Joe was in a chair, watching football.
Oliver was sitting, stick straight on the couch, knees together, hands folded on his lap. His head had fallen to his chest and he was snoring softly.
Grandmother shook her head and then went and got a blanket from the closet. Began to tuck it around his legs. Glanced up at him. She looked as if she wanted to plant a kiss in her palm and press it to his forehead. But she refrained.
At that moment, the crowd on TV went wild. Joe whooped and leaped from his chair.
Oliver stopped mid-snore. Blinked. Saw Grandmother smoothing the blanket and the rest of the women standing. He scrambled to his own feet, undoing all the work she had just done.
Score one for me.
Just before Joe left, Grandmother went into the kitchen to make a plate of leftovers for him. She came into the entry hall carrying a foil-covered plate in one hand and what looked like a bone in the other. “Is this yours, Joe? Or Oliver’s?”
Joe took it from her hand. “The wishbone! We set it aside.”
He held it out to me. “Take the end. We’ll see who gets to make a wish.”
Everyone was watching, so I took the end and pulled. The bone stretched, and then cracked, leaving me with the larger piece.
Adele clapped her hands. “Make a wish!”
I looked at Joe.
He was looking at me.
I dropped my eyes to the wishbone. I wished I were normal, wished I could just fall into a relationship without a second thought. It might not have been the first time I’d wished it, but it was the first time I really understood what I was missing.
We went to the Catholic church on Sunday.
Again.
People were starting to notice we never took communion. Asked, in the most roundabout of ways, whether we were Catholics.
We told them we were not.
They asked if we wanted to become Catholics.
We said we did not.
They weren’t quite sure what to make of us.
And we weren’t either.
There was no praise band at the church. They played music I’d never heard before. Had rituals I was not familiar with. But they kept talking to us before and after service. Mass. They knew who we were. They knew where we lived and where we worked. So we kept going back.
That Sunday, when we heard they needed someone to serve coffee and donuts after Mass, Joe volunteered.
THE CUBICLE NEXT DOOR BLOG
Thanks
It seems appropriate, at this time of year, to say thanks. So, thank you, John Smith.
For being an okay kind of guy.
For being nice to the people who make up my little world. Not everyone would take the time to do the things you do.
It hasn’t been nearly as bad as I expected, sharing a cubicle wall with you.
Posted on November 23 in The Cubicle Next Door | Permalink
Comments
It is interesting to note that although the idea of a day set aside for giving thanks began with the Pilgrims, it was not an annual event with those first colonists in the New World. It was not until more than a century later, in 1789, during the American Revolution, that George Washington suggested an official day of Thanksgiving. New York was the first state to turn it into an annual tradition, but not until 1817. And it was left to Abraham Lincoln to appoint the last Thursday in November as the official date of celebration. He did it in 1863, like George Washington before him, in the throes of war.
Posted by: NozAll | November 23 at 09:09 PM
And as the great Winston Churchill once said, “All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.”
Posted by: survivor | November 24 at 08:10 AM
I find most things in life aren’t nearly as bad as I expected. The imagination is sometimes much worse than reality.
Posted by: philosophie | November 24 at 08:12 AM
To life on the cubicle farm! To us and those like us.
Posted by: justluvmyjob | November 24 at 11:41 AM
Exactly what sort of people make up your little world? And how many of you…er…them are there? Should we just call you Sybil?
Posted by: theshrink | November 24 at 11:51 AM
Twenty-One
An e-mail appeared, the first week in December, about the department Christmas party. A time for the faculty, staff, and their family members to invade the colonel’s home, drink spiked eggnog, and talk about the same things we talked about at work.
Everyone was supposed to bring something. I signed up for an appetizer.
I’d signed up for an appetizer for the last ten years.
I had a great recipe for a pesto-and-goat-cheese mold with roasted red peppers. I served it with crackers. As long as I’d been bringing it to potlucks, I’d never had leftovers.
That Thursday, on the way home from work, I stopped by Manitou’s taffy shop to see Adele. She’d owned it since the 1960s.
The taffy machine was turning, stretching out candy between its mechanical arms. I opened the door and was overcome by a wave of sugar-coated nostalgia. When I was younger, I had split my time between helping Grandmother in the ski shop and Adele in her shop.
“Jackie!” She flipped up a section of the spotless white counter, paused to sneeze, and came over to give me a hug. “When’s the last time you came to see me?”
“It’s been a long time.” I kissed her cheek. “You usually come to see me.”
“Here. Have a piece of taffy.” She took a piece of orange candy from the display box.
I took it from her. Unwrapped it and popped it into my mouth. Savored the smooth hard surface before it began to stick to my teeth.
“How’s Joe?”
“I work with him. We share an office.”
“And?”
“And that’s it. You probably know more about him than I do. You’re the one who plays poker with him every week.”
“But you’re dating, aren’t you?”
I shook my head. Relented. “Sort of. But not really.”
“But he’s asked you out, hasn’t he?”
I shook my head.
“Why not?”
I shrugged. “It’s too complicated to explain. Grandmother told me you had a cold. I came over to see how you were doing, not to talk about Joe.”
“Well, he’s always talking about you.”
The next day, as I was working, I heard Joe clear his throat. And soon after I heard him speak.
“You don’t have to go to the Christmas Ball with me if you don’t want to.”
My fingers paused, hands poised above the keyboard. “I guess before I spent time and energy thinking about it, I’d want to actually be asked. Directly.”
“Would you go to the Christmas Ball with me?”
Joe’s voice came from high above my head. When I lifted my eyes toward the sound, I looked into his. His arms were folded on top of the cubicle wall, his chin resting on top of them.
I heard myself say yes before I remembered I couldn’t dance. Had never danced. Before I remembered I didn’t even own a dress. But I had to say yes. If I didn’t, I knew Adele would never speak to me again. And neither would Thelma or Betty.
His dimples flashed before he disappeared behind the wall.
A dance.
I was going to a dance.
With Joe.
The next morning, after having endured a sleepless night, I decided to let Grandmother in on the news.
“I have…a situation.”
Grandmother raised her eyes from the newspaper. “A situation? What sort of situation?”
“Joe asked me to a dance.”
“I know, I was there. At Thanksgiving. It was about time.”
“For what?”
“For him to take you on a real date.”
“It’s not a date. It’s a dance. And it would be silly to go to a dance without a…date. It really is a date, isn’t it?”
�
��It’s a date.”
“But I don’t have a dress.”
“Don’t worry about the dress. I’ve been fantasizing about seeing you in a dress for years. Decades.”
“I don’t want one with any…stuff on it.”
Grandmother lifted an eyebrow. “Frills and lace? Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. Betty will have just the thing.”
Betty? I doubted it.
But then, I wasn’t a wearer of dresses, was I?
We went over to Betty’s house that evening after work. She brought dresses out of her closet by the armful. Among them was something simple in satin. Very plain. Very straight. It was strapless and had a high waist with the embellishment of a long thin horizontal bow. It was made of silvery-lavender material.
Betty shook her head as soon as she saw it. “You probably wouldn’t want to try this one on. It’s strapless. More of a spring dress, really.”
I nodded. She was the expert, after all.
We went through the rest of the dresses. There were several that were the right size, but the wrong style.
Adele looked at the pile of rejected dresses on the bed and sighed as she patted my hand. “I don’t know what to tell you. Guess you’ll have to go shopping.”
The other women looked stricken. They knew what that meant. While their definition of shopping meant boutique, mine started and ended with the local thrift store.
“There has to be something. Are you sure she tried them all on?” Grandmother wasn’t about to let me leave without a dress.
“Yes.” Betty surveyed the mound of discarded clothing on her bed. “Except for the strapless.”
Thelma seized it from the pile. “She’ll try it on.”
“It will be much too cold.” Adele barely squeezed out the words before sneezing.
“She can wear a coat.” Thelma shoved it into my hands and pushed me toward the bathroom. “Try it.”
I went into the bathroom and unzipped the dress. The material was heavy and slippery. Substantial. The color was slippery too. It wasn’t really gray. It wasn’t really lavender. It existed in the shades between them. I stepped into it, not bothering to take off my jeans or T-shirt. I had already decided that if I had to wear a dress, it wouldn’t be strapless. But I looked in the mirror and changed my mind.
I unzipped it, tugged off my T-shirt, and slipped the straps of my bra off my shoulders. Brought the dress up to my chest and zipped it up again. Turned to see the view from the back.
I was still standing there, gazing at myself, when Adele knocked on the door and then pushed it open. She stood there for a long moment. “That’s it. That’s the one.” She reached in to grab a tissue before she half-turned and then called over her shoulder to the others. “Come and see.”
A moment later, they were crowding the doorway, trying to see over each other’s heads. Only Thelma had a clear advantage.
“It’s beautiful, but it’s still strapless and it’s still December.” Propriety, at least in apparel, was Betty’s motto.
Thelma, however, was much more practical. “She can wear a coat. You do have one, Jackie, don’t you?”
“I have my duffle coat.”
“She can’t wear a duffle coat. Give me a minute.” Betty relinquished her space and we could hear her padding down the hall. Several minutes later, she returned carrying a pile of sleek white fur.
“I can’t wear that…whatever it is.”
“It’s a rabbit fur capelet.” She held it out by the puffy round pom-poms.
“And how would you like it if someone made a capelet out of your skin?”
“Already been done. You know that movie? The one where there’s a cannibal?”
“Hannibal something…”
“With the elephants?”
“No. With the guy who wears the mask.”
“Jason.”
“No. The other mask.”
“Freddy.”
“The other one.”
I decided to put them out of their misery. “Silence of the Lambs.” Thank you, Adele, for that vivid mental picture.
Betty held it out to me again. “Just try it.”
“It’s against my principles.”
“Well, so is going to dances, if I’m not mistaken.” She settled it across my shoulders and tied the strings, leaving them to dangle mid-chest. It looked exactly like the cape Priscilla Dillon had worn in the second grade. The cape I’d always admired, always secretly longed to pet, always craved to own. Hers even had a muff to match. “But what about my arms?” The cape only covered my shoulders and upper arms.
“We’ll just have to find some gloves.” Adele was busy patting the capelet. As if she thought by pressing it onto my skin, I’d change my mind about wearing it.
“I have a better idea!” Betty plodded back down the hall and returned a minute later. “There’s a muff to match!”
A muff. “Can I…try it?” I pushed my hands into the satin-lined middle of the muff. And that was it. In an instant all my principles deserted me.
Betty beamed. “And if that’s not warm enough, just remember Joe is a nice tall boy. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind tucking you underneath his arm if you get too chilly.”
They all smiled.
I scowled, trying to reconcile my traitorous feelings with my firmly held lifelong beliefs. I finally told myself the rabbits were long dead and I might as well redeem their deaths. Put them to good use.
Reduce, reuse, recycle, redeem.
Before I left with the dress, Betty loaded me up with shoes, gloves, and some sort of contraption she called a corselet that dangled straps. I just dumped them all into a bag and draped the dress over my arm.
The three of them waved from Betty’s door as Grandmother and I left. “Don’t forget!” Adele called behind us. “We’ll come over next Saturday to help you get ready.”
The first crisis took place long before Saturday. It was two days later, on Sunday, when I actually started listening to myself think. My thoughts were these: I’m going to a dance with Joe. I’m going to a dance with Joe? I’m actually going to a dance. I’m going to dance?
That was the first point at which I tried to back out.
“Do you know Joe’s number?” I asked Grandmother at dinner.
“Of course. Don’t you?”
“No.” I had never called Joe. I never had to. I saw him practically every day. Why would I know his phone number?
“What do you need it for?”
“To call him.”
“Why?” Grandmother may not have been the quintessential grandmother, but she still had a sixth sense about some things.
“Because I can’t go to the dance with him.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t dance. It would defeat the purpose of the whole evening.”
“I’ll teach you.”
She told all the others and the next night, after work, they congregated in the living room. They sat on the couch, all four of them, listening to a Glenn Miller record as I stood in the middle of the floor.
Adele finally took charge. “Thelma, you be the man.”
“I can’t. I’ve never led. I’ve always followed.”
“Betty?”
“I wouldn’t even know how to begin.”
I stood there, staring at them. “So all of you know how to dance, but only if there’s a man for a partner?”
Betty laughed. “What other reason is there for dancing?”
“I’ll call Oliver.” Grandmother pushed off from the couch and picked up the phone.
He showed up ten minutes later in a tweed sports coat pulled over a wool sweater and an ascot knotted at his throat.
“How may I be of service?”
Grandmother took over. “Jackie doesn’t know how to dance.”
“Do you have any music?”
Adele returned the needle to the record and the sounds of a waltz began floating into the air.
“My dear, may I have this dance?” Oliver had
bowed at the waist and extended his hand. But it wasn’t offered to me. He was talking to Grandmother.
“But…it’s Jackie who doesn’t know…”
“Of course it is, but one of the best methods of learning is by observing.”
“Oh. Well then…” She placed her hand in his and he drew her into a sweeping turn and then proceeded to swirl her around the living room.
And just to be clear, my problem is not with observation. I could watch people dance all day. My problem is in application. In actually applying those same steps to my own clumsy feet.
By the time the song was over, there was color on Grandmother’s cheeks and she was laughing. Oliver twirled her to the couch, where the other ladies were seated, and then he released her hand. “Thank you, my dear. That dance was lovely. Would any of you other ladies care to dance?”
That crafty old man danced with all of the women before he finally turned his attentions to me.
“Now then, Jackie, let us proceed.” He extended his hand and I took it in mine. He had a surprisingly strong grip and a steady arm. He tried to spin me around as he took me to the middle of the living room, but I was taken by surprise and my arm refused to bend.
He released me and put his own hand up to the middle of his back.
“I’m sorry! I wasn’t—”
“It’s nothing. Just a wrenched muscle. There’s no need to worry yourself about it.” He grasped my hand again and waited several beats before catching up with the music.
This time, he didn’t try to spin me, he just tried to turn me, but I didn’t get the signal, I guess, because I ended up running into him. “I’m sorry!”
“Let’s take a moment to converse. This may help: You must not be too stiff or too limp. There is tension required for dancing so that signals don’t get missed. Dancers communicate with their bodies, not with words. We’ll try again.” He stood in place for several beats, simply rocking to the rhythm, and then he moved a foot forward and then back.
I tried to follow, tried to do the same.
“Marvelous. We’ll just keep on for a moment.”
True to his word, he let me get comfortable before trying any more tricks. And then I felt pressure underneath my shoulder blades. A pressure that made me think he wanted to turn to left.
The Cubicle Next Door Page 17
