I
’ve been unemployed
for about ten days now, which means I’ve gotten to know Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa pretty well. I could be using this time to start another novel. Or maybe I could write a short story first. I haven’t written one of those since college, but it seems like writing a twenty-page something would be easier than writing a four-hundred-page something, right? Or I could try to write a résumé. Or, I could just keep watching
Live with Regis and Kelly
. I’ve also heard good things about
The Young and the Restless
.
I check my watch, trying to look like I’m not checking my watch. It’s funny, for ten days I’ve done virtually nothing, but today I’ve got two appointments. My mother has given me strict instructions to meet her in her office at my old high school at 2 p.m. But right now, I’m sitting in a Starbucks on Fifteenth Street talking to Andrew Brown from the
Washington Post
.
The
Post
actually ran a story about me the other day, or, more specifically, about my famed press release. When my colleagues were forwarding it back and forth to each other on the day I got fired, it somehow made it out of the building and began spreading like some sort of virus. Within a few days it’d become what the article called “a minor Internet sensation.”
LOL . . . I guess.
Andrew Brown is a good-looking guy in his forties with salt-and-pepper hair. He looks like a newspaperman as he drinks his venti latte with a double shot. One of the weird by-products of unemployment is the inferiority complex you develop around people with jobs. I found a parking spot right out front, and I can see Hank sitting in my car, looking out the passenger-side window at the building, wondering what I’m doing in here.
“So, you enjoyed the article then?” asks Andrew Brown.
“I did. It made me look like less of an idiot than I thought it would.”
He smiles. Up until now, we’ve been talking about baseball, and I’m beginning to wonder why he wanted to see me.
“Never underestimate the power of humor,” he says. “People can get away with saying a lot of interesting, poignant things when they’re pretending to be an idiot. I have a feeling you’re one of those guys who gets a lot of laughs by being self-deprecating. Maybe by pretending you’re not quite as smart as you actually are?”
“Perhaps,” I say. “Also, I’m not afraid to fall down in public, either. People laugh at that every time.”
Andrew Brown seems to be enjoying this. He’s been laughing a lot since we sat down together, which makes me happy. I instantly like people who laugh at my jokes. It’s a weakness of mine. “Listen,” he says. “I wanted to talk to you about an opportunity.”
The word “opportunity” makes me immediately suspicious. It’s one of those once-harmless words that corporate America has ruined. Like “task” as a verb or “facilitate.”
“Right now, the country is a mess. OK? That’s obvious. People are getting laid off everywhere, in every industry. McCain and Obama are talking about a bazillion-dollar stimulus package, but that might as well be Monopoly money to people on Main Street. Fair or not, nobody thinks they’re gonna see any of that.
“There’s a lot of anger right now. It’s palpable. I think that’s why your press release caught on so much. People kept forwarding it to their friends because you could have been talking about
their
company—
any
company really. Let’s face it, people are afraid. But . . . of what? Sure, they need to work and they need to have paychecks, but a lot of people
hate
their jobs. Most of the things people do for forty hours a week is drudgery at best. A
lot
of people feel a
lot
of resentment toward their employers right now. And why shouldn’t they? Companies go on about teamwork and synergy and investing in
you
, and they have happy hours and employee appreciation day and career tracks, but that’s all bullshit. The last few weeks have proven that no matter how long you’ve been there, or how good of a job you’ve done, if they need to get rid of you to maintain profitability or appease stockholders, they sure as hell will. In a heartbeat.”
I feel like I should yell out an “amen.” “You’re right,” I say. “My wife helps kids learn to read, and my best friend is a doctor. But I don’t think I know anyone who works for an actual company who doesn’t wish they could show up with an Uzi most days.”
“Exactly,” says Andrew Brown, slapping his knee. “And that’s why I want you to write a blog for our Web site.”
“A what?”
“Think about it. You worked for your crappy company for what, seven years? My God, think about how much pent-up frustration you must have stored in that head. I bet that press release was just a taste. Here’s how it’ll work. You follow the week’s business news, you draw on your personal experience, and every Thursday you give us five or six hundred words on how it’s all garbage.”
“You want that in your
business
section?” I ask.
“Hell yeah. Opposing viewpoints. You’re a man of the people, Tom. Every day we’ll run articles about mergers and acquisitions and stock prices and new products and hostile takeovers. And we’ll quote CEOs and CFOs and PR spokespeople with their spin and hyperbole. And you’ll be right there to give the everyman’s perspective. And we’ll all love you for it.”
I look out the window again at Hank in my car, and then all the people in line for their teas and coffees. They’re wearing slacks, ties, jackets, and heels. These people have all managed to keep their jobs, somehow. At least for now. Maybe there’s hope for the world after all.
Andrew Brown takes a sip of his drink, his pitch complete. “Will you think about it at least?”
But I already have. Before he was even done talking, I’d mentally gone through my “Ass Face” file of Greg’s complaints. Thankfully I’d managed to e-mail it to myself before IT shut me out of my computer. Writing about my loathing for that awful place will be the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Greg will be my muse, Ian Barksdale and Janice Stringer my Lolitas. My insubordination, rampant and grossly unprofessional, has given me the chance to blow up the Death Star once a week until the
Washington Post
tells me enough already, and I say, “I’ll do it” so fast that Andrew Brown actually laughs at me.
“Wow,” he says. “You should probably work on your negotiating techniques.”
I park in the visitors’ lot and enter my old high school through the main lobby. On the way here I’ve written a blog in my head about how stupid it is that no one says “call” or “e-mail” anymore. It’s “ping” or “reach out.”
Can you reach out to Stephanie in Marketing and see if she can give you a download on our plans for Q3? Can you ping me later, after your meeting?
My God, this thing is going to write itself.
I’ve only been back in this building a handful of times since I graduated 250,000 years ago, but I’m always struck by how small it seems. There’s a big trophy case front and center, and I stop at the little placard that says
CROSS COUNTRY
. Sure enough, my name’s still there. When I was seventeen, I ran a 5K in 16:22, which at the time was the fifth best in school history. Since then, I’ve fallen to tenth. A kid named Rash Lahari ran a 15:12 in 2002 to take over number one. God bless him.
There are some students roaming the halls, and each eyes me with suspicion, a stranger among them dressed too casually to be anyone of any authority. I do my best to look like I’m not here to murder them all, but this is harder to do than you might think at my age in a building full of teenagers and lockers. There’s a big blue poster announcing a dance on Friday.
I find my mom exactly where she said she’d be, sitting at her desk in the main English office. She’s eating a salad from a clear plastic container and looking through a stack of essays. In a thin cardigan sweater and looking a little disheveled, she’s all English teacher. I lean down and kiss her on the cheek before falling into the uncomfortable chair across from her old desk. We’ve been playing phone tag, halfheartedly, and exchanging e-mails. I’ve told her the vaguest possible version of my current employment status. To be honest, though, I’ve been avoiding her. It’s taken me a while not to be mad about all the things she hasn’t told me.
“Honey,” she says, giving me an unhappy look. “You really didn’t have to go and get all dressed up.”
I’m fiddling with a paperweight bust of William Shakespeare. “In my defense, Mom, these are my most expensive jeans.”
“What happened to your lip?”
My wound is barely there anymore, no more ghastly than a cold sore. “The fiction editor at the
New Yorker
punched me in the face. I’m thinking about suing him. Nicholas Zuckerman is my star witness.”
She rolls her eyes and pops a baby carrot into her mouth.
“So, I saw an interesting billboard the other day. I was meaning to ask you about it.”
She hides her smile behind a forkful of iceberg lettuce. Along with the one that my dad and I saw in Maryland, Gary arranged for the conversion of seven other Ford billboards across Southern Maryland, D.C., and Northern Virginia. “Ridiculous,” she says. “A complete waste of time and money.”
“Seems like it worked though, huh?”
“If you define
working
by making me realize that Gary cannot be left to his own devices without terrorizing the entire city, then you’re correct, it
did
work. I’ve moved back home as a service to society. Some of my honors students saw it. They’ve been giving me a hard time about it.”
For a long time, my mom has hidden behind a façade of pessimism when the subject of happiness comes up. I imagine other women have done this, too, in the wake of men like my father. But I can see through it now, and she’s beaming. She is as loved as any woman can be—a fact that has been demonstrated now to the entire D.C. metropolitan area.
“Consider yourself lucky. It could have been a lot worse. I had to talk him down from a skywriter.”
“You knew about it?” she asks.
“It seems you and I have been keeping some secrets from each other lately,” I say, thumbing Shakespeare’s goatee.
She ignores this, setting her salad aside. “I saw something interesting the other day, too, now that we’re on the subject.” From a drawer full of pens, she pulls out a newspaper, which I recognize proudly. It’s the article the
Post
wrote about me and all of my snarky, immature brilliance. She smooths the wrinkles and clears her throat. “‘It’s like day care for adults, says Tom Violet, of corporate America,’” she reads. “‘We sit in meetings and we use important-sounding, utterly meaningless words to impress each other, but so few of us are actually doing anything to improve the world in even the slightest way. Sure, we may be able to buy iPhones, but we’re handing over our souls and our happiness in the process.’”
Over the top of the paper she gives me a very specific look. Many have sat in this same chair before me and received this same look. In their defense, though, most of them have been, legally speaking, children.
She continues: “‘It is a world in which followers and yes-men prosper, the suits at the top get richer and richer, and anyone with any semblance of creative or innovative thought is either cast aside as a non–team player or slowly beaten into submission. It’s just an awful, awful place.’”
“It’s like poetry,” I say.
“A little self-righteous, perhaps?”
“I think I made a compelling argument.”
“Yeah, a compelling argument for why to not
ever
hire you. What are you going to do for a job, Tom? You’ve successfully burned every bridge in your industry. In
every
industry, really. It’s probably the most impressive example of irresponsibility I’ve ever seen.”
As excited as I am about my brand-new professional blogging career, I feel like telling her about it will not get me very far here, especially considering I’ll be making one dollar per word, before taxes. But, in truth, I didn’t come all the way here to listen to a detailed analysis of my shortcomings as an adult.
“Why didn’t you tell me he was sick, Mom?” Startled, she looks around the room. A few of her coworkers are eating their lunches at their desks. It’s the educational community’s version of Cubeland. “I had to hear that my dad has cancer from Nicholas Zuckerman?
Nicholas Zuckerman
. Do you have any idea how weird that was? That’s not normal. Why is our family so strange?”
Zuckerman’s name perks the ears of some of the other teachers in the room, and we instinctively lean closer to each other across her desk.
“Tom, I’m sorry. He asked me not to tell you. He said he was going to tell you himself. Nicholas Zuckerman? Really?”
“Well Curtis
didn’t
tell me. And I seriously don’t know if he ever would have. I stumbled across everything on my own, Dad being sick, the writer’s block, Sonya.”
“Sonya? What about Sonya?”
“Oh . . . well. He’s with Sonya now.”
As she suddenly makes her hands busy straightening her pile of essays, I see an old kind of pain there. “Well, that figures. She’s been waiting around for him for thirty years.”
“Mom, you’re the responsible one. The actual
real
parent in this scenario. I just wish you would have told me.” Even as I say this, whatever irritation I have for my mother is dissipating fast. Maybe it’s because I can see that this Sonya thing has wounded her. Curtis has the ability to hurt my mom still, from a world away. But more than that, it’s impossible to be angry with her because I know that it’s not her job to be my father.
“I’m sorry,” she says again, and I can see that she is.
I set Shakespeare back on her desk next to some correcting fluid. “You’re prettier than Sonya, you know,” I say.
She smiles. “I have something for you. There’s something I want to talk to you about.” She slides a piece of paper across the desk, a printout from the careers section of the school’s Web site. She’s highlighted one entry in yellow, “Writing and Composition Teacher Wanted.”