The Super Ladies

by Petrone, Susan

  Abra typically arrived at work around eight fifteen or eight thirty, and it was always blissfully quiet. “Early” for most of the staff was any time before nine. The first sign of anyone else in the office that morning was the echoing laughter of Giles Hoffmann, founder and president, reverberating down the hallway from the kitchen. Giles had the bearing of an athletic Santa Claus. Bearded, burly, and beaming, he was clearly in one of his joke-telling moods. Since he announced his retirement a couple months back, he’d grown ever more jovial. Giles seemed to be doing his best to ensure that everyone at the company remembered him fondly.

  A cup of tea sounded good, plus Abra needed to talk to Giles anyway, so she followed the sound of his voice to the kitchen. The company’s offices were located in the one-hundred-and-fifteen-year-old Caxton Building in downtown Cleveland. The place was built like a castle, and while one of the two elevators was frequently out of order, Abra loved the building’s character and the single fat window in her office that reached from knee height almost to the ceiling. The company’s offices had been reconfigured and expanded a number of times, giving the whole place a labyrinthine feel. Hoffmann Software now took up more than half of the seventh floor because Giles had been adamant that the staff not be broken up onto separate floors, but he resisted any thought of moving to another building. What would happen after he retired in August was anyone’s guess.

  The office kitchen was plopped down in the middle of everything, like the reward piece of cheese in the center of a lab rat’s maze. The kitchen was actually just a supporting wall with a sink and a counter. During the ill-fated Suggestion Box Era, someone had suggested enclosing the space with a couple of cubicle panels to make it feel more like a “communal gathering place.” (Abra suspected the use of the cheesy phrase “communal gathering place” was why no one ever owned up to making the suggestion.) Some joker occasionally moved the panels in so that the kitchen was reduced to the size of a closet, or moved the panels (and the refrigerator) against the opposite wall so that the kitchen became part of the main hallway. Most of the time it was just large enough to hold the staples of a workplace kitchen: a sink, a refrigerator, a coffee maker, a microwave, and a random assortment of staffers waiting for the coffee to brew.

  Giles was holding court with Mike Horowitz, the finance director, and a new intern, an MBA student from Case Western Reserve University named Aletha, who was tall, dark, and intense. The company always had a few interns hanging around. The undergraduates were generally an interchangeable bunch who scurried around from one task to another like eager puppies. Grad students were a bit rarer and far more confident and focused. Aletha was the first MBA student they’d had from Case in years. She’d been kind of a big deal when she arrived a week earlier. Abra liked her because she didn’t seem timid when talking to the company president and, more importantly, didn’t laugh at any of Horowitz’s jokes.

  “When I got my first real job out of college, my old Irish grandmother accused me of misspending my money,” Giles was saying. Abra had heard this story before. She leaned against the gray fabric-covered panel (trying not to move the kitchen wall in the process) and listened. Giles imitated his grandmother’s accent well: “I don’t want none of your hard-earned money going to Sinn Fein.” Despite having heard Giles tell this story to practically every intern over the past nine years, she still found it kind of funny. “I kept saying, ‘No, Granny, I’m not sending money to the IRA. I’m putting it into an IRA.”

  Aletha was a polite audience, laughing lightly and smiling in disproportionate relationship to the relative humor of the joke. Horowitz leaned just a tad closer to Aletha. “Are you even old enough to know what Sinn Fein is?” he asked.

  “The political arm of the Irish Republican Army?” she replied. “Yes, I know what it is.”

  Abra snickered as she walked over to the counter and picked up the little electric kettle to boil some water for tea. Horowitz was standing almost directly in front of the sink, yet he didn’t move out of her way. It was tempting to say something along the lines of “Get your privileged flat ass out of my way,” but she simply said, “Excuse me, Mike.”

  “Huh? Oh, sorry. Didn’t see you there, Abra,” he said, moving out of the way. Horowitz wasn’t necessarily a bad guy. He wasn’t exceedingly backstabbing, exceedingly sexist, or exceedingly incompetent. He just seemed to be coasting along through life reaping as many benefits as possible while doing as little as possible to earn them.

  “I’ve been standing here for ten minutes,” Abra said. Admittedly, it’d been more like four, but Horowitz never seemed to see her unless it was to say something annoying.

  “Morning, Abra,” Giles said. “Hey, can we move our meeting to ten? I have an early lunch meeting at eleven thirty.”

  “We were already scheduled for ten, Giles.” She noticed Aletha suppress a little smile. She hadn’t meant to make Giles look foolish or forgetful in front of an intern, but apparently she had.

  “Was it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry, I’m getting a little cavalier about my schedule now that the retirement clock is ticking.” He chuckled in advance over his own joke. “This might be the only time I’m actually shorter than you.” Over Horowitz’s guffaw and Abra’s annoyed sigh, Giles added, “In the military, if someone is going to be discharged before you are, they’re shorter than—”

  “I know what it means,” Abra said, painfully cognizant that none of the other three could ever have been called “short” in their lives.

  “Be nice to Abra,” Horowitz said. “She’s probably just tired because she hasn’t recovered from Cinco de Mayo yet.” He pronounced “Mayo” like the shortened version of “mayonnaise.”

  Abra wondered if a watched electric kettle, like a watched pot, will never boil. She didn’t turn around. Sometimes if you just ignored Horowitz, he’d go away of his own accord.

  “It’s actually pronounced ‘my-o,’ not ‘may-o,’” Aletha said.

  “Hey, se hablo Espanol,” Horowitz said, as though he just learned Aletha had won the lottery.

  “Sí, trabajé durante un año en Uruguay.”

  Abra bit her lip and glanced over her shoulder. Free entertainment was, after all, free entertainment. Horowitz seemed to lean his head forward a little, the same way the cat did when Abra politely told him to get out of the sink so she could brush her teeth. “Looks like you aren’t the only Spanish speaker in the office anymore, Abra. You are very impressive,” he added to Aletha.

  Giles patted Aletha lightly on the back. “She is. I’m hoping Aletha can help us make some inroads in the Latin American market while she’s here. That’s one of my bucket list items before I retire.” The whole succession question wasn’t a secret. The next company president would be Giles’s son, Arthur, who was somewhere in his early thirties and hadn’t seemed all that interested in running the company until about a year ago. There would likely be a power vacuum after Giles left. The slightly possessive way Horowitz followed Giles out of the kitchen made Abra wonder if he was angling for a promotion.

  Abra frowned as she watched them go and turned her attention to the kettle, which finally had a little steam coming out of it. As she was pouring the boiling water into her work mug, she heard Aletha say, “Nice tea mug. It looks like it could be used as a diving pool.”

  “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” Why was she dropping old quotes on the intern? Aletha wasn’t her competition. “C.S. Lewis,” she added by way of attribution.

  “Good quote.” Aletha glanced around then lowered her voice slightly. “Um, can I ask you an off-the-record question?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m not sure how to ask this without sounding paranoid, but that guy Horowitz seems a little too friendly, you know? Do I need to…worry about him?” Her voice trailed off into the netherworld of half-formed statements that imply far more
than they say. Abra knew what she meant.

  “He’s harmless,” Abra said. “I know he kind of flirts sometimes, or what passes for flirting, but it isn’t what you could call offensive. He won’t bother you.” Horowitz was harmless, at least in that respect. He kept the company’s books well, he awkwardly flirted with the younger women, but Abra had never heard of him actually doing anything untoward. “However, I wouldn’t spend more time in Software Development than is absolutely necessary. Sewicki is the biggest offender.”

  “I’m not sure if I’ve met him yet.”

  “Elevator Eyes,” Abra said, and gave a fair imitation of Gary Sewicki’s standard glance that sidled up and down Aletha’s figure before settling somewhere in the region of her chest.

  “Oh, that guy. Yeah.”

  “Still harmless but more creepy. If anyone makes you uncomfortable in any way, let Sandy in HR know.”

  “Thank you. Please don’t mention this conversation to anyone. I don’t want anyone to think I’m being difficult.”

  “I understand. It’s always a balancing act.”

  “So I’ve learned. There are a few profs at the university who think it’s okay to flirt with the female grad students.”

  “Tenured faculty?”

  “Of course.”

  Abra thought back to her own time in graduate school. The students in her MA program in English had been the standard hodgepodge of lefty feminists of both genders, dewy-eyed Austenites who fantasized about the Lake District, and the intense ones who read deconstructionist literary criticism for fun. There, too, the lit crit professors frequently seemed to favor the male students in the classroom, as though the male brain was better suited to analysis. One of the younger faculty members, Dr. Stanton, taught rhetoric and composition and had a reputation for hooking up with the prettier female students, although no one ever proved anything. Then there had been good old Dr. Alberson, whose idea of social propriety seemed to have lodged at a cocktail party somewhere in 1961. He would always call the female students “honey” and liked to pat them on the knee during a meeting if he thought they didn’t understand a point. It was just something you dealt with.

  “You’re always gonna get those guys,” she said. “But you don’t need to let them get under your skin. Or your skirt.”

  Chapter Seven

  Prom had never been big on Katherine’s agenda when she was a teenager. Now that she was teaching in a high school, she’d learned that faculty were encouraged to attend prom to “support” the students.

  “More like act as unpaid chaperones,” Hal muttered as he tied his tie.

  Katherine was putting on her new heels—black-and-red sexy, strappy things that went with her dress. She’d never been one to get excited about shoes, but she really dug these. The whole process of getting dressed for prom as an accompanying faculty member was much less fraught than it was when she was a senior in high school. Chaperones weren’t on display. “It’s my first year teaching there; I kind of need to go,” Katherine said. “And I’ve gotten to know some of these girls. It’ll be nice to be there for their last hurrah at the school.”

  “I liked it when you taught middle school. I never had to go with you to those dances.”

  “Well, thank you for being my prom date.” She stood up just in time to catch Anna, who ran into the room and jumped up into her mother’s arms. The sexy, strappy shoes were higher and more precarious than anything she normally wore, but Katherine felt balanced, strong. Despite Anna’s best efforts, she didn’t knock Katherine over.

  “When are you leaving?”

  “As soon as Daddy goes to pick up Joan.”

  “Why do I always have to pick up the babysitter?”

  “Because that’s the dad’s job,” Anna said.

  Hal looked slightly amused. “Since when?”

  “Since always. That’s how it’s done.”

  Hal sighed. “Fine. I’ll be back in a few.”

  Anna plopped herself down on the double bed and took a couple small jumps. “It’s not a trampoline,” Katherine said.

  “I know, but it’s still bouncier than my bed.”

  “Stop jumping, please.” Katherine sat down on the bed, and Anna snuggled up next to her. For a moment, Katherine didn’t think, just enjoyed the coziness of her kid resting on her lap. “Will you be good for Joan tonight?”

  “Yeeesss,” Anna murmured, drawing out the word so it sounded like it had about twelve syllables. Apparently that was a big thing just now in third grade. The end of third grade. Anna would be in fourth grade in the fall, starting at the upper elementary school. Somehow grades four to six felt like the Wild West compared to K through three. Anna turned upside down, and Katherine was forced to hold onto her legs so the kid wouldn’t fall headfirst onto the bedroom floor.

  “Can we do wheelbarrow?” Anna asked.

  Katherine obliged, holding Anna’s legs while her sturdy short arms walked across the bedroom floor. She was a strong little kid, emphasis on the word “little.” When they had first decided to adopt from China, a friend of a friend said, “Oh, all those Chinese girls are size one and gorgeous.” Katherine still found the comment vaguely sexist and overgeneralizing of an entire ethnicity. But the fact remained that Anna was one of the smallest kids in her class, the smallest of her friends. Katherine was so glad her daughter was a burgeoning little swimmer. It seemed like those muscles would serve her well later. When other kids wrote, “Eat my bubbles” on their backs with Sharpies before a swim meet, Anna had once asked a friend to write, “Small but mighty.” As she held her child’s legs and watched her wheelbarrow her way through the bedroom door and down the hall to her own room, she marveled at Anna’s strength.

  “Aren’t you tired yet?” she asked.

  “Nope.” Anna wouldn’t stop until she was next to her own bed. “Okay, lift my legs up. I want to try and do a handstand.”

  Anna had been trying to learn how to do a handstand for months. She clearly had the strength but couldn’t always find her balance point. Katherine raised Anna’s legs so that she was streamlined perpendicular to the floor. “Okay, let go,” Anna said. She did so. Anna held her legs straight up in the air for about two seconds then let her legs plop onto the bed so that it looked like she was doing an awkward backbend. Then she bent her knees and threw her legs back over herself and onto the floor, ending up in a squat.

  “That was impressive,” Katherine said.

  “Thanks. Marley from swim team can do a backbend and then walk her legs back over. I can only do it off the bed.”

  “You’ll get it.”

  Anna stood up on her own bed and gave a little bounce. “Will you practice with me more?”

  “Sure, tomorrow.”

  “Thanks. I don’t like it when Daddy helps me. He tries to help too much.”

  “He’s just worried you’ll get hurt.”

  “He worries more than you do.” She jumped a little higher, as though testing how high she could bounce before her mother told her to stop.

  “Should I worry about you more?”

  “No, Daddy should worry less. I bet if I was a boy he wouldn’t worry so much.” As she said the word “boy,” Anna gave an extra-big jump for emphasis.

  “You’re probably right.”

  “Why do people worry about girls more than boys?”

  “Why do you insist on using your bed as a trampoline?”

  Anna jumped off the bed and onto the ground. “Because you won’t buy me a trampoline.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Does that mean we can get one?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “That means no, right?”

  “Usually.”

  “Boo.”

  They heard Hal and Joan downstairs and went down to greet them. After the last-minute instructions and goodbyes, the
y were off to the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel downtown for prom. Even though Hal griped a bit about having to spend the evening with three hundred high school kids, he gave a little smile when they walked into the ballroom.

  “Nice,” he said, taking in the desert-themed decorations. “I expected Midnight at the Oasis to be tacky, but they did a good job.”

  “These girls raised a ton of money for this. And they have good taste,” Katherine added. The decorations were nice. Brightly colored swaths of fabric were draped across the ceiling, making it look as though they had entered a huge tent. The soft amber and gold lights made everything look a little desertlike. Even the strategically placed fake palm trees looked good. They had plenty of room for eating and dancing, but there were still a few quiet, semiprivate spots where she and the other chaperones would no doubt have to break up a make-out session or two.

  “Hi, Mrs. Krenzler!” a voice called, and a gaggle of girls who had been in her Biology II class came over, dutiful boyfriends in tuxedos in tow. Katherine was introduced to each boyfriend in turn, then got to show off Hal, who still looked pretty good in a suit. He was taller than most of these boys, yet somehow their youth and energy made them seem more masculine. She often got annoyed with Hal for his reticence to speak his mind, to share what he was thinking and feeling. As she talked to the girls and their dates, she realized these boys seemed to be putting on variations of the strong-but-silent front. Maybe they were just trying too hard to act like men, not boys. Maybe they were nervous or shy around new people, but they did a mediocre job at polite small talk. Meanwhile the girls talked a mile a minute, answering questions about their summer plans, talking about the after-prom, and complimenting the sexy, strappy shoes.

  One girl, Taylor, held back a little, holding her boyfriend’s hand and occasionally whispering something to him and giggling. Katherine remembered Taylor as a reasonably good student but the type who always had an excuse that blamed someone or something else if she did poorly on a test or didn’t complete an assignment. She hadn’t said much to Katherine beyond “Hello,” but now she spoke up, just loudly enough to be heard. “Oh look, here comes Zee,” she said. It was an innocent enough statement, but Taylor’s tone was infested with unmistakable disdain. Katherine turned her head to see Zee Garver, a student she hadn’t had but knew by reputation.