Becoming Lin

by Tricia Dower

  Lutheran Protection’s cantilevered building looks like a giant aquarium on a too-small shelf. Its shimmering glass face is the blue of a pilot light and reflects all around it. She’s grateful for her sweater in its air-conditioned red-tiled lobby. Behind a wide stone-faced desk sits a young woman with a scar-like part down the middle of long platinum hair. Sandy Arvid, her nameplate says. Lin met her in July but Sandy doesn’t seem to remember. She dispatches Lin to the library around the corner to wait for a Miss Larsen from Personnel. The man who interviewed Lin in July is no longer with the company.

  She has the library to herself. A stained-glass window, insane with color, dominates the far wall. Vibrant blue, black, orange, green, white, yellow and red shards paint the moment Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to Wittenberg’s Castle Church door. As she recalls from a St. Olaf course, the first thesis urges believers to spend their whole lives repenting their never-ending sinfulness. A message from the Parent ego state if ever there was one.

  Armchairs upholstered in deep gold, tall walnut bookshelves and waist-high glass cases complete the hushed room, a place to crawl inside your thoughts if you can keep them from boiling over. Her fingers graze the spines of leather-bound volumes on an open shelf. Her eyes peer into a case. “Antique Bibles, one rarer than the Gutenberg,” says a voice from the doorway. It belongs to a woman about Lin’s age who’s gathered her russet hair into a topiary-like topknot and covered her body in a long-skirted ice-blue shirtwaist, her feet in black flats.

  Lin gives her skirt a tug, hopes she hasn’t violated any dress code. “Miss Larsen?”

  “Lois.” No smile. The woman strides forward and holds out her hand. “Any trouble finding us?” Her hand is cool.

  “No, I was here before.”

  “Of course. It slipped my mind.” She glances at her watch. “We should go to my office.” Ron says Lin’s too sensitive but even he’d smell hostility in Lois’s stiff voice.

  Her office is a glassed-in cubicle along a row of others in a spacious area off the lobby with unkind overhead lighting and carpet the color of fog, a dreary contrast to the lobby and library. She takes the chair behind the desk, Lin the one in front. Lois opens a folder holding what appears to be Lin’s résumé. “Brunson sounds Swedish. Is it?”

  “No. My husband’s ancestors came from a place in France named B-r-i-a-n-ç-o-n, the c with a cedilla.” Lois cocks her head as if to say, will this take long? Lin speaks faster. “They migrated to England with William the Conqueror and called themselves B-r-i-a-u-n-s-o-n. Later, in America, they seem to have misplaced two letters in their name.” Ron gets a big laugh when he tells it, helped along by his own husky chuckle, but Lois says “uh-huh” and glances down at the file again. Why is she even looking at it? Doesn’t Lin have the job?

  “It’s unusual for us to hire someone for only a year,” Lois says. “The company was founded on principles of long-term commitment and loyalty. I have no idea what Bob was thinking. However, we don’t renege on an offer.”

  So that’s it. Maybe the man who interviewed Lin got fired for offering her the job.

  Lois taps her pencil on the desk. “What made you decide to leave home?”

  Lin hesitates, hoping Lois will move on. But Lois’s gaze is hard as pits and her buttoned-up smile doesn’t falter. She’s likely used to waiting while people dredge up answers to blunt questions. “Renewal, I guess.” Lois is unworthy of the truth.

  “In an evangelical, born-again sense?”

  “Not exactly.”

  After a sick pause Lin resists filling, Lois launches into benefits. She takes a Polaroid of Lin, laminates it to a card showing Lin’s name and Social Security number, punches a hole in the card, feeds a ball chain through it and voila—a dog tag for an employee soldier. She wears hers around her neck.

  A matronly woman in a startling-pink uniform wheels in a coffee cart and rings a bell. “LP stops for fifteen minutes twice a day,” Lois says. “What can I get you?”

  “Not a thing, thanks.” Especially not fifteen minutes more with her.

  Relief leaks from Lois’s smile. “Well, then, I’ll take you to the elevator.”

  The elevator climbs past the second, third, fourth and fifth floors, Muzak seeping into it like nerve gas. Lin’s apprehension swells like the skin of a helium balloon. What if she’s a flop at this job? Her mouth is dry, her legs shaky. She exits to a maze of offices and desks and a babel of ringing phones. An arrow left directs her to Policy Service Correspondence at the end of the sixth floor, a quieter aerie-like enclave behind sheet-glass windows overlooking the street she clipped along to get here, the only sounds a fluorescent hum and three women at metal desks murmuring into black phones, as if telling secrets. They smile up at her briefly.

  Karin Hagen waves her into a glass-walled office, one wall a window to the outside, level with the WCCO sign across the street—Boone and Erickson’s station: Good morning, good morning. Pigeons dip through the air. Karin stands, extends her hand. She’s tall and wiry, with warm brown eyes in a narrow face draped by hair the color of maple syrup. She can’t be more than twenty-five and already a boss. In high school she’d have been one of the girls slick at sports and everything else Lin wasn’t. “Welcome to the Fish Bowl,” she says in a brisk contralto. “Move go okay?” Her smile has the same impetuous quality it did in July, as if she’s about to break into laughter.

  Lin takes the olive green vinyl chair in front of the desk. “Yeah, not much to move.” She nods at Karin’s navy pantsuit. “I didn’t know we could wear slacks to work.”

  “For a year now. You’ll appreciate it when the air-conditioning’s on, at twenty below and every time you’re in the elevator with the regional sales managers. Not just any slacks, though. They have to match the top and look formal enough to wear to a fine restaurant.” Her fingers air-quote fine. “In other words, no jeans, culottes, jumpsuits or hot pants, even if you do wear them to fine restaurants. We’re only wading into enlightenment here, not ready to drown in it.”

  Lin leans forward and lowers her voice. “I expected to see Bob Halverson in Personnel. Did he get fired?” Karin interviewed her in Bob’s office two months ago.

  Karin’s laugh comes from the bottom of her throat. “You have to commit an immoral act in front of the Martin Luther stained glass to get fired from this place and, even then, they’ll counsel you first. No, Bob got a better offer.”

  Lin smiles and settles back into her chair. “Oh, good for him.”

  Karin’s eyes soften. She tucks her hair behind one ear with a finger, exposing a tiny gold stud. “How are you feeling?”

  “Terrific.”

  “Glad to hear it. The girls are excited you’re here. They can use the help even if only for a year. And, who knows, maybe you’ll stay. What do you know about life and health insurance?”

  “You have to die for one and get sick for the other?”

  Karin’s laugh sounds genuinely tickled. “Love it.”

  Lin should have saved the Briaunson story for her.

  Karin slides a thick, heavy book across her desk. Principles of Insurance. “The first of ten courses for a professional designation that looks impressive on a résumé,” she says. “Twenty-five bucks for each course you pass. Keep the book a week or two to see if you’re interested.”

  “I’m interested.” Twenty-five times ten. How many courses can she take at once?

  Karin runs through office hours, performance reviews, turnaround times and quotas. Work, like religion, has its own language and rituals. “Your desk awaits,” she says at last.

  Out on the floor, she introduces the others: Dee, Wendy and Arlyss. The Girls. All older. Dee, the assistant supervisor, could be as much as forty. Braided black hair coils around her head like a hibernating snake. Brown-haired Wendy has missed the top button of her red sweater, compounding the problem all the way down. Lin hasn’
t seen bangs like Wendy’s in over a decade, cut straight and high across her forehead. Arlyss’s stretchy neck, feathery short blond hair and wide shoulders make Lin think of a loon.

  Indicating the empty desk in front of Dee, Karin says, “Have a seat.” She wheels her chair out from her office, takes three manila folders from Dee and sits beside Lin. Each day, Karin says, someone from Actuarial carts over a pile of these folders with calculations the Girls pass along in letters to policyholders. Dee doles out the folders and will check Lin’s work.

  Lin’s job title is Correspondent. Not the daring kind in helmet and fatigues, lugging notebook and camera into the jungle. In July, Karin sought to assure her the job was mindless enough to be therapeutic but not soul-crushingly boring. Lin might have suggested she was leaving Prairie Fire for a year because she was burned out from protesting the war. It sounded better than overcome with shame.

  Karin places a folder in front of Lin. “First step: place the rubber band on your wrist, doesn’t matter which wrist. Go on.” Reluctant to ask why and appear stupid, Lin slides the rubber band off and onto her left wrist. She thinks of Ron rubber-banding pencils, receipts, sermon ideas, spare extension cords and whatever else he fears might get loose and run wild.

  Karin’s voice is patient as she walks her through the job, presenting a form with columns headed Premium Options, Dividend Options, Surrender Options and Other. Lin likes the power of choice implied by options. She’s to record each type of letter she composes and add the columns at the end of the day. The total should match the rubber bands on her wrist—aha! She’ll dictate said letters into a recording machine via the telephone on her desk. Why did anyone care if she could type? Unseen souls on clandestine typewriters will transform her spoken words into official-looking documents ready for her signature.

  “My signature. Really?”

  “Really.”

  She can give out her extension number for emergencies but the phone is set up only to receive calls. The cafeteria has a pay phone if she needs to make a call. Desks are to be kept free of family photos and other “unprofessional” items. On her desk is a binder of sample form letters along with a list of military alphabet code words. “Enunciate clearly and note each punctuation mark,” Karin says. “Spell out any words a typist might get wrong. Your rating depends on how many letters come back ready to mail. Let’s try one.”

  Karin could be a soul fragment of Ron the way she details every step. The one Lin couldn’t have figured out herself was to dial seven to activate the recorder. Following an example in the binder, she dictates a test letter while Karin listens: “Address, first line. Mr. and Mrs. Harold Hogsven, capital H-a-r-o-l-d, as in delta, capital H-o-g as in golf, s as in sierra, v as in victor, e-n.” She’s nineteen again in a cavernous room at Quill and Page Publishing in Stony River, reading aloud from edited manuscripts to proofreaders ferreting out errors on galley proofs. The wheat-like smell of paper fills her nose, the chant-like hum of voices her ears. She could be speaking in both places at once.

  Pause. Shake your head. Dislodge the illusion.

  “You okay?” Karin asks.

  “Yeah, just lost the thread for a minute.”

  Seth says we can recreate events that seem to be in the past. Seth says. Simon says. Lin says: Focus. Karin will think you’re bonkers.

  She carries on, advising Mr. and Mrs. Hogsven they can withdraw the cash value of their dividends or take out a loan against it. They can also leave the dividends to accumulate at the current competitive interest rate, a dispassionate yet reassuring phrase. The morning slides by. She asks Dee for help only twice. During lunch break she uses the pay phone to give Irene Storm her extension and confirm that Ron dropped Tavis off.

  “Your young man is exuberantly well,” Irene says. “Wolfing down chicken pot pie at the moment.” Lin sags inside. Does that mean he didn’t miss her?

  At three, another pink-uniformed woman wheels in a cart and rings the bell. The Girls rise like Pavlovian puppies. Lin follows the sharp smell of their coffee into a glassed-in room holding a dull wooden table and metal chairs with brown vinyl seats and backs. Wendy’s red sweater is a welcome scrap of color. Dee plants white-rimmed glasses on her nose, hunkers down over some knitting and sighs as though a drug is filling her veins.

  Wendy says, “How was Doctor Coldfinger?”

  Arlyss sings, “Coldfinger” to the James Bond tune. Wendy snickers.

  Karin says, “Hey, let her drink her coffee before you start on her.”

  Lin asks who Coldfinger is. Karin wags a finger at Wendy and says, “He does have a name. It’s Dr. Amundsen, the medical director. Did you sign up for health coverage?”

  “No. I’m on my husband’s plan.”

  Dee stops knitting and lifts her head. She looks disappointed.

  “If you had,” Karin says, “Amundsen would have given you a pelvic exam.”

  “How come?”

  “Pregnancy’s a pre-existing condition they can exclude from your insurance coverage. If you refuse the physical they can withdraw the job offer. LP isn’t the only company that does it.”

  “Can’t they just ask if you’re pregnant?”

  “You might not know or you might lie.”

  Lin falls back in her chair. She’s astounded a stranger’s hand rooting around inside you could be an employment condition.

  “The good doc doesn’t warm the speculum,” Arlyss says, “and he keeps his gloves in a fridge with the penicillin.”

  Karin expels an exasperated sigh. “You don’t know that.”

  Arlyss snorts.

  “I don’t think he even uses gloves,” Wendy says.

  Lin can’t wait to share her outrage with Angel.

  “Enough of that,” Karin says. “Does anybody have a recipe for Caesar salad that doesn’t use anchovies? I hate anchovies.”

  “I do,” Dee says. “I’ll bring it tomorrow.” Lin pictures Karin in a high-rise chrome and glass singles apartment, tossing romaine with giant wooden spoons.

  Arlyss says, “On Friday when I was off, I got to watch the Price Is Right for the first time since it switched to days. You wouldn’t believe how much thigh the models have to show just to point at microwaves and trash compacters.” Dee tut-tuts and Wendy shakes her head. Arlyss turns to Lin. “Their skirts are even shorter than yours.”

  Heat pulses off Lin’s face. She won’t wear Aunt Libby’s dress to work again.

  Karin stands and stretches like a cat. Dee stows her knitting away. Coffee break is over.

  Back at her desk, Lin practices her signature. She opens the drawer that holds pencils, paper clips and rubber bands, closes then opens it again, just to feel the weight of it. She fingers her employee dog tag, leans back in her orange steno chair. It’s hard to believe she’ll be paid for something she’s been able to learn in a day. The hours zip by. At quitting time, ten rubber bands extoll her productivity. Tomorrow ten letters will await her signature as though she’s somebody. She can almost hear Mrs. Hogsven say, “We received a letter from a Mrs. Brunson today.”

  She turns in her tally sheet and heads for the elevator, picturing Tavis waiting for her at Tree House Kids, anticipating the warmth of his exuberant little self in her arms.

  The sun is down by the time they head south on Friday. The car heater spits out a dirty sock odor. Still September but the temperature has dropped twenty degrees since Monday. It’s been two weeks since she left Prairie Fire where they’ll be taking bets on the first dusting of frost. Predicting the weather there isn’t a frivolous pastime. It’s all that matters to farmers.

  At the start of the dark gravel road to the parsonage, a faint beacon floats in black air. It could be the front door light or a star low in the sky. She throws up the brights, stretching the trees into giant witches’ brooms. Tavis shrinks down in his seat and says, “Spooky.”

  “You got that
right,” she says, not inclined at the moment to talk him out of it.

  Ron is backlit at the yawning front door. He bounds down the steps when they pull up. How long has he been waiting there? He opens the garage so she can drive straight in.

  “Daddy!” Tavis tugs at his seat belt.

  “Wait till I stop, honeybunch,” she says. “Daddy’s not going anywhere.”

  In the garage Ron opens Tavis’s door and lifts him out. “I missed you, Possum,” his pet name for Tavis ever since he rode in a canvas carrier on Lin’s back. He hugs Tavis hard and kisses his neck. Tavis cinches his legs around Ron’s waist as he did hers in his footed-sleeper days. The garage smells damp, like dead leaves.

  Lin grabs the overnight bags from the back seat, asks, “Where’s Grace’s car?” Grace has rented her house in Northfield for a year to a St. Olaf professor and moved in with Ron to take Lin’s place in the church and the kitchen.

  “She’s with a friend. She’ll be back around noon tomorrow, hopes to see you.” Lin isn’t eager. Grace’s last words to her were, “I must have loved some wrong idea of you.”

  Tavis’s flashy Big Wheel sits on one side of the garage, a gift for his third birthday. “Can I ride it?” he asks.

  She silently applauds his use of I.

  “Tomorrow,” Ron says. He sets him down and closes the garage door. “There’s a surprise in your room. Go see.” He’s clean-shaven. She’s touched by that but irked by its assumption.

  Tavis scurries up the front steps and disappears into the house. She follows, sets their bags down in the entryway. “I’ll take those,” Ron says and then he disappears.

  The living room flickers with firelight. She drops her purse by the couch, steps up to the fire and rubs her hands together. A bird-watching book and field glasses roost on the mantle. Grace’s, she assumes. The warm air, redolent of pine, stirs up memories that threaten to swamp her. Still, the room needs painting and the church should have replaced the furniture years ago. The shelves on either side of the fireplace have gaps like missing teeth where her books were. Only a floor lamp, carved and painted to resemble a jungle tree, still captures her heart. A kaleidoscopic parrot, far from its sultry home, perches on a slim branch—the congregation’s gift for an appointment renewal. She laughed at the time, guessing the parsonage committee had snapped it up at a white elephant sale. But it grew on her and she named the bird after Phyllis Diller. She picks up the field glasses and trains them on the lamp.