by Nick Arvin
At that time I was still married to Laura. She complained: “Angie never does that when I get home.” I reminded her that Angie could not do math yet. I pointed out that she was unlikely to produce a crayon fiscal year budget.
Laura works in finance. She is what is commonly called a “bean counter.”
Due to work-site encounters I probably see Laura much more often than most ex-husbands see their ex-wives. I would like to report that this gives us the opportunity to confer and communicate about what our daughter is doing and coordinate both of our schedules to her benefit. It does not. Rather it gives us the opportunity to frequently feel awkward and/or glare at each other in passing.
Matters are further complicated because Laura appears to be sleeping with my boss.
(Note: “Sleeping with” is a misleading euphemism. Sleep is not a likely element in the process of fucking someone in the middle of the day on a desk blotter.)
8:22 a.m.: Today’s unique challenge is to balance the work side of the equation with the daughter side of the equation—to not fall behind in my work-related duties while providing Angie with insight into the nature of those duties.
I have introduced Angie to my coworkers in neighboring cubicles. I have found an extra twelve-way adjustable chair for her to sit in. At the same time I have taken two business-related calls on my cell phone. I have told her: “Your job today is to observe.” Angie has informed me that she is hungry. I have procured Pop-Tarts and an orange soda for her from a vending machines down the aisle. I have checked my voice mail. While Angie eats I am able to check my e-mail. She bounces. I tell her: “Quit bouncing. Today you need to act like a professional.” She pouts but stops bouncing.
8:25 a.m.: Angie finishes eating. She gets off her chair and kneels on the floor to examine certain of the chair’s levers and knobs. She tilts the chair on its side to get better access to a plastic button under the seat. She announces: “It’s like a pneumatic pump powered by your butt.” I tell her that is roughly correct. She pushes the button so that we can hear the air hiss out.
Laura contends that Angie is “troubled.” I have not observed this. Laura says Angie is insolent and makes mischief. She makes crude capacitors to store static electricity and deliver shocks to people. A chemistry set I gave Angie was taken away after a series of combustion-related experiments climaxed in the charring of Laura’s heirloom walnut table. Also taken away was a one-half-scale guillotine built from plywood and a baking pan. Apparently its functionality had been successfully demonstrated on a variety of dolls and stuffed animals.
I have no discipline problems with her myself. I have noticed that sometimes she will burst into a room without knocking. Because I sometimes work at home when she is visiting this can be disruptive. She has been known to call me on my cell phone for no particular reason which is nice except that she sometimes does it when I am in the middle of important meetings or racing to complete paperwork for some deadline. But these are minor transgressions. During her weekly visits with me I try to give direction to her creative energy. In my apartment she has several projects ongoing that she is able to pursue quietly and with minimal supervision. A miniature dollhouse with working appliances. A remote control airplane. A small mechanical horse. (I am afraid the mechanical horse project may be doomed to failure but one learns from mistakes as well. Her approaches to some of the problems of articulation and power supply are at any rate certainly ingenious if impractical.) Moreover I have always found that Angie responds willingly so long as I address her sternly and logically and without shrillness or condescension. Insolence has never been a problem. I have pointed out to Laura that there must be some root cause variation(s) in the separate environments we provide for Angie that would account for the differences in her behavior. I have proposed that we try to learn from this. Laura does not like to hear this. She says I am being “unfair” and I am “belittling” her parenting skills. I tell her this is not so and I only think we should learn from all the available data points. But she will not listen to me.
Laura also complains that Angie’s behavior and interests are not “normal for a young girl.” This notion seems to me so outdated it does not even merit reply.
8:53 a.m.: I have a regularly scheduled weekly review meeting at 9:00 this morning with my boss—Roberts.
I ask Angie if she will be okay alone for a little while. She says yes. I believe her. I roll her chair in front of my computer and tell her to go ahead and explore. Just don’t alter any files or send any e-mails in my name.
She nods. She says: “I have things I need to check on the Web.”
I gather several files and step into the aisle. Roberts does not have a cubicle. Roberts has a real office. I proceed until I reach the end of the long row of cubicles and I turn out into the main aisle and Laura is coming toward me. I consider ducking back. But this would be futile as she has already seen me. My ex-wife stands tall and thin. She assesses me with a curious look. She says: “Derek? What are you doing here?”
I say: “Hi.”
“What did you do with Angie? I thought you were going to spend the day with her.”
“I am. She’s at my desk.”
“Lord. Can’t you take just one day off?”
“It’s Take Your Child to Work Day.”
“It’s what?”
“Perhaps you didn’t see the memo.”
Laura repeats: “Take Your Child to Work Day.” She glances around then speaks to me low and with a hiss that reminds me of the pneumatic chair: “You could have mentioned this. You could have mentioned that my daughter would be here at work with us. I might have appreciated knowing that.”
“I have a nine o’clock with Roberts. I have to go.”
But Laura holds my arm. “Why isn’t Angie with you? Why take your kid to work if you’re going to leave her alone at your desk?”
“Please. Laura. I have to go.”
“You’re unbelievable. I thought this would be a fun day for Angie. I was excited for her and you. But you bring her here to work and you just leave her in your cubicle.”
“I have a meeting with Roberts and I didn’t want to confuse her. I thought she might have met Roberts at home.”
Laura scrunches her eyebrows as if puzzled. But a red color appears on her neck. She did not know I knew about her and Roberts. They believe they are discreet. But of course everyone in the building knows. She says: “Why would she have met Roberts at home?”
I am not surprised she feigns ignorance. This is what people do. I say: “Because the two of you are having sex every day in his office.”
“We are not!”
“Won’t he meet you outside the office? That’s not normal. He may be taking advantage of you.”
She stares at me with her mouth slightly open. She says: “You don’t know anything about normal.”
“Doing it in the office is a punishable violation of company policy. I’ve checked.”
Laura glances around. A young man standing at a nearby copier looks quickly away. In a low urgent whisper she says: “You’re absurd. Nothing is happening between Roberts and me.”
“I can prove it.”
She laughs. “No. You can’t.”
I hesitate. She is right. I say: “I have proof. I can get you both fired.”
She shrugs. She says: “Stay out of my life.”
She walks away. I feel angry. I think: I should quit. It would be easy. Walk into Roberts’s office and tell him I am done. Hand over my company badge and my cell phone and my digital micrometer. Walk away.
I have of course fantasized about quitting before. But I have never had to regard the idea with any seriousness and now the thought makes my stomach hurt. My head.
I love this company and my work. My hope has been to work here until I retire. This company has been my solace—it has given me a structured organization within which to place myself and know myself. I have wondered if after I retire they will let me come back to visit.
But the
fact is that the relationship between Laura and Roberts places me into an extremely awkward position. Roberts’s dealings with me to date have remained businesslike. But I doubt that Laura is whispering into his ear compliments regarding my project-management skills. As long as their relationship continues my prospects in the company are dubious. The matter is also frankly embarrassing.
I take my cell phone and my badge off my belt. I look at them. I think: I should just turn them in and be done.
But now I am struck by another idea: Proof. I clip the badge back onto my belt. At the nearest cubicle I ask if I might have some duct tape. The engineer swivels and opens a drawer. He has three different kinds. I select one and we cut off two pieces and I thank him. I walk back to my desk. Angie is on the computer. With my cell phone I dial my desk phone. When the desk phone rings I pick it up and press the “hold” button then return the handset to its cradle. I form the pieces of duct tape into loops—sticky side out—and affix them to the backside of my cell phone.
Angie has been watching this.
I say: “Hey there. Everything going all right?”
“Is your phone broken?”
I say: “Not exactly. This is just a little improvisational engineering. Dad is late for his meeting. Back soon.”
9:10 a.m.: Roberts’s office has an elliptic conference table in the center of the room with six chairs around it. His desk stands beside the windows. His computer monitor shows that screen saver involving a tiny man mowing grass that grows at such a rate that when he has mowed back-and-forth from the top to the bottom of the screen it is time to mow the top again.
Roberts says nothing about my being late. He says: “Having a great day?” His standard greeting. Roberts has a binary smile. One or zero. On or off. During the standard greeting his smile is in the on position.
I say: “Fine. Yourself?”
“Fabulous! Please have a seat. Be comfortable.” He and I sit on opposite sides of the conference table and now the smile turns off. Roberts talks about a company-wide reorganization of the product development process that upper management intends to implement. He wants his department to be “out in front of” this. I nod. Roberts is lanky and square-jawed. Thick curly hair. Handsome. Tall. (Studies have shown that tallness is statistically correlated to corporate promotability and managerial effectiveness.) He and I hired into the company at the same time. He has been a manager for three years now.
Roberts’s promotion came about a year after my divorce. He and I had worked together and knew each other well. I considered him a friend. In a way I felt comforted by his promotion. I thought it indicated my own rise would soon follow and one manager even said as much to me. But three years have passed and Roberts has doubled the size of his department and my position has not changed. (Indeed during the recent distribution of new office chairs I was among the very last to receive the upgrade. Perhaps this is petty. Perhaps nothing should be read into it. But as I sat in a worn and technologically outdated chair while my nearby coworkers perched atop new twelve-way adjustable chairs I looked around and found it difficult not be disheartened.)
Laura is the finance person for several departments including ours. Roberts and Laura probably met years ago at one of the office social functions. Softball. The Christmas party. I probably introduced them. But I do not think anything was going on then. I do not blame Roberts for the dissolution of my marriage.
I first noticed this thing between them only three weeks ago. I cannot be certain how long it may have been going on before that. (But the frequency of their meetings has been increasing steadily—it is now daily—and using the known data to solve for a best-fit quadratic equation an extrapolation can be made backward through time to find an initiation point 5.5 weeks ago. But with the minimal hard data available the margin of error is rather large.) Their meetings and the frequency of their meetings is not in itself inexplicable. An annual departmental budget review is upcoming and Laura has lunchtime appointments in Roberts’s office. Roberts is well aware of the “bottom line” in all corporate decisions and he likes to make his numbers look as good as possible. Indeed much of his success might be attributed to a keen understanding and control of the department budget. But other small factors spur suspicion: Consistently smudged lipstick. Disheveled hair. Wrinkled pants. The door is kept closed during their daily meetings and these occur during the lunch hour when most employees are in the cafeteria or out of the building entirely.
Roberts asks me about my work. We discuss material specifications. Supplier facilities. Project timelines. As we talk I realize he and I have never been friends. We are acquaintances pressed together by circumstance. It strikes me that in the years that have passed since his promotion I have even forgotten Roberts’s first name Harold? Harry? He signs documents with an initial: H. Roberts.
I sit across from him and describe how my work has proceeded in the past week and am tempted to confront him. But I do not. I hand him some graphs and spreadsheets and while his attention is fixed on these I do this: I slip my cell phone under my chair and tape it into place.
9:36 a.m.: Angie is playing something like baseball with the handset of my desk phone and the tracking ball out of my computer’s mouse. Angie tosses the ball in the air and swings the phone. The crack at impact sounds as though it might indicate fracturing in the plastic phone. The ball pops a couple of feet into the air. I say: “Angie. Give those to me.”
She looks guilty. Hands me the phone. The mouse ball.
I am already regretting my maneuver with the cell phone. I do not know how I am going to recover the phone from its hiding spot.
I reassemble the mouse. I check the phone line. I can hear Roberts’s voice. But muffled and thin so that I cannot distinguish more than one word in ten. An ordinary cell phone is not the ideal technology for this application.
9:42 a.m.: Angie says: “Dad—can I go outside and play?”
I hit “hold” and set the phone aside. I say: “No. When we’re at work we can’t just go out and play anytime we want. If we did that I wouldn’t get a paycheck.”
Angie points to an empty cubicle across from mine. “He went outside. Twice.”
“He’s a smoker. He goes outside to smoke.”
“Smoking is bad for you.”
“That’s right.”
“Can’t you have some other kind of break? A bubble-gum break?”
“I don’t have time for bubble-gum breaks.”
“Why does he have time? Does he work faster than you?”
Angie is very smart. Sometimes her questions are difficult. I say: “I don’t know. Dad needs to work now. Dad needs to finish writing this memo on sourcing options for second- and third-tier suppliers. Here.” I hand her a thick design manual full of graphs and flowcharts and assembly drawings. “Look through this and we’ll touch base in twenty minutes to see if you have questions.”
I return to my work. I put all the other things out of my mind.
10:03 a.m.: Laura’s face peers over the cubicle wall. Sometimes when I see her there is a confused and vertiginous feeling I have in me that I no longer dare to call love. But it is something. She says: “Hi. Where’s Angie?”
“She’s here.” I look around. She is not here. “Angie?”
“Yeah?”
She is on her hands and knees and half under the desk involved in further inspection of the levers on her chair. She presses a lever and the seat back pops forward about two inches. She says: “These chairs are cool.”
I say: “Get up and say hello to your mother.”
She stands. “Hi.”
Laura says: “Hi. You look cute.” Angie looks down at her clothes and Laura glances at me with a peculiar expression. She says to Angie: “What do you think? Think you want to grow up to be an engineer?”
“I think so. But it’s a little boring so far.”
Laura laughs. I chuckle—to be a good sport. Laura says: “You want to come see what Mom does at work?”
I put my
hand in the air. “Wait. She’s mine for today. You agreed to that.”
“But you didn’t tell me you were bringing her to work. It’ll just be a little while. Until lunch.”
“You can bring her to work next year.”
“Derek.” She circles around the cubicle wall and stands over me. “Don’t be like this.”
“I’m not being like anything.” I stand. Laura is about an inch taller than I am. “Let’s not argue now.”
We both glance at Angie and Angie stares at us.
I say: “She’s mine today. You agreed to that.”
Laura gazes at me in a way that seems calm but she holds it on me for a long time and it somehow makes me want to run away. Finally she says: “You make me sad. Every time I talk to you it makes me sad. I wish you could hear yourself.” She turns to Angie. “Honey—I’ll see you tonight. Be good. I hope your father will pause in his work long enough to actually show some of it to you.”
I say: “Laura? I do hear myself but I’d been looking forward to this—” However she is already moving down the aisle.
Laura and I were once happy together. I thought we were. We were both pleased when she was able to find employment at this company just a few months after my own job offer arrived. We shared the commute and talked about our work in terms of great detail and shared interest.
Laura works with numbers and when I married her I thought she was a very rational and logical person. But apparently neither of us was quite what the other thought. “Bad chemistry” Laura once called it. (But chemistry is a metaphor for human relationships that I have never understood. Chemistry has certain fundamental principles that are scientific and unchanging. Equations can be written and precise calculations can be made as to how certain compounds will interact with one another and such has not been my experience with human relationships.)
When Laura told me she wanted a divorce one of the reasons she gave was that she saw and feared that Angie was becoming just like me. That was a difficult thing to hear. That my daughter was becoming like myself and this was viewed as a problem. I consider myself an adequate model of human being. Better than most. The things I broke around the house that day were of little or no value and I regret only that Angie had to witness it. She will certainly never have to see anything like that from me again.