Chapter 2 #2
Cece wishes she could pinpoint the moment she decided to become an actuary, but like most things these days, she finds herself unable to remember it clearly, to differentiate between the world’s desires and her own.
She wishes she could blame her overbearing parents—Kim fixated on Cece graduating with a “useful” degree, her father, Barry, content, as long as she kept his D1 swimming glory days alive and well—but Cece can’t.
She knows, in the innermost curvatures of her heart, that from her earliest days, she’s always moved through the world like a drowning swimmer toward a life raft, toward safety.
What was the point of striking out on your own when a perfectly good path, traversed and mapped, lay before you? Was that not prudent, wise even?
Cece had always done the right thing. The safe thing.
And where had it gotten her? What impeccable results had it produced?
After all the assurances, the silent nods of approval from gray-headed relatives during Thanksgiving and Christmas about her sensible major (statistics), recession-proof career (an actuary), and eventual hard-won promotion to senior manager for Ernst and Young’s East Coast risk management division, Cece, incomprehensibly, had found herself out of a job, proven redundant and too costly after a corporate merger.
It didn’t matter that she’d spent nearly a decade at the company.
Nor did it matter that she’d passed all seven actuary exams, in six years no less, a feat accomplished by no other employee at the company.
In a cruel twist of fate, it was Cece’s accomplishments that seemed to make her an easy target for cost-cutting measures.
Her new superiors were less enamored with her credentials and more worried about her salary.
When Cece had met with the new higher-ups, she’d had the distinct feeling, sitting at an almond-shaped table in a conference room overlooking Lexington Avenue, that they cared little for her expertise or professional achievements.
And yet, she’d felt confident. Unlike most of her colleagues, who’d fallen into a sort of paralyzed panic after news of the merger, Cece had felt secure in her position.
Fired? Let go? An impossibility. What company didn’t value loyalty, production, and consummate professionalism?
As it turned out, the three baby-faced men across from her at the table did not, and before she could fully process what had transpired, Cece found herself nodding and saying needlessly polite things like “I understand you’re in a difficult position,” and “I see your point,” and lastly, as she was escorted out of the room, “Thanks for taking the time.” So confused, so utterly befuddled was she that it never crossed her mind to question or challenge them.
Cece might have been able to shoulder the weight of her unceremonious dismissal from the only company she’d ever worked for; she might have been able to weather the catastrophic setback like a veteran mariner guiding their ship through a tempest, updating her resume, collecting a superb and impressive list of references, and arranging interviews.
She might have come out the other side, battered and bruised but stronger and wiser, had it not been for Jonathan’s reaction.
Even now, hands cramping around the pressure washer trigger, head woozy from gas fumes, she can hear his voice clearly, unbothered and patronizing.
Only when Cece reaches for another crate and clutches air does she realize she’s done.
Flipping a switch, the motor comes to a halting stop.
Cece tugs her earplugs out and massages her jaw.
Quiet. Water laps pilings. In the distance, a buoy bell clangs, rhythmic and known.
On their evening walk, Bernard and Cece make a pass by Mr. Shipyard’s house.
Even after a long, hot shower, Cece’s muscles—muscles she never knew existed—still ache.
She is tired—no, exhausted—but unlike the nights when she’d come home late from the office, the glowing computer screen imprinted on the inside of her eyelids, the dreaded ding of incoming emails sounding in her head, she feels energized, antsy.
Mr. Shipyard’s truck is in the driveway, but all the lights are off in the house.
Before she can think twice, Cece’s on the front porch, her knuckles brittle against the solid oak door.
Lungs in her throat, she waits. Bernard whines, no doubt resentful his walk has been cut short.
Nothing. She resists the urge to peek inside, through the cockeyed shades.
Bernard tugs at the leash. Cece wonders if Mr. Shipyard has a girlfriend.
She didn’t spot a wedding ring; Cece remembers that much.
On the second lap around the block, Cece recalls an old bar nearby on Williams Street.
It seems like the type of establishment Mr. Shipyard would frequent, and even if he isn’t there, it might be nice to meet some locals.
There’s something else, too. A desire, a need, lingering in the crevices of Cece’s mind, to do something, something foolhardy and unpredictable—something, anything!
That might distract her from the current state of her affairs.
Even for a Saturday, downtown feels desolate. New London, like Fairhaven and New Bedford, has seen better times, a boomtown funded by the long-forgotten whaling industry.
The bars and restaurants won’t fill up until the fall, she’s been told, when kids descend from the college up on the hill, with its verdant quads and imposing oaks.
Cece downshifts as she descends, passing the inexplicable grouping of Citgo, Sunoco, and Shell gas stations, each offering up wildly different prices.
The Whaler is sandwiched between a barbershop and the Chinese restaurant Cece’s been ordering from in a run-down mini strip mall.
There are plenty of nicer spots to drink in New London, places with craft beer and thin-crust pizza, but Cece’s in the mood for cheap bottled beer, poor lighting, and Mr. Shipyard, of course.
It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust once inside, the air stagnant and sweet.
Two old-timers are at the bar, suspenders stretched over their lumpy backs, white wispy hair peeking out from under their stained caps.
Plumbers, if she has to guess. Above the backlit liquor bottles, the Yankees are playing Baltimore on mute. No Mr. Shipyard.
“What can I get you, love?” the bartender says, her pack-a-day voice thick and raspy.
Cece plops down on a black vinyl stool at the end of the bar and asks for a Coors Light, an order she hopes will endear her to the Whaler’s patrons.
Either deeming her too young (she hopes) or just out of their league, the men have already gone back to their game, grumbling about how it’s no fun to root for the Yankees anymore.
“Look at those yuppies. Too busy texting and eating sushi. It’s all gotten too damn corporate. ”
Jonathan was, still is, one of those yuppies.
His firm is always giving seats away: courtside at the Garden, luxury suites in the Bronx and at Arthur Ashe.
They’d gone to a Yankees game once, seats behind home plate, and Cece had been astounded by the pop of the catcher’s mitt.
And even though Jonathan had silenced his phone to give Cece his full attention—a not-so-insignificant gesture, given the number of work calls and emails he received on an hourly basis—Cece caught herself gazing out toward left field, where the bleachers, fueled by fandom and beer, bellowed and churned with life.
She felt ungrateful then—Jonathan asking if she was cold, offering his jacket, his eyes blue and kind—for wishing she were out there, far away, faceless in the crowd, a collective roar in her throat.
Surely this seat, cushioned and plush, this view, unobstructed, oozing with verisimilitude, was better.
And yet, Cece couldn’t shake the feeling this wasn’t where she belonged, even as she sipped wine from a plastic cup and nibbled on vegetable crudités.
“What’ve they got you teaching up there at the college?” the ruddy-faced bartender asks.
“Oh,” Cece says, flattered for some reason, “I’m not a professor.”
The bartender eyes Cece’s soft hands. Cece feels something close to resentment. She wonders how many college kids and local hipsters come to drink at the Whaler ironically, as if slumming it were a performance, one to be documented, played out in snapshots on phone screens and seven-second reels.
Desperately, Cece wants to say something, anything, to make this woman understand that she’s closer to this world—the flimsy red cocktail straws, the grizzled patrons with their grime-smeared necks, the hand-scrawled signs (POLITICS-FREE ZONE; UNSUPERVISED CHILDREN WILL BE PUT TO WORK; NO DRINKS ON CREDIT)—than she appears, even if she’s spent the better part of her life trying to escape it.
Everything in this bar (the dust-covered speakers, the peeling tin ceiling, and wobbly high-tops) reminds Cece of her grandfather, long dead, who’d bounce her on his stomach when she was just a child, his beard thick with the smell of Marlboro Reds, fingernails grooved and split.
“I’m working at Rayburn,” Cece says, “over in Noank.”
The bartender’s face softens. “Right, then. Hope he finally gets his second operation up and running. The rich folk and college wiseasses have been fightin’ him on it.”
“He has more than one?”
“You don’t know?” the bartender says, scrunching up her lips like Cece’s just asked a real dumb question.
“Richie’s been trying to get approval to install some oyster bags just up the river in Mamacoke Cove.
You’d think something like that would be a no brainer, but like I said, the undesirables have been raising hell.
God forbid we get a few more jobs around here. ”
“What are their objections?”