Who You Know (14 page)

RETTE

O
n my first day at work, Eleanore took me around the office and introduced me to everyone. I promptly forgot their names and what it was that they did exactly.

A big part of my job was simple copyediting, but I had to learn McKenna Marketing style and Eleanore's preferences and the way they marked things up for the typesetter. The training was not exactly stimulating. For several hours I listened to Eleanore prattle on about style and grammar; it took a lot of effort not to yawn.

Finally she left me with some reports to edit. They were focus group studies on what features people looked for in an oven, which were just about as interesting as Eleanore's opinions on the use of hyphens in modern journalism. I drank coffee with abandon, determined to be alert enough to catch every mistake.

The next morning I finished the thermos of coffee I'd brought from home before I even got to the office. I wasn't used to waking up at 6
A.M.
, and of course I didn't get much sleep the night before because of new-job stress and my previous afternoon's caffeine orgy.

I was already having trouble focusing on my work when Eleanore stopped by.

“How's it going?” she asked.

“Well.” I tried to look awake and perky.

“I think you'll really enjoy working here. I've worked here three years.”

She looked thoughtful. Was I supposed to say something? Was this supposed to impress me? “Really?” was what I finally came up with.

“The editorial department was really a mess when I got here. We were losing money, the reports were always coming out past the deadline. But I was able to turn this place around.” Her tone was defensive as if I would doubt her. “I've put in a lot of hours of overtime over the years to get us here. It can get pretty stressful.”

“I bet.”

“I run to relax. It's important to have an outlet for stress. I run at least fifty miles a week. Not bad for someone who is forty-six, huh?”

“That's great. Fifty miles. Wow.”

“I run in marathons. It's what keeps me in shape. I've never been more than ten pounds overweight in my entire life.”

Did she not notice that she was sharing this information with a person who had struggled with her weight her entire life and was quite obviously thirty pounds overweight?

“I gained those ten pounds when my first marriage broke up. Michael was my high school sweetheart. We got married right after graduation. We were married seven years. Then I discovered he was cheating on me. It wasn't the first time either. So for a while I ate a little more than I should. Then I looked in the mirror and said, Eleanore Kelly—my name was Kelly then—I didn't change it after the divorce. My maiden name was Smith; then when I was thirty-two, I got remarried and for six years my name was Chase. Then I married Dwayne, that's how I got the name Neuman. What was I saying? Running. Right. It was the breakup of my first marriage that got me into running. I've never been more than ten pounds overweight in my entire life because I made a decision when I looked in the mirror that day and said, ‘Eleanore Kelly, I will not tolerate self-indulgence . . .' ”

For more than two hours she went on in gruesome detail about the demise of her first two marriages, every place she ever traveled, all the marathons she'd run in, and about how perfect her current husband, Dwayne, was. I said nothing except for the occasional, “Oh really?” or “How interesting.”

“I'm not ashamed of having been married three times. I mean it would be nice if Michael and I could have spent our lives together, but it's not always possible. My therapist thinks that I may have abandonment issues because once, when I was five years old, my parents took me to my grandmother's house and left me for a week-long vacation without saying good-bye.”

She had a can-you-believe-it? expression, her eyes large and accusative, as if her parents had sold her five-year-old body to strangers for sex.

“They thought it would be easier for me that way, but let me tell you, it wasn't. Really they just didn't want a scene; they didn't want to see me crying. But I cried all right. That week I cried a lot.”

Eleanore continued to analyze this event and all of its perceived repercussions on her life. After a very, very long time, she asked me about my wedding plans.

“We're hoping to have it at the Broker Inn if we can . . .”

She clapped her hands together. “That's where Dwayne and I got married four years ago. Everything was just so perfect. You're going to have a wonderful time. For our reception the food was perfect and the champagne was delicious—normally I don't like champagne! I try not to drink very often. When I do drink, I usually only have one glass of wine. I've never been drunk in my life. Our little niece and nephew were the flower girl and ring bearer and they looked so adorable. Particularly little Josh in his little tuxedo. His sister Nina tried to keep him walking straight down the aisle, but he just zigzagged around with a big smile on his face—he just
loved
the attention. I'll have to bring in pictures sometime.”

“Great.”

“Well, I guess we'd better be getting back to work. I think you'll really enjoy working here.” Eleanore looked at me for a moment. Was she waiting for me to say something or was she deciding if she had finished saying all that she wanted to say? “Well, I guess we'd better get back to work,” she repeated and finally left my office. I smiled and exhaled, a survivor of a verbal hurricane. Eleanore was a talker, but she seemed nice.

Funny thing, first impressions.

 

 

E
leanore trained me for the first couple of days, but Paige was really the person who told me what needed to get done and funneled work my way. It was odd working under a person who was only a year older than me, but I liked Paige. Eleanore always seemed annoyed with me when I asked questions, especially if she didn't know the answer. Paige was more relaxed.

Paige's voice trailed off at the end of her sentences when she did talk, which wasn't often. She wore braces on her wrists and hands. I asked her if she had carpal tunnel. She nodded.

“Did you get it from this job?”

She nodded again.

“I have a bunion from when I waitressed in college. It still hurts sometimes . . .” I was cut off when Eleanore came into Paige's office and said she had some proofs for me to go over. I took the pages and promptly went back to my office. I sat down and thought,
I have a bunion from when I waitressed in college?
What kind of information was this? I'd meant to strike up a conversation about workplace hazards, and instead I'd delivered a ridiculous non sequitur that had catapulted out of my mouth at a dizzying speed. I couldn't exactly go back and explain to her what I'd meant. Shit. If there were a perfume named after me, it would be called
Eau d'Asshole
.

Eventually I extracted from Paige the information that she took an anti-inflammatory drug for her carpal tunnel. She worked an average of sixty hours a week, and since the assistant before me quit, she'd been working even more, which had done some significant damage to her hands. She didn't complain or seem upset that she was in constant pain for working sixty or seventy hours a week when she was paid for only forty.

Paige was nice, but she was the kind of person who probably didn't get asked to parties very often; she was the type to hover on the edges of the room as unnoticeable and innocuous as dust. But I liked her. Several times in the first few days she told me that I was doing a good job, and a few times when I queried her about something that looked odd she said “great catch.” I'd return to my office smiling. Great catch! I'd made a great catch! I'd finally found something I was good at.

I was kept busy because there was too much work for our department, especially with Eleanore's unbelievable verbosity—her endless monologues could easily devour two hours of my day. I had no idea how she managed to get any work done because she felt compelled to share her stories with just about everyone in the entire office.

Eleanore's conversations always had a tirade quality to them. Every story seemed to have the same moral: Everyone in the world was hopelessly flawed except her, which thus put an undue burden on poor beleaguered Eleanore, who always rose to the occasion through heroic efforts.

At first, I didn't mind the heavy workload. I liked having a little stress. I liked pushing myself to see how much I could get done in a day. What I didn't realize was that in my first few days, Paige was keeping my workload to a reasonable level. Soon, however, I was expected to plow through as much work as Paige did, and the stress became overwhelming. One day I worked at such a hectic pace for so many hours on end that when my stomach rumbled to tell me it was almost six o'clock, it was like coming out of a trance, and I could suddenly feel how much my right forearm and wrist ached from the keyboard and mouse, and my neck was stiff and sore. By the time I got home from work, my eye was twitching like a mad scientist from staring at the computer screen so long.

The thing was, my body didn't have a chance to heal. I worked the same long intense hours day after day. In less than a week, I was wearing braces like Paige. I tried to remind myself to look away from the computer screen, but my eye twitch lingered. I was beginning to look like someone who should be named Igor.

In stark contrast to the beaten-down ergonomic wrecks in the editorial department were the people from sales who were positively ebullient at all times, always complimenting me on my gorgeous outfits and asking me questions like how my commute was or how the wedding plans were coming along. They acted as though I was the most fascinating person they would talk to all day. I'd answer politely, but people that happy scared me, and anyway, all I wanted to do was
not
think about the wedding. The fact that we hadn't found a place to have it at was keeping me up at night, as were my dismal prospects of finding a dress that didn't make me look like Snuffalupogous in taffeta.

Unfortunately, all my coworkers knew about me was that I was getting married, so in that polite but distant way coworkers feign interest in you, the wedding was a perpetual topic of conversation, particularly with Paige. She was so shy, I couldn't get past feeling we were little more than strangers. I would ask her about her wedding; she would ask about mine. She'd had a huge wedding and an elaborate reception at an expensive restaurant. Her ring was gargantuan.

“Your ring is so cute,” she told me. “It really complements your hand.” What did she mean by cute? Did it complement my hand because it was small like my hand? Did she think my ring was dinky and therefore Greg didn't really love me? Cute was a very poor adjective to apply to a wedding ring.

“Where are you going to hold the reception?” she asked.

“We haven't made final plans yet, but we were thinking about going to the Broker Inn.”

“Oh, two of my friends got married there. It's a nice place.”

Was she insinuating that I was unimaginative? That my wedding would be unoriginal?

“Do you know what kind of food you're serving?”

“Maybe Chicken Kiev. We're not sure if we're going to have a sit-down dinner or a buffet.”

“We had a sit-down dinner. People could choose swordfish or prime rib. I think having a choice is nice, don't you?”

“Sure. Yeah.” My guests would be lucky if they got chicken nuggets and Spaghettios, but I didn't say this. I didn't like where this conversation was going, so I excused myself to return to the safe comfort of my deluge of work.

 

 

I
t was wonderful to be bringing home a paycheck, but my discontent lingered. I woke up early most mornings—four, five o'clock—and then lay in bed worrying about being too tired to do a good job at work, my eyes stinging from lack of sleep. What if I was so tired I made mistakes and got fired? I couldn't take it. I couldn't fail again. I wanted to be out of debt. I wanted the wedding to be over. I wanted a new car so I could stop stressing out about the next time my car was going to conk out on me. My debt was approaching a number so abstract that it was almost easier not to worry about it now than when it had been merely unmanageable rather than unthinkable, which it was quickly becoming.

I would start my diet on January first. Sure it was cliché, but it was a convenient time for new beginnings. I'd had good intentions of dieting, but my new job was insane, and by the time I got home from work, my hunger was raging out of control. I would put a frozen pizza in the oven, binge on whatever snack food was in the house during the eleven minutes it took to cook, then stuff the pizza down so fast I barely bothered to breathe or chew. Then I would sit on the couch, a moaning, distended ball of flab, unable to move because of my considerable girth.

If I started my diet right after the holidays, I could still lose the weight by the wedding. I could lose a pound a week, times four weeks a month, times seven months was twenty-eight pounds. At the end I could starve a little. My goal had been forty pounds, but thirty-five would work.

I couldn't wait to join a health club. I'd work out for two hours at a time, five days a week, and I'd be svelte in no time.

 

 

M
y hopes that Greg would do more housework once I got a job were not realized. He wasn't home much, but he'd use a few dishes every day and leave the counter a mess. I would say, as nicely as I could, “Are you going to clean those dishes?” He always said he'd get to it. And he would. But the mess lingered until every last dish—including the Tupper ware we used in lieu of bowls and plates—had piled up in the sink so I had nothing to eat out of and no cooking pans.