Dragons - Part IV

1

It’s hard for me to describe the way I felt after that meeting. Confident. Proud. Happy in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time. It was the first time since receiving my promotion that I honestly felt like I deserved it. I had actually done something important -- adding value and leading the team to an outcome they couldn’t have achieved without me -- instead of being just another layer of management, obfuscating what needed to be done.

When I got back to my office I somewhat giddily left Mary a voicemail. She was traveling that week, but I wanted her to know that we had completed our task, that we had a new system for screening talent that I thought she would be pleased with, and that we needed some time on her calendar to present it to her. While I was leaving the message my own voicemail light went on, and I was still feeling strong when I punched in my code to access my mailbox.

“Hi, honey,” my wife’s self-assured voice sounded. “Give me a call when you get this message. The company from Boston just called and they want to set up a phone interview at your earliest availability. I’ve got a good feeling about this one. The woman I spoke to was very nice. Love you.”

I deleted the message and put the phone back in its cradle. It was late in the afternoon and the office was starting to clear out. Even with Mary out of town, I felt a little awkward about following up on another job from my office -- from a phone owned by my present employer. I thought about it for a minute or two, turning more considerations over in my mind than the situation really warranted, and eventually convinced myself it would be better to just cut out a few minutes early and talk to Jenny about it at home.

When I got there she was both surprised and disappointed to see me. “Why didn’t you call me? Boston’s an hour ahead of us. They might not be in the office anymore.”

“It didn’t feel right,” I said. “Calling from the office about another job.”

“Oh, Alan, please. You don’t work for the mob. Next time, just close your door.”

I had come in through the garage so Jenny led me to the phone sitting on a small table in our front foyer, directly at the bottom of the house’s main flight of stairs. Her stomach was big enough now that she was wearing maternity clothes, and I watched as the hem of her blouse flounced up and down with her movement. When we got to the foyer she started dialing the number for me.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Who am I calling?”

Instead of answering she simply pointed to the notepad beside the base of the wireless phone. Looking down I saw written in Jenny’s graceful script a woman’s name, the name of the Boston company, and a phone number with a 617 area code. When I looked back up Jenny was holding the receiver out for me and I could hear the distant Boston phone ringing. I quickly put the phone against my ear just as the line picked up.

“Hello, Pamela Thornsby.”

“Hello, Pamela? This is Alan Larson.”

“Alan,” the voice said, sounding relieved. “Thanks for returning my call. You caught me just before I walked out the door.”

I gave Jenny a stern look. “Is it a bad time? Should I call back tomorrow?”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Pamela said. “It’s actually better that we touch base now.”

I heard the shuffling of some papers from Pamela’s end of the line and then she quickly resumed. “I’m an executive recruiter with Quest Partners, and we received … yes, here it is, we received your resume and application for an account executive position we’re trying to fill. We’d like to set up a telephone interview for sometime next week, if that will work in your schedule.”

Jenny moved closer to me and I knew she was trying to hear what Pamela was saying.

“That’s great,” I said, pushing Jenny gently away. “Can you hold a minute while I grab my calendar?”

“Absolutely.”

I put the phone down and went to retrieve my calendar from my briefcase. As I was doing so Jacob appeared at the top of the stairs and began calling down for Jenny.

“Mommy!”

“Shhh!” Jenny hissed, springing up a few of the steps and motioning for Jacob to quiet down. “Daddy’s on an important phone call, honey.”

Calendar in hand, I picked up the phone again. “Okay, next week,” I said as calmly as I could. “Earlier in the week is better than later for me.”

“But, Mommy!” Jacob cried, if anything, louder than before. “I need your help!”

“How about Tuesday?” Pamela asked in one ear.

“One minute, honey,” Jenny’s voice echoed in the other. “After Daddy finishes his call.”

Now my mind was racing. I knew Mary was back in the office next week but I didn’t know what was on her calendar. I didn’t want to schedule this interview for a time she might later choose for our meeting on the staff qualities. Figuring she would want at least a day to catch up before meeting with us, I said, “That could work. But Monday might be better.”

“Mommy! I need you RIGHT NOW!”

“I’m sorry,” Pamela said. “I’m booking all the phone interviews for next week and Monday is full up. I do have a spot on Tuesday morning. Will that work?”

I looked up at Jenny. She was halfway up the stairs now, crouching like a bloated crab to keep both me and Jacob in her sights. She had one arm extended towards Jacob with a cautionary finger raised, but her face was turned back towards me, her ear cocked as if still trying to listen in on my telephone conversation. “Just a minute, honey,” she said.

I waved my hand at her violently, trying to shoo her the rest of the way up the stairs and keep Jacob quiet. “Yes, what time?” I said into the phone and then clamped my hand over the mouthpiece so I could shout-whisper at my wife. “Go deal with him!”

“Ten o’clock?”

Jenny looked about ready to start an argument but Jacob began bellowing Mommy again and that got her moving finally up the stairs. 

“Yes,” I said, watching Jenny turn Jacob by his slender shoulders and begin marching him down the upstairs hallway towards his room. “That would be fine.”

“What number should I call you on?”

Jacob was still babbling, going on and on about something missing from his train set and Jenny needing to find it for him, with Jenny shushing him the entire time. She eventually got him behind his closed bedroom door, and that muffled him enough that I thought I could concentrate again.

“Uh, would it be all right if I called you?” I asked, realizing I wouldn’t want to take the call at home or at the office. 

“Yes,” Pamela said. “Just use the same number you called today. I’ll be here.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“Was that your son?” 

My mind was wandering, thinking about quiet places I could go to make the call on Tuesday -- a coffee shop, the library, my car in a corner of the parking structure.

“Excuse me?”

“In the background, was that your son? When I spoke to your wife earlier she said you had a four-year-old.”

“She did?”

“Yes. He sounds a lot like mine. And Jenny said she was expecting your second in a few months. Congratulations.”

In the silence of my own response I could hear my wife’s muffled voice coming through the floorboards, chiding Jacob for needing to be quiet while Mommy or Daddy was on the phone, and Jacob still pleading with her to help him. 

“Yeah, that’s right,” I said eventually. “The ultrasound says this one’s going to be a girl. I hope she’s quieter than her brother.”

Pamela chuckled. “Don’t bet on it,” she said. “I’ll talk to you on Tuesday, Alan.”

“Ten o’clock,” I confirmed.

We said our goodbyes and the line clicked off, but I was still turning her last few comments over in my mind. Why, I wondered, would Jenny share such personal details with a prospective employer? Couldn’t she just take a message? How on earth did such a subject even come up? Hello, is Alan there? I don’t know, let me move my pregnant belly out of the way and see if I can find him.

Jenny and Jacob still embroiled in their discussion above me, I put the phone back on its charging pad and began walking up the stairs to find out.

2

That weekend we had a family gathering to go to. One of Jenny’s cousins was getting married and they were throwing a big party to celebrate. It wasn’t the wedding reception -- wasn’t even the rehearsal dinner -- just a party to celebrate. Jenny’s family was like that. They’d get together for any reason or for no reason at all, and everyone would get hugged, once when they arrived and again when they left. It was weird.

It was at Jenny’s aunt’s house, a sprawling, palatial thing down by the lakefront with stucco walls and angular lines. It was split-level, with a pool and a four-bay garage, each one with its own cedar wood door and Frank Lloyd Wright windows. We had just come in from the obligatory tour -- Jenny’s uncle was rebuilding a 1963 Aston Martin in the far bay. Every time we went there we had to go see what small amounts of progress he was making. I was standing in one corner of the kitchen with a beer in my hand talking to one of the brothers of the groom-to-be. There were a lot of brothers in that family -- six or seven, at least -- I was never really sure. This one was named Tom.

“How’s work going?” Tom asked.

“Okay,” I said. It’s pretty much what I always said whenever someone asked me that question. It was simpler that way. But Tom was sort of family, and he knew what I did for a living, so I added, “Some days are better than others.”

Tom stopped himself in mid-sip of his Bacardi and Coke. “Didn’t Jenny tell me you were looking for something new?”

It was an interesting way of asking the question. It was entirely possible -- likely even -- but how was I supposed to know what Jenny told him? Jenny was always telling people something -- quietly, and in confidence, as if setting traps for me to stumble into. Telling Pamela Thornsby about her pregnancy was a good example. I was still mad at her about that. I looked out into the great room and saw her in animated conversation with her Mom and two of her aunts. I had told her the night before that I was upset about how she had put me on the spot with Pamela, but she had just brushed it off, her tone practically indicating that I should really be thanking her for all the work she was doing on my job search.

“Well, yeah,” I said. “We’ve started looking.”

“How’s the job market looking these days?”

Tom worked in the financial sector -- doing what I’m not even sure. He seemed to get a new job every two years or so, hopping from one unheard-of financial services firm to another, and always for an impressive step up, according to the family gossip.

I shrugged. “Hard to tell, we just started. I’ve got an interview on Tuesday.”

“Great!” Tom said with a wide smile. “Good luck with that.”

“It’s for a job in Boston.”

Tom gave me a strange look, prompted probably by my tone of voice. “Don’t want to move to Boston, eh?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“A little,” Tom said. “You might want to work on that before Tuesday. How long have you been at your current place?”

“Twelve years.”

Tom whistled. “Well, even if you don’t want to move to Boston, you should go into the interview like it’s the only job there is. You could probably use the practice.”

“Yeah,” I said, knowing he was right but not liking being told. Suddenly my phone started buzzing in my pocket. 

“Is it a phone interview?” Tom asked.

I nodded, fishing my phone out and turning it so I could see its screen.

“All the more reason to work on your tone. Your voice is all they’re going to hear.”

I couldn’t make sense out of what the phone was telling me. I wasn’t getting a call, and the thing had stopped buzzing, but the red light was blinking as if I had gotten a voicemail and there was a strange icon I had never seen before on the screen.

“Excuse me,” I told Tom and began moving away from him as I flipped the phone open. I had one new text message.

Text message? I thought. Who was sending me a text message? I had never even used that function before.

I pushed the button to open the message and was greeted with: WHAT R U DOING?

What am I doing? Who was sending me this? There was a phone number listed in the “From” box, but I didn’t recognize it.

I decided to go into one of the bathrooms. The bride-to-be was just coming out and she smiled at me as I slinked past her and shut the door. Sitting down on the closed toilet I began trying to figure out how to respond to this message.

WHO IS THIS? I finally managed to type and then send.

I sat waiting, looking down at my phone as if it would start speaking to me. I was beginning to think that it was a fluke, a texted wrong number, if such a thing was possible, when it began vibrating in my hands, almost making me drop it. It was a new text from the same phone number. I pushed the button.

IT’S BETHANY. WHAT R U DOING? 

Bethany. Why the hell was she texting me on a Saturday? Why was she texting me at all? I sat there and looked at the message for a minute, trying to wrap my mind around what it might mean. Should I respond? I didn’t have to, did I? What if I just ignored it?

The phone buzzed again. R U THERE?

Maybe I should tell her to stop texting me?

YES. I sent back. 

WHAT R U DOING?

I took me a while to punch out my reply, my thumbs not used to the exercise.

I’M AT A FAMILY GET-TOGETHER. JENNY’S COUSIN IS GETTING MARRIED. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

I thought mentioning my wife might be a good idea. But I was curious. As I waited for the reply to come back I could feel my heart beating in my chest. It felt illicit, having this conversation with someone else’s wife when she wasn’t really there.

I’M HOME ALONE. THINKING OF U. THOUGHT I’D SEE WHAT U WERE UP 2.

Thinking of me? What in God’s name did that mean? The little glowing letters gave me no other clues. There was no body language to read, no real context to put it in. Was she flirting with me?  

DO YOU THINK OF ME OFTEN?

I was imagining what Bethany might be wearing when I heard a child scream. My heart in my throat, I stood up to look out the window and saw Jacob and four of his cousins, running around in the backyard, laughing and shouting at each other.

The phone buzzed in my hand.

STARTING 2. 

This should stop. I knew that and, as if to confirm it, just then there came a knock on the bathroom door.

“Is someone in there?” a woman’s voice called out.

“Just a minute!” I said, thinking wildly that it was Jenny, coming to catch me.

“No problem,” the voice said loudly, clearly now not Jenny, and then more softly, as if to a child, “come on, honey, let’s go find another potty.”

My thumbs went to work, my chest pounding now, the fear that I would be caught edging out the thrill that Bethany might send me something even more provocative. 

GOT TO GO. SEE YOU MONDAY.

After hitting send, I closed the phone and put it back in my pocket. I flushed the toilet for appearance sake and then went to the sink and turned on the water. I was splashing some on my face when I felt the phone vibrating in my pocket again. It created a warm feeling, and I tried not to make a lewd association. I told myself not to look at it, to ignore it and go back to the party, no matter how many more times she texted me, but my curiosity overwhelmed my resolve. I dried my face on one of the guest towels and then clawed the phone out of my pocket. The devilish little red light was flashing. I flipped it open.

BYE. 

It was only one word, and hopefully the last one, but the whole record of our preceding conversation was there for anyone to see. I fumbled around with my slippery fingers, trying to figure out how to delete the previous messages. Eventually I succeeded.

3

On Monday morning there was a voicemail waiting for me when I got into the office -- from Ruthie, not from Mary herself -- letting me know that Mary had picked a specific time for our staff qualities meeting. She wanted to meet at 11 AM on Tuesday, Ruthie said, and she was looking forward to reviewing our progress.

Okay, I remember thinking. Good. Not perfect, but good. I can do the interview with Quest Partners at ten and be done in time for the eleven o’clock meeting with Mary. I’d have to go somewhere close, though. Maybe down to The Cellar? No, not below ground with all that concrete. There won’t be any cell phone reception. Maybe just the park across the street? Yeah, that’s it. I’ll just go sit in the park and keep an eye on my watch.

But none of these carefully wrought plans worked. At 9:06 AM on the fateful Tuesday morning, my office phone rang and the caller ID window showed my home number.

“Hello?”

“Alan?” Jenny’s angry voice said. “What are you doing?”

“I’m working,” I said. “What do you think I’m doing?”

“Why didn’t you call Pamela for your interview? She just called here looking for you.”

I quickly looked at the clock to verify the time. “The interview’s at 10 o’clock,” I said. “It’s just after nine now. Does she want to move it up?”

“It’s ten o’clock her time,” Jenny said scathingly. “You’re late. You’d better call her right now.”

“Oh, shit,” I said, grabbing a pen. “Give me the number.”

“Don’t you have it?” she shouted.

I hadn’t written the appointment on my calendar. All of my notes for the interview were in a file in my briefcase. “I do, but just give it to me again, dammit.”

She recited the numbers with stark clarity, enunciating each one as if it was a score on her side of the tally. When I had them I thanked her curtly and pressed the receiver button before she could respond. Releasing the button and getting a dial tone, I punched in the numbers slowly, making sure I got each one right, and waited through three rings before the line picked up.

“Hello, Pamela Thornsby.”

“Pamela? This is Alan Larson calling.”

“Alan,” Pamela said, sounding relieved again but just a bit more skeptical than before. “Good. You got my message. Was there some kind of mix-up on the time for our interview?”

“There was,” I confirmed. “And it was all my fault. When we said ten o’clock I thought we were talking Central time.”

“Ah. I should have clarified. Is this still a good time for you?”

“Um, yes…” I said, looking up and realizing that my office door was standing open. “Yes, this is fine. Can you give me one moment to shut my door?”

“Of course.”

I put the phone down and darted across the small room. This wasn’t what I wanted at all. I didn’t want to do this interview in the office but now I didn’t have a choice. Bethany suddenly appeared in my door’s long window pane, holding her manicured fingers up and stopping me from shutting it tight.

I quickly pulled it back open. “What?” I said.

Bethany looked back and forth in both directions, the hustle and bustle of the office going on full speed behind her, and then leaned in closer to me and spoke in a low voice. “Let me in. There’s something I have to tell you.”

The memory of our suggestive weekend text messages was still fresh in my mind, and my first thought was that she was playing a similar kind of game.

“Oh god, not now, Bethany,” I said. “I’m on a call.”

Bethany looked quickly past me and my gaze followed hers to the telephone receiver lying as if forgotten on my desk, its kinky spiral leash tethering it to its home unit.

“But something’s going on,” she said out of the corner of her mouth. “Michael’s in Mary’s office and Ruthie’s keeping a close guard on the door.”

I craned my neck to see over the multiple spider-like workstation pods that stood between my office door and Mary’s. By lining myself up just right, I could see Ruthie sitting at her desk, sorting through a stack of envelopes, her eyes flicking up to scan the space around her every few seconds, and Mary’s golden veneer door shut tightly behind her.

“Okay,” I said, not knowing if I should be concerned or not. “I can’t deal with it right now. I have to be on this call.” I started closing the door again.

“But there’s more!” Bethany said, gripping the edge of the door to keep it open.

“I’ll come find you as soon as my call is done,” I said, forcing the door closed. Momentarily noting the look of shock on her face, I quickly retrieved my file of interview notes, sat back down and scooped up the receiver.

“Pamela?” I said. “Are you still there?” My voice was little more than a paranoid whisper.

“Yes, Alan. I’m here,” Pamela’s strong voice echoed in my ear. “Are you ready to begin?”

With the fear of a criminal who knows he’ll be caught I twisted quickly in my chair and was relieved to see Bethany had removed herself from my doorway. Through the door’s glass panel there was a lot of office activity, but none of it seemed directed at me.

“Yes,” I said, reminding myself to relax and to focus on the task at hand. “Go ahead.”

As I would tell Jenny later, I did the best I could. Her cousin Tom, however, was right -- I was out of practice and stumbled through the entire conversation. I think Pamela could sense she was catching me off my game, and she was kind enough to start with a few softball questions, but she had a script to get through and other candidates to consider, so eventually she started throwing some heat. I swung at every pitch as hard as I could, but never felt like I was making the right connection, never once feeling the satisfying chunk of solid wood on the ball.

I might’ve done better if I hadn’t been so distracted. I was worried about getting caught interviewing for another job in the office, but more than that, about ten minutes into the ordeal I realized my bladder was full of my morning coffee. Closing my eyes helped at first, but as the conversation wore on and my need to pee became more desperate, I had to squeeze back against the pressure with a firm grip on the front of my pants. It didn’t even occur to me to excuse myself for a minute or two -- to tell her I needed a quick break or a drink of water or something. I just kept thinking it would end soon, but it didn’t. My answers to Pamela’s questions went from hurried to downright abrupt, my mind seemingly unable to focus on anything else except getting to the end and running down to the men’s room.

I checked the clock constantly, watching the minutes tick by in increasing discomfort, and nearly had a coronary about forty-five minutes in when I saw Mary Walton standing in my doorway like an apparition in pale worsted wool. Seeing that she had caught my attention, she quietly opened the door and poked her head inside. In the middle of one of Pamela’s difficult questions, I had no choice but to let the receiver drift away from my ear. I quickly lifted my hand away from my crotch and clapped it over the mouthpiece.

“Are you going to be much longer?” she whispered, reinforcing her question by tracing a growing timeline in the air with two retreating fingers.

I can only imagine what she must have been thinking. I’m sure my eyes were bugging out of my head and, as far as I knew, she had seen me clutching myself. Unable to speak, I rapidly nodded.

“We need to talk before our 11 AM meeting,” she said softly, tapping a fingernail on the face of her Cartier watch. “Come find me when you’re done.”

She backed out, shut the door, and disappeared.

When the interview finally ended, at twenty minutes to eleven, I thanked Pamela as graciously as I could, then slammed the phone down. Stuffing my notes haphazardly under a pile of folders, I got up and walked as quickly but as discreetly as I could to the bathroom. A few people tried to catch me as I trotted past -- Bethany being one of them -- but I refused to make eye contact with them. Inside the mercifully empty men’s room, I spent the next two minutes draining my bladder, watching the urine swirl down the drain, and cursing myself for my abysmal performance.

I had blown it. After her first few “get to know you” questions, it felt like Pamela Thornsby had simply raked me over the coals -- questioning my experience, challenging my assertions -- and doing everything she could to paint me into a corner where I would be forced to admit I was unqualified for the job. Distracted by the abrupt transition to the interview itself, nervous about the risk of being overheard in my office surroundings, and mocked by my pathetically weak bladder, I had mumbled and bumbled my way through the thing like a stooge.

I pulled the flush handle on the top of the urinal, zipped up, and marched over to the row of sinks to wash my hands. They were mounted too low on the wall -- almost like they belonged in an elementary school -- and as I stood hunched over like an ogre, wringing the Borax-scented soap into my hands, my conspiracy-prone imagination began to think that Pamela might have planned something more than just a simple screening interview.

The whole thing could have been a set-up, I realized. They already had someone they wanted to bring on board, but the hired guns on the client’s legal team wanted the candidate vetted through a competitive search process. Happened all the time in my profession. Make sure you’re getting the best talent at the best price -- that kind of thing. But someone on the client’s board wanted to hire his brother-in-law, so they had hired Quest Partners to first identify and then wash out all the other candidates. And Pamela, like the good little soldier she probably was, was only too happy to comply.

“Shit,” I said to myself in the mirror, thinking about how much sense that made, and then moved to dry my hands on the rough pieces of paper towel that always seemed to disintegrate as soon as they got wet.

It was either that, I thought miserably, or I had just been subjected to my first bona fide stress interview. I’d heard about them before and knew I was bound to encounter one when I started interviewing for a top job. The examination had been real, and there was a job to be won, but Pamela hadn’t been interested in what I had to say -- she only wanted to see how I would react under the heat lamps of an aggressive interrogation. If I couldn’t hold my own against an executive recruiter, after all, how could I deal with a bunch of power-hungry board members? This hypothesis made me feel even angrier at myself, but I told myself to calm down, because it didn’t really matter. Stress or sham -- either way, there wasn’t a chance I would be called back for a second interview. So all I had to do was come up with a story to tell Jenny. She wouldn’t want to hear that I just plain fucked up.

Upon exiting the restroom, I was surprised to find Ruthie standing outside the door, clearly waiting for me.

“Mary wants to see you,” she said.

“Really?” I said sarcastically. “Why didn’t you come in and get me?”

She gave me one of her intolerant looks, but I blew past her, and headed straight for Mary’s office.

“Alan,” Mary said, seeing me in her doorway. “Come in, sit down.” She beckoned me with a lifeless hand but kept her eyes on her computer monitor, her other hand on her mouse, targeting more email to delete unread. I crossed the vast expanse of her office and sat in one of the visitor chairs opposite her desk. I didn’t close the door behind me because that was not the kind of thing you did unless Mary told you to. She publicly adhered to an “open door” policy whenever possible.

Mary turned in her chair to face me. “Have you heard?” she said softly.

“Heard?” I asked. “Heard what?”

“It happened almost an hour ago,” she said. “I would’ve thought you would’ve heard about it by now.”

“I was stuck on a call,” I said uncomfortably. “What’s going on?”

Mary looked up and following her gaze I saw Ruthie leaning against the doorframe, her arms folded across her chest as if waiting for some task to perform. My eyes lingered there for a moment, sweeping over the wide belt she wore and the long pleated skirt that covered her legs. When I turned back Mary was studying me intently, rolling the diamond pendant that hung from her necklace between her thumb and dominant fingers.

“Michael gave me his resignation this morning.”

“What?” I said, genuinely surprised. “When did he do that?”

“This morning,” Mary said again. “While you were on your call.”

“But I saw Michael this morning. We waited for the coffee to finish brewing in the break room together. He told me about his weekend. Why didn’t he say anything to me about resigning?”

“Well, that’s part of what we need to talk about,” Mary said. “But we’re coming up on our eleven o’clock with the department heads, so it might be better if we schedule some time later this afternoon. But you should know that we walked him out.”

“You did?” I said. “Didn’t he give any notice?”

Mary nodded. “But given his reason for leaving, I thought it was better to cut him loose and just pay him for the two weeks.”

It was hard to process what Mary was telling me. Michael had quit and was already gone -- escorted out of the building like a murder suspect, probably carrying his handful of personal effects in one of the brown cardboard boxes Peggy Wilcox kept stashed in a corner of her office. 

“What reason was that?”

Mary pursed her lips, as if trying to keep something noxious from escaping. Her eyes flicked again to Ruthie, and I thought she might ask her to close the door, but she didn’t.

“He said he quit because of you,” Mary said sternly. “He said you treat him like a child and let other staff people abuse him.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, come on.”

“It’s true, Alan. It’s what he said.”

“It might be what he said, but that doesn’t make it true.”

“Are you saying he lied?”

I opened my mouth to speak but stopped myself abruptly, letting the breath fall out in a heavy sigh. I shot a look at Ruthie, still standing like a statue in the doorway. “You mind shutting the door, Ruthie?”

Ruthie twitched like someone had goosed her, uncrossing her arms and taking her shoulder off the doorframe. She traded a cautionary glance with her boss, and only stepped out of the room when Mary gave her an approving nod.

“Look, Mary,” I said, lowering my voice even though the door was now closed. “Michael is a head-case. You know that as well as I do. He always thinks someone is out to ridicule him.”

“What happened at your last staff qualities meeting?”

“What?” I said.

“What happened at your last staff qualities meeting?” Mary repeated. “Michael said you humiliated him in front of all the department heads.”

I bit my lip, remembering some of the things I had said to Michael.

“Alan,” she said with disappointment. “You didn’t -- did you?”

“He was acting like a child, Mary. The rest of the team was on board with what we were doing but he refused, sitting there and pouting like a spoiled brat. I gave him a swift kick in the pants.”

Her eyebrows flew up. “You did what?”

“Figuratively,” I cried. “I didn’t actually kick him.” I took a deep breath and changed my tone. “I told him to grow up and get with the program.”

She shook her head and I could feel the frustration coming off of her. “We’re going to have to discuss this more, but we don’t have time now.” She pointed to a golden engraved clock on her desk -- another award she had accepted on behalf of one of our clients. “It’s nearly eleven. The department heads are probably already gathering in the conference room.”

She pushed her chair back, stood up, and began mindlessly arranging pens and loose pieces of paper on her desk as though she needed them to be a certain way before she could leave. I sat on the edge of the visitor chair, my elbows up and my sweaty palms flat on the chair arms, but did not get up. “Maybe we should reschedule?” I said, feeling my heart thumping away in my chest.

“Reschedule what?” she said with disdain. “The staff qualities meeting?”

“Yeah,” I said slowly, realizing too late that I was stepping into a trap. 

Mary stopped moving things around on her desk and looked at me coldly, her eyes hooded and suspicious, as if she thought she had caught me trying to pull a fast one on her.

“Why?” she said. “Aren’t you ready?”

Bitch. I smiled at her. “Of course I am.”

“Well,” she said. “Let’s go then.”

4

The meeting did not go well.

As we made our way out of Mary’s office, I split off from her to get my presentation materials, and by the time I got back to the conference room, Mary and all the department heads were already gathered around the table.

I noticed an odd silence when I entered the room -- the dozen or so copies of the staff qualities and their associated behaviors sticking haphazardly out of the file folder I had grabbed from the stack still hiding my interview notes on my desk. It wasn’t one of those silences where everyone in a room stops talking when you enter it. That happened all the time in the company; so often it was almost the norm. No, this silence was different. It had a much greater permanence to it, as if it had been brewing for a long time. Stepping into that conference room was like opening the door to a forgotten tomb and discovering huddled about in the fetid air the undisturbed remains of an ancient queen and her royal attendants. It was obvious that this group of mummies -- Gerald, Bethany, Jurgis, Peggy, Scott, Angie, and their leader, Mary, sitting as if bejeweled and enshrined at the head of the conference table -- had been passing the time prior to my arrival in uncomfortable silence. As I entered the room, the only human movement to dispel the crypt-like impression came from Mary herself, her head turning and looking up at me in cold anticipation. All the others sat unmoving, their gazes askance in different directions, all looking safely at nothing in particular.

“Alan,” Mary said, the warmness in her voice opposing the chilliness of her stare. “Please. Come in. Sit down.”

I did as requested, taking the only available seat, the one at the bottom of the table, directly opposite Mary. Bethany sat on my immediate right, and as I settled in I saw her eyes flip up fearfully, catching mine for an instant before dropping back down to the tabletop.

“We were just talking about Michael,” Mary said amiably, as if he was just down the hall, a few minutes late to the meeting, same as me. “I was telling the group about the news he shared with me this morning and some of the unfortunate steps we had to take as a result.”

I looked at Mary suspiciously. News he shared? What did she mean by that? She didn’t tell them about what Michael had said about me, did she? I wanted to ask these questions, but couldn’t bring myself to do so in front of the audience. “Oh, yes?” was all I was able to say.

“Indeed,” Mary said. “The news came as quite a shock -- to me, as well as to everybody in this room. Michael was well-liked in the company. The group here has a lot of questions about what’s going to happen next.”

I looked around the table at the department heads, Mary’s description of their concern grossly out of sync, at least with their posture. Most were still looking away, their body language indicating they would crawl under the conference table if they could, but a few turned towards me, and they had anything but questioning looks on their faces. Peggy was one, I remember. Her sad eyes looked at me with droopy compassion, as if she yearned to spare me from some terrible ordeal. Gerald was another, his eyes behind his glasses more a warning, a caution to watch my step, and a promise, I thought, to guard my back if I decided to move forward.

“Such as?” I asked.

“Well,” Mary said coolly, “their biggest question seems to be ‘Why?’ Why did Michael resign? Given the legal realities of the situation, there’s of course only so much we can publicly tell them. But, I wonder, in confidence, what would you say, Alan? What would you say was Michael’s reason for resigning?”

I looked at her incredulously. What was she trying to pull? Did she expect me to tell them it was my fault Michael left the company? I didn't even think that was true. “I don’t know, Mary,” I snapped. “You’re the one he talked to. All I know is what you told me.”

Mary’s eyes narrowed, looking at me like an insect she had found crawling across the Persian rug in her office. “Well, let’s just say that he never felt comfortable here. That there are … people, here, who never made him feel welcome.”

She looked at me the whole time she said this. Anyone who had their eyes up -- and most still didn’t -- certainly saw what she was doing and couldn’t fail to make the connection. I had no idea why she was trying to tar me in front of all the remaining department heads, and although her clumsy attempt made me angry, I kept my mouth shut. Perhaps because of my recent experience with Pamela Thornsby, I knew it wouldn’t do any good to lose my cool, and besides, I wasn’t sure Mary’s attempt at character assassination was having the effect she was looking for. There was more than one person around the table, I knew, who couldn’t possibly be upset about Michael’s decision to leave.

“Were there any other questions?” I asked, turning my gaze away from Mary and addressing the group as a whole, trying to draw others into the conversation.

“Only one,” Mary said. “Who’s going to pick up all of Michael’s work until his replacement is hired?”

That one was at least easier for me to answer. “I will,” I said with as much enthusiasm as I could muster, knowing that the existing company culture demanded no less, and that nothing was at that time more important than setting a leadership example for the others. “I’ll meet with his staff later today and get the run down on all the projects already in motion.”

“I’ll help.”

It was a mousy squeak of a voice, and it took me a moment to realize it was Bethany who had said it. I looked at her, surprised she had even looked up, much less spoken aloud.

“It’s only a few days before the big national conference,” she said, a little more confidently, as if needing to justify herself to the table. “And Alan’s already doing Susan’s job. No one should be asked to pick up that much extra work.”

She started strong, but her voice tapered off near the end, as it became clear that everyone around the table was looking at her -- some of them blankly, others with a twinge of sorrowful pity, still others with a horror that could not be concealed. But worst of all was Mary, who seemed to zoom in on Bethany, now finding a second insect and magnifying it in her powerful stare, the calculating wheels behind her eyes already turning with the inexorable determination of how best to exterminate it.

“I’ll take care of it,” I said forcefully, touching Bethany’s hand under the table to caution her, and hoping to bring this topic to a close and move on to the original purpose of the meeting. “After all, it shouldn’t be long before we identify qualified candidates for both Michael’s and Susan’s positions. With this new system of staff qualities and behaviors, we think we can dramatically reduce the time it takes to hire, and increase the quality of those hiring decisions.” It was very corporate-speak, I know, but that’s what the situation called for. Delivered appropriately, I knew that corporate-speak had a certain soothing effect on its listeners. It was designed to be inoffensive and value-adding in all of its many dialects, and that’s exactly what I needed at that point. 

Without waiting for Mary to respond, I opened the folder in front of me and began passing around copies of the document I had prepared for the meeting. It was a transcription of all eleven staff qualities and their associated behaviors, taken directly from the affinity diagram the department heads had created on that very conference room wall six days ago. I hadn’t changed a word of it, and at that moment I was glad I hadn’t. I had expected that Mary would want to put her own stamp of approval on our work -- that was fine, she was the president of the company. But now I saw that she may try to sabotage the entire effort, much like she seemed to be sabotaging our team morale by her pessimistic fixation on Michael’s departure and my supposed role in it. If that was the game she was playing, I was going to need every arm in the room to help bend her to the group’s will.

As the papers settled into hands and both battered and battering eyes turned down to decipher the meaning hidden in the little black symbols, I launched into my presentation. It was nothing fancy, but I had rehearsed it a couple of times and knew most of it by heart. I started by restating the charge given to me and the department heads -- redesign the company’s hiring process to focus on the qualities most associated with success. Then I described the process we followed, making sure to give full credit to the team for its creation and execution, and then I walked one by one through the resulting qualities and behaviors. I described how they could be used in the screening process for new hires and in the evaluation process for existing staff, and how those two systems would reinforce each other by bringing on people with the best qualities and rewarding those who demonstrated the best behaviors. I avoided all mention of a potential culture change in the organization, focusing instead on objectives of more palatable corporate sloganeering. I was a bit shameless, but by that point I was so deep into the presentation, and had been speaking for so long without interruption, I wasn’t sure anyone was really listening anymore. I had just described the proposed initiative as one allowing “better alignment with success vectors” when Mary interrupted me.

“Alan, can we go back for a second?”

“Of course,” I said.

“Tell me more about number eight.”

I looked down at the document in front of me, scanning down the page to the eighth quality we thought necessary for success in the company.

“Practices a healthy work/life balance?” I asked, seeking confirmation.

“Yes,” Mary said. “What does that mean?”

“What?”

“Work/life balance,” Mary said slowly, her lips forming the words as if they were foreign to her tongue. “What does that mean exactly?”

I looked at her blankly across the table and again felt the pervasive silence that filled the room whenever she or I stopped talking. There were eight of us shut up in that windowless room -- six department heads with me and Mary, all of them supervisors and leaders in the company -- but for all the noise they were making they could have just as easily been store mannequins.

“A work/life balance?” I said, afraid of where this was going but trying to be brave. “That’s when … uh, that’s when...”

I looked down at the document in front of me, searching desperately for an answer. And, of course, the answers were there. Twelve of them, in fact. That’s exactly what our exercise had been all about -- coming up with answers. There were twelve observable behaviors associated with Quality Number Eight, every one of them a perfectly good definition for what it meant to have a healthy work/life balance.

Things like Shares information about pursuits outside of work.

And Manages workload appropriately within standard business hours.

And Takes and encourages others to take all earned vacation time.

But as I went through the list, I rejected each one of these definitions in turn, knowing that none of them stood a chance against Mary’s warped view of work and life. I looked back up at her with my mouth hanging open. I didn’t know what to say.

And Mary wasn’t the type to miss such an opportunity. “I mean, after all,” she said, setting the hook now that I had taken her bait, “the words ‘work’ and ‘life’ mean different things to different people, don’t they? We all have different life situations. And different sets of job responsibilities. Some of us are married and some are single. Some have kids and some don’t. Some jobs require out-of-town travel. Others demand evening hours spent entertaining clients. It’s just not clear to me what ‘work/life balance’ means in an environment like ours.”

This was bad. She was making a frontal assault on what I now saw as the most important quality we had come up with -- the one we clearly needed if we had any hope of changing the culture in this screwed-up company. I looked around the table to see if any of the department heads were even listening, to see if they saw what Mary was trying to do. Most still looked ready to crawl under the table, but I felt ennobled by what I saw as support from my two main co-conspirators. The look on Gerald's face still clearly told me to fight back, and Bethany looked so concerned I thought she might drift into a panic attack if I didn’t do something.

“Mary,” I said quickly, before she could continue with her self-fulfilling prophecy, “are you saying that, whatever the individual’s situation, maintaining a healthy balance between personal and professional interests is not something we should encourage our employees to strive for?”

She’s not going to answer that. I knew it before the words were even completely out of my mouth. She was sick, I knew, but she wasn’t stupid. If she agreed, if she said that we all should seek balance -- well, that would be a lie so transparent that not even her most snowblind sycophants could pretend that they believed it. But if she disagreed, if she said balance was unimportant, she would be saying that openly and in front of her whole management team -- a team that had brought that very subject to her as something they believed necessary for success. What kind of message would that send? No, I had maneuvered her so that she couldn’t oppose this directly, but since the spirit of what we were trying to do ran so diametrically against what she stood for, I knew she would try to find some other way to kill it.

“What I’m saying, Alan, is that I don’t think there is a consistent way to measure this quality in our environment. All of the others -- showing initiative and solving problems, for example -- yes, I can wrap my head around those. They’re all clear and can be universally applied throughout the company.” She suddenly pitched her voice to the team, as if recognizing their presence for the first time. “You’ve all done an excellent job with those and I thank you all for your efforts.”

Oh shit, I thought, realizing that the change in Mary’s tone meant we were getting the brush off, and so was our vision for work/life balance. 

“The team feels pretty strongly about the whole list,” I said, keeping my eyes on Mary but trying to get some sense of the team’s support in my peripheral vision. “Even the one about work/life balance. They all came out of the same process and are interconnected with each other. Dropping any one of them would be leaving something essential out of the mix.”

Mary did not even hesitate. “Really?” she said. “Is that true?” she asked the table. “The other ten seem perfectly acceptable to me. Who else here agrees with Alan?”

To my great dismay, but not surprise, the death-like silence descended on us again. In that moment it reminded me of Conrad’s darkness -- the underlying natural state of the universe -- and I knew that it was only my voice, like the light of civilization, that was momentarily holding it at bay. I looked around the table, searching for a comrade to go up the river with me, but knew there wouldn’t be any volunteers. Even Gerald looked suddenly skeptical, the defiance I had previously seen replaced with the undeniable calculation of someone now deciding which horse to hook his wagon to.

“Gerald?” I said woefully, knowing I had to try, knowing even though none of them would speak up, they would all blame me if I didn’t try. “Bethany?” I said, now calling the two of them by name and in turn, calling those out who had been most behind me in this, the ones with whom I had dared to share some part of my vision for cultural change.

Nothing.

In the end, it was Scott who spoke -- Scott Nelson, Mary’s hand-picked successor to head the accounting department. Scott, the sniveling little toady, who I now realized had remained mostly silent throughout our process, and who, I remembered, had signed on to our merry group of mutineers more out of professional curiosity than out of any inner drive to change anything. What was it he had said at our first meeting, I wondered, when doubts were strong and I had to call people to account in order to see where their loyalties were?

Let’s see where this thing goes.

Yeah, Scott. Let’s see indeed.

“Alan,” he began, and I blanched just from the fact that he was addressing me and not Mary. “I think Mary’s right on this one.” Of course you do. “The other ten are so strong, so exactly what we need, but this work/life balance thing, it’s fuzzy, it’s too hard to define, it can only be subjectively applied, and that’s not what we want at all.”

I wanted to call Scott a traitor, or at least an idiot for his typically fragmented way of speaking, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. Checkmate, Mary had won, and it didn’t matter if I beat up on Scott or not. No one around that table thought Quality Number Eight was worth fighting for, perhaps believing in a way I didn’t that any ten out of the eleven qualities was victory enough, and without their support I didn’t stand a chance. But more importantly, it wasn’t true. Scott wasn’t a traitor. In that moment, I knew all he had ever been was a mole.

I bowed my head, not admitting defeat, but recognizing that it was not possible to keep fighting.

A smile passed over Mary’s face. Her victory now complete, the dragon would want to flaunt her power over those she had vanquished. “Besides,” she said. “Eleven is such an odd number. It will work so much better if there are only ten. Don’t you think?”

I most certainly didn’t, but when the heads started nodding around the table, I found myself conforming.

5

There wasn’t much time to lick my wounds. The next day a group of us were leaving for my client’s national conference, and the afternoon was filled with preparatory meetings, going over a variety of last minute details. I also had to squeeze in a meeting with Michael’s staff. Several of them were going to the conference -- they needed to manage the press room and handle the public relations -- and Michael’s sudden departure had really unsettled them. Like a lot of junior staff in the company, they were all young women in their twenties, some of them confident but none of them very experienced. I think they had been planning on just doing whatever Michael told them to do at the conference. The realization that they would now be making their own decisions only penetrated their awareness enough to frighten them.

“What if they want to interview someone who’s not available?” one of them asked, referring to members of the press who covered the conference. “What if they don't come to the press conferences we’ve scheduled?” asked another. “What if we need to reach you?”

I did the best I could to reassure them, acknowledging that the situation was less than ideal. I told them they would know what to do, that two of them had been to the conference before and would be able to help the others. I said I had confidence in their abilities. I would check in on them as frequently as I could, and I would always be just a phone call away. All platitudes, but I said them as sincerely as I could, looking into their innocent eyes and trying to determine which ones would make it and which ones would crack under the pressure.

The truth was I had my own demons to wrestle with. I knew a lot was riding on the successful completion of this conference -- Eleanor seemed to echo like the voice of doom in my head whenever I thought about it -- but with all the energy I had been pouring into the staff qualities, I felt now and suddenly that I had let preparations for the conference take too much of a back seat, and that near-certain disaster awaited. Something would go wrong -- with me pinch hitting as director of both the education and communications departments, I didn’t see how that could be avoided. The only question seemed to be how deep the shit was going to get.

Bethany snagged me during a spare minute that afternoon, as I moved from one meeting to another where my only role seemed to be showing a confidence I didn’t truly feel.

“How are you doing?” she asked quietly.

We were standing in a corner of one of the small conference rooms, a meeting with her staff just ending and people still passing by and out the door.

“I’m good,” I said, not able to say anything else while others were within earshot. I wanted to ask her why the hell she hadn't said anything in the meeting with Mary, why she had simply sat there like a deafmute while Mary dismantled what we had planned.

Bethany looked like she wanted to say something else, too, but I was glad she didn’t. Given the way she was looking at me, I’m not sure I was ready to hear it.

“I will help,” she said eventually, touching my hand clandestinely, as I had under the conference table earlier. Her back was to the others, but her fingers were warm on my flesh, and they made me feel like everyone could see what was going on. “With Michael’s workload,” she continued. “Especially at the conference. If you need me to cover something, just let me know.”

“Okay,” I said, my eyes more on the departing staff than on her.

She leaned in closer, as if she meant to kiss me.

“You did good,” she whispered. “You stood your ground. People noticed.”

With no help from you. I kept the comment to myself. Even with everyone else out of the room, I knew this wasn’t the place for an argument. Instead, in a moment of weakness, I shared my frustration. “She killed work/life balance, Bethany. The one that mattered the most.”

She offered me a bemused smile, patting my hand before withdrawing. “One step at a time. We accomplished a lot. If we keep pushing, things will change eventually.”

“Do you really think so?” 

She looked at me confidently. “I know so.”

I didn’t have much time to think about it until later that night when I took Jacob to another one of his Sports Classes. I was stuck late at the office again, and on the drive home I went through my voicemail and left several messages for people in response. By the time I got home I had already missed dinner and Jenny had Jacob dressed and ready to leave.

“How’d the interview go?” Jenny asked as I came in and Jacob ran into my legs.

“Okay,” I said, turning to the side and helping my son out the door.

“Okay?” she said with dissatisfaction. “Is that good or bad?”

“It's okay. I don’t know, look, I haven’t had much time to think about it. I’ve been running a mile a minute and now I have to get Jacob to class. Can we talk about this later?”

“Sure can. Have fun!”

Yeah, right, have fun. Like that’s possible with her in such a flippy mood. It wasn’t ‘have fun’ as in, ‘have fun, my love, you deserve it and I know how much you enjoy spending time with your son.’ No, it was ‘have fun’ as in, ‘have fun, you good-for-nothing piece of shit, it’s about time you started doing your part in raising your little monster.’ Those aren’t the words Jenny would have ever used -- but, then again, she didn’t have to. When she was at the end of one of her long days as Jacob’s sole caregiver, all she needed to convey her frustration was the tone of her voice.

I knew I should cut her some slack, but it was hard after the kind of day I’d had. As I drove Jacob to the high school, I tried to put her and everything else out of my mind.

“Jacob,” I said, looking at him in the observation mirror Jenny had installed on the edge of our sun visor. He was looking out the window, his hat pulled down too far over his eyes.

No answer.

“Jacob, buddy, what will we play tonight?” I adopted my Daddy voice, the one laced with excitement and promises of roughhousing. “Are we going to play soccer? Or tee ball?”

Still no answer -- just staring out the window as if hypnotized.

“Jacob!” I barked, dropping all pretense of frivolity. “Can you hear me?”

I heard him sigh, and saw his little shoulders go up and down in my spy mirror.

“Daddy,” he said forlornly. “I don't want to go to Sports Class tonight.”

“What? Why not? I thought you liked Sports Class?”

“I don’t like it. I want to stay home with Mommy.”

Great. Mommy. “Come on, you'll have fun. Maybe we’ll do bowling tonight.” Bowling was Jacob’s favorite, tossing the red rubber ball and smashing it into the wooden pins.

“No,” he pouted. “I don’t want to do bowling. I want to go home.”

About to cajole him again, I paused, remembering I didn’t like Sports Class either. It was really Jenny’s idea, this Sports Class, an opportunity, she explained, for me and my son to spend some time together, just the two of us, away from her and the house. That last part was important, I knew, for even though she never said it, Sports Class was not just about giving me Daddy time, it was also about giving her Jenny time -- one hour a week when she could stop being Jacob's mother and do something purely for her. I didn’t know what that thing was, and had never asked, but as I sat there at a red light thinking about bailing out, I imagined all the possible things Jenny might want to do with her free time and what I might ruin by coming home early. Given what she routinely complained she didn't have time for any more, I thought the worst I would be interrupting was her painting her toenails or washing the kitchen floor.

Still, I was leaving the next day for more than a week, and she’d have no relief that entire time. And if I went home now I’d have to talk about the interview, and Michael’s resignation, and my meeting with Mary -- none of which I was quite feeling up to. That was one of the nice things about having a four-year-old son. There was a whole new range of subjects and activities that didn’t have anything to do with what I had previously thought of as my life. That other life still mattered -- the one with the increasingly complex arc of career and marriage -- but not to Jacob. To Jacob I was just Daddy -- something I hadn’t been for very long -- and what Jacob and Daddy did often had little connection to the life Alan and Jenny had been planning.

So Sports Class it was going to be, for my sake if not for Jacob’s. I needed a break from all the turmoil. When the light turned green I started the car moving again, not telling Jacob about my decision, and wondering if he would notice by the turns we made.

At the high school itself, Jacob acted as if he had forgotten all about his earlier reluctance, bounding out of the car when I opened the door for him, and running ahead of me to the gymnasium, telling me he knew the way as I called out to him and told him to slow down.

In the gym, Marcie and her athletic Wonder Twin had a surprise for us. After our warm-up exercises, the kids were going to play an actual soccer game. This was a first. Up till now we had spent each class just practicing our skills in father-and-son pairs. Now, Marcie said, speaking as if rehearsing the lines to her school play, it was time to put what we had learned to the test.

I wasn’t so sure it was a good idea, but when they heard the news, Jacob and all the kids let out a cheer, as if finally being given the chance to satisfy some long-held desire. After twirling our arms for a few minutes, I checked with Jacob while foot-tapping a soccer ball back and forth across six feet of the gymnasium floor.

“Are you sure you want to play soccer, buddy?” There was a fear inside me, large and undefined, like that of a psychic that can only receive dark impressions.

“Yes, Daddy!” Jacob said, his eyes wide with excitement.

“Okay,” I said, not at all sure things were okay.

When the fateful moment came I released my son into the fray and took my seat on the bleachers with the other dads. Tyler’s dad was one of them -- adorned in an ironed tracksuit sporting the colors of his alma mater, a small golden cross hanging from the slim chain encircling his unshaven neck. He looked about ready to sit next to me, but veered away at the last moment, probably remembering his confusion from our last encounter and deciding to hunker down with companions more likely to share his interests. The rejection stung for a moment, but when the troop began whooping about their favorite athletes I didn’t feel quite so lonely.

On the gym floor Marcie and the other girl were busy dividing the boys into two teams -- first trying to get them to call off by ones and twos and then, when that proved too difficult for their four-year-old brains, gripping them by the shoulders and positioning them on opposite sides of a blue line like overgrown chess pieces. There wasn’t much for me to do as Marcie started explaining the rules and the baboons next to me continued their mutual grooming behaviors, so despite my intentions in coming to Sports Class, I started thinking about the day I’d had.

It could’ve been worse, I told myself quickly, thinking I should at least try to stay positive. I had by then already written off the interview with Quest Partners. I had been out of the job market for twelve years -- did I think I was going to ace my first interview after all that time? Especially for a high-prestige job that I was only marginally-qualified for? No. Better to chalk it up as part of the unavoidable process of getting back into the market. At least I knew how rusty I really was, and how much I would need to refine my message and my interview presence. There’d be other opportunities, and I’d do just that much better with the next one because of the dry run I’d had. That’s what I planned to tell Jenny at least, and sitting there in the relative calm of the high school bleachers, I felt confident I could tell her in a way she would accept as reasonable. Managing other people’s expectations was what I did for a living, after all, and managing Jenny’s would just have to be part of the game plan. Besides, I knew she really didn’t want to move to Boston.

What upset me more were my encounters with Mary -- starting with the one in her office regarding Michael’s resignation. Michael was gone. The timing was awful, but I couldn’t say I was sorry to see him go. He was plenty good at what he did, but so were hundreds of other people, and I was confident we could find a replacement that wouldn’t come with Michael’s baggage and bullshit. Covering his workload and seeing to all the details of our national conference would leave me precious little time to conduct a proper hiring process, but the bigger obstacle, I feared, would be Mary.

Mary had hired Michael. She had been overly impressed, I thought, with Michael’s credentials, and overly supportive, everyone thought, of his half-brained ideas. He had been her golden boy, someone who was going to come into the organization under her wing and drive success in the way she defined it. And now he was gone. Driven to resign by a monstrous supervisor who treated him like a child and never appreciated the talents he brought to the table. That wasn’t true, but it was the narrative Mary would choose to construct. That much seemed clear from the way she had treated me in her office and later in the conference room.

I knew her behavior during our second encounter was her trying to exert dominance over me, and that her attack on the staff qualities was part of that same compulsion. But I also knew her thirst for control would not be quenched in one uncomfortable staff meeting. There would be other attempts, very few as direct as what she had done in the meeting. I’d seen it before. Once you stepped over a certain line with Mary your fate was sealed. She’d rarely attack you openly -- Michael’s resignation, I realized, must have really caught her by surprise -- but bit by bit your life would be made more and more uncomfortable, until you just decided it would be better if you left. In my case, the surest and simplest thing for her to do would be to drag her heels on the roll out of the ten staff qualities she had decided to accept. No new hiring system meant no new hires, and no new hires meant me doing three jobs indefinitely. It would be just a matter of time before things started slipping through the cracks, and Mary would be well positioned to start taking pot shots at me once they did. The only question I had was, “Had I stepped over her line?” If I had, my life could get very ugly indeed, because based on my performance with Quest Partners, I wouldn’t have anywhere else to go anytime soon.

Marcie’s shrill referee whistle brought my attention back to the gym floor. While woolgathering, two goals had been set up at opposite ends, and a clueless four-year-old had been placed in front of each. The other children were clumped in the middle, Jacob among them, all kicking wildly at an underinflated soccer ball. The dads to my right rose suddenly to their feet, clapping and shouting at their own versions of their immortal selves -- GET THE BALL! KICK IT AWAY! Some kids understood -- Tyler, especially -- and when one of them came away from the pack with the ball between his feet, it didn’t surprise me that it was him.

I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket and pulled it out. This time I knew what the flashing red light meant.

R U ALL RIGHT?

It was as if she was there, sitting next to me, seeing the hang-dog look on my face. 

NO, I sent back, wishing she was there, and then watched the boys play while waiting for her to make the phone buzz again. I saw now why the ball was partially flat. Fully inflated, it would’ve danced too quickly across the gymnasium floor and gotten away from the slow-moving children.

CHEER UP. IN 24 HRS WE'LL BE IN MIAMI BEACH!

YIPPEE. I wondered if she’d pick up the sarcasm as I hit the send button.

SERIOUSLY. IT’LL B GOOD 2 GET AWAY. I’LL BUY U A DRINK THE 1ST NIGHT IF U LET ME.

Damn if she didn’t. I started my thumbs working on my response.

“Hey, buddy.”

Startled, I looked over at the men standing next to me.

It was Tyler’s dad. “You better get your boy under control.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but he was angry and I felt like the skinny teenager I had once been when he barked at me. I looked out onto the floor and saw Jacob chasing after another boy, tears and spittle running down Jacob’s face. I hadn’t heard his crying over the noise of the game before but I heard it now. I watched in horror as Jacob caught up to the boy, who had the ball between his feet, and pushed him roughly in the back. The boy fell hard and Jacob tried to grab the ball but he was too slow and another boy -- Tyler, athletic Tyler with his little muscular legs and Ivy League haircut -- swooped in and kicked it away, the shin-guarded portion of his leg connecting with Jacob’s body as it came swiftly forward. A piercing shriek filled the gymnasium as Jacob fell backward onto the floor, clutching his hollow chest.

Marcie and friend came running over, their whistles blowing and stopping most of the activity. I leapt down off the bleachers and trotted to Jacob’s side. Even with my heart pounding, knowing I was under the watchful gaze of the silverback and the other alpha males, I could not bring myself to run.

Jacob was screaming as if he had broken ribs.

“Is he all right?” the Wonder Twin asked, her nose wrinkled in distaste.

I bent down and scooped Jacob off the floor, trying to cradle him in my arms like a baby, but he fought against me blindly, terror surging through him like a rabbit caught by a farm cat. “He’ll be fine,” I said sternly as I wrestled him into a position stable enough for me to carry him out of there. He was screaming in my ear now, and I could feel his wet face against my neck.

“Does he need a breather?” Marcie said. “We can rotate some of the kids in and out.”

She was trying to help -- I know that. Somewhere in all her adolescent indoctrination she had been trained to take this gig seriously, to do what she could to keep the kids under her charge “in the game” and to “never stop trying.” At sixteen, she was a true believer, an evangelist ready to pass her unproven beliefs onto the next generation. And over her shoulder I could see her acolytes staring at us -- some of them frightened, but others contemptuous of Jacob and what he represented. Already at that tender age they were contemptuous, recognizing a freak when they saw one, and knowing what their doctrine told them to do. 

“No, thanks,” I said hurriedly, turning to get Jacob out of there, again walking swiftly but not daring to run nor even to look at the other dads in my shame. Jacob wailed the entire time -- all the way out of the gym, down the halls, out the door, into the parking lot, and to the car. He wasn’t hurt -- not physically, but he was upset and scared. And as I struggled to strap him into his booster seat while he continued to flap and flail his arms, I finally lost my cool, shaking him roughly and shouting at him.

“Goddammit, Jacob! You’re okay! Shut the fuck up already!”

I slammed the door and marched around to the driver’s seat, getting in and slamming that door, too. With my son crying hopelessly behind me, I pounded my fists on the steering wheel as hard as I could, screaming both to blot out his cries and my own consuming sense of inadequacy.

6

Jacob cried all the way home. He was like that. When he got hurt, no matter how slight the injury, he cried as if the world was coming to an end, as if he had never felt pain before and found himself sucked into a hell of never-ending agony. He’d throw a fit -- there was no other word for it -- a wailing, incoherent hissy fit, and there was absolutely no reaching him until he stumbled out of it like a nomad finally making his way across the desert. I used to think he might be disabled, that he lacked some essential thing that every other boy on the planet had, something he had failed to inherit from me or which I had failed to teach him, some spark of latent manhood that bestowed the ability to face adversity and overcome it. He seemed so utterly incapable of dealing with life’s smallest challenges and discomforts.

And at these times I hated him. It sounds awful to say, but it was true. He was like something alien to me -- a blind, embryonic troll from another dimension, with balled up fists and a slime-covered face, unable to fully perceive our universe. He frightened me. I didn’t know what he was and didn’t think I ever would.

I shouted at him a few more times, knowing it wouldn’t do any good, but needing to shout at him all the same. It was just me and him in the car and he wouldn’t hear me, so it felt like the rules were suspended, like I could blow off some steam and there wouldn’t be any consequences.

But by the time we got home, I had calmed down and Jacob’s crying had decayed into a soft whimpering. After parking the car, I opened his door and stood there for a few moments, looking at him and seeing not the hated monster, but my son again, strapped securely into his booster seat.

“Are you all right, Jacob?” I asked him gently.

His red eyes turned to look at me, tears glistening on his face under the dome light inside the car. “Where’s Mommy?” he asked.

“She’s inside,” I said, swallowing back some of my frustration for the sake of peace. Mommy. Always Mommy. When he began looking around with disorientation I added, “We’re home now. Mommy’s inside the house.”

He began to struggle then, desperate to get free of the seat belt restraining him, but his little fingers weren’t schooled enough to unsnap the buckle. I helped him out and he ran to the back door, clawing on its locked surface and crying out for his mommy to come. By the time I got there with the key Jenny was already opening the door from the inside.

“Alan?” was all she could say before Jacob burst into a fresh set of tears and ran for his mother’s protective embrace. The two of them practically collapsed on the floor of the back hallway together, Jacob clinging tightly and Jenny trying to comfort him while protecting her belly, where his sister slept in her prenatal fog.

Jenny’s questions were rushed and panicked. “Oh my god, what happened? Are you hurt? Did you get hurt?” But Jacob had no more answers for her than he’d had for me, just a long and plaintive howl like the cry of injustice itself. She looked up at me, eyes afire.

I opened my mouth but I had no answer for her, either. It was as if all my words had been tossed out of my brain and into a jumbled pile on the floor. I could have started picking them up, but they wouldn’t have been in the right order, and I knew I’d have to sort through them while my son cried and my wife continued to glare at me. It felt easier to just stand there and look at the mess.

“Alan! What happened?”

I shook my head. “They tried to play soccer,” I said, as if that explained anything.

Jenny dismissed me angrily and then tried to get to her feet. Pregnant, and with Jacob clutching her tightly, she had some difficulty, but when I attempted to help she shooed me away and relied instead on the knob on the pantry door. Planting Jacob on her hip, his nose nuzzled in behind her ear and beginning to settle back down into whimpers, she turned and retreated into the house.

I stayed in the back hallway and listened as her feet went up the stairs and moved into Jacob’s room. I remember thinking about leaving then, about getting back in my car and driving away, never to return. The size of the task before me seemed that big, and the confidence I felt in my ability to complete it seemed that small. It shamed me, but the idea of giving up and starting over somewhere else had a certain dark appeal to it. It seemed like it would have been better than standing in the back hall like a misbehaving child, waiting for his mother to come down and dole out her righteous punishment. But like that child -- afraid of what might happen when mother returned, but more afraid of what life would mean without mother in it -- I simply closed and locked the door and quietly made my way to the bottom of the stairs.

I could still hear them above me -- my wife and child -- Jacob now not whimpering at all, and the two of them in some kind of hushed conversation. As I turned my head to try and better pick up what they were saying, I saw Jenny’s knitting set out on the coffee table in the living room, the remote control and a cup of tea on the table beside one arm of our sofa, and the television frozen on some frame of one of her favorite cooking shows. The knitting, I knew, was a toddler-size sweater with a dinosaur pattern on the front -- something she was trying to finish and present to Jacob as a special gift before Crazy Horse was born.

I couldn’t hear any talking now, and when I looked back Jenny was standing at the top of the stairs. We stared at each other for a few moments, and then she slowly made her way down the steps, easing into each movement as if her back hurt.

“Alan, what happened?” she asked when she reached the bottom. Her voice was softer and much less threatening.

“What did he tell you?” I countered, jealous that Jacob had undoubtedly told his mother what he was feeling.

“He said Tyler kicked him. Is that what happened?”

“Yeah. He’s not really hurt, is he?”

“I don’t think so. He said he got kicked in the chest, but I didn’t see any marks or bruises.”

I shook my head and looked away. I could feel the tears in my eyes but I blinked a few times and drew them back in.

“Alan, what really happened tonight?”

It was a loaded question -- loaded in my mind at least. What Jenny wanted to hear was the recitation of events, and I could have said them, could have gone through the long litany like the play-by-play announcers Tyler’s dad surely listened to. But that’s not what I wanted to say at all. I wanted to say something entirely different.

What happened tonight? I failed, Jenny, that’s what happened tonight. I failed as Jacob’s father and as your husband, just like I’m failing at work and with the job search. I’m an imposter. I can feel the wall crumbling around me and I can’t do anything about it.

“Honey,” she said, obviously seeing the hurt in my eyes. “What is it?”

I sighed. “They tried to play soccer tonight,” I said again, not knowing if I would be able to say what I wanted to say, but knowing at least that I had to start somewhere else.

“Uh huh.”

“Well, they’ve never done that before and Jacob wasn’t ready for it. Every other night they’ve just had us practice our skills together and that was fine because I could encourage him and keep him engaged. He doesn’t know how bad he is, but I do. I look around and see how well the other boys are doing. They’ve got real skills. They’re not like Jacob. They’ve been playing with soccer balls and footballs and hockey sticks, probably since they came home from the fucking hospital. You know how most men are. Come on, sport, when you finish with all that breast feeding, how about tossing the old pigskin around with dear old dad?”

Jenny wrinkled her brow. I felt raw inside and I wanted to lash out, but I was getting carried away and I was losing her.

“Never mind,” I said, composing myself. “The point is tonight they put all the kids into their own soccer game. No dads to serve as buffers, just fifteen kids all going after the ball at the same time. Jacob couldn’t handle it. Everyone was better than him and he couldn’t get the ball and he had a meltdown. He pushed a kid and tried to steal the ball, and when he went to grab it he got kicked.”

“By Tyler?”

“Yes, by Tyler,” I said, dismissing from my mind the fact that I had just reconstructed that chain of events from past behaviors I’d seen Jacob exhibit. My eyes, after all, had been diverted while all that was supposedly happening on the gymnasium floor.

“But it wasn’t on purpose," I continued. "Tyler was going for the ball and Jacob got in the way. Tyler was just doing what boys do -- what boys are supposed to do. He kicked at the ball and got Jacob instead.”

“Then what happened?”

“What do you think happened?” I snapped, angry more at myself, and knowing I would hide behind the anger instead of confessing my fears. “I carried him out of there and brought him home. He was screaming like a banshee, Jenny. You know what he’s like when he gets hurt. The slightest scratch will send him into hysterics. Remember last fall when he cut his finger? You thought he was going to pass out from all the screaming and made us all go to the hospital.”

Jenny looked at me crookedly, clearly not liking the reminder of how she had overreacted.

“Look,” I said, “he got kicked in the chest tonight. Like the cut on his finger he wasn’t seriously hurt, but Tyler thumped him a good one, and he reacted the same way. What else was I supposed to do?”

“I don't know,” she said. “Maybe he would’ve calmed down after a while and could’ve gone back into the game?”

Does he need a breather? The memory of Marcie’s words suddenly stung me, as if even she knew more about parenting little boys than I did.

“Alan, what is it?” Jenny said with fresh concern. “What’s the matter? It’s here, isn’t it? Right here between us, whenever you talk about Jacob. I can see it but I don’t know what it is? Will you please tell me?”

I opened my mouth but no sound came out. The words were there but I held them back.

And suddenly she was hugging me, her pregnant belly pushing into me, her arms squeezing my back, and her soft voice telling me it was all right, all right. It was tender and intimate, and it scared me more than anything else that had happened that day because I hadn’t known she was going to do it. I hadn’t seen it coming. I had thought she was still mad at me.

In a moment I felt Crazy Horse kicking away in her womb. They seemed like violent kicks to me, and they caused Jenny to break the embrace, putting one hand on her stomach and one hand on the banister to steady herself.

“Well,” she said. “I don’t think this daughter of ours is going to have any trouble playing soccer.”

And then she smiled at me and, for a moment, everything really was all right.

“I overreacted, didn’t I?” I asked. “Like you did with the hospital. I should’ve given him a chance to calm down.”

That seemed obvious now, but at the time it had been the farthest thing from my mind.

Jenny reached out and grasped my hand. “Why don’t you go up and talk to your son?” she said. “He’s calmed down now. Maybe you guys can play a game or something?”

“You want to get back to your cooking show?” I teased.

“It is supposed to be my night off.”

I nodded, gave her a kiss on the cheek, and began making my way up the stairs. Jacob’s bedroom door was closed but not shut tight. With two fingers I gently swung it open and found him sitting on his bed, one of his giant picture books spread open on the mattress before him.

“Hi, buddy,” I said meekly from the door.

No answer. Just his little head turned down, ears sticking out, and eyes scanning the pages.

I wasn’t sure what I should do. The part of me that Jenny had helped build back up wanted to go in and give him a hug, but the part of me that even Jenny couldn’t reach wanted to close the door and pretend he didn’t exist. I slowly moved into the room and sat down on the bed next to him.

“Hi, Jacob.”

“Hi, Daddy.”

I put a gentle hand on his back. I could feel the knobby buttons of his spine through his shirt. “What are you looking at?”

“It’s a mystery search book,” he said, his attention still clearly on the page. “I’m looking for ten sharks.”

I looked at the book. It was a big one, twice the size of a news magazine, and the two-page spread Jacob had opened was filled with a colorful under-the-seascape, hundreds of little cartoon fish swimming around and past each other. Just glancing at it made them all blur together and my eyes swim.

“How can you tell which ones are the sharks?” I asked.

Jacob pointed to a column of ordered fish on the far left-hand side of the spread. There at the top was a little gray shark, with a sharp top fin, powerful tail, and an angry mouth. Below him was a yellow number ten. Scanning down the column I saw other kinds of sea creatures with other numbers beneath them -- six dolphins, five stingrays, seven seahorses.

“You’re supposed to find all of these fish?” I asked, running my finger down the column.

“Yes,” he said with a kind of sigh. “But I’m starting with the sharks.”

“How many have you found so far?”

“Three.”

He was so focused on the task that his answers to my questions came as if from the back of a dark cave where he was carefully rubbing two sticks together to make a fire. Drawn in by his concentration I began to search through the seascape myself, my eyes focusing on and rejecting each fish one by one. It didn’t escape my notice that this kind of interaction was far easier with Jacob than anything I may have thought to demand of him.

“There’s one!” I said with a pointing finger, stumbling across a shark the way you might find a buffalo head nickel in a jar of loose change.

“That’s four,” Jacob said, and then dutifully showed me the three he had already found. They were all slightly different, but unmistakably sharks, lost in an ocean of other creatures.

We kept at it until all ten sharks were found. When we had six, I climbed more fully onto his bed, my back resting against the headboard, and pulled Jacob over to sit next to me. He nestled comfortably under my arm, the book spread open on his lap. He found some and I found others, and Jacob seemed just as pleased either way. When there was only one left to find I spotted it but didn’t point it out right away.

“I see number ten.” I said.

“Where?”

“Can you find it yourself?”

He looked up at me, no sign of the tears he had previously shed. He clearly wanted to do this, to find the remaining shark on his own, but he also clearly wanted me to tell him, seduced by the idea that such a thing could be known. “Give me a hint.”

“A hint?” I said, deciding to test him a little, to see if he could handle this small challenge. “I didn’t get any hints.”

“Please, Daddy?”

“Well, all right,” I said as if making a great concession. “Let me see here. The tenth shark is between a jellyfish and a swordfish.”

Jacob rapidly turned his attention back to the book. I looked down on the golden fuzz on the back of his neck while his eyes scanned the page anew. Coming up the stairs I had dreaded the idea of talking to him about what had happened at Sports Class. It had felt like one of the mandatory duties of fatherhood -- you know, talking to your son about the role sports can play in teaching a young man about teamwork, healthy competition, and self-improvement -- but my heart wasn’t in that kind of thing. And I abandoned the idea altogether the moment I saw the peaceful concentration Jacob showed over his mystery search book. He rarely showed the ability to focus on any one thing for so long, especially on things that were difficult. He usually gave up too easily, occasionally breaking a toy or throwing a fit if he didn’t immediately succeed. This studied fascination with the mystery under the sea was something new, and I decided it would be better to reward this as positive behavior than to call attention to another one of his failures.

“There it is!” Jacob cried triumphantly, his index finger stabbing at the tenth shark like a spear. “Right between a jellyfish and a swordfish. Just like you said, Daddy. Just like you said!”

“Good job, buddy. That was a really good job.”

Jacob looked up at me and smiled, his eyes glowing and his little white teeth glistening. My arm was already around him, but I pulled him closer to me and kissed the top of his head.

“Now,” Jacob said, turning back to the book, happy, but all business. “Let’s find those six doll-fins.”

“Let’s do it,” I said, knowing then and there that the two of us were done with Sports Class forever. If Jenny wanted us to go somewhere for our bonding time, I could now think of dozens of other more productive things we might do.

+ + +

“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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