by Rita Ciresi
“You’re sure?”
“Completely.”
Victoria sniffed, as if she doubted I could survive one second on my own. “I hope that while I’m gone,” she said, “I can trust you not to touch my Xerox machine.”
I admit I had jammed the machine once or twice beyond Victoria’s ability to fix it. Victoria then resented me for the way the repair guy—whom she called that dirty man—invaded her office and littered her clean rug with his greasy tools. On the afternoons when this cheerful, whistling serviceman came and went, Victoria always fetched her chicken-yellow feather duster and gave a severe beating to her blotter, her phone, and the black lateral file cabinets. At such moments I lay low, fearing she’d charge into my office to sweep the dandruff off my shoulders.
I knew it was childish of me. And even mean and spiteful. But Victoria got on my nerves so much that the more she complained about her copy machine, the more I stubbornly cited SB’s spending freeze and refused to let her order another.
“That dirty man,” Victoria said, “is scheduled to service the machine this afternoon. Fortunately he’ll be coming during our three o’clock meeting.”
I turned back to Friday in my Filofax and saw my afternoon stood remarkably empty. “Which?”
“On the bathroom situation. In the new corporate wing.” Victoria seemed pleased to remind me of this toilet crisis. “I don’t see how you could have failed to mark this down. You yourself called the town meeting.”
“When did I call it?”
“On one of those days . . . about a month ago . . .” Victoria pressed her prim lips together. “That . . . that woman called you.”
“What woman?” I asked.
“She identifies herself,” said Victoria, “only as Cynthia.”
I took a deep breath. “Cynthia Farquhar,” I said, “is our real-estate agent.”
“But I’m confused, Mr. Strauss. I thought your real-estate agent was a Mrs. Joan Order.”
“Mrs. Order is selling our condominium,” I said. “Mrs. Farquhar is helping us buy a new house. Are her calls bothering you?”
“I’m here to take all your calls.”
“Because I can always give her the number of my private line.”
“You don’t have to do that. I just mean to say that you had me set up the bathroom meeting while you were on the phone with this Mrs. Farquhar. I’m sure I told you about it afterward.”
I shrugged. “I must have been distracted.”
A more plausible explanation was that I wanted to forget about the whole bathroom brouhaha altogether. Last month, when the architect’s plans for the new wing were displayed in the front lobby, the male population of the corporation had examined the square footage of each new office and found it wanting. But their silent dissatisfaction had seemed preferable to the outcry that came from the women, who counted the number of projected stalls in the cafeteria ladies’ room—and went into an uproar. Within twenty-four hours, I was presented with a petition (consisting of close to eighty signatures and growing) demanding what SB women called potty equity. The cover memo stated: We realize that equity, in this case, consists of giving the women more than the men. However, we insist upon acknowledgment that male and female needs in the lavatory radically differ and respectfully request that you call a public forum in which our grievances might be aired.
Next to 3:00 P.M. I penned in: John Whine-a-thon. “At this meeting?” I told Victoria. “You’re sitting next to me. At the podium.”
“But, Mr. Strauss—couldn’t I take my notes from the audience? Just to give the impression that I’m on the right side?”
“You are on the right side,” I said, “if you’re sitting next to me.”
She looked so glum that I feared she might just rise and put on her hearse coat and astrakhan hat. I sighed. “I didn’t see your signature on that petition, did I?”
“I only declined out of loyalty to—well, you.”
I managed to muster an appreciative grunt. “You can take notes from the audience, if it makes you feel better.”
Victoria was so pleased she loosened her knees—and crossed her legs. “Sometimes I’m so happy I work for you, Mr. Strauss.”
“Not always?” I asked.
“Tusk!”
Victoria grasped her Day-Timer firmly in hand, then ran through the day in proper chronological order. Did I have down the meeting with the external auditors at ten o’clock? The early-bird luncheon with the AARP representatives at eleven-thirty?
I nodded yes to both.
Victoria then marched through four more afternoon meetings. “Now, for Sunday.” She flipped forward in her Day-Timer. “I can’t get you out of Westchester; you’ll have to leave from LaGuardia.”
“Leave for where?” I asked.
“Cleveland. Late yesterday, when you were . . . wherever you were—”
I’d been holed up in the men’s room. With no success.
“—Mr. Furlong called to say he needs you to substitute for him on Monday afternoon—at the ribbon-cutting at the new Scheer plant.”
“But I can’t do that.”
“He said he simply can’t go.”
I flipped my Filofax forward and stared down at Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, all marked—by Lisa—with the most revolting of smiley faces to indicate the possibility of her ovulatory surge. “Neither can I.”
“You might want to let Mr. Furlong know that.”
I reached for the phone. “I’ll call Rudy right now. But if I don’t get to him before my ten o’clock meeting, you need to call him and tell him I can’t make this trip because of”—I searched for a valid excuse and only came up with a lame phrase—“a family commitment.”
My phone buzzed on the line that bypassed Victoria’s desk.
“Rudy’s in now,” I said.
“That could be Lisa.”
I didn’t appreciate this reminder that this phone line kept me on a leash to my wife as well as my boss. As I picked up the receiver, I shooed away Victoria with my hand. Clearly miffed, she exited my office and pointedly closed the door behind her. It was only a matter of seconds, I knew, before the entire outer office reeked of Postum.
The CEO of Scheer–Boorman LifeSciences, Rudolf Furlong, was Teutonic in name alone. Although he had been born in Frankfurt and educated in Switzerland and England, the thirty-odd years he had spent stateside had thoroughly Americanized him. The brusque voice on the phone—“Strauss: Get down here right now. I need to talk to a man in a tie”—could have come from the throat of a man who had grown up not in the most select European boarding schools but in the shadow of a five hundred–acre shopping mall in Teaneck, New Jersey.
Rudy was a decent enough guy. But sometimes he was fickle, and it was just like him to get all gung ho on Casual Fridays—and then do a 180. I pushed back my chair and walked through a fog of Postum into the outer hall, taking the long way to Rudy’s suite to check out the Friday fashion scene. The glass-fronted reception areas of most offices stood empty at this precious hour of the morning known as Dunkin’ Donuts Time. The only woman I passed in the hall—one of our graphic designers—sported black stirrup pants and a tweed jacket buttoned over a T-shirt printed with a bright yellow, bulbous image. I whipped my head around as she hurried by. Yes! I tawt I taw a . . . But how was I supposed to handle it? If I called out, Excuse me, but is that Tweety Bird I see on your T-shirt? I’d only give her opportunity to march down to the sexual-harassment officer and file the following complaint: The EVPIR wouldn’t have seen my Tweety if he hadn’t been staring at my breasts.
I didn’t understand why everyone at SB—beginning with Victoria—always took me for a womanizer. I had only womanized with Lisa years ago (which, in my book, didn’t even count—since I married her). Ever since then I had done everything possible to conform to our unspoken policy: A good company man is a good family man—except, of course, when he’s on a junket to Las Vegas.
Rudy’s head secretary—now, he had an extremely at
tractive head secretary—waved me in. Rudy’s office, which had just been recarpeted and repainted, smelled of rug glue and turpentine. The new color scheme—too brown and burgundy for my taste—made me feel like I was locked inside a humidor. I reluctantly closed the door.
Clutching a tortoiseshell pen in his right hand, Rudy leaned way back in his desk chair; I suspected he practiced this trick after hours to gauge how far he could go without tipping over. As if he were heading straight from the office to the yacht club, he wore a white polo shirt emblazoned with a navy blue anchor.
“You don’t have on a tie,” I told him.
He grimaced. “My image consultant—that is, my wife—told me I needed to look more like a man of the people. But I don’t like the way the people look today.”
“I warned you two months ago,” I said. “Dress-Down Fridays are a slippery slope. In the hall, I just passed a woman wearing a Tweety Bird T-shirt.”
“There isn’t a woman in this office who’s showing any leg today,” Rudy said. “They’re all in trousers, even my secretary.”
“Mine isn’t.”
“Who looks at her?”
“I sure don’t,” I said—then immediately felt guilty. “But I couldn’t do without her. Victoria is a very dedicated worker.”
“Her knitting needles make me nervous,” said Rudy. “And you do, too, just standing there. Siddown.”
I saddown on the chair opposite Rudy’s expansive cherry desk, which (unlike mine) was completely clear of paperwork. “About this Cleveland trip.”
“Right,” said Rudy. “Sorry. Short notice. I need someone to—”
“I don’t like to say no.”
“So say yes.”
“I just can’t.”
Rudy gazed out the window at the white-coated bushes and skeletal trees. “Somebody has to cut that ribbon for me. My wife has to have surgery.”
I’d been called—by others—a sympathetic ear. But I knew one reason why I was perceived to be a good listener was because, at awkward moments, words failed me. I only knew how to state the stock phrases: I’m sorry. I hope it isn’t serious. If there’s anything I can do, etc.
Rudy rocked his pen back and forth onto its gold clip. “Dorothy’s had these fibroids, you know?”
Of course I didn’t know—and quite truly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the specifics. But Rudy, obviously concerned about his wife, kept talking to distract himself. Dorothy’s fibroids had bothered her for months, but now the situation was more than just suspicious. She was going into Sloan-Kettering on Monday; the surgeon had told her point-blank that everything had to come out.
“I need to be there for the surgery,” Rudy said. “And after that, I’ve been ordered to stay home and function as moral support. So that’s why I can’t go to Cleveland.”
I kept silent.
Rudy looked at me closely. “It seems to me that lately you’ve had a lot of scheduling problems. Give me the truth: Are you one of these guys who all of a sudden develops a fear of flying?”
“No, no, not at all.” I didn’t know what else to say. I had promised Lisa—and Lisa had promised me—that we wouldn’t tell anyone about what we were going through at the fertility clinic. But telling lies (even small ones) bothered me, so for a second I actually considered breaking that promise—until I remembered how insensitive it would be to tell a man whose own wife was about to have a hysterectomy: I need to stay home and mess around with my wife.
I hesitated, then found a plausible excuse. “It’s the house-hunting. I think we’re closing in on a deal. I need to be here. Lisa’ll kill me if I duck out now.”
“I can’t believe,” Rudy said, “that you’re still living in that condo.”
“I know. It’s far too small.”
“Far too small! It’s a rabbit hutch! Your wife even said so, that night you had us over for dinner.”
“Lisa doesn’t mince words,” I said.
“I like that in a woman.”
“It has its advantages,” I said. “When it doesn’t have its dis–”
“You’re never home anyway, so why don’t you just buy Lisa the house she wants? Unless she wants something different than you?”
“I’m sure we want the same thing,” I said. “But we’re just having trouble finding it.”
Rudy pondered that for a second, then said, “Sounds like a definition of marriage.”
I laughed. “No kidding.”
He waved his hand. “Stay home. And buy your house. I’ll find someone else to go.”
“You’re sure?” I asked.
“Positive.”
I pushed back my chair.
“Wait,” Rudy said. “Don’t go anywhere. I have a little present for you.” Rudy opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a thick sheaf of letters and memos (printed on half-sheets in accordance with SB’s new save-the-trees policy). “Put out a few fires for me while I’m gone.”
I reluctantly reached forward and took the pile of papers from Rudy. Then I remembered the call schedule. Like three doctors in one practice, Rudy and I and the CFO rotated on call to handle emergency situations at SB. Catastrophes always seemed to happen whenever I took over for Rudy on the pager. So far I’d dealt with two major plumbing problems, a surprise picket from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and even an outbreak of food poisoning in the company cafeteria.
“What about call next week?” I asked.
“Substitute for me on Monday and Tuesday. And if anybody wants to know my whereabouts, tell them . . . the Bahamas.”
I nodded.
“Remember, not a word to anyone. About Dorothy.”
“I won’t mention it to anyone,” I said, knowing that—in spite of my promise—I’d tell Lisa. “I hope Dorothy’s all right.”
“Sure,” Rudy said. “She’s a good sport. A real trouper.”
Clutching that messy pile of papers, I left Rudy sitting in his leather chair, looking dejected as a king about to be deposed from his throne. Who could blame him for feeling so low, so powerless? How scary it would feel, I thought, to kiss Lisa good-bye before they wheeled her off to surgery. Wait! I’d probably holler after the orderlies. Don’t take her away. I love her—even if I hardly ever tell her so!
I retreated back to my office—feeling sorry for Rudy but relieved I hadn’t confessed why I couldn’t go to Cleveland. Let Rudy think I couldn’t board a jumbo jet without the aid of Valium. Let Victoria conjecture I was conducting some torrid extramarital affair (with my real-estate agent, no less). Outside of my own home and the doctor’s office, I refused to admit why I was so bound to the calendar. Although it was hardly shameful to want another child, I still could not form the words: We are trying. The phrase made it sound as if Lisa and I were testing a new recipe for low-fat macaroni and cheese, or fixing a worn-out washer on a faucet—without much passion and even less success.
We are trying. I didn’t owe this information to anyone. Yet all of the following people seemed to demand I ’fess it up right now:
**The hostess at the local T.G.I. Friday’s, who greeted my family (obviously a threesome and no more) with an armful of catsup-stained laminated menus and the cheerful question, “How many will you be this evening?”
**Danny, who claimed he needed a dog—yes, he really really REALLY needed a collie dog—because he did not have a brother or sister to play with.
**Victoria, who—in spite of all my consideration and kindness, my pleases and thank-yous and the ostentatious basket (big as a laundry hamper) of flowers she knew I would order for her on Secretaries’ Day—gave me a sour, disapproving look when I returned from lunch, for the second day in a row, with the back of my collar damp from the postcoital shower I had taken ten minutes before.
**Finally, Cynthia Farquhar—whose lips curled coyly upward when she asked me to tell her the absolute minimum number
of bedrooms I would consider in a home. “I need to pin you down,” she said in her velvety voice. “To do my
job well, I have to understand the needs of you and your family.”
I’d rather die than publicly broadcast the specifics of my personal life. Yet lately, the more I clammed up about myself, the more others kept opening themselves up to me. I was beginning to suspect I had some sign attached to my back that said TELL ME YOUR GYNECOLOGICAL CONCERNS. Since becoming EVPIR, I had to approve all requests for extended leaves of absence; thus, half a dozen women had grown teary-eyed in my office as they reported they had lumps in their breasts, incapacitating hot flashes, nicked bladders, and unfaithful spouses. At home, Lisa regaled me with gruesome tales about her fertility doctor (“He keeps rolling my ovaries beneath his fingers as if they’re a couple of vintage grapes he’s considering squishing.” “He shot that lime-green dye through my fallopian tubes—and callously reported, as if my reproductive system were the equivalent of the seven A.M. traffic report, ‘Only one lane seems to be open here.’ ”). My sister confessed her antidepressants were interfering with her sex drive. Even my own mother had asked for advice on estrogen replacement therapy.
At any moment now, I feared Victoria would consult me about some intimate problem, like vaginal dryness. But when I returned to her Postum-odorous office, I found her sitting with her back paddle-stiff to the door, her eyes resolutely turned toward her computer screen. When I announced, “I’m back,” she simply pressed her lips together so tightly they turned silver as sardines.
I had enough problems, I thought, without having to dig for the source of hers. I passed by her desk and went straight to mine without comment. And that’s when I saw I had left my Filofax—open to next Monday—on my desk. Right next to my joyous reminder that Victoria would be out of my life for two sweet hours—my handwritten bliss—lay the itinerary to Cleveland with this yellow Post-it note attached: Canceled 3/20. Make sure you don’t get charged for this on your AmEx.
I gulped. Victoria had seen that bliss, which meant I had committed the most unchivalric of sins: hurt a woman’s feelings! Worse, a lonely woman’s feelings. How could I have been so thoughtless? Even a guy with dirt for brains could see that Victoria fussed and clucked over me (and her basketful of bunnies) because she longed to play wife and mother. Even the dumbest of dolts could tell she regarded the steady stream of men who visited the office (from the ponytailed technical-support team to that dirty man who spotted her carpet with Xerox toner) with romantic interest. But now I’d made it clear to her that bliss—for those men and me—wasn’t being with Victoria. Bliss was being without her.
