The Home for Wayward Parrots

by Wehm, Darusha;

  It was just part of the culture, though. Government jobs are strange like that. Pretty much everyone starts as a level one or two and works their way up the ranks by winning “competitions” for new jobs. Apparently the director of the department started as a mail room clerk. So, everyone has moving up as the number-one goal, and they want to get you on that treadmill as soon as possible. It’s like moving up is what you’re there to do, and the work is just what happens between competitions.

  As much as it seemed strange to begin with, it didn’t take long before I wanted to move up, too. Getting over the thrill of actually having a job in my field combined with the boredom of doing the same menial tasks day in and day out — plus the desire for a bigger paycheque — fuelled my entree into the Competition Club.

  19

  RESPONSIBILITY

  THERE WAS A GROUP OF ABOUT TEN OF US who seemed to meet at every exam for the internal jobs. A couple of the guys I’d been hired on with would be there, plus a bunch of people who’d joined the department in the previous round of hiring. Even though the processes were called competitions, there was no competitive spirit among our group. We all talked about the questions after each exam, and when someone was called for an interview, we genuinely wished him or her well, even when we hadn’t been lucky enough to get the call. It wasn’t personal. It was just business. The business of moving up.

  Out of all the competitions I was involved with, I placed a few times on the list, but I was never higher than third. Someone in third was so unlikely to actually get offered a position that you might as well not have made the list. Almost all the competitions were to fill a single vacancy, and while once in a blue moon the first-place candidate would refuse the job, it was nigh on impossible for both number one and number two to defer. Even so, third was worthy of congratulation, and it felt like a real accomplishment to see my name so near the top of that list.

  The reality of the situation was that the Competition Club was hardly about getting a new job. It was what we did at work — which was sanctioned, even encouraged by our bosses — to avoid actually doing what we were hired to do. There’s this myth that government workers are lazy or incompetent, but from what I’ve seen that’s rarely the case. It’s just that so much effort and energy is directed at tasks that have nothing to do with our actual jobs.

  Aside from the Competition Club, there are the various charitable campaigns that department heads sign up for, all of which require committees of employees to run, all on work time. And there are innumerable meetings, all of which are ostensibly to further the stated purpose of the department, but which serve mainly to kill an hour of two of a workday and possibly even stymie a program of real work. It could have been maddeningly frustrating.

  But after a few months, being at the bottom rung of that ladder had gotten boring, so I was happy enough to get out of doing real work. I’d rather be actually engineering something than heading up the annual blood drive, though, so moving up was my main priority.

  IT WAS ONLY EVER A MATTER OF TIME. After eight months as a level one, I placed first on the list for a level three in the road maintenance department. It was finally a chance for something better than the mathematical equivalent of getting the coffee. The position even came with a tiny bit of control over the projects. I’d been careful in my interview to stress my desire for additional responsibility at work. It was the buzzword of the day, and all of us in the Club were using it liberally in our applications and interviews.

  As it turned out, the “control” over the project was more like being the person management yelled at when things went sideways. All the real decision-making was delegated to a committee I didn’t even sit on. Still, it was better than being a level one. And, of course, there was Audrey.

  Audrey Michaels sat three cubicles down from me on the way to the printer. She was a financial clerk, a pay grade above me, but I guessed that was just because she’d started before me. She’d been with the department since she was in second-year university, as a summer intern. It was enough to get her foot in the door, so that when she graduated she was in full swing with the Club. She moved up fast.

  She was about my age and seemed to be the most interesting person on our floor. On Monday mornings I noticed she sometimes had the telltale black mark of a bar stamp on the back of her hand or the inside of her wrist. She dressed pretty much like everyone else, the “business casual” that made the shareholders of the Gap rich, but there was something about her. Like she didn’t take it all seriously, or that there was some great artistic spark hiding behind her ledgers and spreadsheets.

  I started following her around after three weeks.

  I WASN’T A VERY GOOD STALKER. I’m pretty sure she made me on day two at the Mongolian Wok in the mall; then she totally caught my eye at Munro’s bookstore on day four. The day after she managed to sneak up behind me in the line at the Starbucks on the ground floor of our building when I went down for afternoon coffee.

  “Funny to see you here,” she said, smiling at me when I jumped at her tap on my shoulder.

  “Uh,” I stammered. “Hi, ah, Audrey.”

  She gave me a hard look, but I could see the corners of her lips being tugged up, as if by some invisible thread. “You’ve been following me,” she said.

  “Uh,” I repeated, looking around for some means of escape. I seriously considered just bolting for the door, but that would only postpone the inevitable until I got back to my desk.

  “Uh,” I said again, then grinned in what I hoped was a disarming way. “Just trying to figure out what to do with myself on breaks.” I shrugged. “Times like this I wish I smoked.”

  “What?” she asked, confusion on her face.

  “The smokers all have a built-in set of buddies,” I explained, “and places to go and things to do at coffee and lunch. As for me,” I shrugged again, “there’s only so much internet surfing at my desk I can stand.”

  She frowned as we reached the front of the line and I ordered my Friday treat of a Venti non-fat three-pump vanilla latte. “So, you’re saying you were following me because you were bored?”

  “Sort of,” I said and moved aside so she could order.

  “Can I have the tiny drip coffee that’s not on the menu? Thanks,” she said to the barista and turned to me without waiting for a response. “Huh,” she said to me, the smile twitching at the corners of her mouth again. “And I here I thought you wanted to ask me out. Such a shame when I have tickets to Nomeansno this weekend and no date.”

  She turned away from me to collect her change and walked toward the counter to wait for her coffee.

  A lot of questions were going through my brain all at once. Was she asking me out? Did this mean I was off the hook for the creepy behaviour? Starbucks has sizes of coffee that aren’t on the menu? I asked the one that, oddly, screamed the loudest for attention. “How did you know I liked Nomeansno?”

  “You’re not the only one with observational skills,” she said. “I saw the CD case for Why Do They Call Me Mr. Happy? on your desk the other day.”

  I took my latte from the counter and sipped. “So,” I ventured. “You’re looking to offload that extra ticket?”

  “Nope,” she said, stirring milk into her coffee. “But I am looking for a date.” She looked at me over the top of her itty-bitty Starbucks cup as she took a sip. “Wanna go?”

  OFFICE ROMANCES ARE A BAD IDEA. I didn’t need to have one to know that. Luckily, Audrey moved to a different department on another floor about a month after we started dating, a promotion she knew was coming when she asked me out. She knew about office relationships, too.

  She liked punk rock and wasn’t shy about taking charge of our relationship. Even I could tell that it looked like I was just seeking a replacement for Seedy. Maybe it was something like that in the beginning, but being with Audrey was a lot more ... I don’t know how else to put it than grown-up ... than being with Seedy had ever been.

  I kept a toothbrush and a change o
f clothes at her apartment. We went grocery shopping together and cooked dinner for each other. We argued about money. I’m not sure there’s anything that says “real relationship” more than arguing about money. And after we’d been together a year, it happened. We had The Fight. The fight I’ve had with every woman (except Seedy) that I’ve dated longer than a few months. The fight that always ends up in a break-up. All because of responsibility.

  UNTIL THE FIGHT, THOUGH, things with Audrey were pretty great. I took her out to meet Mom and Dad one weekend in the summer. Dad was barbecuing hot dogs and burgers, and Mom had a night off for a change. We arrived at two in the afternoon and Dad immediately handed us a pair of cold beers. “Stay the night,” he said, jerking his head toward the house. “I finally got around to setting up your old room as a guest room, but we never have any guests. You two might as well make use of it.”

  Audrey and I shared a glance at each other; then she smiled and took the proffered beer. “Thanks, Mr. Guillemot,” she said. “We’d love to stay over.”

  “Excellent,” Dad said, “and for heaven’s sake, call me Dom.” He turned toward Mom, who was coming into the yard with a tray of some kind of hors d’oeuvres. I couldn’t remember ever having hors d’oeuvres at home. “And that’s Shirley,” Dad said. “Don’t let her make you call her Detective, either. She’s got to be off duty once in a while.”

  We talked all afternoon. Mom and Dad graciously pretended to be interested in municipal accounting practices while I just watched Audrey. It all seemed so easy for her — talking with them like they were just normal people, not her boyfriend’s parents, for god’s sake! And we were going to share a bed in their house. It all seemed like too much too fast.

  I ate two burgers and three hot dogs and polished off the last of the baked pastries Mom had brought out in the afternoon. “He’s still a good eater,” Dad said to Audrey while I picked at something in filo pastry.

  “He just eats when he’s nervous,” she said and patted my knee. I wanted to die.

  MOM AND DAD LOVED AUDREY, of course, and I did, too. We’d settled into a happy rut, spending the weekends together, walking in to work together Monday morning. It wasn’t hard to imagine a future where every day would be like Monday morning. I knew I ought to have felt like I was too young to be settling down so fast, like I should have more wild oats to sow. But Audrey was fun, she was good for me and I loved her. Why shouldn’t we move in together? Someday.

  20

  TOO MUCH INFORMATION

  You’ve been tagged in a post by Jeannette Andrews

  I clicked on the link and was surprised to see a huge block of text. My name was highlighted in blue, but it had company. I recognized Rob, Anna, Chuck and Terry, but there were about a half dozen more names that didn’t ring a bell.

  “WARNING,” the post began. All caps — I rolled my eyes. Whenever I met her, Jeannette seemed like a perfectly rational, sane teenager. But for some reason, on Facebook she was what Johnny would call a drama queen. I never really understood what he meant by that until I started reading Jeannette’s Facebook posts.

  WARNING: grandma and grandpa Heinz are on fb and are making nasty posts on ppls walls. If you don’t want there holy roller bs on yr page, CHANGE YOUR PRIVACY SETTINGS to friends only or block them. DO NOT ACCEPT THERE FRIEND REQUESTS!!! There only on here to make awful comments to ppl. Don’t forget what they said to Terry.

  This must be Kim’s parents, I thought. I certainly hadn’t had a friend request from either of them, but why would I? As far as I knew, they didn’t even know who I was. Though this post might change all that.

  I clicked over to Terry’s wall and scanned down the posts. Most were wedding related, interspersed with a few links to library or book topics. I didn’t see anything that looked like vitriol from Kim’s parents.

  I clicked over to Chuck’s page and was scanning for anything juicy when I stopped myself. What was I doing, exactly? Poking my nose into the business of these people I really only barely knew. Certainly, Jeannette had drawn my attention to whatever it was that was going on, so she at least thought it related to me somehow. But really it didn’t.

  Still, I couldn’t help but be curious. I’d noticed that Kim’s parents were absent at the events I’d attended, though she’d made it clear that they still lived on the Island. I could imagine that they didn’t approve of Chuck and Terry’s wedding, but it felt like they were conspicuous in their absence. Like Rob’s father, they were a presence by not being talked about.

  I decided that surfing through my relatives’ Facebook pages looking for gossip was normal, not creepy. Or maybe both, but I could live with that. I finished skimming over Chuck’s wall, then clicked over to Rob’s page. It didn’t take long before I saw the comment to a years-old post about Rob and Anna moving in together.

  Josef and Hannah Heinz: Repent now, sinners, in the hour of your shame. The hour of your redemption is upon you — feel the light of our Lord in your heart and be saved.

  If I didn’t know better, I would have just thought it was spam. Rob had completely ignored it, as far as I could tell, though it was just as likely that he hadn’t seen it. Jeannette obviously had, though, as she’d posted her own comment.

  Jeannette Andrews: Stop this! No one wants to hear your hurtful propaganda. Doesn’t the bible say to love your neighbour as yourself? Shouldn’t you at least try to love your own family as much?

  I could tell from the timestamps that Jeannette had made her WARNING post right after that comment. I had to wonder what the point was. From what I could see, it was Rob’s problem, not hers. And by drawing everyone’s attention to their comments, she ensured more people saw them than if she’d said nothing. I didn’t get it. It had nothing to do with her, and her post only made things worse from what I could tell.

  Maybe it was a generational thing?

  “SO, I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO MAKE OF IT, Gumbo,” Johnny said. He took a bite of his omelette, leaving a smudge of Floyd’s famous pesto hollandaise on his chin. He chewed and looked at me expectantly.

  “I am the last person to ask,” I said. “No one has ever sent me flowers, not at work, not three days in a row, not ever. I guess you’ve got an admirer?” I posited. Inside I was thinking how unfair it was that Johnny’s major problem in life was who was sending elaborate bouquets to his office.

  “Could it be a bribe?” I suggested, mainly because I didn’t want to think about romance. I’d been alone so long at that point I’d just about given up.

  His face took on a thoughtful look. “I guess it’s possible,” he said, “but there’s no card and I don’t know who would think that a bunch of daffodils would make any prosecutor throw a case. I mean, really.” He lifted a forkful of hash browns to his mouth. Man, could Johnny ever eat.

  “Anyway,” I said, working to change the conversation, “I have to tell you about this thing I saw on Facebook.” I gave him a brief synopsis of Jeannette’s freak-out about her grandparents and waited for Johnny to finish his bite of food.

  “Jesus,” he said, missing the irony, “they sound like a pair of nutjobs.”

  “Sure,” I said, “but what was Jeannette thinking? I mean, it’s totally none of her business.”

  “Yeah, but she’s just trying to protect you all. She’s the youngest, right?” I nodded. “She probably thinks she’s the only one who knows how the internet works. It’s kind of sweet, really.”

  “I think it’s weird.” We spent a few moments in silent eating. Then I said, “Actually, what’s weird is that the vast majority of what I know about the Heinz family is from stalking them on Facebook. I’m such a creep.”

  Johnny laughed. “You’re not a creep,” he said. “At least, no more than anyone else. If you can see it, it’s meant to be seen. That’s the whole point of stuff like that.”

  “I guess,” I said. “And it’s not all of them, at least. I hardly know Wolf’s daughter June at all, because she’s not on.” I shook my head. “It never used to be thi
s way. Jeez, I feel like such an old man: ‘Kids these days don’t know what life was like before the internet.’” I waited for Johnny’s laugh, but it never came. Instead I saw he had his deep thoughts face on.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Biomom’s last name is Heinz, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s Kim’s name,” I answered, a little pissed at his dismissal.

  “And she’s got a brother named Wolf?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Short for Wolfgang?”

  “I guess.”

  “Tall, silver fox, drinks dark beer?”

  I frowned. “Yeah,” I said. “You know him?”

  Johnny laughed and slapped the table. “Hell, yeah,” he said. “Wolf’s my boss.”

  “God,” I said. “Small world.”

  “Naw,” Johnny said, “it’s just a small town. We always forget that. How funny.”

  “I knew Wolf was a big-shot lawyer,” I said, “but I never learned exactly what he does. So, he’s your boss?”

  “Think of it like this,” Johnny said. “Imagine it’s Law and Order, okay? He’s Sam Waterston and I’m Jill Hennessy.”

  “Oh,” I said, understanding completely. Part of me hated that Johnny patronized me like this, but it worked. It always worked.

  “So, what does Wolf think about the great floral bouquet mystery?” I asked.

  Johnny shrugged. “He knows I’m a player,” he said without a trace of self-consciousness. “Probably hasn’t even noticed.”