Читать книгу Souvenir - Therese Fowler - Страница 15

EIGHT

Meg sat in the kitchen Saturday morning, coffee in hand, notebooks stacked on the table before her. Brian had gone for his usual Saturday breakfast with his cronies, first dropping Savannah at Rachel’s so they could go … someplace; Savannah had told her, but Meg, distracted by the diaries and her ambivalence about reading them, had passed Savannah off to Brian and thought no more about her plans.

The house was peaceful now, which made it easier to decide to try reading an entry or two. Just to prove to herself that they were frivolous, that she could throw the whole lot away without regret.

She paged through, sampling the entries, surprisingly compelled to turn the pages. Even the shortest of her mother’s comments revealed pieces of her past – their past – she hadn’t seen before.

June 8, 1985

Meggie’s been hired on at the bank. We need her here, but we need her there, too. Or somewhere that pays good. The Lord knows the money will be useful! We had to let our health insurance lapse, so I just pray none of us takes sick. Blessed Mother, watch over us all.

So they’d gone without insurance; the very thought of it was frightening, even long after the fact. She remembered her mother’s pinched face from back then, the worry lines ringing her mouth and wrinkling her forehead. It hadn’t mattered how early Meg got up in the morning, her mother was always up before her. No matter how late she stayed up, her mother was still up too. Little wonder her mother’s blood pressure was high.

‘June eighth …’ she said. The day she met Brian.

Her first day of work at Hamilton Savings and Loan. Her training was set to begin at ten, but first she was required to meet her boss – Brian, who was the owner’s son, only six years older than herself. Belinda Cordero, head teller, led her to his office doorway and disappeared, leaving her feeling self-conscious and somehow wrong for this moment in time, as if she’d been dropped into the scene by mistake. Her real life was waiting in the paddocks – horses that needed to be exercised, tack that awaited repair. She wanted to bolt.

Brian was sitting at a desk that looked older and more distinguished than he was. He wore an off-white linen jacket and a pastel pink shirt, à la Sonny Crockett from Miami Vice. His hair was longish and styled just right, meant to dazzle all the women and show the men he was on top of the trends.

He sat back and waved her in. ‘Hi, come on in, Meg. I’m Brian Hamilton.’

She took three small steps and stopped. His office smelled of old leather and young ambition, embodied by an expensive cologne she would forever associate with him. She took one more step and stopped.

Brian folded his hands behind his head. ‘Welcome. We’re glad to have you as part of the Hamilton team. Eileen tells me you’re a rising senior at North Marion High?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Good in math?’

She nodded. She did her best to keep eye contact, the way her father had told her she should, but it was hard. Brian kept smiling at her as if he knew that her black polyester skirt and ruffled brown blouse came from a thrift shop. Her shoes, too – though she hoped he couldn’t see them while she stood there in front of his desk. It was the same outfit she’d worn for her interview the week before, and she suspected Ms Guillen had told him everything.

She’d gotten the job out of sympathy, she was sure. Everyone in Ocala seemed to know how tenuous things were for the Powells; her father broadcasted his failures as loudly as his successes, afternoons at the co-op. She had applied for a position with the janitorial staff, the job advertised in the Ocala Star-Banner, but during her interview with Eileen Guillen, director of human resources, she’d talked about her plan to study accounting after she graduated. Because of that, instead of cleaning floors and toilets in the historic building that Adair Hamilton had rebuilt right after the 1883 fire, Meg would become a part-time teller. ‘We like to give our people the best possible start,’ Eileen had told her. ‘’Specially those who need it most.’

Brian said, ‘I like math a lot, myself. My degree’s in economics, and I’ll have my MBA soon. Do you plan to go to college?’

‘I hope to.’

‘Terrific.’ He clapped his hands, an exclamation point. ‘We like our people to be motivated beyond all this marble and brass.’ He stood and offered his hand. ‘It’s great to have you here. I know Belinda’s waiting for me to turn you back over to her, so I’d better let you go.’

At first Meg thought she’d rather be cleaning toilets; working as a teller meant being visible, presentable, and this was a challenge for a girl whose best clothes were jeans and T-shirts without patches or stains. She and her mother scoured the thrift stores for decent professional wear with some success, but being dressed up in skirts and heels every afternoon was like wearing a costume. A costume that wasn’t quite as nice as the ones the other tellers wore. Brian went out of his way, though, to help her feel like she was a valuable part of the Hamilton team – that’s how he always talked about the tellers, as a team. If her white blouse was dingy because they’d run out of detergent, he overlooked it. If the fake leather on the heels of her shoes was peeling away, he overlooked that too. Was she good with people? Was she careful with procedures and funds? Those were the things that mattered. By the time school started again, her senior year, she’d been converted to permanent employee status, which Belinda said was ‘super high praise’.

Brian made a point to befriend her. He would find her during her breaks, ask the occasional question about their farm or her family, her boyfriend, her aspirations in life. She thought he did this with everyone – they all talked about what a hands-on manager he was, how he was destined to be a big success – and only learned later that he’d singled her out. Sometimes he joined her and a few of the other employees at the Trough, after work – a treat she allowed herself only every other Friday. Carson never went. ‘Too many guys with ties,’ he joked. She went anyway, wanting to fit in if she could. They all talked about their career goals, and once, she admitted that her dream job wasn’t in finance at all, but in medicine. Maybe veterinary, maybe human, she wasn’t sure. ‘I’m used to doctoring everyone and everything already,’ she’d said. ‘My sisters, the horses, our cats … I’ve helped with foaling – and I even gave our pony stitches once.’

Brian slapped the tabletop. ‘Then do it,’ he said, surprising her. ‘Figure out what you want and how to make it happen, and do it.’

But surely he knew how impossible that was for her, for any Powell girl. Every paycheck she earned went to her parents, to help pay for groceries. Trying for medical school of either type was as futile as trying to use her arms to fly.

Brian. He’d known so well how to play her, when the time came.