Mama's Got a Brand New Job

by Janis Powers

  “Oh, oh,” said the voice of someone in her twenties. “This is Stacy at Hershel & Dixon. I’m sorry. I thought you were calling at 1:15.”

  I glanced at the invite, which had positioned itself on my calendar at 11:15. She must have been doing the same thing because she said, “Whoops, you’re right. This was scheduled for 11:15.”

  “Will that work for you?” I asked, trying to be professional, but not wanting to deal with an interview two hours from now, when my son might be crying in his room.

  “Yeah. This is fine. Let’s just get it over with.” I heard her move some papers around. “Let me pull up your résumé here. . . .” I started scribbling on the pad in front of me while I waited in silence. “You know, I’m sorry, Maxine, but I can’t find it. Would you mind emailing it to me? Maybe we should just reschedule the call.”

  “I’ll resend the email right now. While you wait for it, I can give you some background on myself and summarize my interest in Hershel & Dixon.” I hoped her company didn’t have some ridiculous firewall that would delay the receipt of my email. I had a feeling that if I ever got off the phone with her, I’d never get back on.

  “O.K. Got it.” As she started talking, it became clear that she hadn’t even read my résumé. She made fragmented comments out loud as she scanned it. “Yale undergrad. History major. Yale Debate Association, Director of Development. Club Tennis, Co-Captain.” No questions about any of that. She continued. “Columbia Law. Law Review. I.P.C.?” Her voice inflected upwards until she read on, discovering that I.P.C. was an acronym for Intellectual Property Club. I looked at my watch. Four minutes had passed. She spent three more recounting my past to me.

  When Stacy finished reading about my seven years with McCale, she dropped the bomb. “I don’t understand why, after so many years of loyalty to McCale, Morgan & Black, you’d want to leave and come to Hershel & Dixon. What’s the impetus for the move? Why now?”

  Angela had coached me on this type of question, advising me not, under any circumstances, to volunteer anything about the fact that I had a baby. Legally, there could be no discrimination about the fact that I was a new mother, but in practice, I’d never be seen as accessible as someone without a child.

  I stumbled through my prepared response. “Well, I think McCale, as a firm, has been moving their consumer products practice away from smaller organizations with unique I.P. issues and focusing on broader, international manufacturing regulations.” It sounded like mumbo-jumbo, and I was banking on the fact that Stacy would not be well-versed in corporate strategy.

  She was, however, well-versed in résumé reading. “Hmm. Well, it looks like you brought on some significant business to the firm. From your description, it sounds like the company Perfume X, right?”

  I stopped myself from correcting her. I wondered if she had laid a trap, purposefully asking me the wrong name of a client to test my ethics. “Well, of course I can’t reveal the name of the company, due to client confidentiality.”

  “Of course,” she said, disappointed. “Too bad. Word on the street is the Perfume X account is highly lucrative.” Did she mean Parfum Aix? Or Perfume X? I didn’t know what to say, so in deference to Jacques, I said nothing. But Stacy kept going. “Doesn’t matter anyway since it looks like you moved off the client over a year ago. What happened there?”

  “Standard staffing move,” I said as nonchalantly as possible.

  “That’s odd. I mean, if you brought the business in, why wouldn’t you work the client?” The interview was approaching the 15 minute allotment, and I hadn’t controlled one minute of the discussion. So I tried to change gears.

  “To be honest with you, Stacy, I have had a fantastic professional experience at McCale, Morgan & Black. But as you probably know, the transition to partner takes more than just sales. Timing, mentorship and sponsorship are all critical elements for anyone looking to achieve such a personal milestone.” More mumbo jumbo. And I was in delicate territory now, since this round of verbal goo was all related to human resources. Angela would have pulled her hair out if she had heard my response.

  Stacy let a few seconds pass. “Well, it looks like our time is up. Thank you for speaking with me today about your experience. We’ll be in touch if something opens up at Hershel & Dixon.” The phone went dead.

  Dejected, I went into Henry’s room, hoping he could cheer me up. Half of the foam alphabet blocks I had given him to play with had been thrown out of the crib. I viewed the disorder as a positive sign of Henry’s burgeoning throwing arm, rather than a nuisance to clean up. He looked up, smiled, and handed me a block labeled with the letter F. “Thanks, man,” I sighed. “I’m glad someone’s tuned in to what’s going on around here.”

  37

  Paola plopped a raw chicken on a cutting board in her kitchen. She pulled a knife from a wooden block and held it in anticipation. “Hey, Nelson! I’m gonna do it!”

  Dale picked up Henry and propped him in the crook of his arm. “Watch it with the cutlery, will ya, Brighton? Henry’s already had a haircut.” Henry’s hair had come in auburn, like mine. Last week we had the long wisps cut from the top of his head, and the remaining hair fuzz seemed much darker. Now he looked more like Dale, which somehow made him even more adorable.

  Amanda, loose blonde tendrils askew, came scuffling down the hallway. Like a bee to honey she lunged at the kitchen table for Dale’s unattended phone. I snatched it up before she could grab it. Then Nelson snatched her up before she could get upset. He put her on his shoulders, her head close to the ceiling of their Chelsea apartment. She pulled at the thinning hair on Nelson’s head.

  “We ready now?” asked Paola.

  “I wouldn’t mess with her,” said Nelson to Dale. “She’s pregnant, and she’s got a knife.”

  “I can see that. If this is how she behaves while she’s pregnant, I’d hate to see her in the delivery room.”

  Henry let out a laugh, even though he couldn’t possibly understand the meaning of what he had heard. Then Amanda started in. “C’mon, Mommy! Do it! Do it!” She was encouraging her mother, even though she couldn’t possibly understand what Paola was about to do.

  Paola put the knife down and stood solemnly over the chicken carcass. She closed her eyes and started reciting something in Spanish. Nelson gazed, intoxicated by the sounds of his bi-lingual spouse.

  Dale lost his composure and started chuckling.

  Nelson slapped him on the shoulder. “This is sacred! Shut up!”

  Paola finished her incantation. She picked up the knife with both hands, took a deep breath, and wacked the blade down through the rib cage of the chicken. The cleaved bird fell apart, with each half flopping over to one side. Paola dropped the knife, and she and Nelson cried with excitement.

  As they hugged one another, Dale looked at me and said, “What the . . . ?” And then he mouthed the word “fuck.” Now that Henry had started to imitate sounds and repeat words, Dale had had instituted a profanity blocker on himself.

  Paola fanned herself in relief. “It’s a family tradition. From my mother’s side. In Mexico.”

  Nelson told her to sit down, shoving Dale out of the way so his wife could have some space. “It’s quite amazing, actually. The women in Paola’s family sacrifice a chicken or a goat each time one of them becomes pregnant to ensure a healthy baby. The act goes back for generations, right honey?”

  “That’s right,” confirmed Paola. “My mother was very upset that I could not return to Mexico for a proper ceremony, so I told her I would do something here.”

  “Well, then where is your mother?” asked Dale. “I’d think she’d want to see how well you could hack up a store-bought chicken.”

  “Not funny,” responded Paola. “She’s in L.A. because my sister is expecting a baby. She’s going to help out there for a while.”

  I gave Nelson a broad smile. “So you get to be Super Dad until Grandma gets back. How fun for you!”

  Nelson took Amanda from his shoulders and scowle
d at me. Paola turned her back on us both and started prepping the chicken. I guess I had hit some sort of familial minefield in the Brighton household.

  “Dale,” said Nelson, “You want to bring Henry back to the playroom with Amanda?”

  “Great idea,” said Dale. He held up Henry’s hands as our son stumble-walked his way out of the kitchen.

  “Don’t forget, honey. I’m going to need that recipe for my paper,” said Nelson as he left the room.

  “Paper?” I asked once Nelson was out of earshot. “What paper?”

  Paola started butchering the bird. “Nelson’s writing a paper about the transformation of cultural traditions in modern society. It’s for his tenure application.”

  “He’s up for tenure?” I said, surprised. “Isn’t that a lot of work?”

  Paola pulled a boning knife from the block. “Yes, it is,” she said, as she severed a chicken leg. “We had an agreement. I was going to keep working, and he was going to stay home with the baby. Not stay home like a Mr. Mom, but be in charge. I make three times as much money as he does, but I can only do it if I can travel.” Paola held up the chicken by its wing. She turned the bird as she sliced through some connective tissue.

  “Wow,” I said. “I thought your mom was going to help out.” And as I said it, I realized that Paola’s mom would probably be splitting time between her grandkids, who were on opposite coasts.

  Paola rolled her eyes. “My sister’s baby couldn’t have come at a worse time. Nelson is swamped. He’s got to write papers, do lectures, apply for grants and get this—travel! Him! He’s got to travel to do research! Qué jodienda!”

  Her face was red. Sweat was forming on her forehead, so I got her a drink of water. “Here. Come on. Don’t freak out so much. It’s not good for the baby.”

  Paola dabbed her forehead with a kitchen towel. “Sorry. This is going to be fine. I mean, if this had happened while I was pregnant with Amanda, I don’t know what I would have done. At least now I know what I’m getting into, right?

  “Speak for yourself,” I said. “I still don’t know what the heck I am going to do.”

  “So what’s happening? Are you going to talk to your boss about working from home?”

  “Yeah. I’ve got a meeting scheduled with her this week.” I hoped this one was going to stick, as the last two Joy had scheduled with Deirdre had been postponed. “In the meantime, I had another interview. Total bust, which is a bummer, because it was Hershel & Dixon.”

  Paola wedged a knife between the ball and socket joint of the leg and thigh of the bird. “That’s a bummer. What happened?”

  “The interview lasted a whopping 15 minutes, and they haven’t called me back in almost two weeks. I don’t think McCale has anything to worry about.”

  Paola and I switched places as she opened her refrigerator. “Ouch. I’m sorry.” She rummaged through the produce inside. “Take this.” She handed me a red onion and some garlic. Perfect. I expected her to pull out a rotten banana next. “Here. This, too.” Out came bell peppers, a bouquet of herbs and a plastic container that housed a dark, goopy paste.

  I held the Tupperware up to the light. “What’s in here? Is this for the chicken?”

  “Yeah. I made it yesterday.” She opened the container and held it up to my nose. My eyes started to water. “It’s a concentrated paste made from dried peppers and chicken stock. My mother’s recipe. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, intrigued. “It seems pretty hot.”

  Paola dumped the paste into the bowl with the chicken. “It is hot, but it will mellow when it cooks with the chicken.” She coated the chicken parts with the paste and shoved the bowl to the corner of her counter. “That is going to sit for a bit and marinate.”

  “Right,” I said, impressed and somewhat intimidated by Paola’s domesticity. The closest I had ever come to butchering a raw chicken had been when I used a steak knife to slice a grilled chicken breast from Delmonico’s. Sure, I knew my way around a bar, but Paola’s culinary skills seemed much more useful, especially for a parent. “Does Amanda eat this stuff?”

  “She eats what I cook—when I get around to cooking. My mother brings her all kinds of things. Carne asada, pollo en mole, stuff like that.” She wiped off her hands on a towel and then started chopping the vegetables. “You’re going to have to start cooking pretty soon. Henry’s going to have to eat something besides jarred baby food.”

  Good. More stuff to do. “Maybe I should just hire a personal chef, and see if she does babysitting on the side. I’d probably have better luck with that.”

  Paola cored a red pepper. “Not a bad idea. Maybe you could get her to clean, too.”

  “Exactly!” This seemed like a great concept. “You know, I should post a job description on the Cordon Bleu Facebook page. What do you think pays better: sous chef or Manhattan nanny?”

  “Good question. I don’t know. But I love that you’re thinking out of the box. Just make sure she can make mac ‘n cheese,” said Paola seriously. “It’s an American staple.”

  38

  Deirdre sat behind her desk, facing the doorway. Her secretary told me that I could go in, so I quietly sat down and waited for Deirdre to finish. It gave me time to get even more nervous about talking about the obvious: why I wasn’t coming to the office on a regular basis.

  “Good. Done.” Deirdre slid away from her computer screen and got up to join me and the padded furniture. She brought over a file folder that was about an inch thick and put it down on the coffee table between us. “I’m glad you scheduled a meeting. We have a number of issues to discuss.”

  I put my hands on the legal pad on my lap, only to notice the veins on the back of them pulsating wildly. I took a deep breath with the hopes that my voice wouldn’t shake when I started to speak. “I’m glad you are finally available. I’ve wanted to follow up with you in person regarding my work situation.”

  “I don’t think you have a work situation,” corrected Deirdre. “You have a childcare situation.”

  I wasn’t expecting her to get straight to the point, but maybe that’s because I didn’t want her to. I wanted to dip my toe into the pool of discussion and get comfortable. Deirdre, not one for wasting time, just pushed me straight in. “You’re right. Childcare has been a problem, especially after Henry’s health scare.”

  “I can’t imagine how you must have felt. You know you have the firm’s full support in Henry’s recovery. How is he doing?”

  I unintentionally perked up. I wanted to control my emotions and discuss this serious issue in a detached manner, but talking about Henry made me think about Henry, and that made me run at the mouth. “He’s great! Doing really well. He’s fully recovered. Gaining weight. He can pull himself up now, which is awesome.”

  Deirdre stared at the thick folder without smiling. She looked up deliberately and said, “When will you be returning full-time to the office?”

  “Uh. . . I’m not sure,” I stammered. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  She slid back in her chair and put her hands in her lap. “O.K. I’m listening.”

  “Well, I feel like the last month or so has worked out very well, given my ability to stay on top of everything at McCale with a partial work-from-home strategy.” I had practiced that as my opening line, hoping that my nervousness would abate if I could just verbalize an opening comment. It didn’t. So I just blurted out what was on my mind. “I was hoping that I could keep working from home until I could get a few more things straightened out.”

  Deirdre crossed her legs and asked non-confrontationally, “And how long do you think that will be?”

  My face went blank. I should have listened to Dale. I had come into this session without a negotiation strategy. I didn’t know what I was supposed to ask for except something that Angela had warned me that I was not going to get. Lost, I just replied, “I don’t know.”

  Deirdre picked up the folder. She opened it up, flipped through som
e pages and then asked, “Do you know what this is?”

  “I’m guessing it’s not HKI-related, since we’re not discussing client work.”

  “No. It’s not client-related,” said Deirdre, her tone resolute. “This is your Performance Improvement Plan from H.R. They call it a ‘PIP,’ which is a cute-sounding name for something administrative and bureaucratic.”

  McCale tacitly espoused the “up or out” theory, meaning that employees were either promoted up or counseled out of the company. I sat in shock as she held a document framing me in the latter category.

  “On paper, you are doing your job. As you just indicated. You haven’t missed a deadline since you returned from maternity leave. You have participated in all of your meetings—sometimes remotely—but you have been involved nonetheless. If I had to check off boxes summarizing a list of tasks and whether you had completed them, every box would be checked.” I nodded. “The issue is that no one else at McCale, Morgan & Black works remotely. So from H.R.’s perspective, there’s an inequity.”

  “With all due respect, Deidre,” I started, my confidence growing out of weeks of pent-up frustration, “I think H.R.’s policies are antiquated. They should be updated. And this is the perfect opportunity to do so.”

  Rather than challenge me, Deidre applauded me. Literally. “I couldn’t agree more, Maxine. But Morgan is only one of three names in McCale, Morgan & Black.” She waited a few moments, so my brain could process her coded support for my cause. Now I understood why I hadn’t been told to return to the office. But that folder was still on the coffee table.

  “So. . . what does this mean?” I asked meekly.

  “I’m supposed to give you a series of warnings, have you review your sins with H.R., and then have you swear you’ll get back to the office by a certain time frame; or. . . your employment with McCale, Morgan & Black will be terminated.”