Spoused!

“Emily” by Molly Phalan

Justine has never watched a full episode of Spoused! but she knows its premise, like many of the other shows she has absorbed through the cultural osmosis of standing in line at any given grocery store in America. After ten minutes of recaps, fifteen minutes of schmoozing, and finally, a full forty-five minutes of mentally and physically exhausting date activities (Ziplining! Helicopter rides! Glamping!), the contestants are each given a black box in which their fates are sealed. The boxes either contain a halved apple (Split!) or a whole apple (Stay!), until the finale, where one box reveals an apple with a ring placed daintily on its stem (Spoused!).

So perhaps Justine had seen a few clips here and there. But when Tim calls one night with a gig for Spoused!, she laughs.

“That fake dating show?” she says.

He chides her. “It’s money! Let me know by Friday.”

She skims the nondisclosure agreement Tim forwards. Spoused! is filmed two months in advance of its airdate, save for the final episode, which is live. She would be appearing, however fleetingly, as one-fourth of a string quartet in the background of the penultimate episode. But it is two hours away, near L.A. She reminds herself that she doesn’t need to accept every job that comes her way anymore. Perhaps she did in her twenties, when she lived alone in a studio that was far too expensive for a freelance violinist who sometimes waited tables. But now she lives with her boyfriend, George, in the condo that he inherited from his parents. She makes a healthy living teaching rich kids at an after-school program.

A few days later, Justine sits so low on the couch that she can rest a stemless wine glass in the divot between her breasts, the top of her stomach a surface. She swings her legs onto the coffee table even though George hates when her feet are on the furniture. Last month, after she cheated on him, she would have used the ottoman. But she has resolved to stop acquiescing to George, ending a period of roughly three weeks where she would go out of her way to satisfy his preferences. She did things like diligently turning on the fan after taking a shower, making sure to place her shoes on the shoe rack in the hallway instead of kicking them into a corner, and taking the tea bags out of empty mugs before leaving said mugs in the sink. She never used to care about these things, but immediately after sleeping with Hiro, she found herself tiptoeing around George. She knew why. It was a form of apologizing without actually apologizing. And if she was going to move on and make sure he didn’t notice anything awry, she had to go back to how she was before. But she had found this difficult.

The TV snaps on. The channel guide informs her they are kicking off a marathon rerun of the very season of Spoused! Tim called about. She has not responded to him yet. Her finger hovers over the remote but she stays. Why not?

A line of bachelors files into a gargantuan mansion. In the turret (of course there is a turret) a woman named Ella appears on the balcony like Juliet, if Juliet had two dozen Romeos. Ella’s hair flows in long waves, one side artfully placed over a toned shoulder. It is highlighted just so, teetering between naturally sun-kissed and worth hundreds of dollars in upkeep.

Then there is a canned shot of Ella in a pantsuit walking through an office. It turns out she is an attorney. An attorney! Justine thinks, intrigued now. She is surprised, and wonders if this makes the show stupider than she thought it was or far smarter than she could have fathomed.

She finds herself leaning forward, clutching at her glass so it doesn’t spill. Ella is beautiful in the way that most people on television are, but she also commands attention, speaking with the authority of someone who knows she will be listened to. The men assemble along the stucco entrance.

Ella wipes at her eyes, recounting the last season. Here, via montage and voiceover, Justine learns that on the last season, Ella had gone as far as the altar with Don, a man plucked from a small squadron of well-coiffed men with swollen biceps. But before they could say their vows and plant their symbolic matrimonial McIntosh tree, she had dropped her bouquet and broken down in tears, fleeing, disgraced, ratings so astronomical that nothing could be done but to start again and renew Spoused! for a fourteenth season, Ella starring once more. Ella had loved Don, but she didn’t know if he was the one. She had such a connection to Carlos, the runner-up. A clip of Carlos appears and Justine realizes he is a spokesman for a toothpaste brand that she has seen in ads on her Instagram feed.

And anyway, Ella should know herself by now. She is thirty-four, after all. Justine frowns, perturbed. This woman does not look thirty-four. Not to mention, most troublingly, she is also thirty-four! A suitor appears on screen, as if he is reading Justine’s mind, to say that Ella is the oldest person to ever participate in Spoused! His name is listed (John F., as to not confuse with John B.), and under it, a profession: entrepreneur. She thinks about how, if she were on the show, it would say “musician”, even though all she does now is teach sixth graders scales and book the occasional wedding.

The men wait for Ella to descend a staircase, and Justine watches the artifice — of the ugly house full of bright studio lights, the trays of carb-laden hors d’oeuvres that will go untouched — and she thinks about how a marriage might result from this meeting. It is an odd feeling. In turn, this makes her think about George.

George is not a striking man like the ones on Spoused!, but he is very tall, which seems to matter to the people who ask, and he works as a lawyer for a small but healthy nonprofit. In fact, that is where he is now. She doesn’t mind that she and George aren’t married, or even engaged. She mostly hates the reaction she gets from people when she reveals how long she has been with him — nine years now — and their mouths zipper shut, eyes focused on some point above her as they do the mental math to guess her age and what must be wrong with her. I might have an answer to that, she thinks dully as she drains the last of her wine, remembering, of all things, the feeling of Hiro’s hand resting on the crook of her neck when they first kissed. And then how her hand had clamped around his and guided it toward the waistband of her pants. She closes her eyes.

When she wakes up, her glass sits neatly on a coaster on the coffee table and a throw has been draped over her legs. Outside it is dark, and the television is muted, subtitles flashing. She looks over at George, who is watching Spoused! with rapt attention.

“When did you get home?” she asks.

“Half an hour ago,” he says. “Did you eat?”

She nods. “You can change the channel if you want.”

“No, it’s getting good. They’re about to go scuba diving in Belize.”

“Ugh,” she says. She hates the ocean. Ella appears in a bikini. “She’s a lawyer, you know.”

“Maybe I should audition,” he puts an arm around her shoulders. “I can be the next Penelope.”

“Who?”

He points to the screen. And indeed, as Ella speaks to the camera, the words on her identifying graphic, above “Attorney”, say “Penelope/ ‘Ella’”.

“Huh.”

“What?” He rubs her shoulder, which feels nice.

She leans forward and squints at the screen. His hand drops away from her. Guilt darts through her, because she didn’t mean to snub him. She wouldn’t have cared about this before her infidelity, as awful as that sounds. This is her biggest regret about cheating, after the fact that if he were to find out, he would be irrevocably hurt. It is the fact that it tinges everything she does now, leaking into quotidian things, like sitting on a couch. It is like a long math equation made erroneous by a stray number hidden somewhere in its folds.

Justine hits rewind. The men move in reverse, stripping off their wetsuits. She pauses, and the water’s reflection lurches on to Ella’s face. At first, Justine recognizes nothing in her. But then she sees her, and she feels a shift, like the gray fraction of time that exists between being tricked by an optical illusion and understanding it. “I think,” she murmurs, “I knew her. I knew a girl named Penelope at summer camp. But we called her Penny.”

“Were you friends?” George reaches over and hits play on the remote. The episode resumes.

“Not really,” she says, ignoring the guilt she feels settle in her stomach as she answers. She leans back into the couch, nuzzling against George’s side even though she knows this goes against her rule about acquiescing to him. It’s just that the couch is small, and anyway, they’ve always sat like this. As Ella reaches out to hug each man, Justine feels an instant surge of gratitude to George. She would never have to go on a show like this. The discomfort that had wrapped itself around the memory of camp washes away. He puts his arm back around her shoulders, and they watch the rest of the episode like that. At one point, when she takes her feet off of the coffee table, she watches as George says nothing, his eyes flickering toward her and back to the screen.

***

Penny is by far the best swimmer in their cabin, and she is patient, so she shows Justine how to blow air out of her nose while somersaulting underwater. They tiptoe on the cold slush at the bottom of the lake and imagine alien creatures flitting around their ankles.

By the second day campers are stratified by swimming skill and Penny breaks the record for the fastest 100 yard dash. She is nearly deified. Campers flock to her. Penny can braid hair into intricate patterns. She has thick hair down to her waist that shapeshifts, nearly straight but pliable, always in a different style. Everyone begs her to do their hair and she never says no. They all emerge from swimming with long looping pigtails, french braids wet with lakewater.

***

The morning of the Spoused! taping, Justine brushes her teeth and imagines meeting Ella. You look so familiar, she imagines Ella saying, perhaps when the cameras are resetting, a makeup artist powdering her nose, which seems poreless even in HD. Justine? Justine Watt, is that you? Beyond this, she cannot imagine anything.

On the way to set, Justine watches for the exits as Tim drives. His cello is splayed out across the backseat of his van. The dry cleaning bags holding their black clothing rustle. For the third time that morning, she scrolls through a tabloid article titled “Five Things You Didn’t Know About Ella from Spoused!”, her fingers poised on a photo captioned “#tbt” that Ella posted. In the photo, Ella is eleven or twelve years old, one foot jauntily on a soccer ball and her hair short, pulled back. She looks almost exactly the same as when Justine knew her. She clicks on another article (“Spoused!'s Carlos Speaks Out on ‘Painful’ Exit from Show”) and zooms in on a different, recent photo. She doesn’t think she would have recognized her if George hadn’t pointed out her full name.

“Do you think she’ll remember me?” she says, making sure to measure her tone so it’s clear she’s joking. She has known Tim since graduate school, and though she has a standing place in the quartet that he organizes, they mostly only talk about music. It is why, she thinks with passing irritation, she will have to see Hiro today. The result of a last-minute cancellation. He plays the viola.

“Who are you talking about?” he says absentmindedly, turning down the radio.

“Ella. The woman on the show.”

“Oh, right.”

“Oh my God, I’m kidding. She’s not even going to know who I am.”

He glances at her then back to the highway. “Are you sure it’s her?”

“I’m sure,” she says, suddenly embarrassed to be speaking at all.

***

One day Justine musters up the courage to ask Penny to braid her hair. For a flashing moment she fears Penny will say no, even though she has never known her to say no. What if I’m the exception? she wonders. But Penny only smiles and extends a tanned arm, magnanimous, to reach out and comb through her hair.

They hardly speak, but the entire time, Justine imagines a new life, one precipitated by this moment. How thrilling would it be to find herself next to Penny on their hiking excursions with the group, when the path narrows and only allows two people to walk side by side at a time? They could walk together. The other girls would stare.

Soon Penny is tying off the braids with rubber bands stolen from the crafts cabin, and Justine matches the others. This makes her feel weightless, as though she could climb right into the summer air. But this is before, and later Justine will look back upon the first few weeks of camp with astonishment that there was ever a time so intact and abundant in its sweetness.

***

They arrive to a nondescript warehouse that has been outfitted with a set containing a dining area. The crew mills about and an hour passes without anything happening. Ella and the Spoused! men are running late on the private jet they are taking from a ski lodge in Colorado. Justine changes into her black blouse and pants, sitting near craft services with her violin in her lap because there is nothing to do. Tim is doing a crossword, and Linore, the other violinist, chats gamely with a makeup artist about lipstick shades.

Linore helps run a summer music program at a university. Justine has only been playing with her for a year, but she feels something adjacent to trust around her, because Linore has never said anything to her about Hiro. Once, at a wedding, after they had all played a rather mechanical rendition of Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida”, the lights dimmed and the DJ took over, which Hiro took as his opportunity to place his hand on hers. Linore had stared directly at them but said nothing. This shocked Justine. If their roles were reversed, she would find such a feat herculean.

Hiro is the only one doing work. He sits several feet away, reading over a sheet of music, idly sliding a cracked piece of rosin on his bow. They were friendly before their tryst (she grimaces, she hates this word), then after, when she had texted him — this cant continue. lets go back to the way things were — it had taken two days for him to respond with a single thumbs up emoji. But her wish had been granted. Things were the way they were before, so much so that Justine found it maddening, unnerving. When she saw Hiro at Tim’s birthday gathering, they had exchanged a brief, deeply unerotic conversation about the bar’s parking lot. Then he had excused himself and left her alone for the rest of the night.

Today, she finds herself switching between looking at the entrance of the warehouse to see if Ella will arrive, and glancing at Hiro. If he notices, he doesn’t catch her eye. Linore is still talking to the makeup artist. So Justine rises, placing her violin on her seat. She approaches Hiro.

“Hey, Justine,” he says, his face arranged into an expression of nonchalance. “What’s up?”

She isn’t sure why she has walked over to him. But she knows she must say something now. “Can I—can I borrow your rosin?” she says, hearing her silly, girlish tone and hating herself for it. “I have two cases, and one of them has all my stuff in it, but I forgot to switch them.”

“Sure,” he says, reaching out and dropping the wood block into her hand.

“Thanks,” she says. “How’s it going?”

“I’m alright. I got the call last night about this. I owe Tim a favor.”

“Oh, totally,” Justine says quickly. “It’s money,” she says, repeating what Tim said to her.

“Oh,” Hiro realizes how he sounded. “I meant, I didn’t know you’d —” he drops his voice, “He didn’t mention you. I was surprised, too.”

Justine grips the rosin tight, wishing it were a talisman that could transport her elsewhere. “It’s fine,” she smiles, and it feels as though her cheeks are being pinched from the effort of it.

“Right. Well, I wanted to tell you something,” he says, his mouth barely moving. He leans forward. It is the closest they have been in months. The twin wishes she has, one of Hiro begging her to be with him, and the other of never seeing him again, collide like discordant notes. She thinks stubbornly of George, who made her coffee that morning. Hiro has never made her anything.

“I told my wife about us. I don’t want to tell you how to live your life. But I feel a lot better. It just seemed like when we were,” he searches for the right word, “together, that you were in some pain. I still want you to be happy, Justine.”

She blinks very fast. “You what? Does she know it was me?”

Hiro hesitates, then nods. “But she won’t say anything.”

“Great. Awesome,” she says. Then she turns on her heel and goes back to her seat.

***

At the campfire Justine approaches Penny with her fist outstretched. When Justine unfurls her fingers, a bracelet sits in her palm like a waiting caterpillar. Penny’s marshmallow blackens over the flame and threatens to drop into the kindling. Her face is awash with the orange blush of the fire. She looks at the offering and Justine thinks she sees pity move across her face. But then it is gone. “I’m sorry, I already have so many.” And indeed, Penny has a row of them on her arm, stacked like a fuzzy sheath. Another girl giggles. When no one is looking, Justine drops the bracelet into the fire.

That night, Justine waits for the snores of the camp counselor to permeate the cabin. She makes her way to Penny. The creaking of the wood blends in with the percussion of the cicadas. Penny sleeps in the bottom bunk, her back facing outward, one braid at the nape of her neck hanging over the side of the bed like a plumb weight. Justine palms the pair of scissors she took from the crafts cabin. She holds the braid lightly in her other hand then presses the two blades against the hair, making fast, rough cuts until she is done, the braid still intact when it falls to the floor. Justine climbs back into bed, where she lies awake until morning. She is never caught.

***

Ella and the men have yet to arrive after the second hour. A producer makes the rest of them take their places anyway. A fleet of hair and makeup artists descend, powdering and spritzing the four of them in flurries before dissipating.

Then the cameras are ready, and the four of them lift up their bows. Spoused! requires clean audio of the string quartet. Pachelbel's Canon bounces off the walls of the cavernous warehouse. The studio lights blaze and Justine is sure she’s sweating through her top. Then she gets lost, misplacing her spot in the music, and they restart. She gets lost again and Tim taps his foot impatiently. She can feel Hiro looking at her but refuses to turn her head. Linore suggests a switch, offering the first violin part to her, but she declines. They play for what feels like an hour even though she knows it’s only been ten minutes. A man with a camera rig comes closest to Tim and focuses on the sliding of his bow across the cello strings. The sweat from her hand is making her bow slippery, and she clutches it harder to make sure she doesn’t lose her grip. Then she plays a wrong note, jarring and loud, that causes the other three to look up at once.

A producer waves his hands. “Let’s take five.”

Justine gets up swiftly, carrying her violin and bow with her. “Justine?” Tim calls after her, but she only quickens her pace to reach the side door nearest to her.

Once outside, she lifts her hand above her eyes to block out the sun. Her shadow is a strange figure, violin sprouting out against her leg like a curved extra limb, the bow slicing a line through her head. She can see the cropping of skyscrapers that makes up downtown L.A. This warehouse is one of many in a lot. She stands like that for a while, hating how she is here, stuck at this gig. Five minutes surely pass, but nobody comes to retrieve her.

Then someone opens the door behind her, and she can hear a careful clattering of a heel against cement. She turns. Impossibly, it is Ella. “Hi,” Justine says.

“Hi. Just needed to get some air,” Ella floats by, the whites of her perfectly straight teeth glowing. Her dress is long and burgundy, form-fitting and strapless. Justine can see a microphone pack taped to it, bulky and dark, on the small of her back. A sturdy layer of makeup coats her skin. Her hair is even shinier in real life than it is on the screen.

Although she has imagined this moment, speaking to Ella, seeing her without the scrim of a camera, she finds herself unable to think. She angles herself toward the other woman. She wonders, frantically, if she should have tried to look more like her nine-year-old self. She sees an absurd vision of herself now, as an adult, in pigtails and a tie-dye shirt.

“I’m sorry, but you look so familiar to me,” Justine blurts out.

Ella laughs more easily than Justine expects. “Well, do you watch the show?”

“No. I mean, I watched a little before I took the job.”

“Do you have an opinion?”

“What?”

“Let me guess. You like Shane. The producers like him too,” she rolls her eyes.

“Oh,” Justine says, “I don’t know who that is.”

She laughs again. “Everyone always tells me they can’t tell any of the guys apart,” Ella squints at her, cocks her head. “Did we go to college together?”

In this moment, Justine finds that she cannot even recall a single name belonging to a man. “No. I don’t think so.”

Ella gives a small smile, then looks back at the warehouse behind them. Justine can feel the conversation rapidly turning, shutting down, and she knows she must say something to salvage it.

“Oh!” she snaps her fingers. A name has bubbled up to the front of her consciousness like a life raft. “I remember one guy on the show. Carlos!” The moment she says it, she wishes she hadn’t. I’m a moron, she thinks.

“That was the last season,” she says politely.

“Right. Sorry.”

She points at Justine, a new look of resolve on her face. “You know what,” she says, her voice now bouncy and deliberate. “Did I go to high school with you? Near Chicago?”

“I don’t think so,” she says, not willing to give in to the yearning to be remembered just yet. If it is to count, she wants Ella to recognize her first. She tries again. “Well, I used to go to camp in Illinois.”

“Oh,” her expression shifts. “What’s your name? I’m Ella, by the way.”

“Justine,” she says, shaking her hand. “Did you go by Penny back then? Camp Diamond Lake?”

“Yes,” Ella says, surprised. “But,” she searches her face, “I don’t remember you.”

“Really?” she asks. In her head, she has only imagined up to this moment. She tries to ignore the twinge of annoyance she feels. “Do you remember the lake?”

“Of course.”

“Do you remember the cabin?”

“A little bit.”

“The glow-in-the-dark stickers we put on the ceiling?”

“Maybe.”

“You braided my hair once,” Justine tries again.

At this, Ella laughs. “Oh, wow. That sounds like me, but, I’m sorry. It might as well have been a hundred years ago,” she smiles in apology, and Justine can see the pity behind it, the anonymity she must be assigning her. But Justine is desperate to differentiate herself from the fawning people who must approach Ella all the time now that she is famous.

“Am I remembering it right, that you were a great swimmer?” she says, even though she recalls perfectly.

Ella cocks her head. “Sure, you could say that.”

This irritates Justine. It was an objective fact that she had been a good swimmer. “You really don’t remember me,” she says.

“No, but I don’t doubt you,” she says. “I have a terrible memory.”

Neither of them say anything.

“Well, we should probably get back. It was nice to meet you, Justine,” Ella turns to the warehouse door.

“I think—I mean, I know,” she blurts out, “I cut off all your hair one night. So. That was me,” she says quickly. “I never got caught. So I’m sorry. If you remember. I just remembered.”

Ella stares at her, and Justine can’t tell what she’s thinking. What kind of deranged person apologizes for something they did as a child? I was hardly even sentient then, she reasons. But then she feels a trickle of guilt — that isn’t true. She had been even younger, hadn’t she, when she had first heard Vivaldi on the radio while sitting in the back of her parents’ car. What is this? she had asked, nearly climbing over the front seats. The music lessons had started soon after. Her mother still tells the story to anyone who will listen.

But Ella gives nothing away. Instead, she gives one last, almost longing glance at the city. A breeze slips between them, and Justine watches for her face to change. But her expression remains plain. “Like I said, we should probably get back. These things can take a really long time.”

“Okay,” she says, but Ella has already turned around, ducking through the door, and then Justine is alone again.

***

Almost two months later, Justine is getting ready to leave the elementary school where she teaches to get home for dinner. She has taken to practicing alone in the classroom once the children have left. Today, she plays part of Sibelius’s concerto, which she had not looked at in many years. There was a time when she used to practice it for hours because it was the concluding piece for her graduate recital. She plays the second movement, and when she finishes, a custodian outside the classroom claps.

In the car, she selects the same concerto from her phone, a recording older than she is. It thrums through the speakers and makes something inside of her align.

Her phone pings, interrupting the music momentarily. She picks it up and sees that it is George. Need anything? Picking up food.

Im ok, thanks

Talking to your string quartet friend and his wife at the store.

Her fingers hover over the keyboard.

Who? Tim?

Hiro

What are you guys talking about?

She waits several minutes but George doesn’t text back. She turns off the music, driving home in silence. She hasn’t seen Hiro since the Spoused! taping. Tim has asked her to be in a few more gigs since then but she has declined them. Sometimes, when she is alone and gets the urge to text Hiro, she will remove her phone from her pocket and place it in another room. She is considering starting up a chamber ensemble again.

In the parking garage, George’s car is in its spot. She checks her phone again. He has not replied. In the elevator, she almost forgets to hit the button. Cautiously, she makes her way through the hall. She lingers over the doorknob, nearly turning around.

“I’m home,” she says quietly, slipping her violin case off her shoulder.

“In here!” George calls out, and she freezes, not sure what to make of the tone of his voice. She keeps her jacket on and shuffles into the living room. George turns to her, his face a mask of despair. She feels her throat squeeze tight.

“You’re barely in the episode!” he gestures to the television. A jubilant, laughing Ella is tossing her hair over her shoulder, a hand outstretched over the knuckles of one of her suitors. Indeed, she can hardly make out her string quartet in the background. The warehouse looks nothing like a warehouse. Instead, it looks like the inside of an intimate restaurant. Candles are everywhere, giving Ella and her date a warm, champagne-colored glow.

“Oh,” she says, knees buckling a little as she collapses onto the couch.

“They showed you guys for like, a split second,” he says excitedly.

She leans forward. She can see herself, miniscule, sawing away on the violin in the background. It doesn’t match up with the music. “They just put a random track over this. This isn’t even the song we played.”

“That’s what your friend told me they’d do,” George says, still glued to the screen.

She wishes she could have been at the grocery store with them. In her reimagining, Hiro’s wife is not there. Would George notice something? Would Hiro recognize her exerting the effort to make sure George didn’t notice anything?

She knows that Hiro must have been the one who approached George. George is bad at remembering faces. But did they shake hands? It would be too strange to pose this question, but she lets the urge to ask grip her, lingering in it, savoring this feeling, one that is like seeing a coin spin on its edge. Heads and tails, both at once. The state of not knowing and of also knowing too much.

Without realizing, twenty minutes have passed without Justine paying attention. Ella distributes the boxes. The dinner setting has disappeared, and the string quartet is nowhere to be seen.

“What else did you and Hiro talk about?” she asks.

“He’s the one who told me this was airing tonight.”

As the boxes open, one man collapses, apple halves tumbling out of his box. Even though she has recounted the conversation she had with Ella every day since the taping, she cannot remember the name of the man Ella had brought up, the one that the producers had liked.

Justine looks over at George, who, she realizes, is staring, brow furrowed, at the screen. “I knew she was going to pick this idiot,” he gestures to the screen.

“It’s all fake anyways,” she says, but as she says it, she’s not sure if she believes it.

The eliminated contestant folds himself into a limousine. A graphic of a tiny version of Ella holding a golden apple pops up in the corner of the frame. Text rolls across the bottom of the screen. DOWNLOAD THE SPOUSED! APP ON YOUR PHONE TO VOTE FOR FAN FAVORITE. Justine is about to point out this inconsistency to George — Would someone who’s really looking for love care about being a fan favorite? — but then she feels his hand brush against her palm. Absentmindedly, he lifts it to his lips and brushes a kiss against her fingers. She allows herself to lean against him.

Sarah Turbin is a video producer and graphic designer from New Jersey. She attended Northwestern University, where she studied journalism and creative writing. Her work has appeared in Vox, The Guardian, and Mental Floss. This is her first published fiction piece. Find her on Twitter @sarahturbin.