Georgia — or George as she liked to be called — was part of a dying breed, one of the last of the martini moms, those hard and hard-drinking women who had been so prevalent in the suburbia of my childhood, those gravel-voiced, raucous women who always seemed to adopt the nicknames of men: Jimmy, Gerry, Willie, Phil. It frightened me a little to know that this was Jane’s mother, because I always thought that, in regard to women, you could tell how a daughter was going to turn out by looking at the mother. And I had to admit that I did see some of George in Jane. But there was no hardness in Jane. She was softer, kinder, prettier than her mother, and the differences between the two were pronounced enough that I knew history would not repeat itself.
I made a lot of noise, working on the sewing machine, purposely trying to drown out words that I knew I would not want to hear, but in between the pounding and scraping, I could still hear George’s alcohol-ravaged voice from the kitchen: “…he’s still a nobody…” and “…gutless nothing…” and “…loser…”
I did not come out of the bedroom until she was gone.
“Mom’s real excited about your job,” Jane said, taking my hand.
I nodded. “Yeah. I heard.”
She looked into my eyes, smiled. “Well, I am.”
I kissed her. “That’s good enough for me.”
At work, Stewart’s smug condescension gave way to a more direct disdain. Something had changed. I didn’t know what it was, whether I’d done something to piss him off or whether it was something that had happened in his personal life, but his attitude toward me became markedly different. The surface politeness was gone, and now there was only undisguised hostility.
Instead of calling me into his office each Monday to give me the week’s assignments, Stewart began leaving work on my desk, attaching notes that explained what I was supposed to do. Often, the notes were incomplete or cryptically vague, and though I could usually figure out the gist of the assignment, sometimes I had no idea what he wanted at all.
One morning, I found a batch of ancient computer manuals piled on my desk. As far as I could tell, the manuals explained how to utilize a type of keyboard and terminal that Automated Interface did not possess. Stewart’s Post-It note said only: “Revise.”
I had no idea what I was supposed to revise, so I picked up the top manual and the note and carried them over to Stewart’s office. He was not there, but I could hear his voice and I found him talking with Albert Connor, one of the programmers, about an action movie he’d seen over the weekend. I stood, waiting. Connor kept looking at me, obviously trying to hint to Stewart that I wanted to see him, but Stewart continued to describe the movie, slowly and in detail, purposely ignoring my presence.
Finally, I cleared my throat. It was a soft sound, polite, tentative, quiet, but the supervisor whirled on me as if I had just yelled an obscenity. “Will you stop interrupting me when I’m talking? For Christ’s sake, can’t you see I’m busy?”
I took a step backward. “I just needed — ”
“You just need to shut up. I’m tired of you, Jones. I’m tired of your shit. Your probation period’s not over yet, you know. You can be let go without cause.” He glared at me. “Do you understand?”
I understood what he was saying. But I also understood that he was bluffing. Neither he nor Banks had as much control over me as they wanted me to believe. If what they tried to make me believe was true, I would’ve been fired weeks ago. Or, more likely, I never would’ve been hired at all. Someone above them was calling the shots, and they were hamstrung. They could rant and rave and piss and moan, but when push came to shove, they couldn’t do diddly.
Maybe that was why Stewart had been riding me so hard lately.
I stood my ground. “I just wanted to know what I was supposed to revise. I couldn’t tell from the note.”
Connor was staring at us. Even he seemed taken aback by the force of Stewart’s outburst.
“You are supposed to revise the manuals,” Stewart said. He spoke slowly and deliberately, angrily.
“Which part of the manuals?” I asked.
“Everything. If you had bothered to look through the books I left on your desk, you would have noticed that we no longer use that hardware system. I want you to revise those operator manuals so that they reflect our current system.”
“How do I do that?” I asked.
He stared at me. “You’re asking me how to do your job?”
Connor had grown increasingly uncomfortable, and he nodded toward me. “I’ll show you,” he offered.
I looked at him gratefully, smiling my thanks.
Stewart fixed the programmer with a disapproving glare but said nothing.
I followed Connor back to his cubicle.
It was easier than I’d thought it would be. Connor simply gave me a stack of manuals that had come with the computers Automated Interface had recently purchased. He told me to xerox them, put them in binders, then deliver them to the different departments within the company.
“You mean I’m just supposed to replace the old books with new ones?” I asked.
“Right.”
“How come Mr. Stewart told me to revise the manuals?”
“That’s just the way he talks.” The programmer tapped the cover of the top manual he’d given me. “Just make sure you return those to me when you’re through. I need them. You should find a distribution list somewhere in your desk that will tell you how many copies each department gets. Gabe always kept an up-to-date distribution list.”
Gabe. My predecessor. In addition to being friendly and outgoing, he’d apparently been well-organized and efficient as well.
“Thanks,” I told Connor.
“You’re welcome.”
I licked my lips. This was the first positive contact I’d actually had with one of my coworkers, and more than anything else I wanted to follow up on it. I wanted to build on this tentative base, to try and establish some sort of relationship with Connor. But I did not know how. I could have attempted to continue the conversation, I suppose. I could have asked him what he was working on. I could have tried to talk about something non-work related.
But I didn’t.
He turned back to his terminal, and I returned to my office.
I saw Connor later, near the Coke machine, and I smiled and waved at him as I entered the break room, but he ignored me, turned away, and, embarrassed, I quickly got my drink and left.
At lunch, I saw Connor leaving with Pam Greene. They didn’t see me, and I stood on the sidelines, watching them take the elevator down. I’d begun dreading lunch, feeling self-conscious about the fact that I always ate by myself. I would have much preferred working eight hours straight and getting off an hour earlier at the end of the day, not taking a lunch at all. I did not need sixty minutes each day to prove to me how I was regarded by my coworkers. I was depressed enough by the job as it was.
What depressed me further was the fact that everyone — everyone — seemed to have someone to eat with. Even someone like Derek, who as far as I could tell was almost universally reviled, had someone with whom he spent his lunch: a squat, toadlike man who worked someplace upstairs. I alone was alone. The secretaries who were nice to me during working hours all said good-bye and waved politely before abandoning me at lunchtime, not even bothering to ask if I would like to accompany them, perhaps assuming that I already had something to do with my lunch hour.