to position her arms, her hands. Even the bones of her face felt uncomfortable.
Why were they all looking at her?
#
After the funeral, and the on- and off-site meetings with grief counselors and various other therapists and coaches, they were still looking at her. And Caroline knew why. At first, she’d caught only whispered phrases, conversations that stopped when she appeared. But she heard enough to fill in the rest.
Was there maybe, just maybe, a chance that she could have pulled Danica out of the way?
That was what they were saying. After all, she’d seen the scooter coming. She’d saved herself.
And then one day she was walking down the hall in the direction of Danica’s office, which Patrick now occupied—Patrick, with his streaky blond hair and wildly patterned shirts, had been named acting team leader—and overheard his conversation with Tillie.
“You can’t blame her,” Tillie was saying. “It’s not her fault she didn’t move faster. Not everyone is capable of reacting quickly.”
Caroline stopped a few feet outside his open door. A painful heat spread over her face. Even after all the whispers, it shocked her. They thought it was her fault. They thought she’d failed to save Danica.
Also, had Tillie just called her slow? Slow, and maybe fat? Tillie had delicate little bird bones and wore flowing clothes that emphasized her thinness. That little bitch. A thought for which Caroline immediately castigated herself. She didn’t like calling women bitches.
“You know what?” Patrick said to Tillie. “I don’t think we’re giving her enough credit.” He paused; Caroline held back the wave of nausea that was surging inside her. “She could have saved her. But I think she was jealous of Danica. And I think that on some subconscious level, she made the split-second decision not to. But who knows? I’m just speculating.”
Tillie actually gasped. “You’re saying she did it on purpose?”
“She might not even be aware of it. But yes. Yes.”
Caroline couldn’t breathe. Sweat trickled under her frizzing hair. She was sweating from shame, she realized, as if what they were saying was true.
“You’re terrible!” Tillie said, and laughed. “Honestly, that’s one of the worst things I’ve ever heard anyone say about anyone.”
“But you think I’m right,” Patrick said. He sounded pleased. “You do.”
Caroline felt something crumble inside her, even though she’d known how Tillie and Patrick and the others saw her.
It wasn’t all of them, and it wasn’t all the time. Still, they made it hard not to see herself in the same way.
She didn’t want to. But they made it so hard.
#
On the Sunday three weeks after the accident, the team visited Danica’s husband and daughter.
Danica’s husband, now her widower, was named Nathan, and he was pale and slight, and had light brown hair that was just starting to thin. It seemed that every relative he had, not just his parents but every great aunt and cousin, was squeezed into the two-and-a-half bedroom apartment in Murray Hill. Patrick had arranged the visit and passed along the message that the family didn’t need any food—people had already given so much—but Caroline was the only one who’d taken them at their word and shown up empty-handed. Everyone else brought either a casserole or flowers or a gift for Jane, Danica’s five-year-old daughter. At first it seemed that Tillie hadn’t brought anything, but at the apartment door, Nathan went up to Tillie, grasped her hands, and said, “I can’t thank you enough for that meal-delivery service.”
“It’s the least I could do,” Tillie said.
Caroline realized her mouth had fallen open, and she looked away, hoping no one had caught her staring. They hadn’t even wanted her to come, she was sure of that. Not that anyone had been brave enough to approach her directly and explain their reasons. Too bad, Caroline thought. She deserved to be there as much as anyone.
But it wasn’t long before she wished she’d stayed home. Sitting on Danica’s off-white yet spotless sofa, she wondered what had happened to the Crate and Barrel sofa that Danica had picked out years ago, with Caroline, on a lunchtime shopping trip. At the time, Caroline had been stunned by the idea that people their age were buying grownup furniture. But of course Danica was already married and had just gotten her first promotion.
As Caroline perched on the edge of the sofa, eating the pieces of fruit she’d selected from the buffet table—Patrick had loaded his plate with sandwiches and cookies, and how was Tillie managing to spear bites of pasta salad while also holding a glass of sparking water?—Nathan sat down beside Caroline, bumping her arm in a way that caused the grapes to roll off her plate and fall to the floor. She scooped up the grapes, wrapped them in a napkin, and was searching for a place to put them when Nathan said, his voice trembling, “You were next to her? Right? When she got….”
“Yes,” she said. “I was.”
Caroline saw that the people standing closest to them were listening. She wished Patrick and Tillie were farther away.
“I can’t stop wondering what happened in those seconds right before,” Nathan said. “Do you remember what she was doing?”
Caroline spoke as softly as she could. “She wasn’t really doing anything. We were both standing in the street, right next to the curb. She’d just checked her phone.”
A look of horror came to Nathan’s face. “Did my text distract her?” His voice rose with panic. “Was she looking at it, when it… when the scooter…?”
Had Danica been looking at her phone? For the tiniest possible moment, Caroline let herself hope that here, at last, was her exoneration. The missing piece of information that would prove that Danica’s death wasn’t her fault. Maybe Danica had been watching the progress of her car on Uber! But Caroline wasn’t going to say anything that would make it seem like Danica herself was to blame.
“No,” she said. “I mean, I didn’t hear a text.” Even if she’d heard a ping or buzz, she wouldn’t have told Nathan. She would have said the exact same thing.
He seemed relieved, but that only went so far. “But where was she looking? Was she looking at you?”
The great aunts had closed in protectively behind Nathan. Had they heard his question? If so, they wanted to hear her answer. “No,” Caroline said. “I was just about to talk to her. She was looking straight ahead, I think.”
“What were you going to talk to her about?”
Caroline was too embarrassed to tell the truth: she’d been about to ask Danica why they never talked anymore. She hadn’t even gotten the words out, because she’d been too worried that her coworkers would overhear her—or, worse, that Danica would brush her off, politely indicating that she’d rather not get into a personal conversation.
“I’m really sorry,” she said. “I can’t remember.”
For a long moment, Nathan looked at her. And it seemed like he could really see her. Caroline thought he was about to acknowledge that she, too, had been traumatized by the accident. She was mortified when he glanced at his daughter, who was bracketed between aunts at the end of the sofa, and said, “Jane is regressing. She’s wetting her bed.”
Caroline looked at the little girl, whose stringy white-blonde hair was pasted to her face with tears. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”
He got up, leaving her alone on the couch, alone to battle her own inner questions, which assaulted her for the remainder of the visit. Why was she the one who’d been spared? If either she or Danica had to get hit by the scooter, why had it been Danica, the one with the loving husband? The one who had this sweet little daughter, who so desperately needed her?
Caroline studied the faces around her. Was anyone else wondering the same things? Of course not. She was being crazy! But near the end of the visit, she saw Patrick standing in a tight circle with Tillie and Marlon. He lowered his head to say something, and they all looked over at her. When they saw her staring back at them, their eyes widened, and they quickly turned away.
But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part happened when they were all at the door, once again expressing their condolences to Nathan, promising to help out in any way they could. “Maybe I could come over and babysit Jane sometime,” Tillie said. “When she’s ready.”
They all looked over at Jane. She was across the room, her body pressed against an aunt, and she was staring at them. At Caroline specifically, it seemed. Out of nowhere, she started to cry. She cried inconsolably, continuing to stare at Caroline through her tears. Why was this happening? Had the girl heard some comment about her?
Caroline saw the looks on her coworkers’ faces, their meaningful, knowing glances. She herself was left with nowhere to look as the girl cried and cried.
#
They were in the conference room, giving their weekly updates, a meeting that Patrick was leading. Caroline had taken a middle seat, a generally safe spot that would keep her from having to speak too close to the beginning or the end. But Patrick had called on Tillie first and then gone counterclockwise, which meant that he got to Caroline last.
She was only about two minutes into her proposal for how they could improve their client outreach when she realized that several of the youngest team members were using this as an opportunity to study her. To scrutinize her. Particularly this one girl, Beth, who was right out of college. She was staring at Caroline with undisguised fascination.
Caroline stopped speaking. She stared back at Beth, who immediately looked down at the table, her face flushed.
The energy of the room changed. An excitement lit up the faces of nearly everyone around her, while Beth’s eyes filled with tears. Caroline kept staring at her, daring her to look back.
Patrick seemed to be enjoying this more than anyone, Caroline noticed. His eyes were actually twinkling; one corner of his mouth curved up into a smile. He was expecting her to have a meltdown.
It was the bald anticipation on his face that made her decide to resume her presentation as if she’d never left off. As if everyone—everyone except Beth, whose eyes were still fixed on the table—wasn’t either cringing or watching her with childlike glee.
When she finished, there was a long silence. Then everyone straightened in their seats and collected their papers and phones. Caroline was struck—too late; everyone was streaming toward the door—by the realization that no one had offered any opinions or feedback about her ideas. Normally at least two or three people responded to each presentation. Patrick had already gotten up from his seat, as eager to escape as everyone else.
And she knew why: they were running off to talk about her. They would gather in the breakroom, huddle in their shared offices. Some of them were whispering to each other as they filed out the door, as if she weren’t standing right there.
She wasn’t the only one who’d observed this. Tillie had hung back a half-step. With a cheerful shrug, Tillie turned to her and said, “It’s hard to be last.” As Caroline stared at her, speechless, Tillie smiled in a way that balanced the line between genuinely sympathetic and pityingly amused—balanced it so perfectly that Caroline knew it would haunt her for months, years.
Tillie then strode out the door to join the others, leaving her words hanging after her in the stagnant air.
#
Caroline was almost back at her cubicle when she veered down the hall and headed to Danica’s—she was not yet ready to think of it as Patrick’s—office, knocked once on the partly open door, and went in.
Patrick looked up from his screen. “I thought I’d closed that.”
It was awful to see him in Danica’s office, surrounded by what remained of her things: an economy-sized bottle of hand sanitizer, a water bottle on an otherwise bare bookshelf, a candy dish that Danica had filled with gray pebbles. It was so plain, like Danica.
But Danica had been her friend. Her friend. And Caroline missed her. She’d missed her even before she’d died. Now she missed her so much more.
There was a pressure behind her eyes, but she wasn’t going to let herself cry. Not here, in front of Patrick.
“I want you to stop talking about me,” she said. “I want you to stop saying it was my fault.”
Patrick raised one eyebrow and leaned back in his chair. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to be more specific.”
“You’ve been telling people that I could have saved her. That I could have pulled her out of the way of the scooter in time.” Caroline couldn’t bring herself to admit she’d heard him say that she was jealous of Danica. “And now everyone’s talking about me.”
“I can’t help what other people are saying. Or the conclusions they might reach.”
“I want you to stop. You have to stop.”
Patrick cocked his head. “Do you want me to put you on some better assignments?” he said, gazing at her from this new angle. “Is that what this is really about?”
Caroline felt her hands ball into fists, her nails pressing into her palms. “It isn’t a joke, what you’re saying about me.”
“Why don’t you start working on the proposal you discussed at the meeting?” he said. “Would that make you happy?”
She left, colliding with a chair on the way out, ignoring his call to close the door, please!
#
Hours later, alone in her tiny apartment—on a sofa that couldn’t dream of being mistaken as having been purchased from Crate and Barrel, let alone anywhere pricier—the glow of her fury had faded. She hadn’t gotten anything she’d wanted. He hadn’t agreed to stop talking about her or expressed regret for anything he’d said.
And now she was spending her whole night wondering, as she had so many times before, if Patrick was right.
Maybe she could have saved Danica, if she’d thought quickly enough. If she’d been brave enough. Selfless enough.
And maybe she hadn’t because she hadn’t wanted to. Because she was jealous. Jealous of her friend.
Could that possibly be true? Was she really such a horrible person?
Or maybe all of this was unfair. Maybe they’d all just decided that she was a horrible person, a monster. When the truth was, she just didn’t fit in.
She knew it shouldn’t hurt so much. So what if she didn’t fit in? It wasn’t like this was the first time. It hadn’t happened in every job, or in every grade of school or year of college, but it had certainly happened before. She was one of those people who sometimes just didn’t fit in.
Her tears were flowing freely now. She was crying about Danica, but she was also crying about herself.
So maybe loathsome Patrick was right. For one reason or another, maybe it all really was her fault.
#
It was six on Friday, and her coworkers were leaving the office, two at a time, then three, a small group gathering in the hall, which Caroline could see through the glass doors from her cubicle. Were they all going somewhere together? She was as much a part of this team as they were; she was tired of being shut out and reduced to a target of speculation. When Patrick breezed by with Tillie, Caroline called out, “Where is everyone going?”
“Out for drinks,” Patrick said. “Margaritas. It’s been a stressful week. A stressful month.”
If they were going to spend the night talking about her, they’d have to do it to her face, she decided. She grabbed her bag and locked her computer and caught up with them by the elevators.
They went to a cheesy bar in Midtown, filled with office workers in suits and blasting ’80s music, that Caroline assumed Patrick had chosen ironically but which everyone seemed to sincerely love, and not just because he bought the first pitchers. They filled two large booths in the back, with others milling beside them. Someone suggested nachos, and Tillie said, “Oh, yes!” and soon they were polishing off a heaping plate and ordering another.
Caroline was at the main table—it was obvious that it was the main table—squeezed in between Marlon and Tillie and across from Patrick. She was on alert, ready to pounce on any opportunity to defend herself. To vindicate herself! But by her third margarita, she was letting her guard down. She was possibly even having a little fun. When the people around her mentioned previous nights out, crazy adventures and outrageous things that one or another of them had said, she didn’t feel her usual pang of exclusion. She was with them now, applauding with the others as Patrick ordered another round and shouted, “I think we can call this an important night out for team building and our collective mental health!”
They left the bar and went to another that seemed almost the same, and when that bar closed they staggered into a dive bar that had a karaoke machine in the back. Caroline no longer knew what time it was. Everyone’s voices were high and thin, and they couldn’t stop laughing, even when they were almost falling over. Was this appropriate, so soon after the death of their colleague, their team leader? It was not, but an understanding flowed between them: this was exactly what they needed. One by one, they took their turns on the little stage. They were all surprised, but not, that Tillie could sing in Portuguese, and under the circumstances her choice of song seemed endearing rather than obnoxious. Patrick sang a Rolling Stones song, and to their delight he strutted around the stage, swiveling his hips in Tillie’s direction, his mouth shaped into a Mick Jagger snarl. Who knew he could be so funny? He was hitting on Tillie to the point where it would have been embarrassing, as well as a major HR crisis, but on this night even that came off as charming. At one point he threw his arm around Caroline’s neck and offered her a cigarette. She didn’t even mind that he’d dislodged the ponytail she’d just managed to secure.
When it was her turn, which came last, when some of them were looking for their coats and checking their phones with bleary eyes, she chose a ballad. It was about being loved and the danger of enjoying that feeling too much because, inevitably, you would lose it, and how would you ever find it again? It was a sad song, a little maudlin, and you had to go all out if you wanted to do it right, but Caroline wasn’t afraid of that, because when she sang, she felt beautiful. It didn’t matter that her hair was frizzy or that her thighs were wide, or that her upper arms were thick and squashable. She’d never had thin arms like Tillie’s; she’d always been soft. It also didn’t matter that her blouse was creeping out of the waistband of her pants, or that the gap that always appeared between the second and third buttons of her shirt, no matter how carefully she’d safety-pinned it at home, was definitely giving a sideview of her bra. None of that mattered. She knew, and not because she’d been told, that she had a beautiful voice, one of those clear, melodic voices that cut through the din of bars and made people turn on the street, and when she sang, she felt just as beautiful.
Ten minutes later, they were on the subway platform. No one minded; their wait for the train was a continuation of their crazy night. Marlon was goofing around, and so was Patrick, singing and whirling on the platform, still hamming it up, his limbs moving so wildly that it took Caroline a minute to understand what he was up to. But then she knew: he was imitating her. He was mocking the way she’d flung up her arms, the earnest look she’d had on her face, and, yes, even the way her shirt had come out of her pants—and he was doing all of that while singing in a warbly voice that was nothing like her own. He was performing as if she weren’t watching with all the others. He knew she was watching. But he didn’t stop.
Most of the others were laughing. Tillie, who was just a few feet away from Patrick, was swaying with her eyes closed, smiling in a private way. But she kept sneaking glances at Patrick, and each time she did, her smile would get brighter, and she’d laugh. And then she’d go back to pretending that she wasn’t paying attention.
Patrick knew, of course, that Tillie was paying attention. He was performing mostly for her. His dance moves got even wilder. As he launched into the chorus of Caroline’s song, he backed closer to the platform’s edge.
Caroline was too disgusted even to shake her head. Couldn’t he feel the warning bumps of the yellow line beneath his shoes? Couldn’t Tillie, who’d backed up with him and was nearly as close to the edge? Just as Patrick reached the song’s climax, he lifted his arms again and mussed up his hair. He was making his hair look crazy, making it look like her hair, Caroline realized, some nightmarish version of it. Tillie didn’t even try to hide her laughter.
At that moment Caroline hated them both so much that if she could go back in time to the instant when Danica was killed—if she had a magic wand and could do it all over again, as she’d wished so many times—she wouldn’t use that chance to save Danica. She would push Patrick in front of the scooter. Or Tillie. Pushing Tillie would feel even more satisfying, Caroline decided, although Patrick deserved it more. And maybe that said something terrible about her—that she was, in fact, a petty and jealous person—but she didn’t care.
Why should she? Danica had died in a horrible accident, and Patrick and Tillie were risking their lives, acting like bad things didn’t happen to people like them. Surely someone would save them if they were in danger.
But she was the only one who’d noticed. Everyone else was too drunk, blind to anything but the fun they were having. Caroline wished she was still that drunk, that her haze hadn’t been shattered. As she watched Patrick and Tillie, she felt her heart accelerate. He was going to fall. Or maybe both of them would.
It was completely unfair that it had been left to her to do something. Yet she couldn’t wait a second longer. She leaped up from her bench against the wall. But she tripped over her own feet and went flying forward, landing facedown with a loud splat on the filthy platform. Her bag slipped off her shoulder and fell open, its contents spilling out in front of her: phone and wallet and her little makeup pouch with tampons. Her hands throbbed and her knees hurt but she couldn’t even cry out in pain, because she’d knocked the wind out of herself.
Did anyone rush to her side? Help her get up, gather her belongings?
No. They were laughing, their voices explosive around her. Patrick was laughing the hardest of them all. He was doubled over, his heels at the platform’s edge. Tillie put a hand over her mouth as she looked down at Caroline. Caroline took her chance. Still on her stomach, she raised one arm and waved wildly toward Patrick. “He’s too close,” she said. Tillie didn’t seem to understand. Caroline tried again, shouting as loud as she could. “He’s too close!”
Tillie blinked, confused, maybe even startled by the extreme ungainliness of Caroline’s gesture. But then she turned to look at Patrick, and at the drop to the tracks behind him.
“Oh my god, be careful!” Tillie cried out. She put her hand on Patrick’s arm and steered him, and herself, to safety.
Caroline got to her feet. She smoothed down her clothes, which only made things worse. Some of her coworkers, witnessing this attempt, fell silent. Others kept laughing. And now that Tillie had recovered from her scare, she was about to start laughing, too. She had that look: like she knew it was wrong, but she just couldn’t help herself.
Caroline knew that more laughter was coming her way. But she also knew that she’d saved those awful people. Those absolute fuckers. She’d saved them.
And she felt really good about that. She felt good about herself, actually. And when the train finally screeched into view, blowing her sweaty, matted hair back from her forehead, she knew they could see it, too—just how good she felt. It showed right on her face.
Jennifer Kitses is the author of a novel, Small Hours. Her writing has also appeared in Short Edition, Newtown Literary, The Brooklyn Rail, and other publications. She lives in Jackson Heights, NY, and works as an editor for the Graduate Center, CUNY.
Nice work!
This isn't the kind of story I like, and yet I loved this. Very well done.