When You Went Away

by Michael Baron

  Thankfully, Reese was asleep when we arrived. Elise told us that he’d only settled in his crib a half hour before.When Elise left,Maureen pulled me toward her and kissed me in a way she hadn’t kissed me in months. “Thanks for the date,” she said, holding me.

  “It was a great night.”

  She nuzzled my neck. “It’s still a great night.”

  She kissed me more deeply then and I ran my fingers through her hair while hers played across the small of my back. There had never been a point, even in those empty days after Tanya left, when I didn’t want her, but my desire for her now made me feel like I was seventeen. We uncoupled only long enough to make our way gingerly up the stairs, then tumbled together as soon as we reached our room. And we were in my dorm room in college, or in that olive grove in Tuscany, or on a private beach in Montauk or any of a dozen other places where we could feel our passion for one another in a distinctive and liberating way.

  All I knew at the time was that this was a welcome and necessary release, as the dinner had been before it. But would I have tamped back my hunger and tried to record every instant if I had known that this was the last time we’d ever make love together?

  Or had I anyway?

  • • •

  Eleanor Miller, Inc. is a catalog and Internet retailer that began in the early ’50s as the pet project of a Long Island housewife while her kids were growing up. It evolved into a national company with annual sales of more than a third of a billion dollars. Its corporate office in Centereach, New York, houses about three hundred employees, with another couple of hundred scattered in various locations throughout the Northeast. We are in the “trinkets and trifles” business, though none of us ever use such terms in public. About half of our products are proprietary with the other half sourced from international manufacturers under exclusive American contracts. Everything we sell is relatively inconsequential – whether a personalized baseball card holder or a teak spice rack – and we don’t sell a single item that costs more than a hundred dollars. Still, everything is well made (backed by our lifetime guarantee), all is at least a little bit functional, and much of it is rather clever. People love getting our catalogs in the mail – though most of our business comes online now, all of our research indicates that the catalog still drives it. And for the most part the catalogs love them back.

  I started in the marketing department ten years ago, eventually becoming the VP of new product development. I hadn’t intended to stay with the company this long, but the regular pay raises, the promotions, and the close proximity to our home pacified me. And the place had grown on me. From the outside, it seemed kitschy and old fashioned, and before I started there, I assumed that the staff would be the same. But in fact, all kinds of smart people worked there, and the upper management had an inspiring sincerity. For the most part, I liked what my job evolved into. There were definitely too many board meetings and budget meetings and meetings of every other sort. But I always had a great time coming up with new items, and brainstorming with the team I put together was my favorite part of any workday. That part felt like play. And if I couldn’t say that I would do this work even if they didn’t pay me, I could at least say that it felt a lot less like work than everything else did.

  As I pulled my car into the parking lot, my gut seized up. The staff here was a form of extended family. Many of them had become genuine friends and many more had come to the funeral or sent condolence messages. But entering the building felt alien to me right now. I don’t think I realized until that moment just how completely I had cocooned myself over the past two months. Though I had ample contact with the outside during this time, I paid it little mind.My orbit centered on the kitchen, the family room, my bedroom, and the baby’s room. I hadn’t expected to feel any hesitation about going back to the office, but getting out of my car took some real effort.

  It got worse almost immediately. I could see people’s expressions changing when they saw me. I heard them thinking, there’s Gerry Rubato. Gotta be tough what he’s going through. First that thing with his daughter, and now his wife. As I headed to my office, a few people stopped to ask me how I was doing. I had no idea how to answer that question. Certainly, no one wanted the real explanation of how I was feeling. And even if they had, I didn’t ever want to be the kind of person who delivered speeches like that. I didn’t want to weigh people down with my troubles. I simply nodded meaningfully and people tilted their heads in understanding or touched me on the arm. The pity was nearly as excruciating as the notion that it was possible to reduce what I lost to snippets exchanged in the hallway.

  When I got to my office, my assistant Ben was sitting at his desk. He’d been with me for eighteen months and I hoped to get him a promotion before he found a job somewhere else. We’d been in touch every couple of days while I was out, so he was the one person who didn’t feel the need to “check in on me” when I arrived.

  “I kept the day pretty clear,” he said, following me into my office.

  “Thanks. I don’t know, though. A couple of meetings might be a useful diversion.”

  “I said pretty clear. You have a 10:30, a 2:30, and a 4:00.”

  “Right.” EleanorMiller was an extremely meetingintensive company. It wasn’t unusual for me to spend the entire day in a conference room. Executive management (which I never considered myself to be, even though the organizational chart said I was) believed that people were at their most efficient when they were “firing off of each other.” The upshot was that we spent a lot of time at home on nights and weekends catching up with the work we didn’t do while we inspired our colleagues.

  “In between, is this an open-door day or a closed-door day?”

  I really appreciated Ben. He knew how to ask the question without asking it. “I think it’s an open-door day, but I reserve the right to change my mind.”

  “You got it. It’s good to have you back.”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  Ben hesitated for a moment and I worried that I was going to have to fend off his sympathies as well. “Is the babysitter cute?” he said.

  I laughed. First one of the morning. “She’s pretty cute.”

  “Think she could maybe bring Reese to visit his dad sometime soon so I could meet her?”

  I shook my head. “She’s too old for you.”

  “I seriously doubt that.”

  I walked past him and patted him on the shoulder. “I’m going to see Marshall.”

  • • •

  Marshall Grove is seven years older than I am and had been my boss for the past six years. He has two kids; the youngest is Tanya’s age. Maureen and I went out regularly with him and his wife Denise. Denise sat with me, holding my hand for a long stretch on the first day of the wake, and the two of them came to visit once while I was home. Reese was having a rough afternoon and they didn’t stay long, but it meant a great deal to me anyway. Even though I often couldn’t remember who was in the house and when during those first few weeks, I appreciated the effort. Since then,Marshall and I had spoken on the phone a couple of times about business matters.

  Looking at us together, you might think that our age difference was considerably greater. Marshall was at least fifty pounds overweight, his hair com pletely gray, and it took a fire alarm to move him out of his chair. Still, the vitality of his mind was unmatched by most people twenty years younger. He’d been a great mentor and colleague over the years and, at this point, I considered him the best friend I had at Eleanor Miller.

  When I approached her desk, his assistant tipped her head accordingly and said it was good to see me. She’d only been with the company six months and probably didn’t even know Maureen’s name. Marshall was on the phone, but she told me to go right into his office.

  When he saw me,Marshall’s expression opened up and he reached a hand out for me to shake. I sat down on his couch and waited for him to complete his call. I had long aspired to have an office like his – easily twice the size of mine, with mahogany
furniture and thick blond carpeting – but when that thought came into my mind this morning, it felt a little off. As though I was thinking about attempting to compete in the Olympics after doing nothing but watching television for the past couple of years.

  Marshall got off the phone and reached out his hand again. This was both a gesture of welcome and a signal to come sit in the chair across from his desk so he didn’t need to get up.

  “That was just Reed preparing me for next week’s budget meeting. She thinks Monroe is going to blow a gasket over our missing the budget for the second month in a row.”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t realize we had.”

  Marshall threw a paw at me. “Business is soft everywhere. Not just in our sector. Retailers are jumping out of windows.” He looked down at his desk at some notes he’d made there and said, “We’ll be fine.” Then he looked up at me and said, “So, you’re back?”

  “I’m back.”

  “Denise really misses Maureen, you know. She told me to give you a kiss when I saw you. I told her we don’t do shit like that.”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  “You got someone good to take care of the baby?” “I think so. She’s very smart. She’ll probably leave in a couple of weeks.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You’re a braver man than me.” “Not like I have a lot of choice.”

  “No, I suppose not. Babies. Jeez, I wouldn’t have a clue. With Rachel getting ready for college, I’m kind of looking forward to our having the house all to ourselves.”

  I had no idea how to respond to this and simply sat there.

  “You ready to get back in the game?”

  I shrugged. “Might need to do a few stretches first.”

  “Well, do ’em. Christmas is right around the corner.”

  What Marshall meant was that we had about four months to prepare any new products for the Christmas catalog. “Yeah, I figured I’d catch up the next couple of days and schedule a creative meeting with the team Wednesday or Thursday.”

  “Do it. And listen, I want you to add a couple more people to your team. Don Richmond and Ally Ritten have come to me with some really good ideas lately. I think they might be ready for the big leagues.”

  Don had been with the company for a while and I liked him. Ally worked in the marketing department. She had been around for less than a year and we hadn’t worked together on anything. I’d heard good things about her, though. Not that it mattered, since Marshall wasn’t asking my opinion.

  “Sure,” I said. “We can certainly use the extra bodies.” “Make this Christmas catalog a knockout, Gerry. It will be good for all of us.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “It’ll be really good for you. Look, I can’t pretend that I know what you’re going through, but the best medicine is throwing yourself into your work. It’s the only way you’re going to get over this.”

  I had a feeling that what Marshall said wasn’t even close to true, but he wasn’t saying it as a conversation starter. He seemed distracted, like he needed to get on the phone or summon someone else to his office or something.

  “I’d better go find out how much of a disaster my office is,” I said as I turned to go.

  “Yeah, don’t let me stop you. Check in later if you want. I’m glad you’re back.”

  • • •

  When he saw me, Ben said that four people had come by. Three had stopped simply to say hello. The fourth had an urgent business question to discuss. As the day went on, interaction with my colleagues continued at that ratio.Most of them acknowledged that it might take me a little while to get up to speed, while some approached me as though I had taken an especially long weekend. In a funny way, I appreciated the latter group more. While I felt a step-and-a-half behind in these conversations, they at least approximated what my work life had been like before. And if I was going to do this, if I was going to spend ten hours a day away from my son, I wanted work to feel like what it had always felt like. To be honest, I’m not sure I could have handled another thing in my life changing completely.

  I called Lisa a couple of times during the day to learn that Reese was fine, that she could put her hands on everything she needed, and that she wasn’t planning to quit before the evening. I spent the rest of the time returning phone calls and trying to make sense of the piles of paperwork. Concentration was a real problem, though. At any moment, I could find myself transported by a recollection of Maureen or a speculation about Tanya. Then I would be lost in thought for some stretch of time. At one point, I closed my office door for a while when I felt myself losing my composure. If anything, the fact that I could find even momentary distraction in a memo or report made the memory ambush that much more debilitating when it came.

  By mid-afternoon, I felt very tired. I had never considered my job physically strenuous, but I seemed to be out of shape, like I needed to build back up before I could be effective for a full day. I never left the office before six, but by 4:30 I was useless.

  At 5:15, Ben poked his head in the doorway.

  “I hadn’t heard any sounds in here for a while and I thought you might have fallen asleep.”

  “I think I’ve been reading the same line on this report for ten minutes now.”

  “Isn’t that usually a sign that it’s time to go home?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve been gone for so long.”

  “The company will survive. Go kiss your baby. By the way, I’ve taken the liberty of printing out a head-shot with my home and cell numbers. Just in case you wanted to give it to Lisa.”

  “You aren’t really that pathetic, are you?”

  “It is not easy meeting women around here.”

  I stood up and started packing my briefcase.

  “Really, leave it all,” Ben said. “It’ll be here tomorrow. Go be a dad.”

  Ben was right. There was no way I could accomplish everything that I needed to accomplish on my first day back. There would be time for everything if I didn’t stress overly much about it.

  I grabbed my jacket and left the office behind for the night.

  I had officially survived my first day back in the real world.

  If you could call this survival.

  THREE

  Hearts

  “It was a little bit strange, to tell you the truth. The entire day was like this. I mean, it was actually a little weird even being in the building.”

  Reese and I were in the kitchen – me at the stove making myself dinner and him on the counter in his baby seat – as I told him about my day. Occasionally he would make eye contact, but most of the time his head rolled back and forth, perhaps following a reflection or watching a piece of dust traverse the room. As was the case with my walking him around the house and showing him things, I understood that all of this was going over his head. Still, I wanted to get into the habit of doing it. I wanted to get back from work and let my son know what went on in my life. I wanted this to be one of the things we did at home together.Maybe if communication between us was such a natural thing for Reese that he literally learned it while he was learning how to speak, I could avoid the kind of communication breakdown that dimmed my relationship with Tanya.

  And at the same time, it gave me the opportunity to review the day aloud, just to hear myself talk about it and maybe learn something from doing so. It had been an unsettling day. That hardly made it unique among days for me now. But this one had been unsettling – disquieting, really – for different reasons. One was the huge amount of work that had piled up, much of it reminding me (though none of my colleagues would, at least not today) how much time had been lost on the Christmas catalog. Another reason was that the continual stream of sympathy I faced, expressed or not, made me uncomfortable and didn’t offer even a modicum of relief. And yet another was that the place suddenly felt foreign to me. It wasn’t mine.

  I sautéed some shallots in olive oil and then threw in a few quartered kumquats, tossing them with my kitchen tongs a few times t
o make sure that each picked up a little of the oil. I cooked the vast majority of meals throughout our marriage because I loved doing it and Maureen loved eating what I cooked. My cooking had run through various stages over the years – from studied and formal when Maureen and I first moved in together and I wanted to impress the hell out of her, to simple and casual for a brief period when Tanya started eating with us, to loose and experimental when it turned out that Tanya had world-class taste buds and would try just about anything. And I compiled a considerable repertoire of twenty-minute dishes with big flavors that I could throw together after coming home from work. I hardly ate at all the first few weeks after Maureen died. But I slowly started to cook again, though it was harder to do now that there was no one to cook for.

  When the kumquats were soft, I threw a half-dozen jumbo shrimp into the pan and let them sear on both sides before deglazing the pan with a bit of white balsamic vinegar and a dot of butter. I put the whole thing over rice and sat at the counter across from Reese, bringing his bottle with me.

  “I don’t know how you could have the same thing for dinner every night,” I said, holding the bottle up to his mouth with my left hand while I ate with my right. “We’ll get you on pureed carrots soon. You’ll be amazed.” Clearly, the conversation didn’t interest him much, because he swiveled his head to glance off at something in the direction of the family room, the nipple slipping from his mouth as he did so.

  The shrimp could have used a little cayenne, but I didn’t want to get up and break Reese’s concentration. I watched the expressions on his face while I ate. Whatever he was looking at was fascinating to him: the bottle forgotten, his mouth pursing in what I could only assume was some attempt at communication with the object of his interest. In profile, I could see his eyes widening and then tightening. Suddenly, he turned back sharply in my direction, startling me a little by the unexpected movement. Whatever he saw on my face must have seemed funny to him because he chuckled. Tickled by this reaction – I loved the sound of his laughter – I tried for several minutes to get him to do it again to no avail.