Under the Birch Tree

by Nancy Chadwick

  We got in the car, and I started to drive.

  “Have you ever been to Northbrook Court? It’s a nice indoor mall with movie theatres and restaurants,” I asked. I thought maybe getting out of the city to the suburbs would be a welcome return to when we knew how to be with each other.

  I interpreted his lack of response as compliance. Our drive continued without conversation.

  “You feeling okay?”

  “Yep.”

  “You look tired. Maybe you’d rather be at home sleeping?”

  We parked.

  “Maybe I’m not into walking around right now.”

  “Why didn’t you say something before we left? You’re always tired. You don’t want to do much of anything anymore.” I didn’t care about the drive, but I did care about his lack of interest in wanting to be with me.

  “Maybe we should drive back,” he said.

  My emotions said this was the start of the end of something I had thought had no ending. Our conversations became more like chats—elevator conversations and weather reports. The whirlwind courtship was changing with the autumn winds and dropping temperatures. It was out of my control; I couldn’t make him want to be with me. My happiness was turning to sadness, not for myself because of a selfish attitude, but for Cliff. I felt bad for him that maybe he wanted out but didn’t know how to manage it.

  As much time as I spent at Cliff’s apartment, it not only looked different but also felt different. On a visit during the holidays, I spotted self-help guides and other books referencing relationships stacked on an end table. I interpreted these as evidence of his need to understand relationships and as a signal that ours wasn’t for him anymore.

  I hadn’t seen or spoken to Cliff for a couple of months after that visit, so when he invited me to lunch, I was curious and a little afraid. I didn’t know what to expect. This lunch had a purpose, and it wasn’t social. Cliff announced he was going away for spring vacation.

  “Huh?” I asked.

  “I’m going with Janet.”

  “Your sister, the one I was supposed to meet?”

  Silence.

  “The time apart will do us good.”

  Time apart? Do us good? What’s that supposed to mean?

  “Where’s this coming from? What happened?” My voice was raised.

  “I just need some time.”

  I sank back in my seat. Nothing more was said. It was time to leave. Later that day, as I replayed our conversation—or really, the lack of one—in my head, I took his words as definitive. I didn’t hear from Cliff while he was away. In fact, I’m not sure when he returned. Several months had passed when he called to ask me to lunch.

  We sat next to each other, not opposite, at the table. This seating was comforting, reassuring, as if everything was okay. We ordered and small-talked until we were served. This was my cue to start the real conversation.

  “What’s up?” I said. My words were optimistic and friendly. Maybe he has an idea for us to go away for a weekend or a special Saturday night out.

  We were only a few bites into our lunch when Cliff pulled out a small photo album from his pocket and placed it on the table. Together we stared at the book as if it was something to be avoided. I opened the first page to see us on my birthday dinner cruise. I continued to flip through the album to see consistent smiles and sparkles in our eyes, which revealed a couple enjoying shared happiness.

  “You took a lot of pictures that day, my birthday … those roses … and us, and dinner on the deck. What’s in the back of here, more photos? I remember when I took these at your apartment when we first met … that was a while ago, in the beginning.”

  I thought this was a thoughtful gesture on his part, one where he offered in his hand happy memories to me.

  “Sorry it took me a while, but I wanted to put this together for you. I thought you would want it.”

  “I do want these pictures. I see how happy I am, how happy we were. That was the best day, the best birthday I ever had. Up until then, I always spent it alone, with nothing to do. But you made it special. And I’m sorry it’s still not like that for you. What happened?”

  “I just can’t make a commitment to you.”

  As tears welled, I put my head down. I was losing my best friend. He was breaking up with me.

  “You always told me to be honest with you about everything, how I was feeling, if things were ever to change, that you would always want to know,” he continued.

  “Yes, I did,” I whispered.

  It was time to leave. It was as if all that needed to be said had been put out on the table; the photo album spoke volumes; that was then and this is now. Things had changed. At least we had the memories.

  We waited for the check in silence. I grabbed my book and held it tight, as if it were all I had, filled with memories and good feelings. I saw sadness in Cliff’s hazel eyes. He watched me while he cradled my arm as we walked through the restaurant and out the door.

  I clung to my photos as if to extract elated feelings that were portrayed in the snapshots and infuse them into me. They were glimpses of hope, happiness, and growth in life. It was difficult but affirming to hold my photo book, embracing connections, because I could move forward knowing I was able to experience the nuances in a relationship, just as I knew others did too. I had learned to love someone and, because of it, to let him go.

  September. My mind wandered as I sat on the bus on my way to work. Why doesn’t anyone want to be with me? I’m a nice person, I’m smart, I have a job, and I’m self-sufficient.

  My determination to get a new job overwhelmed me, but knowing that my probation had expired made me a nervous wreck because I thought I would be sent out the door at the slightest error in judgment. I was never given any clarity about why I was on probation. But even if I had understood, I believed it would not have made any difference. I was convinced I was going to be fired, and probation was the necessary step they had to take. Trying to read my manager from her actions and the actions of her boss became an obsession. Are they referencing me with their glances as they talk about me? Are they really watching me?

  I was put to the test one afternoon. United Airlines, my account, had a plane crash. Protocol dictated ads be pulled from all broadcast media. I needed to manage the incident by implementing the procedure, delegating the phone-call load to coordinators, who called broadcast media markets throughout the country to request that ads be pulled. I was marking call sheets and putting them into piles when my manager interrupted.

  “What are you … why are you … This isn’t working, this is a crisis and you’re not …” she said. “We have to start calling now.” She grabbed my sheets and ran to the first available coordinator, haphazardly dropping papers on desks.

  “A crisis?” I asked. “Am I not working fast enough? I’m getting it done.” She picked up a phone at an empty desk and started dialing.

  She never did answer my questions. I didn’t understand why she thought it a crisis. I questioned whether my manager had been standing in wait during my probation, ready to test my performance if a situation like this erupted. I noticed her observing the two rows of desks manned by a dozen coordinators while I implemented protocol. But I had relinquished my role, and I didn’t know where I belonged. My manager had taken over. I stood silent in limbo.

  As the calls wound down I sensed the “crisis” was my downfall. I was ready to defend my performance; I had done all the right things, just as I had several times before on one of my accounts. The end result was achieved: not one spot aired, anywhere.

  In the late morning of the following day, all four managers filed stiffly out of their offices carrying their papers and ducked into other offices, shutting doors behind them. I continued to clock-watch until noon. The floor had emptied for lunch, and I was called into the head manager’s office. Heat spread to my face and radiated throughout my body. I shook inside in anticipation of a confrontation.

  “Sit down,” Pat said, “and shut
the door.”

  “You’ve been on probation now for thirty days, and we have been watching your performance. How you handled that crisis yesterday was inexcusable. You didn’t handle it effectively, and Lori had to step in.”

  “Huh … crisis?”

  “You were … a disaster … a mess,” she continued. She raised her deep smoker’s voice while waving a pointed finger in my face. Her furiousness made her stutter.

  “You are being terminated. Get your things and leave.”

  I had my directive in a matter of seconds from a cold, red-faced, angry woman inside the confines of a ten-by-eight office with no window. I was speechless, shocked as I sat and stared at her in this stifling air. I didn’t understand why this was happening.

  “What does that mean? Why was I a mess? What did I do wrong? Can’t we please talk about this?” I pleaded.

  “No.”

  “This isn’t right. It’s not fair. I’ve been here three years, each year earning a promotion, and then all of a sudden I get fired? Can’t you tell me what I did wrong?” I believed she wanted to hurry me out as quickly as she had dismissed me.

  “No more discussion. Go.” Her wild-eyed expression revealed her lack of control.

  My God, how can she talk to anybody this way? I thought as I walked out of her office, defeated. They had set me up to fail, and no amount of talking through it or understanding my actions would have changed the outcome. I stood immobile, waiting for an elevator, with my head bowed, like a child who had just gotten herself into serious trouble. They made me out to be a bad person, and I needed to leave because I wasn’t worthy of working there. The elevator ride to the lobby was slow and deliberate. Unable to breathe, I wanted to get out of there fast, as if on the brink of a panic attack. I stood paralyzed at the corner of Randolph and Michigan as the day’s noon rush stirred the lunch-hour workers’ brisk pace. Logic advised me to go home, but it was wrong to go home in the middle of the day, so I headed to Cliff’s office a couple of blocks north, off Michigan Avenue. I remembered a letter he’d sent me just weeks after we broke up, telling me how sorry he was but reminding me he had been honest. I tapped into the intimacy of that letter when I needed a protector and friend. I believed he still genuinely cared about me because of his continuous, albeit infrequent, calls to me to “see how I was doing.”

  I walked into his office and looked at him. “I just got fired,” I said in a soft tone.

  He closed his door. I sat on the couch while he stood in front of me. I started to cry—to wail, was more like it. It wasn’t the getting fired part; it was a release of the tension, anxiety, and pressure, as if I were a balloon that had grown larger with each stressful day and had popped, letting go in deflation.

  “She talked at me like I was a child,” I said.

  Cliff sat down next to me.

  Silence. Either he was right in the middle of something and distracted and I’d interrupted him, or he didn’t know how to handle me.

  “Do you want to call someone?” he asked.

  I walked over to his desk to call … who? Who would I call? I noticed a photo of a dark-haired, heavyset woman in a picture frame on his desk. I stared at her face, then picked it up and showed him.

  “Who the hell is this?” I asked. I knew the answer, but I wanted him to feel as bad as I did.

  “Maria.”

  “Who? Oh, I get it. She’s the reason you couldn’t make a commitment, the reason why you canceled our time, the reason for all those relationship books you are reading. I can’t believe this. How much worse can this day get?”

  “You said you wanted me to be honest with you, always.” He bowed his head, and his eyes stared at the worn carpet. “I wanted to see other people,” he said softly.

  “This quickly? My God, you already have a picture of her on your desk. You never asked me for my picture. God, unbelievable. I’m leaving. I should never have come here at all. Stupid. Stupid me. Stupid to ever think … I just hope you find with Maria what you couldn’t with me.”

  I walked out.

  The bus ride home from work at lunchtime on that ominous, gray October day, heading north on Lake Shore Drive, felt like an out-of-body experience. My body was planted numbly on a city bus seat while my mind was still in that office, firing thoughts at the speed of light. I suddenly became tired and cold. I strained to look out the window to meet the familiar corner where my apartment building stood, but I couldn’t see anything. Even though dirt, smudges, and oily residue on the window distorted my scenery, I could sense the motion of the lake’s waves crashing upon the boulders, giving me my sense of place. I was the reflection of the outside, my skin freckled with goose bumps in the cold and loneliness of that day.

  I stood in the center of my studio apartment looking for the familiar in my day of unfamiliarity. I flopped down on the well-worn couch, the heaviness of the day weighing me down, fully compressing the springs to the bottom. I had touched the ground. I stared out the window that afternoon—for what must have been hours—stunned, replaying my conversation with that rude woman in my head, with flash photos of her kinky, fly-away hair as she waved her tightened fist with one finger pointing at me, face reddening, deep voice growing louder, as if I couldn’t hear her the first time she told me to leave. They made me out to be a failure and not good enough to be working at Leo Burnett. I had worked long, hard hours, and I cared about my job and the people I worked with. I couldn’t rationalize the two opposing views, the one I had come to believe from my college professors, who told me I had what it took to make it, and the other from this unprofessional manager.

  I was buzzed with anxiety that I should have done something about what happened, but there wasn’t anything to do. I had been programmed at my job and at home with my mother years ago to fix things, to jump in, to manage a situation. This was one I couldn’t fix.

  From my apartment window, I spotted the usual commuters who disembarked the “L” with me. Their lives were walking in front of me, down below, and I was three flights above, watching them pass. Where do I fit in? I bowed my head, pulled my feet to my chest, and rolled up in the center of the couch. I held myself together. I was going through withdrawal where my addiction, my job, had to run out of my veins in order for renewed life blood to course freely so I could become me again. I would gain myself back after growing more thick skin.

  The next day, I had this overwhelming compulsion to do something, to busy my idle body and awaken my numbness. Perhaps I could flee, run away from being confronted with deciding what to do next. So I took a walk. I remembered the days of my young girlhood when I’d walked my home’s perimeter and any long trek I made thereafter, establishing my footing on solid ground, like dropping anchor to stabilize a drifting vessel. I dressed in warm clothes to protect me from the wind and the damp, cold air. Ambling down the three flights of stairs, I met the empty lobby. I stood outside the front door and surveyed the intersection as if I were trying to find the familiar. This time I had no direction. Which way was I supposed to go? I’d always had a direction when I took my walks, but now I had no plan. Ambling outside in the middle of the afternoon felt odd as I walked east toward the water, as if I had a destination in mind and I was late getting there. I eventually reached the end, the lake. I remembered how the sight of water or being near it brought an unconscious calm to my anxious body. Water was always an attraction for me, whether sitting poolside in my younger years feeling the sun’s relaxing effect or walking parallel to Lake Michigan’s shore. But now Lake Michigan didn’t even look friendly. The high winds made the waves billow and crest until they crashed into the mountainous boulders stacked in an outline. I had been defeated, feeling shattered and limp, just like waves crashing against rocks.

  I didn’t want to be outside anymore; I didn’t belong. I didn’t belong in a world where everyone else was working, going to school, or had things to do. I didn’t have anything like that to occupy my day; I wasn’t busy. I could not find anything to connect to, to find th
e comfort and safety that is home. I returned to my apartment and collapsed on my bed, staring at the ceiling as if I would find the answer, my guidance, written on it. I squinted to find writing above, but the only thing I found were cracks, some bigger than others, two cobwebs, and mismatched colors of paint. I saw my reflection in the ceiling, the cracks, the mismatches, the old and worn. I wasn’t together in full picture.

  I rolled over to look at the clock not knowing how long I was idle. Five thirty. I got up to flip on the local TV news. They were calling it Black Monday, a stock market crash that day. Just more drama to add to getting fired, seeing Maria’s photo—now the stock market crashing. Could it have gotten any worse? I had no one to talk with except the voices in my head. And then I started to laugh about the ridiculous way the termination had been carried out. My laughter turned to relief because I understood I’d been fired from this job for a reason. I had been stuck in Traffic for three years, wishing, praying to discover a way out, a way up to a better place. My wish had come true, just not exactly the way I had hoped—but I trusted it was the best way. And now I was free.

  Yes, my college professor had been right. I did have what it took to be successful. I had gotten my first job out of college at a prestigious ad agency. I’d also been fired by that agency, an agency my school peers could only dream of, because I wanted to advance in my career and continue to be successful, and I could only do that by leaving the agency. Getting fired enabled me to move forward in search of my place to be.

  I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. I’d done my best. God didn’t let anything bad happen to me.

  The unemployed fall months bled into winter days and into the holidays, where I found no cheer. I couldn’t succumb to the festivities. My mood matched the bleakness of the gray skies, and my internal temperatures ran as cold as the outside. I was tired. I sold my bike, deferred my student loans, and placed my Garcia Spanish guitar in impeccable condition on consignment. My unemployment insurance just covered my rent and expenses. I was going through my savings. I didn’t want to live like this anymore.