Mary was hired at Slater, a big law firm right in the middle of Times Square. Its real name was Slater, McKinsey, Brown, and Baggot, but no one ever got past the Slater. She was hired along with nine other brand-new eager lawyers, and al of them were taken out on a boat cruise, where they were served piña coladas and reminded that they were incredibly lucky, that this was the job of a lifetime, that they better live up to their promise, and that they must pass the bar.
She spent the summer studying for the bar, holed up in her apartment drinking Red Bul and eating bananas, because she’d heard that they were good for concentration. Her friends sometimes dropped in to check on her, and while she knew they were being nice, she wished they would just ignore her until it was over. “It’s not normal how long you can stay in one place,” Isabel a told her one night. She’d stopped by and found Mary sitting at her desk, where she admitted she’d been since that morning. “I think you should at least get out of the apartment once a day. Maybe we should go for a walk?”
But Mary refused. She didn’t have time to leave her apartment. She went to the store once a week for supplies, jumped rope for exercise, and treated herself by leaning out her window and smoking out into the darkness. “Just until I finish the bar,” she would sometimes say out loud, and then stub out her cigarette with purpose and force, so that it bent in half, as if to say, See, cigarette, I won’t need you for long.
After she took the test, Mary thought she would feel relief. But al the weeks of studying had taken their tol and al Mary felt was strange. She could feel al the caffeine she’d drunk stil throbbing through her system, and her hand seemed unfamiliar now that it was no longer holding a pencil al the time. Sometimes Mary was sure she could stil feel the pencil in her hand, the way she imagined people with missing limbs would feel.
It was because of al of this that Mary decided that she would not throw away her half-finished pack of cigarettes right after the bar, as she had original y planned. She would finish this pack she had, and then she would quit when she started at the firm. No sense in making too many changes at once.
But when Mary started at Slater, she found she needed her cigarettes more than ever. Al of the other new lawyers, who she’d imagined would be her friends, were competitive and nasty. Some of them were secretive about their desire to be the best. Others, like Barbara Linder, fol owed Mary around, asking her what she was working on, how many hours she had logged that week, and what the partners had said to her.
Slater had a tradition of announcing congratulations to the new lawyers who passed the bar over the loudspeaker, and then having a cocktail reception. For weeks, Mary wondered what it would be like if she didn’t hear her name, if she was the one person of the group to fail. Until she heard the results of her test, there was no way she could stop smoking. And then when she did find out that she’d passed, the relief was so
immediate and overwhelming that she made a weird noise and got tears in her eyes. Also, she wet herself just a little bit and so she let herself have a cigarette. If you pee in your pants, she thought, you deserve at least that.
Mary was at the office until at least nine every night, and that was if she was lucky. She was exhausted and sad to go to sleep at night because she knew it would mean the whole thing would start al over again soon. Each morning, as she walked from the subway to her building, she thought, “If I get hit by a car today, I won’t have to go to work.” She didn’t want to get seriously hurt, of course. She just wanted a minor bump that would send her to the hospital for a week or two, where she could watch TV and eat Jel -O.
No one had told her it would feel like this. She’d gotten so much advice about her first year at a law firm, but no one had ever said, “You wil be constantly afraid.” And that’s what she was. She was afraid that someone would come to her with work to do, and she was afraid that no one would come to her with work to do. She was scared that she was missing something in her research. She went over each assignment she was given, and then she was terrified that they would al think she was slow. Whenever someone said “case law” or “document review,” her first instinct was to hide underneath her desk.
Sometimes, just as she was finishing up one project, feeling like she’d accomplished one thing, someone would come to her office to give her a new task. She was sure she was failing.
At night, Mary would take breaks and leave her office to go to the roof for a cigarette. It was wrong, she knew, but she couldn’t help it. She only smoked at night. During the day, there were too many people around and she didn’t want them to think that she was actual y a smoker. She looked forward al day to standing outside and lighting her cigarette. She loved those five minutes of quiet, standing and blowing smoke. She breathed in and out, and told herself that smoking, for her, was a little bit like meditation. It was keeping her sane.
There was a lot to worry about those first few months, but one of the biggest things was this: Mary was afraid that she was getting fat. Each night that she ate dinner at the office, she felt her ass getting bigger. When it came time to order, she would look through the menus in disbelief that she was staying for dinner again. Sometimes, in a fit, she would order lobster or two different entrées. “They want me to stay, they can pay for it,” she would think as she clicked in her order on her computer. Other times she’d order from the diner, cheeseburgers and fries, and a milkshake for good measure. After these giant meals, she would go up to the roof and smoke. Breathe in and out, she would repeat. Breathe in and out.
In the bathroom, she examined her butt, turning to the side and running her hands over it, trying to measure how much bigger it was than the day before. She’d seen her cousin Col een gain fifty pounds during her first year at a law firm. Col een went from normal to almost obese in a matter of months, and she grabbed the weight and held on to it. “It’s worse than having a baby,” she’d said last Thanksgiving. “It’s just part of the job,” she’d told Mary. And then she’d eaten two pieces of pecan pie.
Mary had sworn that it wouldn’t happen to her, but she hadn’t known it would be so hard. She always wanted to leave the office and she always wanted to stay. She wanted al of the partners to like her, to praise her. She lived for one of them to say, “Nice job” or “Thanks for the help.” It didn’t come often, but when it did, it felt like getting an A. Or at least a B. And there was nothing that Mary loved more than getting good grades. Maybe that made her pitiful, but she couldn’t help it. And so she stayed, and she sat in her chair for fifteen hours at a time, eating Chinese food, popping dumplings into her mouth, slurping up sesame noodles, and hoping for someone to notice her work. And then she would go home and look at herself in the ful -length mirror, studying the bulge that was threatening to explode, wondering how long it would be before she erupted into a truly giant person.
Each time she bought a pack of cigarettes, she said, “Last pack,” as she unwrapped the plastic at the top. She was basical y done smoking, she told herself. It was real y just a formality until she was an official nonsmoker. And so when Isabel a came over to her apartment, sniffed the air, and said, “Were you smoking in here?” Mary said, “No, I quit.”
She knew she’d gone too far. Once she started lying about it, there was no going back. “I don’t care if you smoke,” Isabel a said. She gave Mary a strange look. “I was just asking.” But stil , Mary denied it. She hid her cigarettes in her bedside table, tucked in the back of the drawer, wrapped in an old bandanna. Each time after she smoked, she wrapped up the pack of cigarettes with the lighter, folding them in the cloth, and careful y placing them back where nobody could find them.