Domestic Violets Read online

  There are six hundred thousand initial hits for “erectile dysfunction” on Google. The first one that gets my attention is for a device called a PenizPump. I click on a more official-looking link halfway down the page and a drug company’s site pops up on my screen. There’s a handsome man with gray hair in a denim jacket standing next to a motorcycle.

  YOUR PROBLEM DOESN’T HAVE TO BE A PROBLEM ANYMORE, reads the headline, as if the man himself is saying it. But he’s not real. He’s a model, maybe a part-time actor, hired to pretend to have boner problems, and I find myself picturing him having sex with Anna right here in my office. This is one of the benefits of no longer working in a cube. Let’s face it, there’s just not enough room in a cube for you and your wife and the guy she’s having sex with in her dreams.

  My phone rings, and I cringe. Ringing phones often lead directly to one having to do work, and I’m in no mood for that today. “Tom Violet,” I say, all impatient and short, because this is how people answer phones in offices, like we’ve all been interrupted in the middle of performing impossibly dangerous surgery on a toddler’s brain.

  “Tom Violet, you sound so official on the phone, like a real professional.”

  “Hi, Sonya. I am a real professional. I have a BlackBerry and Post-it notes and everything.”

  Sonya Ross is my dad’s literary agent in New York, and I’ve known her for as long as I can remember. She’s got this great voice, all urban and sophisticated, like Meryl Streep. I scroll down the page a bit and read that erectile dysfunction is often caused by health problems, like heart disease and colon cancer. That’s just what I need right now.

  “Isn’t it a little early?” I ask. “I didn’t think literary agents got to work before noon.”

  “Well, normally you’d be right, dear. But it’s a big day for us. I’m sure you’ve heard the news about the prize. It hit the press this morning, and the phones are ringing. Everyone wants to talk to the man of the hour.”

  The prize. Only a person truly used to accolades would refer to the Pulitzer as the prize—in all lowercase letters.

  “Yeah, he told me last night. I thought Nicholas Zuckerman had it in the bag.”

  “Nicholas is one of the finalists. But it was Curtis’s year— finally. I thought I was going to have to start boycotting.”

  The handful of people on earth who still sit around comparing writers are often comparing my dad and Nicholas Zuckerman. Zuckerman’s about fifteen years older, but neither is young, and they’re both very white, male, and experienced at failed marriages. As much as Curtis hates to admit it, Zuckerman is more famous. He puts out something new every eighteen months, at least, and his most recent is a brilliant, devastating little masterpiece about an old man reunited with his teenage love who is now dying of a brain tumor. To make matters worse, Zuckerman’s a recluse—like cabin-in-the-wood recluse—which makes him more interesting than my cocktail-party-loving father.

  “Can I ask you something?” I ask. “Isn’t it a little weird that they’re giving him the Pulitzer now, for his collected stories? He’s written what, sixteen novels? The newest story in that book is more than seven years old. Not to sound harsh, but I always kinda thought the book was just a way to distract everyone from the fact that he hasn’t had a new novel in five years.”

  There’s a pause and I can imagine Sonya in her long black skirt and sensible shoes looking out over Union Square. “Think of it like any other big prize, Tommy. Like an Oscar. Sometimes it goes to the best of the year, and sometimes it’s like a makeup award for past slights. Remember when Russell Crowe won it for that Gladiator thing? Besides, collections win all the time, like Cheever in ’seventy-nine.”

  “But Cheever was a short-story god, Sonya. Dad hasn’t even been in the New Yorker since the eighties.”

  There’s a phone ringing in the background, maybe even two, and I can hear people chattering in Sonya’s office. “I don’t think I need to remind you of the extraneous circumstances at the New Yorker, dear. Your father isn’t even allowed in the building, and it has nothing to do with his writing.”

  I concede her point, glancing at another online penis testimonial. “But enough about Curtis,” I say. “I’ve actually been meaning to call you. I wanted to ask you about your kid.”

  “Brandon? Oh, you should see his new boyfriend.”

  “A new one, huh?”

  “The boy looks like he just got out of prison. Tattoos running up each arm, like sleeves. I swear, he finds these guys to spite me.”

  “Our little Brandon. He’s always liked the rough ones. Is it true he’s an agent now, too?”

  “Yes. And a damn good one, if you can believe it. He just sold a big memoir last week. It’s by a refugee from Afghanistan. Whole family was killed by the Taliban and now he’s an artist in Soho—designs scarves and blankets. Already sold the movie rights.”

  My head spins at all of this, memoirs and movie rights and the Taliban. My novel is finished, although I’ve told virtually no one this—including, for some reason, my wife. I could give it to Sonya, of course, who happens to be one of the most powerful agents in New York. But then that would derail Operation Secret Novel.

  “So, where in the hell is Curtis anyway?” she asks. “CBS called this morning. Letterman’s people want him for a Top Ten List. Top Ten Perks to Winning the Pulitzer. Sounds kind of funny, right? It could be, anyway.”

  I tell her that my dad stayed with us last night and update her on his most recent marital troubles. I relish this, knowing, if just for a moment, something about the state of Curtis Violet that Sonya doesn’t. Sadly, it’s a fleeting moment.

  “Well I know that, Tommy, of course. That whole arrangement was a ticking time bomb. I just figured he’d have checked into the Fairmount by now. He practically lived there during his last divorce.”

  “Is he doing OK? He looked a little . . . I don’t know, rough last night. Granted, he was pretty drunk, but—”

  “I wouldn’t know,” she says. “He was up here staying at the loft for a while, then I think he was back there in D.C. And, not for nothing, but he has every right to be pretty drunk, Tommy. Pulitzers don’t come along every day. I got a little tipsy myself when I heard.”

  “Yeah, I suppose. So, who do you think the new girl is?”

  “What?”

  “The new one. His latest train wreck. God, I hope it’s not Veronica Stewart again. I don’t think I could handle a Thanksgiving with that woman. Ashley has been bad enough.”

  “Oh don’t be an idiot. Your dad’s smarter than that, whether you believe it or not.”

  Veronica Stewart has been my dad’s on-again-off-again girlfriend/mistress since the early nineties, which would be otherwise uninteresting if she didn’t happen to be married to Alistair Stewart, the fiction editor at the New Yorker. My father has never been one for making things easy on himself.

  “Well, I’m sure it’s someone lovely,” I say. “I hear Madonna’s single again?”

  “I just handle the book business, Thomas. Now I’ve gotta run. The Today show’s on the other line. Don’t work too hard over there.”

  I try to assure her that I won’t, but it’s too late. Like a typical New Yorker, Sonya’s hung up without saying good-bye.

  For a while I stare at my computer screen and complete an online survey about whether or not I have erectile dysfunction.

  How Often Do You Have Trouble Achieving an Erection?

  Infrequently? Occasionally? Often? All of the Time?

  The first three seem vague, and I find the word “achieving” very distracting, like a boner is on par with landing a big promotion or running a 10K for juvenile diabetes.

  Just then, my office door swings open and I close my browser as fast as I can as a girl flops down in the chair across from my desk. I say “girl” not because I’m some horrible, ass-grabbing male chauvinist, but because that’s what she is, a girl. Katie is our twenty-three-year-old assistant copywriter and probably the most beautiful pers
on in this office. Most mornings when I see her, I find that I go a minute or so without properly breathing.

  “Hey, boss. What’s shaking?” she asks.

  I look at my screen, ensuring that my browser is gone. Now it’s just my wallpaper, a picture of Allie chasing Hank in Rock Creek Park. “Nothing,” I say, but I say it too quickly because I’m an idiot.

  She narrows her eyes. “What were you just looking at?”

  “What? Nothing. The Internet.”

  “You closed that browser pretty fast. This isn’t my first rodeo. I know what guys do with their computers.”

  “Due to my prestigious position here at MSW, I’m privy to highly classified information. I’m a very important person, Katie. You know that.”

  “So, porn then, right? What is it with guys and porn? It’s all so objectifying and poorly lit.”

  I lean back in my chair, which squeaks. “I find it relaxing. I come in, have my coffee, check my e-mails, and then I look at porn until lunch.”

  As usual, Katie is dressed like a college kid at a job fair—like a girl pretending she’s ready to take all this bullshit seriously.

  “Did you know that dolphins are the only animals other than humans that masturbate for pleasure?” she says.

  “Well, this seems like an appropriate conversation for the office.”

  “You’re such a square. It’s just science.” Katie grabs a random something off my desk. It’s a trade show giveaway, a squeeze ball shaped like a heart with our company’s logo on it. She’s a perpetual-motion machine, this girl, tossing the heart back and forth from hand to hand. It’s a combination of youth and a raging ten-Diet Dr Pepper-a-day drinking problem.

  “You see CNN.com today?” she asks.

  “Haven’t made it to the news sites yet. Just the porn so far. Are there still lots of pictures of stockbrokers frowning at computers?”

  “Well, yeah. But there’s another story up you might find interesting. Apparently your dad won some minor literary award.”

  I reopen my browser and head to CNN.com. Sure enough, poised between news of global financial despair and an outed televangelist, there’s a story about my dad. I click and there’s his picture. It’s the jacket photo from one of his earlier novels.

  “So that’s all of them then, right?” she says. “The National Book Award. The PEN/Faulkner. The National Book Critics. And now the Pulitzer.”

  “I see you’ve been hitting Wikipedia again.”

  “I was an English major, too, jerk. I know what’s up.” She’s standing now, leaning across my desk to look at the screen. Her dark brown hair, still a little damp from the shower, clings to her cheek for an instant and then falls across her collarbone. She smells like rain and cinnamon and Diet Dr Pepper and whatever that glossy stuff is on her lips. The crush I have on this girl compares only to the one I had on Leslie Davidson in fifth grade. That particular affair ended with me throwing up one day at recess after she dared me to eat a worm.

  “Wasn’t he one of People’s Fifty Most Beautiful People? Like back in the nineties or something?”

  “ ’Ninety-seven, I believe. His picture was between Julia Roberts and Gloria Steinem. It was his proudest moment.”

  “It’s scary how much you look like him,” she says. “You’re better though. You’ve got the cool-nerd thing going on. Girls like that. Your dad knows he’s hot, which negates the hotness a little. It’s a very complex formula.”

  Katie’s breasts exist now at my eye level, but I don’t stare at them like all the other dipshits in our office. Instead, I accept their presence as a given, allowing only the slightest glance at her ever-present corduroy blazer. She wears it almost every day, even in the summer. It is, somehow, the exact brown of her eyes and has been a character in the sexual fantasies of, I can only assume, every straight male in this building. A few months ago I saw one kind of like it at Nordstrom, and I picked it up for Anna, who accepted the random gift with wifely suspicion.

  “Shouldn’t you be working?” I say. “I’ve found that during economic meltdowns it’s good to at least appear busy.”

  “Speaking of . . . have you heard anything? Are they gonna do another round?”

  The word “layoffs” is avoided here. People talk around it, like one of those complex French words that’s difficult to pronounce. I used to manage two people, Katie and a nice kid from Baltimore named Stevie Tanner. But now it’s just us. Poor Stevie got laid off two months ago.

  “I know nothing,” I say, cheerfully.

  “You never seem to. Have you ever wondered why that is?”

  “It’s very deliberate. I’ve found that knowledge is usually a burden. I prefer to be surprised and then eventually horrified.”

  “You’re a born leader, Tom Violet,” she says. “I would follow you into hell.”

  I’ve been a longtime appreciator of a good exit line, and this one—solid—lingers for a few minutes after she’s gone, making me forget that I’m at work, and that I have carpal tunnel syndrome, and, according to a recent online survey from seven minutes ago, “mild” erectile dysfunction. In fact, she’s left me so giddy that it takes me a moment to realize that she’s stolen my heart-shaped squeeze ball.

  I swoon for a moment. I’m like some dumb kid with unfortunate skin at his locker. But then I see my dad on my computer screen, smiling at me below the headline VIOLET WINS PULITZER FOR FICTION. He’s looking at me all smug and accomplished like he’s so smart, and I think of that stupid T-shirt. It’s a good question. What Would Curtis Violet Do?

  Chapter 5

  In most companies, no one really notices you until they need you. And even then, when someone wanders into your office or IMs you and finds that you’re gone, they just assume you’re doing something constructive. Sitting in some horrible, pointless meeting. Stealing office supplies. Weeping gently in a bathroom stall on the fourth floor. Once you’ve established yourself as reasonably competent, you can pretty much come and go as you please.

  And so, as the day wears on and on, I’ve decided to go.

  There are few things as exciting as going over the wall in the middle of the afternoon. On the other side, the air is fresher and the sun is a little more brilliant in the blue sky. There are always people walking around, driving places, and I wonder if they’ve gone over the wall, too. Are there currently hundreds—thousands—of unmanned cubes and offices in D.C. right now while we all do whatever it is we’re doing here on the outside?

  I worked at MSW for a full six months before I even knew what MSW stood for, which is Management Services Worldwide. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but, in a nutshell, my company helps other companies be better companies. We have courses and expert speakers and pie charts and business models and acronyms and PowerPoint presentations that throw around ear-splitting words like “synergy” and “best practices” and we have Webinars and binders of information and it’s all designed to help your organization work more efficiently. My job, as director of marketing copywriting, is to write ads and press releases and brochures about how if you don’t use MSW your company will sink into bankruptcy, your wife will leave you, and you will die alone beneath a bridge.

  It’s all very fulfilling.

  Like most people who have jobs like mine, it was all meant to be temporary. I would write and publish my novel, and then I’d retire from corporate purgatory and become a member of the Community of American Letters.

  That was seven years ago. In a climate in which simply having a job is an accomplishment, mine represents failure.

  When I arrive at my doctor’s office, I stride toward the reception desk where a woman named Glenda sits. Glenda is an elderly black lady who’s worked for my doctor for as long as he’s been my doctor, but she never seems to recognize me. I can’t blame her though, considering I’ve never made an actual appointment and every time I’m here I claim to be someone different.

  “Can I help you?” she asks.

  “Yes. I’m Paul Hewson, here to s
ee Dr. Mortensen.”

  Paul Hewson is Bono’s real name, incidentally. Last time I was here, I was Gordon Sumner, otherwise known as Sting.

  Glenda looks at a giant desk calendar. Dr. Charlie shares his practice with two ancient doctors, and so everything here seems like something out of an issue of Life magazine.

  “What time was your appointment?”

  I look at my watch, which says 3:45, and so that’s what I say.

  “Well, I’m sorry, Mr. Hewson, I don’t seem to have you down.”

  “Oh, no worries. I can wait awhile.”

  As she jots Bono’s name down, I walk by the waiting room and through a door leading to the examination rooms. An old woman reading Highlights looks up but doesn’t seem concerned that I’m blatantly cutting in line. As obnoxious as this all sounds, it’s actually authorized. Dr. Charlie was my college roommate, and he’s too nice of a guy to tell me that I’m not Barbra Streisand and that maybe I should actually make an appointment like a normal person.

  A few nurses smile at me, assuming that I’m someone else’s problem, as I sneak glances into rooms. One of Charlie’s partners dozes at his desk over a file while listening to Rush Limbaugh. A young mother sits in an examining room with a little boy dressed in only socks and tighty-whitey underwear. She’s ignoring him as he drums on her thigh with tongue depressors. I round a corner and see a poster on the wall diagramming the human respiratory system, which looks very much like the D.C. Metro map. Then I hear Charlie’s voice. He’s yelling, but not in an angry way. I follow the shouting to find my friend standing in a doorway, hollering into a very old man’s ear.

  “Two pills, Mr. Halgas! One in the morning, and one at night before bed!”

  “Twice a day? But I only took the other ones once a day. I don’t like all the pills. I’d prefer just one.”

  “I’d prefer to have more hair and a Bentley, Mr. Halgas. But sometimes we can’t get everything we want. Those last pills weren’t working, that’s why you’re here now. You’ll feel better, OK? I promise!”