She remembers how the sun looks when she arrives at the office, how it glints off the winter litter caught in the bare flower pots, how the light hits the glass and exposes the smudge marks. There’s a child’s handprint, a perfect palm with each joint articulated, just under the door handle. She remembers this, and the instant check of heart . . . am I charmed annoyed struck with grief . . . and the decision to feel none of these things.
Simone smiles up from reception and hands Rachel her new claims. Simone’s little daughter is rummaging through the toy box in reception, thumping toy cars together like she’s cracking heads.
“Visit mommy at work day,” says Simone. “Unofficial.”
This is the code around the office for a failure in arranged childcare. No one minds; the babies are passed from arm to arm and everyone exclaims at the size of the boys and eyelashes on the girls.
“Rache!” Peter descends upon her, his eyes wide and his white teeth bared. He flings his arms out for a hug and finds the cupcake case instead. “What have you brought today? Give us a look!”
“Shush, let her get her coat off.” This is Andrea, Peter’s sister, dragging her long gauzy skirts in his wake. She picks at her nose ring then hoists her waistband up over her belly. “Did you have a nice weekend, Rachel? Go anywhere exciting? Oh I can’t imagine how it would be, to be able to just take off! And you had time to bake cupcakes too!” She grabs the case from her brother and dumps it on the counter. “Piss off, Peter. You’ll just complain about getting fat.”
“You should talk,” Peter huffs and sucks in his stomach. His jeans are too tight, too short, but Rachel thinks this is intentional, some kind of thrift shop chic favoured by the young. His sister appears to have wandered away from some music festival befuddled and blinking, amazed to find herself pregnant yet again. She has an oddly calming effect on their most difficult clients. But the piercings and the swearing, the drifting around the office while the files pile up! Rachel can’t help thinking that if she acted like either Andrea or Peter she would be canned. But she tries not to think like that, she really does. It makes her feel old.
“Haven’t you got something to do?” Simone glares at Peter, who is pawing the lid off the cupcake case.
“Oh it’s fine,” says Rachel. “Really, they’re nothing special. I thought, well, Monday and all, right?” She flashes a smile at Simone; it’s important in this office to look like you haven’t tried too hard. To look like sugar eggs were just something you happened to have lying around.
Simone ignores her, her gaze clamped on Peter.
Rachel grabs her files and slides past Simone’s little daughter, who is attempting to tear the head off a sock monkey.
“Oh no sweetie, gentle! Monkey is our dolly baby!” Andrea gasps.
“Our dolly baby? Seriously?” Simone shifts her attention off Peter and onto his sister. “You know, we’ve been really careful about that. We don’t force gender stereotypes on our daughter. And Jamie is naturally curious; she’s really pushing against the world right now. It’s developmental. Gentle?” Simone snorts. “Jamie is a warrior woman. Jamie will not be oppressed by social expectations.”
“But,” Rachel hears on her way through the office. She can imagine Andrea’s hands twisting in her skirts. Andrea has three children with various fathers who are, at best, incidental. The fact that not one of them pays child support is a sure trigger for Simone, even more so than Andrea’s present milky maternity.
Joan barely looks up as Rachel passes her desk. “Oh God, are they at it again? Who’s winning, Earth Mother or Social Justice Warrior?” She peers at the paper propped against her keyboard. “Jesus, here we go. No birthdate and a missing postal code. You think one client could fill out a complete form, just one client, one time? My six-year-old could do better than this.” Joan has two children, first a boy and then a girl, and neither have appeared at the office except in the school photos flanking a steel cylinder of sharpened pencils. Joan’s children are carefully scheduled into ballet and hockey, piano and violin, play dates and calm breaks and earned screen time. A reward chart is tacked to Joan’s bulletin board and there are frequent phone calls home. Rachel’s heard the one-sided conversations: “I’m taking off one happy point. Right now. No, don’t even; it’s too late to use your kind words. You blew it, buddy.”
Rachel smiles. It’s best to humour Joan. “Have a good weekend?”
Joan closes her file and stretches. “Kids barfing with some kind of stomach flu, and hubby in a stinker of a mood. Thank God it was his turn to take them to hockey practice this morning. Family fun, Rache, you must be so glad you opted out. Hey, you try that new café yet? Kinda expensive, but if you don’t need to watch your money . . . ” She waves at the file Rachel carries. “Oh yeah. Judith wants to see you in her office.”
Judith’s door is closed. Judith’s door is always closed, a managerial technique Rachel suspects is designed to make them knock and wait, to speculate and worry. But Judith smiles when Rachel enters. After an exchange of small talk . . . and Judith is adept at this, knowing to steer clear of children and husbands . . . she lays the file open and pushes it towards Rachel.
“Do you see?” says Judith, tapping the top line with her pen. “Right here. Describe the nature of your disability.”
“Yes,” says Rachel, “She’s filled it out: Real sick, blood’s gone bad. Head heart fingers tose, too bad to get out of bed sometimes and cats complan and are mizerbal. Spelling doesn’t count, does it? ”
Judith breathes in then out. “Well, no. But the Ministry needs more information.”
“Like what? How many days she’s been too sick to feed the cats?” Rachel hears the edge in her tone and so does Judith, whose pen taps a sharp staccato warning.
“Hardly. But this sounds, well, slightly incomplete. She needs a diagnosis that fits our criteria, with names of meds and prescribed dosages. A signed letter from her doctor stating that her symptoms are as described and she’s following her treatment plan. The Ministry hates it when we send an incomplete claim.”
“Goodness, that sounds like a lot of work. Especially for a sick person.” Rachel’s read the file and can see the woman clearly, as she would a long lost friend. Elderly, alone in a house stinking of damp newspaper and cat pee, the milk souring in the fridge. Cardigan askew and hunched over a cup of tea, past outrage at life’s injustices and in a state of perennial confusion, relying on the help only Rachel can offer. An oddly comforting image.
Judith smiles and clasps her hands. “Yes, but not all of our claims are entirely, well, authentic. People tend to lack objectivity about their conditions, especially when there’s money involved. And you know how the Ministry asks us to be respectful of their budget.”
Rachel turns to leave, and Judith waits until she reaches the door.
“Oh, and Rachel? I appreciate that it’s not been easy. I really do. I couldn’t believe the changeover either, especially at our ages! I have to question Tom’s judgement sometimes. But you just let me know if you need anything. If there’s anything I can do.” Judith smiles because there is nothing Judith can do, nothing Judith is required to do, except question Tom’s judgement when Tom is not there.
Tom’s judgement. Rachel sits at her desk amidst the piles of claims and post-its and thinks about Tom’s judgement. Tom’s judgement was born of pessimism and doubt, and was therefore almost always correct. Tom’s judgment was great. It was his heart that flopped.
Tom was the one who’d pushed the appeal for the Ministry to merge all services into one office. Who’d slammed his fist at municipal meetings, and argued for the convenience of picking up a hunting licence as you paid your land tax, of claiming for disability while you settled your electricity bill. It would save jobs, he’d said, especially in this age of online service. Tom was the one who’d sat behind closed doors with the town councillors and told them the budget cuts were coming and they’d better start pruning. To let him start with the office ladies, some of whom were
ancient. Those who were left could take on a few extra jobs at no cost to the department.
And thus, a decade or so before retirement, Rachel was moved from stamping birth and marriage certificates in Tom’s office, from seeing Tom every day and sometimes at night, to processing all the sad cases, the income support and disability claims. It was hard not to take it personally. It was hard not to take it as a warning.
Of course, the others changed jobs too. Joan churned out the licences now, everything from birth and death to fishing, and Andrea handled accident and insurance claims. Judith was promoted from Tom’s receptionist to branch manager. But none of these women had been Tom’s mistress for years.
Real sick, blood’s gone bad. She should at least try to fix this poor woman’s claim.
Mistress. Like all antiquated terms, somewhat bloodless and watery in the mouth. What do the young call it now? Booty call? She was Tom’s booty call. His good-time girl, his bit on the side.
At one time, he’d thought he might leave his wife. They’d talked in bed over spread magazines. Where they would live and what furniture they’d buy, the dinners they’d cook and the wines they’d cellar. They’d planned a holiday on the Greek islands in a little art hotel where you could sit on the balcony and hear the dolphins sing. Rachel had always wanted to travel, see the ancient cliffs and scrubbed white sand, the sea in gradients of blue. She’d imagined that after they came back, they’d have babies with uncommon names and eye colours, they’d have a sturdy old English pram and the sweetest nursery furniture. Like the pastel things in her magazines, the ones she’d read when Tom wasn’t there.
And the other thing. The thing that had happened after that trip. It had been a bad time, the worst, with Tom stressed because his wife had found a lump and his son had punched the principal, and he’d needed her to be something other, something lighter, so she’d seen to it. Before it was even a really a thing.
Head heart fingers tose, mizerbal.
Goodness. She’s nicked herself. Something — a staple? — poking into the palm of her hand, bright drops like pomegranate seeds flicking onto the file. Rachel’s conscious of the hum of the office then, the busyness: Andrea offering Simone’s little daughter a cupcake, and Simone’s flat voice intoning no sugar on a weekday, Peter hiccupping laughter, Joan on the phone patiently explaining that no ma’am, you can’t arrange the funeral here but it is your legal responsibility to report the death, and for that you need a death certificate.
Strange thing to certify, a death.
Stranger still that she’s going to skip from birth to death with no other certification in between. In between-y now, that awkward age. The softness to her waist and upper arms, the crepe feel to her skin, the sudden fevers and wavering confusions. On her last eggs.
Joan’s on the phone to one of her kids now — “No . . . no don’t you hang up on me or I will text you into next year” — and Andrea is soothing Peter that he is not fat, only a little cushiony. The bell above the door tinkles and a rush of air announces a client. Simone’s voice, bright and professional, good morning can I help you? Judith strides by and the smell of her perfume is heady and faintly brackish, like flowers left in a vase too long. Rachel wonders if Judith still has sex. What it’s like at her age.
Tom hadn’t broken up with her. Not exactly. Just a lessening through the years; less often and less time when he did visit, less talk after and no plans at all. Something different in his gaze, a fixed expression around his mouth in the last months. No, he didn’t want to discuss it. Everything was fine, just some things happening at home. Of course he would call. When he could. It was difficult. She was not to pressure him. It was the one thing he couldn’t stand in a woman.
When he assigned her the new job, he said she should be grateful. Other women her age were getting laid off. Besides, he knew she would be fine. Trooper like her, she could get on with whatever she was given.
Too bad to get out of bed sometimes. Mizerbal.
“Why do you put up with it?” asked Rachel’s best friend, twice divorced and merrily single. “Why not come to the city? It’s different here; single’s normal. We’d have a blast, Rache, think of the freedom! You wouldn’t have deal with the sanctimonious suburban mommies and their cheat-ass husbands.”
But Rachel lives here, in this place, in the same house she’d grown up in and inherited after her mother had passed away. She knows the flex and shift of the seasons, the way the main street has pushed up and branched out like a living thing. She can tell what family a boy belongs to by the set of his ears, and a woman’s daughter by the way she rolls her eyes. The suburban mommies are her friends and colleagues. The suburban mommies are Judith and Joan and Andrea and Simone.
It’s a kind of symbiosis. The other women imagine a breezy freedom for Rachel: Sunday mornings in the café, weekend getaways and spa retreats, book clubs and art classes and exotic dining. They comment on her small waist and attribute it to unlimited gym time and a lack of pregnancies. They declare envy, then counter it by claiming they would not change a grey hair or single stretch mark, they would change nothing about their child-sprung lives. In return Rachel bakes cupcakes. She sends flowers on birthdays, and starts office kitties for showers and weddings and anniversaries. She listens benignly to the family dramas. She never advises or competes, never contradicts the womanly wisdom thrown around like confetti, and she always admires the accomplishments of other people’s children.
And she’s thinking about this while she dabs at the blood flecks off the file, on how this is a kind of belonging, a kind of love; she’s thinking of the poor woman with the mizerbal cats and how rotten it would be, to be sick and unable to work, how rotten to be old and alone. And even if she sees how they look at her now, the men with vague impatience and the women with a strained benevolence, even so, she’s thinking she’s lucky, she’s lucky to be loved and accepted, when the silence strikes her.
She looks up.
She sees Judith first, palms up and reaching, mouth open to say something to the man in the doorway. He’s carrying something long and wrapped in nylon (golf clubs? tennis racquet?) and Rachel sees it’s a gun and thinks how silly, he doesn’t need to bring his gun to get a hunting license, and then many things happen at once: a high pitched scream, quickly muffled, and Peter frozen, a cupcake halfway to his mouth; Simone, calling lockdown, Jamie, lockdown! and her little daughter scuttling underneath the toy table; Judith, her palms opening while the man raises the gun.
“I want . . . ” he says.
His eyes are odd: muddy and unfocused. His face has a chalky coarseness to it, like something a child might draw.
“I want . . . ” he says again.
“Stay down, Jamie,” hisses Simone and the man swings the rifle towards them.
“Please tell us what you want,” says Judith.
“I want you to listen.”
“We’re listening.” Judith makes an odd shushing movement with her palms.
The little girl starts to wail, and Simone says shut up shut up or the bad man — and the man points the rifle at her. “You shut your goddamn mouth, I’m not going to hurt no kids.”
“Please tell us what you want, we’re listening.” Judith’s voice is soft.
“I want you to listen to me. I’m not going to hurt no kids, never would hurt no kids, that’s the last thing I wanna do. I got kids.”
“You have children? How old?” This is Andrea. Rachel catches the swift look Peter gives her.
“Five. Seven.” The rifle swings from Judith to Andrea. Judith’s hands sink to her sides.
“Boys or girls?”
“No. You’re not listening. I want I WANT . . . ” The rifle butt thumps against the floor and someone screams and someone whinnies and someone says fuckfuckfuck.
The man thumps the rifle butt again and tells them to shut up. His eyes roll back and then find their focus, muddy as melted chocolate. He’s mumbling. Rachel can hear phrases; the bitch, the goddamn bitch, liar liar
liar.
“Please tell us how we can help you.” Judith is speaking again.
“I want you to listen to me.”
“We’re listening.”
“It’s her. See, it’s her. After they took my job, after they stopped my disability. But see, my head don’t stop hurting, hurts all the goddamn time. They put something in there, some kind of damn chip makes me do stuff. But her, she don’t listen.” The man shakes his head and the motion makes him stagger. “Bitch took my kids. She’s poisoning them against me.”
“What would you like us to do?”
The man looks at his rifle. He’s swaying on his feet now. Rachel wonders if he’s drunk and whether this would be a good or bad thing. Maybe he’ll pass out. “I want you to call the cops.”
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