The Contract

by Sheila Grinell

  “This is a government project. It’s bureaucratic language.”

  “Ev doesn’t like it.” Becca grimaced. “Sometimes I can’t tell if you’re a Pollyanna, or you just blinker yourself, like the way you live in Oakland but you really don’t see it. And that whole business with Skinny Flynt.”

  “You’re way out of line.” Even now, Jo flushed with shame. “So how would you handle it, with your superior principles?”

  Becca looked surprised. “I’m not being superior. I’m trying to psych out the deal….”

  “Finish up. I need my computer before the meeting.” She turned away to hide her pique. Ideology was a waste of time. People should quit bellyaching and get to work. Or get out of the way. Politics had no place in business.

  She’d stubbed her political toe in those early days in Atlanta. A casual “girl-to-girl” talk about contraception with the wife of a museum trustee had led to her losing a job because her views were “insufficiently balanced.” She’d sworn off airing her views then—better to be silent than hungry—and managed to keep her nose clean. She told only Ev what she truly believed. She took a defensive posture that no reasonable person could call hypocrisy. She felt herself to be incorruptible.

  Noise at the front door. Carlos’s and Ev’s voices blended in the hallway. Soon the staff meeting would begin. She went to the white board and erased yesterday’s notes. She pulled the cap off a green marker; the familiar acid smell comforted her as she wrote the date at the top of the board.

  That evening, spinning scenario finally outlined to her satisfaction, Jo prepared for bed. Ev had not yet come upstairs. Still in his studio doodling pinwheels and windmills. D-Three had had a productive brainstorm, and if they suspended work on their other jobs, they had enough time to flesh out the outline before the proposal came due. She felt good about it. As she loosened her clothes, Becca’s challenge emerged in her mind, disturbing her, not because Becca had mocked her—no, she could count on the girl’s good will in the long run, but what if Becca were onto something? With some clients, you ran the risk of their turning on you six months down the line, or a year, or even two years into the work. They became afraid to offend some segment of the public, or afraid to spend enough money to finish the job properly. She didn’t expect cowardice from this client, and she didn’t expect them to run out of money. But should she anticipate being manipulated for some ulterior purpose?

  She heard a scratching sound, Ev strumming his fingers on the bedroom door. Jo thought his courtesy unnecessary—it’s okay to enter your own bedroom unannounced, she had said time and again—but he persisted. She told him to come in. He sat at the foot of the bed and untied his sneakers. She sat beside him.

  “Becca and I quarreled this morning. She said I’m being bamboozled by the Saudis. The project could be political cover. Do you think she has a point?”

  Ev shrugged and took off his socks.

  “She implied you agree with her.”

  He stood and pulled his T-shirt over his head. “There’s no way to know.”

  Jo raised her voice. “She’s so absolute. So exacting.”

  He sat to remove his jeans. “Becca never got enough hugs.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “She’s a good kid.” He headed for the bathroom. Over the noise of water filling the sink he called, “I need to go to the hardware store first thing tomorrow.”

  “Take your time. It’s Saturday.” He would, she knew, have nothing more to say.

  She lay back on the bed, hearing the medicine cabinet door squeak as Ev followed his bedtime routine. She resented his nonchalance, or what seemed like nonchalance but was actually his reluctance to continue talking. He refused to engage with political or strategic questions. Sometimes she thought him incapable of reasoning like an adult. But the flip side, his ability to sense the world as it appeared to children, earned their living. For a nanosecond, she speculated about what if they hadn’t married. She’d be running a different kind of business, for sure. Would she be happier? An unproductive line of thought.

  She roused herself and continued undressing. Becca’s doubt had wormed into her head. She hoped sleep would defuse it.

  8

  That night she dreamed about Chris Flynn, who morphed into Robbo, her first lover, who said something oblique and walked away from her, as he had in real life. She’d thought she’d put the affair to rest, but there it was poking up from below. She felt uneasy, and, somehow, ashamed at still caring about the loss of Robbo.

  It had happened in college. Jo’s parents had respected hard work, and she did, too. In high school, she added McDonald’s and then KFC to her daily load of childcare and homework. Pretty girls got distracted by boys and clothes; Jo saved pennies and did well enough to pay in-state tuition at VCU.

  College widened her world. She focused on her classes and job, but other peoples’ experiences intruded. She discovered there had been holes in her upbringing; she kept her own counsel. When Sally Ride flew into space, she cheered for spunky, hard-working women everywhere. When TIME magazine nominated “the computer” as man of the year, she thought “this is the way forward.” But she soon discovered she lacked aptitude for computers. She found a way to hitch her star to technology anyway by majoring in design. It turned out she was good at using a computer to graph information. She was also good at finishing projects on time.

  Jo did not attack her social life with the same vigor. She didn’t learn how to drink or flirt. She didn’t play sports. She had no money for clothes. She got around campus on an old bicycle with a rusty basket, unlike her roommate’s shiny car. She felt like an outsider, nose pressed to the ballroom window, bewildered by the dance. When dorm-mates invited her to join them, she claimed no interest. They mistook her standoffishness for disdain. She knew better. Junior year she challenged herself to get in the game. She decided to find a decent guy and sleep with him, like the other girls on her floor. She began to daydream about which of the men in her classes might accept an invitation to coffee. She had almost settled on a poetic-looking guy in a literature class when one of her teachers intervened. It seemed the design department was throwing a party for alumni who would be in town for a conference. The teacher suggested she come to scope out working in the field. She agreed.

  The night of the party, without consciously planning to, she dressed in her only filmy blouse, leaving it partially unbuttoned. At the design chairman’s home she asked for a glass of wine and sipped slowly, surveying the crowded room. After a beat, the department secretary, a myopic young woman who leaned into your shoulder when talking to you, came over. She whispered, “Do you see who’s here?”

  Jo shrugged.

  “The boss is gloating. His favorite alum brought a fancy architect. This guy’s hot. In all the magazines. Named Roberto something-or-other but he’s American. I’m going to talk to him.” She swayed a little and reached for the back of a chair. Jo bent to help her sit. As she straightened, a short, slender man with long, graying hair pushed back behind his ears approached. The secretary giggled.

  “Do you need assistance?” he said looking into Jo’s eyes. “Please call me Robbo …” nodding as if to apologize, “… silly nickname from childhood.”

  “I think she’ll be okay. We don’t usually party here.”

  Robbo raised his eyebrows. “How can they teach design without partying? You are missing something.”

  “Drinking?”

  Robbo laughed. “No, celebration. Every culture celebrates in its own way. A designer must make room for it.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Would you come to dinner with me in, say, half an hour? I haven’t eaten all day.”

  A hundred thoughts raced through her head. The secretary gave a little moan, and that clinched it. “Sure,” she said, “I haven’t eaten either.”

  She got tipsy at dinner. Robbo encouraged her to talk. She confessed to feeling isolated at VCU. He told her he had always felt so. She asked abo
ut his work. He said it kept him humble, made him realize he couldn’t do anywhere near as good a job as the Designer of the Universe. When she blanched, he laughed, saying he was paraphrasing Buckminster Fuller. They began to speculate about uses for geodesic domes, each more far-fetched than the last. After the meal, he put her in a cab to go home—he said he had another appointment that evening, otherwise he would have accompanied her—and she wanted to cry. Her head turned so hard it spun for days.

  He called her mid-week. It seemed he would be spending the next three months in Richmond, working on a commission. He invited her to party with him. She had never expected an elegant man to notice her, let alone like her. He told her he could show her love she’d never dreamed of. She wanted that dream. She spent a week high on the thought of him, juicy as never before. They met for coffee and drinks. He said he found her refreshing, so talented and attractive yet not the slightest bit spoiled. She found him intoxicating beyond words.

  So she offered herself to Robbo, and he took her. After the initial embarrassment, she luxuriated in his attentions. She wanted to practice love Robbo’s way. Several nights a week, she waited for him outside his rented apartment. She spent the night with him, happy and grateful for her good fortune. A man of the world admired her, a man whom the world admired. A grown man, who looked past the superficial and found her attractive. A man who valued her person, plain and simple. A man who could teach her so much.

  Then Robbo finished his commission and prepared to leave Richmond. She begged to keep seeing him. He appeared disinterested. She asked for his home address. He said his wife would not wish to meet her. He had never mentioned a wife. And she had not thought to ask. She retreated, crushed.

  She did not speak or write to him. For weeks after his departure she flagellated herself for having been so naïve. She reevaluated every flattering thing he had said. Exploitation, all of it. She’d been like a puppy; he must have been amused by her fawning. She suffered. She lost sleep and walked around pale and purposeless. She stopped riding her bike, she skipped class, talked to no one. Her social confidence, so recently won, bled away.

  Toward the end of the semester, she screwed up her courage to go to the department office to look for a summer job. The secretary squinted at her, then stood up from her desk.

  “You can use my computer. It’s open to the job file.”

  Jo sat in the secretary’s chair. The woman leaned against her shoulder. “You’re looking a little better, I’m glad to say. We were all worried.”

  “What about?”

  “Well, everyone knew Robbo’s reputation. The boss told us. We hoped you wouldn’t feel like a victim, although maybe you were.”

  Jo froze. She hated the thought that the design department had been talking about her. She hated their pity. She would not let this nasty little bitch wound her further. “Tell everyone I enjoyed Robbo’s company. And he enjoyed mine.” She hit delete and left the office.

  In fact, the woman had done her a favor. Anger turned her focus outward. She vowed to finish her degree without any help from the design department, and over senior year, she kept the vow. She ignored her colleagues and got dinged for not participating in departmental activities, but she didn’t care. She buckled down and figured out how to score well, and by graduation, the narrative in her head had changed from victim to victor. She called herself an independent thinker. The department had graded her “competent”; she had far more to offer than mere competence. Filled with ambition, she couldn’t wait to prove it.

  At her first job in the big Atlanta firm, she befriended the two other unconventional associates, a gay man and a grandmother returning to the workforce. They ate cheap meals together, and Jo read the books they recommended: Studs Terkel, Eric Hoffer, and other champions of the common man. She bought a better bike and committed to riding regularly. She didn’t date, and when she got promoted, her ambition grew arms and legs: she needed more than material success, she wanted moral victory. When she left the firm to go out on her own, she determined to accept only projects that contributed to the public good, however loosely defined. She vowed never to give a client or colleague cause to say an ungenerous word about her. After she started D-Three, she swore to run the design office as democratically as possible, given the need for excellence. She would deal transparently with competitors and vendors. Nothing would ever blemish D-Three’s reputation.

  Over the years, Jo stuck to her guns. She preferred working on children’s museums, she would say, because they offered the most potential to change lives. She accumulated data that proved museums helped children make significant academic gains. As the business grew and prospered, she became more and more convinced of the rightness of her approach. She did not let missteps shake her; she made a point to learn from them. The Skinny Flynt episode, for one, taught her to stick to basics. And Ev always seemed to approve, which mattered more than she would say.

  But sometimes in an idle moment, she wondered if, deep down, there was rot at the core of her ambition. It had been born out of defiance, not out of passion. Truth be told, she cared more about proving herself valued in the design world than about inventing the next Helvetica. She’d always earned respect for her capacity to work hard, from girlhood on. It was her greatest strength. Ev told her the quality of work counted more than the quantity, but he didn’t convince her. She wanted to prove to the world that she had mastered her discipline. She wanted to solve the most complex, visible problem possible. She wanted to create the Children’s Museum of Riyadh.

  Jo looked at the clock. 7:42. Ev had already risen. She got up and made the bed, the dream reverberating in her head. She dressed slowly as scenes emerged from the ether, and went downstairs to put on the kettle. Clearly, the argument with Becca had stimulated the dream. But why had it resurrected Robbo? Was there a connection, or was she simply upset at Becca? Nothing in this life was simple. She opened the fridge. Nothing looked good. She closed the door.

  The kettle chirped. She turned off the burner and poured water into the waiting teapot. She set the microwave timer for five minutes and walked to the window. Behind the glass wall of the studio, Ev stood with his back to her, leaning over a workbench. She left the kitchen and slipped quietly into the studio—quiet because you never knew which dangerous tool might be in his hand—and watched him cut a thin piece of plastic with tin snips. She wondered how to begin talking about her mood. Ev didn’t set stock in dreams.

  The studio contained two workbenches back-to-back in the middle of the room. Machines lined the solid walls: a drill press, a lathe, a band saw, a welder. A cabinet of little drawers held screws, nails and other small parts whose names and functions Jo didn’t care to know. A table saw stood in one corner, and lumber and sheets of plastic were stacked in another. Hammers and screwdrivers and wrenches lay around as if dropped at the end of a task. It looked messy to her, but Ev’s mind worked differently.

  He became aware of her and looked up. “Morning.”

  “You’re starting early.”

  He rummaged on top of the workbench and picked up a loop of string with a button in the center. Turning to face her, he held one end of the string in each hand and pulled. The button spun, making a humming sound. “I thought we could get kids to play tunes with these, but it’s too hard to restring the button.”

  Jo stepped closer. Ev’s explanation would come.

  “Look,” he said, pointing to the notebook that lay open on the workbench. Spread across two pages was a drawing of a pole with a circular platform at the top and a crank attached at the bottom. On top of the platform a dog figure faced a cat figure. The contraption resembled a toy carousel splayed vertically.

  Ev said, “Kid power spins the platform and the dog chases the cat.” He turned the page, pointing to a diagram. “I’ll put a cam under the dog.”

  Jo didn’t understand the linkage. No matter. “What if a kid roots for the cat?”

  “The dog never gets close enough to attack.” He turned the
page back to the drawing. “Kids can try different cranks with different gear ratios.”

  Jo visualized a five-year-old turning the crank. They’d have to find a way to protect other kids from getting their fingers pinched by the mechanism. Ev would get there soon enough.

  “In West Virginia, people put whirligigs like this on weathervanes, and the wind spins them. I like the idea of spinning in the wind. Maybe we can use wind made from kid power.” He raised one hand to the back of his head. “Got to figure it out. Could be too inefficient.”

  “Are you cutting out weathervane blades?”

  Ev smiled. “You got it, wife.” He reached out to touch her cheek. “I need help with woodworking. Know anyone local?”

  “Couldn’t Carlos do it?”

  “I want a skilled craftsman. This should be folk art.”

  “You can do it.”

  “If I had the time.”

  She knew better than to challenge his judgment. “I’ll look for someone. Do you want breakfast?”

  He shook his head and picked up the tin snips.

  She returned to the kitchen, unable to interfere with his pleasure. For Ev, there was no straight line to solving a design problem. She’d just have to watch and wait. She silenced the bleeping timer and rummaged in the refrigerator for a loaf of bread. She put a slice in the toaster, and as she watched its wires glow red, she thought about Ev’s whirligig. In the end, it would be captivating, she was certain. Ev’s work always lifted her up.

  Her phone buzzed: Becca. So early on a Saturday? She swiped the phone.

  “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “Not at all. Is there a problem?”

  “I’m the problem. I’m sorry that I mouthed off to you yesterday. I didn’t mean to be insulting.”

  “I’m not insulted. But I am curious. What makes you so suspicious? We’ve dealt with bureaucrats before.”

  There was a pause, as if Becca were fighting for composure. “These people are different. Every time I see a woman wrapped up like that I cringe.”