Revenge of the Cube Dweller

by Joanne Fox Phillips

  When Hal’s office door opens a few minutes later, Moe stops by my cube and continues the reprimand. “I’ll take it from here,” he tells me at the end of it, and with that I am dumped from helping him with his audit and reassigned to work for Frank. I feel my face get red and hold back tears at the idea of having failed so publicly.

  How can I resurrect my career working for bumpkins incapable of thinking beyond a checklist? I think I have uncovered a major security lapse, and instead of accolades, I am bawled out and taken off the assignment. From experience, I know that it’s best to just move on and wait for another opportunity to shine and redeem myself—I’ll keep my head down and keep doing my job—but for right now, I am devastated.

  Working in a cube provides no privacy, so I walk quickly down the hall for a five-minute cool down in the ladies’ room. When I return, my raccoon eyes are replaced by red puffy ones, and Frank shows up at my desk with a stack of files for me to scan.

  “This shouldn’t take long,” I say. “Do you have anything else for me to work on?”

  “Not sure. I might have some more filing or document scanning I can send your way. Just sit tight for now.”

  Sit tight means sitting there and doing nothing until he is ready to show me what he wants me to do for him. I sit tight until 11:30, at which time I knock on Frank’s office door and ask if it is okay for me to go to lunch. It’s a courtesy most young people don’t observe nowadays. That is one of my redeeming qualities: old-fashioned business manners. I always make sure to ask Frank or Moe, depending on which I am working for, because it makes them feel important and reinforces their superiority. And sure enough, Frank beams as he tells me it is okay for me to go to lunch.

  I usually eat at my desk, but today I need to get away. I am too mad to be hungry, but I power-eat two burritos from the food truck outside our building as I walk six blocks to a pocket park with a bench. I break tradition by smoking three cigarettes in a row, hoping that the stiff Oklahoma breeze will carry the residual stink elsewhere. As I walk back to the office, I munch on a couple of Altoids for dessert and am back in my cube ready to continue to sit tightly until summoned.

  After a half hour, I overhear Frank tell Hal that he is off to a meeting with the financial group for the rest of the afternoon, which makes it clear that I will not be getting any more assignments that day. It is not unusual for Moe or Frank just to leave me idle for extended periods. As the underling in the department, they view me as dispensable.

  I decide to spend my remaining time looking at my Windows XP bible. It is a thick yellow instruction book that explains how to use a desktop computer in the simplest terms for the non-techie. Most companies have moved to at least Windows 7, but not Bishop, where technology is viewed as something for lightweights. “If 20 columnar pads were good enough for us in the ’70s …” I heard the CFO say at an employee meeting once. But although it is archaic, the operating system is still more advanced than what I am used to. I goof around, changing the displays: large font, tiny font, blue background, purple wavy background. I find the date and time function and change that too. I set the date to June 1, 2007, and the time to 6:00 p.m.: my fiftieth birthday party.

  Winston had surprised me by gathering our friends at the club for a party. It was a sweet gesture on his part, particularly since we had grown so far apart over the years. My friends Beth McAfee and Alice Mayhew had been enlisted to help with the details and to refine a guest list that included fifteen other couples, mostly from the club. The cocktail hour was out on a covered patio overlooking the eighteenth green, and conversation circles formed as hors d’oeuvres were passed among the guests.

  “Happy birthday, Tanzie!” Alice squealed and gave me a kiss on the cheek. Her face had some sunburn peeking through her makeup and her bare shoulders had a white outline of a sleeveless golf shirt.

  “Did you two play today?” I asked Alice and Ken.

  “Oh my God, Tanzie. I knew I shouldn’t have worn this dress with my golfer tan.” Alice shrugged and laughed. “Oh well.”

  “How’d you play?” I continued.

  “Uhhhh. Forty on the front. Fifty-nine on the back! Totally cratered.” Alice giggled. She wasn’t much of a golfer, but Winston and I played with the Mayhews every Sunday in the couples’ tournament.

  “Good grief, Alice. How do you shoot a forty, fifty-nine?” I shook my head laughing.

  “Got on every green in regulation on the front, hit in every lake and sand trap on the back. That’s how. I think I just got tired.”

  “I think you’re a sandbagger, Alice.” Winston laughed. “Driving up your handicap so we can win on Sundays.” He leaned toward Alice. “Atta girl.”

  “Ken shot a seventy-one!” Alice smiled at her husband.

  “Good man.” Winston gave Ken a slap on the back. “We’ll see if you can keep that up tomorrow morning.”

  “Better bring your wallet, Winston. I mean to win back the five grand you won last week!” Ken joked.

  Alice was like another sister to me, and I spent countless afternoons hanging out at their sprawling home in Memorial playing with the boys when they were toddlers and helping them with their math homework when they grew older. Winston and I were godparents to Matt, the older boy. “Your godson; my goddamn son,” Alice would joke when Matt was going through an episode of teenage obnoxiousness.

  Ken and Winston had been high school buddies at St. John’s, an exclusive Houston prep school, and they remained best friends throughout their professional lives.

  Grant and Beth McAfee and Bill and Julie Matheson strolled over to join the conversation. Handshakes, kisses, and birthday wishes gave way to cocktail banter about the condition of the greens, a new club chef, and a proposed capital assessment to widen cart paths.

  Ken, Winston, Grant, and Bill called themselves the “Rat Pack” and had a standing tee time on Saturday mornings. They played for high stakes and were considered the power foursome at Ravenswood, our club. Each had served a term as president and their portraits hung in the main hallway. As the men discussed club business, we women snuck away for our own conversation.

  “Tanzie, I signed us up for the shootout tournament in two weeks. That’s still good for you, right?” Beth asked as she lit up a cigarette, waving the smoke away as she exhaled. The shootout was an annual club tournament benefiting one of Beth’s many charities. We were always tournament partners because we had single-digit handicaps, thrived on pressure and competition, and dominated most of the tournament play at Ravenswood.

  “Absolutely! Who are you playing with, Alice?” I asked. Though she and I were best friends, she wasn’t serious about her golf and tended to lose focus and to clown around, which explained her horrendous back nine. She didn’t seem to mind that I paired up with Beth in tournaments; in fact, Alice probably preferred it, since she really hated playing under pressure.

  “I’m playing with Frankie Waldon. We’ll have a good time in the fourth flight, us high handicappers.”

  “Frankie cheats,” Beth whispered.

  “Good,” said Alice. “I could use the help.”

  “Alice!” Beth and I shouted in unison. Golfing is a game of honor and cheating is unthinkable. It’s a swift road to being ostracized at a club. Sandbagging is one thing, but no serious golfer will tolerate cheating.

  “I’ll keep an eye on her. Don’t worry.” Alice rolled her eyes. “She’s still a blast to play with. More fun than you two, that’s for sure.”

  “How about you, Julie?” Alice asked. Beth and I didn’t care too much for Julie Matheson, but because our husbands were close friends, she came along with the package. Julie was always complaining about aches and pains and had a tendency to back out of social engagements at the last minute. Alice was too nice of a person to get annoyed by such minor things.

  “Bad back.” Julie sighed. “I’ll try to help with the sign-in, but I can’t promise anything.”

  There were other guests to mingle with, so I excused myself and rejoined
Winston, who was talking with Mason, one of our older friends who had suffered a series of strokes lately and was prone to inappropriate remarks. “So how’s the new CFO—Caroline, is it?—working out, Winston? She’s pretty damn young, don’t you think?” asked Mason. “She’s a rock star,” said Winston. “Battle-tested over at KPMG, made partner over there in eight years. I think that may be a firm record.”

  “Unbelievable. Maybe she has her sights on your job. How long do you think before she’s the next CEO?” Mason joked, as his wife, Leanne, looked on uncomfortably.

  “No doubt, Mason, I’ll need to watch my step around the board,” said Winston, always the politician.

  “Not bad looking, either,” said Mason. “Must be more enjoyable jetting off to New York with her instead of that old fart, George Callaway.”

  Winston looked a bit startled but composed himself. “I can assure you, it’s all business, Mason. George was a great executive to work with.”

  Leanne gave Mason a gentle nudge and changed the subject. “Tanzie, I’m wondering if I can borrow you to look over the luncheon menu for the bridge group next week. It’ll only take a second.”

  While there had been many previous infidelities on Winston’s part, I was blissfully unaware of this affair that would change my life so profoundly a year later. I didn’t get the inference underlying Mason’s comments until many months afterward. Looking back, I think plenty of people did know, but that is how country club friendships work, sometimes. They tend to be superficial and husband-centered. The women are your friends while you’re married and involved in the club, but since the man is the member and the woman a “spouse,” a divorce means that you are no longer welcome on the premises. No Wednesday morning golf, no ladies association lunches, no bridge or book club. Promises to meet outside the club evaporate over time, and pretty soon you lose all contact.

  Still, my friendship with Beth and Alice was anything but superficial, and we remained close even through the awkward months as the divorce finalized. I promised to keep in touch after moving to Tulsa but instead retreated inward. I can’t pinpoint the emotion that made me distance myself from my closest friends. Alice suggested I join Facebook, but I didn’t. She and Beth left messages on my machine and sent e-mail that I didn’t return. I fell into a funk after moving, and reminders of my old life only made me more depressed.

  And the whole process had started right then—June 1, 2007, my fiftieth birthday. I stare at the date, right there on my computer clock.

  Moe and Hal stop by on their way out the door, interrupting my thoughts. “Just so you know,” Moe begins, “I called around about the security breach over the weekend. The guy they used was new because of the holiday. They don’t think that will happen again.”

  “Okay,” I reply. “I am really sorry if I went too far. Are you sure there isn’t anything I can help you with on your audit, Moe?”

  “Maybe. I’ll let you know,” he says coldly.

  Hal leans in. “Tanzie, could you put together a data request for this construction audit before you go home tonight? See if we can get the contracts by the end of the week. Think you can do that?”

  “Of course, I’ll send the requests by e-mail tonight. I’ll copy you so you can make sure I did it correctly,” I say, trying not to sound angry.

  I get busy putting together a schedule and figuring out who has the needed information as the clock reaches five and keeps going. Ironic, I think, I had nothing to do all day but will end up leaving late because of this assignment. I feel sure this isn’t accidental. I click send and pack up for the day.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  After I finish my dinner, I pour another glass of wine and head out to my balcony for my evening smoke, taking the landline with me. It has been an exhausting day and I want to talk to someone. I think about calling Alice or Beth, but that feels funny after blowing them off for the last six months. Instead, I decide to talk to my sister again.

  Lucy and I are Irish twins, just eleven months apart. Looking at us, though, it’s hard to believe we’re related, let alone sisters. Lucy is tall and delicate with red hair, and I am sturdy, dark, and athletic—good peasant stock, my brother Charlie used to tease. Lucy and I are the youngest in our family of seven girls and one boy, with an immigrant Irish dad and Greek mother. We grew up in the Richmond District in San Francisco, the set of avenues just north of Golden Gate Park and east of the Pacific. The O’Learys were not dirt poor but more on the “barely scraping by” rung of the economic ladder. Often the recipients of charity donations, we volunteered our time at church projects to compensate for our inability to make monetary contributions; our ultimate donation was my oldest sister, Honey, to the convent, which allowed the rest of us to receive a subsidized education at Catholic schools.

  Growing up, I never knew what loneliness was. But tonight, on my balcony looking at Utica Square below full of people shopping and meeting friends for drinks or dinner, I feel completely isolated and long to be back home. I close my eyes for a moment trying to remember the smells and sounds of my childhood.

  “Tanzie. Tanzie. Are you awake?” Lucy raised my eyelid with her finger.

  I swatted her hand away and opened my eyes on my own, groaning as I stared up at the nearly twenty years’ worth of petrified chewing gum stuck to the underside of our dining room table, placed there pre-dinner by my siblings. I had seen it before. As the two youngest, Lucy and I were the most portable, so even though we fell asleep in our own bed, there was no guarantee we would awaken there the next morning. Our bed was routinely reassigned to accommodate the many visitors to the O’Leary home.

  As immigrants, my parents felt a responsibility to help not just their own family members coming to America but also people in general coming to San Francisco. At any given time, entire families of cousins, friends of cousins, and other nonrelatives crammed into our home. When couch space filled up, the children were redistributed to unconventional sleeping spaces.

  Lucy and I crawled out from our makeshift bed in hand-me-down flannel nightgowns and headed through the kitchen and onto the enclosed back porch that functioned as our laundry room.

  “Here’s your uniform.” Lucy handed me a wrinkled blue plaid jumper from the pile of clothes that had been dumped out of the dryer onto the floor, and I got busy hunting for a blouse, underwear, and socks. Our mother always made sure our clothes were clean, but the final steps of the laundry process were rarely completed in time to be of any use.

  “Want me to iron your stuff?” I asked Lucy.

  “It’s okay. I don’t mind the wrinkles,” she replied, stripping down and throwing on her clothes in almost a single motion.

  “Lucy! You can’t go to school like that. Your socks don’t even match.” She gave a shrug and left me on the porch standing on a box at the ironing board. Even at six years old, I understood the value of good presentation. So, even though my jumper was two versions behind the current uniform worn at St. Geronimo’s Catholic School and had been worn by six previous sisters, it would be starched and crisp when I arrived on the playground that morning.

  In the time it took me to get dressed on the porch, the downstairs had transformed from total quiet to complete chaos. Every chair at the Formica dining room table was now occupied. Uncle Agamemnon was arguing with a distant cousin from County Cork about whether Richard Nixon was finished politically, and my brother and two of our older sisters were retelling jokes from last night’s Ed Sullivan Show. My mother had two coffee pots percolating on the kitchen stove, and a line of visitors waited with coffee mugs in hand. Some strange old man in a black suit was smoking and sitting off by himself on a kitchen stool, holding the yellow clay ashtray I’d made in art class on his lap. I found Lucy sitting Indian style under the table with a bowl of cereal between her legs and a book in her hand. I joined her.

  “Greek myths,” she answered without me asking.

  “Read it to me,” I pleaded.

  As a second grader, Lucy was reading at a hi
gh school level and always seemed to have her nose in a book. I, too, was an avid reader, but since there was only one book and two of us, it would be better for her to narrate rather than have me read over her shoulder.

  The story was about Hermes and the Cattle of Apollo, and I ate her cereal as she read.

  “Time for school,” Mama shouted. “The bell rings in ten minutes!”

  Lucy and I emerged from under the table leaving the book and bowl, which I was certain would still be there when we returned home.

  Lucy answers on the second ring and I begin to cry as I recount my horrible day.

  “Just quit, Tanzie. Come out here and live with me.”

  “Thanks, but living in a trailer might be the final straw.”

  “What was I thinking? There probably isn’t enough room for all your shoes and purses, anyway.”

  “Hey, Lucy, I just want my career back.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  I was taken aback by the remark. With all my focus on my own career woes, I’d completely forgotten about my sister’s failed business. Back in the ’90s Lucy gained considerable fame and fortune by inventing cotton that grew naturally in colors. Inventing seems like the wrong word, because she actually patented her seeds after painstakingly crossbreeding season after season, extracting the genetic properties of most value to her. She had started with some brown wild cotton that was thought to be pest resistant but too short-stapled to be spun commercially.

  As she selectively bred for length she discovered quite unexpectedly that the brown hue contained a spectrum of other colors that could be extracted through selective breeding techniques. This is not genetic engineering, mind you, which shortcuts the process and can result in dangerous and unanticipated results. Lucy’s technique, while arguably slow, partnered with nature so that all her results were in keeping with her environmental and scientific ethics. It was along the lines of utilizing a wise and experienced matchmaker versus cloning human beings.