Under the Birch Tree

by Nancy Chadwick

  “So, how did you get this lifeguard gig, anyway?” I asked.

  “Long story. Just a word-of-mouth thing,” he said, letting out a burst of laughter. “Being a lifeguard is not my calling, you know.”

  I didn’t think it was, I thought. I smiled at him.

  Going to the pool took on a new meaning for me, as it wasn’t just about going for a swim and relaxation anymore. I went to see Scott. Though our conversations were limited, understandably because his job was to watch others and not me, evenings provided slow time for us to get to know each other. Our conversations were lighthearted with laughter between our responses and dry humor getting us through our seemingly similar situations.

  “Not going to law school, here, in the city?” I asked.

  “Hell no, I hate the cold. Won’t be staying here during the winter, that’s for sure. How can you stand it here in the winter?”

  “I don’t know any different. Besides, I’m young and adapt to my surroundings, unlike you, perhaps?” I didn’t know exactly how much older Scott was, but I used the mystery as a conversation prodder. “I have to stay with my mom while I’m looking for a job in the city.”

  “Well, looks like we’re both getting to where we want to be.”

  “Yep, and sitting poolside, relaxing through the rest of the summer is the way to get there, isn’t it?” I agreed.

  Our poolside conversations shifted to the telephone and seeing each other away from the pool. Soon, my dates with Scott were just as I imagined real dates should be. We would start our evening with a cocktail at Andy’s, a small, dark, jazz piano bar, then head over to Spiazza for an Italian dinner, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in tall black booths with white tablecloths, and finally on to the Rafaella to hear piano jazz as we sipped aperitifs. We would walk down Oak Street, then to the beach. Our conversations protected us from thinking about the reality of where we were in our lives.

  We sat at the pool one Thursday night looking ahead to when we would be getting together again.

  “Elaine and Clay wanted to know if we’d like to go to brunch with them at the club this Sunday,” he said. I noted how he referred to his parents by their first names.

  “Sounds great. And then we’ve got the Bears game the next weekend. I’m looking forward to that day. I’ve never been to a Bears game.”

  “You’ve lived here all your life and you’ve never been to a Bears football game?”

  “Can’t say that I have …”

  We lacked the seriousness that should automatically progress with a relationship. But what we lacked in closeness through conversation we gained in carefree spirits, allowing us to just have fun.

  One date night, he wouldn’t tell me where we were going. I was happily surprised when we landed at the 94th Aero Squadron, a quaint restaurant with French chalet decor, circa WWI, and dining room windows that overlooked the Palwaukee Airport runways. We were uninhibited enough, thanks to having shared a bottle of wine, to run away with our desires and act on spur-of-the-moment inclinations. Just when I thought we were headed to the car, he grabbed my hand, and we made a dash for an open field, joining the view of the restaurant diners. Tall grass slowed our pace in the kohl-black night. We whispered conversation so as to not break the eerie silence. Suddenly, lights flickered. A loud running engine noise broke. “Get down,” he yelled. We plunked to our bellies. “Here one comes.” Within seconds a private plane skimmed over our backs and glided to the runway. I screamed at the thrill of it. He joined in laughter and then more screams. We were holding on to the present moment and enjoying life and each other.

  Dating Scott was enabling my lack of dedication to my job search and allowing me to succumb to résumé rejection. Our busy social outings and the knowledge he would be leaving once the pool closed kept at bay my expectations about our relationship and what we were to each other. By the fall, I still hadn’t worked toward finding a job, but I didn’t even care that I had defied my guilt—I was with someone to enjoy my summer.

  Then, one mid-September morning, Scott called and asked me to meet him for lunch. My heart pounded with worry as he greeted me with a dozen yellow roses. Is this a bad thing? If so, why is he trying to make me feel good?

  He started off our conversation, “You know how I started part-time work at the law firm in the city? Well, they offered me a full-time job.”

  “Okay, so, what are you saying?” I said.

  “I’m taking the job and will be staying here.”

  “No law school in Florida?”

  “Nope. I’m going to stay in Chicago and be just as miserable as you with the god-awful winter weather.”

  I didn’t know what to make of this statement, given that accepting a job in the city was in conflict with his adamant intention to move. This shift of intention and his giving me flowers confused me. I reasoned that time would explain, so I resolved to let the situation play out.

  As the weeks progressed, Scott’s full-time job was all-consuming, leaving him tired and unenthused. Our time together became limited.

  “How about we go out on Saturday, a walk somewhere to enjoy this fall weather and then dinner out?” I asked him one Friday afternoon.

  “Saturday? As in tomorrow?”

  “Yes. But, you look as if you couldn’t possibly think about tomorrow when all you want to do is get through the afternoon.”

  “I’ll be here at work, late. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  I knew he wouldn’t, and he didn’t. And I let it go. There was nothing I could do. As the fall gave way to winter’s cold and gray skies, I sensed that our relationship was fading. One night, as we were driving home from a date in the city, he said just above a whisper, “We could dream and wish and take ourselves anywhere.” Staring ahead, he added, “I’m crazy about you, but, we … we, have no future.”

  My heart pounded, and my cheeks flushed. I didn’t say anything. We continued driving through the city, meeting stoplights, and slowly starting up again as Handel played on the car stereo. “I could see you working in the city and fitting right in.” He had it all figured out for me, but I didn’t want him to. “And probably forgetting about me,” he added.

  “Are you mad at me?” he asked.

  “No.”

  But I was mad. I was mad because good things that happened to me seem to desert me, and he was a good thing. I was mad because he was calling the shots, and it was out of my control. Why doesn’t anything work out for me? My anger mingled with sadness.

  We stopped at a traffic light on Michigan Avenue, and he pointed to a Saks Fifth Avenue store window at the corner. “See, over there, with the winter coats, the one in the middle, tan, big buttons, big collar. I like that one. I could see you in that with a pink cashmere scarf around your neck. You’re so very mature. I think about you and wonder about you. You look like you belong in one of those Camay soap commercials.” He smiled. The drive was completed in silence.

  His attention to me diminished as I found him to be more impersonal, isolating himself from his usual social interests.

  I stopped by to see Scott on a Saturday before Christmas.

  “Hi there. How are you doing?” I asked, looking directly in his face to take my own measurement of his wellbeing. He was pale and looked tired, with shadows under his hazel eyes. The smile I had grown accustomed to seeing whenever he greeted me was gone.

  “Oh, just great, splendid,” he said sarcastically.

  “I have a Christmas present for you. What are you doing for the hol—”

  “No, I don’t want a present,” he interrupted, his raised voice drowning out my question.

  I looked down at the box and remembered how creatively I’d turned a nondescript shirt box into a festive holiday package, carefully surrounding the best wool sweater I had been able to find in his favorite color. Perhaps I thought my kind gesture and dose of niceness would heal him and make him want to be with me. “I want nothing,” he said as he pushed the gift back into my hands. “Listen, I don’t have
any plans for Christmas but to be alone while Elaine and Clay are in Florida.” The defiance in his tone startled me. He was angry. I didn’t recognize who he was, who he had become. “C’mon now, take this back. It’s really time—”

  “But I want you to have it, it’s Christmas, and …” My voice faded as he stepped closer to me to put his hands on my shoulders, turn me around, and walk me out the door.

  “Thanks, but really, I don’t want presents. I don’t want a thing,” he said, standing in the doorway as I was pushed outside.

  I paused to consider the confrontation. At best, I’d expected a calm and civil chat to follow his rejection that clearly had indicated a breakup. But then I remembered how we never really talked about where we were in our lives and our relationship. I wondered what we really had been to each other. I didn’t have an answer.

  I don’t remember speaking to him after that incident. We weren’t to be together anymore.

  I thought how my young-girl self would have spoken in frustrated angst, how nothing works out for me and nobody wants to be with me. I had attributed this to an innate flaw, something I lacked, an underdevelopment that would eventually be the cause of the disconnection. But my big-girl self had grown out of that reflection and saw the connections as links to move my self-understanding along.

  Scott was the bridge that enabled me to leap from a life I had grown into, giving me a sense of security, to reach the other side, and to plant an attitude that would push me on my way. It wasn’t meant to be anything long-term; it was a short-term investment, where I valued the time and reaped the rewards.

  It would take the remaining winter months and into the spring for me to get serious about getting a job and moving out of my mother’s place. Once I realized this, a new door would open after this one had shut.

  I refocused my intention to have a job soon, but not just any job; it had to be one in advertising. My best talent was myself, and I knew it. My spirit would not be broken, as I believed each day would get me closer to employment. I remembered the college days, where God and faith sustained my belief that nothing bad would happen to me.

  On a whim, I answered a nondescript ad in the paper. It was a blind response in that I didn’t know what the job was. I was offered an interview.

  “Well, by now, you are probably wondering what company this is for, right?” the female headhunter asked. She held the last bit of information in suspense until I first qualified.

  “Well, yes, I am.”

  “The job that I need to fill is for a traffic assistant.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not really familiar with traffic in an ad agency.”

  “This position is in the broadcast department, where commercials for television and radio get scheduled … and the agency is Leo Burnett,” she said in drawn-out words.

  “Leo Burnett?”

  “Yes, they’re in the city, in the Prudential building.” I had a flashback to my college exit interview, when I’d told my professor I would start there. I believed it would happen then, and it did now. My conviction was fulfilled, and I couldn’t help smiling and thinking this was meant to be.

  When the elevator opened its doors on my interview day, Leo Burnett’s well-known large signature in shiny steel covered the wall ahead of me. This wasn’t just a leading ad agency I was in the midst of; it was an agency that considered me good enough to work there. Even though I hadn’t had the interview just yet, I was convinced that this was my place to be and that I would have the job.

  I accepted the job offer the following day from my soon-to-be manager. The acceptance was more validation, a starting point from which to branch out and thrive. Once again, I recognized that God didn’t let anything bad happen.

  I started working at the best, most sought-after advertising agency in the fall of 1984.

  part 4

  a second decade

  working it out

  I relished my work routine at Burnett for only a year before bouts of anxiety surfaced. Something was missing or just not right. I’d start my day with a positive attitude, but by the end of it I was asking, “What the hell am I doing?” Was this a normal feeling for a twenty-three-year-old? I was coasting when I should have been gaining speed in my career. Those who asked me where I worked were surprised, even envious when I told them. Their excitement made me think that I should be grateful to have a job in a special place, and that I should value my seat among professionals. However, they didn’t know just how low I was on the ad-agency hierarchy. Though their responses made me feel lucky, it was a temporary feeling.

  Am I to be here for the rest of my working life? What’s next for me? The agency business was difficult, competitive, and over-supplied with eager, aggressive players pushing to get picked for the next level. I wasn’t one of them but I stuck to my thoughts that someday, someone would notice me, and I would have an opportunity to move up in my career. But when?

  The Advertising Club at my old J-school took a field trip to the city to visit a couple ad agencies, and Leo Burnett was one of them. An account executive walking through the door interrupted me as I was talking to the students about how I got my job. He explained his agency position—account executive—and I was hooked. I wanted to be an account executive just like him. I, too, wanted to work with clients and come up with ideas and sell them. I wanted to write strategies and deliver the goals. But I had no idea how to get there. The wheels in my head started in motion.

  A goal served as a link to a vision of a place I wanted to be with a position I sought to hold. I had the goal, but did I have the steps mapped out to get me there? I could only value the achievement and trust that the path I needed to take to get me there would work itself out. God wasn’t going to let anything bad happen to me.

  After a year of employment, I moved out of my mom’s place, southeast, to a studio apartment in Evanston, where I had quick access to the city. My corner place was cheery with thick-paned windows spanning from the radiator tops to the ceiling, allowing light to flood inside. I doled out a few necessary furniture pieces to round out the corner: a bed, a bookcase, and a wrought iron café table and chairs. A long, cushy, hand-me-down couch stretched long to fill a wall opposite the windows. My tiny kitchen had a window that provided an escape for the cooking odors I excitedly stirred up.

  A promotion to traffic coordinator after eighteen months kept me moving up in my department. I received a promotion to senior coordinator eighteen months later, managing coordinators. But the agency was too big for me, with its account-management training program and a male-dominated, highly educated force to match its size. I reasoned I would need to leave the agency to get where I wanted to be.

  At home, my empty, chameleon-like apartment reflected my mood and feelings, matching the outside as I looked through those panoramic windows and tried to connect and find my place to be. The windows were like looking glasses, mirroring a gray, cloudy day, a reflection of new aloneness that began to spread from outside to what I had once found to be bright and happy inside. I struggled to reconnect to that person.

  My coworker Lorraine and I went to Clubland on the north side of the city one Friday night for drinks and dancing. I was distracted by a tall, slender, dark-haired guy standing next to me at the bar when we caught each other’s stares. I smiled because I didn’t know what else to do at that awkward moment. I noticed his nose wrinkled when he smiled at me.

  On Monday morning Lorraine said, “Hey, Nancy, here, this is for you.” She handed me a small piece of paper with a giggle behind her grin. “It’s that guy’s name and phone number from Friday night. Wow, you sure made an impression.”

  Flattery eased my doldrums and self-doubt. I called Pat later that morning; we met for lunch and talked as if we’d been friends for a long time, picking up where we’d left off. His warm conversation coincided with his soft-spoken words. His gentleness was attractive to me.

  It was all about Pat that summer. My thoughts were about him, and I wondered when I would see him agai
n. Admittedly, my zealous attitude was overbearing compared to his more relaxed, casual nature. I was full speed ahead. He was one date at a time.

  On a warm August night, we set out on a date. His eyes locked on to mine after I opened my apartment door to welcome him.

  “Hello to you, come on in,” I said.

  His faded blue jeans fit him well. He wore a white shirt, tails out, with a couple buttons undone at the top. His tan face and chest complemented his long black wavy hair and dark eyes.

  I thought he was a rock star, and he was standing in my doorway.

  The clapping echoes of my floppy sandals making contact with each stair broke the silence trapped in the stairwell. He had parked just outside the front doors.

  When I was seated inside his black MG, I surveyed the tan interior and realized the top was down. My eyes were free to greet every star in the blue-black night sky and grab every sensory experience available—intermittent horns honking; the sweet smell of summer breezes, damp lake water, and pungent wildflowers; spots of colored lights against the soft tan and brown hues of apartment buildings. I was back to those summers of long ago sitting poolside during the best part of my day and learning to live in the moment while taking nothing for granted. When Pat caught me staring at him, we smiled at one other. I was a grownup reaching for a connection to a right place, a right time, with the right person, just as I was reaching for the stars as I sat in his car. My happiness calmed my nervous and anxious self as thoughts of not being in the right agency with the right job retreated from my mind.

  After dinner, he drove around the lake’s shore, where the water was calm, the air smelled of leftover sunscreen, and echoes of yelling and laughter subsided. The sand was cool under our feet when we stopped to talk.