Belonging Read Free Page A

go.” Taking up his briefcase, he gave the office a quick last look.
    They kissed quickly, solemnly.
    “I’ll see you in a month,” Carter told her. Then he left.
    Joanna stood in her darkening office without moving for a while, then crossed behind her desk to sink into the familiar confines of her desk chair. It was growing late. Time for an evening meal, she supposed, but she had no food at her apartment, she never did, and really she wasn’t very hungry, although a void was opening up within her that felt very much like hunger.
    She fancied she could actually feel the silence of the offices in the building tonight. If she wanted, she could summon up the presence of any number of colleagues, even Carter, by slipping on an unedited working video- or audiocassette. But she needn’t indulge herself now; she’d have all the time in the world to be maudlin as the month progressed.
    Behind her, outside her window, the city blossomed into night like a time-lapse photograph of a marvelous glittering electronic rose. She was encapsulated from the street sounds by the hushed humming of the building’s air-conditioning system. If she began to feel too lonely, she could call a friend, or she could simply remain here, where she felt most at home. She could sleep on the sofa, where she and Carter had made love, where she and Jake and Carter had earlier watched the Tennessee senator’s show.
    She would be all right. She was fine. This imposed solitude could actually be good for her, she decided. It had been a long time since she had had the time to sit peacefully, alone. Kicking off her pumps, she put her feet up on a fat pile of folders on her desk, leaned back into the padded leather chair, and considered her life.

Two
    All in all, she was glad to be where she was, a successful career woman, a “media personality” at the age of thirty-eight, with her own New York apartment and a substantial bank account. A few good friends. A rich, rewarding life. She’d never married, but then she’d never expected to. Because her parents had divorced, had never found “true love,” she’d calmly, if ruefully, assumed she wouldn’t, either. It had been the most wonderful surprise of her life, the miracle of adulthood, a completely unexpected bolt from out of the blue, that she loved her work, that she and her work fit so well together it had become a sort of marriage for her. Her deepest personal satisfaction, her sense of identity, even the most enduring visceral pleasures and deep abiding joys, came from planning and producing her television show.
    It was an odd talent, she supposed, that she could immediately, instinctively, detect the core and strengths of other people’s homes when she had grown up without a home of her own. When she was younger, she had envied others their memories of home: a split-level ranch house or a backyard with a swing set or a bedroom filigreed by sunlight through a maple tree’s leaves or a kitchen table or the worn corner of a favorite chair. She hadn’t had any of that, not her own room with stuffed animals and curtains matching the bedspread, or a cat or a dog or a hamster, or even an apartment steeped with familiar, welcoming smells.
    She was the only child of Erica and Vincent Jones, a handsome, charming, ill-matched, and finally irresponsible couple. When adorable Erica was a young woman at Vanderbilt, everyone told her she was gorgeous enough to work as a model; after she’d heard that enough and found herself bored with her studies, she moved to New York, visited the agencies, and actually worked on the runways in fashion shows for three months. During that time, at a nightclub, she met Vincent, who was just finishing his residency in plastic surgery. They fell in love, married, had Joanna, moved to Palm Beach, had affairs, got divorced.
    Joanna’s father quickly became a popular, socially visible plastic surgeon, with offices in Palm Beach and New York. Her mother smoothly evolved into a