The Break-Up Clause by Niamh Hargan
Chapter Twenty
Once Fia notices it, she can’t stop noticing it. Many more people than Carole appear to have already made a friend of Benjamin Lowry – or he’s made a friend of them.
She watches him on Thursday, after a lunchtime seminar, chatting with a bunch of mid-level associates from the banking team: not holding court, not dominating, but certainly looking for all the world like he’s one of the gang.
She clocks that on the way back downstairs after said seminar, an equity partner passes by, nodding to them both. ‘Hi, Fia,’ he says. ‘Hi, Benjamin.’
And then, on Friday evening, Fia is down in the lobby. She’s dressed for her run, having done a quick change in the bathroom, some part of her mind already bounding through Central Park. When she spots Benjamin, though, the sight of him jolts her back to the here and now. He’s looking – in a way she can’t put her finger on but would put money on – a little harried as he comes through the entry turnstiles, apparently heading back upstairs to the office. That’s a turn-up for the books, she thinks, her mind flashing back to his first week, when he hightailed it out of ZOLA every evening at 5.30 p.m. as fast as his feet could carry him.
From the security desk, a guy in a white shirt and lanyard calls out to Benjamin.
‘Hey, how ’bout them Yankees last night?’ he says.
Fia does not know this man’s name, despite having herself passed him most days for … she doesn’t know how long. Months or years.
Benjamin hardly slows his pace, but still he grins. ‘Reggie, when I tell you I almost cried with happiness …’ he replies, and the pair of them chuckle together.
There really are no two ways about it, Fia thinks, as she sneaks out the exit turnstiles on Reggie’s other side, before she can be seen: Benjamin Lowry is popular.
Of course, he always was popular. She remembers that from Camp Birchwood. Back then, his type of friendliness was often grating to her. It seemed overfamiliar – insincere in its reach and its force. Fia didn’t know the word performative at the time, but if she had, it would absolutely have been the one she’d have used. Setting aside the snarkiness he’d saved just for her, Benjamin Lowry had, with other people, always been given to what struck Fia as excessive affability.
She would have to admit, though, that she doesn’t get that impression from Benjamin now. In some perverse way, she actually wishes that she did. But, aside from anything else, the fact of the matter is that he appears to be pretty genial even towards people who can offer him no advantage whatsoever. He doesn’t do what she’s seen so many other summer associates do over the years: namely, dedicate themselves to the full-time brown-nosing of senior partners.
The whole thing just makes her think, as she heads out into Midtown, starts off at a brisk walk through the Park Avenue crowds: maybe Benjamin hassettled into himself a little since Camp Birchwood, dialled the bonhomie down a notch.
Or maybe he has always been exactly like this. Maybe he simply is now and has always been an American.
It took Fia a while – probably at least a year – to really adjust to the particular frequency of American life: the have a great day of it all. Eventually, though, she came to realize that a lot of what she instinctively considered phony was, in fact, not phony at all. And even when it was, it undeniably contributed, nonetheless, to a general sense of buoyancy; it added a warmth and positivity to the most ordinary of interactions, in a way that eventually proved somewhat catching. For as long as she lives, Fia never plans to shop for jeans anywhere else but the United States, such is the perkiness – the sheer determination and fortitude – of the sales associates in this country. If she could somehow take what she knows now and rewind all the way back to 2015, she wonders what she’d make of Benjamin.
Needless to say, it’s very disconcerting, this notion that the things she’d once felt sure of could now be up for debate. Absolutely everyone thinks they are a good judge of character, and Fia is no exception. But what, she wonders, if she’s not? What if she’s terrible at seeing people for who they really are? Or worse, what if she herself is the problem?
She thinks about all this as she circles Central Park with her headphones in, her heartbeat throbbing in her chest. Sometimes, she’s not sure whether running is very good for her at all, psychologically-speaking. Sometimes, it seems to dredge up as many issues as it resolves. She might be much better off simply binging reality TV or drinking herself into oblivion.
By the time she gets home, Annie’s in the kitchen, stirring a pot of some delicious-smelling thing on the hob.
‘Hey, d’you remember my friend George?’ Fia says, once they’ve done the general exchange about one another’s respective days, their weekend plans. And she knows absolutely that the fact she is bringing this up now – out of nowhere, when she never has before – all goes back to Benjamin Lowry. Evidently, his ability to knock her off her equilibrium doesn’t even directly require his presence any longer. It is extending, uninvited, into all sorts of other areas of her life.
‘Of course,’ Annie replies.
For the last year or so before George disappeared from Fia’s life, Fia was living here, in this apartment, with Annie and another girl named Brie. At that time, Annie actually spent most of her time inside her own bedroom – as, in fact, did Fia. It took Kavita’s arrival in Brie’s place – Kavita’s particular energy and disposition – to bring them together, make something of a trio out of three people.
However, that is all by the by. The point is that, at least sporadically, Annie’s path did occasionally cross with George’s in this very kitchen.
‘Did you think I was … I don’t know, controlling or intense or …’ Fia stops, tries to think of other negative attributes. ‘… dismissive or unkind or just … anything weird with her?’
Having examined her own conscience (over and over throughout the past two years, and then once more this evening for good measure), Fia doesn’t think she was any of those things. But she suddenly thinks it might be prudent to double-check.
‘No,’ Annie says, and her slightly perplexed chuckle is more comforting to Fia than any words could be.
‘And what about her with me?’ Fia continues, approaching it from the other angle – because this is the other thing that plagues her now: the thought that maybe, all along, there was some glaring red flag in George’s character, and she was simply blind to it.
‘No,’ Annie repeats, with a little shrug. ‘I liked her. She seemed nice.’
Fia just nods, tapping her fingernails a little against the granite countertop. In the circumstances, she isn’t sure if that feels good to hear or not.
‘Did something happen with you guys?’ Annie asks then. ‘I guess at a certain point I noticed I hadn’t seen her around much, but I figured you just drifted apart after she moved out to Brooklyn.’
Fia gives herself a little shake, as though to return her focus to the here and now. ‘Yeah,’ she murmurs. ‘I suppose we did.’
The two of them hadn’t just drifted apart, though – of that she is certain. Having now reached the age of 30 and having moved around a bit, Fia has drifted apart from plenty of people in her life – case in point: every single person she knew at Camp Birchwood, save for the one she married. She hasn’t heard a dicky bird from anyone else in that whole gang for years. These are people whom she now thinks of entirely without pain, without confusion, without any negative emotion whatsoever.
By contrast, with George, it was not a gentle, gradual sort of thing, a reality of life as natural as the changing of the seasons. It was like a severance – a break-up. Something, to use Annie’s language, did indeed happen. Fia has just never been able to work out what.