Читать книгу Cubicle Envy - Geoff Jarok - Страница 7

-Let’s talk about this offline-

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Easter Sunday was a chilly mess of rain and cars zig-zagging across the Commonwealth. Some front doors were lit up by wreaths and other decorations, but others clung to the dark- evacuated for ham and hopefulness. The Catcher’s home was one of the welcoming ones, though Chris still missed their street most times. Groton was one of those towns that could only be attacked via back-roads. Street signs were tiny or non-existent shoveling travelers deeper into the web of colonial town planning.

Donna’s father, Ron, had retired from an insurance company a couple years prior. Now he had all day to watch their retirement savings tip precariously in the wrong direction. Even the money they had earned by recently downsizing into this split-entry in Groton was shrinking. Mrs. Catcher, Eva, was still working in a doctor’s office all the way down in Wellesley. Ron, like many, didn’t really want to talk about their situation, leaving it with a bow at the White House doorstep to fix. They were pleased to leave the concern to the younger generation conveniently sitting before them.

Peter, as the oldest, was the first to face the questions. Plus Donna’s other brother, Steve, was working the Easter shift for the electric company.

“You know, I don’t know what to say about it. It’s unprecedented, right? Well, in our lifetime.” He was speaking and watching his son, Corey, swish the remaining green beans around his plate. Peter was an engineer who couldn’t be distressed about much. In that way he was outwardly similar to Chris, but the economy was just the beginning of what gnawed at Chris. Maybe if Massachusetts suddenly had chronic earthquake problems Peter would take out stock in Pepto-Bismol, able to reach beyond the layman to understand how dire building collapse could be. Here he was tiptoeing around the financial crisis, but knowing marginally more about finances than his parents, Peter was as steady as ever; and his wife, Jan, waited it all out hoping she wouldn’t be called on. The previous year she had placed Bucharest in Hungary and was told by Eva that, as a teacher, she should probably have known better. Chris agreed, but it made him think about himself. As an accountant, what should he have known about yet continued to fuck up? Well, he knew not to talk about Bucharest.

Chris looked beyond the dinner table, with its eroded mountains of food, to the living room. There were the red painted eggs sitting in a bowl on the coffee table. Their story wasn’t quite reported yet, but dinner also wasn’t over. Chris was sure he had heard it at least twice. Eva was a strong woman who could mind-wrestle you to the floor should her story need retelling. Similar to her mother Donna was mentally tough, but more affable and open-minded like her dad. Chris didn’t grow up with any tradition so seeing colorful decorations and hearing tales of distress was oddly warming in that it all made him feel like a member of this family.

Peter pressed his finger down on his dessert spoon propping up the handle as he continued his thoughts, “Things aren’t easier for us, especially with the activities we’re involved in, but work…” He hesitated for a second, “…seems OK. I don’t foresee any major changes. Chris is the business guy. He probably knows more.” Peter raised his eyebrows in Chris’ direction. Chris kept his face steady. Dirty looks don’t solve problems. Well, maybe for Dirty Harry they did, but instead of a .44 magnum Chris was armed only with his own dessert spoon.

Eva interrupted any senseless violence, “Let’s not talk business before we have some cake.” Things began to shuffle around the table and suddenly the story was reborn. Eva’s accent was light, like powdered sugar sprinkled on top of something already sweet. “Look at what Chris and Donna have brought. Bott, this is good wine. This is from close to where I grew up. My brother, he picked these grapes.” Her eyes were in Hungary in that moment as the cork no longer held the wine back from the story. She was silent as it was poured around in crystal glasses. Eva lifted hers and offered “Egeszsegedre” slowly so they could all repeat. Ron followed with a “Cheers” to satiate the less ecclesiastical Hungarian wine drinkers.

“This tastes like caramel and peaches,” Eva pronounced spiritedly.

“And dirt, a little,” Peter said. He would humor his mother, but he wasn’t much of a drinker.

“Dirt?” she pulled her lips back from the glass. “Well, yes there is dirt. It’s from the earth, you know. My brother picked grapes like these.” She saw her brother in his best Easter suit and herself in a floral skirt with a blouse hemmed by her nagymama. “We worked so hard in Hungary and got nowhere better. That was the way. We left when I was eight years old wearing only our best clothes and what we could carry.” While Donna began to plate the cake, Eva eased her way gently to the egg basket on the coffee table. She picked it up and turned it towards her people.

“This is all I have left of Hungary,” Eva said matter-of-factly. “Corey, come here!” The boy was hesitant, but his mother pushed him towards the couch. Donna and Peter knew what was coming, but Chris was curious as he sipped his wine.

“You know what these red eggs are?” He shook his head. “They represent the blood of Jesus and rebirth, but they are more than that. It’s a promise. Corey, you have to promise me that you will work hard and be a good boy. Will you do that?” He nodded. She reached down into the basket and pulled out an egg covered in pink foil. “This is for you.” She handed the chocolate egg to Corey. Eva looked at her people placed around the kitchen table with eyes that seemed to look into her own version of dusk, “I don’t change my beliefs. I saw what you get if you work hard in Hungary. If you work hard here in the US they understand it. You get all of this.” Her arms weren’t long enough to show everything she had.

# # #

Things were different in Hopkinton at Kelly’s house. She had spent most of Saturday trying to clean up as neither she nor Bert could get any free time from work during the week. Last year she thought they let them go early on Good Friday, but that was last year. Kelly was already worn out and they hadn’t even sat down to dinner yet.

“Jackie, no! Dad can’t have fruit juice. It doesn’t mix with the Razadyne.”

“Sorry, I didn’t…” Kelly’s sister didn’t know what to say or do next. She escaped into to the kitchen as Bert came back from the garage with a folding card table. Between guarding her sputtering father, mothering two young children, and absorbing anything else that could happen at the house, Kelly sometimes liked the reprieve of work. Headquarters would tell her what to do and she’d do it to the best of her ability. It was a little bit dry at times. In the quiet moments she had with herself on her commute home, before she put on her Suzy-Homemaker mask, she could grumble about her job. Kelly wasn’t a perfectionist, but she expected a lot from people. She sensed accurately that co-workers she depended on were beginning to go through the motions with their work. The job’s not done until all of the nails are cleaned up from the floor. You don’t want anybody stepping on them later. That’s what her dad used to say when she’d sneak out to the garage to smell the sawdust and watch him checking his cut. He was a statue now full of dusty advice. When Kelly sat in her car she concluded that even though work let her down sometimes it would get better again someday. Sadly, the Alzheimer’s wasn’t getting any better. He was not a statue. He was a dying child.

“No, Jackie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. Things change every day. We take him to the doctor and suddenly there’s new medication and they all got side effects.” The living room was starting to warm up when the front door opened to the chilling rain. Kelly saw the rust stain below the number fifty-four in the clear light and was dissatisfied. Maybe she was a perfectionist. She was sure the disease would capture her one day too. Maybe her kids would also have to fight over who took care of her. Uncertainty had rooted itself in the family long before it snagged the economy.

Kelly’s sister, Diane, came through the door with raindrops lying on top of the plastic wrap that covered her famous “loaded stuffing” that nobody particularly liked. Diane’s husband, Mitch, came through next with his big boots scuffing against the mat.

“Sorry we’re late. I should not be taking calls from work on Easter. It’s ridiculous,” explained Mitch. “We’ve got a big week coming up and somebody got nervous. Di gave me the stink eye so I think we’re even now.” He stopped in front of Kelly’s dad. “Danny Boy, how goes it?”

“I’m OK son. I’m OK.” Dan Reynolds said with a hint of a smile. He was now Danny to all, even the grandkids.

Mitch took his wife’s coat and his and hung them in the closet. The Reynolds’ house and, by extension, their children’s homes were not fond of etiquette. If you wanted something done you did it yourself as Brett learned quickly. Kelly was certainly that way. She never really tied in that it was that quality that made her father so lost in the early days of the disease. He refused to ask for anyone’s help especially any doctor. If she and Bert hadn’t broken from that mentality and had the sentiment to take her parents in, Mr. Reynolds would likely have been much further gone by that point.

Mitch’s energy was a nice change of pace for the family that was slowly folding inward like a circus tent after the final show. He was talking while reaching for a couple of glasses in the cabinet.

“Everybody’s running around at work trying to do multiple jobs.”

“Sounds familiar,” Bert interjected.

“You know, when I made the jump from Sears a couple years back it was mostly for salary and benefits, not necessarily growth potential. I kept asking myself if that made sense. But, look at it now. People aren’t upgrading washers and dryers. But they’re going to come to the drug store and buy shampoo. There’s not much of a choice. I’d love to say I predicted all of that, but I kinda lucked into it. CVS doesn’t have the layoffs that Sears does. It’s like being on a hill during a flood. You’re not perfectly safe, but you’re safer. Kelly, how’s your stuff going? I know when Product, what was it..?”

“Wave.”

“Yeah, Product Wave purchased you guys there were some hiccups. You guys past that?”

The daffodil in her bay window caught her eye for a second as she thought how to answer. “Um, yeah, we’re doing OK. I’m not in the numbers, but I’ve got a feeling the first quarter wasn’t so hot.” Kelly continued to search for a good way to summarize everything.

Mitch sensed he had put her on the spot. “I think we’ve got an opening in payroll. I think it’s payroll.”

“CVS, Kelly,” Mrs. Reynolds re-stated as if CVS was some sort of Rolex compared to PW’s Seiko-styled time-keeping.

“I mean, you can look into it, Mitch. I appreciate it, but I’m not really looking to bounce around. I’ve got friends at PW. I know the system. Management doesn’t really listen to me, but they don’t listen to anybody…I’m probably going to wait it out there. It’s a paycheck, you know. We’re lucky to have jobs. Look at Di. She doesn’t choose to not work. It just happens for a while.” She reached up and scratched her head while looking at her sister. “I get calls every day from recruiters. I got this job through a recruiter, but he had been in HR and knew the kind of experience and person this job required. These recruiters that keep calling are like twenty-two years old trying to place people like me who are in the middle of their careers. Those kids have never even seen an office. How the hell do they know where I fit? The worse thing I could do is take one of their jobs; they get a three grand commission, and I sit around wondering what the hell I’ve done. I’d be better off sitting at home with Dad. At least then I wouldn’t be alone in trying to figure out what’s going on. That right, Danny?” Kelly smiled as she looked at her father lovingly. She missed those days where he would cover her in shoulders and pound his advice into her ear like tack nails. Those days weren’t coming back. He was a magic eight ball; expressions in short bursts when you shook him.

“Right as rain, little miss. Right as rain.” His eyes were sharp and it lifted everyone to see him smile.

# # #

“Bud Light, alright?” Tim’s neighbor, Mark handed over the can to Tim and sat on the brownish afghan quilt covering the couch.

“Yeah, that’s fine,” he looked at the blue of the can as if it were somehow different at his neighbor’s condo than his before popping it. He slurped the first sip while Mark spoke.

“Sorry, there’s a little issue with the ham. Uh, she’ll get it.” He leaned in with a whisper, “Look at me. I should freakin’ be in there cookin.’ I get sugar-mama’d practically every other day.

His wife Janet spoke up from the kitchen. Her smoky voice echoed, “Don’t worry, it’ll just be a few more minutes.”

“Not a problem at all,” Tim said confidently. He was concerned that they were being too kind to him in asking him over for Easter. That’s a pretty big holiday. He had been over probably close to five times and never returned the favor. It wasn’t intentional. Tim just wanted things to get better. Then he’d have the work guys over and Mark and Janet. Yeah, there were good times on the horizon. He just needed some motivation. “I’m just really lucky you guys were stickin’ around here and thought of me. Let me know if I can help with anything, Janet.”

“Nah, everything is good. You know, one of the burners on the stove went right before Christmas. We haven’t had the money to replace it so it slows us down a bit. It’s on the list, I guess. Right, Mark? We need new carpets, bathroom upgrade…the place is pretty beat up.” Hair in a ponytail Janet snuck into the threshold of the kitchen to be a member in the conversation. She was in a faded 3M sweatshirt and slippers. Tim didn’t mind that they didn’t dress up for their guest, though Janet wasn’t always frumpy. Sometimes he’d see her coming in at night. She still had a figure in the right outfit.

“You guys don’t have to apologize for anything. My place is a sty. I like that picture.” He gestured at a framed poster on the wall. It was the four early Beatles with Japanese characters in deep reds, oranges, and purples. It read “Tokyo ’64” down the side in English.

“Yeah, I picked that up in California a few years back when I had a job that would actually send me places. Pretty cool piece. You like the Beatles? Actually you seem like more of a Stones guy.”

Tim didn’t know much about music, investing too often in silence, a losing investment. “Eh, I don’t know. I like it all. I just like the colors of that…that one.”

“Now my job just sends me to the unemployment office for travel.” Mark pulled lightly at his own beard as he grinned, “You ever been unemployed, Tim?”

“Yeah, once, but not for too long. Not for seven months.”

Mark nodded, “Well it sucks. It’s hard on both of us for obvious reasons. Every day you wonder, ‘should I just quit trying to find something? Go back to school and get another degree in something? I…we don’t have the money to really do that. Now, if they could guarantee me a job, a solid job, at the end I’d get a freakin’ loan and do it in a heart-beat. Who wants to sit around all day looking for jobs? Look at me, I’m not getting any sexier. You start to get paranoid too. It’s like the steroids in baseball, right? Most of the guys that do ‘em are successful while only some of the guys who are clean do good. Some of the other guys who are clean get replaced by cheats. Why do some guys have jobs and I don’t? I’m a good software programmer. Are all of the programmers who have jobs better than me? No, some of them knew the right people or found the right situation. Some of them must have lied on their resume. I guess, if we were put in that position…Heaven forbid Janet lost her job, I’d start making shit up too. See where that gets me.”

Tim was surprised a bit at Mark’s anxiety, but he understood it too. Janet peeled herself off of the wall she was leaning on and went back in the kitchen. Mark eased back on the couch.

“It’s just hard because…well, all the experts say ‘just find your passion and things will fall into place.’ What if there’s no jobs left in your passion or worse yet your passion fired you? Then wad’ya got?” Mark looked away for a second. “Hey man, sorry for being all serious and stuff, but having all of this free time makes your brain crazy.”

“Yeah, I know. If I didn’t have my job when I was going through the divorce…those guys were like life-savers. Seriously. I’d leave there laughing and then take my medicine when I got home and had to stare at an empty house,” Tim admitted. “Things are getting better slowly. We’ll see what Obama can do. I guess you gotta put your faith in something.”

# # #

Lisa felt sometimes like she was slowly becoming the personification of the crucified Jesus ornament that showed up once a year at her parents’ front door. She had no idea where it was the rest of the year, but it always got pulled out of some softened ancient box having shed a little more lacquer than the previous Easter weekend. Somehow Jesus tended to look sadder every year. Lisa still called it “Sow Jesus” stemming from a toddler who couldn’t pronounce the word for crucifixion in Portuguese, only catching the last syllable. Loving parents latched on to their little girl’s deficiency soon memorializing it in the kitchen among the tall-standing aunts and grandmothers and on the patio with folded up uncles and grandfathers. For all of this grief over the years she had earned title to Sow Jesus when her elders become limited to ornamental memories themselves, but there had been no white gown for Lisa permanently affecting her status within the family. She could smell the disappointment cooking in the kitchen as soon as she passed by Sow Jesus. He seemed to say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t do enough for my people,” but she couldn’t apologize for her choices.

It was a different house in Dorchester than the one Lisa and her siblings grew up in, but in these corners of the city you never traded in your faith and you never traded in your furniture. Lisa’s grandmother was the sun sitting smaller each year despite the cushions of the royal chair being plumped for her arrival. Revolving around her were eighty-nine years of laughter, sorrow, and copious great-grandkids, some menacing, some angelic, others just growing up. The kitchen was alive too with heat and furious rhapsodizing of memories, some of which were so old they didn’t have an English translation. Only steps away through the screen door the men huddled on the covered section of the patio to talk about the wives and finances, to make up stories to sustain the belly while the lamb roasted and the folar was prepared.

As much as Lisa hungered for this type of reunion, she was no longer sure of her place. She had been a grandchild that danced around the living room. She had been a young lady who went right from first communion to baking apprentice. They were proud of her for tackling college while her other cousins spent nights in garages drinking and fixing cars that already worked. That was years ago, and they continue to pull out this dream as worn out as Sow Jesus. Lisa would still joke or tell tall tales to get a rise from anyone who will listen. She didn’t want to be a clown, but her place in the family circle had changed. While her siblings and cousins knew Lisa was everything the family needed, the older generation was faithful to marriage and children. Unlike PW management, the people running the family told her exactly what they wanted, but in both cases Lisa couldn’t quite figure out where her needs fit in anymore.

As she set her coat down on the bed, the floor creaked. She couldn’t be sure if it ached from the spring rain or was just trying to get a word in edge-wise among the vociferous Portuguese. Walking through the threshold she physically bumped into her cousin Ernie who was on his way to the bathroom. They tried to exchange pleasantries in the hallway, but he kept having to swing his hips from side to side to allow somebody’s kid to rush past. Everything was madness until they pulled themselves back into the bedroom.

“Lis, how’s work going?” They shared the same skin tone that after a long winter made them almost the pale inner color of an almond where soon they would each blossom back to an outer nut brown. While cousins on her father’s side seemed to share that trait, Ernie had eyes that were almost too small for the lids he was given. It made him look sad or tired even though things were OK for him.

“Oh, you know, it’s OK. Same shit, different day. If people keep getting laid off one of these days I’m going to be manager.”

“You get a company car?”

“No, I think PW’s cut that out of the budget. Maybe a free oil change coupon. If I’m lucky maybe it won’t even be expired. Or maybe they can get me a moped. I can wear a…whaddathey call that? A jump suit with all the advertising on it. Blowing down the streets at thirty miles an hour.”

“Yeah, they can get you one of those sweet HANS racing helmets. Oh, get a second one for your boyfriend whenever you get one,” he laughed. His chest and shoulders shook in delight as if he were dancing with the humor.

“Don’t start with me Ernie,” Lisa said while raising her fists in an unintentional impression of today’s Muhammad Ali. “How’s business? You living down by Fall River too, right?”

Ernie was about ten years younger than Lisa. When you’ve got that much family, black sheep seem to beget more black sheep. Ernie had an opportunity to choose his color. Most of the family was blue-collar making a life for themselves both legitimately and under the table, but nothing truly criminal. Lisa was one of the few who got to college and was making her way in the white-collar world. She spoke the two languages: office politico and city street braggadocio. She knew the paths her siblings and cousins could take. She knew the subtle difference between hanging out under-age drinking at a garage and what gangs did. Lisa knew where Ernie was sliding. It was in the genes and she was going make it stop.

When the economy was booming in the late 1990s one of her clients was looking to get into selling cars to Latinos, Vietnamese, Portuguese and some of the other minority groups around. He needed a guy who knew cars and could speak Portuguese, especially in Fall River near Rhode Island, a huge untapped market of people who wanted flashy cars. That’s not to say all of the car loans were beneficial to the borrowers, but despite certain business practices it was the perfect spot for Ernie, and he earned some really sizable commissions over the years. It was better than watching a cousin rot on the street.

“Yeah, I’m down there. I’m thinking about moving, though. Things are not good. Rhode Island’s getting’ killed for jobs. Breaks your heart, you know. Between people not able to pay off their loans and guys showing up every day looking to see if we’re hiring. The only job we got is to freakin’ impound more cars. The city’s like breakin’ down too. My neighbor had his house broken into and they stole his copper pipes. What the fuck is that? They’ll snap your antenna right off the car for the aluminum. You remember how bad Dorchester and Roxbury was in the early 1980s? Oh shit, it’s just as bad.”

“So you’re going to move?”

“Yeah, probably up north a bit. Maybe one of the suburbs…but I still love working at the dealership. They really do right by their people. We had to lay off a couple of ‘em. A mechanic and an admin girl, but everybody else is hoping that the economy will switch. Sales are down a lot, but the thing about having no jobs around there is that people have to have cars to go to the far out jobs. Cars break down or cars get stolen. We got cars.”

“You guys should make that your motto,” she said with a squinty smile. It was ironic that Ernie, so untrained in business, viewed lay-offs as nothing, but a business decision done for the greater good, while Lisa took each layoff as a personal affront. She wanted to give him that same fire, but she was already challenged by her colleagues at work.