The Big Dream (23 page)

They are mopping the shiny linoleum at the hospital. Even though I tried to shake the rain off myself in the foyer, I still drip with every step. There's always something to feel guilty about. “You look for guilt,” my mother would say, if she weren't on oxygen and discouraged from removing her mask to say unnecessary things.

Her bed is in the corner of the wardroom under the window, which she never looks out. I wonder if the other patients resent her for that. I would. Her bed-curtain is pulled shut. Through it, I can make out Desi silhouetted by the flicker-flash of TV. I assume my mother is there too, but in silhouette, she is indistinguishable from a lumpy bed.

“Hey, Mom. Hey, Des.” As I slip in, they are watching a big blond man heft a shining grey plank of stone that will become, in the next half hour, a kitchen counter. Like magic.

“Hey, Belinda. Some lady took the other chair.” Desi sits slack in the remaining chair. Her hair is loose feathers and random ringlets, sprawled over her shoulders.

“S'ok, I'll sit on the bed.” My mother kicks and fidgets towards the window until there is room for me. I sit beside her legs, put a
hand on her shin: the bone feels as hard and heavy as ever. She shoves the screen back on its revolving arms so I can see.

My mother was diagnosed with cancer when she was already pretty sick, though the coughing and breathlessness seemed worse once we knew they were associated with the big C. She started having to be admitted to the hospital just a couple months later, and now it's been a year of this, of Des and I circling around and hanging out in a sleepy, nearly silent way that is all we can think of since she's been dying. Before this, the three of us never really spent much time together.

It's strange to find I don't mind all the togetherness. We like the same shows, and I've had the PVR for so long, it seems organic to be watching as stuff airs, on the tiny screen attached to my mother's bed. Since I've been spending all my time with work problems or my mom, I've lost track of the PVR – I could have 35 hours of
Top Chef
.

Only a year and I can barely remember what I did every evening when my mother was well and my company wasn't foundering, or at least back when I was ignorant of both issues. I know I subscribed to Netflix, to an organic vegetable delivery program, to eHarmony. I know every couple of weeks I would stride into a Starbucks and look for a man who was looking for me. I know I liked the Netflix better. I wonder what my mother was doing in the evenings, before she was dying.

I leave around 10:30, after prime time is over and my mother is slack under the crunchy white sheets. In the elevator, Des asks me how work is, and I say, “Fine,” because it is only a four-storey ride. I always feel I should hug her narrow shoulders before we go to our cars, but there is no history of hugging between us.

The next morning, I am congested before I am even conscious. The drenching yesterday has caught up with me. The snot is thin and slippery as blood, without the wet-metal smell. It's tempting to stay in bed, but the customer service reps are not going to lay themselves off, and I can't bear the look my staff gives me when I delegate tasks like this. I use four tissues while getting dressed. I can't face food, so there's nothing left to do but go to work.

The rain has turned to sleet – it clings to me in big icy drops and the wind buffets through my trenchcoat. While I am crossing a patch of ice, the phone buzzes in my pocket and almost knocks me off balance. Once I'm safely in the driver's seat I've missed the call. I dial Desi back without starting the engine. Ice-water drips from my hair onto my neck.

“What's going on?”

“Nothing. I was just thinking you could bring a pizza from that Iranian place tonight. Since it's on your way.”

“You were thinking about dinner at eight in the morning?”

“I wanted to get you before work. I know you don't like interruptions.”

I can't remember ever saying that, specifically, but it's true. “What do you want on it? Nothing?”

“Is that cool?”

“Sure, nothing's fine. I'll bring it.”

“See you tonight.”

The office is so bright and warm after the slick deluge outside. Wet spots form on the carpet in my office, drips from my coat and hair. The carpet is a grey-brown and you can't really tell if it needs to be vacuumed or not. The wastebasket, however, is most certainly empty.

After I look for the missing HR dossiers for customer service on three drives, I go ask my assistant. The budget is so tight this
year, assistants are paid like drive-through staff, and there's not enough of them. Kat's tiny eyebrows scrunch tight as she listens to my request. An hour later, she comes to report that we don't have those employees because their files aren't in our system.

“I'm sure they work here, and if we hired them, there must be files. Files don't prove existence; existence necessitates files.”

Kat sags, a pantomime of exhaustion. “I'm sorry, but if we have no files and you don't know their names, how can I search?”

“By category. Just try to think where they would've been classified, if not the right place.” I wonder what she wants to be when she grows up. Kat's thick-framed glasses and hair slanting across her forehead look like she's trying hard, but not at HR. “They had paperwork once, it's just gone now. I got the head-count requests when they were hired.”

“They could've quit or been let go.”

“No, I'm letting them go
now
– I'd remember if I'd done it already.” I want to clamp my hands over my mouth, but Kat's job
is
supposed to be dealing with sensitive information. I'm supposed to be training her.

“Really?” Kat straightens. “When's the meeting? Do I need to prepare anything?” Once someone can be laid off, anyone can.

“No – unless you want to go down to the CSR room and take names?”

She lowers her gaze to look through the tiny panels of her glasses directly at me. I guess she is trying to tell if I am kidding. “I don't – I don't know anyone up there.”

“Then just see what you can find in the system.”

She nods hard. “OK, thanks.” Takes a step backwards. “I will.”

After the last conference call of the day, I rest my forehead on the wrist cushion in front of my keyboard, listening to the hum of the
CPU. The computer doesn't seem to be having any problems today.

The sound of a throat clearing makes me jerk my head up, a ribbon of snot spooling to the desk. The cleaning woman is in the doorway, today in a black
Raiders
shirt. She has a vacuum cleaner.

“You ok?”

I wipe my nose with the back of my hand and it smears across my cheek. “Just resting. You're early?”

“No, on time. We're always on time.”

The windows are black and icy; my legs are stiff. I've slept. The watch on my snotty wrist says 7:27. “Yes, you are.” On my second try, I stand all the way up. “I'll get out of your way, just let me log out.”

I shut applications and log off without even checking email, but as soon as I look up, she says, “I'll vacuum now, but just this once. We are contracted only for quarterly.”

The screen goes black. “You don't have – ”

“You are exec, I see the doorplate, we can make an exception.”

I try to sigh, but the breath won't go in that deeply. I go toward my coat behind the door, but I guess it sort of looks like I'm coming for her.

Backing up, she says, “Or later. We here for an hour.” I watch her dragging the vacuum down the hall as I do up my coat. The back of her jersey says Biletnikoff. A Russian name, maybe, or Polish? I think the Raiders play football. But who am I kidding? I will never have a pleasant chat about sports with this woman.

It seems almost impossible now to go up the north stairs to the call centre and look for names I can search in the database. However, if by Monday's update meeting I've accomplished nothing, the executive team will offer only baffled frowns and a desire for outside consultants. I need to figure this out.

But all the call stations are generic – no décor or sweaters, and no nameplates. They must rotate cubes among part-timers. When I open the drawers I see pens and garbage and the occasional pack
of gum, nothing identifying. All the computers are shut down, part of an energy-saving policy I myself instituted. I wouldn't know the passwords, anyway.

I'm defeated, but stand there a moment trying to picture this room a few hours ago, warm with bodies and loud with subscription rates, re-orders, misdirected mail. I am sure they are good at their jobs, whoever they are.

I stagger through the hospital parking lot with pizza and drinks, no hand free for an umbrella against the sloppy wet snow, and my nose is running. In the fluorescent warmth of the entranceway hangs the sign I've passed a million times, above the hand-cleanser dispenser. There's the usual detailed explanation of how to wash one's hands, and then below, the ban on sick people that always seemed logical until now: