“I guess,” I say.
“You’re coming over for dinner this weekend,” Mom declares. “Erin will be bringing Haley, and we’ll all eat as a family.” When I hesitate, she says, “Please, Matty, we haven’t seen you in such a long time. I miss you so much.”
Whenever my mother calls me “Matty,” it makes me feel like I’m about five years old again. I hate it.
“Fine,” I grumble.
Maybe they won’t notice I can barely walk.
Chapter 26: Anna
Of all the people I work with, the one I find most distasteful is Calvin Fitzgerald.
Calvin is, I suppose, handsome. In a conventional sort of way. That’s what all the women in the office think, anyway. They are all in love with Calvin, who does not actually deserve to have anyone love him. They love his thick sun-streaked blond hair, the cleft in his chin, and the muscles in his chest and shoulders, even though it’s plain to anyone who gets to know him that he’s a jerk.
Calvin is a computer programmer, but he is terrible. Peter is always handing me Calvin’s code and asking me to fix it. He’s got a SQL textbook on his desk that he consults with alarming frequency, even though any programmer worth his salt should know SQL backwards and forwards. His code is sloppy and poorly commented. It’s like he took a few computer science courses in college as a lark, then stumbled into this job without knowing what he’s doing. And he’s not smart or motivated enough to learn.
It baffles me that Matt would be friends with Calvin. They both started working at the company at the exact same time and went through orientation together, and I suppose that was the bond that drew them together. I think Matt liked the extra attention he got from women thanks to hanging around with Calvin, although I’ve noticed recently that Matt doesn’t leave the office with Calvin on Friday nights much anymore since he got the cane.
A few days ago, Peter assigned me to be the lead on a new project. It involves putting together software to control a large database at a growing company. I know Peter gave me the project because I’m the best programmer at the company. He’ll admit that in the moments when he’s not furious with me about my cans. But I’m dismayed to discover that the team he’s given me includes Calvin.
I try to work around it. I distribute the work via email, and assign Calvin tasks that he cannot screw up. Basically, it’s like working with an intern on the team.
I had believed and hoped that maybe Calvin wouldn’t even notice the inferior assignment that I’d given him. Or perhaps he’d be relieved to relinquish any real responsibilities, considering he must be aware that he’s a terrible programmer.
But no. Fifteen minutes into the work day, Calvin is at the entrance to my cubicle, his face red underneath his perfect tan. I brace myself, knowing that I can’t give in. After all, any work I assign to Calvin will just be work I’ll have to redo myself and I won’t be able to complete the project on schedule if I have to take on a double workload.
“What the fuck, Anna?” Calvin snaps at me. “I saw your email.”
“That’s the distribution of the work,” I say calmly. “I tried to do it as fairly as possible.”
“This is bullshit,” Calvin says. “You’re giving me all the shit work.”
Yes. That is true. I’m giving you the work that you deserve.
He’s edging into my cubicle and it’s getting me nervous. I tap my finger against one of my cans eleven times. It calms me slightly. “I’m giving you the work I think you’ll do best.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Every piece of this project is important,” I say. “Peter put me in charge and—”
“Yeah, and he must have been out of his mind,” Calvin snaps. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
I raise my chin. “I believe I do.”
“You’re crazy,” he says. “You shouldn’t be working anywhere. You ought to be fired for having all these cans in here.”
I wince like he slapped me. There’s a part of me that’s scared he might be right. There are bad days when I spend a large part of my work hours in the bathroom washing my hands and I know that if things get any worse, my performance might suffer. Nobody is going to hire an employee who is going to spend half her day in the bathroom.
I try not to let Calvin see that he got to me. I keep my head held high, and say, “Peter doesn’t think so.”
Of course, Calvin will never give up. I can almost see the wheels turning in his little brain. He edges closer into my cubicle and I back up as far as I can go. He knows I hate that. He does it specifically to torment me.
“What if I refuse to do it?” he says.
My heart is pounding in my chest. I feel sweat breaking out in my forehead as Calvin takes another step forward. I’m cornered. I want Calvin to get out of my cubicle. I need Calvin to get out of my cubicle. I need him to get out of here. Right. Now.
And that’s when I see Matt walking by. Matt. Please help me. Help me.
Chapter 27: Matt
I stuff the KAFO in my closet and don’t wear it to work the next day. I refuse to look at it as an inevitability. Yes, I have declined in the last two years, but that doesn’t mean I’ll continue to get worse. Kelly and I have been working on my balance, and I’m fine with just my AFOs. I do compromise and use the more supportive cane with the four prongs. At least I can stash that away if I need to.
When I get to work and have nearly reached my cubicle, I see Calvin standing outside Anna’s cubicle, looking pissed off. I can tell he’s angry by the way his ears are bright red and the veins are standing out on his neck. He’s talking to her in an angry, hushed voice, one that he seems to reserve primarily for Anna.
“You’re crazy,” Calvin is saying to her. “You shouldn’t be working anywhere. You ought to be fired for having all these cans in here.”
Anna is standing in her cubicle and I can tell that Cal’s comment has hit home. Her face is calm, but I can see her tapping furiously on her knee, her cans, and everywhere. She’s like some kind of crazy tapping machine. “Peter doesn’t think so,” she says, although her voice is trembling.
I don’t blame her for feeling wounded by his comment. Anna might be the smartest person I’ve ever met and she’s definitely the best programmer we’ve got, but she’s got issues. Issues as bad or worse than my own.
Calvin is edging into her cubicle. I know that’s his strategy to intimidate her. And it works really, really well. She looks like a trapped animal, her eyes darting everywhere, looking for an escape.
“What if I refuse to do it?” Calvin says. He sticks his face closer to hers and she looks straight up terrified. I feel my hand ball into a fist—Cal might be my best friend, but right now, I want to punch him in the nose.
“I… I’ll just talk to Peter then,” she says.
Calvin looks infuriated by her response. He looks like he might do something crazy, like, I don’t know, hit her. I know I can’t punch Calvin in the face, but I’ve got to do something. I’ve got to rescue her. So I step up and say loudly, “Anna, I need to talk to you.”
Calvin whirls around, startled by the sound of my voice. His eyes widen when he sees my new cane. It throws him off enough that he doesn’t look so angry anymore.
“Hey, Matt…” He narrows his eyes at me. “What’s going on?”
“Just an issue I need to discuss with Anna.”
Cal looks between the two of us, obviously not sure what to do. Finally, he kicks a can angrily, knocking it over, before he stalks away. The can rolls across the floor for a second before Anna snatches it up. Baked beans.
I don’t enter Anna’s cubicle. For starters, you almost can’t. The can situation is getting worse. It’s really, really bad. I haven’t counted them, but they’re definitely starting to encroach on her work station. I heard Peter talk to her about them, but they haven’t budged.
Also, I notice that Anna doesn’t like people entering her cubicle. Whenever anyone does, I can hear her tapping and hyperventilating. Someti
mes she races off right after someone talks to her, and spends the next half hour in the bathroom, doing who the hell knows what.
“Thank you, Matt,” she says to me.
“You’re welcome.”
She shakes her head. “I didn’t want to say it to him, but Calvin isn’t a very good programmer. He always messes everything up. I don’t find his work up to par. That’s why I gave him the shit work.”
I smile at her. “I don’t blame you.” And I don’t. If I were in charge of a project with Calvin, I’d be tempted to give him the shit work too. He’s a terrible programmer. He still sends me a lot of his code to correct.
“I wouldn’t give you shit work,” Anna says to me. “I mean, if you and I were working together and I were in charge. You’re good at your job.”
“Thanks,” I say. “But I’m not as good as you are.”
“That’s true,” Anna says so matter-of-factly that I laugh.
It’s the first time I’ve laughed since Kelly showed me that stupid KAFO.
She looks down at my four-pronged quad cane. “You got a new cane.”
“Yeah…” If she noticed that my gait was a lot worse recently, she hasn’t said anything. I’m glad. I don’t need comments like that.
“I should get back to work,” Anna announces. “We’re not supposed to be socializing during working hours.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I’ll stop socializing with you.”
There’s part of me that considers asking her if she’d like to join me for lunch so that we could socialize further. But that’s probably not a good idea for many reasons.
Chapter 28: Anna
I show up at my parents’ house at six o’clock on the dot. I told my mother that I will not be staying past eight. That is the absolute limit. She responded by asking me to wear makeup.
The makeup comment sits heavily in my stomach when I pull up on the street next to my parents’ house and find an unfamiliar car parked next to my brother-in-law’s truck. Who is here? Could the car belong to a guest of our neighbor? But my intuition tells me that it does not.
I consider turning around and driving home.
Ultimately, I decide to get out of the car. If there’s an unfamiliar person in the house, I will simply endure it. Perhaps it will divert some of the attention away from me.
The second my mother opens the door to the house, I know that I have absolutely made the wrong decision. I can tell from the look on Mother’s face that the person in the house is not simply an extra guest. This is a matchmaking endeavor.
“Anna.” Mother smiles at me, inspecting my face and my clothing. I am wearing plain, straight-leg black slacks and a white blouse. “You didn’t wear makeup.”
“I’m not slopping gunk on my face,” I say.
“You could have worn a skirt.”
I very rarely wear skirts. She knows that as well as she knows that I don’t wear makeup.
I step into my parents’ home. I hear my three-year-old nephew Jayden in the living room and that immediately sets my nerves on edge. Children make me incredibly anxious. Jayden especially always seems to have a runny nose that Lisa will wipe with a tissue, then not even clean her own hands. She just shoves the tissue into her purse and it’s done with. His fingers are chronically sticky with glue or syrup or some unidentified substance, yet nobody seems concerned enough to wash them.
Also, I heard that pertussis is spreading in epidemic proportions in this area, and I know that Jayden is in daycare. He could most certainly be a vector for pertussis.
Jayden is playing with some blocks on the floor with his father, and he looks up when I walk into the living room, but doesn’t seem all that interested in me, which is a relief. In the past, he has run over to hug me, and I had to later throw out all the clothes I had been wearing after I saw Jayden eating a lollipop he picked up directly from the sidewalk.
“Hi, Anna,” my brother-in-law Jake says without getting up. Since the incident with the foot fungus, he’s been to my house about half a dozen times to fix various things. I doubt Lisa is aware of this, and we’ve mutually agreed not to inform her. “I brought one of my friends from poker. This is Tom.”
I spot the man sitting on my parents’ armchair. He scrambles to his feet and Jake nods in my direction. “Tom, this is Anna. I told you she was hot, didn’t I?”
Tom looks mildly embarrassed by Jake’s comment, which I appreciate. He’s on the short side, with thick black hair and eyes set so far apart that it throws me off. He’s not terribly unattractive, I suppose. But I like Matt better.
“It’s nice to meet you, Anna,” Tom says as he thrusts his hand in my direction. My mother is beaming at us from a few feet away.
I look down at Tom’s palm. I can practically see the sweat crystals glimmering in the creases. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t shake hands.”
Tom looks befuddled. I hear Jake give a chuckle.
“It’s nothing personal,” I explain to Tom. “However, it’s been proven at least a quarter of people don’t wash their hands after using the toilet. And while it’s more likely you washed your hands than you didn’t, I don’t care to take that chance. After all, even if you washed your hands, how do I know you didn’t shake hands with one of those 25% who didn’t?” It’s the same explanation I gave to the vice president of our company several months ago, which admittedly was not well received.
Tom just stares at me for a second until my mother cries out, “For God’s sake, Anna, shake his hand!”
“It’s nothing personal,” I tell Tom again.
“Yes,” he murmurs. “That’s… okay.”
I flash my mother a triumphant look. Our guest has agreed, albeit reluctantly, that I don’t need to shake his hand. Maybe he isn’t so bad. Maybe he gets me.
Chapter 29: Matt
Because I can’t think of an excuse to get out of it, I drive to my parents’ house on Saturday night. I just wear my AFOs, and I leave my cane in the car, because it will attract too many questions. Last time I saw them, I left it behind. My parents have two stairs to get to their front door, but there’s a railing, so I think it will be fine. Inside the house, I’ll just hold onto the furniture when I walk.
Unfortunately, the second I start walking from my car to the front door, I realize how completely reliant I’ve become on my cane. It’s hard to make it to the front door without that support. I have to walk very, very slowly. At some point, I’m tempted to drop down to the ground and crawl there.
Almost there. You can do it, Matt. Just a little bit farther.
I feel like I’ve just run a freaking marathon by the time I get to the front door. By some miracle, I’m still on my feet. Despite everything, I’d go back and get my cane now if it were possible.
My mother answers the door, looking flustered. She’s behind on dyeing her hair, and I can see lots of gray roots, which makes her seem scarily old. But she looks so ridiculously happy to see me. Sometimes I don’t understand why my parents like me so much. It’s not like I’ve been a great son. I didn’t even come by for Mother’s Day. I just sent some flowers I bought online.
“Matt!” she cries. And she hugs me, while I grab onto the door frame to keep from falling. “Oh my gosh, it’s so wonderful to see you. I missed you so much! You look so handsome!”
“Thank you,” I mumble, because what are you supposed to do when your mother tells you that you’re handsome, aside from get embarrassed?
I follow her into the house. I’d forgotten that they have that rug in the foyer, and after all my careful work outside, my foot snags on that stupid rug, and I’m down. I fall spectacularly right in the foyer of my parents’ home, right in front of my mother. Who screams.
“Matt!” she yelps, crouching down next to me. “Oh my God, what happened? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I say quickly.
Well, I’m not exactly fine. I’m not injured or anything, at least (I’ve become the master of falling), but I don’t think I can get u
p so easily. There’s nothing for me to grab onto here, except the wall. And I don’t have my cane. So if I want to get up on my own, I’d have to crawl over to the living room, and use the couch to help me. I have to admit that in my own home, I do sometimes resort to either crawling or scooching on my ass.
Thanks to my mother’s scream, everyone comes into the living room. It’s my father, my sister Erin, and her husband Steve. Dad holds out his hand to me, and I’m able to push myself back up into a standing position.
“What happened there, Matt?” Dad says as he claps me on the back, nearly knocking me down again. That would be epic. “Drunk already?”
I smile weakly. “Just tripped on the carpet.”
Erin is looking at me with a weird expression on her face. She’s three years older than I am, and like I said, we’ve never been close. To put it mildly. I haven’t seen her in about two years, and she’s put on quite a bit of weight. Maybe twenty pounds since I last saw her—then again, she’s just had a baby. I’d probably use that as ammunition to give her a hard time if she started bugging me, but right now, after face-planting on my parents’ carpet, I don’t feel like throwing stones.
“Hey, Matt,” Erin says like we don’t dislike each other. “Long time no see. You remember Steve, right?”
“Sure,” I say. I shake hands with the loser that my sister married about five years ago. They wrote their own vows. It was painful. That was the day that I knew that my sister and I were never going to be friends like other siblings are. We were just too completely different.
“Would you like to meet Haley?” she asks.
“Absolutely.” Not.
But I follow my sister into the living room to pretend to be excited about the new baby. This is going to be a longass evening.
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