The Cubicle Next Door (30 page)

…oops. I meant an open mind.

Posted by:
survivor | January 15 at 08:36 PM

Twenty-Nine

T
uesday evening, as we were watching the news, Grandmother looked at her watch and then rose to her feet.

“Where are you going?”

“To get ready.”

“For what?”

“I’m going out.”

“At this time of night? By yourself?”

“I’m going out with Oliver.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is this a date?”

She sighed and sat down next to me on the couch. “I suppose it is.”

“But…then…why didn’t everyone come over and help you get ready?”

“Good heavens. It’s just a simple date. There’s no need to create a big fuss.”

“Whereas, there was with me?”

“Of course there was.” She smiled. Kissed her palm and pressed it to my forehead. Left me to wonder why as she walked up the stairs.

About half an hour later, the doorbell rang.

I looked toward the stairs. No sign of Grandmother.

Clicking the TV off, I walked to the door, opened it, and let Oliver come in. “Why are you here?”

“To take your grandmother to see a movie.”

“No. I mean why are you here? In Manitou.”

“Because I want to be.”

“Don’t you have family somewhere?”

“I don’t. Not anymore.”

I waited to for him to say something that would make me feel sorry for him, but he didn’t. “So you just…?”

“I travel. Ostensibly, to ski. I’m just an old gypsy whose wanderings have made him unsuited to life in England.” He cleared his throat. “There’s no snow there, you understand.”

“And no mountains.”

“Exactly.”

“So what will you do in the spring?”

“Sorry?”

“When the snow melts?”

“Oh. Er…” His train of thought must have been interrupted by Grandmother coming down the stairs because he never answered.

“Right. You look lovely, Helen. Shall we go then?” He offered Grandmother his arm and they walked out the door without a backward glance, leaving me to wonder about the purpose of dating at the age of 85. By the age of 80, everyone was living past their life expectancy anyway, right? So what was the point? Grandmother was usually so practical. Logical.

I was still pondering the puzzle of Grandmother and Oliver at work the next day. I ran a statistical analysis on a hypothetical relationship between the two of them. Every way I ran it, the numbers were clear. Oliver should be dead. And if he weren’t, he would be soon. There was one variable, however, that I had no way of computing. It was possible those who lived past their life expectancies had a different standard deviation in their expected life spans than those who did not. But there was no way of knowing for sure.

I graphed the expected lengths of the rest of their lives, just out of curiosity, and then graphed my own. Imagined what it would be like to be 85 and look back on my life. What things would I be proud of? The van-rickshaw project? No, not proud. Just glad I had helped. I’d be proud of Antonio and Jorge, Nicolette and Adriana, Maria and Gloria, Carlos and Juan. But I would still be alone. I knew I couldn’t trust myself to be with someone, but I wasn’t happy with the alternative either.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding!” A feminine voice with hints of laughter startled me and made me look up from the computer. I turned toward the hall and saw a petite blonde in blues standing with a hand on her hip, grinning into Joe’s cubicle.

“Kate!”

I watched as Joe came out of his cubicle, enveloped her in a hug, and then let her go. “You working here?”

“Yep.”

“Since when?”

“Just this month. It took that long to sort out the craziness at the Personnel Center. Join Spouse assignments are never easy.”

“How are the kids?”

“Fine. Doing great. How’s Harry?”

“Not so good. Dead.”

“Harry’s dead? When? Why didn’t you tell me?”

I saw Joe shrug.

“When did he die? How did it happen?”

“Last summer. Cancer.”

“I’m sorry.” She put a hand up to his arm. “I know he meant a lot to you.”

Joe shrugged again. Crossed his arms. “So you’re teaching where?”

“Pysch. Back in the department. Seems like old times. Almost.”

“Steve here too?”

“No. He’s at Pete Field, east of town.”

“That’s right. I’d forgotten he was a space guy.”

“I was just passing through. I have to get back for office hours. E-mail me sometime. We’ll have you over for dinner.”

Joe smiled at her. “I’d like that.”

She returned the smile and then turned to leave. It seemed to occur to her then that I had watched the whole encounter. “Hi. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

Joe now turned toward me too. “Kate, this is Jackie. We…work together.”

“Hi.” Her eyes swung toward Joe. Swung back toward me. “Work together, huh? Watch out for this guy.”

I glanced at Joe. “I am well aware of his coffee-drinking habits. Believe me.”

“Coffee-drinking? Well, that’s a new term for it! Anyway,” she turned away from me back toward Joe, “see you later.”

By the time she had disappeared, Joe had vanished. I heard him typing. Heard him stop. The chair squeaked and I could imagine him leaning back for a stretch.

I started typing myself, labeling my charts, but I kept having to stop and delete misspelled words. I finally gave up and pushed my chair away from the computer. Decided to do something about the piles of cable on the floor. I seized the end of a narrow cable and started looping it around my hand. That done, I tethered it with a twisty and dropped it.

Pulled at the end of another one and looped it around my elbow and palm.

Secured it.

Who was Kate?

Dropped it to the floor.

A former coworker?

Chose another.

So it would appear
.

Wound it.

But that didn’t explain about her being back in her department and it seeming like old times
.

Secured it.

Maybe she was in his class at the Academy
.

Dropped it to the floor.

That would fit. But then, who was Harry and why would she know about him?

Chose another.

Maybe…had she been his girlfriend?

I stood there a full minute before I realized I hadn’t done anything with the cable.

Maybe she had been his girlfriend
.

A girlfriend. Why should that have been so surprising? A guy like Joe with a Super Smile. And dimples. Just because I’d never had a boyfriend didn’t mean he’d never had a girlfriend. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I was probably right.

But the only way to know if I was right would be to ask Joe. So I did. But I wound the cable first and dropped it onto the pile I’d made. Then I kicked the other cables into the corner.

“Joe?”

He was typing. Didn’t stop. “Hmm?”

“Who is Kate?”

“Kate?”

“Who was just here.”

“Oh.” He stopped typing. “She’s my ex-wife.”

Ex-wife
.

Funny. No matter how many times I repeated those words to myself, I couldn’t quite turn them into “girlfriend.” Although, to be fair, I’m sure she once was his girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend. Because I assume in order to become a wife, you cease to be a girlfriend.

Wife?

Joe had been married?

“Did you…do you…have kids?”

“Kids? Yeah. We had Harry.”

Harry? Harry had been their child? And Kate hadn’t even known he had died? No wonder they’d gotten divorced! What a witch!

“He was our hairy child.” Joe’s voice came from above. He was standing on his desk.

“Harry child?” Something wasn’t making sense, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

He must have seen my confusion. “Hairy. H-a-i-r-y. He was a dog.” The faintest smile urged his lips upward.

“Oh. Well. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay. He was old. Fifteen. We got him the first year we were married. That’s ancient for a boxer.”

“And you called him Hairy?”

“A joke. Like calling a bald guy Curly. You know.”

“Oh. Yeah.” But I didn’t. Not really. I didn’t know what to think about a Joe who had been married, who was still on speaking terms with his ex-wife, who had once owned a dog—a boxer—named Hairy. I didn’t know what to think at all. “So will you go?”

“Where?”

“To dinner. At Kate’s house.”

“Probably. Maybe. She’s a great cook.”

“And her husband won’t mind?”

“Why would he?”

“Wouldn’t he think it’s a little strange to have his wife invite her ex-husband over for dinner?”

“We were only married for two years. Kate and Steve have been married for…at least ten.”

“And possession is nine-tenths of the law?”

He scowled down at me. “It isn’t like that. Kate and I never should have gotten married in the first place. The wedding was during June Week, right after we graduated, and eighty percent of June Week weddings don’t survive. Real life was nothing like the Academy. I was in pilot training at Williams near Phoenix. She was doing intelligence training at Goodfellow in Texas. We saw each other for about four weeks, total, during our first year of marriage. And we realized we got along better when we were apart. That we were better friends than we were lovers. And even then, we weren’t great friends. We had shared an experience: The Academy. But we had never really shared our lives.”

My cheeks flamed. I glanced down at my computer. Poised my hands above the keyboard.

“She and Steve are a perfect match. Why shouldn’t she be happy? She’s still a great person. Always has been.” His head disappeared behind the cubicle wall. I heard the thump of him jumping from his desk.

Later that evening, I found myself staring at my blank blog screen, not knowing what to write.

My whole idea of Joe had been turned upside down. And inside out. He’d been married. He had an ex-wife. With whom he was still friends. He’d owned a dog.

There was nothing inherently wrong with any of those facts. The only problem I had with them is that they didn’t fit the image of Joe I’d constructed in my head.

I already knew he was kind. I already knew he was gracious. I knew he was forgiving and loyal. I just didn’t like to think someone else had benefited from his finer traits.

Someone else who had shared a part of his life I hadn’t.

But that wasn’t quite the entire truth. I had nothing against Todd and all of the other pilots who’d flown with him. Nothing against his academy roommates, for instance. Or against his high school friends.

But I had everything against a woman named Kate.

Why? Because I envied her.

I was jealous.

I could never remember being jealous before.

Seeing the world through green-colored glasses?

Sure. Especially when other kids had liverwurst sandwiches in their lunch boxes and I had beef tongue salad.

But turning into a green monster?

No.

I never thought I’d break one of the Ten Commandments. Not one of the major ones. But I found myself, that evening, coveting a neighbor’s husband. Ex-husband.

And it was not a redemptive experience.

I hadn’t realized before just how dangerous jealousy was. But as I thought about Kate, a person I didn’t even know, jealousy began to grow and wrap green stalks of greed and anger and malice around my heart.

I didn’t know her, but I hated her.

Without reason. Without provocation.

I hated her in the worst way. I hated her on principle.

She had everything I was discovering I wanted: Joe’s respect, Joe’s friendship, Joe’s loyalty, Joe’s life. That was the main thing. She had life in common with Joe.

I just had life beside him.

And it didn’t look as if that would change.

The saddest, most tragic part about my feelings was that they were completely irrational. I didn’t own Joe. Didn’t even hold his heart.

And how could I blame him?

My heart wasn’t worth holding.

I’d have to be some kind of a moron not to think the past hadn’t left marks on my life. I’d like to think if my father had known about me, and if he hadn’t have been killed, he would have come back for me. My father is my favorite parent. And I never even got to meet him.

My mother, on the other hand? What can you say about someone who abandons a baby?

Too much.

I’ve had so many thoughts on the topic, ranging from empathy to self-pity, that I decided several years ago to disassociate myself from her. It might not be healthy, but it’s stopped me from picking my scabs. I was in danger of becoming an emotional self-mutilator. Like Robbie, the creepy guy I sat next to in second grade. People assumed we were friends. Not because we ever talked to each other, but because we didn’t talk to anybody else.

Those scabs I picked just kept bleeding. Kept getting deeper. Besides, if you leave them alone for long enough, don’t scabs eventually heal on their own?

I do have Grandmother. I take care of her and she takes care of me, in her own way. She was never touchy-feely, and I realized long ago that words are not the only way to say “I love you.” But that’s never stopped me from dreaming and wishing for a pair of arms that belonged just to me. And for a voice that would, as many times as I wanted to hear it, say,
I love you, Jackie
.

Which doesn’t mean I’m emotionally impaired. I’m still functional.

There’s just always been this question for which I’ll never have an answer: What if my mother had stayed around long enough to get to know me? Would she still have left? I know it has everything to do with her and nothing to do with me, but I have always been afraid the answer would have been yes.

Any sane person might wonder whether I even acknowledged the parallels between my life and my mother’s. She, having been the epitome of all things liberal. Me, being the epitome of all things environmental. Which people assumed meant liberal, even though it didn’t.