“So, what should I do?”
Sue’s words are punctuated by short bursts of static. “Is there anything you haven’t done yet?”
I wrap the telephone cord around my finger. “There must be something.”
“Why?”
“Because nothing’s worked yet.”
“Okay. Listen.” I can see her thoughtful frown in my mind’s eye. “I think that you’re pushing Matthew too hard. If I were you, I’d back off, at least a bit.”
“That’s not an option,” I reply immediately.
“Well, if you keep going on like this, you’re just going to piss him off.”
“I refuse to give up on him, Sue. He’s my brother. I have to save him.”
“Right.” Sue is silent for a moment.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” She coughs. “Just thinking. How much do you know about Matthew?”
“Enough to know that his lifestyle runs absolutely contrary to what God intended.”
“Okay, let me try that again. Do you know what he does in his free time? Do you know who he spends it with? Can you name any of his friends?”
“Of course I can,” I say, only to realize that I can’t as soon as the words are out of my mouth. I can recall boys that he used to associate with, and women who used to leave messages for him, but I know nothing of what his life has been since he left home. I’ve been working so hard to change him that I haven’t been paying attention to him. And if I don’t know who he is ...
“Chastity?” Sue asks. “Are you still there?”
“It’s no wonder I can’t relate to him.”
“It’s not your fault,” Sue says. “I mean, maybe there are things you could have done to make it better, but ...” She trails off. “Don’t waste time thinking about that. What you need to focus on is learning to understand him, meeting him halfway. I’m sure he’d appreciate that much more than what you’re doing now.”
“I’m not sure that I can. His life is so alien to me.” I look out the window, at the grey sky. “How much of it can I really hope to understand? And how can I get close enough to learn about it without condoning it or driving him further away?”
“That’s for you to figure out. What do you have to lose?”
I look away from the window, and at the reflection in my dresser mirror. Father, I pray, if this is the wrong choice, please help me to realize my error before it becomes irreversible. If it is the right choice, however, if it is what You intend, then please help me to fulfill it. I wait a moment, and the serenity that I last felt before Mass this morning returns to me.
“Chastity?”
“Nothing,” I reply. “I have nothing to lose.”
Sue
WHILE THE COFFEE machine is doing its thing, I dig the aspirin out of the medicine cabinet. This is the third day in a row I’ve woken up with a migraine, and I can’t afford to have one today. Work sucks enough already.
Five pills left. I take two of them back to the kitchen and put them down on the counter. The coffee machine isn’t done, but I don’t have time to wait for it, so I take the coffee pot off the burner and ignore the sizzling noise of the last few drops hitting the burner. I need a mug. Where the hell are they? Not a mug in sight. I grab a glass from the sink and give it a quick rinse. Better than drinking out of the pot, I think as I pop the pills into my mouth and wash them down.
In the pantry, I find a small box of cereal and start digging into it as I look around the mess in my apartment for my uniform shirt and a clean pair of pants. Why do they only want black pants? I kick a couple of jeans aside and swallow a mouthful of cereal. Like I couldn’t do my job in jeans. And the stupid supervisor wears whatever the hell he wants anyway, ‘cause he’s not ‘client facing’. What’s he going to do if some bitch wants to complain?
Eventually, I find a pair of black slacks that aren’t too dirty, and drop the empty cereal box onto the floor. Time to get going. I can’t be late again today.
But I am. Ten minutes, to be exact.
I nod to the girl at the cash next to mine as I drop my purse onto the floor and log in. It takes me two tries to get my password right. When I finally manage to get my station set up, I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Okay. The morning’s been shit so far, but there’s no reason that the rest of the day should be bad. It’s a weekday, and there’s never anyone here on weekday mornings. Sure enough, I don’t see any customers except for a couple of old women browsing the romance novels in the bargain bin. There. Everything’s fine.
“Oh, yeah, Sue?” the other cashier says to me.
“Yeah?” I say, forcing myself to smile.
“Rich wanted to see you when you got in. Said it was important.” She nods toward the back, where Rich’s office is. “You should go before it gets busy.”
My headache returns full force as I lock my cash. “Thanks,” I grumble, and make my way into the back of the store.
Rich’s office is past the antique water cooler and even older coffee machine. His door is open when I arrive, and I can hear him talking on the phone. Nice. Maybe he won’t want to bother with whatever he wanted now. With my best fake smile, I stick my head into his office and wave, hoping for him to wave me away. Instead, though, he simply holds up one finger and nods to one of the chairs in front of his desk.
A few moments later, he hangs up the phone and swivels his chair to face me. “Morning, Sue. How are you today?”
“Fine.” As soon as I’ve said this, my head throbs, and I wince. “You wanted to see me?”
“Yes, I did.” He glances at his computer, then lowers his voice. “Could you get the door, please?”
Crap. I get up, close the door, and sit back down.
Rich spends a few seconds typing before he gets back to me. I can’t decide whether I appreciate the distraction or whether I’d rather have the meeting over with. “I hear that you left early last week,” he says, almost conversationally.
“Yes.” There’s no point denying it: he’s obviously seen the timesheets. “I had to be somewhere for 6, so I got Keith to do half my shift.”
Rich stares at me for a few seconds. “You know that you’re not supposed to do that. All scheduling changes need to be approved by me.”
“Yeah, I know, but it was a sudden thing, and you weren’t around, so I —”
“— thought you’d just make your own rules.” He pauses. “This isn’t the first time that I’ve had to talk to you about this. You can’t just come and go as it suits you.”
“I don’t see what the problem is.” My head throbs again and I lift my hand to rub my temple slowly. “I didn’t just walk out. I made sure that there was someone else to cover for me, and put a note on the timesheet.”
“Yes, you did. But the schedules are made the way that they are for a reason. Keith is still very new; he shouldn’t have been here on a Friday evening, particularly not when we were already short one cashier.”
“Were there any problems?”
“That’s not the point. If there had been any trouble, it would have been entirely due to your disrespect of the rules.”
“How could I respect the rules if you weren’t here to ask?”
“You should have come to see me earlier, given me advance notice and asked for permission.”
I begin to rub my head more forcefully. “I already told you this was a sudden thing. I didn’t find out until a couple of hours before I had to leave.” This is a lie, of course, but he’s got no way of knowing that.
“You have entirely too many of these ‘sudden things’, Sue.” He looks at his computer. “This is the fourth time in two months.”
I roll my eyes. “Oh, please. Cathy’s constantly calling in sick and leaving us strapped on Thursday nights. I think that’s probably a bit more serious than me asking someone to fill in once in a while.”
“The affairs of other employees are not your concern.” He presses his lips together, and I know that I’ve pissed him off. Good. I’ve got shit of my
own to deal with; I don’t need this. “This is your last warning, Sue. If I see that you’ve taken it upon yourself to write the schedule again, I’ll have to escalate this.”
“‘Escalate’? What is that supposed to mean?”
“We might reduce your hours, or your salary. We may dismiss you entirely.”
I scoff. “You can’t fire me over something like that.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Your attitude isn’t doing you any favours, Sue.”
“My attitude? I’m not the one on a power trip.”
He stares at me for a few moments. “I believe that we’re done here,” he finally says. “It would be in your best interest to get back to work before I decide against letting you off with a warning.”
I stand up and glare straight at him. Even before I start speaking, part of me knows that this is stupid, that I’ll regret it even before I get outside, but I just can’t stop myself. No one pushes me around, especially not some bastard behind a desk. “Oh, we’re more than done here,” I say as I rip my nametag off my uniform shirt and throw it onto his desk. It bounces off the cheap imitation wood, making him jump, and lands on the floor. “I’m fucking done.”
Before he can say anything, I leave his office and charge back to the cash to get my purse. The other cashier is handing someone a bag when I get there, and as I throw my purse over my shoulder, she asks: “Everything okay?”
“Drop dead,” I say.
The trip home is a complete blank. When I get there, I dump my purse and keys onto the floor and change out of my uniform shirt into an old tank top. Then I turn the TV on and flop on the couch.
It’s after 5 when I turn it off again, and by then it feels like every muscle in my body is competing to see which can cause me the most discomfort. Slowly, I make my way toward the window and stare out. People are coming home from work; their laptop bags and beaten-down expressions give them away. They’re like rats, really; just herded along. They wouldn’t dream of fighting back, not as long as they have pellets and water.
The phone rings. I answer without checking the caller ID. Maybe it’s Rich calling to apologize. “Hello?” I say, trying to sound as professional and serious as possible.
“Hi, it’s Denise.” Nice to hear her voice, but I can’t stop my heart from sinking just a bit. “How are you?”
“Shitty. You?”
“Okay, I guess. I was calling to ask you about something. Someone, really.” A pause. “It can wait. What’s going on?”
“I quit my job today.”
She inhales sharply. “Oh, my God. What happened?”
“The boss was giving me a hard time, so I told him where to go.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Don’t know.” I laugh, and the sound is far too high-pitched. “There’s always welfare, right?”
“Sue, don’t talk like that! Don’t even think it.” She pauses. “Okay. How about I take some time off this week, and we go down to the temp agency downtown together? They’re really good, and it might turn into something permanent. That’s how I got my job, remember?”
“Yeah, and you love it so much.” I close my eyes. “Sorry. I’m still trying to come to terms with this whole thing.”
“Of course. I’m sorry, I just ... What can I do?”
“I don’t know. I think I just need some time.” I lie down on the couch again. “I don’t think that I can do this right now.”
“Right. Okay. I shouldn’t have pushed you.”
“Don’t be silly. I would have told you before if I couldn’t deal with it ... but I do need to go. I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”
“Sure. And Sue, if you need anything —”
“I know where you are.” I smile. “Good night, Denise.”
“Good night.”
Diana
“SO, WHAT CAN I do for you?”
The academic advisor is wearing a denim shirt over jeans several shades too light to match it. Above the right breast pocket, a stain that could be anything from ketchup to blood to lipstick proclaims her slovenly nature. I allow my gaze to roam over the heaped mass of paper and folders she calls a desk, count no less than four unfinished cups of take-out coffee, and frown at the half-eaten sandwich next to the greasy keyboard before I can look her in the eye without betraying my disgust.
“I’m not quite sure what I should be studying,” I reply evenly.
The advisor nods, and begins to rummage through the portion of the mess closest to the edge of the desk. “Well, we get that a lot.” She snickers, as though she’s said something particularly witty. “Now, let me see ...” She glances at a labelled folder. “Julie, right?”
“Diana.”
“Oh, right. Sorry about that.” She swivels her chair to the right, and pulls out a grease-stained folder whose oft-replaced label, appallingly, bears my name. “We get a lot of people coming in here, and I’m really, really bad with names. First visit?”
“Yes.”
“Alright. Now we’re cooking with gas.” She chuckles as she flips open the folder to expose a blank sheet of loose-leaf with the date written in the top right corner. “Have you taken any university classes so far?”
“Some. I took one course in Italian and another in modern literature. There was also one in psychology. For this semester, I’ve signed up for an introductory course in Sociology.”
“Electives, then,” she says dismissively. “Did you enjoy them?”
“Yes, for the most part.”
“Which did you like best?”
“I ...” Does it really matter? “Psychology, I suppose.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” I say sharply. “Why?”
“You don’t seem the type.”
“And what, exactly, constitutes ‘the type’?”
She smiles at me condescendingly. How dare she? “I’ve been doing this for years. I know a Psych major when I see one, and you’re not it.” She taps her pen against her upper lip. “I think I’d peg you as a Science or Business student ... something logical, with numbers. Something controlled.”
“Psychology is a science,” I remind her.
“True, but I think you’ll find that people aren’t given to obeying equations.” She shrugs. “Then again, I guess you know yourself better than I do.”
“Evidently.”
“Alright, then.” She folds her arms in front of her, and swivels her chair so that her entire body is facing me. “So, why not?”
“Why not ...?”
“Why not Psychology?” She unfolds her arms and sits up a bit straighter. “If you liked it, and you didn’t have any other plans, why wouldn’t you take it full-time? What stopped you?”
I think back to the last session of that Psychology course, when I asked myself that very question, and give her the answer that I gave myself back then. “While it was enjoyable, I didn’t see myself making a career out of it.”
“Why not?”
“Does there need to be a reason?”
“No, but there usually is.” She meets my eyes, and I stare right back at her, keeping my expression blank. “Was it the subject matter? Did you find it too hard, too easy ... too obscure, even?”
“I — No, the subject matter was fine.”
“Was it the people, then? Did you have trouble getting along with everyone? Did it just feel like you didn’t fit in?”
“I had no more social trouble than usual.” I arch an eyebrow, daring her to comment on this, but she lets it pass.
“Were there any other circumstances, then? The details are none of my business, but were you in some sort of financial trouble, or did some sort of situation come up that was severe enough to stop you from attending class?”
“There was no such circumstance, and you’re right to say that it’s none of your business.” I shift my purse a bit higher up on my lap. “I don’t understand why we’re discussing this in the first place. Psychology wasn’t for me: how are we served by dissecting my feeling
s on the subject?”
“You’d be very surprised to know how many people have sat where you’re sitting with the exact same attitude,” she says, and her tone gets softer. “They want me to tell them what program to enroll in, and what job to try for once they’ve completed it. They want me to plan out their lives for them, and maybe that’s what some of my colleagues do.” She rests an elbow on her desk. “Every one of those people is just like you: confused. It’s easy for the kids with passion, because they can focus on whatever makes them happiest and try to make a career out of it. Most of them don’t wind up here.” She props her chin up on her hand and frowns sympathetically. “I think it’s probably hardest for the ones like you, with great marks all around but no idea what you want to do with them. Sometimes, you really can have too many doors open.” She looks over my transcript, then back at me. “I’ll tell you what I tell them: think about taking a break. Get yourself a temp job, or do some volunteer work. If you have to be in school, then take a course or two, something that you think you might enjoy. Whatever you do, though, make sure that you take some time to think about what you want, and what kind of job might provide that.” She closes the file without having written anything. “Come back and see us in six months, and let us know how it’s going.”
“What an utter waste of time that was. How do people like that remain employed?”
“I have no idea. It’s disgusting.” Belle smiles at me over her ice cream cone as we walk down a side street a few blocks from her apartment building. I’ve told her several times that eating ice cream in autumn is perfectly idiotic, but she insists on doing it anyway. “I sincerely hope that she was having an off day. That can’t possibly have been her best.”
“Who cares if she was doing her best? Effort doesn’t count for anything.”
“Not beyond kindergarten, anyway.” We come to a small park, and Belle only just makes it to the nearest bench before she has to crane her neck to catch a bit of melting ice cream. “What are you going to do?”
“Finish getting a degree, at least.” I sit down beside her, but far enough away that there’s no danger of her ice cream dripping onto me. “I’ve wasted so much time and money on those useless courses. I might as well get something to show for it.”
A Tale of Beauty Page 6