What Doesn't Kill You

by Virginia DeBerry

  From my car I could see Olivia sitting on the porch in her pajamas, head propped against her rocker. The newspaper had slid down her legs. A breeze tinkled the wind chimes and had blown some pages against the railing. I remember thinking, Wonder if she still snores? I’d give her grief about that. It all looked so normal, but then I got closer, and I realized she wasn’t breathing. That couldn’t be. We’d said our good nights the day before. She was excited about going to get her teeth whitened. “So I look young and perky. All right, middle-aged and perky,” she told me. I said I’d be sure to wear my shades. They were on my desk, so I could pop them on when she walked in, but right at that moment I had to grab hold of myself, because I had to do something to make this go away. I was trembling so bad the emergency dispatcher had trouble making out the address. And I’ve never felt more empty and helpless, waiting to hear the ambulance siren. I had my eyes closed, praying. I couldn’t look at her like that.

  They called it sudden cardiac death—that about summed it up. Her heart was broken and it stopped. You’d never have known it to look at her, but I knew how sad she was that Hillary had become so distant. I’m no doctor, but that’s what I think wore her down. Olivia had two grandsons she saw only on state occasions. I watched how she was with Amber, so I know she had mounds of love stored up to give them. But confidences shared with an assistant amount to what? Part of my job description? Certainly not the basis for an official diagnosis. Nobody was interested in my theory anyway, but you’ll never convince me otherwise.

  I went through the funeral in a hazy limbo. She was still so young, not that much ahead of me, really, although I never thought of her as an age. Olivia was never big on birthdays anyhow. “Why celebrate one day? Rejoice for them all,” she used to say. Hillary acted like she barely knew me, didn’t introduce me to her family. So after all the prayers and eulogies, I drove Amber back to her dorm room. She was pretty shook up and she talked nonstop about things I didn’t even think she remembered. Then she hugged me, hard, before she left the car, told me she loved me. I hadn’t heard that much since she entered her teens, and I sure needed it that day.

  After that I went home and lit some ginger-almond candles. The smell reminded me of the loft and the first day we met. I didn’t know what to call Olivia. My employer? My friend? A little of both, I guess. I’d probably spent more time with her than with anybody else in my life, and my every days would never be the same.

  Olivia was barely in the ground when Hillary started entertaining offers to buy Markson & Daughter. How could she just ditch a company her mother built from scratch all around her? She was the damn inspiration. She saw what we went through. I mean, if it had been left to me…Let me not even start. It was Markson & Daughter, not Markson & Tee, so it was hers to sell. She could take the money, add a wing to the castle, buy a ladder for social climbing. Hillary wasn’t even interested in her mother’s personal things. She told me to crate the ones in the office and ship them. Why? So she could stick them in her royal attic? I took the framed job posting home. That was ours.

  Then I was a lame duck—executive assistant to the dead president. That made me what? In the way? There was no one there who understood how far we’d come. And who was we? I was on my own and it was time to jockey for position in a race I never expected.

  Didier Lowe, Olivia’s senior VP for operations, became interim president. When he joined Markson it was a big deal—a coup, they called it in Cosmetics News, since he came over from a bigger company and he was supposed to be some kind of boy wonder. I didn’t like him from day one, with his black patent hair slicked down over his little pea head, his great big superiority complex and his signature black suede loafers, no socks, even in January. He wore them with everything: suits, jeans, probably his pajamas. I was through when he sent the memo requesting that staff call him Monsieur Lowe, so we spoke as little as I could arrange. The feeling was obviously mutual since almost immediately he had HR tell me I’d be moving to another office to make way for Monsieur and his assistant. So with my computer, the pen mug Olivia handed me that first day and Rapunzel, I moved downstairs to Marketing. I think they had an empty office. I answered to the marketing VP—I think they flipped a coin and she lost. Anyway, she made up projects for me, like reading entries in the annual high school essay contest. I proposed compiling a corporate history. No one had been there long enough to know it all but me. I’m not sure she got what they’d use it for, but she approved. At least I’d be out of her hair for a while. It would be my last gift to Olivia for all she did for me. Didier would probably use it as an executive doorstop.

  Around the time Amber got engaged, Markson & Daughter became a subsidiary of a mammoth cosmetics conglomerate traded on the New York Stock Exchange—so much for homegrown. New rumors spread daily, but not much changed for a while. Then the pinstriped vultures from the home planet started touring the offices, interviewing various people. Nobody said boo to me, which should have been a clue, but I was happily engrossed in wedding plans.

  Then I got a memo from human resources asking me to schedule an interview. Do you know they had the nerve to make me reapply for a job? That’s what it amounted to. The woman who interviewed me looked about Amber’s age, and she was definitely wearing a fragrance from one of the other subsidiaries. It made my eyes water. She assured me it was standard procedure to reevaluate employees when they were unifying the workforce. Oh, that made me feel a lot better. I wanted to get up and tell her this company wouldn’t exist without me, but I tried to keep my cool, act like a dignified professional. She flipped through my file, asked if the associate’s degree was the only one I held. I wanted to say that what I did for this company had nothing to do with degrees. It was about ingenuity, persistence, and dedication, but I answered, “Yes.” I explained that I was Olivia Markson’s first employee. She looked underwhelmed. Then it was over.

  Nothing happened for a month and a half. We had Amber’s shower, the final fittings. Then it was Friday morning, my last workday before the big event and I was summoned to HR again, this time by the director. As soon as I sat down, he started this speech about appreciating my loyal service, eliminating redundancy, blah, blah, blah. He stared directly in my eyes like he was trying to hypnotize me. It sounded like he was speaking under water, but I caught the upshot. “You’re firing me.” He said some stupidness about outplacement and I snapped, “Will I have a job with this company after my vacation?” He sputtered and tried to find a delicate way to say no, but that was the answer. He babbled about papers to sign, a separation package, and not removing company property, but before he was done I walked out—

  —and straight into my escort, a wide-bodied guy in a blue blazer who would accompany me to my office and out of the building. I was outraged. Olivia Markson herself left me in her apartment alone the very first day she met me, and this goon was supposed to make sure I didn’t steal anything?! Like there was anything I wanted besides my job—but that ship had sailed.

  Nobody looked at me as I walked through the halls, Bulldog trailing behind me. When I got to my office, I laid my head on the desk. It was too heavy to hold and I was getting a migraine trying not to cry. Then Bulldog says, “Do you need a box for your things?” which I guess is corporate speak for hurry up and get the hell out. I raised up and glared at him and he shut up and stepped back. Then I looked around. What was there to take, really? I dumped the pens on my desk and put the mug Olivia had made in my purse. Then I looked at Rapunzel and remembered that tiny white plastic pot, and Olivia repotting it, and the twenty-five years…next thing I knew, I had snatched it and started feeding forty feet of philodendron to the shredder. The loud buzzing and grinding—that’s exactly how I felt, what I wanted to do with what they had made of Olivia’s company. And oh, did I happen to say that while that was going on I accidentally on purpose shredded the neatly arranged and carefully annotated index cards I had been using to organize the Markson corporate history? It was so easy—they were right in my top desk dra
wer, exactly where I’d left them before my trip to the guillotine. If they wanted to know how it all started, let them come ask me.

  The flower pot fell and dumped dirt and leaves all over my shoes, the carpet. Then Bulldog got tense. “Hey, what are you doing?” I shot back, “What does it look like I’m doing?”—like that made some sense. He kept eyeing me like he wanted to make me stop but couldn’t figure out how. I didn’t stop until I got that high-pitched whine and the shredder teeth clogged.

  By now people had gathered around my door to see what the commotion was. I pulled off the shredder lid and started tossing the green bits up in the air like confetti. I had been spending money on Amber’s wedding like confetti and I kept seeing the gown, the flowers, the limo and all the bills—and me with no job. “Bye-bye!” I said and the leaves were all in my hair and I know I looked like a crazy woman, but at that moment I was. Then Bulldog had had enough. He snatched my purse and my arm and dragged me out to the applause of my coworkers.

  And I decided right then that nobody needed to know about this until after the wedding.

  3

  I didn’t need advice and I was not collecting pity.

  So there I was, seventeen days into my little hiatus, as I called my outplacement—I hate that word. Anyway, I was having myself a personal ball, making discoveries every day. Like how great it feels pouring a second cup of coffee and ignoring the traffic report. And how civilized the supermarket is on Tuesday afternoons—not like the Friday night crash-cart derby. Who knew the Super Shop carried canned eel? I’m still not sure what you do with it. Eel salad? I don’t think so, but in all my years of grabbing a four-pack of Albacore so I could cross it off my list and race to the salad dressing, I never noticed it. I learned the names of the people at the dry cleaner, took advantage of Monday discounts at the car wash. I was seriously getting into life in the leisure class.

  So this one morning I hit the drugstore to pick up vitamins, which I take religiously, and my monthly supply of feminine necessities, because that visitor was due the next day. Another advantage of the day shift—no teenage boys on the cash register so we don’t have to pretend we’re not embarrassed. Then, around eleven, I dropped in at Ten & Ten, my nail salon—they cost a little more, but they use the best products, not that no-name crap some places try to pass off on you. I pulled into the space right in front, which never happened during my standing Thursdays at seven. The midday dress code featured jeans and sweats, not business suits with twelve-hour wrinkles, the uniform of the after-work crowd. I could actually hear the smooth jazz playing above the massaging whirlpool pedicure chairs, and I could take my time picking a polish without somebody wrestling me for the Peek-a-Boo Pink. Not that my color changed a lot from week to week, but I like to look. I keep it simple—no tips, wraps, jewels, rainbows or butterflies, thank you very much. I have nice hands, like my mother’s, no need for overkill.

  So I’m cuticle deep in warm moisturizing cream, eyes closed and really looking forward to the hand massage, when I’m snatched out of my peaceful trance. “Mom, how come you’re not at work?” Uh-oh, snagged by my own daughter, sounding just like me. And I felt like I was playing hooky since I hadn’t bothered telling her I’d been kicked to the curb by my employer. Excuse me—former employer. I wasn’t too worried about her trying to catch up with me on the job. Everybody who knows me knows I do not like email. It’s for work, period. Don’t send me forty-two forwards of the same joke that wasn’t funny last week, because I will delete them. And I’ve got better things to do with my spare time than follow the blinking cursor, so I don’t have a computer at home. If you want to tell me something, call me—at home, not at work, which obviously doesn’t matter anymore. And don’t call on my cell phone because it’s probably not turned on. The charm of having my purse ring is highly overrated. And don’t get me started on the losers who aren’t content to annoy everyone around them with a chorus of “When the Saints Go Marching In” every time their phone rings. After that they have to share a detailed description of little Timmy’s first time going to the potty by himself or a blow-by-blow account of Jane’s divorce-court nightmare with everybody who’s in earshot.

  From the time Amber was little I told her jobs were for work, not for personal business. I mean, she could always call me when she needed to, but we never spent a whole lot of phone time. And once she got her own job she still followed that rule. We spoke in the evening, usually on her way home, because unlike me, her cell was always on. Or when she was trying to cook dinner for J.J., and she’d ask me how to tell when a steak is medium rare, or if you can substitute skim milk and butter for cream, bless her heart. They had come back from their honeymoon all glowy and drunk with love. How could I throw cold water on their wedded bliss with my rotten news? Life would do that soon enough.

  Besides, I wasn’t broke. No need for a news flash. Those people at Markson had sent me some kind of mail, but I tossed it in the fruit bowl with the pears I wasn’t eating. Whatever they had to say could wait until I was ready to hear it because the time for cranberry sauce and cornbread stuffing was right around the corner and I’d already been to the Trim-a-Tree shop at the mall to pick up a few things for Amber’s first Christmas on her own. Nobody changed jobs before the holiday bonus checks went out, and thinking about that was a booster shot to my pissed-offedness since they were going to get away without giving me one. Hell, my severance agreement—which sounded to me like they were planning to slice off my right arm, which is a lot like how it felt—was supposed to give me one week’s pay for every year I worked. Except the cheap fothermuckers only counted the years after Olivia incorporated. You know that’s just wrong. I was there before any of them. That should count for something. Anyway, I wasn’t about to let that nonsense ruin my holidays. I’d been working since I was nineteen, and I deserved time to enjoy my freedom while I had it. As a matter of fact, I went ahead and paid for the cruise I was planning to take with the Live Five in the spring. Diane and Marie would be celebrating one of those birthdays with a zero in it and I had no intention of missing the fun. I booked my own cabin, because this was not camp—I was not sharing a bunk. And I got one with a balcony because, why take a cruise if you can’t see the ocean? When I took a new job, they would just have to understand I had a prior commitment and needed that week off.

  In any case, Amber didn’t need to know about my change in job status until I started looking for a new one.

  Actually, besides Gerald, nobody knew. I definitely hadn’t told my parents. They were all settled into their active adult community—I think that’s what the brochure called it. There was no point worrying them. I also didn’t need my mother talking about, “I knew from the beginning that woman wouldn’t treat you right.” Like Olivia died just to mess with me. And after twenty-five years, I was not convening a committee of friends to discuss what I should do and what so-and-so’s hairdresser’s daughter did when she got canned. I didn’t need advice and I was not collecting pity.

  The day the axe fell I called Gerald, and after I finished picking plant flakes out of my hair he took me to lunch. He didn’t say much, just that it was their loss. Like I didn’t know that already? But he listened to me rant, which is really all I needed. What else could I expect him to do? It was kind of nice, seeing him in the afternoon. That didn’t happen too often. Afterwards I went home and pulled myself together for the surprise bridal shower Amber’s coworkers were throwing that evening, because those corporate monkeys were not about to stop our show.

  Anyway, I could feel Amber waiting for an answer, so I opened my eyes real slow and said, “I might ask you the same question,” to buy myself a few seconds to get my story straight. She presented exhibit A—her left hand. “Nail emergency.” I could see the broken tip on her index finger and I knew she could not tolerate any flaw on the newly banded hand. The child had been obsessed with her nails since she was eleven and asked for a manicure for her birthday. I thought it was cute and innocent enough considering som
e of the CDs she’d been asking for. Clearly, she was transformed by the experience, because the next thing I knew the girl was saving her allowance to get her nails done once a month. Since then I know she’s spent a fortune on tips, wraps and whatever else would strengthen the short, soft nails she obviously got from her father’s people.

  Amber put her hands on her hips, talking about, “I’m on lunch. Your turn.”

  I told her I was having a mental-health day. It wasn’t a lie—not exactly. Then she told me I deserved it, kissed me on top of my head, like she was the parent. I felt relieved—like when you were a kid and you got away with something. But I was so wound up I barely even remember the hand massage.

  Afterwards I met my fellow Markson outcast, Julie, for lunch, which wasn’t exactly relaxing either. She spent most of the time chugging Chardonnay and moaning about how hard it was going to be to find a job. Unlike her usual sunny self, Julie was sounding the alarm before the first flame, but I wasn’t going for it. She had hardly looked yet. Besides, I knew I was good at what I did. I would be an asset to anybody who hired me. Then Julie couldn’t believe I hadn’t applied for unemployment. So I didn’t tell her I hadn’t gone for my outplacement counseling session either. “After all those years and the way they treated us…” We had stopped using the M word. It was all “us” against “them” and Julie thought they should pay. “They owe us.” She had already gotten her first few checks and was looking forward to her twenty-six weeks of assistance—said it would keep her in wine, which was obvious, and out of trouble, which was not. Julie felt we were entitled, but I was not interested in taking a number and singing the blues in exchange for a handout. If I didn’t need one when Amber and I were first on our own, I surely didn’t need one now.