On Hannelore’s desk was a large book with a simulated leather binding and gold trim. “Open it. It is our history.”
The book was indeed the story of the company. It contained copies of every single transaction that ever took place, including the purchase of rubber bands. Customers’ letters were reproduced (but probably not the complaints), along with brochures, sales reports, invoices, and photos taken at trade fairs.
“Touch the paper.”
My god, this was Hannelore’s holy book, the Book of Hours of Hannelore Links.
“Acid-free vellum. From goats. It is my special project. I sent my parents their personal copy with their initials in gold on the cover. It was like a long letter to them about my life in America. It is my baby.” She picked up the book and hugged it.
Maybe, Amalie thought, I’ll unbend and suggest lunch some time.
#
The worst part of having the job is not having Stewart to talk to at the end of the day. There was always so much to discuss over dinner, even after eighteen years. Charlie’s latest obsession (when he wasn’t sitting there with them), news items, outrages committed by Stewart’s freshman English students who never learned to spell. And while Stewart talked—he did most of the talking—the moment when Amalie slipped her foot out of her shoe and rubbed her toes up and down his calf.…“What do you have in mind?” He’d smile, fork poised. “Or will you be too sleepy later?”
“I don’t know. I’m not myself today.”
“Oh, how exciting.”
Then she’d give him a little kick. Who needed reminders of the women who ogled him, the ones who called, the junior colleagues who needed orientation over a drink? There was a lot of teasing between them but never the direct question.
The silence now is dreadful. It is like anti-matter, anti-noise. It is like hell. Maybe her phone is dead. No. Amalie looks out the window into the courtyard. A long drop. She turns on the radio, loud rock music as though to lure Charlie home. She won’t call any of his friends. She has her pride. But the worry is beginning to make her crazy. This is the longest he’s ever stayed out. He might be lying in a heap on the subway tracks. Or maybe he’s in the middle of a training session on passive resistance. Learning to cope with tear gas or worse. She’s seen the gas mask Charlie is fashioning, though he keeps it hidden in his closet, together with the wad of flyers announcing demonstrations he is planning to attend unless there are concerts that conflict. What if he is hurt, hauled off to jail, incarcerated incommunicado? He would be less vulnerable if he cut his hair. Although he believes in living in the here and now, not to speak of the where it’s at, hair is to Charlie what it was to Samson. Why couldn’t Charlie be interested in normal things like other kids his age? What a curse to have a politically committed child who insists on acting according to his father’s principles.
Around midnight when she’s sure he’s lying battered somewhere, the victim of a patriotic construction worker, Charlie comes in. “You still up?” he asks cheerfully. “How was your day among the oppressors? I hope you weren’t worried. I stayed with a girl I know.” And before she can ask why he didn’t call her he says, “Her phone was broken.” Her phone was broken? Isn’t she living at home? Or is she one of those squatters he’s so fond of who live in decrepit abandoned buildings? No, Amalie won’t ask. “Did anyone come to the meeting?” he inquires.
“Wall-to-wall people. Your flyers weren’t necessary.”
“That’s good. Tell me what your office is like.”
“Tell you about it tomorrow, okay? I’m not at my most sparkling now.”
“You never want to talk, you know that?” Charlie sits cross-legged on the floor by her bed. “You’re my mother—don’t you want to know about my life?”
Other mothers complain that their children tell them nothing. This one tells her his every thought, political and gastrointestinal. But can she say to her child, Go away, I’m not in the mood to listen to you? What is she, a Medea? Charlie used to talk to Stewart for hours. They were best friends. He misses his father more than he lets on.
“So, where were you—Christ, Charlie, what is that thing you’re wearing?”
“It’s a huipil,” he says with dignity. “A hand-embroidered Guatemalan shirt.” Amalie knows it means trouble. “The Indians down there wear it.” The trees are hung with shreds from these shirts, left by people fleeing the government troops, he explains. Whole jungles are filled with embroidered remnants, leaving a trail for the pursuers. Charlie wants to go down there soon. He’s sorry he missed the chance to go to Nicaragua to help build a hospital but he was too young.
Tonight he was selling T-shirts after the Grateful Dead concert at Madison Square Garden. He almost got busted. “But I was cool.” Now she notices that he’s keeping one hand tightly closed, his wrist is stiff. “What happened to your hand?”
“Some dude tried to get funny. Those are valuable T-shirts, hand-screened.”
“What do you mean, ‘tried to get funny’?” So he got into a fight.
“They think they’re so suave because they carry a switch-blade.”
“They? You said a dude.”
“Yeah, dude in the collective sense. Anyway it’s nothing. Just a cut and I hardly got any blood on the T-shirts.”
“To hell with the T-shirts, Charlie.” Her voice rises. “Show me your hand.”
“What’s the big deal? I told you it was nothing. The knife wasn’t sharp.”
Gritting her teeth, Amalie says, “You know you could die from lockjaw. You haven’t seen fit to go for a tetanus booster so let me see your goddam hand.”
“You’re such a typical mother. You know I’m almost eight-een and I know what I’m doing.”
Yeah, she knows the argument: almost old enough to vote. To be, God forbid, in the army, to marry, and to screw up. What else is he keeping from her? He and Stewart were a pair, hiding news from her—about traffic tickets and the time Charlie was caught jumping a turnstile and Stewart had to go and bail him out of the police station.
“Honey, please, a little iodine,” Amalie cajoles. “A Band-Aid, something to make me happy. I’ll buy one of your T-shirts.”
“You got a deal.” He unfurls his fingers.
#
At the end of her first week of work, Amalie was summoned to Marshall Berger’s office. Now I’m in for it, she thought. Some snoop must have seen me xeroxing tenant committee materials. Or maybe somebody heard me calling Metropolitan Council on Housing. Who would report her? She also had made a number of calls to the media about the upcoming rally. “Well, when am I supposed to attend to my life?” she said aloud. Fortunately Irina wasn’t in her cubicle today. Now it was possible that Hannelore knew she had stolen a roll of scotch tape and some post-it notes. Hannelore kept a strict inventory of everything. Possibly Amalie had been seen sitting at Ed Fielding’s desk in the editorial office, that den of subversion. Fielding had asked for help in tracking down some obscure references to anonymous Catalan poems.
Hannelore was having a bad day. The recently hired production manager, a man who used the word “fuck” as often as grammatically feasible, had just had a fight with her and stormed out of the place.
A deep silence settled over the rest of the office, broken only by the receptionist’s voice on the phone, saying, “Go ahead, take the furniture, who gives a shit.” A red-eyed and disheveled Hannelore informed Amalie that the president wanted to see her. Then she sniffled and said, “I have no rights here. Everyone else is permitted to take weekends off, but not me.”
“Have you tried?” Amalie asked, glad that Hannelore wasn’t about to give her a hard time over a number of mistakes she’d made during the week, but maybe she was leaving that to Marshall.
“Mr. Berger will not allow me any time. If I have to make a doctor’s appointment he is furious.”
Hard to believe, Amalie thought, but maybe Marshall was really a bastard. Just because he had photos by Lewis Hine and Jacob Riis on his walls didn’t mean
that he applied his social principles to real life. Maybe he was like her father, the eminent sociologist Herbert Marcus. His concept of the role of women was completely at odds with the progressive theories he professed. Ever since she was a little girl, Amalie was taught to emulate her mother, a woman whose domain was the home and ministering to her husband, despite her college education. According to Herbert Marcus, appropriate jobs for women were in teaching or nursing, or, if it was necessary to enter the world of commerce, as assistants to male executives. He was relieved when Amalie was safely married, that she was no longer his responsibility. But he was mistaken in thinking that an adjunct assistant professor like Stewart could support the two of them. He never knew that his Wellesley-educated Fulbright scholar daughter had turned her French major into—not a meal ticket exactly, but more of a snack—by freelancing as a porno translator, since she wasn’t competent to do technical translation and those were the only two kinds of translating work that paid decently. And she was never interested in teaching. Stewart was not too happy about her decision, still cherishing the notion that she could continue to work on an occasional translation for a French travel agency or the French Cultural Services. But she ignored his arguments, for once.
“I think I should return to Germany,” Hannelore said now. “To an orderly society. Or join a union. Well, it doesn’t matter. We are consolidating. There will be changes here.”
Oh oh, that sounded ominous, Amalie thought. Last hired, first fired. Back to the snotty employment agencies, the ads calling for a “strong work ethic” (Heavy overtime, weekends and nights, no extra pay) and boasting about the “informal downtown location” (decrepit space, large insects, very young staff, no air conditioning). She wasn’t a translator for nothing.
“Nothing special,” Marshall said when she was in his office. “You’re doing fine.” He had that white suit on again. It was hard to keep from blinking. “Don’t be afraid to take some initiative. The chaos here is just surface. There’s an inner momentum to the work. Take your cues from Hannelore.” He sounded as though he was quoting fortune cookies. “I’m going to send you out with Frank—Frank McCullough, the new production guy. He’s supposed to be some kind of technical genius. He’ll do all the microfilming from now on so we don’t have to farm it out. And don’t be intimidated by Ed Fielding. He’s got credentials but he fell down somewhere along the way. Dried out now. I keep an eye on him, he’s an old pal. You’ll find a good support system here and a lot of emotional reciprocity.”
“You mean—like—friends?” This was the first time she understood the need for the word “like” used in this way.
“Friends? That’s a relative term. We’re a jolly group. Take that birthday party yesterday.” It was Marshall’s birthday and the staff had reverently presented him with a cake decorated with sugared female genitalia. The receptionist’s dress had gotten wet in the rain when she went to pick up the cake and Marshall immediately gave her a $100 bill so she could replace it.
Marshall turned his chair and gazed at a photograph on the wall, a ten-year-old girl in a textile mill. It seemed to give him inspiration and he swiveled around to face Amalie. “Try to cultivate Hannelore. There’s a marvelous drive about her. She gets people to challenge their own capabilities.”
Yeah, and she’s always catching me off guard, Amalie thought.
Marshall urged her to speak up if ever there was something on her mind, not to be afraid. No one was perfect. “There’s no hierarchy,” he added. We all do our jobs. We’re all peers. Everybody’s equal.”
“I imagine some are more equal than others,” Amalie said. The man was practically foaming at the mouth with benevolence.
Marshall looked at her keenly. “That’s good. I like a woman who thinks. But more importantly I want you to have a good time. Look, I’ll tell you the kind of guy I am. This isn’t just a company. It’s a utopian experiment in moral commerce and soon, maybe, in community living. There’s going to be a change in venue.” His eyes took on a slightly crazed look. Like Stewart’s when he got worked up about some corporate or governmental injustice. Admirable but scary.
“I think I understand what you’re trying to do,” Amalie said cautiously, wondering why she was called in.
“I knew you would,” he said. “We’re on the same wavelength, I can tell.”
“I sincerely hope so,” Amalie said, maybe a little too fervently. At least she wasn’t being reprimanded so she could afford to say just about anything.
As Amalie left his office, she had the distinct feeling that Marshall’s eyes were boring into her back. She rather liked the sensation.
Is there a refined soul who loves Sibelius and evenings by the fire? Vigorous, DWASPM, ageless, solvent, seeks youthful Freia. Photo appreciated. Dutch treat, naturally. Box 85 NYR.
Oh please! Amalie thought. Anyone can see through that ad in the New York Review. Some elderly miserly slob wants a young woman to minister to his perverse needs. That desperate I’m not, Amalie thought, even though it’s Saturday night, the curse of the single woman. Horny, yes, admittedly. Even Marshall was beginning to look good.
Amalie stared at the bottle of scotch with the intensity of the breakfast eater reading a cereal box. Then she poured herself a double. Ed Fielding used to have a drinking problem. Rescued by Marshall Berger. That made both men more appealing. Too bad Fielding was married. Stop it. Whatever happened to fidelity? Well, what am I supposed to do, immolate myself? Amalie took a large swig. What’s a peccadillo among friends? “That’s the spirit,” she could imagine perfidious Stewart saying. Just as she was about to take another swallow, she heard Charlie’s key. Grabbing a funnel she poured the liquor back into the bottle and shoved it into the cabinet.
“Ah, my child, just in time for dinner.”
“Sorry, not tonight. Going out.” He had on his beaded headband and a long scarf with fringes and pompoms. A dress rehearsal for a guerilla role, wherever the action was, Latin America or the Middle East. Amalie affected unconcern. “I brought you some sprouted wheat bread,” Charlie said. “It’s good for you. I smell liquor.”
“So you do, my dear.” This time she took out the scotch and poured herself a drink. “I’ve heard that sprouted wheat continues to sprout when it’s in your stomach, but thank you anyway. So where are you going?”
“Out. Grandpa called this afternoon. Why didn’t you tell me he was in the paper the other day?”
“He was in the paper the other day. What did he say? Were you nice to him?”
“Do you really expect me to answer that?”
“Quite right. Sorry,” she said. Emblazon it on my chest. Not the letter “A” though that might have done for Stewart, but rather the letters “I.S.” for “I’m sorry.” “What did grandpa say?”
Herb Marcus had lectured his grandson on maintaining a nonpartisan umbrella and spoke of articulation of consensus. He did not ask how Charlie was nor did he ask about his daughter. According to Charlie, he seemed to cheer up when the boy mentioned demolition, gentrification, and a citywide delegation of tenants for a City Hall demonstration. “I told him we missed him at my graduation—I know he loves words ending in i-o-n. Of course I didn’t say I still had to make up a gym class to get my diploma.”
Those i-o-n words represented impersonal forces, concepts Herb Marcus could grasp. Amalie had figured that out a long time ago. When Stewart was in the thick of the Columbia protests, Amalie had been careful to call the emergency meetings “intra-university convocations.”
“I also told him to keep his orientation cool and he liked that. Oh, and he offered to make a contribution to the teenage hotline my friends and I are setting up at the church across the street—I told you about that.”
“You did?” Amalie was baffled but Charlie went on talking.
“Round-the-clock advice on drugs, parents, housing. He gave me some good ideas for setting up a board of professionals. You know, he’s totally happening in the brain.”
“Yes, fo
r a social scientist he’s pretty smart.” Amalie’s antipathy toward sociology dated from the first and last Passover celebration her parents held, just before her mother’s death. The service spoke of Moses as a society dropout and went into detail about the infrastructure of Israelite society—another plague to add to the usual ten. At that time, Herb Marcus was polishing up his course on the influence of religion on family life.
“I’m going,” Charlie said. “Since you asked, there’s a vigil outside of Dow Chemical.”
The phone rang. “Oh hi, Evan…I know, I’ve just been tied up.” Amalie was embarrassed. Evan Diaz, a colleague of Stewart’s who was an urban historian, had been of tremendous help to Amalie in the aftermath of Stewart’s death. He had sorted out legal matters and dealt with the administration at Columbia. A really good friend but she had the feeling that he was probably ready for a change in their relationship. And maybe she was too. He had been divorced for a couple of years.
“Look,” he said, “I know you folks are planning a rally in three weeks. My contact at the Housing Department tells me that the mayor won’t be in town that day but his staff might receive a tenant delegation, two from each zip code.” Evan seemed to know a lot of people involved with city housing. “What’s going on with your building?”
“Oh, thanks for the info. There’s this loophole I found.” Amalie described it excitedly. “I filed papers for a review.”
“Where did you send them?” She told him.
“Did you get a reference number? Always very important.”
“Yes, I even memorized it.”
“Come on, I don’t believe you.”
“It’s S-209831A,” she said gleefully.
“Good work, lady! Now how about we make a date for dinner soon.”
“Yes,” she said, with conviction. He was easy to be with and attractive. She’d heard he did a mean tango. “Call me next week.”
“Sorry, sweetheart,” Amalie said to Charlie. “That was Evan Diaz.”
Amalie in Orbit Page 4
