Cancellation

My 11:30 a.m. meeting was cancelled today, giving me a free hour in a crowded day.

I’m an events planner at a communications and marketing agency, and my schedule is always tight. I was promoted two years ago, and now there are several young women working beneath me. They need my supervision and guidance, particularly one of them - she’s not the newest, but she sometimes seems overwhelmed by small tasks that should be automatic by now, after six months of work.

I still run events myself, of course; my first meeting of the day was with a mental health agency that’s contracting with us to facilitate their annual conference. This is the first time we’ve worked with them, and if we do a great job, they might commit to using us for the event every year indefinitely.

For the past two weeks, everyone has been telling me to cancel meetings, to take a day off. I haven’t taken a day off in ten years at this job, and I don’t intend to start now.

The only change I made to my office space two weeks ago was to re-arrange the photos on my desk and remove the one closest to the phone. Otherwise, I didn’t miss a beat - I picked up right where I left off.

My supervisor’s name is Cliff, and his office is down the hall and around the corner from mine. So when I showed up that first day, after the incident, and he popped his head in, I knew that he hadn’t just strolled by my office and spotted me. Either Valerie, my assistant, or one of the girls I supervise had tipped him off. It was aggravating, but I guess I couldn’t blame them. I might have done the same thing if the roles were reversed. If it was their name on everyone’s lips, their life everyone was talking about in hushed tones.

“Eleanor,” he said, his tone surprised, stepping into my office. “I didn’t expect to see you this week.”

This week, he said. Not just today. How much time do they expect people to take off? Who was going to attack the pile of work on my desk if it wasn’t me? Who was going to make sure that Clarabelle is on top of her events, one of which is contracted with an agency I’ve worked with for the past three years?

No. I can’t expect others to do what I do.

“I had a meeting I couldn’t cancel,” I told Cliff.

“Which one?” he asked. He’s a charming man - he has to be, so much of our job is PR and schmoozing. He’s handsome, too, though obviously not my type. My wife Lara and I have been happily married for five years. He smiled kindly at me, but his eyes didn’t have that light, silly quality they sometimes had.

I couldn’t tell him which meeting, because there wasn’t just one. My day was jam-packed - my days were always jam-packed. I couldn’t cancel a thing.

“I had to come in,” I told Cliff. “I have to make sure Cecelia is on top of the Allie account.”

The pause that followed was awkward. I remember looking at Cliff for a second, maybe two, before I realized what I’d done.

“Clarabelle,” I said hurriedly, avoiding his gaze. “Can you let me get to work now, Cliff?”

I didn’t see him nod and retreat, but I heard the door closed. My eyes were burning.

An hour later, there was an e-mail in my inbox from Cliff, with the info for our agency’s EAP program and a brochure attached. I archived it.

Lara was the one who called me the day it happened. She’s a classroom teacher, second grade, and is usually the one our day care provider calls with emergencies. It’s hard for her to leave work, but her principal is understanding and very supportive of working parents. Really, nothing ever came up before that day. Not a thing since the day Cici was born.

I carried her, and she looked like me, a little miniature Eleanor. My eyes, my button nose, my coloring. We used a sperm donor, and we were hoping to use the same donor if we have additional children someday.

We haven’t talked about it for the past two weeks, of course, but I can’t see that ever happening now.

There was a small child care center not far from our house, and Cici attended there five days a week from when she was three months old. They adored her - she was always a good-tempered child, even as a small baby. She rarely cried. She had just moved up to the twos class after her birthday, the month before the incident.

But the day in question was actually a Saturday, so it was unusual that we were both working and not home with Cici having a lazy morning. I was managing a conference downtown, and Lara had a professional development training - not something required, but a training she’d been wanting to go to for some time. She was anxious, being away from Cici on a weekend day. I was not, partly because my focus was the conference, which had several guest speakers flying in from across the country, and partly because of how excited my younger sister was to watch Cici for the day.

“Can I take her to the playground?” she asked me excitedly, before I left that morning.

I laughed. It was so sweet, the novelty of it, from someone who didn’t have a child of their own. “Maybe not this time,” I said reluctantly. “Just so she gets used to being watched by you.” Cecelia had watched her before, but not for such a long stretch.

Cecelia agreed. I hugged Cici, who wasn’t a bit distressed - she loved my sister - and I left.

The meeting that was cancelled was at 11:30, and it was 9 a.m. right now. I’d already had two meetings this morning, a 7 a.m. and an 8:30, and that gave me two hours to figure out what needed to get done during that open hour.

I looked around the room for inspiration, trying to ignore the buzz of anxiety I felt. Everything for my upcoming events was under control. There was nothing I needed to re-schedule. I was on top of all of my grunt work, paperwork, contracts, thanks to all the weekend hours I’d been putting in.

I felt as if I’d already had three cups of coffee that morning, which I hadn’t - I was trying to cut back on caffeine, hoping that it would help my sleep.

I could not sleep.

The idea popped into my head suddenly, a light bulb moment. I’d have Clarabelle come in, for an additional supervision, to sort through her to-do list and make sure everything was managed for the Allie event, which was three weeks away.

I sat down at my desk and opened up her Outlook calendar - we all shared calendar access, it made scheduling so much simpler - and saw that she was free. I e-mailed her at once.

Hey, I have a free hour, 11:30 to 12:30 - I’m going to send you a calendar invite so we can check in. Eleanor

I sent the invite as well. A reply popped up almost immediately.

Good morning Eleanor!

I have a few tasks I have to cross off my to-do list during that hour. I’m so sorry! Can we catch up later this week?

Let me know if you want a coffee, I may run out!

Clarabelle

I stared at her reply for a long time. The exclamation points. The sweetness. The way she could sound charming even when refusing to do something her superior asked her to do.

I’m afraid I have to insist, I typed, and pressed send.

When Lara called that day, I dropped what I was doing and drove straight to the hospital, frantic.

She was sobbing when I got there, and I thought the worst immediately. I’ve never felt like that before - like everything inside me froze. I ran to her and wrapped my arms around her, but before I could fully embrace her, I found myself pulling her hands away from her face.

“You have to tell me,” I said. The sound of my own voice - high-pitched, frantic, desperate - terrified me. “You have to tell me,” I repeated.

The second it took for her to catch her breath was the worst moment of my life. Well, at that point, it was.

“Sh-she’s in s-s-surgery,” she said, struggling to breathe normally. “The d-d-doctors s-said to wait out here.” We were in a waiting area, I could see that now. There were families huddled together all around us.

I sank into the seat next to Lara. She leaned on my shoulder, sobbing. “They w-w-wouldn’t let me go in to see her,” she whispered. “I asked. I w-wanted to be w-with her.”

I shushed her, wrapping one arm around her. I needed to know what exactly had happened, but that could wait a moment.

What I did next was inexplicable to everyone I know. While holding Lara with one arm, I popped open my work e-mail on my phone and typed out an e-mail to the managers of the conference I’d been facilitating, CCing Clarabelle and Valerie.

I’ll most likely be out of the office for the rest of the day, but feel free to e-mail if you need anything and I’ll get right back to you.

Eleanor

I waited until Clarabelle accepted the invite, as I knew she would, and then I could feel muscles that I hadn’t even realized I was clenching relax.

The thing about that day is that I should have known something was up.

Even when she’s not watching my daughter, Cecelia and I text constantly. We’re four years apart in age - 33 and 29 - and we’ve always been close. She FaceTimes Cici, which is always a short-but-sweet call, but she and I are always in touch. She is incapable of seeing a funny meme and not sending it to me immediately; she is endlessly patient when I don’t reply consistently, either tied up with Cici or Lara or work. She texts me any and every time she is trying to make a decision - me, not our mother. There’s not an hour that goes by when I don’t have an unread message from my little sister.

It was eleven o’clock, late morning, by the time Lara called me, and twenty minutes later, after running three red lights, I was at the hospital.

But everything had happened by then. We just didn’t know it yet.

Once I had the new meeting on my schedule for 11:30 a.m., I dove into my 9:15 meeting, following by a ten o’clock call and a 10:30 Zoom meeting.

I never called the EAP number that Cliff sent to me. Valerie sent me the same information, as did our company’s HR rep.

I knew what was happening. I knew I was throwing myself into work.

It was fine. The cancellation today was a fluke. My schedule is packed for the next month, and I can keep it that way. I’ll have a back-up plan, like calling in Clarabelle, like I did today.

I’m fine as long as everything keeps moving.

The doctor came out to tell us that Cici was okay. Lara straightened up, as if the news helped her regain the ability to hold her own weight, and asked if we could see her, and the doctor said yes.

We had been at the hospital for two hours at that point, and that was the first moment that I thought of Cecelia.

There was a neighbor who saw everything that happened.

They were walking out the front door, down the front steps, to go for a ride on Cici’s tricycle. There was a big bar in the back that Cecelia could use to push her around the block.

The neighbor was out watering her flowers and waved at them. When Cecelia waved back - she knew all our neighbors, she was always at the house - she lost her footing and slipped, an ugly fall. Her legs slipped out from under her and the neighbor heard Cecelia’s head hit the concrete step.

The neighbor started to run toward Cecelia, who was looking around, woozy. Our house is close to the road, and the street, while not exactly busy, is no stranger to speeding drivers.

A car started to fly down the street. It was as if everything slowed down, the neighbor said, weeping. She saw Cecelia scramble to her feet and take off at a run toward the street, tripping and stumbling, to where she had seen two-year-old Cici toddling off toward the road. Then she watched as my baby sister dove, knocking Cici clear out of the way and taking the full impact of the oncoming car.

Clarabelle is late, and I cannot allow people to be late right now.

It all might have been a mistake. The truth is that Clarabelle reminds me a little of Cecelia - sweet, charming, a little spacey. In need of coaching. Benefits greatly from my advice and guidance.

When people are running late, I have time to think. I sit at my desk, tapping my pen and thinking about the photo of Cecelia and I that used to sit beside my phone, the one I removed the day after the funeral when I came into the office.

It was two hours before I even thought of Cecelia. My only thought was of my child.

Not a single thought of Cecelia, who’d been watching her.

How could that be?

It was impossible - inhuman. That I’d been in the hospital, my sister’s dead body down the hall, unidentified, and I had not known - me, who always knew every single detail of her life.

The neighbor who called 911 stayed with Cici - we were so grateful she did - and so there was mass confusion about Cecelia. Everything happened quickly, and it was assumed that she was a paid baby-sitter, not family. They were checking her phone, and reached out to our mother. Our mother knew before I did, and she

was three states away.

Five minutes late.

I have scheduled meetings from sunrise to sunset every single day for the past two weeks. They all look at me strangely, co-workers, clients - they don’t understand. I know Lara doesn’t understand, either - I’ve barely been home, barely been helping with Cici’s recovery. Cici’s doing great, though.

Doing great, at the expense of her young, loving, selfless aunt, who died because -

“Eleanor?”

I looked up, dazed. I felt whoozy - light-headed.

“Eleanor, are you okay?”

Clarabelle was at my side in an instant, kneeling down on the floor next to my chair. This was truly a mistake. She is so similar to Cecelia - so caring. It really was best for me to be around selfless jerks at this troubled time.

“We don’t have to meet,” she said quietly. “Valerie tried to get me not to come. I know, it’s a lot -”

“Don’t,” I said sharply. I looked up at her, meeting her eyes.

She looked at me carefully, then seemed to make a decision. I saw no trace of tears in her eyes, thankfully.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” she said steadily. “Or do you want to talk about the speaker travel arrangements for the conference?”

I straightened myself, repositioning my chair so that I was facing an empty chair on the other side of the desk - the visitor's chair. For meetings. “The travel arrangements, please.”

“You got it,” she said, standing up and settling herself in the chair across from me. She took out her notebook and her planner, and we got started.