by Jo Barrett
“Always the cynic,” I say. And I don’t mean to say it. But I do. Because sometimes Henry is a bit much.
“It’s never good to mix work-life with love-life,” he says, matter-of-fact.
“At least we’re not sharing an office,” I say. “Carlton found this amazing office space for a great price. Fourteen bucks a square foot and we get almost the entire floor! We’re moving in next week.” I say. “Organics 4 Kids is about to have a home!” I squeal and clap my hands. It’s something Heather would do, but I don’t care.
Henry laughs. “I bet this company will be more successful than you ever dreamed.”
I grab the tape and roll it across one of the boxes. “You know, our only competitor will be Giganto Foods,” I say. “But they haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of the organics food market. Especially for children’s food.”
Henry nods. “Maybe you should bring your idea directly to Giganto. I bet they’d pay a fine penny to hire someone like you.”
I stop and look at him. He’s eyeing me in that way where I can tell he wants to say something.
“C’mon. Out with it,” I say.
Henry pulls a white envelope from his pocket and thrusts it into my hands.
“A little going-away present,” he says.
I feel my eyes beginning to tear up. “I—I can’t accept—”
Henry raises his finger to his lips and goes, “SHHHH! You’re the best employee I’ve ever had, Madeline. You’ve made this company a whole lot of money and kept my clients very satisfied. And you knocked it out of the park with the Meyers account. Take the envelope, my dear.”
Henry grabs my hand and squeezes it. “Promise me something, kiddo.”
“What?”
“Don’t spend it. Just put it in a savings account for a rainy day. You never know when you’ll need to break open the piggy.”
“So this is my ‘break glass in case of emergency’ money?”
Henry slaps his palm against the desk. “Exactly.”
I look down at the envelope, and turn it over in my hands. I don’t open it because I know it’s a significant amount of money. And I don’t want to cry.
After all these years working for Henry, on my last day, I want to be all smiles.
“Thank you, Henry. I don’t know what to say.” I walk over to him and give him an awkward sideways hug.
Henry chuckles and I can smell the alcohol on his breath.
“I have a little something for you, too,” I say. I walk over to my desk and pull out a finely crafted, leather-bound keepsake book. Over the past few months, I’ve constructed the interior of the book, by carefully pasting together all of the newspaper articles, glossy magazine photos, and client confessionals—every single mention of Henry Wrona since the company’s inception. I’ve created something Henry would never create for himself. It’s a book of his accolades, his accomplishments, his lifetime of success in the business.
“What’s this?” he asks, almost in a whisper. He sets the book on the table and begins flipping through it, slowly. Taking it all in.
“This is a gift for a man who taught me almost everything I know about business. A man without an ego. And the best boss anyone could ever ask for,” I say, quietly.
Henry looks up at me, and his eyes are filled with tears.
“Did you hear the one about the Polish loan shark who loaned out all his money?” he asks, his voice cracking.
“He had to skip town,” I say.
Henry smoothes back his streaked white hair and wipes his eyes. “I know I’ve got a joke you haven’t heard.”
“I doubt it,” I say. I grab my portfolios and slip them in a box. Grabbing a black magic marker, I label the box “Important!”
I’ve arranged all of the client work I’ve done over the past fourteen years in several black, bound portfolio books. I made the portfolios in case I ever needed to interview for a big firm. The Big Firms require portfolios. So I spent years working on mine. I crafted them during grad school and updated them with all my new work every year.
Henry watches me as I put the box with my portfolio books on the top of the stack.
“You mustn’t lose your portfolios, Maddy,” he cautions. “They’re the gatekeeper to the entire industry.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I won’t let these babies out of my sight.”
Henry helps me lift a few boxes and we walk toward the office door. I turn and give the place one last look.
I feel my heart drop into my stomach.
Henry notices, so he says, “Why don’t Polish women ever use vibrators?”
“Henry!” I say, slapping him playfully in the arm.
“Because it chips their teeth!” He throws his head back and laughs up at the ceiling.
“You’re right,” I say, shaking my head. “I haven’t heard them all.”
He claps me on the back and we both buzz out the door.
Chapter 27
I have a theory. And here it is…
Breakups are better in winter.
Yes, it’s better to break up in the winter than in the summer. Let me share my logic. In the summertime, people are outdoors, the sun is shining, and you look like a big fat loser if you’re sitting alone inside your house moping on a beautiful day. But if it’s wintertime, you can watch Blockbuster movies and sit inside and eat pizza after pizza and complain about the weather.
The problem with living in central Texas is that even in February, it almost always feels like summer. The sun is always shining. I mean, it’s not New Jersey here.
And therefore, I’m not getting the benefit of the winter break-up. I mean, the sky is blue, the sun is shining, and here I am, moping around my house, wishing for a freak ice storm.
Sometimes you’ve got to pull yourself out of the funk. So when Sunday rolls around, I treat myself to a Day of Maddy. First, the do-it-yourself spa. A fabulous three-dollar Noxzema facial, complete with sounds of howling monkeys and screeching birds in the background. I have to admit something here. I ended up buying the rainforest “inspired” CD, so I figure I should get some use out of it. It’s an indulgent afternoon, me taking a long bubble bath in my glorious tub, but I figure I owe myself.
Afterward, I eat lunch at my favorite pit-stop. Manny’s Mexican. I order the chicken enchiladas with extra cheese and extra Guac.
“You want hot or mild salsa?” the Mexican waiter asks.
I say, “Surprise me.”
He brings me the hot stuff, surprise, surprise.
I read the newspaper. The Sunday New York Times. From cover to cover. (Well, almost. I skip the Arts and Entertainment Section. I don’t need art. And I don’t need entertainment. What I need is a gun. Ha, ha.)
But seriously. I’m on my own. For the first time in almost four years.
I consider calling Henry. Begging for my old job back. Especially now that I’m sitting in Manny’s Mexican—it reminds me of the big going-away party he threw me. And the big going-away check. My “Break Glass In Case of Emergency” check that I’m now living on.
Good ol’ Henry. He was right all along, and I guess, deep down, I knew he was right. I don’t mind conceding the point, but it would be awkward. When I was working at Organics 4 Kids, I never kept up with him like I should have. I was always busy. We had a few lunches together, exchanged e-mails, that sort of thing. But our relationship, during my stint at Organics, fizzled.
Now that I’ve got so much free time on my hands, I feel the loss. And it’s an acute pain. I know I’ll call Henry one of these days. Let him know the scoop. And then I’ll have to listen to a big, fat “I Told You So,” speech.
But not today. Today is Maddy Day.
I decide to take a nice stroll.
I walk to the Public Library. The Park. And the Museum District. There’s a new exhibit about the Constitutional Congress. And I’m somewhat of a Revolutionary War buff. So I figure, what the heck?
I walk inside and realize it’s been a while since
I’ve set foot in a museum. It’s a shame, really, because I love museums. They make me feel as though life is so fleeting, that our time on Earth is so precious, that we’ve really got to live it!
Yes, museums make me hokey.
The exhibit is neat. It starts with letters from the Founding Fathers. A sign on the wall reads: Welcome to the National Archives Experience.
I peruse some of the letters. The museum feels cold. And a little dark inside. “Probably to preserve these letters,” I think.
There were fifty-five delegates to the Constitutional Congress, but only thirty-nine actually signed on the dotted line. I stroll around the glass cases reading letters by our Founding Fathers: Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Benjamin Franklin.
The usual daddy-o’s.
All of the letters appear with a typed, translated version, in case me olde tyme English is rusty. The translated version is helpful.
I stop at the letters from Abigail Adams to John Adams. Abigail is the only female writer in this exhibit, as far as I’ve seen. She’s written a letter to John Adams for his journey to the Continental Congress. I peer down at the letter. It’s magnified and under glass. And it starts with:
“Remember the Ladies.”
Remember the Ladies…in the new Code of Laws. Remember the Ladies and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember—all Men would be tyrants if they could.
—Abigail Adams
Letter to John Adams in Philadelphia. Braintree. March 31, 1776.
I straighten my shoulders and stare off into space.
All men would be tyrants if they could?
Wow. You got that right, sister.
I leave the museum with my head in a fog. The museum lady says, “Have a nice day,” as I amble out the door. I wave to her, absently.
On my way home I consider my role in Carlton’s crimes against me. If anything, I was certainly an accomplice. I mean, what did I do to protect myself? Nothing. And in the end, I suffered.
I did it. Me! Carlton never put a gun to my head. He simply asked, cajoled, persuaded, and gave me the type of mind-boggling sex that made my head spin and my eyes roll back. But in the end, wasn’t I to blame? Didn’t I put all my eggs in the Carlton Basket? And watch, as a mere bystander, a sniveling victim, while he crushed those eggs, not one by one, but with one swift kick?
I consider this. And I consider Abigail Adams. For a woman of her time, Abigail Adams had some spunk.
Chapter 28
After Carlton and I moved into the new Organics 4 Kids headquarters, we hit the ground running. The company will be top-notch, we decide, so we hire the best people to design our website, network our computers, and do all the general dirty work of getting going.
I spend night and day designing our marketing and public relations program. To really capture the theme, I have the Organics 4 Kids logo emblazoned on T-shirts, bumper stickers, lunch boxes, and even on our refrigerated delivery trucks. The rainbow-colored logo becomes so popular, the local news does a feature story on us.
I hatch an idea to have school kids participate in our focus groups. We discover that parents want healthy organic school lunches at a reasonable price. Kids are all about taste. So we compromise and develop a unique school lunch program to make everybody happy. Our organic cheese pizzas or chicken tenders might be paired with snack-pak carrots, micro greens salad, an apple, a healthy cookie, or Vitamin C–enhanced fruit juice.
We hire a famous nutritionist to help develop weekly menus so we can make sure the kids get variety, as well as good, solid meals.
We’re a small company, but a strong one. And we’re growing by leaps and bounds. Our sales numbers blossom each month. In our fourth quarter, we actually begin turning a profit. An amazing feat for a company just out of the gate.
Carlton and I celebrate by leaving the office before midnight, drinking champagne straight from the bottle—we didn’t have time to muddle around with glasses—and having hot, steamy sex on Carlton’s awful bear rug. In front of the fireplace. The henna tattoo of the Organics 4 Kids logo was still visible across my tailbone. And Carlton licked the tattoo with his tongue back and forth. Very saucy stuff.
The workload is exhausting and exhilarating. I drink buckets of coffee each day, and become thin and pale from lack of exercise. Sometimes Carlton and I play tennis on Sunday mornings, but afterward, we head straight to the office.
Our week is seven days long, with late nights, too.
Yet, even as I struggle at my computer, field hundreds of e-mails from customers, suppliers, distributors, local school boards, the press, and even some school kids, I feel alive. An idea I’ve created on paper has finally become reality.
It’s trial by fire. Every day. All day.
I interview candidates for my staff and have the brilliant idea to set up an internship program. “Free labor!” I declare. “We’ll set up a great program where the students get college credit and where they really learn the nuts and bolts of the business.”
Carlton agrees it’s a great idea. I spend three months developing and marketing the intern program at local colleges. I speak to college professors, campus advisors, and finally to the students themselves. I hire five interns, get them desks and computers, and start them on a program so that their work benefits them as well as the company. Everyone agrees it’s a win-win situation. Twice a month, Carlton and I treat the interns to dinner and drinks. They love it. Everything is going splendidly.
Carlton spends time traveling to Denver, Los Angeles, and New York trying to attract new investors and generate new customers. I run the home office. Fifteen full-time employees. Five interns. At times, I’ve got phones on each ear. And two lines holding. I’m triaging my e-mails. I’m slammed. But I manage. The ship sails in a nice, straight line.
Chapter 29
Michael, that little snitch, called my brother about the carbon monoxide thing. So now, I’ve got Ronnie up in arms over the whole deal. He’s calling me every five minutes. Probably to check whether I’m still breathing.
“Yoga,” my brother will say.
“Boring,” I’ll reply.
“Church.”
“They revoked my membership.”
“Why don’t you learn how to scuba dive, Maddy?”
“Sharks.”
Finally, he relents.
My brother tells me he knows a guy who knows a guy.
“I think he does light jobs—you know, like when people don’t pay their drug debts,” Ronnie says.
I clutch the phone tightly in my hand. “He breaks their legs?” I ask, and I shudder a little bit at the thought.
“I think he just scares people. Maybe punches ’em a few times in a dark alley, tells ’em to pay up or else.”
“Okay, but that’s it. There’s nothing else. No broken fingers? No baseball bats? No knives?”
My brother sighs into the phone. He’s smoking a cigarette and blowing it away from the receiver. “I don’t know, Maddy. I’m not an expert at hiring thugs. Look, why don’t you come over so I can talk you out of this.”
I stretch my arm over my head and glance around my lonely kitchen. My empty townhouse. “Want me to bring you a burger?”
“It’s 9:00 a.m.”
“Oh.”
I hop in my car and cruise over to Ronnie’s bachelor pad.
My brother calls it his “low-key” flat for a “low-key kind of guy.” It’s nothing fancy. Just your basic garden-style apartment with a balcony overlooking the communal pool.
I knock on the door and hear him say, “Maddy-go-laddy!” Stepping inside, I see my brother is going overboard with his plants again. Mr. Greenthumb buys exotic flowering plants from Brazil and Africa. Stuff that’s hard to keep alive. Like the teenagers he counsels, he likes the challenge.
“It’s a jungle in here,” I say, parting my way through two large potted ferns.
“Isn�
�t it great? I’m really getting this gardening shit down,” Ronnie says.
I step over a stack of self-help books piled high on the floor. Ronnie doesn’t have a TV. Instead he’s got a couch facing the windows and tons and tons of books. He calls it his “library.”
“Step into my library,” Ronnie says, motioning to a leather recliner. “Take a load off, Maddy. You look beat.”
I see my brother is wearing his weekend uniform. A Longhorns T-shirt and jeans. He’s got a Longhorns baseball cap perched crooked on his head, so he looks like a white rapper.
I plop down in the recliner, push down the wooden lever, and pop back with my feet up. Behind me, a plant brushes up against my head. I push the dangling leaves out of the way.
“Hey, take it easy,” Ronnie says. He strolls over to a table filled with drug paraphernalia. His “temptation table” as he calls it. There’s a bong for smoking marijuana, a crack pipe, a mirror and razor blade for cutting cocaine, and some other things I can’t even identify.
My brother has turned the bong into a French Press.
He holds it up in the air and says, “coffee?”
“Sure.”
I watch as he carefully upturns the bong and pours a steaming cup of mud-black coffee. He hands me the mug.
I take a sip, gingerly. “This is delicious,” I say, because it really is.
“It’s the beans,” he says. “I got them from this Columbian guy I know.”
“Funny,” I say.
My brother smiles coyly and lights a cigarette. He sits on the couch’s edge, slides the balcony door open and blows the smoke outside.
“Why do you keep all this stuff?” I ask, motioning around the table at all of the drug paraphernalia.
He stares out the window a long moment. Takes a sip of coffee. A drag from his cigarette. And exhales the smoke slowly.
“It reminds me of what I overcame,” he says. “Like when Jesus was in the desert fasting forty days and forty nights. And Satan approached him and told him to turn stones into bread. And Jesus was starving but he told Satan to essentially go fuck himself. When I look at this stuff every day, Maddy, these implements of destruction, I tell them to go fuck themselves,” he says. “And it works.”
