We meet at the same time one evening every month.

The date is tough to nail down.

We often reschedule multiple times.

But tonight, we are here.

We are sloped shoulders turning toward.

We are crossed arms jutting out at the elbows.

We are deliberate heads nodding in clear directions.

We are sharply creased jackets and structured coats.

We are designer heels stuck in the carpet like daggers.

We are what we wear to the extent that our bodies can be robed, suited and adorned in order to

reflect the interior, to embody the self.

And because we believe this, once the room has warmed, once our collective presence has filled

it, we peel off these exteriors, removing jackets and coats, and bend them over backwards on one

designated corner of the host’s living room couch, piling them up like layers of puff pastry.

We mingle until the last woman arrives.

Some sit while others stand.

Someone often cancels at the last minute.

Someone is often inexcusably late, and everyone excuses her.

We stack soft shapes on top of crispy shapes and devour them.

We exchange pleasantries, making pointed choices about what to say and what to hold back.

At least, I know I do.

The reason we are here is to remark, to share what has been remarkable, how we each have been

remarkable, and how we can help one another to be more remarkable by supporting one another.

The reason we are here, however, is feeling more like the original reason for the group and not

the current reason.

I feel conflicted about this.

I have not shared this with the group.

I have not shared this with the group because the current reason, which shall become quite clear,

doesn’t seem to bother anyone but me.

I feel conflicted about feeling conflicted about this.

When I feel conflicted about things, which I often do, I set them aside and move on.

There are seats at a small square table meant for four, set for six, but rarely occupied by more

than five.

Someone brings wine.

The host already bought wine and specified no wine was needed.

Someone states how she is trying to drink less wine.

Someone states how there is always too much wine.

We’ve been meeting like this for years now.

Trust me, no wine will be left over.

Someone brings a cardboard to-go container from the Whole Foods hot bar.

Someone brings something that needs the oven to reheat based on the side-of-box instructions.

Someone brings all the ingredients and cookware and utensils from her own kitchen in a giant

reusable canvas bag in order to combine the ingredients into a composed dish, which is

something she didn’t have time to do earlier because she is so staggeringly busy.

She apologizes.

Someone brings a dessert that one of us cannot eat due to dietary restrictions or preferences that

were either forgotten, ignored or recently instituted, in which case, we’ll hear about that,

probably while the one who cannot eat the dessert watches the rest of us eat it.

I’ve made something a few times from scratch and the women have looked at me with a curious

unwelcome fascination, as in, if I have the time to do that, what remarkable thing am I not

doing?

Instead, I’ve brought expensive-looking bread, and the group approves my offering.

Once our plates and glasses have been filled with the evening’s bounty, we move to the table,

take our positions and begin.

We start at one end of the table, each providing a brief synopsis of the remarkable things that

have taken place since last we met.

Each woman takes a reasonable and respectable unit of time that is mimicked by the woman

beside her as we proceed around the table, the clinking of glasses, utensils and plates ticking off

the seconds like a clock keeping time.

We smile and coo when successes are shared.

Each woman is celebrated for her individual achievements by our affirmative vocal interjections,

a tasteful gasp, a sensible cheer.

We laugh when jokes are made or attempted.

We drop our faces in mutual sorrow when setbacks are recollected because they are a weight we

carry as one.

Sometimes as we perform this verbal routine of speaking and reacting and listening, I envision us

throughout history, at a prehistoric bonfire, encircling a bubbling cauldron, around a wood table

dug into a sawdust floor, in chivari chairs facing a white tablecloth set for high tea, and I think

how throughout the ages, women have been practicing this ritual of recording and stacking our

lives up against and on top of each other.

I get very philosophical when I drink.

We’ve come all the way around the table to the woman who always goes last, the host.

The first woman to share always sits to the left of host because the host insists upon it.

The host insists upon it because going last is considered the hospitable thing for a host to do.

This was the host’s idea.

It was also the host’s idea to start the group.

The host lives alone, has multiple degrees with long expansive titles etched onto each diploma,

has traveled to several continents working with refugees and medical relief groups, earns six

figures, and has written and directed two documentary films, but dreams of writing romantic

comedies.

We all know her dreams because she won’t shut up about them.

She maintains, what she describes as, a beautiful relationship with her body.

At some point in the evening, she has been known to change her shirt or swap a pair of pants for

shorts in full or partial view of the group because it gets warm and we’re all friends here and

none of us has ever said that we mind.

The host has been dumped seven times since the group started.

Tonight, she tells us, it’s happened again.

I started to count the number of dumpings when the number of dumpings exceeded the number

of years I’d known the host.

I don’t ever use the word dumped aloud.

No one in the group uses the word dumped in conversation with the group.

The host is the only woman in the group allowed to speak the word dumped aloud.

This is an obvious and unspoken rule.

At this point, it should be clear what I suspect the group’s real purpose has become, and possibly,

why I feel conflicted about it.

I feel like a trapeze artist or a gymnast with these men, trying to contort myself for them, says the

host, whom I will now begin to refer to as the dumped woman.

We listen with expressions that indicate rapt attention.

This must be why you’re so fit and flexible, I joke, trying to keep the mood light, searching the

table for glints of solidarity in the eyes of the group.

The other women giggle and nod, and I am grateful for their support.

I earn a living as a communications director for an independent philanthropist, which is a

position that requires knowing what to say to a person who possesses the type of unfathomable

wealth that must be discretely and strategically given away.

I’ve become remarkably good at this vocation, so good in fact, that the skills I have acquired

allow me to know what to say to almost any person in order to set that person at ease.

I feel conflicted about how good I’ve become at this job because it’s harder and harder for me to

tell when I genuinely mean something I say and when I say something because it’s what

someone would want to hear to be put at ease.

I have not shared this with the group.

The dumped woman smiles, but only halfheartedly, reminding us that men are turning her psyche

into a pretzel, like they have been doing to women since time immemorial.

That wasn’t the kind of flexibility I signed up for when I joined YogaWorks, she says.

The dumped woman sits with pristine, upright posture swirling a large goblet of sour cherry juice

she has poured in between glasses of merlot to, as she puts it, better pace herself.

I drink my wine, which I do not punctuate with sour cherry juice.

That sounds exhausting, says the sympathetic TV writer, whom I’ve noted for my records

no longer eats gluten or dairy.

I’m reticent of saying really provocative things or sharing creative ideas with her around because

I fear she will steal them, and they will show up in the mouths of characters on her Netflix show.

She is most often the woman who cancels at the very last minute.

I admire this quality about her because I often lack the commitment to my own goals if I’ll

disappoint others in order to achieve them.

You dodged a bullet, says the development coordinator who works for a nationally recognized

advocacy organization.

She, too, is single, but not miserable about it like the dumped woman, and is, instead far more

interested in other aspects of her own life than being single, a simple one plus one equation.

She deals in the business of solving difficult social and emotional equations.

She deals in the business of weeding through gordian knots of data and factoids and evidence to

motivate donors and engage strategic partners and rally support for the organization’s causes.

I love hearing her talk about the complexities of her job, probably because it’s not my job, but

also because she is so genuine in her commitment to the goals of her job and the value those

goals bring to her life and the lives of others.

I admire this because the goals of my own job, which appeared altruistic and positive when I

started, now appear to be focused on making powerful people even more comfortable in their

positions of power than they are already, so that the original goals of my job and the current

goals of my job are in conflict with one another, which reminds of how I feel about this group.

Men are scum, says the public relations rep who resembles a super model and takes multiple

anti-depressants.

She recently resigned from a flailing healthcare startup that manufactured a product so boring I

could never remember what it actually does.

She recently started a new job as a publicist for a socially responsible and inspiring organization

that offers support and job training to formerly incarcerated women.

Her salary is half of what it was before.

She has no vacation time.

She works sixty-hour weeks.

She hates this job too, but she seems to no longer hate herself as much as she did before.

I admire her for this because I consider it a step in the right direction.

I wonder if this group was never about being remarkable, but actually about the steady and

arduous accumulation of meaning that takes place in all of our lives, about the small steps we all

take hoping they are in the right direction.

I think about sharing this with the group, but the dumped woman cuts me off.

When the dumped woman wants to speak, there’s no stopping her.

I pour another glass of wine.

The dumped woman has forgotten to tell us about her remarkable consultation with an Angel

Reader about her most recent dumping.

The dumped woman consulted the Angel Reader before the mass dumpings, but now has regular

appointments every other week.

The Angel Reader told the dumped woman that each man who has dumped her was a bridge to

her eternal partner, or was her baby brother in a past life, or that his spirit was a dumb-dumb and

needed a few more reincarnations to reach her supreme level of self-actualization, and this time

is no different.

I hope the dumped woman is not alone forever.

Actually, I hope the dumped woman is not miserable forever, whether or not she is alone.

I often feel bad thinking about her as the dumped woman but it’s hard not to define her in these

terms when they are the terms by which she defines herself.

Our plates have been emptied.

The wine is all gone.

It’s time to wrap up.

We offer to help the dumped woman clean up.

She refuses at first but continues remarking on ways to assuage her fears of being alone forever.

Perhaps, she’s had too much wine and sour cherry juice.

We remind the dumped woman of all she has accomplished, her work overseas, her academic

papers, her filmmaking.

She stops us.

In the refugee camps in Syria, she tells us, to keep going, to stay hopeful, all the women talk

about is love. The only movies they talk about are romantic comedies, she says, that’s what

reaches across the world.

The dumped woman’s eyes fill up like she’s going to lose it.

I admire that the dumped woman wants a life that reaches across the world.

I want that too.

The dumped woman and I are not so different really.

We are not so different except for one thing.

I have never been dumped in my entire life.

I am the one who leaves first.

I am the one who strays, who keeps options open, who puts herself on top, who maintains the

dominant position of choosing the end when it suits me.

I understand that this choosing, this power—something women across the world and women for

centuries before me have fought for and yearned for and even died for—is not something to

discuss here.

If I’ve learned anything in this life, from my job, from this group, from being a woman, it’s that

there are times when the thoughts I want to say are better left unsaid.

It’s a privilege to lead a life where most of the conflict lives inside me.

The others say kind things in kind tones that are meant to remind the dumped woman that she is

remarkable, and she allows us to help her clean things up, which makes us all feel better because

we are being helpful in some concrete way.

At least, I hope so.

I excuse myself.

I say my goodbyes.

I am the one who leaves first.

– Sarah Haufrect

Author’s Note: The form or container for this piece came to me visually like stacking a pile of blocks as high as it could go (to the point just before it would topple over).