Page 67 of Escape Girl
I pushed Bobby out of the room. “Give me a minute, will you?” I said coldly. I pulled the dress off my body as quickly as could.
When I rejoined the others, I had the cupcake dress in my arms and a huge fake smile on my face. “You guys were right!” I cheered. “This one is it!”
Bobby looked bewildered. I ignored him and concentrated on the sales staff, who began to parade out veils and white shoes. Eventually, he left and we never talked about the dress again until recently in his townhome.
Now, on the screen in the escape room mock-up, the cupcake dress I’d worn on our wedding day was displayed next to the Grecian gown. I cleared my throat and spoke into the microphone connected to my laptop.
I didn’t want to go wedding dress shopping, Bobby. Not without my mother. It just hurt so much. She should have been there with me.
She loved dresses—did I ever tell you that? No, of course I didn’t. Unless she was on the golf course, she never wore pants or shorts. Dresses were her thing. Kind of like how suits are my thing.
When I put on the dress that I actually loved, I heard her voice, telling me that it was the right one. I don’t know if it was just my own mind echoing what I knew to be true, or if she was really watching me that day and decided she had to weigh in. Which I can absolutely see her doing, by the way, like some sort of sassy angel, breaking the rules.
But it shattered me. I’d become very good at not thinking about her and not talking about her. It was a self-protection thing. I didn’t want to feel her loss. And I didn’t, for a very long time. But when I fell in love with you, I started to feel everything again.
I didn’t want to shatter so I fought against it. I wore the ridiculous dress and pretended I liked it. I didn’t talk to you about it, and I should have. This was a moment I could havesaved us. If I had opened up to you then about my unresolved grief, maybe I wouldn’t have been overwhelmed by it later.
I’m sorry—
My voice broke, so I had to stop the recording there. I wasn’t going to have audio clips of me sobbing, for Christ’s sake. The escape room was about explanation, not sniveling for sympathy.
*
The second roomAndie had set up for me resembled a Thai restaurant that opened on the same street as our condo in San Francisco. The restaurant had its grand opening on the same date as my first day at my new job after we were married, so we’d decided to meet for dinner there.
As I’d instructed, Andie had crafted the room so that after you entered the restaurant, the perspective shifted and settled on a table by the window. Bobby had been waiting for me there, reading a book, not caring that I was forty minutes later than I said I would be.
“Well?” he’d demanded after planting a smacking kiss on my lips and pouring me a glass of Riesling. “How was the first day?”
I remember settling into the chair across from him, the joy at coming home to him fighting hard but losing to the deflated feeling that had weighed me down all day. “It was OK.”
“Only OK?” He raised his eyebrows, inviting more details.
Yeah, only OK. The same kind of people, the same expectation of insane billable hours, and the same type of cases I’d been working on at my firm in Seattle. I hadn’t really expected it to be that much different, so I didn’t understand why it was affecting me so negatively. Maybe I didn’t want to admit that spending the fall with Bobby had altered me so much that Icouldn’t pick right up where I’d left off. That maybe I needed to make a big change.
I grew irrationally irritated at Bobby’s concerned expression. “It’s work, Bobby. It’s not all fun and games, OK?”
I didn’t say: “You don’t get it because you don’t have a real job,” but it was implicit and he knew it. He just nodded and opened his menu to hide his shamed face, and I wanted to punch myself in the gut.
I spoke into the microphone.
I lashed out at you here, for no good reason. You simply expressed concern that I didn’t have a good first day at my new job, and I bit your head off. I was snide and cruel and exploited your own worst insecurity. This was the start of a pattern: I wasn’t happy working like a maniac anymore—it was easy to see—and every time you tried to talk to me about it, I hurt you.
All I’d had in my life, after my mom died and before I met you, was work. In a way, it saved me because focusing all of my energy and time there gave me a survival mechanism, but it also gave me a way to escape the grief instead of processing it like I should have.
My whole identity was tied up in my job. So when I realized I was unhappy with it, it became clear that I was also unhappy with myself as a whole. When you pointed out the obvious, you were forcing me to confront things I didn’t want to deal with.
I’m ready to deal with it now.
I quit my job last week. I cheered when I hit Send on my resignation letter.
I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do now. I’m thinking about starting my own firm and taking impossible cases. Cases for the underdogs that no lawyer in her right mind would take on. No lawyer except one with bottomless resources and zero fucks to give.
I know it sounds crazy. God, I’d love to talk to you about it.
I’m also dying to talk to you aboutyourjob. Jo and her team do nothing except sing your praises, but all I really want to know is what you think about it. How you feel about it.
I’m sorry, Bobby. This was another place I could have saved us, but I made everything worse. I was angry and irritated with myself, not you. Never you.
