by Suzie Carr
Adam placed the graduate school bug in my head a year ago after I’d had my second layoff in the training field. At first, I thought it would be just another kink in the hose that would shut us off from the much-needed supply of air flow we needed to move forward in life. Then, Adam shed some new light on how much brighter our future could be if I took the time to build this foundation first, while we held the resources to do so, before the kids and the mortgage came along, before I got stuck in a commuter job where we’d have to be tied to a metropolis. He mapped out a future where we snuggled up on a mountain side, him writing novels and me teaching organizational development to a bunch of online students from all over the world.
Granted, he dreamt in idealistic tones. In no way did I see myself living life as a mountain woman putting my credentials to work in a virtual connection. I let him dream up our idealistic future because it carried him through the present a whole lot happier.
This three year program would offer me time to figure out what I wanted out of it, and it would allow Adam the time to understand that we wouldn’t be packing up and hiking up a mountain side anytime soon after I graduated.
This opportunity trumped any other for me. Any self-respecting person would be thrilled at the chance to further her education while getting paid to do so. I needed more of an edge to get ahead. I would not be that woman clipping coupons and shopping at three different grocery stores to find the cheapest prices on apples.
So, when I received word that I’d been awarded a fully-funded Ph.D. education and a teacher’s assistantship on top of it, I did have to stop and think about it seriously. I liked my trainer position at the firm, and I liked the people. I did flinch for a few days about giving up such a great gig that, unlike other places, promised many years of employment.
The indecision kicked my butt.
Then, I talked to my sister.
See, she only got so far as completing two classes at Bryant University the year she met her husband. Then, she quit and raised her daughter. She raved about those two courses like they granted her an honorary doctorate from Yale.
She told me I’d never survive the Ph.D. program. So, the very next thing I did after closing the door after her, was plop down to sign on the dotted line.
So, propped on my bed, laptop in hand, I was about to end a great thing. I typed my first sentence, and stared at it for a few minutes trying to find a way to break it to them any gentler. I didn’t want to create a rift. The office cranked out massive amounts of stress, to the point the government should actually consider bottling up its by product and using it as an alternative source of energy. The place couldn’t face a loss in manpower.
I hated rocking the boat, even if it meant sailing on the open sea without a sail just to spare the boat from being lonely. That place needed me, and I liked being needed.
But, I liked proving my sister wrong even more.
~
Quitting sucked. I despised leaving a task incomplete. At least a dozen projects still needed life breathed into them, and I cringed at their early deaths. No one took initiative but me. That would mean the plan to update all training modules would cease; the plan to add the firm’s branding theme to all computer desktops would never happen; the plan to train each employee on how to properly record inquiries from prospective clients would fail miserably. I lost a great deal of sleep over the inquiry management project, and wanted to see it through. I lost sleep because the ideas were piled up neatly in the corner of my brain where no one could access them, and no one would ever realize the great magnitude of such a system. I just needed time to roll it out.
I was trapped in a geek’s brain. I dreamt about organizing, while others dreamt about real issues that mattered. My brain was wired differently from others.
I’d known this from the time I celebrated my eighth birthday and my mother left me and my sister alone for the afternoon so she could go get a massage. My then twelve-year-old sister immediately sat her butt in front of the television and watched three hours of cartoons, a privilege we were never granted in our house. Me? I went straight to my mother’s bedroom, unhooked the ironing board from the back of her door, and dug into an overflowing basket of wrinkled shirts. I didn’t rest until every one of those shirts hung perfectly wrinkle-free from the pull-up bar on my mother’s bedroom door. My life at eight-years-old presented itself complete with a clear path. I would grow up and iron clothes for a living. I couldn’t wait to set basket after basket of wrinkled clothes free from their heaps. I didn’t have the faculties to label my passion just then, and if I had possessed such a mature ability, I would’ve called myself a control freak.
I had only worked at the firm for eight months, yet, the guilt encased me. The trainers loved my ideas, and were eager to follow in my lead. None of them were equipped to take charge of any of the projects I proposed. They didn’t have the will or dedication to focus long enough.
I worried about Dorothy the most. She was so shy. So painfully shy. I wouldn’t have hired her as a trainer if I were Chuck. I think he pitied her. One day, Hope tossed out the idea that maybe he suffered an inferiority complex and wanted to build himself up around someone who he could outshine at the front of the training classroom, and that’s why he hired an introverted trainer like Dorothy.
Either way, my news would not thrill him. He relied on me, even though he took all credit. Ceding credit for my ideas didn’t really bug me that much. I didn’t want to rock the boat at work, and then have to come in every morning and fight my way through the day. I only cared about the project.
The day arrived to quit. There I sat like a statue in a chair, my letter of resignation crinkling under the pressure of my tightened fingers on it, waiting for the right moment to launch.
I glanced over at Hope. She twirled her pretty dark hair again, and sipped on some green tea, no doubt. I pretended to stare off into space, hard at work concentrating, and this offered me the chance to sneak some extra peeks at her. I adored the way she handled her tea cup, like a woman in charge.
She looked up, just as Chuck whistled across the cubicles.
Here I went, grabbing life by the horns and pulling it in a direction that called out to me. I walked by Hope and inhaled her light breezy scent. She smiled up at me. Me, like a big idiot, winked at her. I might’ve shocked her more than myself.
I would miss Hope most of all.
~
The next day in the office, I invited Hope to lunch. She sat across from me wearing a smile. She wore her hair down. I adored how it rested on her shoulders, the ends nice and blunt and freshly trimmed, its color rich and bold like java.
We munched on chicken wrap sandwiches. Fresh cilantro and sweet mint blended together in a symphony of earthen pleasure on my tongue. Hope told me about her friend’s room offer and how she accepted it through the sheer pressure of friendly duty.
I overinflated, pretending to understand, but inside my heart sunk into a gigantic pool of disappointment that not even the spicy, Cajun chicken could cure.
For the past couple of days, I had daydreamed about coexisting in that big estate house with Hope. I envisioned us flirting over bowls of Cheerios, her tossing out the advances, me accepting them with a coy smile. This dream planted something wild and defying, something completely foreign, yet form-fitting.
In a valiant, selfless effort, I asked her to tell me every detail of her new room. She shrugged this off and said it was just a room. I opted to squeeze out of this a theory that Hope was not thrilled to be taking up residence in her best friend’s former ironing room. At least that’s what our spare room has turned into. Or maybe she thought it strange that I wanted to know the details. Maybe even a little freakish considering we were just coworkers in her eye and not the secretive lovers of my dreams. Do coworkers really need that level of detail fleshed out of the most intimate room in a house where sleeping, changing, dreaming took place?
We sat across from each other on hard plastic chairs that pained my but
t. A sea of coworkers littered the space around us, their microwaved frozen entrees stinking up the air, their petty complaining scratching at the back of my neck.
Hope would not be living with me. I would not be working with her. A panic rose in me that caused my breathing to rattle. Would I ever see Hope again? How would she react to my resignation?
In my daydream that morning, I imagined she would tell me she was happy for me, but sad for her. I also pictured her asking me every minute detail about my teacher’s assistantship and new graduate program, raking in my information and caressing it as if she really cared about any of it.
Just as she sipped the last of her Diet Coke, she stood up. “I’ve got to get back.”
“Wait.” My hand flew to her forearm. “I wanted to tell you before you heard it from anyone else. I gave my two weeks’ notice this morning.”
Her eyes shot open. Her jaw dropped. Her cheeks flushed. Basically, she answered every nervous detail I summoned up in my prayers that morning. My news visibly upset Hope Steele.
Chapter Three
HOPE
In Lucy’s last two weeks, I had invited her for coffee every day. With a sweet smile, she declined all invites, citing Chuck, her boss, needed her now more than ever.
“Just tell him you can’t,” I pleaded. “You need to eat.”
“He really does need me to tie up loose ends.”
“One lunch? You can’t pry yourself away for one last lunch?” I’d met married couples celebrating fifty years who were less loyal.
She agonized over declining; tilting her head to the side, wincing at her responsibilities like the fate of the free nation depended on her explaining the day-to-day grind of training. “He wouldn’t understand, and I wouldn’t feel right leaving him this way.”
I backed off, surrendering my hands in the air like a Good Samaritan allowing her to continue saving the rest of us from future bad training days.
On her last day, we’d been chatting and then she’d glanced over at Chuck, who was standing in his office in his usual power stance, hands on hips, chest bellowed out, his head perched up and out discerning the world from above his pointy nose, and she once again ran to his aid.
I never realized the job of a trainer could be so demanding. How many loose ended projects could exist that would take precedent over cinnamon swirl bread, bold and spicy Arabic coffee, and time with those she was leaving behind in this banal world of mailing lists, paper, and promotional campaigns?
If it were my last two weeks, I’d be totally different. I’d be vacating the building at least every hour to walk around and get fresh air, go for bathroom and coffee breaks, get lunch, maybe leave early. I simply wouldn’t care about unfinished projects. I guess that’s what happened when a person didn’t tie any meaning to her job other than a paycheck at the end of the week. Meaning for me happened outside work; in my workouts, in my friendships, even in the dreams I still had to travel through Europe.
If I left that day and never came back, a temp could easily move in to my spot and take over, even if she simultaneously decided to listen to heavy metal and watch an episode of “Jerry Springer.” That’s how superficial my work had become. Somewhere between graduating college, taking a few design classes, and cheating on my husband, my life now centered on being a single lesbian who carried countless flaws—soon to be discovered by PJ and Rachel, my new roommates.
On my first night as a roommate, PJ presented a set of ground rules. “This is just to create a system so we don’t drive each other nuts.”
She listed twenty rules, and whoever broke two of them agreed to shop for, pay for, and cook for an entire week. Their rules super exposed my flaws. In fact, I was just one more fuck-up away from having to cook all meals the next week. I broke rule one the other day and left my coffee mug in the sink. Supposedly this caused Rachel to freak out because she needed order in every detail. “It’s just a coffee mug,” I said to PJ.
“Yes, but a dirty coffee mug to an OCD sufferer sits more like an atomic bomb ready to explode.”
That morning, I managed to break rule number two. I forgot to put my wet clothes in the dryer before heading out to work. About an hour into my work day, I got the text from PJ. “Sweetie, you forgot the wet clothes. Rachel put them in the dryer for you.”
“Sorry,” I replied back. “I guess I’ll be doing the shopping this week. I’ll go right after work.”
Yup, seemed I couldn’t stop flubbing up my life, and now I was dragging these two innocents down with me.
With Lucy in with Chuck now, I stalked her cubicle from the safety of mine. All trace of her life was erased from the clothed walls. No more adorable photos of her and her niece.
I peeked over at them. She stood next to him, pointing to a document. Chuck patted her back and they broke into huge smiles. Then, he hugged her. A long lingering hug. I scanned the room to see if anyone else caught this display of inappropriate boss-to-employee behavior. Nope. Just me.
A few minutes later, when she sat back down in her cube, I dove in for one last try at convincing her lunch with me would be better than pleasing Chuck. She agreed this time.
An hour later, I sat across from her at a small round table in front of the bay window facing the wooded trail of Cedar Lake Park.
She spoke about graduate school like I would no doubt one day speak about my future trip to Europe. Her voice rose in pitch when she told me about her teaching assistantship. She couldn’t believe her luck that she’d get her entire program paid for by doing what she loved to do anyway, organizing lessons and training people. She’d get to lead discussions, prepare the presentations, and even conduct a few webinars.
Yahoo.
To get a pulse on her life, I broached the boyfriend subject. “Your boyfriend must be so proud of you.”
She stared down at her plate and tossed a crumb around in front of her a few times. “Yeah, it was actually his idea.”
Later that day, long after we shared sandwiches and chocolate mousse pie, long after we indulged in long streams of laughter and witty banter, I helped her carry her plants to her car on her way out to freedom. She drove a baby blue Corolla and dressed up the seats with a sunflower blanket. I leaned down to place the spider plant on the floor behind her driver’s seat and wondered if I should offer her a hug goodbye.
I surfaced and we just stared at each other.
“So, I guess this is it,” she said, cocking her head to the side. The sun danced along her cheeks causing her to squint.
“Work is going to suck here without you.”
She flipped her long hair over her shoulder and smiled. “I’m going to miss you.” She tucked a folded up piece of paper in my hand. “Don’t be a stranger. That’s my contact info in case you change your mind about that room. Another person paying rent might allow us all to eat more than Ramen noodles and macaroni and cheese.”
I chuckled.
She merely raised her eyebrows. “I’m not kidding. I’m back to being a student.”
I backed away, enjoying the play in her eyes. “I’ll definitely think about it.”
~
PJ and Rachel drafted rules for everything. For instance, Rachel asked me to hang the toilet paper so the tissue rolled down off the roll instead of up from the roll. Then, one morning, I sat down with a bowl of cereal without placing a mat down on the table first, and Rachel’s eyes nearly popped out of her pretty little face. PJ swept in and saved the day, plucking up my bowl of Cheerios and sliding a matt under it. “There you go, sweetie. It’s just a little trick to keep the cherry wood in top shape.”
I felt like a twelve-year old.
Our friendship began to suffer, too. In the first week, we all acted so cordial and happy to see each other every morning and then again at the end of our hard working hours. We’d launch into dribbles of our days, accounting for every laugh we enjoyed, every tidbit of gossip we discovered. Then, by day four, when my happy-go-lucky entrance into the kitchen at breakfast was not s
o joyfully reciprocated due to a lover’s quarrel over the electricity bill, the reality of my invading their privacy side-swiped me. They looked up at me, their dilated pupils warning me to get the hell out of their kitchen while they dueled over wheat toast and eggs frittata. I tip-toed around the counter, grabbed a banana, and sped out.
I conducted quite a few soul-searching sessions with myself in the shower that first week. In one, I forbade myself to get in their way. Whenever I’d see them in a room I was about to venture into, I’d turn on my heel and go the other way. This worked for about five minutes in reality. It never failed that whenever I needed a glass of water or a snack, one of them was always in the kitchen chopping their veggies or preparing some fat-free, sugar-free dessert.
I just needed to bide myself some time to get my head together. Then, after that, we’d all become good friends again and laugh about the blip in time when we all lived together and drove each other nuts.
By the end of week three, this idealism ended.
I overheard Rachel and PJ arguing about me. I was tiptoeing down the hall and to the kitchen to prepare a cup of tea, when I heard them in the living room.
“It won’t be forever,” PJ said. “If she leaves a sandal lying around, just put it off to the side and forget about it.”
“Forget about it? Our lives are upside down now.” Rachel puffed out the air in her chest, taking with it about ten years of her life. “If she wouldn’t have cheated on him, we wouldn’t be having this argument or giving up our space or spending way more on groceries and water and electricity.”
“I know. I’m stressed, too. She’s our friend, though. We can’t just kick her to the curb.”
I clung to the wall for balance, thrown off kilter by the amount of trouble I placed in their lives.