Under the Birch Tree

by Nancy Chadwick

  One night I couldn’t get out of a stupor. I saw my apartment like a dark box with expansive, thick cloudy windows obscuring the outside. My sense of place was shattered as I sat surrounded by dark heaviness exuded by the four cement walls, their boundaries overpowering my desire for strength. I sat on the threadbare shag carpet feeling drafty cold air battling heat from the vents that pushed out plumes of warmth. The dim light and cold pulled me into gray nondescript existence. I felt as if some energy force had taken hold of me, and I was resisting, trying to match the force’s strength with my own. I held my breath, twirling in fear and anticipation of when this would be over. I had to ride out the storm and stay grounded, balanced, and headed in a direction only I would determine.

  I faced a battle of control. On the one hand, I knew that getting fired and losing direction had been out of my control; on the other, I wanted to stand up, be in control, and direct my own course. The confrontation became too much; I hurt, physically and mentally. Was I in a breakdown or depressive state?

  I thought of Len. He had helped me through those difficult times during my Burnett days by being a good listener. Whether it was a night out to a city concert, an Italian dinner, or an invite to his house, he’d tried to comfort me, to distract me from my bouts of depression and frustration from feeling lost, unconnected, and not in a good place. But reaching out to him was a temporary distraction; my discomfort and periodic depressions remained.

  The next Saturday he called. Expecting our talk to be about me, I became uncomfortable when the conversation turned to being about us. His interest in me was clearly more than being just a good friend.

  “I know you’re struggling. I can see it, and I sure can hear it in your voice. But I’m here.”

  “I know you are, and I’m glad you are.”

  “And sometimes I get the feeling you don’t want me here, like you’ve put up a wall and I can only get so far before it goes up.”

  “I don’t know what to say. I’m focused on getting a job and finding a good place, to be happy that …”

  “You wouldn’t have to struggle. You could have anything you need.”

  I knew what he was really saying. He was offering to become a couple. I didn’t want to face this discussion; I had too much on my mind.

  “I … can’t … do that. I have to be on my own, not dependent. I have to work, to support myself. It’s what I need to do …” I thought I had hurt his feelings. How would I have felt if someone told me that? Rejected. I wanted to remain as we were—friends. But I would understand if he couldn’t.

  “Okay, it’s okay.

  I was relieved at his response. This conversation was a good thing. We could still remain as we were.

  My job was looking for a job. My notebook, a combination journal, call list, and tracking system, was my path, my map to moving forward. I remember how Dad used this practice to find a new job after he got let go from Admiral while Tim and I were kids in the Carlisle house. He looked for consulting jobs in the newspaper, meticulously cutting executive ads from the “help wanted” pages of the Chicago Tribune and keeping a log as he sent out his résumés and made phone calls. I was reminded that he was still a part of me, that we shared similar ways of going about solving a problem or meeting a challenge—methodical and plotted. Drawing a connection to Dad then, despite my years of believing in our lack of connection, infused me with strength, as if he had just placed his hand on my shoulder in guidance. Just when I dismissed really knowing him, I saw him through our similarities.

  I believed I would get closer to getting a job with every résumé mail drop. I made phone calls strategically during the day, asked for informational interviews, and knew to never leave one without getting another contact name. I read everything I could get my hands on, believing that with each Adweek article I read and every person I talked to, I would get that much closer to retrieving my sense of belonging and connecting. My diligence and determination just had to pay off.

  On a whim and a need for distraction, I drove into the city on a Friday night to see Pat perform. We hadn’t spoken or seen each other for many months. I didn’t want him to know I was there, but I needed to connect to something I associated with good feelings. After the show, I saw Pat, and then I saw Christine next to him. She was an actress, blonde, petite and young, with a fresh innocence I knew Pat would be attracted to. We locked eyes, studying each other as if we were having a conversation but not saying anything. Christine’s head bounced from Pat’s face to mine as if she were trying to read the confidential discussion. Pat smiled as he grabbed my hands, leaned in, and kissed me on the cheek. I looked at Christine. Her eyebrows were raised above her wide-eyed expression.

  “How are you doing? You all right? I’m really glad to see you,” Pat whispered in my ear. I didn’t have words to return, but I did have a concentrated look at him invoking memories, grasping my imagination, and leading me into unreality. When Christine excused herself, Pat drew me closer into a dark corner of the bar. “If you ever need money, I could help you out,” he said.

  “Thanks, I appreciate it. I’ll be just fine. Things will work out soon.”

  I stayed at the nightclub to talk with the other actors. The few hours of diversion enabled me to travel back to happier times.

  When the conversations waned, I walked to the door, turned, and looked over my shoulder to see something I had seen many times before. Pat was standing next to four actor friends seated at the bar, where they were in their element. The one standing tall was special. And I remembered the scene and carried it with me as I walked away.

  At least I got it all over with at the same time, breaking up, getting fired, depression, not being with Pat. These experiences made impressions, some never forgotten, others faded enough to remember the circumstances of their birth but not their markings. Healing from my experiences with these men and the failure at my job provided a blanket that covered me with an ability to cope. I gained the ability to recognize and celebrate when the smallest of good things were upon me. I reconnected with gratitude, returning to a place of appreciation, a place from which I had strayed but had not forgotten.

  conviction

  I have always been a voracious reader, but I struggled to find time to read all I wanted. Unemployment gave me the time. I was a follower of columnist George Lazarus on advertising and marketing in the Chicago Tribune. George was going to do it for me. I was convinced he was going to give me in his column the name of an ad agency to contact. And he did. He wrote about a new, small agency that was in the process of completing broadcast commercials. I sent a letter to the owner of the agency and positioned myself as someone they needed. This opportunity was going to happen.

  My confidence soared when I got a phone call from the agency a week later to ask me to come in for an interview.

  After I talked with Tim, account director and agency partner, he escorted me to the owner’s front office, where Jan, the agency’s owner, sat at a table that was home to stacks of papers in no particular pile or order. As she shouted over the telephone, her frizzy, flyaway red hair matched her distressed look. Her blue eyes; pale, freckled face; and skinny, petite frame didn’t fool me. She spoke loudly and bluntly, in a voice that matched her hard edge. I anticipated a meeting that would be the opposite of the one I had with Tim after she ended her phone conversation.

  “Do you know anything about bills and estimates? Shouldn’t the bills reflect the amounts of the estimates? And just look how over budget this is. Who worked up this production?” Jan demanded. Her fist pounded the table to punctuate her questions.

  “Do you know how to reconcile bills, post production?”

  “Yes, I believe I could do it.”

  “Did you talk to Timmy?”

  “Yes, I did. I just came from his office.”

  “Do you have any production experience?”

  “No, not directly. My experience has been in trafficking of broadcast commercials … when the commercials are done, not while
in production.” Do you know who I am or why I’m here? Her questioning made me think I was there for a different reason.

  When I left her office, an exit I’m not sure she even noticed, I wondered if this was the right place for me.

  A couple of days later, Tim called. “We’d like to offer you the job.

  I accepted the offer.

  During the first months on the job, I didn’t know what I should be doing, but I’d learned from my previous experience that jumping in and taking control was crucial to keeping my account coordinator job. I was lucky to be there with an opportunity to get everything I could out of it. I smiled, thinking God didn’t let anything bad happen to me.

  After six months, I started taking on account management work for Tim. I was in control of my direction.

  When I stood in my office doorway, I was struck by something that had never occurred to me before. I’d never had an office, and now I had one that even had a window. I saw my large, glass-topped desk sitting on a black X-frame metal stand that looked like an oversized ironing board with two accompanying guest chairs. Is it all too much? Did I ask for something I wasn’t ready for? But then I reminded myself that my friendly coworkers and my small company contributed to filling my confidence that had emptied to mere drops.

  Jan’s assistant, Michele, was a bright spot at the agency. We laughed spontaneously because we believed no amount of assistance could help Jan, who was just one of those people who was always frantic, always late, and always yelling. We were the same age, with common interests in advertising and goals to be in a more advanced position than we were currently in. When I asked Michele one day, “What are you doing being an assistant to someone like Jan at an ad agency when you have a master’s degree?” The look on her face said it all. “I’m sorry, bad question, bad, bad question. Let’s just get some burgers for lunch, can we?” Our uncontrollable laughter broke the awkwardness of the moment, and a friendship was born.

  Michele and I followed each other’s progress in our careers. But it wasn’t all business. Sharing work experiences with a best friend made our challenges less difficult to manage. Our camaraderie eased our professional growing pains. A new best friend and a new job rounded out my optimistic outlook.

  I wanted to share my new-job news with Len and show him I had made it to that better place. I wanted him to see that I was no longer that sad, defeated person from the old Burnett days who couldn’t enjoy life.

  So I called him.

  “Hi, it’s me. It’s been a while. How are you? What’s going on with you these days?”

  “Working hard. Just got back from Italy from seeing the rellies.”

  “Oh, yes, I remember you’ve got a number of relatives over there. So, what’s new?”

  “Well, I’m getting married. And I’m sure damn happy about this.”

  The unexpected announcement drew silence from me. My heart raced, and my face flushed with emotion. He wasn’t my best friend anymore, and we had never been a couple—so why wouldn’t he marry? I was a fool to think he would be there every time I picked up the phone to pacify my neediness. I didn’t blame him for giving up his attention to me and moving on.

  My focus on a new job was reason to set aside my most valued friendship and accompanying emotions to be dealt with later. In my heart, I ached and mourned a broken connection. Intellectually, I knew I had to move on. And in retrospect I was ready to do so.

  Up to this time, I had known I could depend on Len for a listening ear, guidance, and laughter. Even though our communication had diminished over the months, I was reassured knowing he was there should I need him. Once denying his strength and courage and that it was solely up to me to find that within myself, I was now able to admit he was my emotional compass, that his words helped to point me in the right direction.

  It was time to leave my 1970s studio apartment in Evanston, a place that held captive jilted memories and a despondent life outlook. I was moving to Lakeview, on the north side of Chicago, to a more modern, chic, convertible studio. I welcomed the promise of four new walls and a safe place to make new memories and a new life.

  My apartment on Pine Grove was illuminated by an eastern view toward the lake. When I looked through winter skies to Lake Shore Drive, I saw bare tree limbs like hash marks against the gray canvas of water. In spring, those limbs popped abundant green from sprouting flimsy leaves, and the once-steely lake transformed to a carpet of deep blue and shimmering teal in summer. I recognized the life cycle of these trees. They were my connection, all the way from Carlisle Street. The birch trees confirmed I was in the right spot.

  The turning leaves lining Pine Grove marked the start of fall, signaling time for change, for evolving, winding down, hibernating for a while and storing energy. The start of spring foreshadowed summer days, which I usually spent alone. I ambled through my neighborhood streets and people-watched and became curious about what their lives were like, hoping mine one day would be the way theirs appeared. My eyes welled as a shiver came over me, and I suddenly felt cold on a sunny day. I turned the corner and headed east toward the lake with my eye on the beach. I stepped onto the still-cool sand at Oak Street Beach while keeping my focus on the distant horizon. All the regular beachgoers were there, the hardcore city slickers—the women with bikinis barely covering their already-tanned bodies accented with manicures and pedicures polished in bright red; the men’s bodies fit and slender and seemingly contradictory, strutting as they walked, shaking their shaggy sun-streaked hair as if they wanted to be seen but wearing dark sunglasses in an effort to be incognito. No one gave me a glance or a hello, so I headed south to the apartment that was my place.

  Anxiety and lack of connection wore me like an old overcoat. I thought of the imbalances in my life thus far, as I placed variables of home, job, and a special someone on a scale, eagerly trying to put them in balance. I recalled the inherent energy absorbed from the connections made in my youth, when I would walk my home’s foundation, planting footsteps and marking my neighborhood, and now I was doing the same in my mid-twenties, at the beach’s lakefront. And so I continued to walk. I had time to spend offering a meditational journey to clear my head and to diminish my troubles.

  I walked north to Belmont Harbor to see the boats, large and small, tinkering dockside, their bodies bobbing in the wind, and unsteady ripples of water stopping suddenly as they bumped into their berths. The harbor was a turning point for cars exiting the outer Lake Shore Drive as well as inline skaters, runners, bikers, and then me as well. I was curious about the lives of those who passed me and those I focused on in the distance. I wondered if the people sitting alone on the rocks lakeside were truly alone like me or just by themselves for a time. I turned around at Belmont, headed back north to Addison, then to Waveland Avenue, to the park, the golf course. The softball players over there; I bet they meet regularly at this time on Saturday. Those playing golf had something to do for a morning or a whole afternoon partnered with someone else. How do they spend their days, and is there anybody out there who is by themselves just like me? I was no longer content with being alone as I had once been long ago. Being alone now meant being lonely.

  I reached my apartment. I had traveled in a circle. Have I come full circle? My legs were tired, my mind was numb, and my lungs were filled with clean air. I believed this cleansing would give me strength to make it through one more day. And it did. God wasn’t going to let anything bad happen to me.

  When I received my first review at work, I got the customary raise, but when it came to the actual evaluation of my performance, it was all about what Tom, my account supervisor, didn’t say.

  “Yes, you’re doing well,” he started. He took a drag of his cigarette, tilting his dirty-blond buzz-cut head back, then blew smoke into the air. The air is going to fill up soon in this small office with no windows. I hope this is quick and to the point. “You’re highly organized, you’ve organized me and Tim well, the clients really like you, we let you work with them directl
y, and it has worked out well. I’m glad they can call you instead of going through me.” Yep, uh-huh. Good. Drag. Blow. Seat shift. “Tim has appreciated all your help and tries to keep you busy. You’ve been great in helping accounting to reconcile production and post-production estimates to the bills.” More seat shifting, more puffing, puffing away. “Keep up the good work.”

  He didn’t make comments, good or bad, about how I performed on specific tasks or whether I was meeting their expectations. I had expected a sharper critique of my performance. Though I welcomed the affirmation that I was doing well, I didn’t know where to go from there. Would I be given more account responsibility, since they thought I was succeeding in my current role? Later that week, I would ask for it.

  I was ready to move to account management. I had started at the agency as an account coordinator, a position where, among other duties, I kept track of administrative details. I remembered my Burnett days when I reasoned I would have to be at a smaller agency if I wanted to be in account management. I just had to ask for what I wanted.

  One morning, I stopped Tim in the hall.

  “Tim, I’d like to talk to you about something, if you have a few moments.”

  “Sure. Let’s go,” he said, directing me into his office. I smiled as my nervous jitters softened at the sight of him. He looked like a little boy sitting in his father’s chair, cushy brown leather enveloping his petite frame. His silence was my cue to start the conversation.

  “I’ve been here a year, working not only broadcast, but also some print and budgeting. I’ve been learning most aspects of account management. I’d like to move up to assistant account executive.”

  His pursed lips matched his raised eyebrows. “Well, Tom doesn’t need an assistant, but I do. I’ll need your help on Glass Works. We can bump you up. The folks at Miles will welcome you,” he said. He didn’t hesitate with his response.