Читать книгу Because You Loved Me - M. William Phelps - Страница 13

While they were at work during the day on August 6, Chris McGowan and Jeanne Dominico didn’t talk much beyond a quick, passing hello. Chris stopped by Jeanne’s cubicle once in a while to “chitchat,” but it was minimal at best. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to talk, or had trouble communicating. Jeanne was adamant when they started dating that their relationship not affect their job performances.

“It’s not fair to our employer.”

Chris agreed. Work wasn’t a place for romance. They could say hi, certainly. Maybe eat lunch together once in a while, if their schedules permitted it. But that was going to be the extent of it.

At around 4:30 P.M., Chris walked over to Jeanne’s desk, which was on the opposite side of the building from where he sat. It was the end of Chris’s day. He wanted to stop by and tell Jeanne he was leaving. Ever since they’d started dating, Chris rarely left the office without stopping by Jeanne’s desk and “touching base.” They had decided earlier that afternoon Chris was going to his house after work to grab a quick shower, change and meet Jeanne at her Dumaine Avenue house between 7:00 and 7:30 P.M. Jeanne mentioned something about picking up dinner on the way home. There was a pizza place, Ciao’s, near the house. Jeanne loved it. On certain nights, beginning at five o’clock, the price of a pizza was determined by the time a customer called: 5:00 P.M. meant a five-dollar pizza.

“Jeanne was a penny-pincher,” Chris remembered with an admiring laugh in his voice. “She looked to save wherever she could. She would have called Ciao’s exactly at five P.M., not a minute sooner or later. I know her.”

Approaching the aisle of Jeanne’s cubicle, Chris poked his head around the corner. “I’m heading home to change, shower and check my mail. I’ll be over around seven, seven-thirty.”

Jeanne had a routine every night when she returned home from work at five-thirty. She’d clean up after the mess the kids left during the day, something that bothered Chris, and then tend to her many other single-mom suburban chores.

“I told her they needed to clean up after themselves. The kids would trash the house. And that’s the type of person Jeanne was. She wouldn’t think twice about working all day and going home to clean up. She didn’t like it when I’d come over while she was cleaning up after them, because I’d get on her to make the kids do it.”

As Chris hung around Jeanne’s cubicle, itching to leave, Jeanne said, “I called the kids. I’m gonna pick up a couple of pizzas on my way home.”

“Do you need anything else?” asked Chris. “Soda? Chips?”

Jeanne was totally absorbed in her work. She had spent the day training a coworker and they were still engaged in their work as the clock ticked its way toward five. Jeanne had received flowers from Chris the previous day, August 5. The flowers weren’t supposed to arrive until August 14, which was Chris and Jeanne’s anniversary of meeting each other. But the flower shop botched the order and Jeanne ended up with the flowers that Monday. When coworkers asked Jeanne about the flowers, she said with a smile, “Just because.”

“She beamed when people stopped and asked about the flowers,” said Marge Alcorn, the woman she was training that day.

“No, we don’t need anything. I’ll see you later, honey. OK?” said Jeanne as Chris stood by.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“That’s fine.”

“No wine…anything?”

“I think we’re all set,” said Jeanne. She was focused on her job, engrossed in the training.

“I love you,” Chris said as he prepared to walk away. It was a mandatory custom for Chris to send his affection to Jeanne before he left work each day. As it always did, that one subtle whisper of devotion turned Jeanne’s attention from her work back to Chris. She smiled, put her pencil down and reached up to hug him.

“I love you, too.”

It was vital to Chris, he later noted, to let Jeanne know at every opportunity that he loved her. They said it to each other quite often. To the both of them, Chris insisted, it wasn’t three words couples say to each other under their breath, or in the middle of doing something else. When he was ten years old, Chris had lost his father. “That taught me that you never know when something is going to happen. I needed to tell Jeannie I loved her as often as I felt it. And before I left work every day, I said it—and meant it.”

Chris McGowan wore his business-cut black hair and thick mustache well. At five feet eight inches, Chris had put on a little weight into his late thirties and early forties, but wasn’t stout by any means. What was a little extra weight, anyway? He felt good, despite fighting some serious health issues. He and Jeanne were, according to many who knew them, the “perfect couple.” After years of dating, having both been involved in failed, foolish relationships, they had found a soul mate in each other and their life together had been trouble free the past three years.

“I have never seen two people,” a former coworker stated admiringly, “so positive and upbeat in my whole life.”

“The love of my life,” remembered Chris. “Jeannie was truly an angel. Not just to me, though, that’s important to note. But to anyone she came in contact with.”

Shortly after Chris left work, Jeanne wrapped up the training session with Marge for the day. Turning to her coworker, she said, “We’ll talk more about it tomorrow. OK?”

“Thank you, Jeanne,” said Marge. “I appreciate all your concern and help.” Marge had never met a coworker who cared so much about doing her job right.

“Jeanne could see I was stressed about the whole thing,” recalled Marge. “I had spent the entire day with her…[and] I wish I had known her better. I learned in that one day what everyone else already knew: she was an angel on earth. She only had concern for others.”

Packing things up, Marge said, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jeanne.”

“Have a great night, Marge.”