by Tricia Dower
I’m stunned again at his ability to move me.
Four days later, heart in throat, she speaks to the vice president of Personnel. Takes a chance and finds him in his office with the door open. He’s reading, his hunched shoulders in their black jacket looking a little crow-like. She raps gently on the doorframe, says, “Mr. Gunderson?”
He glances up with a panicky how’d-you-get-past-my-secretary look. “Yes?”
“I’d like to ask you a question if that’s all right.”
He frowns for just a second then stands. She realizes she’s seen him before. In the cafeteria, eating alone. He’s surprisingly tall and gray. He gestures for her to enter. “Come in.”
It’s her first time in an LP office with walls to the ceiling. This one is wood-paneled with a huge desk, a bookcase behind it, a tweed couch and two upholstered chairs. The air in it smells stale. Jacob Gunderson is a smoker. He says, “Have we met?”
“No. I’m Lin Brunson. I joined Policy Service five months ago.”
He smiles. “Ah, welcome Miss or is it Mrs. Brunson?”
“Mrs.”
“I hope we’re treating you well.” He glances at his watch. “I have a meeting soon but I’ll try to answer your question if it’s a quick one.”
“Well, the question’s quick.” Her voice wobbles and her stomach flutters. Who is she to be asking this guy in this intimidating office anything? “I read the announcement of the new assistant VPs and wondered why there aren’t any women officers.”
The smile leaves his face and his shoulders sag. He comes around his desk and gestures toward the couch and chairs. She takes one of the chairs. He sits on the couch, turns toward her with the expression Ron gets when he feels he must explain something to her. “Officer titles are assigned to positions,” he says, “not individuals. The board determined the regional sales jobs needed to be officer positions to have more clout with agents. That’s the reason for those appointments.” He leans forward, an earnest squint in his eyes. “Does that make sense?”
“I guess, but I’m still wondering why there aren’t any women in those positions.”
He sits back against the couch and crosses his legs. “Well, they may not be interested in them. Officer positions generally call for some evening and weekend work. That’s hard for married women, especially those with children. Do you have children, Mrs. Brunson?”
She smiles from that warm spot when she thinks about Tavis. “A son. He’s four.”
“Ah, so you probably know what I mean.”
She nods. “If a woman were interested and could manage one of those positions, would LP allow her to take it?” She’s thinking of Karin, unencumbered by husband and children.
He sits up as though someone has pushed him from behind. “Of course we would! All positions are open to women.”
“Oh, that’s good to hear. Are job openings posted somewhere so anyone can apply?”
He gives her a fatherly smile. “Goodness no. People might get upset if they were turned down. Far better we approach qualified prospects privately.”
She smiles back. “Personally, I think adults can handle a little rejection.”
He purses his lips and shrugs. She fears she’s tested his patience. She stands, says, “I should let you go. Just one more question if you don’t mind. How can a woman prepare herself to be a qualified prospect?”
He stands, too, relief on his face. “Training and education opportunities are spelled out in a binder in each vice president’s office.” He gives her a big false-teeth smile. “Are you interested in a particular position?”
“No, I’m just interested in fairness. Thank you for your time.” She holds out her hand.
He takes it. “You’re welcome. Come back if you have more questions. Make an appointment next time.”
That night on the phone Angel laughs when Lin tells her she can’t imagine why Mr. Gunderson would want to spend any more time with her, a nobody, especially since she told him she had one question and more just sailed out of her mouth. “I bet he almost had a stroke,” Angel says. “He’s afraid you’ll file a complaint with the government.”
“What for?”
“Discrimination. They don’t post jobs because they don’t want women finding out how much men get paid. The best place for a woman is in sales. I get the same commission rate as the men.” She pauses. “At least I think so. Shoot, now you’ve got me wondering.”
46
LP women tend to be typists, keypunchers, clerks and secretaries. The only exceptions are Lin’s boss Karin, Lois in Personnel, Astrid “the Warden” in Actuarial and a programmer in Data Processing. The typists are lowest in the hierarchy of the Unclean and give others a false sense of superiority. Lin can’t see any of them asking to see a VP’s binder.
She tests her own courage with Brenda Appleby, secretary to the vice president in charge of the entire sixth floor. That includes Lin’s unit and row upon row of people with their heads down, churning out policies. Brenda and her mountainous red hair sit at the privileged and isolated desk outside the VP’s office. Employees aren’t supposed to chat with each other except at break, but on her way back from the ladies’ one day Lin walks up to Brenda’s desk as though she has every right. Shadows move through the frosted glass panes on either side of the VP’s closed door. Brenda squints up from an appointment book. Her perfume recalls the gardenias Ron pinned on Lin’s coat after their wedding, their fragile petals soon edged in brown. Lin introduces herself and says “I understand there’s a binder in Mr. Peterson’s office with a section about training and development. I’d like to see that section.”
In a la-di-da voice, Brenda asks “to whom” Lin reports. It takes a few seconds for Karin Hagen’s name to register with her. Once it does, she says, “She’ll have to request it for you.”
Lin nabs a few minutes in Karin’s glass bubble of an office, tells her about her encounters with Jacob Gunderson and Brenda Appleby. Karin says, “I wondered if you’d take Wendy’s dare. Why did you?”
Lin considers her answer as a pigeon lights on the skinny ledge outside the office window. “When I was a kid, my father said there were some things I wasn’t meant to know. I didn’t like that then and I don’t like hearing it now.”
The pigeon pecks on the glass with his sharp beak. Karin taps back and the bird wheels out over the street below. “LP isn’t a democracy,” she says. “If you think it’s different elsewhere, forget it. Everybody up the line decides what anybody below gets to know. Take Oscar the Grouch.” She means the dumb terminal out on the floor, a monitor that does little else than display names, policy values and codes. The Girls nicknamed it for its green face and prickly nature. “Lois and I are the only ones in this unit authorized to use it. There’s private stuff in there about policyholders.”
“I’m okay with that,” Lin says, “but Mr. Gunderson implied anybody could look at the binder. I’m trying to find out if that’s true.”
Karin leans back in her chair. “I get what you’re saying about making the info available to everybody but I felt touched by magic when they tapped me out of the blue for supervisory training. To realize somebody had noticed how special I was.” She reddens and laughs. “Anyway, why do you care if you’re going to leave in another six months?”
Lin’s not ready to say she might stick around. “It’s not just for my sake. Have you seen that binder?”
Karin purses her lips. “Nope.”
Next day she calls Lin into her office and closes the door. “Brenda wouldn’t give it to me either, told me I had to ask my manager. So I trotted into Jack’s office and asked if training and development programs were described somewhere, said I was just curious. Jack said if they are he hasn’t seen it. Maybe Gunderson was snowing you.”
Lin makes an appointment with Jacob Gunderson. She tells him she’s been unable to see her VP's binder. He
says, “Oh, you do surprise me.” His secretary photocopies the relevant pages. Lin reads them on the bus on the way home, eager at first, then puzzled. Except for the self-study courses she’s taking, there’s nothing for the middling employee. Support is generous, however, for actuaries, accountants, lawyers, underwriters and those identified as having management potential. To whom much is given, it seems, even more will be given.
Lutheran Protection doesn’t have any female actuaries, accountants, lawyers or underwriters. She wonders how one could tell if a woman has management potential. Over the next few weeks, she takes her brown-bag lunch to the cafeteria and seeks out as many different women as she can to sit with, like a dog digging for bones without a clue what to do with them. She develops a patter: I’m in Policy Service, how about you? What do you do there? Any chance you went to St. Olaf? The last question ferrets out the colleges they did attend. She’s proud of how subtly she gets that out of them, could spy for the FBI if she didn’t detest them. She ducks into a stall in the ladies’ room after lunch each day and writes down what she’s heard so she won’t forget. Of the twenty-two women she meets, fourteen have undergrad degrees. None is aware of how she might get into a better paying position but each would like to, their dreams larger than their lives give them room to be. She’d love to tell them everything they can imagine is possible and nothing is out of their reach.
But it’s not in her power to promise them salvation.
Tues, Mar 6/73
Dreamed about one of the women I interviewed. Shirley Mack. We were racing around the cafeteria on roller skates. Her hair was stiff & pale as meringue as always & didn’t move an inch in the breeze we stirred up. She hung onto my waist & we were dizzy with joy. Man, was it fun! She was in my unconscious, I guess, after she sat down w/me at lunch yesterday and asked how she could to get a better job, like I’m some expert. She has a BA in history. Short of teaching, not much you can do w/that, it’s worse than psych. Her ex is 3 months behind on support & she’s late on her rent, brushes her teeth w/salt to save on toothpaste & doesn’t know how she’ll pay the electric bill. She’s tired of sharpening her VP’s pencils, balancing his checkbook, getting his coffee from the cart & doing his personal shopping like she’s his office wife. Tired of hearing the executive washroom is out of toilet paper. She knows a secretary who left to go work in a general agent’s office. She believes this would be a promotion but doesn’t know how to make it happen for herself. I said maybe your VP could help. She said she couldn’t picture him doing that. She looked at me w/such need & hope in her eyes, I wished I had some hocus-pocus. This morning I took $10 from the freezer money and slipped it into her in-tray w/an anonymous note saying it was for her & not a mistake.
47
An absurd amount of snow cancels her trip to Prairie Fire. Ron enjoys rocking and gunning his way through drifts but even he doesn’t want to chance getting stuck, so Tavis stays in Hopkins, the first weekend in nearly six months.
Snow nudges its way into every drainpipe and gutter, burying pathways and benches around the complex. Footprints disappear moments after they’re made. There’s no getting to the grocery store. Angel invites Lin and Ginger to her place at five. “Bring what you can for supper,” she says. “A towel, too, and wear something comfy for yoga.”
Ginger arrives in a zebra print blouse, gray tights and heavy makeup. Lin wears her black capris and a St. Olaf sweatshirt. Angel looks the best in black leggings and a billowy blouse as white as baby teeth. They talk all at once, as keyed up by this impromptu party as their kids who head out through the patio door in snowsuits. Angel spreads a tarp on the floor to catch their puddles when they come in. Lin stands at the door watching them for a while. The boys dive in and out of the deep snow like seals. They hoot, they holler. Jolie builds a tiny snow person. It seems to Lin as if the earth has been stunned into purity. She turns away to help Angel and Ginger set out the food. When security lights on poles around the complex stammer to life and cast shadows like pencil drawings on the snow, she slides the patio door open and summons the children. Her voice carries in the eerie hush, the natural holiness.
Angel has only four chairs, so the kids are first to sample the collective wealth: bread and butter, cubes of yellow cheese, tomato soup, baked beans, celery sticks, apple slices and Fig Newtons. Angel has moved her “guilt pile” (a stack of unpaid bills) and the carousel horse to a corner of the living room. The women spread their towels on the floor. Angel demonstrates poses to the background music of burps, snickers and talk of monsters. (“They’re scared of us,” Anthony assures the younger ones.) The three boys take off into Anthony and Matty’s room. Jolie sits alone for a while finishing her meal then asks if she can watch TV. Angel puts Carol Burnett on for her.
So much for yoga.
The women sit down to eat. Angel pours white wine and sets the bottle on the table. Lin says, “They’d have apoplexy at church if they saw me with this. Some people won’t even cook with vanilla because of the alcohol in it.”
Angel says, “Get out of here.”
Ginger says, “Vanilla has alcohol?”
Jolie says, “This show is boring,” and invades Anthony and Matty’s room.
Before long Tavis emerges, complaining that Jolie says they have to play Wedding and she won’t let him be the husband and now Anthony doesn’t even want to play. Ginger says, “She can be bossy.” She goes to the bedroom door and says, “Let Tavis be the groom.” Jolie runs out and flops on Angel’s loveseat, wailing.
Ginger sits back down at the table. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t get her to stop licking her lips. It makes her mouth sore and ugly. And she bursts into tears if anybody looks at her cross-eyed. Irene says it’s manipulative, whatever that means, that she does it to get away with being a brat.”
“Irene said brat?” Angel says.
“No, but that’s what she meant, right?”
“Sounds like anxiety,” Lin says. “Natural enough when parents separate.”
“Is it ever,” Angel says and launches into tales Lin has heard before. Angel and Ginger play Delinquent Husband for a while, Angel filling Ginger in on Dickhead’s disappearing act, Ginger trotting out Sonny’s cheating heart. Angel pours more wine. Lin has zilch to contribute to the moan-fest—Ron isn’t the least bit delinquent. Angel and Ginger move on to talking about their first time. Lin considers trying to turn the assault into a funny story but they might pity her and she’d look as pathetic as Ginger whose wide eyes are swimming with self-pity. “Maureen knew Sonny was my man,” she’s saying. “Him and me were Class Couple.”
Angel hugs her. “Before long you’ll be looking at that old life from far away. You’ll be a changed person.”
Ginger blows her nose. “I won’t be like her. Screwing a married man is just wrong.”
Angel says, “I could easily be a nun, do nothing but meditate.”
Lin says, “What about Charles?” She met him when he visited for Thanksgiving. He’s at least twenty years older than Angel. Tall. Balding. A stutterer, painful to listen to.
“Oof, strictly platonic.”
Ginger says, “Who’s Charles?”
“A man I’ve known since I was eight. He likes to take care of me.”
“I could use one of those,” Ginger says.
Jolie is asleep, sprawled on the couch like something the tide left behind, and the boys have gone quiet. Angel investigates, reports that Matty and Tavis have nodded off on Matty’s bed and Anthony is alphabetizing his baseball cards. She pours the last of the wine and pretends to wring the bottle’s neck.
Ginger says, “Uncle Fran gave me a bottle from the restaurant. Be right back.”
Angel and Lin start on the dishes. Lin read of a study that concluded married women have superficial relationships, don’t confide in each other about real problems because they’re afraid to look insecure, afraid to be disloyal to their husbands.
How would it be, living all the time in a husband-free world, helping each other over rough patches, not being afraid?
Ginger returns smelling of smoke, carrying a bottle and a heavy book with a stark white cover. She opens and pours the wine, ruby and sweet as communion grape juice. “The doctor gave me Valium after Sonny left,” she says. “Wine is better.” The book is The Joy of Sex, a Gourmet Guide to Love Making. Angel snickers at the title. Ginger sets it in the middle of the table and fans the pages, past drawings of a naked man and woman doing lurid things to each other. Lin feels her face blush, says, “Gross.”
Ginger says, “Yeah. She didn’t shave her pits.”
Other than hairy armpits, the woman is nice-looking, no stretch marks. The man is Neanderthal-like with dark, tangled hair, a full drooping mustache and beard.
Angel flips to the table of contents and laughs. “Starters, main courses, sauces and pickles? What, no desserts? Where’d you get this?”
“Mom manages a motel in Hibbing for chumps who want to see the world’s biggest open pit iron mine, the Grand Canyon of ugly holes in the ground. They come to see where Bob Dylan lived, too. Jolie and I moved into a kitchenette there when me and Sonny broke up. Mom paid me to clean rooms. You wouldn’t believe how many people don’t flush the toilet and leave crotch hair in the tub, used rubbers in the bed. Somebody left this book a month or so before we moved. I didn’t tell Mom I found it.”
Angel turns the pages, a rapt expression on her face. “The drawings are actually well done. Look at the detail.”
Ginger says, “Yeah, even hair on his balls.”
“The color illustrations are pretty enough to frame,” Angel says, “although I suppose you’d have to hang them in a closet.”
