by Rita Ciresi
“If you did say that,” Dodie assured me, “you can as good as count it over.”
“It is over. But if it’s over, why does he keep watching me? I’m sure, at work, he’s watching me.”
“Of course he’s watching you. He’s probably scared shitless you’re going to blow him out of the water.”
“But I promised not to.”
“Maybe he’s looking for a chance to give you the boot.”
“He promised he wouldn’t.”
“You must still be crazy in love with each other if you’re holding to those kinds of promises.”
Maybe we were. But love lived next door to hate. There was nothing to keep either one of us from holding a gun to the other’s head and firing. The whole thing seemed as simple (and as complex) as Dr. Seuss’s anti—Iron Curtain manifesto, The Butter Battle Book—in which the respective enemies climbed up on the wall, each holding their Big-Boy Boomeroos, and threatened to blow each other into pork and wee beans. Which side would drop it?
“Every day when I go into work,” I told Dodie, “I’m terrified I’m going to get the can.”
“He’s more likely to get it than you are. Although you never know.” Dodie cleared his throat. He had a lot of phlegm in his throat lately. “What news from the feminist contingent, such as it may be at Boorman?”
“Doctor Peg’s been out a lot. I think she’s at Hilton Head, trying to squeeze in every last moment of golf season.”
“You’re lucky she didn’t boink you over your bimbo head with her five-iron.”
“To think that we came within twenty-four hours of telling her.… well, either she’s blessedly oblivious, or she’s just acting that way.”
Dr. Peggy Schoenbarger had more than just a physical resemblance to Beatrix Potter. The more I watched her, the more I thought she was acting like the omniscient author, manipulating me and Strauss like a couple of fierce bad rabbits—determined to push us into a hole until we gave up and confessed. At the end of September she started toying with me. She called me to her office one day and I noticed, with a start, that my quarterly employee evaluation—the one Strauss had prepared—was on her desk.
“I’ve heard a rumor, Ms. Diodetto,” she said.
My knees weakened. I sat down and pressed my thighs together so hard that later I would find a small bruise along the inside of my kneecap. “You don’t strike me as the type of person who listens to rumors, Dr. Schoenbarger.”
“I don’t usually. Nor do I repeat them. But this one interested me. And I think I will listen to this one and repeat it back to you, just to get your reaction.” She gave me a prescient pause. “It concerns Mr. Strauss.”
“Oh.”
“Mr. Strauss seems to think Karen might not be coming back.”
“Oh.”
“In which case her position would be vacant. In which case, you’d be the logical replacement.” She watched me carefully. “Mr. Strauss seemed to be of the mind that you’d be interested.”
“He did?”
“Aren’t you? It’s been noted you’re here almost every weekend.”
I was there all right—and so was my fictional alter ego. Donna Dilano was having the time of her life. If she couldn’t be a professional cartoonist, at least the savage caricatures she drew of Thomas Akins (who had most cruelly jilted her) functioned both as therapy and revenge!
“And you’ve shown a lot of dedication,” Peggy said. “On your last performance evaluation Mr. Strauss praised your doggedness—”
That hardly sounded like a compliment.
“—and your hard work. I forgot how he put it. The phrasing seemed a little poetic coming from Eben.”
Peg thought it was poetic; I knew it was pure plagiarism, because Strauss, as a little inside joke between the two of us, had gone back and rewritten the evaluation to quote the first chapter of Stop It Some More almost verbatim—changing only the tense and the name:
Donna Dilano proved herself to be the kind of employee who never took the last cup of coffee and left the glass pot on the burner.
Lisa Diodetto has proven herself to be the kind of employee who never takes the last cup of coffee and leaves the pot on the burner.
“Here it is,” she said, flipping through the evaluation. “Something about coffee. So you like your coffee. Eben also is partial to it. Caffeine is bad for your health. It puts a tremendous strain on your heart. But let me get to the point—”
“Please do,” I said. “I mean, I’m eager to hear what you have to say.”
She raised an eyebrow. “There are some concerns about your—how shall I say this?—attitude.”
“I don’t have an attitude,” I said. “I have … strong opinions.”
“Which get voiced, loud and clear? Especially after lunch?”
“Lunch?”
“Mr. Strauss seems to think you don’t eat enough—”
“What?”
“—and that in the afternoon your blood sugar drops and you encounter some problems with authority.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“That’s what I told him. Although I do think you can stand to eat more. Quite a bit more.” Peg quickly turned the page on my evaluation, as if embarrassed to have caught herself breaking one of the cardinal rules of feminism, which stated that a woman should never comment on another woman’s weight. “Now, let’s look at this category of collegiality. Mr. Strauss wrote: In due time, Ms. Diodetto will better understand the dynamics of corporate life. What does this mean?”
“I have no idea. Maybe Mr. Strauss wrote that after he skipped his graham crackers and milk.”
She gave me a level gaze.
“I’ve noticed he has a problem with clarity in his prose,” I added.
“He can be a bit windy in his memos. But this is a low score here. A six.”
“Mr. Strauss is a hard judge.”
“But a fair one, don’t you think?”
“Not all of the time.”
“You didn’t agree with the score? You signed it.”
“I didn’t want to argue. I don’t like arguing with him.”
“That’s not his side of the story. He said he wrote that of you because you were argumentative. So are you or aren’t you?”
“What?”
“Argumentative with him?”
Sometimes I could surprise even myself with my own chutzpah. “I hope you don’t mind me making sexist generalizations, Dr. Schoenbarger.”
“Proceed.”
“But when a man says a woman is argumentative, it’s usually because she doesn’t agree one hundred and one percent with something he has to say.”
She cracked a grim smile. I wondered how many stubborn run—ins she herself had with Strauss in the back of those stretch limousines.
“We’ll have to get you out on the green sometime, Ms. Diodetto. Mr. Strauss has an awful slice. How are you with a driver?”
“Merciless,” I assured her, and with that remark, I was as good as promoted. I also was as good as fucked.
“Eighteen holes,” she said, “come spring.”
I gulped. The only time I’d ever been on a golf course—other than the Putt-Putt variety—was to illegally bellywhop on my sled down the steep slopes of the municipal golf course. Not a single item in my wardrobe was kelly green. I was sure I’d look as foolish as Benjamin Bunny in a tam—o’—shanter. But there was no backing out now. Peg’s eyes seemed to gleam at the very thought of my beating the pants off Strauss.
October was another rainy mess, and most of the leaves were down by the time the secretaries threw a loathsome baby shower for Karen (Now, each one of you women—even the ones who don’t have children—write down a few words of advice and encouragement for Karen on a three-by-five card, and we’ll put all these cards into a little book that she can enjoy reading during her two A.M. feedings!). After Karen gave birth to a boy—and I got used to the idea that she’d be returning at the end of her six-week maternity leave—I got called down
to Human Resources by the chief honcho, a man with the country-western handle of Wayne Lamarr. As I walked into his office, my heart thumped to see the inscrutable Dr. Margaret Schoenbarger also sitting there. This is it, I thought, I am out the door.
“Greetings, Ms. Diodetto,” she said.
I tried to say hi, but the odd syllable that came out of my mouth sounded more like hoy! I nodded at Wayne Lamarr, and to distract myself I wondered if he was from Tennessee or Kentucky.
Mr. Lamarr greeted me cordially in a New Jersey accent and asked me to sit down. I lowered myself into the visitor’s throne opposite his desk as if it were an electric chair.
“We’re waiting on Mr. Strauss,” Mr. Lamarr told me, and I immediately looked around for the wastebasket, terrified I would throw up. After two quivery minutes—during which time Mr. Lamarr and Dr. Peg vigorously debated the real reason behind the rising green fees at the local country club—Strauss strode in. I bolted up from my chair as if the priest had entered the room during catechism assembly and the nuns had commanded, “Stand for Father!”
Strauss saved me by shaking my hand and telling me in a deliberately calm voice, “Please sit down. This is very nice news we have for you here.”
He let Mr. Wayne Lamarr deliver it. Karen had decided that motherhood took precedence over her career (here Peggy frowned) and given her notice. After consultation with all parties concerned, Human Resources was pleased to offer me Karen’s former position.
I didn’t dare look at anyone but Mr. Lamarr. “I thought it had to be advertised,” I said. “Because of affirmative action.”
The way Mr. Lamarr focused on his pencil holder made it clear that the trio of executives assembled here had some concerns about this very issue. “We’re getting around that by—”
“We’re not getting around anything,” Peg interrupted. “We’re treating this as an internal promotion. Besides, she’s a woman—”
I saw Strauss’s loafer shift forward on the carpet.
“—and no one can—or should—object to having more women in management positions at Boorman,” Peggy finished.
A hostile testosterone—laden silence followed. “I accept,” I blurted out—two words that probably cost me a thousand dollars each in terms of salary negotiation. “I mean, I’m interested,” I said. “Could you outline the responsibilities and the compensation, please?”
During the conversation that ensued, I tried to determine how vigorously—and using what means besides the affirmative—action argument—Strauss had tried to block my promotion. I finally concluded he had done just the opposite, probably to avoid creating suspicion about his own bad behavior. He played it cool throughout the whole meeting. When it was his turn to speak, he only said, “You should know by now what I expect of you, Lisar.”
At this mention of my mispronounced name, Dr. Schoenbarger looked at me closely, as if she had just been informed she had been calling me by the wrong handle since my first day at Boorman. I recrossed my legs and felt sweat collecting in my panty—hose crotch.
Formal notification of my promotion came in a letter—typed on twenty—pound cream letterhead—signed Eben Strauss and Dr Margaret Schoenbarger. Formal acceptance consisted of my typed letter back to Peggy and Strauss thanking them for their confidence in my work and promising to live up to their highest expectations. I did not mention the glaring typo I found in their letter just above the salutation (Dear Ms. Diodetto), which said Research and Developement. I proofread my letter twenty times before I asked the secretary—in a tone of voice that I hoped conveyed my new authority—to deliver it.
Being a boss, I found, was not easy. First of all, I couldn’t be late to work. Greetings got dropped from my vocabulary; I ceased referring to the CEO as Booze—Hound Dick. I had to hang around at the office later than everyone else (which I always did anyway), and nobody in my own department suggested doughnut runs or chats about weekend activities over the Mr. Coffee machine. My coworkers—now my subordinates—were sometimes truculent and other times so eager to kiss my ass I knew they were about to ask for next Friday and the following Monday off, if that was okay by me? Only half of them congratulated me with any sincerity after my promotion was announced in a staff meeting.
I tried to convince myself that nobody at Boorman—except Hook and probably Gussie and now maybe even Peggy—knew about me and Strauss. That wishful thinking got squashed on the sunny November day that Karen came back to show off her new baby. When she brought the plastic carrier filled with her sleeping, swaddled infant into the office she once used to occupy, I felt awkward. The moment I moved into her old space, I had the housekeeping staff replace the blinds, strip the prints off the walls, and move all the furniture around—the way divorced people were reported to redecorate the moment the spouse moved out of the picture. I thought this would bother Karen. But she merely put the baby in its carrier down by my desk and told me it was great to see me.
“Do you mind if I shut this door?” she asked.
“Not at all.”
“One of the reasons I came today was because I thought we should have a little chat.”
Little chat certainly sounded threatening. As she shut the door, I reminded myself that I was in the power seat now—the office chair—while she was relegated to the straight—back chair that was clearly the visitor’s spot. I asked her how she was feeling, admired her baby (a sweet, chubby—cheeked muffin with fingers so precious I couldn’t resist leaning over to stroke them), and thanked her for recommending me for her old position.
Karen told me she had every confidence that I could steer through a storm. Continuing the nautical theme—but mixing metaphors to the point where I had to wonder how much sleep she really was getting at night—she told me, “We have a first—rate crew here, and even though we may have a few unhappy campers in our division, we have lots of support from the commanders up top.” She paused. “Things change, of course, when you’re the one who has to give the orders.”
I nodded.
“You really have to watch what you say and do.”
“That’s right.”
“I hope you don’t mind a little advice.”
“Not at all.”
“I mean it in a friendly way.”
“Of course.”
“I don’t work here anymore, so I don’t have an ulterior motive—”
I acknowledged the truth of that statement. The baby gurgled and sighed. After a quick look downward to check on her new job and life, Karen told me hurriedly that she thought I should know that some of the girls in the office were bound to be difficult because they felt I did not deserve this promotion.
My face grew hot. “I don’t see why. I work just as hard, if not harder, than everyone else. After all, I’m in here every weekend—”
“Lisa, please. I recommended you for this job, I want you to succeed, I’m trying to help. I just think you need to be careful. There’s this gossip—”
“Gossip about what?”
“Totally unwarranted, I’m sure. That you’re involved with someone on top.”
“That isn’t true,” I told Karen, thankful for once I wasn’t lying, but scared that the oil slick of gossip had spread so far that even someone who no longer worked on the premises was privy to the information. Because I knew that after she left my office she would make the rounds of the entire company to show off her baby (sharing her news and perhaps disseminating some of mine with the lead-in phrase, I don’t want to spread rumors, but …), I told her, “In fact, I’m dating someone in the city. He’s my financial adviser. We’re pretty serious about each other.”
“Oh, how wonderful,” she said. “I’m glad to hear that.”
“We’re talking marriage—”
“How wonderful!” she repeated. “Lisa, I’m so pleased for you. You really deserve to be happy.”
I gave her a tight smile. “I wouldn’t mind knowing where you heard that other story.”
Karen shook her head and said she was sor
ry she ever brought this up in the first place. “I never believed that story about you anyway,” she said, leaning down to stroke her baby’s foot. “Just for a laugh, they said it was Mr. Strauss—”
I tried to eke out a chuckle, but only a pig—snort surfaced from my nose and mouth.
“I know how he bores you, Lisa. And who would do such a stupid thing with Dr. Schoenbarger standing right there as—what did you call her that time?—chiefiess of the feminist police? Besides—not that it matters—everyone knows Mr. Strauss is probably gay—”
“What makes you think that?” I asked.
Fortunately Karen was too engrossed in her own baby to pick up on the sharpness in my voice. “In all the years I’ve worked here, he’s never once been seen with a woman. He’s never brought a date to the Christmas party—”
“Maybe he just dates Jews.”
“Oh. That would make sense.”
“Why would that make sense?”
Karen looked embarrassed. “I just meant I never thought of that issue.”
“Oh,” I said. “I thought maybe you were expressing disapproval of interfaith relationships.”
“Why would I be opposed to interfaith relationships? You know my husband is Methodist and I grew up in the Congregational church.”
“That must present some real problems.”
“They’re not insurmountable. What I meant to say was that I forgot Mr. Strauss was Jewish.”
“But you remembered that he was a probable homosexual.”
She looked at me closely. “Did I say something to offend you? Lisa, now I’m quite sure I’ve said something offensive to you—”
“Not at all,” I said, quickly trying to cover my tracks. “You know, I have a cousin who’s gay—”
“I’m so sorry.”
“—and my boyfriend—well, really, just between you and me, my fiancé—he’s Jewish, that’s all, and ever since I’ve been dating him I’ve gotten kind of sensitive to … um … religious issues.… ”
Karen looked worried. “I hope you know what you’re getting into, Lisa. I mean, I wish you the best of luck.”