The Opposite of Love

by Julie Buxbaum

  I hate Carl. More than Marge, more than Carisse, more than my father. I fucking hate him.

  “Um, well. I wanted to discuss the boxes that need to be reviewed. A. Sap,” Carl says calmly. His eyes are curious, and I can tell he is not used to fielding anger from associates. Things are usually the other way around. The way he says “A. Sap,” like they are two different words, pisses me off. A.S.A.P. I want to scream at him. The term is A.S.A.P., acronym for “as soon as possible,” you dipshit. Not A. Sap.

  “No.” I don’t meet his eyes, because I am worried I will lose control if I do.

  “Excuse me?”

  “No, I am not reviewing those boxes. I am a fifth-year associate. That is first-year work, and if you want it to get done, I suggest you find a couple of juniors to do it.” I say it quickly, rushing the words into one another. But the anger fuels me on. I will not do it. Repeat after me, Emily, I will not do it.

  “I am sorry. That is not a decision for you to make. You will do it because I asked you to.” Does that mean I should have let you eat me out because you asked me to? I almost, almost say these words out loud but realize I can’t. I have walked pretty close to the ledge, but that would be jumping off.

  “Carl, I’m not doing it. You can fire me if you want to, but we both know that wouldn’t be very wise on your part. Given what happened in Arkansas.” The threat comes out before I’ve even formulated the thought, and I can’t believe that I had the nerve to actually say it. Carl’s shock, too, is palpable, and he pauses to regain his composure. What have I done?

  “Okay. I get it. I’ll find someone else to review the boxes. But I will not accept this kind of behavior in the future from you. Tread carefully, Haxby. Tread carefully. Consider this your one get-out-of-jail-free card.” For a moment I am impressed by Carl, his ability to give a little but to still cede back total control. To gently remind me that, at the end of the day, he has all of the power.

  “You know what? I quit.” And the words are out again, without my knowing it. Without planning. Without even a moment’s consideration of the consequences. So this will be the day I quit, I think to myself. I will remember this day. It will be distinct from all the others, yesterday and tomorrow, because this is the day I walked out.

  Carl looks calm, serene even, and does not seem bothered in the least that I have resigned.

  “Come on. I will not accept that. You’re not quitting. You’re a valued member of the APT team. You have repeatedly shown your dedication to this firm. And just because you’re angry right now is not a reason to throw away your career here. So this is what is going to happen.” Carl leans forward, and he almost looks kind, like somebody’s father.

  “You are going to go back to your office and think this through. I will not accept your resignation. In fact, I will pretend like you haven’t quit at all. We will get some other associates to do the review, and you will take some time to regroup. Okay? Go on vacation or something.”

  And there it is, the opportunity to take it all back, to undo this whole thing. How often in life do you get the chance to rewind like that? He is throwing out a lifeline. Emily, take it. You can un-quit.

  “Carl, I’m serious, I quit.” I say the words again, and I can tell I mean them. Even though my conscious thoughts tell me to undo what I have done, someone else is now running the show. The thought of having to work at APT for even just one more second is overwhelming. I am done, I realize. I am done here.

  “I already told you. I will not accept your resignation. Now, please get out of my office,” he says, and shuffles around some papers on his desk. “Some of us have work to do.”

  I leave Carl’s office, and on the walk back to mine, I think about my options. In the eyes of APT, I still have not quit. I can still come to work tomorrow and collect my paycheck on Friday. I still have health insurance. This can be just another little secret between Carl and me, one that lives in my bottom drawer with my Kiss My Arkans-ASS shorts. But I also know I cannot turn back now. I do not want to grow up to be Carl MacKinnon or any of the other partners, even the ones I actually admire. This is not the life I want. I don’t know what I do want, but I know enough now to say this is not it. It is time to walk away.

  When I reach my office, I call the managing partner of APT. If Carl won’t listen, I will get someone else to take my resignation. Not surprisingly, I get Doug Barton’s voice mail, and I leave him a message saying that I need to speak with him urgently. I also leave a message for the head of the litigation department, James Slicer. I don’t tell either Doug or James that I am quitting, because for reputational reasons this is something better not said on a machine.

  “I quit,” I tell Kate in person at her office a few minutes later.

  “What?”

  “I quit. Well, actually, I’m quitting. Carl refused to accept my resignation, so I have left messages for Doug and James. I’m quitting. Today.”

  “Get in here,” she says, and she leads me to her guest chair. Kate closes her door and sits across from me, behind her large wooden desk. She looks like a real lawyer, sitting there among neat stacks of paper and leather-bound treatises and one of those little green lamps.

  “Are you okay? You seem a bit…a bit…frazzled. Or—” She pauses, deciding whether she wants to say what she actually thinks. “Well, you seem a bit hysterical.”

  “I’m fine. I’m quitting. So I’m a bit jumpy, yes, but please don’t try to talk me out of it.”

  “Why?”

  “Why am I quitting or why don’t I want you to talk me out of it?”

  “Why are you quitting?”

  “I’m done here, Kate. I hate it. Everything about this place. Except, of course, for you and Mason. But I hate everything else. I’m done. I feel like I am not only not making the world a better place, I am making it worse. That’s not why I went to law school.” I take a deep breath and then I keep going.

  “And Carl wanted me to review six hundred and seventy-eight boxes for Synergon, and I told him I wouldn’t do it. I threatened him, because he hit on me in Arkansas. So he said I didn’t have to review the boxes. But that’s not the point, is it, Kate?” I start to cry now, lines of tears rolling swiftly down my cheeks. I wipe them away with my sleeve, and Kate hands me a tissue and some hand sanitizer.

  I know she wants to ask me questions about what happened with Carl, but I am not done. The words keep tumbling out. Today is not only the day I quit, I think, today is the day I got verbal diarrhea. I wonder if I will ever be able to control my mouth again.

  “And I just feel horrible. Grandpa Jack has Alzheimer’s. I found out this weekend. He got lost, and it was just awful. And I miss Andrew. Though Jess was probably right. I am not ready for an Andrew. But it still sucks. And if he ends up with Carisse, I deserve it. I think he hates me now, and that’s probably the worst feeling of all.” Kate attempts to break into my monologue, probably to say something like Andrew doesn’t hate you, but I don’t let her get a word in.

  “You know what else? Want to hear the kicker? I fell asleep in the women’s bathroom today. In my favorite stall. Kate, I got toilet paper in my hair.”

  Somehow this breaks the moment, and Kate and I start laughing, gut-gripping laughter, until tears are falling down her face too. She dabs at her eyes furiously with a tissue to keep her mascara from running, but she’s too late. For the first time, I see what Kate looks like underneath the perfect makeup. She looks freer somehow.

  I spend the next hour in the safety of her office and tell her exactly what happened with Grandpa Jack. I give her all of the explicit details of sharing a hotel room with Carl too, and she blanches at the thought.

  “I think I would have kicked him in the balls,” Kate says.

  Eventually we move on to her wedding plans, and, surprisingly, I enjoy talking about the details. Her color scheme. The flowers. The band. The invitations. I find comfort in picturing Kate’s to-do list, with items carefully checked off once she is sure they are exactly right for h
er and Daniel. I can see she views the wedding as a jumping-off point. If that day goes well, so should the rest that follow.

  I imagine how her wedding could have been for me had the last few months been different. It would have been a jumping-off point for me too. Andrew would have stood behind Daniel at the altar, looking handsome in his tuxedo, the perfect best man. I would be across from him, in formation with Kate’s bridesmaids, a line of pale pink. Andrew would have caught my eye and smiled at me, smiled one of those knowing smiles, a smile that said something like This will be us soon. And if I was someone different, someone ready, I would have smiled back, a smile that said something like I love you too.

  And then I think about how it will likely go now that I have ruined everything. Andrew and I will both look steadily ahead and make sure not to catch each other’s gaze. He will bring Carisse as a date and look over at her in the audience. And when they exchange those smiles, I’ll stand mutely on the sidelines, like in a bad dream, when you scream and it doesn’t make a sound.

  Although my decision to quit today seems final, the powers that be keep me from following through. Neither the managing partner nor the litigation-department head returns my calls; apparently, any emergency I may have cannot be important enough to stop billing for a few minutes. I consider going to the receptionist and bribing her to use the firm’s loudspeaker. I picture myself, the microphone in hand, announcing my resignation to all of APT via a page.

  Ladies and gentlemen, I would say, and everyone in the office would stop what they were doing and listen.

  This is Emily Haxby, I would say. I quit, you fuckers.

  Or perhaps I could go simpler, subtler, more polite. Do it the way I imagined this morning. Walk out the front door and never come back. Leave behind APT, leave behind Emily Haxby.

  As I walk out for the day, I pass the main conference room near the elevators. I glance through the door, and I see that it’s filled with boxes. Six hundred seventy-eight boxes, to be exact. The floor-to-ceiling view down Park Avenue is blocked out by the towers of cardboard.

  At the table, Carisse is bent over a document, reading each word carefully. After a few seconds she puts it down and reaches for the next sheet in a stack about two feet high. I knock on the window and wave as I walk by. I smile when I see that she is only on box number one.

  Fifteen

  My big moment comes at eleven-thirty on Wednesday morning, when I finally get summoned into Doug Barton’s office. As managing partner of the firm, he gets the corner office, a boss’s office, and its two walls made of windows. The double view gives the impression that we are suspended above New York City, dangling over Midtown, and unrooted from solid ground. Although my office is on the same floor as Doug’s, it feels higher up here. I get dizzy before I even sit down.

  “So, Emily, what’s up?” Doug asks, after we shake hands and I steady myself in his guest chair. His voice is friendly and casual, as if we are longtime friends, although until today I was unsure if he even knew my name.

  “Well, I wanted to talk to you about something important.” And then, in the spirit of his relaxed tone, I add, “Doug.”

  His desk is completely clear of all paper and books and legal pads. Since it’s apparent he does not busy himself with actual work, I wonder what he does in here all day. Maybe I should wash my hands after the meeting is over. Just in case.

  I glance out the window and am startled to see a man on the outside looking in at me. He smiles, like we, too, are long-lost friends, and then takes out a squeegee and moves it up and down, rhythmically cleaning the transparent glass. He swings fifty stories aboveground to make sure our views remain unsmudged.

  “Okay.” Doug coughs, his polite way of saying Get to the point. He looks like he plays a lawyer on TV, with his silver-streaked hair and manicured cuticles and commanding glare.

  “I’m here to give you my resignation. Slightly less than standard notice, but I couldn’t reach you on Monday. My last day will be next Friday.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I’ve always viewed you as a valued member of the APT team. You have shown continual dedication to the firm.” He clears his throat. I get the impression that compliments do not come naturally to him, that they are an inconvenience that comes with the office. He adjusts his cuffs under his suit jacket, and I see that they are monogrammed, like Carl’s. The grown-up version of a camp label.

  “Thanks, Doug.” I am having fun using his name. I am half-tempted to push this buddy-buddy thing as far as I can and try to high-five him.

  “May I ask where you are going?” He grabs a pad from the drawer to jot my answer down. He rests his pen on its tip, expectant.

  “Actually, I don’t know yet. I’m going to take a little time off to clear my head, but I’ll have to start looking for a new position relatively soon. For financial reasons.” He nods his head at this, as if he can relate. Though based on the Rolex on his wrist, I would imagine financial concerns don’t come up much for him.

  “That’s very unorthodox. Usually our associates leave for another job. Perhaps go in-house at a company. Very rarely do we have associates leaving to do…to do…” He pauses and clears his throat again. “Nothing.”

  He utters it likes it’s a dirty word, like I said I was quitting to rape small children.

  “Yeah, the decision was sort of sudden. But I need some time off. I haven’t taken more than a handful of days since I started with the firm five years ago. I don’t think I have taken a single real vacation.” His face registers the implications of this. When associates leave, the firm is required to pay out for vacation days that haven’t been used. This is the only reason I am able to quit without having another position. APT owes me more than three months’ salary.

  “We always like to learn from departing associates,” he says. “So it would be great if you could discuss with me some of your reasons for moving on.” He surprises me with his next question. Until now, I thought he was following a script.

  “I see you have been working a lot with Carl MacKinnon lately. How has that experience been?”

  His question is subtle enough that I am given the option to either take the bait or to ignore it. I pretend to be fascinated by the view to buy a few moments to consider my answer. I had assumed the firm had adopted a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in regard to sexual harassment, so I am thrown off guard by his prompting.

  I am unsure how Doug will react if I tell him the truth about Carl. I find that men like him, professional men in their late fifties or early sixties, often dismiss what I have to say, as if whatever comes out of my mouth can’t be all that important. I think they don’t know how to relate to a woman who is too young to flirt with, too old to be treated as a child, and too female to mentor. Or maybe many of them have daughters around my age whom they have grown accustomed to tuning out. I check the bookshelf behind him for family photographs, but there are none.

  “Working for Carl is challenging.” I pause again. “And I do think he has trouble creating a healthy working environment for women.” I am not sure if I want to say more, to be responsible for telling on Carl; but at the same time, I hate the idea of him preying on the new class of associates—the women who are fresh out of law school, the ones who are still figuring out how to survive at APT. I want to preserve their naïveté, their optimism, just a little while longer.

  “Let me put it this way. I have heard from others, and have seen from personal experience, that he can be inappropriate.” I realize this is an incredible understatement, that Carl’s antics go way beyond inappropriate, but I can tell from the look on Doug’s face that I don’t need to elaborate. He is listening to me, and he gets it. He does not have to know the specifics about messing with hotel reservations and the offering of cunnilingus. It’s still sexual harassment even when they offer to do all the hard work.

  “Do you intend—” Doug stops, and I realize he likes to deliver his questions like a cross-examination, intentionally timing his beats for
maximum impact. “To sue?”

  “I haven’t really thought about it. It’s not a fight I particularly feel like having, though I’ve got to tell you, I have a great case.” This is true. Carl not only hit on me but took away the summary judgment motion right after I said no. I am surprised he would be so careless; it’s so clearly a retaliatory strike.

  “I wouldn’t want to see the firm destroyed because of one incredibly irresponsible partner,” I say, and uncross my legs so that my feet are planted firmly on the ground. I take a deep breath before I continue. “But I do think it’s time you cleaned house. If you don’t, I make no promises.”

  Doug jots down a note, and I see that he is taking my threat seriously. He knows that there must be many more women like me out there and that by keeping Carl around he is opening up the firm to millions of dollars in liability. I don’t know whether he thinks my suing is a real possibility, but I am not sure if that’s important. If I don’t, it’s only a matter of time until someone else does.

  “Thank you. I appreciate your candor,” he says.

  “No problem.” I feel like I have taken back some control of the situation. In less than two weeks I will never have to see Carl again.

  “I wish you the best of luck with your future endeavors.” He stands up and shakes my hand good-bye, indicating that our conversation is over.

  “Thanks.” I decide to go for one last shot. “Oh, and I assume I will be receiving a bonus check at the end of the year, considering I already surpassed my billable-hours target.”

  “Absolutely. I will see to it myself.” He smiles and looks proud of my having asked. I wonder if he now wants to give me a high-five. “Please keep in touch.”

  “Thanks.” And just for fun, and because I can, I add, again, “Doug.”