Then We Came to the End

  Joe’s sudden presence was the dissolving agent, and we picked our individual bodies up and returned to our desks, heavy and yawning. Morning was officially upon us.

  Why was it so terrifying, almost like death, one morning of a hundred, to walk back to your own office and pass alone through its doorway? Why was the dread so suffocating? Most days, no problem. Work to be done. A pastry. Storm clouds out the window that looked, in their menace, sublime. But one out of a hundred mornings it was impossible to breathe. Our coffee tasted poisonous. The sight of our familiar chairs oppressed us. The invariable light was deadening.

  We fought with depression. One thing or another in our lives hadn’t worked out, and for a long period of time we struggled to overcome it. We took showers sitting down and couldn’t get out of bed on weekends. Finally we consulted HR about the details of seeing a specialist, and the specialist prescribed medication. Marcia Dwyer was on Prozac. Jim Jackers was on Zoloft and something else. Dozens of others took pills all day long, which we struggled to identify, there were so many of them, in so many different colors and sizes. Janine Gorjanc was on a cocktail of several meds, including lithium. After Jessica’s death, Janine and her husband, Frank, divorced. We understood divorce to be a common repercussion of the death of a child. There was no bitterness between them, just a parting of ways. Now they each lived alone with their memories. Pictures of Frank with Jessica also hung in Janine’s office, and, to be honest, it was almost as moving to see pictures of him as it was to see all the ones of the lost girl. Frank with Jessica on his knee, Frank caught in an apron with hot mitts on his hands during some holiday — that man was as gone from the world as Jessica was. The woolly sideburns were gone and the thick black glasses were gone and he no longer had a wife or child. Spend two minutes in Janine’s office looking over those pictures and contemplating the destinies of the happy people involved, and you too would reach for one of the prescription containers scattered about the place.

  Yet for all the depression no one ever quit. When someone quit, we couldn’t believe it. “I’m becoming a rafting instructor on the Colorado River,” they said. “I’m touring college towns with my garage band.” We were dumbfounded. It was like they lived on a different planet. Where had they found the derring-do? What would they do about car payments? We got together for going-away drinks on their final day and tried to hide our envy while reminding ourselves that we still had the freedom and luxury to shop indiscriminately. Invariably Tom would get drunk and berate the departing with inappropriate toasts. Invariably Marcia would find hair bands on the jukebox and subject us to their saccharine ballads while recalling the halcyon days of George Washington High. Invariably Janine would silently sip her cranberry juice, looking mournful and motherly, and Jim Jackers would crack dull, tasteless jokes, and Joe would still be at the office, working. “‘Every ship is a romantic object,’” Tom would blather, “‘except that we sail in.’” Concluding, he would stand and lift his glass. “So good luck to you,” he toasted, finishing off his martini, “and fuck you for leaving, you prick.”

  WE HAD WIDE HALLWAYS. Some contained offices running along both sides, while others had offices on one side and cubicles on the other. Jim Jackers’ cubicle was unique in that it was set off in a corner. He had a wonderful view because of that location and we questioned whether he deserved it. To get there you had to walk past the toner stain in the carpet on sixty. He shared that prime space with one other person, a woman named Tanya something who worked on a different partner’s team. A retractable wall separated them, made of thick privacy glass, the kind used in shower windows. Behind it, one moved about, it seemed to the other, as if scrubbing and deodorizing, when really they were just filing or inputting.

  We were into the first few weeks of layoffs when Benny told us the story of Carl Garbedian saying good-bye to his wife. We were gathered at Jim’s cube for some arbitrary reason — it was a mystery how and why some of us found ourselves gathering at the same place at the same time. Benny’s stories were more frequent in the days before the downturn, when we felt flush and secure. We were less mindful of being caught gathering. Then the downturn hit, our workload disappeared, and, though we had more time than ever to listen to Benny’s stories, we were more conscious of being caught gathering, which was one indication that our workload had disappeared and that layoffs were necessary. We were in a bind — what to do about Benny’s stories? We compromised by continuing to listen, but without enjoying them because we were too worried someone would come by and see us. We would listen with only one ear, and with one eye always over our shoulders, in case we needed to bolt back to our desks and commence the charade that our workload was as strong as ever, because only then would we not be laid off.

  Carl Garbedian was in his midthirties. He had a gut like the male equivalent of a second trimester. He wore off-brand, too-tight jeans and generic tennis shoes, which, to us, conveyed the extent to which he’d given up. His wife dropped him at the curb one morning and he refused to get out of the car. Benny had seen much of this himself, but what he couldn’t get firsthand, he got later from Carl, when he prodded it out of him during the lunch hour. Practically everyone shared their thoughts with Benny because everyone loved Benny, which was why some of us hated his guts.

  Just before stepping out of the car, right as she should have been kissing Carl good-bye, Marilynn’s cell phone rang. She was an oncologist and always felt obligated to answer the phone in case of emergency. “Hello?” she said. “Go ahead, Susan, I can hear you just fine.”

  Carl was immediately annoyed. Benny told us that Carl hated the way his wife always reassured people that she could hear them just fine. He hated how she plugged her finger in her opposite ear, effectively shutting out all other noise. And he hated that her other obligations always preempted him. They were just about to say good-bye, for chrissake. Didn’t it matter, wasn’t it important, their kiss good-bye? The thing he really hated, which he would never admit to her, was how he felt the lesser of the two of them for having no obligation that could compare with hers, which he might use to preempt her. She had people calling about patients who were dying. Let’s face it, there was zero chance one of us would call Carl with a question of mortal urgency. Whatever question we might have for Carl, it could wait until we ran into him in the hall the next day. That made Carl feel that his wife’s job was more meaningful than his own; and, because of his particular way of thinking at the time, that she was therefore more meaningful. Carl’s thoughts were dark, man. It didn’t make for an easy marriage. If only you heard the fragments of phone conversations we sometimes overheard when passing Carl’s office.

  Benny told us that when Marilynn answered her cell, Carl considered stepping out of the car and storming off, but instead chose to stay and gaze out the window. He caught sight of the man who panhandled outside our building. He was always there, this man, sitting near one of the revolving doors, lifting and shaking a Dunkin Donuts cup as we entered, while his legs remained outstretched and crossed at the ankles. The sight of him, just the sight of him alone — which five years ago might have inspired Carl to empty his pockets of change — was a mnemonic torture device that now dropped with thundering anguish the whole memory load of innumerable days back upon Carl’s shoulders. They had lifted the night before, for an hour or two. But now, even before entering the building — by god, even before he had the chance to run screaming from another bit of Karen Woo gossip, or see the shine clinging to Chris Yop’s brow — they had reappeared, all the compounded days of Carl’s tenure, with the additional crushing weight of yet another day.

  Do something! he had wanted to scream at the bum. He was close to rolling down the window and doing just that. He was offended that the man just sat there for his money. Other bums had positioned themselves. They had brands. “Vietnam Vet with AIDS.” “Unemployed Mother of Three.” “Trying to Get Back to Cleveland.” This guy had nothing — no words on a piece of cardboard, not even a dog or some bongos. For some
reason it infuriated Carl. Yeah, there was a time he’d have given whatever was in his pockets; now he’d give the guy half his life savings, if he’d just choose a different building!

  Benny had seen the Garbedians idling at the curb and had snuck up from behind and pounded on Carl’s window. Carl irritably waved him off. Benny assumed they were fighting so he left them alone. But Benny being Benny, he loitered around the front entrance where he wasn’t easy to spot, over by the post-office drop box. He had a good view of the car from there.

  Inside Marilynn was still on the phone. She was discussing a matter of medical importance in a language Carl envied. He decided to make a call of his own. He took his cell phone out of his jeans pocket, hit speed-dial, and put the phone to his ear. His wife said into her phone, “Can you hold on a minute, Susan? I’m getting another call.” She looked down at the screen and then she looked over at Carl, who was looking straight out the window.

  “What are you doing?” she asked him.

  He turned to her. “Making a call,” he replied.

  “Why are you calling me, Carl?” Marilynn asked with a firm, cautious bemusement.

  Mornings had turned tetchy of late between the two Garbedians, sometimes downright traitorous. “Hold on one second,” Carl said to Marilynn, putting a finger up in the air. “I’m just leaving a voice mail. Hi, Marilynn, it’s me, Carl. I’m calling at about” — he lifted his arm and looked at his watch, a formal gesture — “it’s about half-past eight,” he said. “And I know you’re real busy, Sweetie, but if you could do me a favor and call, I’d love to just . . . catch up. Chat. You have my number, but in case you don’t, let me give it to you now, it’s —”

  Marilynn put her phone back to her ear and said, “Susan, I’m going to have to call you back.”

  “Okay, bye-bye, Sweetie,” said Carl.

  They both hit end on their cell phones at the same time. At some point, the new-message light on Marilynn’s phone began to blink.

  JOE POPE STUCK his head over Jim Jackers’ cubicle just as Benny was coming to the good part in his story. Some of our cube walls were made of particleboard wrapped in a cheap orange or beige fiber and were so flimsy they wobbled from nothing more than the in-house draft. Other cube walls, like Jim’s, had been purchased just before the downturn and could withstand hurricane winds. Benny’s story came to an abrupt halt. Some of us departed Jim’s cube immediately, while the rest of us peered up at Joe nervously. Joe asked Jim if the mock-ups he was working on would be ready for the five o’clock pickup.

  Joe had a tendency to interrupt. Sometimes it was a good thing. We could lose ourselves in one of Benny’s stories and the time would fly and then someone more important than Joe might come around and see us and that would be worse. We liked him at first, very early on. Then one day Karen Woo says, “I don’t like Joe Pope,” and she gives us her reasons. She goes on and on about it, for close to a half hour, a very spirited rant, until finally we had to excuse ourselves so we could get back to work. After that there was no doubt in anyone’s mind how Karen Woo felt about Joe Pope, and more than a few people agreed that she had a legitimate gripe — that if in fact the situation was as Karen reported it, Joe was not a likable person at all. It’s tough to say now what that gripe actually was. Let’s see, here . . . trying to remember . . . nope, not coming. Half the time we couldn’t remember three hours ago. Our memory in that place was not unlike that of goldfish. Goldfish who took a trip every night in a small clear bag of water and then returned in the morning to their bowl. What we recalled was that Karen didn’t let up on the story, day after day for an entire week, and when that week was over, we all had a better idea of Joe than we had gotten in his first three or four months.

  Jim Jackers looked up from his computer. “Yeah, Joe, they’ll be ready,” he replied. “I’m putting the final touches on them now.”

  Jim’s remark was Joe’s cue to depart, but instead he lingered over the cube wall. This was between the time of his first promotion and his second. “Thanks, Jim,” he said. He looked at us. We held our ground. We didn’t want to be bullied back to our desks by Joe Pope when Benny was in the middle of a good story. “How is everybody?” asked Joe. We looked around. We shrugged. Pretty good, we told him. “Good,” he said. He finally left and we raised our brows at one another.

  “That was a disgusting display of power,” said Karen Woo.

  We told Jim he had to leave if he was the one attracting Joe Pope’s attention. If he was the reason Joe was on the move in our direction, Jim had to go.

  “But this is my cubicle,” said Jim.

  “Maybe he was just trying to be friendly,” Genevieve Latko-Devine suggested. Genevieve had blond hair, cobalt eyes, and a tall, gelid grace. Even the women admitted her superior beauty. For Christmas one year, she was given as a gag gift a set of twisted redneck teeth, which she was instructed to wear year-round in an effort to even us all out. But when she put them on, we discovered — the men among us, that is — a desire for rotted teeth we never knew we had. We told Benny to go on with his story.

  He picked up where he’d left off. Carl and his wife sat in silence a long time after hanging up their respective cell phones. Finally Marilynn, with tender, firm insistence, turned to him and said, “You need help, Carl.”

  Shaking his head resolutely, Carl replied, “I don’t need help.”

  “You need medical attention,” said his wife, “and you won’t admit it, and you’re hurting our marriage because of it.”

  “I’m not depressed,” said Carl.

  “You are a textbook case of depression,” Marilynn persisted, “and you need medication so badly —”

  “How would you know?” he asked, cutting her short. He had turned at last to stare at her with an outraged and lonely expression. “You aren’t a psychiatrist, Marilynn, are you? You can’t know every angle of medicine — can you, can you possibly?”

  “Cancer patients, Carl,” she said, exasperation rising in her tone, “are not the happiest people, believe it or not. I recommend antidepressants for many, many of my patients. I know a depressed person when I see one, I know the symptoms, I know the damage it can do to families, to . . .”

  He let Marilynn fade out. Just then, crossing the street on her way to work, was Janine Gorjanc.

  Janine looked to Carl perfectly motherlike. Unpretty but not ugly. Hippy but not fat. Puffy about the face but with a youthful cuteness buried somewhere in there that might have caused someone to be crazy about taking her to the high school prom. A child, thought Carl, is not the only result of childbirth. A mother, too, is born. You see them every day — nondescript women with a bulge just above the groin, slightly double-chinned. Perpetually forty. Someone’s mother, you think. There is a child somewhere who has made this woman into a mother, and for the sake of the child she has altered her appearance to better play the part. Insulated from her as he was by the car, he could look without the urge to turn and flee, and it was the first time he had seen her in months, maybe years. “Carl?” Marilynn was saying. “Carl??”

  “Marilynn,” he said. “Do you see that woman? That woman there, in the wrinkled blouse. She looks like a mother, doesn’t she?” Marilynn followed his gaze. “That’s Janine Gorjanc,” he said. “That’s the woman, I’ve told you about her,” he said. “Her daughter was killed. You remember? She was abducted. I told you about her. I went to the funeral?”

  “I remember,” she said.

  “She stinks,” he said.

  “She stinks?”

  “She emits some kind of smell, I don’t know what it is. It’s not every day. But some days, I think she just lets herself go. She doesn’t shower or something.” He watched her enter the building. Marilynn was looking at her husband, not at Janine. She was listening, trying to understand. “Marilynn,” he said, “I hate the woman for how she smells.”

  “Have you ever tried talking to her about it?” she asked.

  “But I hate myself even more,” he continued, u
nbuttoning his oxford, “for hating her. Can you even imagine what she’s been through?”

  “Carl,” Marilynn said, “what are you doing?”

  “The abduction,” he continued obliviously, “then the waiting, the terrible waiting.”

  “What are you doing?” she cried.

  “Then finding the body. Imagine finding the body, Marilynn.”

  He was naked to his waist by then. He had removed the oxford and flung his undershirt over his head. “I don’t want to go into work today,” he announced, turning to his wife. He was breathing up and down with his paunch exposed, a hair-brushed hillock of pale, glowing belly. When Benny recounted all this to us, he said Carl had told him later he hoped Lynn Mason would walk by right then and see that unattractive feature and walk him Spanish for the sake of aesthetics. “Put your clothes on!” cried Marilynn.

  “I don’t want to be the person that hates Janine Gorjanc,” he said. “If I go inside I will be that person because I will smell her. I don’t want to have to smell her. If I smell her I will hate her and I don’t want to be that person. You have to take me home.”

  “Have you gone completely out of your mind?” she asked as she watched him yank off his tennis shoes, unzip his jeans and pull them down to his ankles.

  He sat up in the front seat in nothing but his underwear. “I’m wearied,” he said, turning to her. “That’s what it is, Marilynn. I’m really very wearied. If you make me go inside, I’m going inside like this.”

  “That,” she bellowed, “no —” She shook her head and laughed. “That is no threat to me, Carl.”

  “I’m so wearied,” he repeated.

  “Carl, put your clothes on,” she said, “and go inside, and by this afternoon, I will have made you an appointment to see a very good psychiatrist.”

  “I’m not putting my clothes on until you take me home,” he said.

  “Carl,” she cried, “I have to be in surgery in ten minutes! I can’t take you home!”