“It seems to me,” Jane spoke softly, “you might want to consider moving the office stuff out of your bedroom and making a nice office space somewhere else in this house.”
“No, I like it there,” Maggie replied with absolute certainty.
Jane let it go. There was no point in pushing.
“Okay, then, maybe we try to store most of your files in a closet or cabinet. Do you really need all these files out?”
“Well... jobs that I have finished with, I guess I could put the files away... but then, I do refer to them for current jobs, so I wouldn’t want them anywhere not easily accessible—”
Maggie’s phone started ringing.
“I have to get this—please look around and see what you can do.”
As Maggie walked back to her bedroom/office, they heard her side of the conversation: “I’m sorry, Brittany, but these kinds of venues book out at least a year in advance. So if you don’t want to make any compromises—which of course I understand, the goal is a perfect wedding—the one compromise you will have to make is the date....”
Jane cringed imagining the overwrought bride Maggie was trying to soothe.
“I feel so bad for Maggie,” Lindsey whispered.
“I know. But I also feel bad for us, because—what can we do here?”
Jane and Lindsey worked side by side most of the day, and Jane was grateful for the company. The house was so sterile; every surface felt lonely; the light pouring through all the vast windows was somehow chilling rather than warming.
Maggie was constantly on her phone, which she cradled to her ear, resisting the comfort and convenience of a headset orearbuds. The conversations about the minutiae of events were relentless: seating assignments, photo booths, music, menus—salmon or sea bass, filet or rib eye? What’s the vegetarian option? Lemon cake with raspberries or chocolate cake with vanilla icing and did there need to be a vegan cake or a gluten-free cake as well? Maggie would occasionally dash over to a file and pull something out for reference, not skipping a beat. Her tone was authoritative and reassuring, perfect for allaying all kinds of event-induced anxiety. She might look disheveled, but she sounded unflappable.
Maggie did, in fact, have an uncanny knack for knowing where everything was, but this required her to be ever vigilant: she relied on memorization to know the exact physical location of each file. Simply imagining living day after day like this made Jane weary, but perhaps this cathexis helped Maggie avoid thinking about other stuff.
Jane and Lindsey assured her they would put the files in a logical order—creating a system—so she would be able to find anything she needed easily. They divided the files by type of event and sorted each category chronologically. Maggie’s handwritten labels were practically impossible to decipher, so they needed to peek inside the folders to know how to identify them. In doing so, they got a taste of some of the decadent parties she had planned. An African Safari–themed Malibu wedding that required renting elephants, tigers, tents, and Jeeps and creating a pith helmet with a bridal veil. A bar mitzvah in Dodger Stadium with hot dogs, peanuts, real live Dodgers lured by honorariums, and a photo booth customized to make playing cards of all the guests. A sweet sixteen on a boat that had been turned into a floating spa with mani-pedis and waxing and a birth control bar. Was a birth control bar a real thing? Jane tried to picture it: it would be a joyous reclamation of female desire, a bold celebration of #girlpower, strenuously fun and relentlessly pink. It was a marvel that this woman who seemed so abstemious was the mastermind of all these over-the-top bacchanalia.
At lunchtime, Maggie said they could help themselves to whatever they wanted from her kitchen, although there wasn’t much of a selection: only cottage cheese, applesauce, and pureed vegetables. Jane was curious about what could account for this diet—strange even by LA standards—but would never ask. What if it was due to a colostomy? Lindsey, however, was intrepid.
“Oh wow, you have such a restricted diet.... That must be challenging.”
Lindsey was so good with indirect questions—she leavened them with empathy. Jane wondered if, unlike Lindsey, she hoarded empathy. Maybe she was saving it for herself. Was self-empathy a thing? Or just a synonym for narcissism?
“It’s not really restricted. With soft foods, I don’t waste time preparing meals and clients have no clue I’m eating while I take calls,” Maggie explained as if this were the most natural thing in the world. “The pureed veggies have some fiber, and now there are all kinds of really tasty organic baby foods. And cottage cheese with raspberry jam and Gerber banana is so good, you should try it.”
It took Lindsey a minute to think of something to say.
“Well, that’s certainly efficient! I’m impressed.”
Jane and Lindsey drove to the Brentwood Country Mart for lunch, a rare opportunity to try to carve out a moment of enjoyment and camaraderie. The restaurant they went to was meant to evoke a barn, with lots of reclaimed wood and picnic benches for seating. The menu featured homespun-yet-gourmet food, all extravagantly priced and carefully sourced from the farms name-checked on the menu.
Lindsey was fixated on all the wedding plans they had just eyed.
“I had no idea you could go to one place for appetizers, another for the food, and then somewhere else for dessert? And all these trade outs the celebrities get?! Do they end up getting their weddings completely free? If I ever get married, I want something really chill and low-key, you know? I definitely do not want a wedding that compromises my mental health.”
“Agreed.”
“Of course, since I’m so into Jesús now, and then looking at all this wedding shit all day, I start thinking about what our wedding could be like and that is so cart-before-the-horse and also, like, Cinderella brainwashing! But still, it’s sort of fun to think about.” She paused, but she wasn’t done. “Can you imagine Maggie planning your wedding? She is so...”
“Joyless,” Jane said, finishing Lindsey’s thought.
“Yes! That’s the perfect word.”
“She’s not there to enjoy the party, she wants to control it.”
As she said this, Jane wondered if she was describing herself. She was going to a Christmas party with Teddy that very night, but there was, she surmised, a difference. Unlike Maggie, Jane did want to enjoy parties—even if she didn’t know how.
