The Tao of Pam (3 page)

His place was a pigsty; Julie wasn’t the neatest woman, and the two of them could make a mess in a matter of days. His cleaning lady was coming that afternoon, so at least it would be clean for the weekend when he left for New York. He picked up the briefcase that he hadn’t opened for days and headed for the office.

A typical busy Friday, he got through it but was subdued; a concerned Joanne asked him if he was okay. Finishing one task after another, he produced in a day what it took his colleagues a week or longer to accomplish. He was oblivious to what was going on around him as he sent the completed files to his boss, job security reinstated a final time.

At five, he picked up the briefcase Joanne packed for him, knowing it would probably be in the same condition when she opened it on Monday, loosened his tied, and left the office without saying goodbye.

Chapter 2

Dan’s sister, Catherine Chua walked through the rambling farmhouse her ancestors built almost two hundred years before, opening windows and pulling shades up, letting as much fresh air in as she could before air-conditioning season started. Wearing her usual working attire—knit stretch pants and a T-shirt with an adolescent cartoon character printed in the front—Catherine didn’t give much thought to her clothes. Framed by hair peppered with gray strands she’d tried dyeing with brown dye, her face was relatively unlined. The brown dye faded to a reddish color she hated, but it didn’t cross her mind to have it done professionally. Coral lipstick was the only makeup she wore. Her husband never seemed to notice what she had on or if she even combed her hair in the morning. He’d left hours ago; part of the business they ran was the dairy farm her father had started in the nineteen fifties, and he milked the cows at sunrise. All of the feed they needed, the corn and alfalfa hay, was grown on their place.

Until the early settlers arrived in the sixteen hundreds, her people had hunted and fished, grew corn, and harvested hay from the salt marsh. Now, they had one of the last farms in the area, employing over fifty men and women year round. During the busy seasons, the younger members of the family were called to help supplement the seasonal workers. Her baby brother, attorney Dan Chua, Pam Smith’s boyfriend, showed up the week before, working eighteen hours a day, driving the tractor, pulling a disc plow behind him. He’d get as much planting done as he could in the week he’d taken off work.

Catherine started breakfast for the crew working today. She maintained the precepts her mother and grandmother started, cooking and serving food to everyone who worked on the farm. She had it down to a science now; her sister Agnes helped every morning before she left for her nursing job in Brooklyn, and college-age nieces, Faith and Carol, accompanied her when school was out. They used crockpots for oatmeal and froze casseroles ahead of time so they weren’t slaves to the stove as her mother had been. The difference now was that they only served one meal a day. Workers brought their own lunch. She heard a car pull up to the front of the house and the laughing voices of Agnes and her girls.

“Hey,” she said, looking up from the toaster. They greeted her as they went to the sink to wash their hands. The banter would go on for two hours during the preparation, serving and clean up. Eventually, the conversation rolled around to the party at Pam’s house in a few weeks. They’d attended last year, and it was just as ostentatious as the newspapers had said. Dan never suggested they dress a certain way, but they knew ahead of time that their farm clothes weren’t going to cut it.

“So what are you wearing to the famous picnic this year?” Agnes asked.

“The same thing I wore last year,” Catherine said.

The girls laughed.

“Aunt Cathy, you better hide from the photographers, then,” Carol said.

“I ask you; who on earth has professional photographers at a summer picnic? It is about as pretentious as you can get.”

“Catherine, they were from the paper. She didn’t invite them,” Agnes said. “Besides, I bragged about it to everyone at work. It was nice being in the style section of the
New York Times
. The doctors have been nicer to me ever since.”

The women laughed together.

“They wouldn’t be if they knew the truth,” Faith said, raising her eyebrows.

“You said it,” Catherine said, agreeing.

“Shush, you two! Jesus, if Dan ever found out I repeated what he told me, he’d never forgive me. Promise me you won’t say anything to anyone else,” Agnes said passionately. She moved quickly to help prepare the rest of the meal, ignoring the whispering, and took a tray of plates and cutlery out to the mess hall.

Working steadily until nine when Catherine rang the bell, they stood at the kitchen door, watching the farmworkers file in. “How much longer will we be able to do this?” Agnes asked. Catherine shook her head as the girls looked on. They’d go back to school in the fall, and when they graduated, who knew where life would take them?
Certainly not to the mess hall.

“I know I’m about done,” Catherine replied. “I want to do something else before I die.”

Agnes frowned at her. “What? Stop with the dying talk.”

“You know what I mean. I see Dan with Pam, and she’s almost as old as we are.
I
want to go to the gym and get my hair done and stand in the third position of ballet looking cute like Pam does,” Catherine said, looking at her sister. “
I
want to take care of
myself
for a change. Turning sixty means I get to do what
I
want to do.” She’d made up her mind. She wanted her husband to notice her again. She wanted to remember what it felt like to be a success at learning something new. She didn’t want to be the woman who served breakfast.

Agnes was worried; she didn’t want to do breakfast alone. “So what’s the answer?”

“We cut down to one day a week, or stop all together, or pool our resources and pay to have someone else do it. I just know my days here are numbered. And to answer your question about what I’ll wear to the picnic, I changed my mind. I’m getting new duds,
and
I’m getting my hair done.”

While they debated the wisdom of self-care, they watched as their brother walked into the mess hall with a group of farmworkers. “Dan fits right in,” Agnes whispered, alluding to his tanned body and dust-covered hair.

“Yeah, only he’s better looking than anyone else in here,” Carol said, and the others nodded their heads in agreement.

“Look at that body,” Catherine said, whistling. “I can say that because he’s my brother.”

They laughed.

“You’re being creepy, Aunt Cathy,” Faith replied, laughing.

Dan Chua had pulled his T-shirt back on before coming in to eat, but it didn’t hide his physique. The few women workers who were sitting down to eat couldn’t take their eyes off him.

“He could have any woman he wanted, yet he’s with that old gal. What the hell is that all about?” Catherine whispered. “He’s our last hope to continue the Chua name. And
she’s
not giving birth again, that’s for sure.”

The others looked on, frowning, thinking the same thing but not saying out loud that their brother and uncle had settled for someone who was too old for him, and echoing the thoughts of the rest of the family.

“She’s got money,” Carol said.

“Yes, but so does he,” Catherine argued.

“Not like she does. He doesn’t have to work unless he wants to, thanks to Miss Pam,” Agnes said. “Must be nice. I, on the other hand, have to get to work.” She kissed her daughters on the cheek and squeezed her sister’s shoulder. “Hang in there, old woman. You’ll get over this resentment you’ve got brewing.”

“I don’t think so,” Catherine said. “But have a good day.”

Agnes left to take her hour-long drive to work. Catherine grabbed a gallon jug of orange juice and started walking around the dining hall, offering juice to workers. When she reached her brother, he looked up at her and smiled his fabulous smile. But she wasn’t going to let it sway her.

“We need to talk, sonny boy,” she said.

He frowned. “What now?”

“You got time after breakfast?” Catherine asked.

“I’ve got time now,” Dan said, pushing his chair back and picking up his plate. He had a bad feeling about what his sister was about to say to him. They walked to the wash kitchen, and she waited while he scraped his plate into the garbage pail.

“So what’s going on?” he asked.

“I’m tired of doing this,” she said simply. “We need to decide if feeding everyone is really necessary, and if it is, get someone else to do it, or have it catered.”

Dan tried to keep his face neutral. He looked at her, but she was keeping her face neutral too.

“What’s going on?” he repeated. “I mean, you’ve never said anything before about breakfast.”

“Everyone takes it for granted that I’ll get up with Harvey at five in the morning and start cooking a feast. I’m tired of it. I don’t want to do it anymore. I’ve been doing it for…” She put her hands up to count. “Forty-five years. Since I was eighteen. I’m sick of it. I want do something for myself before I croak.”

He grabbed her arm and squeezed it. “I gotcha,” he said, trying to validate her. “I’m not sure how we can keep doing it without you, but let’s figure it out.” He scratched his cheek. “You got a time frame in mind?”

“June. I want to quit end of June. Pretend I’m retirin’ from the job.”

He nodded his head. She could’ve given more than a month’s notice, but he didn’t say anything about it.

“Okay, we’ll figure it out.” He squeezed her arm again and walked out, stopping to talk to his nieces and greet other family members who were there for the meal before they went back to work. Catherine knew that what she’d just done would precipitate a major lifestyle change for everyone. She was determined that she was going to remake her life. And she had silly Pam Smith to thank for the inspiration.

Chapter 3

Natalie Borg, anthropology professor at NYU, could barely contain her excitement as the end of the school year approached. She was spending the summer upstate with her daughter Deborah; Deborah’s birth father, Ted; and Ashton, Ted’s husband. When she tried to explain the cast of characters to her mother and father who lived in a nursing home in Queens, she realized how complicated it sounded, so she simplified it by saying she was going with friends.

Ted Dale and Natalie had a one-night stand twenty years before, and it resulted in the birth of Deborah, who was given up for adoption and was a beautiful, intelligent and kind young woman who had devoted adoptive parents. There were so many questions answered when her mother told her about the adoption. Who she was and why her curly black hair and stocky build didn’t fit in with the family’s lean, Nordic-blond good looks had haunted her. Deborah couldn’t wait for the day she turned eighteen so she could begin the search to find her birth parents, with her adoptive mother’s blessing. She wasn’t disappointed in her birth parents either, although her father was a little wishy washy, with an emotionally arrested partner for a mate. Her real mother was fabulous, and they were quickly becoming good friends. They shared so many interests.

A junior at Rutgers, Deborah had one more year, and then she’d determine what her next step would be. Her boyfriend, Zach, was an elementary education major, and he loved it, wanting to teach more than anything. Deborah thought she might follow her birth father into the real estate business. Once Natalie finished teaching for the year and Deborah’s classes ended, they were packing up and leaving for Ted’s cabin in the woods. He’d offered it, and they jumped at the chance. Not able to go with them for the whole summer, Zach was going to work as a counselor at camp during the summer, a job he’d had since he was a high school student, hopeful it would be a permanent summertime teaching gig once he graduated from college. Once they got settled, Deborah needed to hunt for a summer job.

“Take a week off before you do anything,” Natalie had advised over the phone. “We’ll get settled in and explore the surroundings. You don’t drive, by any chance, do you?”

“I do, sort of. It’s been a while.”

“I’ll get Ted to rent a car for us,” Natalie replied.

They said goodbye, and as soon as Natalie hung up the phone, she dialed Ted and Ashton’s house phone. Ashton answered on the first ring.

“Stop stalking me,” he said.

“You wish,” Natalie replied. “Do me a favor and ask your husband if he’d rent a car for me next week.”

“Who’s driving?”

“Deborah,” Natalie said.

“Wow, she has many talents. What day are you leaving?” he asked. “I thought I might go up with you.”

Natalie’s heart dropped. She and Deborah had looked forward to being alone and doing girl things. Now, with Ashton tagging along, it would change the entire dynamic. Maybe she’d look for a summer job, too.

“The day after Memorial Day,” she answered. “I was afraid traffic would be awful if we went up before.”

“Let’s hire a car to drive us on Friday. That way, Ted and Zach can come if they want. What do you think?”

She was grateful that he was deferring to her. She could afford to be gracious to him.

“That sounds like a great idea,” she replied. “I’ll call Deborah and tell her.” They said good-bye. Natalie waited to make the call, allowing the change of plans to sink in so she would sound positive, upbeat.

When she first met Ashton, it was wonderful; they were like kindred spirits. There was no jealousy between them even though she’d had a child with Ted and now Ashton and Ted were married. When at the height of the honeymoon phase all new friendships go through, she’d seen the real Ashton in action. They’d gone to Costco together, and by unbelievable coincidence, Pam Smith was there with Sandra Benson. Pam was the widow of Ashton’s former lover Jack, and Sandra had been Jack’s girlfriend. Ashton said horrible things to Pam, hurtful things, telling her Jack had planned to leave her for Sandra and would have done so if he’d lived. Natalie had to drag him out of the store, frightened that he was revving up for an explosive fight if she let him continue much longer. She’d never forget the look in Pam’s eyes, like a wounded animal looking down the barrel of a gun about to put it out of misery.