Authors: Lynne Spreen
“Not a chance. Everybody knows where you spent the night.”
“What is she going to think?”
“That you jumped the fence, and you ain’t apologizin’?”
“Christ!” Karen hurried back to the house and changed into her cocktail dress and heels. When Curt saw her he started laughing.
“No sneaking in with this on, is there?” She looked forlorn.
He took her hand. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”
They rode in silence through the brightness of midmorning, through the fields sprawling away from his farmhouse to the leafy green streets of her neighborhood. In front of the house, Karen leaned back in his window and kissed him lightly. She wanted more, but felt eyes watching her from behind every lace curtain within one hundred yards.
When she straightened up, he sighed. “Not even a couple extra days? Are you sure?”
“I have no choice.”
“There’s always a choice.”
She pecked him on the lips and went in the house, dashing into her bedroom and changing before Aunt Marie could see her in lastnight’s dress. Although Karen was flattered by Curt’s attention, his attitude about her job irritated her. Nice that he’d carved out a sweet niche for himself, but that didn’t mean everybody could swing the same deal. Especially now, in this economy, and at her age.
She checked her messages, and called Peggy. “There’s something different in your voice,” the older woman said.
“No, I’m just relaxing. This trip has been really good for me.”
“Well, I’m about worn out. I’ll be glad to see you back here.”
“Day after tomorrow,” said Karen. “It’s been fun but I’m ready.”
“See you then.”
Aunt Marie was working in the garden, so Karen went outside to help. As she pulled weeds and tied up raucous young beans and peas, her fingers moved automatically in old, familiar patterns, freeing her brain to analyze every delicious detail of last night. Who knew her body would work so well? Turns out maybe she wasn’t so old after all. She looked up and caught her aunt smiling.
Karen sat back on her heels. Aunt Marie’s fingers, knobby with age and arthritis, were half-buried in the fragrant earth as she pulled weeds from around the base of a coriander plant. She hummed softly, looking up in surprise as Karen leaned down to hug her.
That evening she finished packing, checking and rechecking her tickets for tomorrow’s flight. Finally, all that remained was to check her messages one last time. The last one was from Wes. He’d left it an hour ago, early evening in California, and he wanted her to call him right away. He answered on the first ring.
“Hey, North Dakota girl,” Wes said. “You’re up late.”
“It’s only nine. How was the conference?”
“It was helpful.”
She waited, but he was silent. “I was just checking my messages and you wanted me to call.”
“Yeah. I’m going through your files–”
“My files?”
“Yep. Got ‘em here at home with me.”
She heard ice clinking in a glass as he took a sip of his drink. “Did you have a question?”
“Thing is, Karen, I can’t find your notes about contract negotiations with the lab workers, and I’m going to need them.”
“The reason you can’t find them is because I have the file with me here.”
“I need it back.”
“Sure. I’ll bring it in Tuesday, bright and early.”
The ice clinked again. “Why don’t you go ahead and overnight that file to me, and anything else you have relating to these negotiations?”
Karen hesitated. “None of it will reach you before I get back there.”
“While you’re at it, why don’t you send me anything else you’ve got?”
“Wes? Did I not mention I’m coming back Tuesday? Anything I have will be on your desk in a little more than a day.”
“How about instead you overnight me those files, and then you can stay back there in the country for as long as you like?”
“That’s nice of you, but I’m all packed. I have my tickets and I’m flying home tomorrow.”
“Payroll’s drawing up your last check, and I told them to throw in any of your unused sick leave.”
“Pardon?”
“Well, you earned it, and I want to be fair.”
She felt her legs wobble and flopped into a chair. “That isn’t necessary. Not at all. I can be home by tomorrow afternoon.”
“No need.”
She took a steadying breath. “If I read you correctly, you’re unhappy I took a week off, but I’d like you to understand. My mother died. I needed to take care of her affairs.”
“That’s a personal issue. You know I don’t take those into account.”
Karen gripped the phone so hard she accidently pressed a button and it beeped. “Right. But what you should take into account is my value to the company, and the difficulty and expense of replacing an employee at my level. I understand you may be annoyed that I was gone, but you have a lot on your plate right now. Let me just come back, pick up where I left off a week ago, and keep things rolling at the office.”
“Thanks for your concern, but I can handle it just fine.”
She finally cracked. “It’s not a firing offense, for God’s sake.”
“Good-bye, Karen.”
Her mouth opened, then closed. Air wasn’t moving. Karen lowered the phone from her ear and stared at the thing as if expecting it to explain what just happened. Wes was insane. She’d only been gone a few days. She hadn’t taken time off in years. She worked sixty, seventy, eighty hours a week on salary. The man was a fucking maniac.
Did he just fire me?
Aunt Marie walked over, dishtowel in hand. “Is something wrong?”
“Um, no. Nope. Not at all. Everything’s cool,” she babbled. “You know what? I think I’ll go for a walk.”
“It’s dark, honey.”
“I’ll be careful.”
She sprang from the porch like a puma and hit the pavement in a sprint. Turned left at the sidewalk, but the sidewalk couldn’t contain her, and then she was in the street, her footsteps landing hard.
Fucking bastard fucking bastard fucking bastard.
Her mind raced as fast as her pulse.
Fired? He was out of his mind. She was so busy, she had so much going on, that he was a fool to fire her; too stupid to even know it. He would learn it eventually, but by then the damage would have been done.
And who the hell was he to fire her? San Francisco corporate loved her. Lou, the CEO, had told her so many times that he appreciated her dedication, her expertise, her institutional memory. They don’t make ‘em like you anymore, he said. He couldn’t have approved this.
A car honked and she swerved back toward the curb, wild eyed and winded from the unaccustomed effort. She needed to call Lou immediately. Wes had no right. Karen had proven herself over the years. She was loyal, effective, and reliable. They couldn’t be letting her go. She was too important; she had done too good a job. The people at corporate knew her, knew how long and hard she had worked. Nobody knew the job like she did.
Her pace slowed. What if Wes really did have the blessing of Lou and the higher-ups in San Francisco?
Could they be that stupid?
She sat on the curb, breathing in huge gasps. Karen knew the answer to that. Even in spite of her distaste, she had worked hard to form bonds with the porcine executives who treated Global Health as their personal bank, and she had no illusions. She kept her mouth shut and did her job, playing it safe while working behind the scenes to protect the company. As a result of her efforts, the guys at the top were printing money. Apparently it wasn’t enough. They wanted her salary, too.
Overhead, a pair of bats circled the street light.
It did not make sense. If the top guys at corporate knew all the projects she was working on, and that she was in the middle of a dozen high-profile operations, they would never have let her go, if only to save themselves money and effort. A ton of work remained on her desk, critical work no one else could do. Who would finish recruiting a dozen new nurses for the city hospital? Who would interview the physicians for neonatal intensive care? What about the contract negotiations with the electricians? They’d threatened to walk, except Karen had won a temporary reprieve while she reworked management’s offer. Who would handle that now? What would happen to the office?
What would happen to her? Finding another job would be impossible. Prospective employers would take one look at her resumé and know she was expensive. Even if age discrimination weren’t in play, she’d probably have to take a giant pay cut to land a job. The idea of competing with some young thing fresh out of graduate school slayed her. Going on interviews would be like sitting in a bar trying to convince a guy that your clever, witty self should compensate for your wrinkles.
This is what my life has come to. I come back for my mother’s funeral and I lose my fucking job. They can’t fire me. I’m too valuable. They need me. People know me.
What am I going to do? Twenty-five years, my whole career, gone in one little phone call?
Karen took a deep breath. She would call Lou Cullen at corporate. Lou would overrule Wes. He had to.
She turned back toward the house.
.
A
fter a sleepless night, Karen waited until nine and then punched in the number of the executive secretary to the CEO. Even though the office was closed, she knew Janice would answer. Janice was never away from her phone. She worked even harder than Karen.
She waited while the call connected. Louis Cullen would fix this. Their friendship, or at least their professional acquaintance, spanned two decades. Over the years, she’d kept Lou up to date on the challenges and victories at Newport, and he had been appreciative, sending her encouraging messages in return. Every Christmas he tucked a complimentary, hand-written note into her bonus envelope. It didn’t seem possible he would agree to her firing.
The phone rang and rang, seconds ticking away, until the executive assistant picked up. “Karen, I heard. I’m so sorry.”
“You heard already? Does Lou know?”
“He would have to.”
“Where can I reach him?”
“You can’t. I’m serious. He left Friday for a month-long trip to Africa.”
Holy shit.
Karen sagged against her aunt’s table. “Who else can I talk to? What about Freeman or Esperanza?”
“It’s a holiday. Everybody’s gone.”
Karen lay on the sofa, fifteen hundred miles from home, jobless, and on the verge of divorce. Her delusions of security had vanished. Everything she knew seemed abnormal; everything she knew seemed to have changed. In middle age she was discovering it was true: a person could do her best at a job for years and still be out on the street because some fat-assed CEO bought himself an island and needed the money.
Aunt Marie stood in the doorway. “I’m fixing lunch. Are you hungry?”
“No, thanks.” Karen moved her legs so Aunt Marie could sit down next to her. “I lost my job.”
“Oh, dear. Just now?”
“Last night.” Karen stared across the room, unblinking. “It’s like I’m trash. Like I’m nothing.”
“Can they do that? After all the years you worked there?”
“They can do whatever the hell they want. Sorry.”
“You should talk to Lorraine’s lawyers. Maybe they can help you.”
“It’s not illegal,” Karen said. “I’m old. If they can hire somebody younger and cheaper, they can and do. Why not? It’s business.”
“Used to be, people would work for one company all their lives,” said Aunt Marie. “Your father did. So did my Henry. They were loyal, and Dakota Gas took care of them.”
“Yeah, well, those days are gone forever.”
Aunt Marie brightened. “Maybe now you don’t have to rush home.”
“I still need to work. I need to go back and find another job.”
“There are plenty of good jobs in Dickinson, what with all the oil. Maybe you could look here.”
“I can’t think about it right now.”
“Maybe in a few days. You’re in shock right now, but once you leave, you don’t know when you’ll ever get back. Think how happy it would make Lena, to know you’re living here and safe.”
Right now all Karen wanted to do was escape. She’d done her best and where did it get her? All that duty and obligation hadn’t protected her from anything. She wiped her eyes and leaned into the warmth of her aunt’s embrace.
“Change is hard,” said Aunt Marie. “But in the long run, maybe this is better.” She gave Karen a squeeze. “I don’t want to add any pressure on you, but if you decided to stay, you could have this house back. Free and clear.”
Karen pushed away. “This is your house.”
“It’s still in Lena’s name. Let me finish,” she said when Karen began to protest. “Years ago, Lorraine and Jim asked me to move in with them. They even remodeled their place so there’s a mother-in-law’s cottage at the east end of the property now.”
“I’m not moving back, and even if I were, I wouldn’t kick you out.”
“You wouldn’t be kicking me out. It would be a blessing. Listen to me, dear. I’m eighty-six and living alone is getting harder. We knew this day would come. So you can have your house back.”
“I’ll deed it over to you.”
“Do what you like. I’ll still move in with the kids.”
Karen wanted to escape, to go somewhere where nothing mattered, nobody knew her, and she was entirely free. For the moment, though, she was stuck in North Dakota. “Can I borrow the car?”
She hit I-94, a strip of solitary asphalt stretching across the state. Propelled by a sense of claustrophobia, she motored through seemingly endless farmland, racing westward toward the Badlands. The rush of the wind coming in all four windows stung her eyes, but the tears never showed up. A half-hour later, she turned off the freeway at Teddy Roosevelt National Park, passed the visitors’ center, and followed the narrow road along the Little Missouri until, at the end of a tree-shrouded lane, she arrived at a campground. She cut the motor and sat quietly, listening to the shriek of a redtail hawk and the rustle of the cottonwoods.
What am I going to do?
No answer.
Locking the car, she trotted down a willow-edged dirt path until reaching a clearing, past a deep depression in the soft sand, still wet from the bison that had rolled in it after crossing the shallow waters. The wallow was large enough to accommodate a car. Beyond the wallow, the path disappeared over a berm. The herd could be right there, just out of eyesight.