Eric Sutton

Audience

Alone in her office, Angela heard the ping from her phone across the room, where she kept it buried in her purse. She used to leave it sitting on the desk next to her laptop, but it proved too enticing a distraction, especially with Sophia’s daycare releasing an app that enabled parents to check in on their child’s activities whenever they wanted. It was probably her husband, Gregor, asking what they planned on for dinner. If he texted at all, it was usually of this nature and around this time of day, late afternoon, when people looked ahead to the evening.

When she extracted the phone, however, Angela saw that it was Marcus who had texted. She allowed the phone’s face recognition technology to work its magic, indulging in the feeling of anticipation, the light energy that coursed through her.

Hey! the message read. Would you mind taking a look at a new story? I always value your feedback. If not, no worries.

Marcus often led with I was thinking about you and… or How are you? I miss you! which engaged that guilty yet delicious mechanism inside her. Angela was disappointed that he’d skipped that step today. She deliberated over the message before deciding to put the phone back in her purse and return to her computer. He could stew for his lack of charm.

They had texted off and on for the past two years, after Marcus had ended a long-term relationship. Weeks might go by and Angela would be so consumed with work and housekeeping, her aging parents, trips to her overpriced gym, birthday party after birthday party, that she’d forget all about him. But he always reappeared, a pleasant jogging of memory at first that had, of late, evolved into a subtle, impossible longing, even at home, when the kids had been put to bed and Gregor was gaming in his office under monstrous headphones.

Angela adjusted her glasses and threw on the white shawl she kept hanging over her chair like a blanket. The temperature in her office was erratic lately, alternating blasts of warm radiant heat for half an hour with what felt like air conditioning the next. Facilities would tell her the issue was fixed only for the extremes to start up again the following week. She looked down at the goosebumps on her bare arms and thought once again about why she still bothered with designer blouses and long pencil skirts and other professional attire. She could just wear yoga pants and long sweaters, like everyone else in the office.

She was an editor by trade, no doubt the reason Marcus solicited her help – that and their history together – and while her current role managing public relations for a Midwestern university’s department of social work was a far cry from her former life assistant editing at a Manhattan publishing house, Angela still thought of herself as a New Yorker, one who should dress and act the part. So she did, even though she’d been back home for nearly a decade.

Work came slowly now that Marcus was on her mind. After each email composed and sent, Angela turned toward the street scene captured through her small office window, where a March thaw sent rills into the gutters and students huddled against the wind in long jackets. She could use a tea, something else to warm her.

Lately, Marcus had been pushing their conversations beyond where they should go. An evening last month, for example, he began by typing I’m going to my cabin this weekend and couldn’t help but think of our ski trip senior year, after which they relayed a few minor anecdotes – how she had failed miserably on the bunny hill and was it John Lennon, after all, who wrote “Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite!”? – but these were appetizers. Angela had let him get to the brink before coming up with the excuse of reading her kids one more bedtime story. They both knew what had come next without needing it breathed to life: their rampant fucking that entire weekend, once in the cramped backseat of her Cabrio, any number of times he was able to sneak into her room – his parents asleep in the dead of night – and where they struggled to contain their silence, making it all the more intense and pleasurable.

After signing off and deleting all possible incriminating language from the thread, Angela had escaped to the bathroom, slipped her hand beneath the elastic of her underwear, and pictured the scenes he’d conjured from their past, bringing herself to orgasm right as resounding cheers echoed from Gregor’s office – apparently, he’d just blown up some enemy position. She had emerged sheepish, moving furtively in her socks to check on her sleeping daughters, a reminder of just how indulgent and fantastic and stupid she was being.

There was Jack, as well, to consider, whose framed pictures adorned mantels and shelves in every room of their house. Mostly sonograms. A few of Jack in the incubator, with Angela and Gregor and their parents standing around him. She hadn’t wanted to smile in those pictures, but Gregor had carefully and quietly pulled her aside and said, “What if he makes it?” From the beginning, Gregor possessed the strength to sustain their collective grief, and Angela couldn’t forget that, as much as she sometimes wanted to. Even now, eight years on, whenever Angela found herself caught in a vulnerable state, the pain rising in her throat like an acid, she would turn one of the frames down, only to discover it neatly re-positioned in the morning, Gregor’s doing. She’d have to stifle a sob that could easily have erupted into tears of anger or appreciation – she couldn’t say which – had she let it.

Angela would swear off Marcus after these episodes, telling herself she had two daughters who brought her unending joy, a loving husband. But then her phone would ping, as it had today, and she’d have been anticipating him, Marcus, desiring his presence without realizing it.

Sighing, she opened the document he’d sent. He’d titled his story “Organic Eggs.” Bad already. She was his audience, and if she were honest, she would tell him that while his stories had sensible structure, developed their characters well enough and made proper use of mechanics, there was something missing from them – some styling or personality – that made the writing limp. Stick to flirting, she wanted to write back.

She scrolled to the bottom of the document. Sixteen pages.

His story concerned two couples who rent an Airbnb for the weekend. They have grown distant – she commented in the margins that distance was incurable the older you got – because the one couple, upwardly mobile with two kids, has surpassed the other, who are childless and debt-laden, with none too subtle drug and alcohol issues.

She added more commentary: Why are they taking this trip together? They seem like they are in completely different stages of life.

The couples fight amongst themselves on the car trips to the vacation home and while unpacking in their respective rooms – arguing about sex, about money, about why they’re even on this vacation in the first place – and eventually, as the evening progresses and alcohol enters the equation, the couples begin to fight with one another.

Angela paused after ten pages or so when an email came through that needed her attention. Next, a call sent her scrambling to retrieve her phone. It was Eleanor’s preschool informing her that a classmate had gone home sick and she ought to look out for symptoms that evening. Angela hung up and opened the conversation with Marcus:

So far, so good. she typed. Characters are intriguing, but they’re coming across flat: the bitchy wife, the effete husband, the alcoholic friend wanting to relive former glories. Avoid stereotypes.

She put the phone on her desk and rubbed her temples. She could finish the story later, or tomorrow, or never. But Marcus messaged back right away and right away she was rapt, awaiting some thankful, suggestive note typed in haste but, knowing him, still genuinely appreciative. The mere thought of his response – its promise and secret knowledge – was enough giddy motivation to carry Angela through the evening’s cooking and bathing and story time and half-hearted attempt at reading a book of her own before she nodded off.

She reached over out of habit and brought the home screen to life, a picture of Gregor and the two girls on a merry-go-round in a nearby park. The notification covered their smiling faces. 

You’re the best! That’s great advice, but keep reading. Things get complicated. My whole theme is exploring their complexities. Nobody’s issues are simple or easily fixed. You taught me that.

He ended with a blushing-face emoji, one they’d use often in their more playful conversations. She could spare a few minutes. It was Gregor’s day to collect the girls. Her job was a simple pasta, which wouldn’t be much trouble to prepare.

In high school, Marcus was one who took more than he gave. He had band practice and couldn’t hang out, he would tell her. The mixed CDs she’d burn for him or the letters she’d write would go unreciprocated. After their inevitable parting, that of high school lovers attending different colleges, Angela recalled a great sense of relief in letting him go. But since he had resurfaced, he seemed a different person. Not untoward or selfish. Kind, rather, and attentive. The good parts she remembered of him. Marcus told her about his breakup, how for years he had felt hemmed in, unable to express himself. He had stopped writing, he said, surprising because Angela had no idea he wrote in the first place. She, in turn, had shared her frustrations about Gregor: his annoying pragmatism, his overbearing tech conveniences and determination to fix everything himself, his maddening engineer’s mind. Over time, Marcus heard more about her suffering after Jack’s death than her friends did, than even Gregor did. One night, she texted, she had contemplated cutting herself as she used to in high school, a little nick on the thigh, but she hadn’t. Those days, thankfully, were past her. Marcus hadn’t rushed to any conclusions. I’m sorry, was all he had written back. That must have been such a difficult choice.

It was she who had sent the first picture, nothing sexy, just Angela in a black work dress with a polka-dotted neckline that she thought flattered her, asking him if she looked too frumpy. Marcus texted back with a picture of his own. She hadn’t seen his face in years, his Facebook photos long outdated. He had aged, crow’s feet around his eyes, but the large smile, the dimple in his left cheek, was the same. He was giving a thumbs-up. The caption read: you look great! Of course, she had deleted it all by the end of the workday, but not without staring at it each hour, revisiting the lifting feeling it gave her.

Returning to Marcus’ story, a scene in the kitchen where high-priced organic eggs were supposed to function as some sort of symbol (to later symbolically break, she portended, embarrassed), Angela read on.

But when she reached the passage about the stillbirth, about the rift that had opened between the couples in its aftermath, their desperate, defensive accusations of one another, flung wildly like glassware, a pang lodged low in her stomach. She stopped reading.

Shutting her laptop, Angela closed her office door and switched off her desk lamp. The gray weather through the window rendered her office a paling dark. It was on a day like this that Jack died, cold when she held him for the last time.

Above her desk was a corkboard with a calendar full of scrawl: arrows rearranging meetings, circled deadlines, little drawings of a present to indicate a party. Next to the calendar Angela had built a collage of photographs. Most of them were of the girls, printed from the camera Gregor had bought her after Eleanor was born, but some came from before, when she and Gregor first met in New York, the adventures they’d taken together in Peru, in Cambodia, in Turkey. All smiles, sunny afternoons, good food. There were none of Jack.

She stared at this compilation of her adult life until her breathing settled. Soon enough, she knew, her phone would ping, Gregor or Marcus or someone else needing something from her. They would have to wait. Angela first had to remind herself of who she was. At the very least, she wanted to remember who she was supposed to be.

Throughout dinner, baths, the bedtime routine, an episode from a Netflix series with Gregor, their customary positions at either end of the sofa, Angela held within her a pain more acute than the dull ache that visited her daily. Marcus had co-opted that pain, her pain, hers and Gregor’s, no one else’s, even using one of her lines – “I am a mother of three” – which he had pulled from a text conversation of theirs. He’d included other uncanny details – Angela’s chesty short stature, the model of minivan she now drove, her affinity for a clean kitchen – that she hadn’t picked up on at first, but these did not matter so much. What did was his treatment of Jack’s death, his portrayal of Angela as belittling and judgmental, like he viewed her as someone unable to cope with grief, who had become jaded and snapped at every minor inconvenience. In writing her character, her tragedy, Marcus hadn’t considered the expanse of her suffering. He hadn’t considered her at all.

Some future dystopian world flashing on the TV had Gregor transfixed, so Angela dislodged herself from the couch when Sophia called for her, moving as if through a fog to soothe her daughter’s nightmare. Afterward, with Gregor staying up late in his gaming universe, Angela clenched herself in a tight ball beneath the covers and quietly cried. For Jack, yes, and the grief Marcus had so casually put to the page, but for Marcus too, who never could be anything to her now.

Though she desperately wanted to, Angela didn’t write to him. Not for three days. She silenced his piling messages and resolved not to stray from her work. In the years following her loss, when everyone offered themselves up for “a talk, if she needed it,” Angela had learned to give herself three days to process her emotions before responding to them. But it wasn’t only that. She delayed writing Marcus because she could not forgive him, and not forgiving him meant letting him go, blocking him from her life entirely, and she wasn’t ready to do that yet.

Finally, nibbling on cold pasta in a free moment, the weather outside her office still sodden but warmer, a turn to spring perhaps – she had worn her beige trench coat into work that morning – Angela felt ready. Marcus had texted, DMed, and emailed her. He didn’t like people upset with him, even back in high school. Each thread ended on pretty much the same note: If I’ve offended you, I’m sorry. Can we talk?

The If exasperated her.

Choosing to email, Angela composed her thoughts in a measured, fluid voice.

I lost Jack. You know this. Yet you chose to write him into your story. Why on earth did you have me read this? Did you give any thought to how it would affect me? Also, the mother, me I presume, is a domineering narcissist. You’ve elided layers of grief and made a caricature of me and my trauma.

Should she add to it? This was no longer literary critique. She needed to be concise and direct. Still, she tacked on a final thought.

Stick to the adage “Write what you know,” because you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.

Hitting Send, Angela brought her hands to her face. She’d lost her appetite. She wished for something, some music maybe, to cloud her thoughts, to give back a sliver of the pleasure she had forgone, but she knew it would only feel artificial.

Marcus’ reply came within minutes. She had half a mind to leave it but opened the message anyway, an old nagging feeling of misunderstanding, of affection even, creeping into her conscience.

Angela, leaving the child’s death as this – how can I put it? – lingering topic that no one wants to discuss but is on everyone’s mind creates unbearable tension. They lack empathy because they cannot register any trauma but their own. I thought that would come through, but I was wrong. How stupid of me. Can you forgive me?

Angela typed quickly now, running on adrenaline that for days she had sought to tame and rationalize.

Forget themes and interpretations. Here’s what it’s really like. Twelve hours in labor, loving someone far beyond what I previously thought possible, worrying constantly that something could go wrong. And then it does go wrong. My worst fear realized. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Some days I still can’t. It’s nothing at all like the character you made me out to be. But what gets me so unbelievably angry was how you conveniently made Jack’s death a stillbirth. Jack lived, Marcus. For eight weeks. You didn’t think about that, did you? I shared personal details, vulnerable details, with you, and you manipulated them for your own selfish purposes. How fucking dare you!

Angela paused and closed her eyes. She imagined having it out with Marcus on the street,

screaming this exact messaging in his face, everyone watching as she tore into him, humiliated him. She pictured Gregor shedding his aloofness for once and intervening on her behalf, striking Marcus across the face with his open hand. Marcus would have no defense either, just pitiful excuses, exposing himself for the coward he was while blood poured from his nose.

Exhaling deeply, Angela returned to the screen. She couldn’t continue in this vein. More anger would only give Marcus a reason to justify his behavior, and she wouldn’t allow him that.

Marcus, you filled a gap in my life when I needed it. I’m ashamed to say it, but you made me feel something again. I guess I should thank you for that. I hope you felt something, too, that all this wasn’t transactional. But this is where it ends. It took reading this story to fully understand who you’ve become, maybe who you always were, and I want no part of that anymore.

She stood up, packed away her lunch, and scoured her calendar. A meeting soon, with the Dean, but she had known about this, was fully prepared. The street scene outside was unchanged – cars and SUVs halted at the stop sign, waiting for students to pass; the bustle in and out of the corner market – except there were patches of sunshine breaking through, which made everything and everyone a little more brilliant, a little more palatable.

Every few minutes Angela checked her email for new messages. Nothing. His delay gave her satisfaction. He must have been fumbling about to find the right language to save himself, determining how serious she actually was, if she was just angry or if she really meant it.

The meeting came and went, and still there was no response. Certainly, he would have read her email by now. Angela’s high dissipated. She had to remind herself who was in charge. She could exit the performance any time she pleased.

Say goodbye, she said to herself. He’s not worth the trouble.

When the message thread did appear in bold, indicating his reply, Angela pondered deleting it, pretending the whole episode never existed, but that would mean leaving herself in limbo, a scene opened without resolution. It reminded her of first moving to New York, her initial belief that the city would find her out and swallow her. But she had adjusted to it, seen it out, lived its madness through her twenties – the job searches and late nights and shitty decisions. She had grasped, briefly, at happiness. It was an iteration she had left behind to move home and start a family. Now, she would have to close this chapter too, the one with Marcus.

Leaning forward in her office chair, Angela opened the email.

You’re married, Angela, with beautiful kids and a husband who seems like a pretty good guy. I, on the other hand, am a lonely fuck up. What good would it do to tell you my true feelings? I can, without a doubt, affirm that nothing between us is transactional. That would denote black and white, and we exist somewhere else. Fantasy, most likely.

I share my writing with you because you’re the smartest person I know.

I have one more thing to say, and I’m reluctant to say it because I’ve hurt you and feel terrible, but here goes: You do not have the authority to tell me what I can and cannot write. Criticize me all you want, but exploring a difficult subject, even if I have not gone through it personally, is a writer’s job. To argue that my act of creation is problematic is problematic in itself. I created these characters to assume their own personalities and spaces. Did I draw from reality? Yes, of course. What writer doesn’t? But she, the mother, is not you, Angela, and supposing she was you, then based on the conversation we’re having right now, am I not depicting some truth, that we fail to truly grasp one another’s suffering? That was my point, to write to the heart of what we hope to understand. Either way, I never should have sent it to you. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’ll talk to you soon, I hope.

Marcus

 Angela read the message a second and third time, studying its angles and dissecting its tone. So consumed was she with this dramatic turn her life had taken that she felt neither hot nor cold in the office, neither under nor overdressed. Only present. Attuned. She sat there mobilizing her faculties, intent on defending her position and outwitting him, which used to come so easy to her, but each time she revisited his words, their embedded burn, she found nothing in her reserves to call upon. The wound had reopened and wept, and she was tired of suturing it.

She crafted a single line in response – I am no longer your audience – but it sat there cold, embittered, until Angela erased it. A weight lifted as she watched the letters disappear. Then she went ahead and deleted the whole thread. Taking her phone from her purse, Angela, through a rush of relief, deleted his contact information and with it their recent history.

What need was there, she decided, to write anything more?