By the Book

by Mary Kay McComas

  Mostly she checked on checks for people. “I can’t believe I forgot to write down the amount,” they’d say. “Now I have checks bouncing all over town.” Frequently she’d pull up on her computer the balance of a savings account or trust fund or the maturity date of a specific money market CD. “We’re planning a trip to Jamaica for our anniversary,” someone would tell her. “I’m getting so excited and nervous. I just need to make sure we have enough money saved and that nothing goes wrong.” On occasion she was forced to call a customer about insufficient funds. “I got the notices in the mail,” would come a sad voice. “But my husband is still out of work, and since I got laid off it’s been hard for us. I have three children. They have to eat. I have to keep them warm. Can’t we work something out?”

  How could anyone not respond to someone else’s embarrassments? Their concerns and worries? Their desperation?

  Today her phone was unusually quiet. The people of Quincey were coping. Her sigh was one of relief and gratification, fringed with a bit of boredom.

  You got used to working in a fishbowl, she mused, glancing out the large display window. Being on exhibit all day, it became second nature to keep your hands as far from your nose as possible, to sit with your knees together, and to adjust your bra straps and panty hose in the ladies’ room only.

  The world passed by that big window all day long, and one hardly considered it. She suspected it was the same from the other side as well. Who paid any attention to people working in the window of a bank when they were busy living their own lives?

  Ellen took a good hard look out the smudge-free glass. The camera shop was directly across the street from her desk, its windows shiny clean. Poster enlargements of a boy with his dog, a blushing bride, and a stream in the woods took up most of the space above a small display of cameras, cases, and tripods.

  What was he doing in there? she wondered, leaning back in her chair, her pen bumping rhythmically against her upper lip. Developing film? Unpacking new stock? Flexing his muscles?

  Then, as if in answer to her reflections, he appeared in the glass doorway. Resting his hands on the push bar, he looked up the street and down, then directly across into her cubicle.

  Her heart stopped and she sat perfectly still. He looked straight into her eyes, entered her soul without knocking. She held her breath. Then he was smiling, and her heart took off, beating too fast; her nerves twitched to life under her skin. She hunched her shoulders over her desk, kept her head down in deep concentration, and tried to gather her thoughts.

  Had he seen her? Had he really smiled at her?

  “Vi?” she called out, louder than her telephone voice but not so loud as to disturb the dignified fiscal quiet maintained in the bank.

  “I saw it,” Vi whispered back loudly. “He smiled at me.” Something twisted painfully in Ellen’s chest. “Maybe I won’t have to buy that camera after all. Maybe he’ll come open an account.”

  “Maybe,” Ellen said, swallowing the envy she felt. Vi was always so confident, always so sure. Ellen should have known that smile wasn’t for her.

  She tossed the pen onto the desk and leaned back again in her chair. Why hadn’t that smile been for her? Hadn’t she reacted to it as if it had been? She turned her head to the window. The man was gone, but she could still see him standing there, smiling. She pursed her lips and her gaze meandered slowly to the bottom drawer of her desk

  Determine exactly what it is you want. You can’t have your way unless you know which way you want to go. Be practical. Be realistic. Reach for the stars ... but stay in your own galaxy.

  He was definitely in her galaxy. On her planet even, earthy and human. He’d helped her with her groceries. It was possible that smile had been for her. Vi didn’t have a monopoly on happiness; she wasn’t the only one who could take what they wanted from the world. Her gaze gravitated toward the teller boxes across the room and settled on Lisa Lee, earning fifty cents more an hour in a position she was barely trained for, knowing full well that if she played her cards right, she was in line to move up the line ahead of Ellen.

  No, she wasn’t being fair.

  Lisa was a sweet girl, a Korean immigrant who’d come to Quincey with her husband to make a better life for themselves. She worked hard—on her English, in her citizenship classes, at her duties at the bank. Ellen liked her ... but ... well, the position of loan officer was in her galaxy too. She worked hard too.

  Okay. She’d had enough.

  She knew exactly what she wanted now. Change. And she was going to make it happen. Was she not the captain of her own vessel? Was it not her life to direct? Could she not create her own destiny? If being too nice was causing her to fall short of her targets, wasn’t it time to try new trajectories? Wasn’t it her responsibility, as well as her right, to make her own happiness?

  And it wasn’t the job or the money or the man—none of them in themselves had the power to make her happy—but knowing would. Knowing that she could have the promotion and the pay raise, and the man, if she wanted them—now, that would make her happy. Knowing that she could change her life, that she wasn’t a victim of fate, that being too nice was a curable disease—that would make her happy.

  She’d get a pay raise, she’d get the promotion, and she’d make that man smile at her. Her—in a way that left no doubt in anyone’s mind as to whom he was smiling at, in a significant way that would curl her toes and cause her to smile right back at him. That’s what she wanted. That would make her happy. And she had a right to be happy.

  “Vi,” she said, the wheels on her chair squeaking a little as she pushed herself away from her desk and reached into her bottom drawer for her purse.

  “Yeah?”

  “Have you ever had one of those days when your life didn’t seem to be worth living, and then something”—she held the small green booklet in both hands—“some little thing happens, and everything is different?”

  Across the street in the camera shop, Jonah Blake was contemplating the short-term emotional benefits and the long-term physical drawbacks to putting another dent in the wall with his forehead.

  He growled out loud, then took a deep breath, holding it until he was calm enough to blow it out slowly. A half-crazed laugh escaped him as he shook his fists at the ceiling.

  “Jonah, old buddy, this town and that woman are going to drive you over the edge if you’re not careful,” he told himself, blowing yet another pent-up breath out through stiff lips.

  He scanned the shop, looking for something to do, searching for something to focus his attention on—other than the woman in the window across the street. But it just wasn’t going to happen. Nothing had changed since the last time he scanned the shop, looking for something to do, searching for something to focus his attention on.

  He’d processed every strip of film he could find, developed the pictures, gathered them up, put them in envelopes, filed them in alphabetical order. He’d washed the windows, wiped off the display cases, dusted the cameras. He’d vacuumed the floor, retallied the negative balance in the books four times, done fifty push-ups in the back room, and that was all before lunch.

  Since then, he’d been kicking himself stupid for acting like a tongue-tied idiot when he’d finally gotten an opportunity to talk to her. “Duh. One of those days, huh?” he muttered to himself and cringed, remembering. Not the most intriguing opening line he’d ever used.

  Not that he’d actually used all that many opening lines for a man his age. To date, his dealings with women had been long-term sexual encounters at best, with very little emotional involvement. And to be truthful, they’d suited him just fine.

  Which wasn’t to say that on rare occasions he hadn’t contemplated the efforts involved in meeting a different kind of woman; in allowing himself to feel something for her; in marriage and children. Those occasions had left him feeling empty, alone, and small, and were often best avoided. But deep down inside, he knew that was exactly what he’d always wanted. To grow up, marry a n
ice woman, have children, and spend the rest of his life loving and taking care of them. Trouble was, he had no idea of where to start to build this dream he had.

  His own childhood had been fragmented. What he hadn’t deliberately forgotten was blurry and permeated with sadness and confusion. What he did remember had little to do with home and family, and a lot to do with discipline and control, regulation and achievement.

  He’d grown up in a man’s world, and while women had certainly topped the list of topics for conversation and were the ultimate prize on a Saturday night, they had remained—for him—bizarre, alien beings who were difficult to talk to, uncomfortable to be with, and hard to understand.

  Except for this one ...

  The first time he’d seen her, with all that dark red hair glinting sparks of copper in the afternoon sun, the bright white dress with the green trim, the long legs that looked as if they started somewhere near her neck—he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her.

  She’d come out of the bank and stood holding the door open for an elderly couple coming out behind her, a frail-looking woman pushing a man in a wheelchair. The wheels had gotten stuck on the threshold. She hadn’t been able to make the woman grasp backing up to let her back in to help, and she hadn’t been able to get help from inside the bank. Jonah had thought about sprinting across the street to help her, but instead he’d watched her walk briskly down the street, turn the corner, and re-enter the bank from the rear—because soon she was gently talking the old woman into giving up control of the chair, tipping it back slightly to pass over the threshold, and pushing it out onto the sidewalk.

  She could have left them there and considered her duty done. Instead, she’d made Jonah smile as he watched her wave the couple good-bye and then stand there watching them doubtfully. He’d seen the concern come to her face as they crawled at a snail’s pace toward their car; saw it scrunch up with fear and dread as the woman came incredibly close to ramming the man’s chair into a too-small space between a parking meter and a streetlight pole. He was completely enraptured by the time she sighed and rushed once more to their aid, helping first the old man then the old woman into their car, folding the wheelchair into the trunk, and standing on the curb with a furrowed brow as they drove away.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen someone go to so much trouble for someone else. The patience, the kindness, the concern. And he was pretty sure they weren’t relatives, as there had been no farewell kisses or hugs, just polite friendly smiles and an obvious mutual deference between them.

  Since then he’d watched her working diligently, smiling and shaking hands respectfully with the people who came to see her, fetching coffee for some, always making an effort to put them at ease.

  He liked her, liked the way she looked, but more, liked the way small kindnesses seemed second nature to her. He liked that she took her time and dealt with people slowly and gently and thoughtfully. He liked that she didn’t fiddle with her hair all day, or file her nails in her spare time. He liked the way her face lit up when she smiled, and he tried a thousand times to imagine what her laughter would sound like ... and her voice ... or a pleasured moan in the back of her throat. ...

  In fact, the only thing he couldn’t like about her was that she was so unconscious of the world outside her window that she rarely looked in his direction. When she left the bank at six every evening, her long legs carried her with purposeful strides, in a hurry, and she never seemed to see him loitering around the parking lot, trying to catch her eye.

  Then the gods had smiled on him twice in one day. First in the parking lot behind the bank, when he was so dumbstruck and awkward that the second time, when he caught her looking out the bank window and smiled at her, she leaned over her desk and pretended not to see him.

  His sigh was a mixture of boredom and frustration—one of the most explosive mixtures known to man.

  If she were a man, he’d know exactly how to proceed to engage her trust and win her friendship and loyalty. He was used to dealing with men, who were so uncomplicated, who took most things at face value. You didn’t have to bathe or shave or wear clean clothes to have a good time with them. Men were easy to understand. Women were as convoluted as feather collectors in hurricane country. They didn’t make any sense at all.

  Restlessly his eyes wandered slowly over the wall across from where he stood at the register. The old black-and-white photographs in cheap black frames, hanging in an uneven line, were a constant reminder of why he’d come to Quincey in the first place.

  A single disbelieving laugh broke loose in his chest. Why was he so surprised? Everything but the clocks seemed to be working against him in the queer little town. He was running a camera shop he knew nothing about. He couldn’t leave. He couldn’t get a pretty woman to look his way to save his soul. He couldn’t even gloat in the face of the dying man he’d hated all his life.

  CHAPTER TWO

  STEP TWO

  Alter your life by altering your attitudes.

  —William James

  Success is ninety percent attitude. And attitude is the mind-set or outlook you have and project in regard to any given person, place, thing, or idea. Assume a mental position toward what you want. You deserve it. It’s yours. No one can do it better than you. It’s your destiny. Show your surprise if anyone thinks otherwise. ...

  “I’M SURPRISED BY YOUR attitude, Ellen,” Joleen Powers said, smiling and nodding. The middle-aged office manager in pressed pleats and sensible shoes had also been surprised by her sudden request for a private conference moments before the bank closed for the day. At first leery, she realized that Ellen had come to her with good news rather than bad and was now considerably more relaxed. “I had no idea you were interested in learning Mary’s job. And like you say, there’s no one here more qualified than you. To tell you the truth, I just assumed you were content in Bonds and Trusts.” She laughed at herself. “I should have guessed you were more ambitious than that, and just too polite to say so. I’ve been meaning to tell you how well you’re doing in Customer Service, as well, and how much we appreciate you helping out there when you’re not busy. It takes a lot of patience. Not everyone can handle the patrons with such consistent courtesy. Even Mr. Bragg noticed how well you were working out in both departments, so I’m sure he’ll include you in any decisions he makes about—”

  “Then maybe he won’t be amazed to hear that I want a raise too,” Ellen said, nervously firing off her statement too soon, her heart thumping away at a dizzying speed, her hands cold and clammy with sweat. You deserve it. It’s yours. The little green book with the bold white title weighed heavily in the pocket of her jacket as she watched the expression change on Joleen’s face.

  “A raise? Well, of course, you’ll be making a little more in Loans if ... Her voice trailed off as Ellen began to shake her head.

  “In my present position,” she said, stunned to hear the words squeeze by the lump of pure raw nerve in her throat, “I manage all of Trusts and Bonds and spend a great deal of time on customer service. Except for you and Mary, I’ve been here longer than anyone else. I haven’t taken a sick day in three years. I come in on my days off to fill in. I’m a good employee, Joleen. You know I am.”

  “I’m not denying it, Ellen. I haven’t had or heard one complaint about you since the day you started here. It’s just that a raise right now—”

  “A fifty-one-cents-an-hour raise,” someone using her mouth and body interjected. Truly, she felt possessed. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined herself saying such things.

  Obviously this sort of behavior from her had never occurred in Joleen’s dreams either, as she frowned and looked somewhat perplexed.

  “Fifty-one? Ellen, that’s a big jump. We don’t normally give raises in increments of more than two or three percent.”

  “It’s not nearly as big a jump as my leaving and going to work at Quincey’s First Savings and Loan, or People’s Bank.” Hysterical laughter bubb
led in her chest. Where were these words coming from? If she didn’t discover the source soon, and stop them, she’d talk herself out of a job altogether.

  “Oh now, there’s no need for that,” Joleen said quickly. She stood and walked over to the filing cabinet. “I’m sure we can work this out. When was your last pay raise? You know, I don’t recall offhand ...”

  “Two years ago. Last year you said no one was getting one because of the low interest rates,” she said as the panic in her heart reached its peak, and she completely missed the worried concern in Joleen’s expression.

  “Yes, yes. I remember that. So you’re about due for another evaluation anyway, right?”

  “Possibly. I do know I’m due for a raise.” Why back down now? Her heart was going to stop any second and she’d be dead. What difference would it make?

  “My goodness, yes,” Joleen said, breezing through the papers in the folder as if she were actually reading them. “I believe you are due for a raise. Long overdue, in fact.”

  “I am?” Ellen asked. “I mean ... yes. I am. Overdue. Long ... in fact ... overdue.”

  Dear God. Had it worked? Was it over? Was that all there was to it? So simple. Keep repeating what you want to the person you want it from, until you think you might die, and then ... it happens? No, that sounded more like nagging. This was different. This was sticking to her guns. This was being right about something and knowing it and sticking it out to the end. Not backing down, not showing weakness, not being too understanding or too nice. This was getting what she wanted.

  However ...

  “I appreciate you looking into this for me, Joleen,” she said, feeling more herself and seeing, at last, the discomfort in the woman’s eyes. “If I came on a little strong or sounded like I didn’t appreciate all you’ve done for me over the years, I—”

  “Oh, no, Ellen, not at all,” Joleen said, a tentative smile on her face. “You were right to come to me. You’ve been with us a long time. You’re a good employee. We want you to be happy here.”