Follow Me

by Joanna Scott

  That same day, Sally gave notice that she was resigning from her job at the store, and by the following Monday she was working for one hundred dollars a week as the receptionist at Kennedy and Kennedy. She soon learned that the first Mr. Kennedy, the father of the second, had died thirty years earlier, and his portrait hung prominently in the hallway. Maybe it was his glowering look that kept everything hushed and tentative in the office, maybe it was the shared sense that they were all participating in a precarious venture, or maybe she’d been enlisted in the dream being dreamed by the surviving Mr. Kennedy — a dream that mustn’t be disturbed.

  Yet even if initially she felt the whole situation wasn’t quite real, the reality of her paycheck made her eager to adapt. She began to foresee a different, more prosperous future, contrary to her expectations. All that followed because of this new position promised to unfold with a natural and irresistible logic, as if the contract included in its terms a prescription for her conduct both on the job and away from it.

  And regarding her predicament, she had to admit she’d never been married to her daughter’s father. She’d made the mistake of thinking she was fond of him, she said, though even that was more than Arnold Caddeau needed to hear. He gave no sign that he blamed her or thought less of her because of it. He studied the matter thoroughly and met on two occasions with Griffin Marcus. And though he didn’t end up accomplishing much on her behalf, she had the impression that he could have saved her a lot of trouble, if only she’d contacted him earlier.

  So here was Benny arriving like Rumpelstiltskin to make good on a contract and claim the child he was promised; there was nothing Sally could do or say to dissuade him. She’d been a fool to acknowledge her history with him, but there was no taking it back. Like it or not, Benny Patterson was inextricably involved in Penelope’s life.

  Since Sally was not the type to register her disappointment directly, her account of this period would tend to be terse and to begin with a bland suffice it to say… Suffice it to say, the law clearly stated that a competent father had the right to be involved in the child’s upbringing. That the father had once assaulted the mother was not an issue. As Mr. Marcus pointed out, there were no existing records indicating that a complaint had ever been filed against Benny Patterson with the Tuskee police. And if Sally wanted to pursue the case in court, she should remember that she was responsible for failing to inform the father about the birth of their child.

  It was agreed that they would settle the matter out of court. Mr. Patterson would get what he wanted. There was one small concession Arnold Caddeau achieved, though. He argued that the father, being a stranger to the girl, shouldn’t intrude into her life all at once. Visits would be limited to one afternoon a month, Griffin Marcus agreed, until a relationship had been established and the child felt comfortable in her father’s presence.

  And so on September 9, 1961, Benny Patterson arrived to wedge himself into the narrow space between Sally and her daughter. For their first visit, Benny brought along his own mother, a stout old woman draped with pearls. She was the one who came to the door to pick up Penelope. Sally sat for the entire afternoon at the upstairs window, watching for the car to return, hardly breathing. They were supposed to return at exactly four o’clock, and when they weren’t back at five minutes after four, Sally considered dialing the police. At six minutes after four, Benny’s Cadillac pulled up in front of Mr. Botelia’s store, and Benny’s mother stepped out of the car with Penelope, who was gnawing on the tip of an ice cream cone.

  For the second visit, Benny arrived with his younger sister, Tessa, who came to the door holding a wrapped package. She wouldn’t let Penelope open the gift until they were in the car. Again, Sally sat by the window waiting for them to return.

  Eventually, she found something to occupy her during the empty hours. This was the period in her life when she began making her own bread, less for the pleasure of producing something to eat than for the satisfaction she got from handling the mound of dough. She’d pound it more than knead it, punching the bubbling surface smooth until she was worn out, and then she’d punch it some more, right in the gut of the dough. She’d go at it for close to an hour instead of the twenty minutes suggested by the recipe. It was a way to pass the time, and it helped her to be less afraid of Benny, even if it didn’t help her to get used to him.

  As it turned out, it was easy for Penelope to get used to a man who bought her ice cream and jewelry and, on his third visit, a fancy three-story Victorian dollhouse, furnished and occupied by a whole family costumed in velvet and silk. It was easy to like a jolly stranger who took her out to the amusement park and paid for her skating lessons and even promised to buy her a pony for her next birthday. She liked having a real granny and an aunt. She liked the feeling of being important to the whole clan of Pattersons, and she had her dad to thank for that. She didn’t understand why her mother didn’t like him. Her mother wasn’t even impressed with that great big green car he drove. She said it was a piece of junk and more than once wondered aloud why, if Benny was really a man of means, he didn’t buy himself a new car — a question that frustrated Penelope, since though she knew there must have been an answer, she couldn’t think of it.

  Penelope soon learned that it was easier to blame her mother than to try to argue with her. She blamed her mother for not being friendlier. She blamed her mother for scrimping on everything, even while she boasted about earning one hundred dollars a week — more if you counted the income from child support. She blamed her mother for baking bread that was inedible. And of course she blamed her mother for keeping her father a secret all those years.

  It was clear to Sally that Benny had set out to buy his daughter’s affection, though to what end she couldn’t say. At some point in the distant future, when Penelope was grown up, maybe Sally would tell her that Benny had been the one who’d knocked out her teeth that night in Tuskee. But for the time being, she decided that she should spare the girl the truth.

  It surprised Sally that Benny’s presence in their lives wasn’t more of an immediate disruption. His checks came in the mail as dependably as his car pulled up in front of the door. Once a month he arrived to torment Sally and trick her daughter into adoring him. The rest of the time Sally strove to forget him.

  As for her job as the receptionist for Kennedy and Kennedy, it was less demanding than any other work she’d done. The phone didn’t often ring at the office. Rarely were there reports to be filed or letters to be typed. Sally bought a book to teach herself dictation, but neither Mr. Kennedy nor Mr. Caddeau had anything to dictate.

  In the quiet hours of the afternoon, she’d listen to the spokes of the ceiling fan click with each revolution. She’d dust the windowsills and run the sweeper over the carpet. She’d write out a list of groceries to pick up on her way home from work. But was it even accurate to call it work? Yes, if it earned her one hundred dollars a week.

  Mr. Kennedy, it seemed, had long been neglecting his practice and was devoting himself to founding a company that would construct basement bomb shelters in private homes. It wasn’t that he worried about the devastation of a nuclear war; he liked to say that he’d be long dead and buried before the world was blown up. But he hoped to take advantage of other people’s worries. It was a get-rich-quick scheme for a sickly man who through inheritance and hard work was already rich. He was sure that bomb shelters would make him richer, and he’d been investing large sums of money to pay for advisers and architects and engineers, against his family’s wishes. With Soviet ambitions escalating, as demonstrated most vividly by the wall that went up overnight, dividing East Berlin from West, he insisted that there wasn’t any time to waste. He had to hurry and put the pieces in place before some other canny entrepreneur beat him to it.

  But Arnold Caddeau, who was married to Mr. Kennedy’s daughter and had four children of his own at home, didn’t show the same enthusiasm for Shelters, Inc. Sally had the feeling that he was just waiting for his father-in-law to d
ie so he could lure back the business they’d lost through neglect. In the meantime, he stretched out his work on a single ancient insurance case to fill the hours.

  As long as Sally arrived by nine and didn’t leave before five, she proved her worth to Mr. Kennedy. But whether or not she’d keep her job after he was gone, she wasn’t so sure. Through that first summer, as the old man grew more feeble and more certain that the Soviets were plotting to blow up the world, Sally came to realize that her future at the firm depended upon Mr. Arnold Caddeau, and she set out to make herself indispensable to him.

  He always arrived before her in the morning. For a couple of weeks she took to picking up an extra coffee and a cherry Danish at the stand in the lobby of the building, until she discovered all ten of the uneaten Danish wrapped in cellophane, tucked away in the fruit drawer of the lunchroom refrigerator. She didn’t know whether he drank the coffee or just poured it down the sink. She tried tidying up his desk while he was away at lunch, stacking his newspapers and returning reports to their folders, but immediately upon his return he would take out the reports and scatter the papers. She offered to pick up his dry cleaning for him; he’d always say that he could pick it up himself. She offered to mail any packages on her way home from work; he had no packages to send, nor did he have prescriptions for her to collect at the apothecary or maintenance issues to convey to the building supervisor.

  While Mr. Kennedy puffed away in his frantic effort to smoke as many Havanas as he could and at the same time get his bomb-shelter business rolling, Arnold S. Caddeau sat studiously at his desk, poring over briefs, taking meticulous notes, making lists, and preparing for an outcome different from the one his father-in-law foresaw. Rather than becoming more informal in his dealings with Sally, as she would have expected, he seemed to grow more distant, more timid in the few requests he made. She wondered if he blamed himself for failing to do more for her in her battle with Benny Patterson. He’d gone out of his way to help. There was nothing more he could have done, and she would have told him this, repeatedly, if their rapport allowed it. But they had no rapport beyond perfunctory courtesy. Increasingly, Sally worried that he didn’t like to interact with her. His timidity hardened to outright coldness, even as the weather turned cold and the fall rains changed to snow. He declined her help with a brisk wave of his hand. Though he always left his office door open, he was too absorbed in his reading to look up when she appeared on the threshold. She’d have to announce her presence by clearing her throat before he’d acknowledge her.

  At home, her daughter grew prouder as she grew taller, her legs stretching into stilts, adding three inches to her height in a year. Nothing Sally did was right in the girl’s eyes. She overcooked the hamburger, she undercooked the peas, she rode the bus to the grocery store, she drank too much and sang too loudly.

  At work, Arnold Caddeau was so aloof that Sally gave up trying to anticipate his few requests; if there was something he needed her to do, he’d have to ask. The tension became so great that after almost a year of working at the firm, she began reading through the classified section of the newspaper again. She wasn’t ready to leave her job for any of the available openings, all of which paid less than half of what she was currently earning. But she wanted to be prepared, in the event that she was fired.

  From the time she started working for Kennedy and Kennedy through most of the following year, Sally went about her duties with an increasingly pessimistic diligence, expecting her fragile situation at any moment to take a turn for the worse. If she wasn’t fired outright, then her hours would be reduced, along with her salary. If Arnold Caddeau didn’t recognize that she was being paid for doing close to nothing, then Mr. Kennedy would catch on. Or else the whole office would shut down, driven into bankruptcy by Shelters, Inc. Or else Mr. Kennedy would drop his cigar one too many times.

  The clouds were gathering, thunder rumbling in the distance, the air was thick with premonition, the tension high not just in the offices of Kennedy and Kennedy but around the world. How easy it would be to lose everything all at once. The story could end here, in 1962. Something terrible and final could happen, and Sally, along with everyone else involved, would never get to experience the unlived portion of her life.

  Finally, Mr. Kennedy gave her a letter to type. It was to be sent out to residents of the city’s and suburbs’ upscale neighborhoods, advising them how to survive through the coming Armageddon and reminding them that the fifteen kilotons of explosive in the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima was nothing compared to the newest state-of-the-art weaponry. Let all souls here rest in peace, for we shall not repeat the evil. God, Sally didn’t want to think about it. The Russians were coming. The Cubans were angry. On the twenty-first of October, President Kennedy declared a naval blockade. Americans were glued to their radios and televisions, all except the singular Mr. Kennedy of Kennedy and Kennedy, who was holed up in an office on the seventh floor of the Terminal Building, busily composing the line items to include in the contract he’d ask his clients to sign.

  See you when the world ends.

  Oxygen diluted with smoke, smoke mixing with blood, grime mixing with mucus until the goddamn body can’t take it anymore. Cough, cough, sputter, retch, gulp —

  “Mr. Kennedy, are you all right? Mr. Kennedy?”

  Sally was knocking at the door, Arnold Caddeau right behind her. But earlier that morning the old man had gone to the trouble of locking himself in the room, probably to shut his own son-in-law out of his scheme. He meant to keep the wealth to himself and destroy the firm while he was at it.

  “Mr. Kennedy, won’t you open the door?” No, he wouldn’t open the door, he couldn’t open the door, and by the time his son-in-law had found the key and turned the lock, ancient Mr. Kennedy couldn’t even open his mouth to tell those entering the room to go away.

  Though it was actually the third stroke he’d suffered in the past decade, it was the most severe; he lived for another day and a half but died before Khrushchev announced that the weapons in Cuba would be dismantled. Shelters, Inc., would never open for business, and the letters advising residents to prepare for the end of the world would never be sent out.

  To Sally’s surprise, his son-in-law seemed genuinely moved by the old man’s death. At the funeral, Arnold Caddeau delivered a eulogy describing Mr. Kennedy as a great man who never failed to deliver on a promise. Back in the pew, overcome with grief, he covered his face with his hands, and the regal, broad-shouldered, iron-haired woman who Sally guessed was his wife bent toward him to whisper comfort.

  But it turned out to be a brief period of mourning. One day, a week after the funeral, Sally caught him going through the papers Mr. Kennedy had left on his table. As she approached, she noticed that he was blinking rapidly, blinking back tears, she thought. She had already, repeatedly, offered her condolences, and she offered the same again, expressing her appreciation for Mr. Kennedy’s courage and vision, thinking that this was what her employer wanted to hear. Arnold Caddeau thanked her, but he wasn’t persuaded by her praise.

  “Maybe he had courage,” he said with unusual bitterness, “but he didn’t have much vision. He couldn’t see that he was driving us into bankruptcy.”

  “Gosh, I think he had plenty of vision,” Sally blurted. “He could imagine surviving an A-bomb. That’s something.”

  Arnold Caddeau was still blinking, but not because he was pained by the loss of Mr. Kennedy. He looked as though he hadn’t expected his secretary to have a thought of her own. She worried that she’d been too forward and started to apologize, then let her voice trail off. What should she say next? She wanted to be solicitous. Was that what he wanted? The silence in the room was heavy with possibility, but Sally couldn’t decide whether to be afraid or intrigued.

  How strange it was that they both went for so long without saying another word. How strangely mesmerizing, this feeling of uncertainty. They neither spoke nor made a move that would stir them from their absorption in each other. She ha
d thought he was a man whose character was superficial and easy to grasp, a man defined by his work and family responsibilities, but all of a sudden he seemed no worse than shy, and capable of surprising her in innumerable ways. Everything seemed strange right then: Arnold Caddeau’s habit of blinking rapidly, as though at a light too bright for him to tolerate — that was strange, as was the slight purplish tinge at the edge of his lips. And how strange it was to feel a sudden desire to touch the tinged part with her tongue. It wasn’t that she wanted to kiss him, she just wanted to see if his lips tasted of plum. Strange, this urge rising as a logical response to a color rather than as a symptom of desire. She wouldn’t have thought she’d be drawn to him. He was too old, too dull, and obviously too attached to his wife. Whatever other rules Sally had broken, she’d never cheated with a married man. But wasn’t it strange that she would be standing there secretly thinking about cheating even if she wasn’t truly considering the prospect? It was strange that they both were unable to break the spell that kept them locked in each other’s gaze. And the strangest thing of all was that though old Mr. Kennedy had been dead for more than a week, the faint smell of smoke from his cigar still hung in the air.

  Arnold Caddeau was the one who finally summoned the will to speak. And how tender his whispery voice seemed as he said, “Indeed,” and added, “That’s something,” in echo of Sally.

  It was something, the tension that had held them rapt for a few long moments. It was more than something. But right then, they both had no choice but to decide the experience had been insignificant. In their conviction that they had to defend the arrangements they’d worked so hard to establish, they were identical. After struggling to get to where they were, they weren’t going to put their successes in jeopardy. And while Sally was far less affluent, she believed that she had more to lose. A man in Arnold Caddeau’s position, with all his education and advantages, would never be as poor as Sally Bliss would be if she lost her job and couldn’t find another.