Alligators in the Trees

by Cynthia Hamilton

  Roxanne shrugged indifferently. “I’m not the managerial type,” she said. “I guess I just don’t like to boss other people around.”

  Stan took the insinuation with a predictably incensed smirk. He regarded her coldly before continuing his long-winded appraisal of her. “Nor, curiously—and here’s the thing I find really interesting,” he said, leaning into his work with evident malice, “nor have you ever been cited for any misconduct or insubordination.” Stan let this statement hang threateningly in the air. Is he asking me or telling me? Roxanne wondered.

  “That’s right,” she finally said, hoping to get the inquisition moving along.

  “Am I to conclude, then, that you’ve decided to only butt heads with me?” The question seemed so ludicrous, Roxanne almost laughed.

  “I didn’t decide anything like—”

  “…because not one of your other managers had anything derogatory to say about you.” This line of reasoning left Roxanne grappling for comprehension.

  “Uh…I don’t know what to say… I’ve never had any problems with any other managers before…”

  “So you admit, then, that you do have a problem with me,” Stan declared, delivering his coup d’ grace with all the vigor of trial attorney who’s picked up the scent of blood.

  “I don’t have a problem with you, Stan—other than the fact you make a career out of riding my case,” Roxanne replied. By this point, she had lost any trepidation about losing her job and was calculating what her unemployment checks might net her.

  “See? See…? This is exactly the kind of disrespectful attitude I’m talking about!” Stan bellowed, leaping out of his chair to wag his finger in her face.

  Roxanne’s mouth dropped in amazement. The guy was losing his grip right in front of her. She stiffened in her chair, worried for a moment he might strike her. But seeing him flip his lid had given her the upper hand, though Stan did not seem to fully realize this yet.

  “This is the kind of insubordination and lack of respect that leads to widespread disobedience! Your bad attitude toward me can and will affect the entire staff,” he continued to rage.

  “Stan,” Roxanne replied calmly, “I think you’re being rather paranoid. I don’t have a problem with you, and I don’t incite the rest of the employees against you. I just come to work, do my job, and leave. That’s it, that’s all. I’m just a working mom trying to support myself and my son,” she said, piety and earnestness written all over her features.

  “I don’t think you understand the effect your attitude has on your fellow workers. I don’t think you even realize how bad your attitude is,” Stan said, resuming his seat, falsely believing he was still in control of the situation.

  “Stan, are you firing me? Because if you are, you need a reason, a real reason. By law, you really can’t fire me just because you think I’m out to undermine your authority. You need some sort of proof, some incident to back up your accusations.”

  By now, Stan was starting to catch on. Though Roxanne hadn’t come out and said it yet, Stan got the distinct impression Roxanne had more than a passing familiarity with labor law.

  “Are you threatening to sue?” he blurted out. Roxanne smiled. “Is that what this is all about?”

  “You tell me, Stan. You’re the one who called this meeting. I don’t have a problem with you or ValuWise,” she lied. “I just want to do my job, get paid and be left alone. So, you tell me—am I going to be able to continue doing that, or is this going to become an…issue?” Stan stared her down, his eyes blazing with contempt and a flicker of fear.

  “Consider this a warning, Ms. Platt,” he said, as he grabbed his pen and began to document this altercation. “It’s in writing now, so don’t push your luck,” he hissed

  Roxanne pursed her lips to keep her tongue inside her head. Nothing wrong with a clean victory, she decided, though she knew for certain she had to walk a very straight line from now on. “Are we done?” she asked sweetly, as she rose to leave.

  “You can go now. But a word to the wise, Roxanne—you want to play hardball with the big boys, you better watch your back.” Roxanne rolled her eyes heavenward as she trudged back to the relative sanity of her check stand.

  Five

  Roxanne executed one final kicking leg-lift before collapsing flat-out on the carpet. She lay there, mouth hanging open as she panted, until she could no longer stand the sound of the instructor’s impossibly energetic commands. She rolled back onto her side and slithered to the coffee table, where she seized the remote control and switched off the DVD.

  That Pilates guy is a maniac, she thought as she sprawled out again and stared at her dingy ceiling, idly counting the number of daddy longlegs that thought enough of her shabby condo to call it home. At least the sadistic exercises had taken her mind off work and other quandaries, namely what to do about her car. But acknowledging this brought them both back to the forefront of her mind, where they pirouetted in unison, taunting her inability to reckon with them.

  “Okay, I still have a job—for the time being anyway.” She struggled to her feet and made for the sofa, grabbing her cigarettes along the way. She sat back, thoroughly spent, grateful she had forced herself through forty-five minutes of grueling self-abuse. It did make her feel virtuous, at least on one level.

  She pulled two cigarettes from the pack and stuck one in her mouth, letting out a huge sigh as she did so. The other one she rubbed between her fingers, loosening the tobacco and watching it trickle to her lap, a sight she found highly satisfying, for reasons she could not explain.

  She wanted to call Connor before he sat down to dinner with Derek and his new wife, Lana. But she also wanted to enjoy these few fleeting moments of contentment while they lasted. As much as she loved her son, talking to him on the phone when he was at his dad’s always made her feel oddly disconnected from him, as if he were on the other side of the planet and not merely six miles away.

  But she couldn’t blame him for seeming so distant; the duality of his life must be less than desirable. When he was with Derek, he had everything a seven-year-old boy could want: his own room, his own TV and computer and oodles of games, a big house, nice neighborhood to play in.

  Still, he didn’t have the same kind of closeness with his dad as he had with her. He once asked if she could come along when Derek came to get him. He loved being with her, but it had to be like Cinderella after the ball. She did what she could to make it up to him, but it was comparable to substituting an algebra book for a trip to the video arcade.

  Roxanne took in her surroundings, wondering how she could make them more cheerful and inviting. I could paint the place again—something a little brighter, she mused half-heartedly. But she didn’t really feel like painting. What she really wanted to do was put a “for sale” sign in the window and walk away. She let this lofty notion linger in her head, savoring the power she only dreamed she could possess.

  “Why can’t I change my life?” she asked herself. Instead of the myriad of usual excuses, Roxanne found a germ of possibility edging its way around the periphery of her mind. That germ was leftover from the other day, when she briefly and absurdly entertained the idea of pursuing a career in real estate.

  “A career in Real Estate. A career in Real Estate.” The words lingered on her tongue like something sweet and foreign, like Crêpes Suzettes or baklava. The phrase also brought up images of herself she barely recognized, visions of speaking with authority to people who hung on her every word. Giddy visions of gazing upon her first commission check. Dreamy visions of giving ValuWise a single-finger salute goodbye.

  This last mental visual was enough to get her off the sofa in search of the morning paper. She found it in the trash, mottled with brown dampness from the coffee filter. She retrieved the section she was looking for and dropped the rest back in the wastebasket, along with the two cigarettes. She was on a mission now. No time for useless props.

  She began scanning the real estate ads as she took a seat at the ta
ble. From what she could determine, homes in her area ranged from $350,000 for a two-bedroom starter condo, to a million-plus for a house on the ocean or one of the marinas. Without taking her eyes off the paper, she retrieved the calculator from the junk drawer and punched in a few hypothetical scenarios.

  Taking a rough average figure of $700,000 and multiplying that by six percent… Whew—forty-two thousand bucks! But that was the gross commission. She knew enough about real estate to know the six percent was split if two different companies were involved… Twenty-one thousand. If the agent got sixty percent of that… Twelve-thousand six hundred.

  Not bad, not bad at all. And that was just one sale. If she could do a minimum of four sales a year… Fifty grand. She could live on that. Heck, three measly sales a year would net her what she was making at ValuWise. And she wouldn’t have Stan Kemplehoff breathing down her neck, just waiting for her to commit some infraction of his Gestapo-esque rules.

  Without hesitating, she booted Conner’s computer and quickly retraced her steps from the other night. After a few minutes of comparison, she settled on Elite Real Estate School. She filled in her information, and right before she clicked on ‘submit,’ gave her pessimistic side a chance to dissuade her.

  For starters, it was two hundred and seventy-five bucks that she didn’t have. Whatever she could beg or borrow had to go to fixing her miserable wreck of an automobile. Okay, she couldn’t afford it. But she couldn’t ignore the fact that her days as a checker were numbered. She was beyond burnt-out. If she didn’t find another line of work—and soon—she’d end up in the rubber room. So…it was immaterial that she didn’t have the money. She’d just have to get it, somehow, some way.

  Then there was the matter of suitability. After all, this sudden desire to sell real estate was a dramatic departure for her. What made her think she possessed the aptitude for that kind of work? She’d always shied away from sales, just as she shied away from salespersons. Could she really see herself talking up the good points of a place that lacked real merit, like her own dump for instance? Hmmm…that was a challenge. Good starter condo for first-time homebuyers, centralized location, large sunny patio. Piece of cake, she thought, as she clicked on the submit button.

  The thrill of initiating such a profound change in her life made her tingle all over. Besides, real estate companies train you before turning you loose on the world, she tried to convince herself. She pushed away from the computer; it was done. No turning back now.

  As she wandered toward the kitchen, she entertained images of what the process would be like, what it would feel like to show clients homes for sale. This thought stopped her dead in her tracks. Show clients around in what? A car that didn’t run? A car that virtually screamed LOSER from twenty paces? Everyone knew a real estate agent had to have a great-looking car to impress clients. The better the car, the more successful the agent. Everybody knew that.

  Damn, I forgot that one tiny detail, she thought miserably as she sank onto the sofa. Her stomach flip-flopped as the reality of wasting two hundred and seventy-five bucks set in. She blindly reached for her cigarettes, but even as she did so, she knew fake-smoking wasn’t going to cut it this time.

  She staggered to the kitchen and tore through her junk drawer until she located a matchbook. She took a long, anxiety-calming drag and exhaled as she made her way out to the patio. She perched herself on one of the cheap resin chairs, once white, now streaked the color of nougat, caked with dead leaves and dirt.

  After a few more drags, she chided herself for her impulsive stupidity. But by the time she was finished with the first cigarette, she had grown weary of self-abasement. Despite the setback, her tenuous optimism began to once again flicker and flare. Changing her life wouldn’t be easy, but keeping with the status quo was not an option. Neither was not buying a new car. It was unthinkable to live in California without a car. It simply wasn’t done. There had to be a solution, somewhere; she just had to find it.

  With another amazing burst of clarity, she hit on the answer. It was so foolproof, she laughed out loud. She stubbed out the cigarette on the deck and practically skipped to the phone, making a mental list of all her upcoming expenses. She cleared her throat and donned her sunniest outlook, as she prepared to make the first sales pitch of her new career.

  Six

  As the taxi carried her to her assignation, Roxanne rehearsed her appeal for financial aid. Had it been solely for the purchase of a new car, she would’ve never wasted the cab fare. But she suddenly saw her situation in a new light, and she was determined to bilk it for all it was worth. After all, $275 was a drop on the mortarboard compared to what her folks had dished out on her four siblings in the education department. She did not think it was at all presumptuous to include in her request $7,000 for a ‘pre-owned’ automobile and another five hundred for proper real estate-pedaling attire. It was a heck of a deal, she would tell them, a one-time, up-front disbursement that would provide their youngest child with a fresh start and a means to the financial freedom she longed for.

  With this zippy mantra on her lips, she paid the cab driver and got out. It wasn’t until she was standing at the foot of the driveway that she realized the unbroken line of cars parked along the curb in front of her parents’ house belonged not to the neighbors, but to three of her four of kith and kin. Damn, another oversight.

  At first she had the paranoid thought that in the space of time it took her to shower, put on her makeup, dress and get over there, her parents had sounded the call for reinforcements. But she realized this would’ve been unnecessary, seeing as how—their assorted degrees notwithstanding—there was no other place on the planet Felicity, Bronte and Lloyd would rather spend their free time than at the bosom of their learned parents. The fact that Wes lived on the East Coast was the sole reason he wasn’t in on the love-fest.

  Roxanne took several deep breaths and forcibly restrained the hand which had automatically begun probing her purse for cigarettes and matches. “Keep focused, keep focused, keep focused,” she chanted as she climbed the walkway to the front door of the seventies stucco faux-Mediterranean, two-story house, badly in need of some updating. Should I knock or should I just go in? She knocked.

  As soon as her knuckles hit the door, two small mongrel dogs began barking feverishly as they raced for, and eventually slammed into, the glass panels on either side of the door.

  “Damn mutts,” Lloyd said, as he held the spastic dogs at bay with his foot while cracking the door open barely wide enough for Roxanne to slip through. Lloyd, glasses riding down on his nose, his hair alternately spiked and flattened from sleep, customary tome dangling from one hand, took the cigarette from his mouth with his free hand and kissed his baby sister on the cheek.

  “Everyone’s in the living room,” he said unnecessarily, for where else would they be? Perhaps twice a year they all mounted sufficient interest and energy to venture outside for a rousing game of croquet. But other than that, mother and father, two sons and daughter occupied their own particular space, be it sofa, chair or window seat, as much a part of the fixtures as the peeling grass cloth.

  “Whiskey! Buff! Stop that infernal barking!” Harold Burrows shouted, rising out of his chair to give his command more emphasis. To Roxanne’s surprise, this worked, and the two flea-infested mixed breeds resumed their stations at the patriarch’s side, where they immediately recommenced the never-ending chore of chewing and clawing themselves.

  “Roxanne’s here,” Lloyd announced, also unnecessarily, to the rest of the clan.

  “Hello, darling,” her mother said, standing to receive her daughter in the wings of her pink pleated muumuu. Despite the casualness of her attire, Daphne Burrows’s face was perfectly made up, as was her silvery-white hair, swept up and back and held in place with an enamel inlay comb, naturally of the same color in her tent-slash-dress.

  “Hey, Rox,” Bronte said from one of the two sofas that flanked the floor-to-ceiling white brick fireplace. He reminded Ro
xanne of a grown-up version of Conner when he was engrossed in one of his games.

  “Give your sister a proper hello,” Harold admonished in his upper-class British accent, a cherished remnant from decades ago. If anyone wanted to be unkind, they could say this characteristic was merely a cultivated affectation. And they would be justified in saying so, seeing as Harold Burrows hadn’t lived in Jolly Old England since his mid-twenties. Nor was he the spawn of English parents, though he was born in London, a fact he mentioned as often as his sense of propriety would permit.

  “Just a sec,” Bronte said, as he typed furiously away at his laptop keyboard. Roxanne bent over and gave her brother’s head a kiss, regretting it as soon as his hair goo began stinging her lips.

  “Hi Sis,” Felicity said, rising out of her seat without taking her eyes off the trade magazine she was engrossed in. She did manage to refocus her attention long enough to give her sister a halfhearted hug before turning back to her preferred reality.

  “Sit down, dear,” Harold said, after giving his daughter a warm embrace. Roxanne glanced around. What space wasn’t taken up on the sofas by her brother and sister was hopelessly laden with every imaginable form of reading material.

  “Bronte, make some room for your sister,” Harold said, lending a hand by shifting one stack to the coffee table. Bronte grudgingly pulled a stack towards himself as he slid closer to the other arm of the sofa. Not once did his eyes stray from the computer screen.

  “There you go, dear,” Harold said, repositioning himself in his wingback chair which stood directly in front of the seldom-used fireplace. Roxanne liked to think of it as his throne. Smiling munificently, he re-unbuttoned his jacket and smoothed down his ancient Cambridge tie.

  “You’re looking very well, Roxanne,” he said, though Roxanne wasn’t sure if he really thought so. “Isn’t she, dear?” he asked of his wife.

  “Yes, very, darling. Would you like a cookie, Roxanne?” Daphne asked, standing to extend the silver platter containing a variety of cheap butter cookies, the kind nearly every supermarket whipped out on a daily basis, ValuWise being no exception. As Roxanne waved the tray away, she regretted not having brought some token gift along. Her parents were great fans of token gifts.