The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan

Author:Kelly Corrigan
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Hyperion
Published: 2008-01-07T16:00:00+00:00

I didn’t go back east for a while after that. The Kaplan deal never materialized, and although I was out of debt, I had very little coming in. Plus, even though I was making progress in therapy, I was still uneasy about flying and a little superstitious about New York in particular, it being the location of my first panic attack. But my dad was retiring, after almost fifty years of selling ad space, and what had started as a nice office party had grown into a command performance. GT called to tell me that the event had been moved from a large boardroom to the formal dining room they reserved for first ladies and princesses. All the Corrigans were going, and, GT said, if I could get there, we could make it a surprise and wouldn’t that be great? I had been to Greenie’s New York office many times, I told myself. It was a safe place. I ran through our usual routine in my mind.

I’d sleep over at Wooded Lane. Around quarter to six, the alarm would go off, and Greenie would appear in my doorway in his blue pinstriped pajamas.

“Hello, World,” he’d say with a smile.

“Yup, I’m up,” I’d say, lifting myself up on one elbow.

“Don’t forget to turn off the electric blanket.”

“Yup.”

My dad cut things close, no time for breakfast, only coffee. I’d ride to the train station with wet hair, putting on mascara at stoplights.

“Lovey, is that Great Lash?” my dad would ask, wanting to know if his customers at Maybelline were cutting it with my generation.

“Dad, Great Lash is for eighth graders. This is L’Oréal.”

“The Frenchies, huh? They’re good guys, the L’Oréal gang.” As soon as we’d pull into the North Philly Amtrak station, a rundown place where my dad’s car had been repeatedly vandalized, he’d say, “Run over there and tell them to hold the train for the Green Man,” because who wouldn’t hold a train for the Green Man?

Once on the train, there’d be at least five people to say hello to.

“Ruth, this is my daughter, Kelly,” my dad would say. Ruth must have been a very serious woman not to have elicited a nickname from my dad, not even Ruthie.

“Good morning, Kelly. I’ve certainly heard a lot about you.”

Then we’d move down the aisle and talk to Ted (“Ted-O”), and Jimmy (“Jimbo”), and a guy my dad just called Elvis, for reasons that were never made clear to me. Each one of them would reinforce Ruth’s claim that I was the subject of much conversation.

“Well, you’re just as beautiful as your dad said you were.”

“Right. You’re the California girl!”

“Ah! Kelly! The world traveler! I know all about your adventures ‘Down Under’!”

At the office, it’d be more of the same, starting with Mick (“Irish”), the building security guy, who loved telling me about how my dad once forgot an umbrella, so he borrowed Mick’s shabby raincoat for a big sales call. Then we’d go straight to the second floor, to the publisher’s office, where my dad would chat up Lorraine, the secretary with the best work space in the building.

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