Ask Again Later Part 1

Jill A. Davis.

Ask Again Later.

With love, For Ed and Campbell.

Missed Opportunities.

I CAN REMEMBER the first Christmas after my father left. I was five. We didn't get a tree that year. We didn't buy gifts. Somehow it seemed pathetic to deck the halls and all-when Dad wasn't there. We missed opportunities. And I got really good at missing opportunities.

I am Emily. Emily Rhode. When I was in second grade, I experimented with changing my ident.i.ty by misspelling my last name. I had hopes that a new spelling might transform me and permit me access to a new home, and a new life.

Sometimes it was Road. Or Rowed, and even Rode. Almost no one ever noticed the way my name was spelled. People just a.s.sume you're going to get your own name right. Except for Miss Bryan, my English teacher. She seemed curious. Or, at the very least, not comatose. She gave us an a.s.signment.

"Write one paragraph about your home," said Miss Bryan. "Spelling counts."

Write about home...should I tell her the combination to the safe, too? I was eager to share, the perfect accomplice, and I didn't need more than one sentence. The sentence is as true today as it was twenty years ago: Home is a place you can never leave behind. I liked that it was both insistent and ambiguous. I spelled my name correctly, because spelling counts.

While you can't leave it behind, you can look at the events of your past from a new point of view. Turn them around. See all the angles. Consider it your second chance. Second chances do come your way. Like trains, they arrive and depart regularly. Recognizing the ones that matter is the trick.

Plexiglas.

MY OFFICE CHAIR IS parked behind a small desk, and on the desk is a giant phone. I intentionally use the word parked because the chair is enormous and-if you believe the old wives' tales-engineered by the Ford Motor Company.

In front of my desk is an impressive wall of bulletproof Plexiglas. It's the one thing I'll miss about this c.r.a.ppy job when I leave. I've been able to work in confidence knowing that if someone tries to shoot me-the fabulously sultry gal who answers the telephone-the bullets will bounce mockingly off of the Plexiglas and not disturb me from the important business of answering the telephone.

When the phone doesn't ring for a while, I start to think about bringing in my own gun and taking a couple of shots at the Plexiglas to test it. Sure the manufacturer says it's bulletproof. I don't own a piece though, and when I call a shooting range somewhere in Millbrook, New York, they tell me not to call again. Ever. They refused to answer my question. How much will it cost to hire a guy to take a couple of shots at a piece of Plexiglas in a Midtown high-rise? It isn't their line of work, they claim.

"Yeah, but bottom line it for me, sister. Send a body out to gimme an estimate. Bottom line it for me," I say.

"You're crazy, lady," they say, and hang up. I'm just killing time and hoping they'll play along, and I'm disappointed when they refuse. For a moment I worry that I work for one of those companies that monitors its phone calls under the guise of quality control. I am instantly comforted when I realize I work for a law firm too disorganized to tap its own phones.

To say all I do is answer phones is to seriously downplay my role around here. I also control the buzzer b.u.t.ton that opens the main door, allowing lawyers into their offices after they get off of the elevator, or return from the bathroom.

Sometimes I fail to push the buzzer with the deftness they might like. I eat up a second of this person's life, five seconds of that person's life. The ones who grow impatient quickly and who are easily angered are the ones I steal twenty seconds from for the sheer pleasure of it. They grunt and growl in sincere p.i.s.siness, and it makes me feel terrific, alive in that way that you don't feel often enough.

Propaganda.

I DAYDREAM-AND GET paid for it. I recall a scene from An Officer and a Gentleman. At the end of the movie Richard Gere, dressed in his naval whites, goes into a factory, picks up Debra Winger, and carries her out of that depressing place with all of those dirty machines.

I wish that would happen to me. Of course the whole time I'd be worried that the guy was trying to guess my weight or something. I realize how truly pathetic I am. Some guy in a uniform drags his woman out of the workplace to stick her in a house to cook and possibly even clip coupons, and I am starting to buy into it, into the antifemale propaganda disguised as romance. As soon as he picks her up, things have to head south from there, because at some point, he has to put her down.

I blame my father for my current situation. It's so much easier to blame him than rehash my past and actually work through it. Instead, I pin all of my disappointment and loss on my current post. I can't decide what's worse, clock-watching or minimum wage. Luckily, I'm steeped in both, so I don't have to choose.

The world of nepotism is ugly and dark. I know. There are people out there paying their dues who probably deserve to sit behind this Plexiglas more than I do. If not for the fact that my father is so well connected, I'd be forced to do a job I got solely on merit. I'd be working as a lawyer, on track to make partner, at a firm where a senior partner was not 50 percent responsible for creating me. I would be boosting my resume and sleeping with young enthusiasts of all things legal. The notion of being shot would, in all likelihood, not even occur to me. It certainly wouldn't preoccupy me. I may be the only professional in history to take several giant steps backward by cashing in on my "connections."

Habits.

I INHALE A DRAG from an imaginary cigarette being held in an imaginary cigarette holder, recline in my ma.s.sive chair, and say to n.o.body, "Jesus is coming...and I haven't a thing to wear." I say this as if I were preparing to attend one of those c.o.c.ktail parties at which the women wear giant fake pearls and have the alcohol tolerance of a four-hundred-pound man. I go to great lengths to amuse myself because, you see, no one else does.

I'm one of those people who other people like but never remember. I think most of the world is probably like me. Until recently nothing about me was outstanding, and then my mother got cancer. It's a disease people like to talk about, so I'm more popular now. And when I flip through magazines, I read the breast cancer articles first, even before the numerology column.

At lunchtime I walk downstairs to the lobby and buy the tallest, thickest magazines I can find, then walk down Fifth Avenue with them propped up in front of my chest. I've grown to feel naked without the Plexiglas shield.

If a sniper tried to get me, would the magazines stop the bullets? I had great confidence that Vogue, particularly their September issue, might have the heft to stop a shower of hot lead. A cautious person by nature, I skip every few steps, hop on one foot, turn around, duck down, and pop up. If a sniper is waiting for me, watching me, well, he is going to work for this. .h.i.t. I am no one's easy mark.

The woman who waters the plants at the law firm sees me and steps up her pace heading in the other direction. I want to call out to her to explain, but she waters plants for a living. What would she know of dodging bullets? Of the loveliness of a squinted eye pressed tight against the cool scope of a rifle? If you've got dead leaves, root rot, she's your gal. Of course maybe she's being warehoused, too. Her greatness ripening right there on the branch of life that is the weighted, muggy air of Midtown.

Free Ride.

MY FATHER AND I commute to the office together. I walk from York to Fifth and meet him on the corner of Seventy-ninth.

Today he has a shopping bag, which he clumsily presents to me.

"It's for you," Jim says.

He hails a cab. In the backseat of the car, I open the box that's inside of the bag. There is a suit for me. Gray flannel with chalk-colored pinstripes.

"Thanks," I say. Then I notice that it matches his suit. The words Dad and Lad come to mind.

"Wow. You really wanted a son, didn't you?" I say.

"No, sir! Why would you say that?" Jim says, pointing out that it's a skirt and jacket, not pants and jacket.

"You just called me 'sir'..." I say.

"Buster, I call everyone sir," Jim says.

"Thank you," I say. I think it's the only gift I've ever received from him that he selected himself. "Seriously, thanks."

"You're welcome," Jim says. "You don't have to wear it if you don't want to. What you're wearing is just fine."

It's bittersweet, of course. He thinks he gets a say in what I wear. The subconscious owns no fancy timepiece. In his mind there's been no gap. Nothing lost. I'm still five.

Pizza Party.

WENDY, THE OFFICE MANAGER, approaches me with papers in hand. "It's Sarah's birthday today; want to sign her card?" Wendy asks. "She's going to be-oh, I'll never tell!" She laughs, and smiles. "Okay, forty-two. She's going to be forty-two. But you didn't hear that from me!"

"I don't know who Sarah is," I say. "Do you still want me to sign the card?"

"Sarah's really nice. You'll like her. She works in billing. She's been here forever. We're getting pizza and cake. Party starts at six in the conference room," Wendy says.

"Okay," I say. I sign the card. "Dear Sarah, Happy Birthday. I look forward to meeting you.-Emily"

"Okay, now I just need four dollars for the pizza and cake. Everyone chips in," Wendy says, "fair and square."

"Oh, okay," I say. "I don't have change for a five. Keep the dollar."

"No, no, I'll bring your change back to you," Wendy says. "This is strictly nonprofit."

She puts a checkmark next to my name and makes a note that she owes me a dollar.

I look at the employee list. There are thirteen professionals and eight support staff, including myself. Twenty people (not including the birthday girl), each contributing four dollars. Eighty dollars for pizza and cake.

I buzz extension #1.

"h.e.l.lo?" Jim says.

Jim is so many things. He is my boss. He is my father. He is where I place the blame for my incomplete and unsatisfactory relationships with men.

"I think you should start paying for pizza and cake for staff parties," I say.

"Okay," Jim says.

In general, he's so much more agreeable than I ever could have imagined.

"Don't you want to know why?" I ask.

"Sure-why?" Jim asks.

"Someone's wasting ninety minutes getting a birthday card signed, collecting cash from people, making change, interrupting those who are working...it's more cost-effective for the firm to pay for the party. She doesn't even carry change with her-just to prolong the process," I say.

Silence.

"Well," Jim says, "I get the impression Wendy likes arranging these festivities. I agree that the process is a waste of time. But it does give her a real sense of getting out of work. Being paid to chat people up. I think it's a good outlet for her."

"Well, then, never mind," I say. "But why not give her a raise if you want her to be satisfied and excited about her job?"

"Oh, I think she's happy with her salary. It's the work she's not so fond of," Jim says. "I think everyone in this office can relate to that, don't you?"

"Yeah," I say.

Secret Life.

I LISTEN IN on my father's personal phone conversations through the firm's not-so-sophisticated phone system. Mostly boring stuff. Sometimes he's very funny, but I can't quite figure out if it's because he has a highly developed sense of humor or if it's because he's out of touch.

I secretly need to know him, and spying on him seems like good practice for not missing opportunities. If he knew I was listening to his calls, I don't think he'd care, which makes this breach of trust easy to justify and too tempting to ignore.

I make a list of his best traits. Traits that are less obvious outside of work. At work, he's competent. Smart. Nice. Caring. Generous. Outside of work, he's lost. The one place left that is safe for us to go is work.

At approximately eight thirty-five each morning, while reading the New York Post, he calls officer manager Wendy Corbett's extension. She's always in the staff kitchen making the second pot of coffee at that time. So curious was I that I finally got the courage to listen in on the daily call. Turns out he leaves each day's horoscope for Aries on her voice mail. Last week it was Valentine's Day, and he left two messages. Her horoscope and her romance-scope.

Yesterday I heard him talking to a woman, in a whisper that was supposed to sound s.e.xy or something. I suspended my own private wiretap for the rest of the afternoon out of empathetic embarra.s.sment. Today there have been a series of calls from a younger woman.

We all regress when we're scared. Why shouldn't he? That was his upside to our crisis. During my mother's treatments he started a maniacal dating spree. It has always been his favorite coping mechanism. A similar spree ended my parents' marriage twenty-five years ago.

A few weeks ago he was dating a woman who'd graduated from school three years ahead of me and made her living selling makeup out of a pink suitcase. When she was in the waiting room, I was curious, so I asked to hear her sales pitch and ended up buying some moderately priced lip gloss from her out of guilt. We chatted for twenty minutes. There was nothing overtly objectionable about her, and at the same time there was nothing obviously wonderful either. Yet my father landed himself here.

There are moments when I believe I could travel down this path of thought and never return. But the ringing phone s.n.a.t.c.hes me back-a literal tether to reality.

Breakdown.

IF I WERE LOOKING at a map of my life, this is the point of the journey at which I'd have to ask myself: How the h.e.l.l did I end up here? Answering phones? Reunited with my father? Trying to micromanage office pizza parties? This was not the future I envisioned. These are not the dreams I hatched while sleeping on rainbow sheets in my single bed. It has nothing to do with lack of ambition. Far from it. I graduated from college and went directly to law school without taking a summer break. Two days after graduating from law school I started logging seventy-hour workweeks at the respected firm of Schroeder, Sotos, Willett, and Ritchie.

I kept myself buried in work. Obsessed with it. Glancing up every so often to see there were other important things in the world. Things I had no time for until my mother found a lump. A small lump that changed everything.

All of the things in my life that worked suddenly seemed broken. So I abandoned my former life. Truth be told? It was an emergency escape hatch that released me from a job that had kidnapped my personal life, and got me out of a relationship I was too afraid to engage in.

When pressed to tell people how I got myself into my current nepotism-gone-bad situation, I like to describe it as a mini-breakdown. The prefix makes all the difference. It makes it sound more like a vacation than a condition best treated with medication and art therapy.

I can pinpoint the morning that things changed. As usual, I was on a self-improvement mission from the time the alarm clock sounded. Each morning I woke with the same promise to myself. I would work less and live more. Every day I broke that promise and ate takeout for dinner at my desk and pretended not to be in love with Sam. I was looking for ways to enhance my life without having to change anything significant.

My Shrink.

PAUL'S OFFICE IS COZY, and by cozy I mean there is a white wicker daybed in lieu of a couch. The first time I came to see him there were pastel-colored b.u.t.terfly sheets on the daybed, and I almost didn't come back because of that single detail. I tortured myself with what it could all mean-his choice in sheets. Are we all meant to soar in this world? To see things from the vantage point of a metamorphosing insect? Or were they just sheets that happened to fit the daybed? As soon as he gets an actual couch, I'll be lying on it. Until then, I'll sit across from him in the black, foam-stuffed pleather club chair.

"So, what's happening in your internal life?" Paul asks.

"Who's got time for an internal life?" I say.

"Not a h.e.l.l of a lot happening in your conscious life," Paul says.

"Ouch," I say.

"Well, not anything you're willing to talk about," Paul says.

I steal a glance at him. He needs a haircut. Like all shrinks, he wants me to talk about my mother.

"Whatever happened to that guy? The one who had the appointment after me?" I ask.

"Why do you ask?" Paul says.

"I think I miss him," I say. I can't handle separations that aren't accompanied by lots of advance notice.

"I see," Paul says.

"You cured him, and I'm not sure I'll be able to forgive you," I say.

Silence.

"Because you miss him? Or because I 'cured' him and not you?" Paul asks.