Nancy Thompson - What Happens in Paris

“You’ll forgo Paris to keep your rented studio?” She looked around, and I could see her considering her words before she spoke.

“Paris, Anna. And you could sell your work to the French government for tons of money. What’s not to love?”

When I didn’t answer, she sighed. “They’re choosing twelve artists. You have to apply. Cross the bridge about going once they offer you the residency.”

I set the application on the table, feeling faintly sick.

“Just think about it,” she said. “You don’t have to decide now.”

Working at Heartfield Retirement Communities was like living in a scene from George Orwell’s 1984. My boss, Jackie King—or the Jackal, as I called her—was always on red alert, watching and waiting for someone to screw up so she could sound the alarm and shine a great big spotlight. No wonder the day before I returned to my job as assistant director of marketing, I had a giant panic attack over what I’d face in the wake of Blake’s arrest.

Exactly sixteen days had passed since the story appeared in the paper. I knew I couldn’t hibernate indefinitely. The longer I put off plunging back into the real world, the harder it would be.

Cold hard reality dictated that since I was getting a divorce, I needed this job. Selling a painting had only lulled me into a false sense of security. Even if my attorney negotiated a decent settlement, I’d still need an income to support myself. Unfortunately, that meant that keeping my job had taken on new importance.

Talk about adding insult to injury.

Jackie King would almost smile if she knew how she had me under her thumb.

The Jackal rarely smiled.

Three of us made up the Heartfield Retirement Communities’ marketing and advertising department: Jackie, the director of marketing, a real piece of work who had no life beyond her job; her administrative-ass, Lolly Rhone, who fancied she ran the organization; and me, the marketing misfit.

The Dynamic Duo. And me.

I’d been blackballed from their club de deux for a holy trinity of sins: my refusal to give my life to Heartfield Retirement Communities; my refusal to kiss Jackie’s ass; and my blatant refusal to play their game.

I had nothing in common with Jackie, and she hated anyone who was different from her. She was a shop-at-WalMart-all-you-can-eat buffet-white-cake-bland kind of normal. Anyone too different, she mocked mercilessly (behind their backs, of course) for the term of her employment.

She cleansed her soul by going to church on Sundays and spending her vacations on mission trips to third-world countries where she built houses and shelters while her daughter stayed home with a sitter. Then she’d come back to work and treat anyone in her way like shit. But that was okay. She did church work.

She and Lolly were like two rotten peas in a pod. They traveled together, ate lunch together, socialized after hours. Jackie even baby-sat Lolly’s kids. Yes, the boss baby-sat the administrative-ass’s kids. In return, Lolly had her face so firmly buried in Jackie’s behind she couldn’t see their “closeness” bordered on incest.

We had our weekly department meetings—Jackie insisted the three of us have department meetings: one hour of hell consisting of a five-minute delegation of assignments for the week and fifty-five minutes of listening to Jackie’s harangue about how her boss, Ezekiel Bergdorf, had screwed up the previous week and how she could have done so much better. She wanted his job as vice president of operations so badly she nearly foamed at the mouth. I was willing to bet that over time she would systematically destroy him to get what she wanted.

Therein lay the irony. Jackie’s weekly rants left her wide open for me to cause her serious professional harm; it was as if she was playing career chicken, daring me to take her tirades to the brass. She knew I wouldn’t do it.

I didn’t rat on others (I’m sure in the catch-22 of her small mind she considered that a weakness) and I had no designs on her job.

Sad to admit, but I wasn’t ambitious when it came to Heartfield Retirement Communities. I did my job and did it well, but come five o’clock, I was gone. Contrast that with Jackie-the-martyr whose life revolved around the company. She was divorced, had a nanny for her daughter and spent more time on the road than at home. She couldn’t fathom why everyone didn’t sell their soul to the company.

My marketing job started out as a temporary gig that stretched to twelve long years. In the beginning it was a part-time position that provided enough flexibility that I could work while Ben was in school—he was in second grade when I started—and leave the job behind when I went home. It allowed me to keep my foot in the workplace, but still take care of our son—

Who was I kidding? I used to feed myself that line of crap when I started feeling bad about not being able to be the room-mother for Ben’s class or chaperon his field trips because Blake was adamant that I bring in my fair share of the livelihood. Heaven forbid that he be the sole supporter of his family.

Looking back, all I really wanted was to paint and be a mother to my baby (not necessarily in that order). My heart was never in marketing an overpriced retirement community. I suppose I should have left a long time ago rather than stay so long my boss regarded me as an inoperable tumor she was forced to live with because Heartfield never fired anyone—short of them murdering their boss.

No wonder Jackie had it in for me. She had no patience for a woman who preferred her child to climbing the corporate ladder.

Looking back, I should have done a lot of things differently. Now, all I could do was try not to look down as I crossed this rickety bridge over the canyon-of-major-life-changes. It was enough to make me contemplate curling up in a fetal position for the rest of my life. Instead, I walked in wearing my hair back in a tight chignon, the same as I had every weekday for the past twelve years. The place smelled of burnt coffee, carpet shampoo and office supplies, the same as it had every day for the past twelve years. I greeted our receptionist, Vicki, and started my approach to the break room to stash my salad in the fridge, the same as I had every day for the past twelve years.

“Oh! Annabelle.”

I stopped and glanced back into an uncomfortable pause that lasted a few beats too long. But I reminded myself to hold my head up and look her straight in the eye.

“Yes?” I said.

“Um…welcome back.”

“Thank you, Vicki.”

Then by the grace of God her phone rang, and I beat a hasty retreat down the long hallway that contained a row of offices on the left and a liberal sprinkling of cubicles on the right. I made it unscathed, stashed my lunch and made myself a cup of tea (no break-room coffee, thank you, because it looked like dirty water and tasted worse).

Clutching my cup, I started to my desk, looking each person in the eye, greeting them. My personal life was my business, and I dared anyone to ask. But as I wound my way through the maze of cubicles, my co-workers honored my privacy.

Perhaps returning to work wasn’t so bad. It reminded me of a little kid going to the doctor for a shot. The more she dwelled on it, the more it scared her, until she’d built it up to be something so monumentally frightening that even the thought nearly paralyzed her.

I’d turned going back to work into the mother of all shots. This wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

Then I ran headlong into the Dynamic Duo.

There they were. Jackie was standing outside Lolly’s cubicle, which, like it or not, I had to pass on the way to my office.

Jackie darted a quick glance at me, but kept on with her canned let’s-pretend-we’re-talking-about-something-so-important-we-haven’t-noticed-Annabelle conversation. Good, maybe she’d let me pass without a passive-aggressive dig or contemptuous look. I was almost relieved, because I’d rehearsed this encounter in my mind, prepared several pointed comebacks I preferred not to use.

For instance, if one of them asked “How was your vacation?” I’d smile and say “Lovely, thanks.” Or if I felt strong enough to volley, I could say “Why would you ask me that?” Then stare them down until they crawled into their respective holes, and then as I walked away say “I am not in the mood for your crap.”

Good God, this was just like junior high school. Of course, since I was prepared, Jackie took another tactic. As I walked past she said, “Lolly, hold my calls. Annabelle, good morning. Please come into my office.”

Oh, shit. “Sure. Let me put away my briefcase and I’ll be right there.”

I was not prepared to deal with her one-on-one.

“Right. Take your time.”

Take my time? She almost sounded…What was that vaguely familiar tone in her voice? Was she being…nice? Jackie King was a lot of things, but nice wasn’t in her repertoire. She was too mean to be nice.

Oh God, maybe she was going to fire me.

Surely she wasn’t that mean? She liked to pretend she had a conscience, and firing me now, when I really needed this lousy job, would be unconscionable.

She told me to take my time, so I did.

I shut my office door, placed my purse and briefcase on a shelf in the small closet. I closed the bifold door carefully so it wouldn’t jump the track, adjusted the clip taming my long auburn curls, smoothed the back of my black skirt before I sat down at my desk and picked a piece of lint off my stocking before I started my computer.

The Windows logo had emblazoned the screen, and I had just lifted my mug to take a sip of tea when I spied Blake’s face smirking at me from the five-by-seven gilded frame perched on the left corner of my desk. A vision of the mug shot that ran in the paper flashed in my mind. My heart ached as the hole in it tore open a little bit wider.

I pressed my hand to my chest for a few seconds before smacking the photo facedown and sweeping it—like a dead bug—off my desktop into a drawer.

Tears stung my eyes. I dabbed them away and gave myself a pep talk: I was not going to cry. He was not worth it. I closed my eyes for a good minute, until the burning subsided, then I took a deep breath, donned my emotional armor and prepared to march into battle.

“Annabelle, come in. Close the door. Sit.”

Jackie’s lips curved down, even when she smiled. She looked at me, radiating a forced creepy-warmth that made me think of the funeral director who helped me make arrangements for my mother’s burial last year. An I-can-be-as-empathetic-as-you-want-while-you’re-giving-me-your-money kind of look, but it wasn’t money Jackie wanted.

Oh, no, no, no. It was details. I sensed it the minute I walked into her office.

She folded her hands on her desk, cocked her head to one side and looked at me. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Liar. She didn’t give a damn about me. She wanted the inside scoop—big fat play-by-play juicy details of Blake’s arrest—and she was willing to make nice to get me to spill my guts.

“I’m fine.”

“I wanted you to know I’m here for you.”

Right. How about a pay raise and a transfer to another department? She’d never been there for me one day in the entire time I’d worked with her. And she’d be there for me now for as long as it took to get the goods and have a titillating oh-my-God-can-you-believe-that lunch with Lolly, because Jackie King was that kind of person.

It took me years to understand what this woman was made of—because there was a time in the beginning when I allowed myself to be taken in by her—and I’d rather ask Blake to move back and bring his lovers home than confide in the Jackal.