Read Online Eating Ice Cream With My Dog by Frances Kuffel - Free Book Online
Authors: Frances Kuffel
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say that your services will no longer be required at this agency. There is no good purpose in prolonging our association.” She popped a Nicorette between a molar and her cheek, looking rather like a pounce-ready dilophosaurus, and watched for my reaction. When I gave none, she pressed, as she always did, her questions a long fingernail scratching to catch me off guard or overreactive. “What do you have to say?”
I gawped as I scrambled for what I was feeling, then said, with eerie, momentary calm, “Relieved that I will never have to sit across from this desk again.”
If you read this scene carefully, you can see that articulating emotions comes slowly to me. I may experience an ache in my throat or gut, and I cry easily, but I can’t always tell you whether it’s anger or grief, nervousness or defensiveness. It’s not unusual for me to need a couple of weeks to have names for my responses.
My reticence is dormancy, however, not stupidity. Like Yellow-stone’s Mastiff Geyser, I erupt infrequently, briefly, but at 202 degrees and thirty feet in the air.
A few weeks before I was fired, I found a note attached to one of my clients’ book contracts. “Please write a letter and send,” it said in a coworker’s handwriting.
Customarily, Alix signed cover letters for contracts, including those of my clients, but in the beginning of our two years together, I signed those letters. I couldn’t remember when she took over the contract cover letters, and she had never stated this as a policy change as she did, for instance, forbidding flip-flops in the office. The agency was the Queen of Hearts’s croquet ground. Any Alice who wandered in would think it bizarre that we were painting rosebushes red, but we never knew whose head would roll next.
I looked at Abigail nervously. “Did Alix ask me to write a letter for her to sign, or does she want me to sign and send it?”
“She said for you to do the letter and send,” Abigail answered.
“Are you sure?”
“That’s what she said. I wrote it down verbatim.”
So I did and included a CC of the letter in the folder I gave her at the end of the day so she could keep apprised of the various projects I’d tended.
The next morning I found the copy of the letter on my desk with an angry scrawl.
We will discuss.
“We will discuss” were never good words from Alix.
The Mastiff Geyser percolated rapidly into action. When Alix arrived, an hour later, I was loaded for bear.
“Alix,” I said, meeting her in the hall and flapping the letter, “the note attached to the contract told me to write the cover letter and send the contract. I double-checked this with Abigail.”
“I don’t want to discuss it now, Frances.”
“But I do. I’m sick of never knowing what is policy and what isn’t, of not knowing what I can and can’t do. This is just one more damned thing I’m in trouble for because your directions weren’t clear to either Abigail or me.”
“Not now, Frances.”
“Then when?”
“I’ll call you.”
I turned back to my office, shutting the door to sit, doubled over, breathing hard, trying not to cry. It was a cloudy day. Not much light filled my north-facing office. I rarely turned on the overhead light, preferring the imagined anonymity of sitting in the small pool of my desk lamp. The gray swath of sky behind me, which matched Alix’s color scheme throughout the office, filled my veins. I felt trapped.
An hour later, the conversation quickly dwindled to the number of angels dancing on the nib of her Renzetti fountain pen.
“This has been always been procedure,” she insisted.
“Would you like me to bring copies of cover letters I’ve sent my clients in the past?”
She laughed, sarcastically. “You’ve never signed a cover letter.”
“ Bull shit, Alix! You raved about the letter I sent with Hyacinth’s contract.”
She chewed the inside of her lip, considering this. That had been my biggest sale. “We
I gawped as I scrambled for what I was feeling, then said, with eerie, momentary calm, “Relieved that I will never have to sit across from this desk again.”
If you read this scene carefully, you can see that articulating emotions comes slowly to me. I may experience an ache in my throat or gut, and I cry easily, but I can’t always tell you whether it’s anger or grief, nervousness or defensiveness. It’s not unusual for me to need a couple of weeks to have names for my responses.
My reticence is dormancy, however, not stupidity. Like Yellow-stone’s Mastiff Geyser, I erupt infrequently, briefly, but at 202 degrees and thirty feet in the air.
A few weeks before I was fired, I found a note attached to one of my clients’ book contracts. “Please write a letter and send,” it said in a coworker’s handwriting.
Customarily, Alix signed cover letters for contracts, including those of my clients, but in the beginning of our two years together, I signed those letters. I couldn’t remember when she took over the contract cover letters, and she had never stated this as a policy change as she did, for instance, forbidding flip-flops in the office. The agency was the Queen of Hearts’s croquet ground. Any Alice who wandered in would think it bizarre that we were painting rosebushes red, but we never knew whose head would roll next.
I looked at Abigail nervously. “Did Alix ask me to write a letter for her to sign, or does she want me to sign and send it?”
“She said for you to do the letter and send,” Abigail answered.
“Are you sure?”
“That’s what she said. I wrote it down verbatim.”
So I did and included a CC of the letter in the folder I gave her at the end of the day so she could keep apprised of the various projects I’d tended.
The next morning I found the copy of the letter on my desk with an angry scrawl.
We will discuss.
“We will discuss” were never good words from Alix.
The Mastiff Geyser percolated rapidly into action. When Alix arrived, an hour later, I was loaded for bear.
“Alix,” I said, meeting her in the hall and flapping the letter, “the note attached to the contract told me to write the cover letter and send the contract. I double-checked this with Abigail.”
“I don’t want to discuss it now, Frances.”
“But I do. I’m sick of never knowing what is policy and what isn’t, of not knowing what I can and can’t do. This is just one more damned thing I’m in trouble for because your directions weren’t clear to either Abigail or me.”
“Not now, Frances.”
“Then when?”
“I’ll call you.”
I turned back to my office, shutting the door to sit, doubled over, breathing hard, trying not to cry. It was a cloudy day. Not much light filled my north-facing office. I rarely turned on the overhead light, preferring the imagined anonymity of sitting in the small pool of my desk lamp. The gray swath of sky behind me, which matched Alix’s color scheme throughout the office, filled my veins. I felt trapped.
An hour later, the conversation quickly dwindled to the number of angels dancing on the nib of her Renzetti fountain pen.
“This has been always been procedure,” she insisted.
“Would you like me to bring copies of cover letters I’ve sent my clients in the past?”
She laughed, sarcastically. “You’ve never signed a cover letter.”
“ Bull shit, Alix! You raved about the letter I sent with Hyacinth’s contract.”
She chewed the inside of her lip, considering this. That had been my biggest sale. “We
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