“You should start looking for a new job.”
“What?” I asked. We were sitting across from each other at the dining room table, Jacob long since excused and playing up in his room, and the dirty plates from a hastily-devoured meal scattered about.
“You don’t have to quit tomorrow or anything,” Jenny said, pushed back from the table and swirling the last sip of milk around in her glass. She was about five months pregnant with our second child then, and we had long since switched to drinking milk out of our wine glasses. “But that place is poison. You should start looking for something new.”
It took my mind a moment to process what she was saying. I had been at the company for twelve years, hired right out of college. I had been promoted several times, most recently to Deputy Account Executive for the company’s largest client. In their way, they had been good to me, and raises had come each year and with each promotion.
“Do you really think it’s time for that?” I asked.
Jenny nodded. “I do. Look at what they did today. This isn’t the first time they’ve put the needs of the company ahead of those of their people.”
“But I don’t feel threatened at all. And with this new position it’s almost as if I’ve entered a kind of inner circle. I think this new assignment Mary’s given me is a really big deal. She’s put me in charge of redesigning the hiring process for the entire company.”
Jenny had been emptying her glass and now she hastily swallowed so she could interject. “Alan, don’t get me started on Mary Walton,” she said, her voice husky from the milk still coating her throat. “You know how I feel about her.”
I certainly did. Jenny and Mary only saw each other twice a year—at the company’s summer picnic and again at its Christmas party—but in the last couple of years the tension between them seemed almost palpable. It started immediately following Jacob’s birth when Mary had asked Jenny when she was planning on going back to work. Jenny had always been very career-focused, so it was a question she was hearing a lot in those days. But when she told Mary with her usual aplomb that we had decided to give it a go with Jenny staying at home with the baby, Mary had given Jenny such a sour look, I thought someone had slipped a cockroach into her holiday punch.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” I remember Mary saying in her uniquely condescending way.
And I remember Jenny looking back at her blankly, surprised, I know, at the idea that someone would think she would make such a decision without being sure it was the right thing to do. Jenny was sure about everything she did—that’s one of the things that made her Jenny—and she had a hard time keeping the disdain out of her voice when someone questioned her. “Of course,” she had said assuredly. “Alan and I think it’s what’s best for Jacob, and we’re comfortable enough right now that we can make ends meet without my salary.”
If anything, Mary’s look had turned even more sour upon receiving this information. Both of Mary’s kids had gone straight into daycare after they had been born—by scheduled c-section, if you were to believe the office rumors; scheduled, of course, to avoid any conflicts with client meetings—and it was a well known fact that women professionals who decided to stay home after the birth of a child were something less than human in Mary’s eyes. It happened time and again. Whoever it was, no matter how high in esteem Mary might have previously held them, once they made that one unforgivable decision, Mary started giving off this vibe that they were no longer to be spoken of in her presence. And if you ever forced Mary to mention them, she would always be sure to make a snide remark about how incompetent they had been and about how the company was much better off without them.
From that day forward, Mary started treating Jenny exactly the same way. At each Christmas party she would mostly avoid Jenny, looking contemptuously at her from across the room, and at each summer picnic, when it was harder to surround herself exclusively with co-conspirators and sycophants, any words she happened to offer would be as cold as the tubs of catered potato salad.
I looked down at Jenny’s belly, just beginning to peep out between the bottom of her top and the top of her pants. “Okay, forget Mary Walton. What about the new baby?”
Jenny instinctively put a protective hand on her stomach as she placed the wineglass back on the table. “What about her?”
“Well, don’t I need this job to support you and the two kids? We decided you should stay home with Jacob because we didn’t think it made sense for you to keep working just so we could pay for daycare. Doesn’t that same logic hold true for Crazy Horse?”
It was the joke name we were using to refer to the baby until we settled on a real name.
“I said you didn’t have to quit your job tomorrow. We do need your income, but you can start keeping your eyes open, can’t you? Apply only when it seems like a good opportunity. Let them know your current employer doesn’t know you’re looking. They’ll keep it confidential. Come on, Alan. People do this kind of thing every day.”
Jenny was right, I knew she was—both about how people found new positions and about how it was time for me to at least start looking. But something in me still rebelled against the idea. I shook my head.
“I don’t know, honey. With Susan gone things are going to get a lot busier for me. Until we hire her replacement I’m going to have to pick up her workload in addition to mine.”
Jenny looked at me skeptically. “Until who hires her replacement?”
“We,” I said, not sure what Jenny was driving at. “Until we hire her replacement.”
“We as in you and Mary?” Jenny asked. “Do you honestly think that woman is going to involve you in the process this time? You weren’t consulted at all when she hired Susan—even though you had spent three years in the position she was hiring for and would be supervising whoever she brought in to fill your shoes. What’s going to make this time any different?”
“The new project,” I said, somewhat defensively. “I’m going to revise the way the company screens and interviews applicants.”
“And Mary is going to wait until you have that finished before she begins interviewing candidates for Susan’s position?”
It was a good question. Reflecting back on my conversation with Mary, I realized I didn’t have a clear answer to it. But evidently Jenny did.
“No, wait,” Jenny laughed, waving her hands in the air. “That makes even more sense. That’s exactly what she’s going to do. Look at what she’s done. As long as you’re working on this project, she has a reason for not moving forward in hiring a replacement for Susan. And all that time you’ll be doing both your job and Susan’s job for her. Same amount of work getting done, one less set of salary and benefits to pay for. What a bitch.”
I looked at Jenny suspiciously, not wanting to accept her interpretation, but knowing that it at least fit within Mary’s pattern of behavior.
“You’re definitely going to start looking for a new job. I’ll help if I have to, but you’ve got to start thinking about getting out of there.”
I smiled at her. We had been married long enough for me to know that when she spoke with that kind of finality there wasn’t much else I could do. She certainly wasn’t going to change her mind.
“Yes, mum,” I said with mock servility. “Would you like me to do the dishes before drawing m’lady’s bath?”
“Very funny,” Jenny said with a smirk. “No, I’ll clean up here. Go spend some time with your son.”
It was Jenny’s way of letting me know she needed some “away” time. Seeing to Jacob’s needs all day had proven more demanding that either of us had thought. But she wasn’t being selfish. She knew I wanted to spend as much time as I could with Jacob. Too often, it seemed, I would be working late or stuck on the road, and days would go by before he and I had any meaningful contact.
I went upstairs and found him in his room playing with his trains. While Jenny and I had talked he had set up an elaborate track all over his floor. The wooden pieces were normally kept in an enormous plastic tote in the corner of his room, but he had fished most of them out and had assembled them into a maze of switches, bridges and crossings. Part of it even extended under his bed, the trains coming out from under the drape of his bedspread like they were going through a tunnel. I stood in the doorway for a few moments, watching him push long trains of magnetically-connected cars around, and marveling at the exactness that my four-year-old son could sometimes display.
“Hi, buddy,” I said eventually.
“Hi, Daddy,” he replied, not taking his eyes off his work. “Do you want to play trains with me?”
“Okay,” I said, and I got down on the floor with him. “Who’s this?” I asked, pointing to a green-painted engine off on a siding with three cars behind it.
“That’s Percy,” Jacob said.
“Can I be Percy?” I asked.
“Okay. But you have to go through the trainwash first.”
“The what?”
“The trainwash,” Jacob said patiently, pointing to a wooden structure with two blue rubber rollers on either side of the track and a gray-painted wooden cylinder labeled “WATER” on the very top. “All the engines have to be clean before they leave the station.”
Of course they did. It was one of the life lessons they tried to teach the kids on the television show the train engines lived on. A smart engine keeps himself clean, boys and girls. I had watched some of the shows with Jacob, and they were always trying to impart some kind of do-gooder morality—you know, be nice to others, take care of the planet, don’t ask too many questions. It was thinly-veiled indoctrination for pre-schoolers, and its icons were reinforced with every trip down a toy aisle or through a grocery store. These train engines, each with a cheeky human face stuck on its front end, showed up on everything a child may come into contact with—from tennis shoes and underpants to juice boxes and toaster waffles. They were everywhere, and in their insidious ubiquity they tried to convince their acolytes the world was a place where every problem could be solved by just trying a little harder and working together as a team.
“Who do you have over there?” I asked, beginning to push Percy through the rollers in the trainwash.
“I’m Gordon,” Jacob said proudly. “He’s the biggest and strongest engine there is.”
“Oh yeah?” I said. “Is he fast?”
“He’s superfast!”
“Is he faster than Percy?”
“He’s faster than everyone, Daddy.”
“Should we have a race?”
Jacob looked at me excitedly. “A race?”
“Sure,” I said, confidently. “We can build a pair of tracks that the engines can race down. We’ll start them at the top and see which one goes the farthest.”
My suggestion had lit a fire in Jacob’s eyes. “Can we race Thomas, too?”
“Of course,” I said. “Bring them out. We’ll race them all.”
I spent the next twenty minutes trying to construct a race track that would serve our purposes, eventually deciding I had to roll up Jacob’s area rug and build directly on the hardwood floor so the wooden blocks and pieces would be stable enough to create the effect we wanted. At one point Jenny stuck her head in the room—evidently finished with the dishes—and asked what we were doing.
“We’re building a race track, Mommy!” Jacob said, jumping up and down with excitement. “Daddy and me are going to race my engines!”
Jenny looked skeptical. “All right. Just be sure to clean up when you’re done, okay? And put the rug back.”
“Yes, Mommy,” I said.
When we had the track built the races began. Jacob had eight engines, so I put them in qualifying heats and then I sketched a kind of NCAA bracket tournament on the inside cover of one of his coloring books. Jacob was unbelievably excited with every race, jumping for joy and cheering for his favorite engine in each pairing. I quickly learned all of their names and which ones had a special place in his heart. One, in fact, was not an engine at all, but an old-fashioned double-decker bus named Bertie. Jacob thought it was hysterical every time Bertie raced.
“Bertie can’t win!” he would laugh. “He’s not an engine!”
In the end, the championship was between Jacob’s beloved Thomas, and a sneering black engine named Diesel. Superfast Gordon had fallen in the first round.
“Are you ready, Jacob?” I said, trying to build as much drama as I could. “Are you ready for the final race in the ultimate Jacob Larson Train Engine Championship?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!”
“On the right track,” I said, cupping my hand over my mouth to imitate the sound of an announcement coming over a loudspeaker, “painted blue and red and puffing white smoke, the number one really useful engine…Thomas!”
“Yaaaaay!” Jacob shouted, jumping up and down and flapping his hands like a flightless bird. “Yaay, Thomas!”
“And on the left track,” I continued, “painted black and red and reeking of oily fumes, the engine everyone loves to hate…it’s Diesel!”
“Boooo!” cried Jacob. “Not Diesel! Thomas! Go Thomas!”
Diesel, I remembered, was the engine always causing trouble on the TV show, the one the other engines had to clean up after, or help each other out of the messes he created. But the little wooden and plastic toy that bore his likeness had legitimately earned its way into the championship race. He and Thomas both had consistently sailed down the sloping tracks I had built, and had rolled farther across the floor than anyone else. It was truly a battle of titans and I didn’t know who was going to win.
I let the two engines go and they flew down the track, leaping off the end at precisely the same time, and then rolling neck and neck across the floor. Jacob was screaming with excitement, hooting and hollering at Thomas to go, Go, GO!
“And the winner…” I crowed, feeling invincible at having concocted such a captivating activity for Jacob and watching as the two engines came to a stop, one just half a length ahead of the other, “…is Diesel!” I started making sounds like those of a roaring crowd.
“Noooo!” Jacob groaned, all the fun of the past half an hour suddenly evaporating in the heat of his burned expectations. “No, Daddy!” he complained petulantly. “Not Diesel! Thomas! Thomas is the winner!”
“No he’s not, buddy,” I said with a smile, noticing how red his face was and surprised at his angry tone. “Take a look. Diesel went farther. He’s the winner.”
“NOOOO!” Jacob shrieked, the high pitch of his voice piercing painfully into my ears, and then he frantically rushed forward in an attempt to kick the engines, as if needing to destroy the evidence of Thomas’s ignoble defeat. In his mad rush he stumbled over the rolled-up area rug and he fell into the wooden ramps, knocking them over in a clatter of falling blocks and pieces of track, and thumping his forehead hard on the exposed floor. Seeing him go down I lurched forward to try and break his fall but was only able to bring him into my lap after the damage had been done. The caterwauling cries that followed brought Jenny quickly to the door.
“What happened?!” she demanded.
I was focused on Jacob, trying to console him as best I could, but as soon as he saw Jenny he began to fight against me, squirming down halfway onto the floor again, his shirt bunching up near his red face and exposing his belly.
“Alan, what happened?!” Jenny said again, her voice loud and powerful.
“He fell!” I shouted at her, trying to make myself heard over Jacob’s cries.
“Fell?” she said. “Fell how?”
I couldn’t make any sense out of her question. Not with a bellowing and writhing four-year old in my lap busily coating my shirt sleeves with tears and snot. “What do you mean, fell how? He fell! He tripped over the damn rug!”
Jenny gave me an exasperated look and then rushed forward to take Jacob away. He went gratefully into her arms and she stood there rocking with him, his growing toddler legs dangling awkwardly down as she both shushed him and tried to get a better look at his face.
“He’s bruised!” she gasped upon seeing the red splotch on his forehead. “Did he hit his head?”
I was still sitting on the floor amidst all the rubble of scattered train tracks, trying to wrap my brain around what had just happened. We had been having so much fun, my son and I, and then, it seemed, a tornado had come out of nowhere and torn the roof off our house. Was there anything I could have done to prevent it? At the time I didn’t think so, and it’s only with the benefit of hindsight that I’ve come to realize that I could have pretended Thomas had won.
“Alan!” she shouted at me. “Did Jacob hit his head?”
“I don’t fucking know!” I shouted back. “I think so.”
It was the worst thing I could have said. Head injuries were serious business in Jenny’s mother book. And I had seen Jacob bang his forehead against the hardwood floor with my own eyes, but in my distracted state I had said I didn’t know, and that was tantamount to admitting I had been an inattentive father. Jenny looked at me with a kind of horror and then took our son from the room, Jacob wailing and crying the entire time.
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“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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