At last the countdown began in earnest. Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight . . .
Pat pulled the cork out of the bottle of sparkling wine and filled everyone’s glasses.
Thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten . . .
They were all on their feet.
Three, two, one.
“Happy New Year!”
Pat gave a tremendous blow on her noisemaker, then turned and planted a New Year’s kiss on Tom. Jen took a sip of sparkling wine, then received and returned her mother’s New Year’s hug. Then Pat led off:
“Should auld acquaintance be forgot / And never brought to mind?”
Tom’s deep though slightly quavering voice joined Pat’s, and Jen joined in too, though at a volume designed to keep her voice, of which she was not proud, from being distinguishable from the others. She waited to hear Paul’s strong bass join. At this thought, she turned to look, and saw Paul and Katie in the doorway to the dining room, kissing.
She stopped singing. Ceased to hear the song. Felt herself to be staring. Looked away. Looked back in time to see Paul’s hand reach up to stroke Katie’s hair gently.
Then the two seemed suddenly to feel the attention on them, and they separated abruptly, looking away from each other, flushing, yet uncontrollably smiling.
It was with a wish to adjust her desires and hopes in peace after the events of the night that Jen retreated to her room, pleading tiredness, as soon as the family saw Paul off. For something so unsubstantial, a dream dies hard and often leaves a clawing pit in the stomach as its memorial. She was all too conscious of the fact that she would have to share her room and bed with her sister, but perhaps she could arrange to be asleep before the newly blissful Katie came in.
Katie, on the other hand, seemed to be in the stage of happiness that cannot easily be kept to oneself. She followed Jen into her room almost immediately and cast herself on the bed with a happy sigh.
“Just think of all the things that have changed in the last year,” Katie said, lying on her back and looking up at the ceiling. “I finished my degree, moved out to California with you, moved back, met Paul. Think how much will happen over the next year!”
Jen climbed under the covers with her, turned off the light, and lay looking up into the darkness.
“Did you know Paul liked you before tonight?” Jen asked after a moment, her desire to understand the parameters of her disappointment overcoming her reluctance to hear Katie talk about it.
“No. I mean, I hoped. We talked about things. And he seemed to understand me so well,” Katie said. If a sound could be said to glow, Katie’s voice did so. She continued—by the sound of it, more for the sheer joy of reciting the events than with any consciousness that Jen was listening. “He said, ‘Happy New Year!’ and hugged me. And then he said, ‘May I kiss you?’ I couldn’t talk, I just said, ‘Mmm hmm.’ And he kissed me, and it was such a light kiss, I was afraid he was just giving me a New Year’s kiss and didn’t mean anything more than that. But I thought that if he was going to kiss me, I would at least let him know how I felt. So I pulled him close and really kissed him. And he kissed me back. And I felt him stroking my hair and pulling me close. And then it was all over so fast. I wish we could have had hours more to talk about it. And kiss some more. But of course Mom and Dad are here, so I guess that would be weird. But he gave me a hug and another quick kiss as he was leaving. Oh, Jen, isn’t it wonderful?”
“Yes,” Jen made herself say, before any hesitation could become noticeable. “I am very happy for you.”
10
Pat and Tom rose early the next morning so that they could go to Mass before the broadcast of the Rose Parade began, a ritual to which Pat was as deeply devoted as watching the ball drop in Times Square the night before. Jen had intended to sleep in, but having wakened briefly, she found herself unable to get back to sleep with Katie in bed next to her.
The main rooms were silent and orderly. Pat had evidently cleaned up from the party after the sisters had gone to their room the night before, or else had embarked on an early-morning cleaning frenzy. Looking at the cabinet frames that now lined the walls of the kitchen, Jen found herself thinking back over the past week and the familial glow that had filled the house: Tom and Paul working in the kitchen, had seemed, she now realized, not unlike father and son. Pat and Katie seemed to have found a new common ground in preparing meals together. Setting firmly aside the hopes that had ended in disappointment last night, the week had been the most enjoyable family time she could recall.
Tomorrow her parents would move to their new apartment, and she herself would fly off for three days of LeadFirst training. The kitchen would probably be done by the time she got back. And if Paul and Katie proved to be a lasting couple, they would doubtless withdraw increasingly into their own world in the manner that couples invariably did. A sense of loss struck her, and with it the impractical desire that somehow the experience of the last few days could be continued indefinitely.
This last morning with the four of them together seemed to call for some celebratory gesture. Her eye fell on an open cardboard box sitting in a corner in which the cookbooks that Katie used most sat in semi-storage. She pulled out The Joy of Cooking and started paging through it. Waffles were her father’s realm, into which she dared not tread. Muffins? The pans were packed. There was a cookie sheet; what could she cook on that? She flipped pages until her eye fell on scones. “Bake 15–17 minutes.” If she hurried, they could be done just as her parents got home. Perhaps they would watch the Rose Parade together.
It was still dark when Jen rose the next morning, getting ready as quietly as possible so as not to wake Katie. Her roller luggage was waiting for her by the front door. She had only to wrestle it down the icy walk and load it into the BMW’s trunk. She could get breakfast at the airport.
Any news-watching American has heard of General Benjamin Palliser: famous for his leadership in the war in Afghanistan and even more so for his sudden ejection from that post after explaining all too candidly in a major interview his differences with the administration over the conduct of the war. F. Scott Fitzgerald claimed that there are no second acts in American lives, but when he said this, he did not anticipate the creation of Palliser Associates: “Providing combat-tested organizational awareness and leadership solutions to today’s ever-changing business environment”.
Rumor abounded at Schneider and Sons as to how exactly the company had become one of Palliser Associates’ first clients. Some claimed that Gus Schneider IV and General Palliser frequented the same glider club in the Colorado Rockies. Others maintained that the connection stemmed from the general’s widely rumored political ambitions. Whatever the origin, for three years now, the LeadFirst Management Boot Camp seminars had been a staple of the Schneider experience, providing just the right combination of useful content, mockable buzzwords, and memorable “team-building” physical activity (and the resulting colorful injuries) to be an endless source of anecdote and commonality among “all Schneider leaders of director level and above, as well as select managers in strategic lines of business”.
Jen had experienced team-building and leadership exercises ranging from cooking classes to rock climbing, from group meditation to personality analysis, but next to her Silicon Valley experience, this blend of management consulting and military trappings was wholly novel. She found herself wondering if Palliser Associates drew any of its clients from the Coasts, or if this was a uniquely Middle-American business experience.
On arrival at Dulles Airport, Jen collected her baggage and found the middle-aged man who stood holding the LeadFirst sign—obviously military-looking in his crew cut, khakis and dark-blue LeadFirst fleece. Several other seminar attendees already stood waiting, though no other members of the Schneider and Sons contingent had arrived yet.
A paunchy attendee in polo shirt and blazer sidled up to Jen, wheeling his luggage behind him.
“Hi there. Joe Smith. Insure America,” he said, inspiring in Jen
curiosity as to whether he spoke exclusively in two-word sentences.
“My name’s Jen Nilsson. I’m from Schneider and Sons.”
“You gonna run? With the SEALs?” he asked.
“I haven’t decided. It sounds like fun, but I’ve heard the history jog with the general is very good as well.”
“I heard that too.” He sucked in his gut slightly each time he was about to speak, perhaps out of self-consciousness, but giving the impression that he was slightly out of breath. “I want to try. I heard it’s tough. Running with SEALs, though. Can you beat that?”
Jen allowed that this would be difficult to beat and looked around for someone else to talk to.
“My company sends everyone here,” he continued. “Say it’s a great experience.”
At that moment, Jen saw another woman approaching the group and hastened to introduce herself to her.
“Sarah Walters,” the woman said, replying to Jen’s introduction. “Sales strategy director at Midwest PVC.”
“PVC as in plastic pipe?”
Sarah nodded and launched into the kind of expertise talk that Jen knew well, though the variety she was familiar with addressed network speed and chip architecture, not drainage systems. “Yep. Polyvinyl chloride. Plastic pipe. Everything from your half-inch pipe for interior lines up to twelve-inch water mains. We don’t actually make the dinky white stuff you buy at Home Depot. Our products are all industrial grade, sold to construction companies, public works, that kind of thing.”
“I’d never really thought about plastic pipe, but I guess someone has to make it.”
“Oh, we make it. Over six million feet of it last year alone. Turns out making it isn’t the hard part, though. Everyone can make it, including the Chinese. You know how much PVC they can put on one of those mega freighters?”
“No. How much?”
Sarah laughed. “Well, okay, I don’t actually know. But a lot, I can tell you that. And the surface shipping across the Pacific only adds pennies per foot to the price. The point is: the money isn’t in manufacturing anymore. The money is in design and installation. And consulting. And selling that is my new job, which is why I’m on the national tour of training seminars. Before Christmas, it was negotiation training. Now it’s this. Next week is pricing for consultative selling. No one’s sure quite how to turn a brand manager into a sales director, so they’re just throwing everything at me, and then they’ll see if I sink or swim. But at least with this one, I hear they’ve bundled a run in with the official activities, so I don’t have to get up at four to get my miles in before things get started.”
“You run?” Jen asked. Of course she ran. What did she not do? And a director. The list of accomplishments and breezy confidence would be annoying if it weren’t for the easy way she rolled them out.
“Yeah. I’m signed up for a half marathon in March, so I have to keep my training up.” As she spoke, Sarah rested a hand on her stomach. It was a bit rounder than the rest of her. Perhaps she was doing the half marathon to lose weight.
“Is this your first half?” Jen asked.
“Oh no. I’ve done a dozen or so. The last few years, I’ve done a full in the spring, but this year I didn’t want to put that much time in with the promotion. And now with the baby, I’m glad I didn’t.”
“Baby?”
“Yeah.” Sarah drew the syllable out in a way that indicated mixed pride and self-consciousness. “I found out just a couple weeks after signing up. I’ll be five months when I do the race. My time will be lousy, but the doctor says I should be okay if I don’t push too hard.”
Jen shook her head. Go to a leadership seminar, bump into superwoman. “So you’re going to be running with the SEALs?”
“Yep. I assume we’ll get at least three or four miles in, so I should be covered even if it’s a bit of a light day. You look like you run. Are you going with the SEALs?”
She could hardly back out when this woman was going to be running it pregnant. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
When the half dozen people on the driver’s list were all assembled, the group piled into a shuttle bus and drove off. The seminar was evidently to be a study in contrasts. Each attendee was handed a “briefing paper” assigning him to a “squad” and listing activities for the next two days. As they were driven to LeadFirst headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, video screens in the shuttle bus played a talk delivered by General Palliser propounding “strategic awareness” and emphasizing that “in our global economy, as on the modern battlefield, information is the most powerful weapon.” After the general’s talk, they saw another video in which instructors in athletic garb with whistles around their necks propounded the importance of “working hard, playing hard” and team building.
With all this buildup, Jen had almost begun to expect the shuttle bus to stop in front of corrugated metal barracks, where she would spend her night in a bunk or a cot. Instead, it pulled up in front of a picturesque hotel whose gracious lobby featured a “Welcome LeadFirst!” sign. She took her bag up to her room and, consulting her briefing paper, saw that she had free time until the “Welcome Dinner with General Palliser and LeadFirst Team” in a couple of hours.
Skimming over the schedule for the rest of the seminar, she learned that in addition to the near legendary “06:00 Physical Training: Participants to choose between 5-mile run with the SEALs or historical sightseeing jog with General Palliser”, there were a mix of physical activities and seminar topics ranging from the banal to the arcane:
Strategic Awareness and the Power of Information
Leadership and Knowledge Networks
Ropes Course
Building an Understanding of Routine: Lessons from de Vigney
Conquering the Infoscape
Team Building: Relay Race by Squads
A note at the bottom of the briefing paper advised her, “LeadFirst emphasizes a holistic approach to leadership, incorporating knowledge building and physical activity. We strongly encourage all participants to take part in physical training and contests. However, participants are encouraged to know their physical limits and avoid unaccustomed exertion, which may lead to injury. The attached waiver must be signed before participation in any physical activities.”
At 5:50 the next morning, a milling crowd of LeadFirst attendees in various styles of athletic gear filled the hotel lobby, most of them grasping cups of coffee to fend off the early-morning hour and the temperature outside, which was hovering around freezing. Three facilitators stood at different points in the room, holding up signs saying “RUN”, “JOG”, and “WALK”.
Jen made her way to the first group and found Sarah as the group was boarding the bus. The running group was heavily male, a mix of men who looked as though they regularly did triathlons and others who perhaps had not run regularly in years but couldn’t pass up the chance to run with the SEALs. By securing a pair of seats together, Jen and Sarah avoided any risk of being talked at before the sun was up and sat in companionable silence as the bus took them across the Potomac and dropped the group off near the Jefferson Memorial.
The three retired SEALs were waiting for the group on the memorial’s steps. One gave a brief talk about Jefferson and the memorial, then told them that the route would take them around the Capitol, down the Mall, and end at the Lincoln Memorial.
“It’s just under five miles,” he concluded. “At a comfortable pace, we should be able to make that in forty minutes, which will allow you to watch the sunrise from the Lincoln Memorial. Don’t stop unless you drop. Let’s go!”
Even at early-morning rates of multiplication, Jen quickly arrived at the conclusion that this meant eight-minute miles. With dedication, she could do that for five miles. She set off with the determination not to be the last in the group. It quickly became clear, however, that the real pace setter would be Sarah, whose fluid, long-legged gait quickly took her to the front of the group, where she stayed.
The three SEALs had nothing to prove. Two kept with the
front of the group. The third brought up the rear, offering encouragement to the clump of gasping, unpracticed runners who were suffering for their decision to join the group based more on bravado than on ability.
But for those able to keep up with the front group, “don’t be outrun by the pregnant lady” became the consuming challenge. The synthesized voice of Jen’s iPhone running app informed her at intervals that they were exceeding the pace promised by the SEALs as they rounded the white-columned Capitol, ghostly in the predawn half-light, and set off down the tree-lined pathways of the Mall.
Sunrise was still some ten minutes away when they reached the Lincoln Memorial. Jen leaned against an icy block of marble wall as she tried to stretch the threatening cramps out of her calves. The cold morning air wheezed and rattled in her lungs, and when a facilitator handed her a bottle of water, it was tempting to splash some on her burning face, though she knew that if she did that, she’d be shivering from the cold in a few minutes.
Sarah was also stretching; then she jogged lightly up the stairs to the memorial above. Jen followed her at a more plodding pace.
“The bragging rights will be that I ran with the SEALs, but you were the hard one to keep up with,” Jen said, as they stood beneath Lincoln’s knees.
The other woman shrugged. “Everyone already knows the SEALS are tough. I was trying to show myself I could lead the pack now, even if I won’t in March.”
“Well, you won.”
“I guess so. Funny, isn’t it, that winning some kind of status with people you’ll probably never actually see again can seem important. But we do it all the time. That’s how I keep going after a water stop in a race. I tell myself I don’t want the people giving away cups to see me drop into a walk. Not that they have any idea who I am.”
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