“Cool! What changes are you planning?”
Jane realized she didn’t have a concise answer for this.
“I’m trying to change everything, really.”
“That sounds ambitious. Good for you! Well, I’ll miss you Jane—you were one of my favorite people to work with and I always hoped we’d get paired more often.”
“Aw that’s sweet. Same here.”
As she said this, Jane realized that she actually would miss Esmé.
They had come to The Container Store with a list (drop-front storage boxes, clear plastic bins, woven storage bins), but Jane did a quick lap first to see if anything inspired her.
She wandered past mock-ups of closets, of pantries, of bathrooms, until she found herself by a wall filled with clear plastic containers of assorted shapes and sizes. All the empty containers in rows and stacks felt oppressive, like a mausoleum of emptiness. Shewasn’t just staring into the void, she was being swallowed by it. Was life all about staving off emptiness by filling it with crap? Did accumulating tangible objects somehow make the meaning of life—or the meaninglessness of life—easier to grasp? Jane thought about a Porsche she’d seen with a bumper sticker that readHE WHO DIES WITH THE MOST TOYS WINS. What did they win? Douchebag of the year award? Why did a child need a roomful of clothing? Why did anyone, for that matter? Was her life’s work shoving superfluous things into boxes so they could be stored and then forgotten?
More than one of Jane’s yoga teachers had referred to a body as “your container.” If Jane were a container, was she clear or opaque? And what was she filled with?
She was, perhaps, filled with sadness.
If only she could rent a storage unit somewhere in the Valley, off-load it, and lock it up.
Something was surging in her—she wasn’t sure what it was, whether it would be cathartic or catastrophic. She blinked back the tears she felt welling up. No. She was not going to have a breakdown in The Container Store.
“Say ‘thank you’ to these nice ladies for the wonderful job they did, Scotty.”
Scotty, Lauren’s son, stood by her side, leaning into her. He was clearly a momma’s boy, sweetly shy, stocky with a shock of unruly hair, wearing shorts and a T-shirt with a smattering of stains. Not at all the slick fashion plate Jane had expected. Seeing this sensitive little boy with his mother precipitated an alien maternal longing in her.
“Thank you,” he dutifully said to them, then turned back to his mother. “Can I use my iPad now?”
“Sure, baby.” Lauren patted him on the head as he ran off.
The day was winding down, and Jane sensed they were all a little exhausted. But what in Lauren Baker’s life would exhaust her? Lauren Baker had everything. Shouldn’t she be ecstatic all day, every day? Although, wouldn’t that, in and of itself, be exhausting? Maybe Lauren sometimes felt like an empty vessel, a beautiful face onto whom people projected their own pathologies. Maybe her lay-about husband aggravated her. Maybe her chubby, dress-avoidant son disappointed her.
Kirsten, who had been lurking nearby, spoke up.
“Lauren, they’re telling me they need a decision today.”
“Then they should have sent me the options a week ago, shouldn’t they have?” Lauren answered with a tinge of peevish irritation that she might have thought was undetectable, but which Jane heard loud and clear.
“Yes, but—what do you want me to tell them?”
“What were they thinking? If I’m going to do T-shirts, they cannot be ironic! It’s so off brand. ‘Hey y’all y’all.’ What does that even mean?”
Kirsten looked flummoxed. This was a loaded question, so she went with the neutral, “I have no idea. So... what do you want me to tell them?”
“Nothing, I’m going to call them myself.” Without skipping a beat, she turned back to Jane and Esmé, all gracious and Southern again.
“Thank you so much, it looks wonderful. I hope Scotty will keep it neat—who am I kidding, he won’t—but we’ll do our best.”
“It was our pleasure,” Jane said.
“Kirsten will show you out, I have to jump on a call. Drive safe!”
“This was sort of a perfect last hurrah, right?” Esmé, standing by her car, glanced back at Lauren’s front door.
“Yes. You’ve got all my info—I want to hear how the new gig is going and everything.”
“For sure.”
