The following morning was Monday. And what a Monday it turned out to be. A Monday like none I had ever lived before. A Monday that, had I been writing a novel, I wouldn’t have had the courage to put down in writing. Mondays like this one just don’t happen in real life.
It really began while I was getting dressed for work, my mother-in-law, on what was likely to be her last morning with us, downstairs making breakfast for Jacob and maybe for me. I was buttoning my shirt, looking at myself with dread in the mirror on the back of our closest door, and almost didn’t hear my phone buzzing on the dresser behind me.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Alan? This is Steve Anderson.”
Yes, it was. And he apologized for calling so early, but he wanted to catch me before I went into the office this morning. He wanted to offer me the position we had recently discussed, at a salary almost double what I was currently making.
“Alan? Are you there?”
I was lucky my unmade bed had been so close, or Steve might have heard my head thump against the bedroom floor.
“Yes, yes, I’m here, Steve. Can you please say that all again?”
He did. And this time I listened more carefully, making sure I heard every single word. He offered me the position. At a salary almost double what I was currently making. And then he went on with several other details regarding the offered benefits, the relocation assistance, the support for professional education activities, and the other executive perks.
“We want to make this easy for you, Alan. We’re convinced you’re the right person for this job, and we don’t want to give you any reason to say no.”
I was flummoxed, but knew I had to say something, so I slowly thanked Steve for that vote of confidence and for the offer while my brain started working overtime in a mostly futile attempt to parse the information it had so suddenly been given. I thought desperately that I should maybe tell him about my wife, our baby, and the hospital, but quickly decided against it.
“I want to put all of that in writing,” Steve was saying, “and give you time to review it and the employment contract in detail. Is it okay if I send that to the email you listed on your resume?”
“Yes,” I said, knowing that this was my personal and not my work email. “Yes. That would be great. Please do that, Steve. I look forward to reviewing it.”
“My number will be on the email, Alan. You call me at any time if you have any questions. I hope we can bring this to a quick and mutually beneficial conclusion.”
“You bet,” I said, and then Steve said goodbye, and then the line clicked off.
And there I sat, in my half buttoned shirt over pajama bottoms and bare feet, wondering if what just happened had actually happened.
I finished getting dressed and then went downstairs and fired up our home computer. I could hear Jacob helping Meredith in the kitchen while I sat patiently through its long boot cycle, forcing myself to wait until it was complete before opening up our email program. And there it was. Right at the top of the inbox. An email from “Anderson, Steve,” with the little paperclip icon that meant it included an attached file.
I opened both the email and the document, and they were what Steve had just promised -- the email a faithful recap of the numbers and benefits he had verbally described, and the attachment an eight-page employment contract with a bunch of legal paragraphs and a pair of lines at the very end -- one of them already containing Steve Anderson’s signature.
I was halfway through reading it when Meredith appeared behind my right shoulder.
“Are you working from home today? I thought you had to go to the office?” In the corner of my eye I could see the twinkling of the diamond ring on one of the fingers holding her coffee cup.
“I am. I mean, I was. I mean, look at this.”
She leaned in closer, her matching necklace falling forward and its pendant swinging free. “What is it?”
I hit the print button, suddenly realizing the advantage of having an attorney for a mother-in-law. I gave Meredith a quick summary of what had just happened, and asked if she would take a professional look at the contract, already knowing that I was in over my head with it. In a few minutes we were sitting at the dining room table -- Meredith slowly turning pages, Jacob eating grapes and Cherrios out of two different bowls, and me placing another phone call.
“Hi, honey,” I said when Jenny picked up. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m tired,” Jenny’s voice breathed into my ear. “How do you think I’m feeling, Alan?”
I told her to brace herself and then gave her the news.
“OH MY GOD! WHAT? ALAN! HOW MUCH DID YOU SAY?”
I think it was hearing Jenny’s reaction -- the shock and the surprise, and then the joy and the laughter -- that I for the first time began to realize that my long and painful ordeal was, in fact, about to come to an end. I’m glad I was already seated, because the realization made me initially dizzy. It was thrilling -- almost dangerously so -- and yet, there was still so much to think about, and to plan for.
“What do you think?” I said, tongue-in-cheek. “Should I accept?”
“My God, Alan! Of course you should accept. You need this. WE need this!”
“But it’s in Boston,” I said. “We’ll have to move to Boston, you know.”
“We knew that going in,” Jenny said. “We’ll do it. We’ll make it work.”
“What do you think, Meredith?” I asked, seeking her legal opinion rather than her blessing.
“I’m still reading,” she said, understanding me. “And this isn’t necessarily my area of expertise, but so far, I don’t see anything unreasonable here.”
I looked up at the clock and saw that I was already twenty minutes late for work. An idea then entered my head, an idea that was both wonderful and terrible at the same time. Wonderful in its potential. Terrible in its finality.
“Should I quit?” I said back into the phone.
“What?” Jenny said. “I didn’t hear you, honey.”
“Should I quit?” I asked again, this time more forcefully, willing the idea into existence, giving it the freedom it needed to live or die on its own. “This morning? Without even going into the office? Should I just call Mary and tell her I quit? That I’m done? That I’m never going back there again?”
God, I wanted the answer to be yes. I would’ve done practically anything in that moment to do exactly what I had just proposed -- not so much so I could tell Mary off, but primarily so I would never have to go into her office again. With everything that had happened in the last seventy-two hours, the idea of never having to return there was seductive.
But cooler heads would prevail -- primarily Jenny’s and Meredith’s. They discussed it -- me actually putting the call on speaker so that they could do so -- and they agreed that I should wait. A day, or two, or however long it took for the contract to be signed and countersigned and for the deal to be legally struck. Cutting one cord before securing the next was a risk, perhaps a small one, but a risk nonetheless, and probably not worth taking.
Except for the fact that I was drowning. And now, after the tantalizing prize of a life preserver had been dangled in front of me, the idea of returning willingly to the sinking ship, and of continuing to bail the murky water with my leaky bucket while the unsounded sea kept rising relentlessly around me, it was almost too much for me to bear.
I told Jenny that I would come and see her at the hospital after the work day was finished and then we said goodbye. Meredith went back to reading the contract and so I got Jacob out of his booster seat and took his bowls to the kitchen, soaking them in the sink with the handful of other dishes that Meredith had created. She had brewed a pot of coffee, and I poured myself a cup, sipping it slowly while I stood in the kitchen and waited for my mother-in-law to finish her review of the document that would, I hoped, chart the next major chapter in my life.
“Alan?” she said eventually, calling me back to the dining room, sitting me down, and walking me page by page through the contract. She was strictly business, adopting a tone that I had only seldom heard her use, perhaps while she was on the phone at a family gathering, talking to a client or an opposing counsel. She explained each clause to me, stressing the items that were clearly in my favor and those that were clearly protecting the interests of the organization hiring me, and she did it all in a neutral tone, simply an umpire calling balls and strikes. When she finished, she scooped the loose pages up off the table, tapped them together into a short, neat stack, and slid them across the table to me.
“It all sounds reasonable,” I said. “Am I missing something?”
She gave me a long look, her painted lips pursing with only the slightest flicker of discomfort.
“Again,” she said, carefully, “employment contracts are not my area of expertise. But, yes, to the degree that I can make an informed opinion, it appears to represent a fair agreement between the two parties.”
Her speech was stilted. I tried to look at her compassionately. “You don’t want us moving to Boston, do you, Meredith?”
She paused -- a long and quiet moment passing in what was normally a whirlwind of our house -- and then slowly shrugged her shoulders. “What I want should not be the prevailing interest in your decision, Alan. You’ve worked hard for the offer that this contract represents. I wouldn’t want you to walk away from it out of some perceived loyalty to my preferences.”
She was like a robot -- a robot lawyer, spewing nothing but legalese, assessments of mitigated risk, and sound advice. But she was also my mother-in-law, the woman who had raised the woman I loved, who had cried at our wedding, who had accepted me as a son into her aura of protection, who had doted on her grandson from a respectable distance, who had done everything in her power to love, to celebrate, to clear the way.
I looked back down at the contract. “I’m going to read it one more time,” I said.
“I think you should,” Meredith said, pushing herself up from the table. “I’ll go get Jacob ready. We’re going down to the park this morning.”
“Are you staying?” I asked her suddenly.
She nodded. “A few more days. If you think you need me, that is.”
I thanked her, told her we definitely needed her, and then I turned to the document. I read it all the way through -- first the section establishing the parties and the intent of the agreement, and then onto the clauses detailing the offered compensation and benefits, and through to those providing guarantees and protections from liability for the organization. And by the time I got to the closing clauses on jurisdiction and indemnification, I realized that I had made a decision.
I picked up my phone and called Steve Anderson. He was surprised to hear from me so soon and delighted to hear that I was accepting the offer. I would be signing the agreement as presented and returning it as soon as I got to the office and could scan it and attach it to an email. We agreed that there were still a lot of details that would need to be figured out. I would, after all, need to give my current employer two weeks notice, and then there was the matter of relocating to Boston.
“Don’t you worry about any of that,” Steve told me. “We’ll provide you all the time and assistance that you need. What did you say your wife’s name was? Jennifer? Whenever she’s ready, have her call my assistant Julie. She’ll help in any way that she can to make sure you find a place and your family can settle in. You have a little boy, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, hearing the thumping steps of said little boy’s sneakered feet upstairs. “But that’s something else we should talk about. You see, we’ve just had our second. A little girl.”
“Splendid!” Steve said, with enough sincerity I thought I could hear his face beaming. “Congratulations, Alan. That is wonderful news!”
But there were complications. I told him in a few clipped sentences about the birth, about the NICU, about my red-eye trip back from Denver. I then held my breath, only knowing how someone like Mary would have reacted to such information from a potential hire.
There was a short pause on the phone, and then Steve’s voice was back, warm and gentle.
“My god, Alan,” he said. “I had no idea. Are you all right? Jennifer? The baby?”
“We’re fine,” I said. “At least I think we are. Honestly, Steve. Right now, I’m not sure I know what fine is supposed to feel like.” I was suddenly choking up, that last few words squeezing out under distress.
“Alan,” Steve said compassionately. “I don’t want you to worry. My youngest -- also a girl -- was born premature. I still remember the few tense weeks she spent in the hospital. But you know what?”
“What?”
“Now she’s a twenty-two-year-old young woman, about to graduate college with a degree in actuarial science. She’s strong and unstoppable, my Amelia, and so is your little girl. You’ll see. Okay?”
I had to wipe my tears away with the back of my hand. “Okay,” I said, sniffling. “Okay. Thanks, Steve.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Steve said. “You get that contract back to me like you’ve planned to do. You give your two weeks notice to your current employer, and we’ll get you on our payroll effective the following Monday.”
“Steve,” I said, “I don’t know that we’re even going to be out of the hospital in two weeks. I just don’t know when I can actually get to Boston and start working.”
“I doesn’t matter,” Steve said. “You’ve got enough things to worry about right now. I don’t want you worrying about money and health insurance, too. We’ll work things out as best we can over the next two weeks. If you need to start working remotely from your current home, we can manage that. Okay?”
At first, it seemed unbelievable that he could possibly be so generous, but then I realized how much things had just changed for me. Miraculously, I was no longer a slave to the dragon, heaping my body, mind, and soul upon her ever-growing pile of ill-gotten treasure. I was free. Punched through what was once an unstoppable barrier, and out in the clear unknown.
“Okay. Thanks, Steve. Thanks, a lot.”
“No worries. Congratulations again on your baby girl. Have you named her yet?”
“No,” I said. “No, we haven’t had the chance. But now I’m thinking Amelia may be worth considering.”
Steve chuckled. “It’s worked well for us.”
+ + +
“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.
This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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