Chapter One

A Reinvented Life

 

I can hardly hear myself think once the train roars off, speeding me toward the center of the city. I figure the racket is a blessing and thus, I zone out with the turbulent sound of the chugging, grinding, screeching wheels beneath me. I am curiously comforted. Perhaps it's the gentle motion of the train car, the deep hum, and the vibration that rides inside my belly, warming it, that makes the trip inside this very ordinary railcar pleasant. The experience punctuates the beginning of my day-and the end, a sensuous redundancy that settles a host of anxious fears, which would otherwise rise up and clobber any composure I attempt to maintain. Everything in my life is so strangely new-from the wide-open fields of the Midwest to this grand city, with its hodgepodge of bungling architecture splashed across its cityscape. The language indigenous to this region, the smell of the streets, the lazy pace compared to the East Coast frenzy...I could go on with my observations, from things that matter to minute details that awaken me with surprise.

I love it all.

It's new; nothing like the world I left to come here, with its airs and mannerisms, which for me was so filled with pitfalls and booby-traps that I stumbled over my own feet with every choice I made.

I landed a job with Riordan & McCall, Designers, two months ago and swept into my new world on a magic carpet ride of excitement. Those days were a wildly wonderful whir of enticements; temptations and spine-tingling thrills that kept me dazed for nearly two weeks. I suppose it's a very good thing that my life has now settled down to a more reasonable pace.

My routine is set. I understand my job and do it well. I have a quaint but very functional apartment north of the city. I even have a few budding friendships and causal dinner dates that keep me from turning into a social outcast, as leery as I am of developing any close connections-just yet. All things considered, my ducks have lined up in perfect order and are moving me swimmingly into an easy, blissful sameness.

Not that I'm bored. Far from it. The job alone would keep me entertained without any further additions. And the city could keep my weekends occupied for months, shopping, sightseeing, dining in strange restaurants. Because of that fact, because the city will always be available to me, I often choose to stay home and relax on my days off curling up in my reading chair with some scintillating novel-so screams the vibrant book jacket in embossed gold lettering. After an excruciating beginning to adulthood, this is nirvana. I suppose all that I could ask for.

Though my past reeks with shame, I feel vindicated now, reborn. That secret terror may tug at me from time to time, in quiet twinges of guilt-a billboard, newscast, magazine ad suddenly ripping my gut for a few brief seconds with unpleasant reminders-but the worst of it washes over me as I remember how well I've done to put those awful two years behind me.

There's a man who rides my train with me everyday. I consider him another comforting, stabilizing feature of my life, even though I have no idea who he is. A businessman by the look of him. Tall, but not too tall, dark wavy hair, brown eyes, a slim build-nothing particularly remarkable, except his taste in reading. He consistently reads slim volumes of erotic fiction with provocative sounding names like Slut Toy, Bound Virgin, Twins In Chains... anonymous authors, racy covers and his stoic eyes reading line after line without a hint of any sexual stirrings in response to what must be intended to arouse. I imagine his insides furtively boiling over with lust-why else would he devour book after book, day after day? Why would this man be a comfort to me? Because he reminds me of me, with my secret other life. This stranger seems to keep himself well-contained between the covers of his graphic reading material, which makes me believe that I can contain myself as well, that my reinvented life will not crumble all around me with that other me seeping out, like blood oozing from an unhealed wound.

I realize that my stranger is just a fantasy. That I've made up a persona for him that probably doesn't exist at all. He could be a porn king, or one of those sleazy fellows who likes to hit on women, perhaps a pervert of the crudest sort, or maybe just an average guy with a dull wife and rowdy kids; one who finds no shame in his choice of entertainment for early morning and late afternoon train rides. I prefer, however, to think of him as a 'contained' man who, like me, has his life carefully circumscribed, thought out and neatly compartmentalized.

Thoughts of this strange companion in my railcar initially amused me, but since those first few weeks, since the brief titillation over his trashy novels wore off, I haven't thought about him much. We ride the same car together as a matter of habit and there is no other reason for me to spend more time contemplating who he is. I did see him walking through my neighborhood the other day, and presumably discovered where he lives-the basement level apartment in one of the many old brick apartment houses in our district. I live three blocks away, on the third floor of a similar building. Where he lives should hardly surprise me. But as similar as our lives might be at seven-thirty in the morning and five at night, we otherwise diverge into what is most likely very different lives.

I have been so busy with my new job, that while at work, I've hardly had time to notice the people around me, with the exception of those few I work with directly. There is Stephen Dunfey, with a wife and three children, head of the department and a first-class architect, Jeanette the department secretary, a part-timer, Joe, and Phil, a designer who has been with the firm three years-thirty, gay and always good for a laugh when tensions start to rise. His easy wit would save most any dicey moment from complete disaster. Phil appears to do nothing but mosey from one office to another collecting gossip; you'd wonder if he ever works at all. I thought he might work at night, but he's routinely gone every evening before the rest of us have turned out the lights and put on our coats. When I attended our first departmental meeting, Stephen, Jeanette, Joe and I were sitting around the conference table going over layouts when Phil popped in the door late, a broad grin on his face.

"Here it is!" he announced, as if everyone should stop what they were doing and pay attention. Of course, everyone did. He laid out an entire sketchbook of drawings, a dozen layouts, then stood back and smiled, quite self-satisfied.

I sat there stunned, my mouth agape, while the rest of the group took his smug entrance in stride. This was how Phil worked. I doubt even he could explain the process he uses to create his masterpieces of creative genius. Envious, I sulked a bit, with the attention in the room taken from my well thought out, but less than spectacular, design.

"Don't worry, kiddo," he said to me as we were walking out together. "You're just getting started and you're good. Otherwise Harry would never have hired you."

Harry is Harry McCall, owner, CEO and workaholic, who would appear to pluck his employees from a massive number of good applicants on hunches alone. He never conducts interviews, or even bothers, as far as I know, to review portfolios. He spotted me at a New York designer's conference, where we talked for five minutes about a painting on display. Apparently he liked what I said. He hired me the next day.

Not a word was mentioned about my own design work, my college training, or my noteworthy background. This last was a particular relief to me. I'm not talking about the dirty little secret background that no one here will ever learn about, if I can help it, but the Mid-Atlantic pedigree the Dickinson name normally inspires-that particular Dickinson family with two powerful brothers-my father the Anglican Bishop and my uncle the US Senator serving his second term. Harry McCall never put the two together, but, of course, why should he? I avoid that association wherever possible. And no Dickinson that I've ever known has taken my career path. We're typically a more 'in your face' sort of family with a love of politics and big institutions. Not that I don't love my family. I'm proud of them, and indebted to them for saving my skin when my life moved from one disaster to the next. I'm grateful that I am part of this distinguished family. But it does have its price, and I decided after my great mistake at nineteen, that I will no longer ride aboard their coattails, gaining favors because of my name.

Sounds smug, perhaps self-righteous, doesn't it? Well, it's not. I was nearly the cause of my family's ruin. I've given them enough trouble and will not be that troublesome black sheep again. I left them in their fancy East coast mansions, with their religious fervor and political causes, and will be happy here in Chicago, keeping my nose clean and to the grindstone. I'm sure they are happy for that, too.

Harry McCall has been a bit of a savior to me, as much as he is an eccentric in the design world. Every few days, he brings me into his office and we chat. But don't bring to mind the typical picture of a suave, sophisticated, worldly, suited executive behind a polished rosewood desk. That's not Harry. He's usually dressed in baggy pants, sweaters or even torn and stained T-shirts he wears for oil painting, which is nearly as lucrative a passion as his design agency. For a man of such distinct tastes and creativity, his physical presence is unimpressive-wild, curly gray hair, a sallow complexion, small but sometimes piercing pale gray eyes, a thin and gangling build. He's all creativity and inspiration. Right brain. Obvious when observing his work space: easels along the windowed wall of his high-rise office, mobiles dangling from the center with little cardboard cutouts of buildings he's working on and a paper-strewn desk shoved off to one side. He can't find his telephone. But then, he's not one for doing business on the phone. He's never touched a computer.

We talk ideas, concepts, color, shape, form, structure-whimsy. Whimsy, that's his word of the week through which he filters everything, and what our last impromptu chat was about.

"You have to be less bound by rules, Natalie. Expand, open, feel the vital energy...and whimsy, that's the little quirky stuff that will spontaneously appear in your work." He strut about the room speaking sweeping truths, while I stood gazing at him in awe. You have to stand in his office because there are no chairs. Just pillows and if you end up on the pillows-well, who knows what will happen? That's what I hear. I wonder if he plans to have sex with me?

"Be your own person, above all. Take chances."

He stared me down quizzically, as if I was supposed to say something, but I was speechless. He was prepared for that too. He strut right up to me, puts his hands on my shoulders, and looked down from his six-foot two frame to my five-foot six, saying in a fatherly way, "We can't let the world diminish who we are. It must only expand on it. Whatever befalls, we have to take it all in and own it...all the experience, all the drama, all the good, the dangerous, the horror, the mystery, the insight and the despair. You understand?"

Yes, I think I understood what he meant. He wasn't talking to me specifically, but making a general theoretical statement about life that he could have shared with anyone. For all I know, he calls all of his employees in and gives them the same lecture. Although in Harry McCall's unique fashion, he would shape the message to the listener and to his own mood at the time. Eccentric, yes, but lovely. He made me feel unique and less finite than my current limited appraisal of myself.

"I think you need a man in your life, Natalie," was the last point of order in our last meeting.

"Really?" I smiled kindly.

"Yes. Sex. It's the sex that's missing. Your work needs the raw sexuality of your youth. The fearlessness, the experimentation."