The Contract

by Sheila Grinell

  “Well, if they’re traditional, don’t they want him to take care of his kid?

  “He has nothing to give right now. I can’t ask him.”

  “But you can ask me.” Resentment filled her chest. Evidently it was okay for Diane to screw a loser because her big sister would bail her out.

  Diane looked straight ahead. “I’m sorry.” She drove the rest of the way silently. Jo withheld comment, not trusting what her angry gut might prompt her to say.

  Their parents waited on the sagging front porch, grim-faced, as if braced for a fight. Jo put her roller bag in the bedroom she and Diane had shared as children and followed the family into the boys’ room, now devoted to Joey. Against the wall, a hospital bed with raised rails, cables leading to a monitor, a cart holding a jumble of braces, bottles, cotton balls, tongue depressors. In the center of the room, a padded playpen with a small figure lying inside. He was dressed in a blue-and-white sweat suit, and he lay still, looking peaceful. Diane lifted him in her arms and turned toward Jo. She picked up Joey’s hand in hers and laid it against Jo’s cheek. Diane said, “Here’s Aunt Jo. She cares about you, too.”

  Jo felt a pang—a flash of love, then fear. Love for Diane, despite everything, and fear that Joey would never heal. Diane would wither, and they would all suffer. Jo cringed and recoiled.

  Diane said, “It’s okay. You won’t hurt him. You can hold him.”

  “No, I’m clumsy with babies. Maybe later.” She left the room shortly to calm herself.

  After dinner, Jo held Joey in her lap as they sat making plans. She offered to help find specialists and additional caregivers, and to pay for them, provided Diane contributed and stayed clean. Diane looked relieved and tried to embrace her. Jo brushed her aside. In the morning, they parted well, and things stayed amicable for a while, until their mother called to tell Jo that Diane had been seeing the baby’s father again, and who knew what they were up to. Jo called her sister immediately.

  “Why are you seeing him? Is he going to support you? Or are you getting high?”

  “He has no money. I want Joey to know his father. That’s all.”

  “Mom says you’ve been seeing a lot of him. All for Joey?”

  Diane sighed. “I need someone to talk to who’s not Mom or my boss. I have no one else.”

  “That’s totally stupid. You know he’s a loser.”

  “Nothing bad is happening! I would never endanger Joey!” Her voice shrank. “I just need some comfort once in a while. He’s my friend.”

  “What do you call ‘comfort’?”

  “Jo, please.”

  “Are you lying to me?”

  “I never lie to you. Don’t you know that?”

  “I can’t stomach it. If you keep seeing him, count me out.” She hung up. She could taste her disappointment, like an acrid coating on the tongue, and she swore to butt out of Diane’s life. Diane would never do right by her. Diane didn’t care.

  She did not completely abandon Diane, of course. After their father died, everyone treated Jo as “the man in the family.” She continued to pay for Joey’s treatments for several years but held herself aloof. Diane eventually got a degree and a decent job. Jo visited a few times to satisfy herself that Diane and Joey were safe, which was all she dared hope for. The sisters lost touch after a while, for a long while. Jo’s resentment faded in the press of business. Then Diane showed up in Oakland with a gangly teenager who reasoned like a nine-year-old and adored his mom. And Jo gave her a job. A job she did to the best of her ability, bless her screwy little heart.

  PROPOSAL

  7

  You could always find good Italian food in Oakland. Immigrants from northern Italy had coalesced there around the turn of the twentieth century. In California’s Mediterranean climate, they grew familiar crops and sold the produce. They established restaurants and delis, some of which still operated. After the 1906 earthquake, more Italians and many people of means came over from San Francisco, the latter settling in the foothills on the eastern edge of town. The city divided into “the flatlands,” where ordinary workers and successive waves of immigrants lived, and “the hills,” where the fortunate enjoyed fog-free views of the Bay. The D-Three house stood at the edge of the flats, at the base of the hills, and D-Three sometimes fraternized with gentry, sometimes with hoi polloi. Jo attended museum and gallery openings, while Ev collected olive oils in various colors and flavors, ranging the bottles on top of the kitchen cabinets. Most of the time, Jo and Ev stayed home, she running the business, he tinkering.

  This morning, Jo came downstairs early to make a blow-up of the Saudi RFP that had arrived via email the day before, after a month of silence. It was a request for a proposal to define a children’s museum in the capital that would later support satellites in the provinces. Everyone on staff had read it. The language was grandiose and formal and so unspecific that a bidder could answer with boiler plate and brags. Unwilling to vamp, Jo and Ev had discussed their options and finally decided last night to invent a scenario to show how D-Three thinks. Their proposal would constitute a model of their design process rather than a conventional bid. She was betting the Saudis would appreciate their integrity.

  Last night, preparing for bed upstairs, Jo had fretted about the competition. She’d told Ev she expected Phil Owen to trot out the glamour, to flaunt the fact that he had taught in two European capitals and could arrange interviews with museum directors in London, Paris, and Istanbul. She’d wanted to counterpunch. Ev said it wasn’t necessary because Owen hadn’t talked to a kid in a decade and he wouldn’t know what to say if he ran into one. Imitating Owen, he puffed up his cheeks and got in her face. He called her “young lady” and offered to shake her hand. Jo took his hand and bit it. Ev dropped the Owen face and chased her around the bedroom. He caught her and tossed her onto the bed. He covered her body with his, and they began to undress each other. They slid into lovemaking and afterwards into sleep. It sometimes happened that way, work segueing into love, although most of the time Jo tried to keep these parts of their lives separate.

  To prepare for the staff meeting that would soon begin, Jo tacked the RPF blow-up onto the wall next to the white board and assembled a pile of colored markers. She underlined three sentences in blue, the ones she wanted the staff to keep foremost in mind as they ran through the design procedure. She felt in her element. She went to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee and another pot of hot water and listened for Ev upstairs in the shower. In deference to their ancient water heater, he was supposed to turn on the washing machine, into which she’d loaded their soiled sheets, after the shower. And he was likely to forget. Not that he’d forget their pleasure.

  Carlos was the first to arrive, carrying a platter of antipasto and two loaves of bread for the team to share for lunch. He said he figured they could use a little nourishment because you need to feed active brains. A squat, wide man, a second-generation Mexican–American who looked like a dock worker, Carlos had a light touch with a pencil. He illustrated D-Three’s documents with unexpected whimsy. He’d been a construction laborer before attending tech school to learn computer-aided design, and he shared Ev’s feel for materials and tools. He had a pretty, young wife, two daughters, and an older son he also loved to brag about. He was a family man, and D-Three was family.

  Andy arrived next, cutting school to spend the morning with them. At the start of a project, Jo usually sent someone to photograph an established museum that could be considered comparable. Then they’d use the photos for inspiration. It was Andy’s turn to travel, and, evidently, he wanted to, classes be damned. Whenever Jo prodded him to finish his degree, he complained the teachers and equipment were out of date. Jo urged him to finish anyway. He ignored her advice, and she exploited his availability, with only a twinge of guilt, because he was so good at coding. Looking sleepy, Andy slouched past her to the kitchen. He put two green teabags in his mug, filled it with hot water, and sat at his desk.

  Becca arrived with
an odd expression on her face. Diane entered at her heels, brandishing a bag of cookies. When the two women had deposited their belongings at their desks, Jo called out to Ev, still upstairs, and then walked over to the white board, red marker in hand. The staff pulled up chairs in front of her. Ev ambled in, with wet hair and the distracted look that signaled concentration on some internal matter. He pulled up a stool as Jo wrote a column of words at the left edge of the board: WHY, WHO, WHAT, HOW. She shot Diane a look that said “ready to take notes?” Diane’s role in a brainstorm session.

  “We’re doing a scenario. The best topic, given Ev’s current fascination, is tops. Tops as toys, as craft objects, as science lessons. Kids love playing with them. There could be a cultural connection. You know, the Sufi whirling dervishes? The proposal is due in two weeks.” She wrote “playing with tops” on the board.

  Becca said, “Why so soon? Normal clients would give us a month.”

  Jo let the comment pass. “Let’s make some assumptions. Say we have a fifteen-hundred-square-foot storefront in a shopping mall in a hot, dry, city with no children’s museums, maybe no museums at all, and only one small zoo nearby. I think we need to first show the community what a children’s museum is like.” She wrote “demonstrate” on the board next to WHY. “The client can’t expect people to patronize something absolutely foreign to them.”

  Ev said, “We need to invite kids to spin things and let their brains spin.”

  Jo winked at him. She wrote “engagement.”

  Carlos said, “We’d better spin their bodies. Give them a gyroscope or two.”

  Jo wrote “excitement.”

  Andy said, “Why gyros? Riding a bicycle teaches you plenty about angular momentum.” Andy had studied physics before dropping out of school the first time.

  Carlos said, “Yeah, but it’s not special.”

  “I’ll call over to Cal and ask if there’s research on kids and tops.” Cal meant the educational psychology group at the university whom they consulted whenever they started work on a new topic. Jo insisted on grounding their imaginations in data.

  Becca said, “Let’s show a variety of tops from around the world.”

  Jo frowned. “Not sure they care about the rest of the world. The RFP states they don’t want your typical collections. Let’s move on for now.”

  Becca said, “So they don’t want a museum.”

  “Most children’s museums don’t have collections.” She picked up a green marker and poised it beside WHO. “Remember Spock’s dictum, ‘it’s not about stuff, but for somebody.’”

  Diane asked, “The baby doctor said that?”

  “No, his son. One of the early thinkers about children’s museums.” She didn’t want to waste time educating Diane. “In fifteen hundred square feet, we’ll have room for only one age group. I suggest we do five- to seven-year-olds. Maybe their parents already think about careers. You remember they want us to prepare toddlers for careers in renewable energy.” She pointed to one of the underlined sentences.

  Ev said, “Be nice. But I agree. Older kids can do spinning games.”

  Jo wrote “five to seven” on the board.

  Becca asked, “What about the parents?” “They can spin the bottle.” She paused; no one laughed. “The little ones will come with family. The five-to-sevens will come in school groups as well as with family. Boys one day, girls the next.”

  Becca asked, “They’re segregated?”

  “They go to separate schools.”

  Andy asked, “Is there an IT angle?”

  “I don’t know.” She moved the green marker to point to WHAT. She addressed Andy. “I think you should go to that place in Calgary, the kids’ museum inside a science center. Take pics and talk to them about apps. Maybe there’s a career app already.”

  Ev said, “Don’t push the career thing.”

  Jo flashed back to the last time Ev had ignored a client’s directive. The client was a manufacturer of specialty equipment. For a geology convention, he had asked Ev to make weather maps for all the planets. Instead, Ev built a model of the Earth’s atmosphere, complete with wind, in which you could fly a tiny kite and feel “convection” caused by a hidden heater. The client was incensed and refused to pay. At the time, she’d been angry at Ev for not listening. Later, she’d admired Ev’s ingenuity; his piece would have garnered far more attention than a bunch of maps. The client had been too rigid, not sophisticated. Unlike the Saudis. Next to WHAT she wrote “experiment with tops” and, in parenthesis to denote secondary status, “careers.” She turned to Becca.

  “Can you find out what the kids study in school, ages five to seven? And anything you can about the teachers.” She pointed to another underlined sentence. “The director wants us to connect to the curriculum. Her assistant might be helpful. I’ll send you her email. Carlos, get everything about gyroscopes and anything that spins at other museums. And find out if anyone has a top-making activity. We’ll reconvene Friday morning to discuss HOW.” She tapped the marker on the word.

  The staff dispersed, replacing chairs behind their desks and tables. Ev stretched off his stool and came to her.

  “What’s my assignment?” He tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear.

  “Keep on inventing. I’m thinking we should go all the way. Ask them to set up a gallery somewhere so we can mount a demonstration and check out how families behave around the exhibits. How about you sketch what a demonstration might look like?”

  “Okay.” He pecked her cheek and walked away.

  She went to her desk and opened her Contacts. She rolled up her mental sleeves as the screen populated. She always liked the early stage of design, when every idea exuded potential. Your excitement mounted as you added each new discovery to the collective concept. And then the team resolved the unruly accumulation into a singular, elegant notion that you would spend the next six months of your life amplifying and adjusting. This time, Jo felt an extra buzz: it might be possible to operate as a fifth column to infect mothers and daughters with disruptive ideas. She picked up her phone to call her contact at Cal.

  Early the next morning, still dressing, Jo heard Becca enter the office and call up to her, asking to use her computer. Jo pulled on a shirt and went downstairs to find Becca seated at her desk.

  “What’s going on? Why do you need my computer?”

  “Mugged on the bus. I preferred giving up my tablet to being knifed. I want to make notes on what I learned about Saudi schools while I remember.” She held her hands over the keys, looked straight ahead at the screen.”

  “Look at me. Are you all right?”

  “Of course not. Oakland’s a cesspool. It never gets any better. I would move if not for this job.”

  “It has gotten better. The Black Panthers give tours now instead of rioting.”

  “Can I just get on with it? Working for the Saudis is bad enough.”

  Jo motioned Becca to move aside. She typed in her password, asked “Are you physically hurt?”

  Becca shook her head and took the seat Jo vacated.

  In the kitchen, Jo made tea and wondered how long it would take for Becca to come around. The girl puzzled her.

  Rebekah Howard had first come to D-Three for a summer internship as an undergraduate. She’d found Jo’s name at the alumni office at VCU, where she studied design, and made a cold call. She roomed with three students in Berkeley but spent most of her time at Jo’s side, watching every move and following instructions to the letter. When she graduated, she asked for work and Jo hired her on the condition that she visit her parents at least once a year. Jo didn’t want to be in loco parentis, even figuratively. Becca came from an old Yankee family that, apparently, had money enough. She was the middle child, a gangly girl with mousy blond hair. She’d had to learn to speak up for herself, first at the dinner table and then out in the world. She trooped around like an Amazon, but she was easily bruised. Jo didn’t mind her sharp tongue, Ev liked her work, and you could trust her to fol
low through.

  Jo put down her teacup and went to look over Becca’s shoulder while she typed.

  “Your buddy Myriam was helpful,” Becca said.

  Jo read:

  • Schools are elementary, middle, secondary as in US—only a few kindergartens.

  • Some student populations in big cities are large, but majority of schools are rural and tiny (less than 100 pupils) because each tribe requires its own school.

  • Subject matter in elementary is Arabic language arts and Islamic religious studies, with only a smattering of math, science and art; other subjects don’t start until 4th grade!!!

  • Afterschool programs for older students (mostly boys) exist in some cities.

  • There are two types of teachers: older, experienced ones who focus on classroom management; younger ones trained in progressive methods but lacking materials. They do not get along.

  • Transpor….

  Jo interrupted, “They don’t make our job easy, do they? I have no idea how we can connect to that curriculum.”

  “According to Myriam, that’s not a problem because the teachers know how to relate to the modern world. She says the real problem is transportation. Poor women in the countryside don’t have access. Even where there are buses, the more conservative parents won’t let their girls ride for afterschool activities.”

  “Then we’d better concentrate on school groups.”

  “Didn’t you say you wanted to reach the unreachable? You’re compromising already.”

  “Don’t be silly. Anything we could do would be a plus.”

  “Or it could be so compromised it reinforces the orthodoxy. It could be window dressing to make the patriarchs look progressive while they hang onto control. There’s danger here!”

  “Do you know something I don’t know, or are you objecting on principle?”

  “Just look at the RFP! Support the national STEM initiative and the ten-year economic plan. We’re talking toddlers!”