Too Simple a Word
Chapter 2: Harmlessness and a Pirate's Feathered Hat
November, 2006. On the eve of Joey's return for Thanksgiving, Rachel finds herself on the edge of the forbidden. She must decide whether to lengthen her stolen moment, or return to her half-life.
Note: Please be aware of dates attached to chapters; the prologue takes place much later than the rest of the chapters.
"People know what they do, they know why the do it, but what they don't know is what what they do does." M. Foucault
"What a ship is, what the Black Pearl really is … is freedom." Captain Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean
"Yes, Joey," says Chandler, finally taking his gaze off of Rachel just long enough to dip his own finger in the whipped cream topping his hot chocolate. Sticking it in his mouth, he glances back up at her, her mouth opening wordlessly, her finger still hovering in mid-air. "It's one of the perks of being a Hollywood up-and-comer, I guess—you get to demand where you spend your time." He sighs. "Rach, it's not just Thanksgiving. He's thinking of moving back to New York. Indefinitely."
"In- Indefinitely? Indefinitely." Her voice feels distant, hopeful.
"Yes, indefinitely. He's thinking about it," he says firmly, like he can tell Rachel is as of yet unbelieving. She stares at the space just to the left of Chandler's right hand, at curve of his spoon lying on the table. It makes crisp, crescent-shaped shadow on the wood beneath it; she finds she cannot yet look him in the eye. Almost absentmindedly, she finally sticks her finger in her mouth and sucks on it, letting the sweetness of the cream fill her mouth. "Listen, Rach, he didn't want me to tell anybody. He sort of wanted it to be a surprise."
"A surprise?" she blurts out, and Chandler's mouth slides into an ironic smile.
"You can't expect him to hate secrets forever, can you?" he says, chuckling, and leans forward to prop his elbows on the edge of the table. He surveys Rachel over folded hands. "Or maybe he just hates other people's secrets and not his own."
Rachel blinks. Was he referring to her, or to himself? She bends to take a sip of hot chocolate, pressing her lips against the rim of the cup to blow across its surface, biding her time.
"Thanks for telling me," she says, finally looking into Chandler's eyes and to her surprise reading sorrow there, for the moment unmasked. It is then that it hits her that this, too, is Chandler. For the moment, it is his sorrow that makes him real.
"I couldn't not tell you, Rach. You—you took his leaving worse than anyone."
"Worse than you?" she asks, before she is able to stop herself. He pauses and shrugs, looking down, and runs his finger along the rim of his near-empty soup bowl.
"Maybe. But maybe not," he says quietly, and again Rachel has the distinct impression that his comment is more personal than meant purely for her comfort. "It was the final straw," he says after a moment. "It was the final change in a string of changes that happened that year."
"That year," Rachel says, watching the progress of his finger running along the edge of his bowl. She reaches out and catches his wrist, stilling him. She squeezes it and he looks up. "Hey, I can't believe he's really coming." She is smiling.
"Do you want to come with me to JFK?" he asks, and Rachel draws her hand away, settling back into her chair, and gives a slight sigh.
"I can't. Ross has a late meeting tonight and I'll have to be home with Emma."
"Can't Molly stay later? What about Phoebe, can't she stay over?" he says, and watches as Rachel weighs this carefully, a slight frown on her face. "She and Mike are talking about having a baby, you know. It could be practice." He rolls his eyes; "practice" is something Monica would do, something Ross would do, not Phoebe. Phoebe would take the plunge. She would take Emma because she likes Emma, not for something as mundane and conventional as practice.
"No. I—I can't, Chandler," she says, and for a split second she thinks she may start to cry again. Instead, she simply repeats, "I just can't. Not with . . . well, not with things the way they are."
"But you're the only one," he says. "You're the only one that hasn't seen him. Mon and me, Phoebe and Mike … Christ, even Ross with his UCLA paleontology lecture, we've all seen him in LA. God, I wish I could have seen Joey's face when Ross invited him to that lecture." Chandler gives a short bark of laughter. "But Rach, he's always wanted you to visit—"
"It's not that I didn't want to, Chandler! It's not that I don't want to go to JFK." she says, her temper flaring so suddenly that it frightens her into silence. A woman at the table beside them is startled into slopping coffee down her front. After a moment, Rachel continues, forcing her voice into calm. "Listen, Mon has her babies and her beloved chef work, Ross has the little family he's dreamed of since the ninth grade, Phoebe's always had her music and now has Mike to boot. . . . You're the only one, the only one, Chandler, who lost something. I don't want to yell at you for that."
"We all lost Joey, Rach."
"Yes, we all lost somebody, but only you and I lost something. Don't pretend we're as happy as the others. I know you're not," she says, and adds, "You live in the 'burbs, Chandler. You grew up in the 'burbs—you have a general distain for the 'burbs." Chandler straightens, reddening; she can tell he is aware for the first time that she can see right through him and his grave dislike of Westchester. She knows—somehow the lawns are too emerald green, the clean, two- and three-storied houses too solidly there and too beige, too white, too light blue, the only color variances on their block … the neighbors are too perky (or perhaps too much like his mother) than he can sometimes take, the driveways too jammed with SUVs and strollers equipped with handle grips and shocks to make jogging easier.
She imagines that it is on the evening train home that this usually hits him, that he has left the city and longs only for return, for the pulsing, beating life of it. He'll wish for it to take hold of him mercilessly, to shake him and stir him and pull his heart out. He'll wish to wake up and not know exactly what he'll see waiting for him on the corner of 6th and West 4th as he waits for the bus uptown… to not know if the sax player that perpetually resides there will play "Blue Skies" or "Mrs. Otis Regrets," or if he will skip them entirely and play something unrecognizable, something created right there on the corner, his felt hat resting on top of his saxophone case, hoping you, too, will recognize the agility of his fingers as brilliance. There are days, thinks Rachel, when he probably lives for the seven blocks he has to walk between Grand Central and his office building, navigating the determined strut virtually all New Yorkers learn to adopt on workday mornings. She can see it in the reddening of his face, hear it in the words he does not say. It will be then that he feels both robbed and scandalously fortunate, to have both Monica and the twins as well as a taste of his old life in the city, until he realizes that he can not simultaneously have both.
"I love Erica and Jack," says Chandler fiercely, returning to himself. "I love Monica."
"And I love Emma and Ross." Rachel counters. It's true; she thinks of them constantly. She can see them perfectly in her mind's eye, Ross's dark eyelashes resting heavy against his cheek in sleep, the exact curl of Emma's hair when she bounces out the door in the morning for preschool. "But something changed when Joey left."
Chandler smiles slightly, uncharacteristically devoid of a quip. "Everything changed when Joey left," he says, and Rachel knows he feels it too. She knows he misses the bursting, billowing joy Joey's presence in the group had always afforded. She knows he misses him, but like her, he also misses the idea of him, of the life they all shared before they scattered. She knows he misses the six of them in Central Perk, talking or not talking, laughing or not laughing, but always reveling in the squashy armchairs, in the scents of coffee and cinnamon muffins, in the worn and chipped brick of the walls of this little nook of the city … always reveling in the comfort of the presence of the other five. She knows this without a breath of doubt, just as sure as she knows that she will not go to the airport, that she will wait for Ross to come home, that she and Emma will go through the routine of dinner, of brushing teeth, of bedtime story.
She knows she will be everything Emma and Ross want her to be. She will not chirp the news of Joey's return with giddy abandon as she longs to do, but state it plainly, with measured excitement. And she knows Chandler will do the same. He will return on the evening train. He will have dinner with his family and laugh as Monica tells him what cute thing Erica did that day. For this reason they are singular, unique. They have agreed to be harmless.
--page break--
Later that night, Rachel plays out the role she imagined at lunch with Chandler.
"And then," says Emma emphatically, "Molly found branches for the arms and we stuck them in and it looked like a real snowman."
She is glowing, and bright pink from her bath, her dark hair freshly brushed and starting to curl various unpredictable ways at the ends. He skin is still hot from the bathwater when Rachel frees her from her towel and exchanges it for her pajamas. Emma looks down.
"Which ones are these?"
"They're your fairy jammies, honey," says Rachel, and Emma pulls a face ripe with distaste.
"May I please have my Harry Potter ones instead?" she asks, and Rachel can't help but wonder at her politeness. A three-year-old with etiquette; this must be Ross' doing. Rachel goes to the dresser and pulls out the requested pajamas as Emma launches again into her story. "And then," she says, brushing a piece of hair out of her face with a practiced air of impatience, "we found rocks for the eyes and Molly had a carrot for the nose, and it looked even more like a real snowman! But then we were getting too cold and so we came home for hot chocolate." She sighs. "Can I go back to the park tomorrow? Pleeeeeease!" She clasps her hands together for added effect, and Rachel laughs.
She can picture Emma perfectly in Washington Square Park, one of the many patches of green that pepper Manhattan, the stubby trees heaped with snow and the fountain's frozen water starting to crack, children's shrieks bursting in the air and adults' laughter following. She imagines Emma, her mittens caked with snow, her nose red and shining, reaching up to stick the carrot where the nose should be. It is off-center, childlike. It is precious, and Molly, sensing this, does not correct it, but applauds and lets her laugh flow skyward. Emma, emboldened, does the same.
"No, silly. Tomorrow you have preschool. And you know what? You'll get to see Aunt Monica and Uncle Chandler the day after that, on Thanksgiving, and they have an even better place to make a snowman" she says. Emma lights up, her eyes positively popping, and Rachel has the sudden urge to grab the little girl sitting cross-legged on the bed in front of her and tickle her until she cries from her laughter. She longs to transport her, to make her breathless, to squeeze her and never let go. Here she is, her Emma, her angel of a daughter, the one she loves with singular ferociousness. Here are her big brown eyes under their lashes and here are her Harry Potter pajamas. Rachel hesitates, then reaches out and pinches her nose softly. "But you know what you can do?"
"What?" Emma giggles from the pinch.
"You can help me make brownies for Daddy before he comes home. Do you think you can help me make brownies?"
The girl is momentarily confused; over the years, Rachel has made a point of avoiding the kitchen at all costs. "Why are you making brownies for Daddy?"
"Because, honey," she says with perfect motherly indulgence, "that's what mommies do. They make brownies for Daddy."
"Oh."
"And," adds Rachel, "it's the perfect excuse for eating brownie batter off a spoon. You want to do that?"
"Yes!" she exclaims, delighted, her confusion forgotten, and positively bounces off the bed. Rachel finds that the moment has passed; her daughter is, in fact, just a little girl who wants to lick chocolate off a spoon.
She follows her daughter into the kitchen, pondering what she had just said. Because that's what mommies do. They make brownies for Daddy. She hadn't meant to say it, really. It was a slip of the tongue. But it must be true, mustn't it? If she could settle on a reason why she married Ross, at this moment, that would be it. To make him brownies. The thought leaves her short of breath; she really is harmless. She's the type of woman gives her daughter a bath, who makes brownies for her husband.
--page break--
Rachel sighs, a short, impatient sort of sigh that catches slightly at the back of the throat. It is a sigh that feigns more impatience than she actually feels. She stands beside the kitchen sink, baking paraphernalia spread out before her as if she is holding court. Emma stands beside her on a stool, the top of her dark head reaching Rachel's elbow, her nose just level with the countertop.
"What, Mommy?" she asks, eyebrows knitted.
Rachel taps the box she holds in her hand. It is brownie mix, the front of which shows thick, fluffy, steaming brownies, the words "Family Style" curl lavishly around them in a generous shade of purple. Rachel lets her eye flick over the recipe one more time. Four eggs, ¼ cup vegetable oil, and the brownie mix.
"It calls for four eggs. Do you remember how many four is, Emma?"
There is a half-moment of silence, and then Emma raises four fingers up in front of her face. Rachel smiles and pokes her in the stomach. "You're a smartie," she says, and Emma grins, wiggling her fingers. "Ok, so we need four eggs, but look how many we have." She holds the carton of eggs down to Emma's level, and Emma peers at them seriously.
"Three!" she exclaims, and looks up a Rachel for approval. Rachel nods. "But Mommy," Emma says, suddenly worried, "we need four. How can we make Daddy brownies if we only have three eggs?" She looks almost terrified that the brownies will be a failure.
Rachel can't help but think how successful she is, this little girl standing beside her in her Harry Potter pajamas who knows that they don't have enough eggs. How fortunate, how blessed to be exactly who she is, to look and to know without question that three eggs simply will not do. Rachel herself feels that she is a failure; she knows that now. She has failed just as Emma has prospered. Her certainty is never so steady, so unquestioning.
"We'll just have to buy more eggs, that's all," says Rachel.
She does not mind leaving the apartment and running to buy eggs at the Korean grocer down the street. In fact, she's practically humming to herself as she settles Emma on the couch with pillows and a mug of warm milk, the phone at her elbow in case Rachel needs to come running home before eggs can be bought, before the potential brownie disaster can be rectified. She practically itching to stray away down the block. She's already remembering the happenings of the day as if she were alone, striding purposefully down Christopher Street in the snow.
She goes. She remembers. She is surprised to find herself blushing.
Because after all that—after having gone to her meeting with Mr. Zelner and making competent and insightful input, after having completed her day at work with minimal annoyance at Sybil, after having given Emma her bath, after having read a recipe off the back of a brownie box—after all that, here she is, blushing on a snow-covered city street like a schoolgirl. Here she is, pink with pleasure at the memory of lunch. With Chandler. Of all people.
Because she won't, and perhaps can't, fool herself. She realizes it now. It wasn't because she is harmless that she's making Ross brownies; it is because she is attempting to regain her harmlessness. Yes, yes, that must be it. Chandler is the reason she's making Ross "Family Style" brownies. Chandler is the reason she has left Emma alone in front of the Discovery Channel watching some show about frogs (or was it toads?) while she trudges through the freshly fallen snow to the Korean grocer at the end of Christopher Street. Her weekend go-to place for freshly squeezed orange juice has, she realizes as a taxi arcs slowly around her, wary of slipperiness, suddenly become the saving grace of her marriage. Brownies. Not that, she thinks, what happened was all that earth-shattering. No, not at all, at least not on the surface. It was exhilarating, yes, and perhaps tainted with tinge of—who is she to deny it—desire, but surely not earth-shattering enough to merit a full-fledged, triple layered, double fudge, twice-iced cake. Brownies will do. And yet still here she is blushing at the memory.
It was after lunch, after the news to end all news had been delivered, and Rachel could feel the shift. Joey was coming home. Joey, the television up-and-comer. Joey, the lost friend who now seemed to matter more than all the others. Joey, the angel who would defend her with blazing sword and fiery wings. And who was she, exactly? What had she made for herself in his absence? She was a wife, of course, and a mother, too, who had a solid job . . . But perhaps she was asking too much of herself . . . a touch of brilliance, a touch of success beyond the ordinary was undoubtedly too much to ask. A husband and daughter were enough. Of course they were. Who needs what she could have chosen—who needs Paris, who needs to be wildly successful, who needs the spectacular plunge into the unknown? Who needs—does she dare say it—freedom? That freedom was Joey's. He was the one who plunged, the one who leaped into his future while she took baby steps into hers.
Ah yes, freedom, she thinks, and is again pulled back to the events of the après-mangez. She remembers it perfectly, and somehow she knows she will keep this tiny kernel of a memory locked safe inside forever, only to unlock it at will in times both brighter and darker than today. She knows he will, too.
They had finished lunch, and they had exited with as much dignity they could muster given the heavy words that had flown between them. Chandler stops to pester her one more time about Joey.
"Ok, this is my last attempt. Come to the airport."
"We've been through this."
"Ok, how 'bout this. Please come?"
"No."
"Pretty please? With sugar on top?"
"I can't."
"You won't," he corrects her. "You know, under all that good girl veneer, I've always thought you had a wee bit of a rebel in you. I bet if I were to rip that coat off you, you'd still have some sort of pirate regalia on underneath. Under that pressed collared shirt of yours," he gives a smirk, and gestures to his own nearly identical shirt, "top sails, feathered hat and an eye patch would all come spilling out."
He chuckles, but Rachel looks at him, eyes riveted, staring wide-eyed. She has stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Something about what has passed between them has caused her to stand stock still while the snow flies at odd angles around them. And quite suddenly, there it is. Rachel, pirate-woman. "So do it," she says, voice a rough whisper.
"Do what?" He's suddenly serious.
"Rip," she states, eyes still boring into him, daring, challenging.
"I'm not going to rip your . . . W-we're on the Upper East Side . . ." His voice trails away; whether stolen from the wind or not it is hard to tell.
She gives her head a tilt, nonchalant. Her eyes are clear. "Pirate," she says, and shrugs, a slyer smile than usual playing on her lips.
A moment passes in which neither one of them do anything. Then, there is suddenly a hand on the rise of her hip, and another running along the buttons of her coat. Rachel's knees almost buckle but she looks straight ahead, and the eyes in front of her are at once crazed, at once disbelieving, never leaving her own eyes. Snow swirls around them, blinding them from the rest of the world. It is all white meaningless, snow-laden fog, and echoes of other people's existence. Their breath rises in between them, mingling. There is a rush of cold air against her stomach, at once followed by a bare hand, and she sucks in a breath at both sensations. She closes her eyes, and suddenly, without warning, she feels she is no longer on a New York City sidewalk just days before Thanksgiving, but rather somewhere else altogether. The deck of a ship seems to sway creakily underfoot, and she can almost smell a deliciously sharp, salty, weathered something that smells like the sea. The leather straps of the purse she clutches in her hand are no longer straps of a purse, but the wooden helm of a ship, worn and smooth from touch and the spray of the sea. Faintly, beyond the snowflakes swirling around her, she can hear the snap of sails and the rubber-band rasp of ropes growing taunt. She feels it, briefly, here on the deck of a ship, here on a corner on the Upper East Side. She feels freedom.
She throws her head slightly back, breathing in deeply. And then there's another hand, this one slithering around her side to her back, pressing, steadying her as she sways slightly on her imagined sea, and now the wind cannot reach the skin along her midriff. She steadies, the hand on her relaxes, and she opens her eyes. Chandler is still standing before her, his hands disappearing inside her coat, his eyes a clear, Caribbean blue. She can feel his heat.
"Did you find top sails?" she asks, again swaying slightly, though she doesn't quite know if it's because of her imagined sea or the hands that have slithered around her back and are now trying not to play with the shirt that is tucked into the band of her slacks.
"Yes," he says, blinking at this Rachel-turned-pirate. "And your feather hat is enormous, really."
"I'm still not coming to the airport."
"Hey, you're the pirate. Who am I to argue?"
And she knows now, pulling the door to the Korean grocer open as a bell tinkles to announce her entrance, that she's proved something to him, to herself. After all these years, she still has the longing to be free, and this, if nothing else, is something.
And so she kicks the snow off her boots and buys her brownie mix.
--page break--
It is nearly an hour later. Emma is in bed, snuggled deep under the covers and muttering about snowmen with carrot noses and Thanksgiving. The apartment is nearly silent, and the rich, homey smell of freshly baked brownies fills every nook and every corner. As for the brownies themselves, they are cut into squares and piled (Rachel would like to think artistically) into a shallow, napkin-lined basket that would make even Monica smile indulgently. The baking dish has been washed and dried, the crumbs on the counter have been wiped away. Rachel realizes she has done everything perfectly. More perfectly, in fact, than she had expected. And for this, she feels a failure. Her inner pirate is cringing. She feels a failure for making her husband brownies, for successfully putting Emma to bed without the usual whining. She feels a failure for secretly enjoying these motherly and wifely duties, for reveling in their simplicity, and for doing them well. As well as someone like Monica, with all the world's motherly instincts and longings, would have done.
Outside, snow continues to fall, sliding past the windows in tiny flakes that the wind stirs into flurries. A branch taps against the window pane, the only sound Rachel can hear over the ticking of the oven clock and her daughter's quiet mutterings.
There is the sound of a key being inserted into a lock, and a click. The door swings open to reveal a tired Ross.
"Hey, sweetie," he says, setting his briefcase down by the door and crossing to give Rachel a kiss on the lips. His coat emanates the cold brought in from outside, his hat is dusted with snowflakes, but his mouth, as always, is warm and smooth.
"How was your meeting? It sure ran late."
"Way too late," he agrees, shrugging off his coat and hat, placing them in the correct places in the closet. Rachel has the urge to tell him to leave them scattered haphazardly on the couch, so at least one thing in this apartment would be blissfully out of order.
Instead, she says, "Emma and I made some brownies. Want one?"
"Oh, did you?" he says, without a trace of surprise. It's as if he seems to know they were due to him. "Sure, I'll take one." Rachel is overly aware of her hand reaching for the basket, offering him a brownie. He takes one, popping it into his mouth, chewing with relish. "Oh my God, these are fantastic." He takes another, and gives Rachel's hip an affectionate squeeze. She can't help but think that Chandler's squeeze in the exact same place was altogether different. Ross finishes the brownie. This is how it should be, she thinks. This is the set-up. Ross coming home to brownies, to his wife and daughter. She wants to cry, to run.
"Delicious." He winks. "Ok, I'm gonna take a shower. I'm chilled to the bone from walking home in that snow."
She hears herself say, "Alright. Yeah, it's freezing out there today. You know, you should come by Ralph Lauren, we've got really great coats in this season."
"Oh, perfect. Maybe I'll drop by tomorrow before we hit the restaurant?"
Oh right, the restaurant. "Good. Now go get in that shower. You're still shivering."
He ambles down the hall, leaving Rachel to listen to the tapping of the branch against the window. And suddenly, it's not at all enough. Not nearly enough to have made the brownies and to regret their perfection. She can hear the shower turn on.
Without thinking properly, she has pulled her own coat out of the orderly closet, found her own hat and gloves, pulled on her own boots. Without thinking, she is at the door of the apartment, she is tugging it shut behind her. And then, breathing shallowly, her cheeks tinged a deep rose, she is flying down the stairwell with indecent speed, as if she will suffocate if she is in the same room as the brownies for another second. Her feet hit the pavement and she is still running, a fantastic figure, her hair whipping behind her, one moment lit by a streetlamp, the other obscured in darkness. The cold rushes at her, pierces her, carries her down the sidewalk as streetlamps cast their lemon light into shadows grey with snow. She is desperate for this, the freedom and obscurity of the street. For this she loves helplessly the snow, the streetlamps, the way this street ends and another begins. She loves the piercing cold.
She slows after a number of blocks, her breathing labored. Her hair whips around her face and snowflakes settling themselves in the flyaway strands. Several blocks over, her apartment window is lit from within, spilling yellow light onto a tree branch tapping against the window. She will not be gone long, she thinks, catching her breath. Ross will not have to know. He will not have to know she made the brownies because of Joey's return, because of Chandler, because of a feathered pirate hat … because she both is and is not the wife she should be. He will not have to know she escaped into lemon streetlamps and grey snow shadows.
He will not know she had needed to escape.
She turns, she walks on. Again she can feel a boat sway creakily underfoot and the wooden smoothness of a ship's helm under her hand.
Note: The Rachel-as-pirate scheme, incidentally, was the driving image for this entire story. I thought it'd make for an interesting and truthful alter ego of sorts. And her line "pirate" in response to Chandler's trailing off is stolen (or commandeered, if you will) directly from Johnny Depp's performance in Pirates of the Caribbean. Her notion of equating freedom with a ship is also taken from his character. Must give credit where credit is due.
Please leave a review! Huge, enormous thanks for reading, by the way. Epilogue will be up shortly. I swear it on pain of death.