by Janis Powers
I had been at the office over three hours. My calendar was open, so it seemed like a good time to pump. I grabbed the machine and scooted to the bathroom just a few yards from my office. I zipped by Joy too quickly for her to ask where I was going. Given the conspicuous, clunky pleather box attached to my shoulder, she had to have known exactly what I was doing.
I set up shop at the bathroom sink, as far away from the door as possible. I was prepared to employ my blazer as a privacy shield if someone came in, but nobody did. I wished there had been outlets in the stalls so I could have done my pumping duty in privacy. It was a mathematical certainty that, at some point, someone would enter the bathroom while I was pumping, and I would get busted. Although “busted” wasn’t the right word since I wasn’t doing anything wrong. In any case, when I was finished, I put the pumped milk in a brown paper bag with my name on it, and shoved it in the back of the freezer in the break room.
Back at my desk, I checked my watch. 12:13 pm. I had pumped ten minutes on each side, so twenty minutes was accounted for. Between the set-up/clean-up time and the few minutes to package and store the milk, I was looking at at least another five to ten minutes for each session.
Disappearing for half an hour at a time was going to take some maneuvering. Next time, I would definitely bring my phone so I could check email while pumping. Perhaps I could even send messages from the bathroom to waylay certain people, like Nancy or Deirdre. I’d have to stockpile a list of reasons for Nancy to charge over to Deirdre’s office so I wouldn’t be bothered: Nancy, Deirdre needs you to install that new valet parking app on her phone ASAP! Deirdre needs the memo reprinted in 12 point font, not 11, pronto!
As I got back to work, I noticed a marked increase in hallway noise. Then I realized why the bathroom had been empty. Monday at 11:00 was Deirdre’s high-level staffing meeting. It explained Deirdre’s absence from the bathroom, as well as Nancy’s. Lallyberry had probably been at her desk on stand-by, waiting for some scrap assignment to fall off the conference room table and into her inbox.
Realizing this, I immediately blocked off 11:30 on Mondays as an ideal time for pumping. I decided that any time there was a scheduled meeting involving Deirdre and/or Caine, I should be pumping. I poked my head out of my office door and said, “Hey, Joy? Can you come in here for a minute?” I sat back down at my desk and tried to feel authoritative, despite my impending, totally personal request.
“Do I need to take notes?” she asked as she stood in my doorway with a notepad.
I waved her in. “Not now. I sort of need a favor.”
“Does this have anything to do with. . . ?” She raised her eyebrows as she stared at me. To the average onlooker, her gaze might have seemed indiscriminate, but I knew that she was staring directly at my chest.
“As you’ve probably figured out, I am going to try to pump at work.”
Joy gave me a big grin. “I nursed both my kids for a year. I think it’s fantastic that you’re doing it!”
“Yes. Well, it seemed like a great idea when I was in the privacy of my own home. Here at work . . . that’s a different story.”
“Oh. Do you want me to keep watch while you do it in your office?” she offered. I looked at the glass wall of my office. I really liked Joy, but if she could only sit where I was sitting, she would have realized the absurdity of her suggestion.
“No. There’s no privacy in here. And even if there were, it’s not your responsibility to act as a look-out for me while I am participating in non-billable activities.”
Joy sat upright in her chair. I slouched over in an effort to seem more informal.
“You understand the benefits of nursing. It’s the logistics of pumping that is the problem. I’d like to mitigate the chances of an encounter in the restroom by being a little more educated about partner meetings, client presentations, and things like that.”
Joy nodded her head knowingly. “I get it. You want to pump while everyone else is at a meeting so they don’t walk in on you in the bathroom.”
“Exactly!” It did sound a lot simpler when she said it. Joy agreed to monitor the company calendar for regular meetings, and she would alert me of any client visits. Joy was excused, and I checked my desk clock. The last 15 minutes, like the 30 before it, had been totally off the grid. To what code could I charge “Pumping in Bathroom” or “Scheming with Administrative Assistant”? By the time 6:00 pm rolled around, I would have to take at least one, maybe two more trips to the bathroom. That was going to put my daily un-billable total to well over an hour.
Somehow I had to make up the time, by either coming to work early, staying late, or working from home. Olga had reminded me that morning that she had to leave promptly at 6:30 pm that day and every day. I’d have to do my best to accommodate her schedule, so working from home after work was going to have to be the solution, at least for the short term. I hadn’t even made it through my first day at work, and already I felt like quitting the pump.
“Maxine! It’s good to have you back.” Deirdre Morgan strode into my office and shook my hand.
“It is good to be back.” I said as my eyes darted wildly around the office, checking for any stray nursing paraphernalia.
We exchanged a few pleasantries about Henry and parenting foibles. Deirdre shared her own story about how alarmed her husband had become when the remnants of their child’s umbilical cord had come off. From her vague description, I couldn’t tell if Deirdre had been home for this momentous occasion or not. Which would have been weird, since it had happened to Henry within the first week of his life. And then I wondered if Deirdre had taken any maternity leave at all.
“Well, Henry sounds delightful,” she concluded the second I took a breath. “Shall we go to the meeting?”
“Meeting?” I asked. The word slid out of my mouth before my brain had time to stop it. It was too late to scan the emails I should have been reviewing over the last half an hour. I didn’t have the energy to pretend I knew about any meeting, and Deirdre didn’t have the time for me to fake it. I just grabbed a pen and pad followed her down the hall.
I composed myself. I didn’t get one-on-one time with Deirdre too often, so I plowed headlong into issues pertaining to HKI. “We haven’t heard back from the local office of the F.T.C. yet, have we?”
Deirdre smiled as she opened the conference door for me. “No, but I am impressed that you’re so up to speed with the account.” I sighed with relief, since apparently nothing had happened since the last status report had gone out.
Deirdre glided right by me to the head of the table in the conference room. Her presence cast a pall over the characters assembled inside, which included Jeffry Hsu, Nancy Lallyberry, and a handful of eager-looking junior associates rummaging through accordion file folders, trying to look worried. A red light blinked on a speaker phone at the center of the table, indicating that someone else would be joining the meeting. Since McCale and Black were not in the conference room, I wondered if either one of them would be at the other end of the telephone line.
I sat down in an empty chair between Jeffry and Nancy. This forced Nancy to move the gigantic mound of paper that she had managed to transport from her office to the conference room, ostensibly to have the entire case at her fingertips. When people described Nancy as “green,” it wasn’t a reference to her ecologically friendly work habits.
“Welcome back,” she whispered.
“Thanks.”
As Nancy reorganized some papers, I noticed the tinkle of the charms on her bracelet. The usual suspects were present: a heart engraved with some important date; a modified symbol for the scales of justice; a flower; and a small picture of a baby, probably Troy. Nancy didn’t even have pictures in her office, so I was surprised to see one on her wrist. Had she worn the bracelet today as a tacit act of motherly solidarity, or had I just never noticed it before?
Deirdre took command of the meeting. “Harry McCale will be joining us from Hong Kong momentarily.” She gestured at the
speaker phone. I squeezed my pen. So much for an easy transition back to work. “While we wait for him to dial in, could someone give Maxine an update on the account?”
Before Nancy’s hand shot up in the air, Deirdre honed in on Jeffry. I stopped staring at Nancy’s bracelet and faced the junior associate, who looked miserable. His suit was crumpled, his face was sallow and from up close, it seemed as if he hadn’t shaved in a few days. He was lucky that he didn’t have a heavy beard, because that might have been the hygienic faux pas to get him kicked out of the office for a day of unpaid leave.
He stammered through a synopsis. Through his brief explanation, it was clear that Jeffry had a solid understanding of the situation. I could only assume that his shoddy appearance was some sort of pathetic badge of honor, a reflection of the long after-hours he had spent studying for the bar exam. I wondered if I could use my extra-curricular activities, i.e. parenting, as an excuse to a eliminate showering from my daily routine.
“Thanks for the synopsis, Jeffry. I read all of Nancy’s emails while I was on leave, so I should be fairly up to speed.”
Deirdre pulled her glasses down to the end of her nose and raised her eyebrows in my direction. Then I heard Nancy thank me. I realized that the first thing I had done in a group professional environment since my return to the workplace was to praise Nancy Lallyberry. My professional moxie had just been stunted by maternal empathy. What was going on here?
After a few productive hours of work and another successful—or rather, uninterrupted—pumping session in the bathroom, I was ready for a nap. I had forgotten how mentally exhausting the McCale, Morgan & Black atmosphere could be. But rather than crawl up in my bed, I had to power through a team meeting. I had just called for a breather, as we had been hacking through the to-dos from the conference call for over an hour.
I settled behind my desk, admiring the one picture of Henry I had brought to the office. I checked the clock. Henry was probably napping right now. At least he was supposed to be napping. I wondered if Olga was sticking to the schedule I had prescribed. I thought for a moment about calling her to check in; but if Henry was, in fact, sleeping, then a phone call would wake him up.
This was ridiculous. I had given the team a ten minute break, and I had blown half of it contemplating something over which I had no control. I now realized why Nancy Lallyberry had no pictures of her son in her office. They were too distracting.
Thoughts of Nancy, this time anyway, helped me to calm down. Judging from the delegation of work so far, it was clear that Nancy had not re-organized the entire HKI team under her domain. I still had my team and she had hers. Maybe things weren’t so bad.
I looked up, and there was one of my team members, Horace Blankenfield, gesticulating wildly right outside my door. I calmly waved him in.
“Horace. Chill out. What’s up?”
Horace shifted his weight from side to side, like a toddler trying not to wet himself. His face was red. I stared at him until he squeezed out the words, “You gotta come now. To the conference room. Everyone’s in there. Emergency.”
It felt like a foghorn had gone off in my office. Urgent emails had piled up in my inbox, and I hadn’t even noticed. Then Joy came in to find out what was happening.
“Is everything O.K.?” she asked, probably hoping it wasn’t so there would be some excitement in the office. Which was the last thing I wanted, especially at this hour. Any emergency that cropped up after 3:00 undoubtedly meant that the entire team would be staying late to resolve it. But I had to leave at 6:00 so I could get back to relieve Olga. I couldn’t be late relieving the nanny on my first day back to work!
More people charged towards the conference room. “Nothing’s wrong,” I lied, as I picked up a pad and darted out of my office. When I got to the conference room, it was standing room only. Paul Black had joined Deirdre Morgan at the head of the conference table. The two of them were hunched together in a mini-conference. The rest of us waited to learn our fate.
A few minutes went by. I could tell from the smiles and nervous glances that people were texting each other. That was a great idea, I thought. I could text Dale and see if he could get home tonight to relieve Olga. Then I realized that I had left my phone in my office. I started squeezing my way through the crowd towards the door so I could snag it when Deirdre started to speak. Someone shut the conference room door. No one walked out on Deirdre Morgan.
We all listened intently as Deirdre described a grand theft had occurred at the main warehouse of Hong Kong Industries. The target of the theft had been the products that our company, McCale, Morgan & Black, had been hired to patent. The HKI Board was in a panic over the loss of their intellectual and physical property.
Although it wasn’t the best news, there were ways to accelerate the patent process, and HKI’s paperwork with the Patent Office was fairly far along anyway. The loss of the inventory was a problem, but that seemed like an issue for the local police.
But it was the police, according to Deirdre, which were our biggest source of concern. The Chinese authorities had detained anyone with information pertaining to the case. Unfortunately, that included Harry McCale, who was supposed to have been on a flight home from Asia at this very moment.
Immediately, I knew that I had to find someone to get to the apartment by 6:30. I was tempted to ask Horace, who was shuddering next to me, if I could borrow his phone. But then Paul Black took over.
With a commanding tone, Paul described a high-level action plan. He was heading to Hong Kong by private jet as soon as Jeffry Hsu finished taking the bar exam. I jerked to attention. The bar exam was supposed to be on a Tuesday, not a Monday. It had been a long day, but not that long. Something was amiss.
Apparently, Black had secured a waiver not only for Jeffry to take the test early, but also for Jeffry to be given a compressed exam. He had somehow convinced the Bar Association that Jeffry’s fluency in Cantonese, and his leadership on the team, were critical in extricating fellow bar member and Section Chair Harry McCale from the Big Brother claws of Communist China.
I knew that Paul was a brilliant attorney, but I was stunned by the direction in which he chose to wield his power. With Black’s connections, I would have expected him to start working over some contacts at the State Department. He probably could have borrowed a top translator from the United Nations, rather than deprive Jeffry of one more night’s worth of studying for the bar exam. And given Jeffry’s past failures on the test, he needed all the help he could get.
Paul mercifully gave us a few minutes’ break. That was code for, “Call the spouse and kids and let them know you’re not coming home.” I texted Dale as I walked back to the office. I wasn’t sure why; even if he dropped what he was doing at that very moment, he’d never make it back up to our apartment in time to relieve Olga.
I shut my office door and called our nanny.
“Meezuz Peedairsen,” she articulated. I only had to tell her one time not to call me by my first name, and the fact that she had remembered made me hopeful that she might be amenable to working with me around this professional crisis.
“How is your first day going? Henry’s O.K.?”
“Henry is fine.” I could hear him cooing in the background. “But my mother call to tell me that my son has a fever. Do you think you could come home early, Meezuz Peedairsen?”
Early? Really? It was her first day on the job and she was already unreliable. Was she going to make this a habit? Leaving early? And as everyone scurried around outside my office, I realized that my only option on my first day back at work was to do the same thing.
I looked out of the window of my office. Joy was packing up her things, getting ready to go home for the day. I waved hysterically to get her attention. I couldn’t have her leaving early now, too.
I hung up with Olga and hauled Joy into my office. I explained the emergency meeting situation and the fact that I was about to blow it off so I could go relieve my nanny.
Joy had it un
der control. She said she’d explain everything to the powers that be, patch me through to the conference call and make sure all the proper documentation was forwarded on to me. Then she practically kicked me out of the office.
I wasn’t quite sure who the one true professional was at McCale, Morgan and Black. Joy? Deirdre? Nancy? At this point, I just knew it wasn’t me.
27
Jeffry Hsu had exceeded everyone’s expectations with his mastery of the language, culture, and most importantly, the “legal” system in China. It took him less than four hours to negotiate the release of Harry McCale. For all I knew, the Hong Kong police commissioner was Jeffry’s uncle, and he had created this whole fiasco just to make himself look good. Now the guy was a downright hero.
And as a reward, McCale, Black and Hsu took a day at the luxurious Peninsula Hotel to decompress before taking a chartered flight home. I couldn’t even fathom what it might be like to suddenly desert my family at this juncture of my life. But for an unattached up-and-comer like Jeffry, it must have been heavenly.
I wasn’t that young associate anymore. I was sleep-deprived and hormonally amped. Short-term as my situation was supposed to be, I had real issues with physical stamina. Since I was operating at full capacity before Henry’s arrival, I had to modify my workload to accommodate the responsibilities of motherhood. Something had to give.
Lunch was now always at my desk, sometimes during a meeting. Pumping sessions were done in the bathroom with my phone. Team meetings were scheduled to accommodate my pumping sessions. Non-work communication was ignored until the subway ride home. And after work happy hours? I had to unsubscribe from about 15 lists just so I could stop receiving notifications of events I’d never attend.
My happy hour was arriving home after work to see Henry. He was usually in his playpen. Olga would be at the door, wearing her coat. She had no interest in dilly-dallying with her boss. I could sort of empathize with her; I couldn’t stand it when I was way-laid at the office right when I was supposed to be heading home.
