Two
I’m deep into client survey data when Nadia pokes her head around my door. “Staff meeting,” she announces.
I check the time, and to my surprise, it’s almost noon. “Sorry?”
“Emergency all-hands meeting,” she elaborates. “Right now.”
Nadia disappears down the hall before I can ask for details. Concentration broken, I drink my cold tea and stretch, unworried. It’s probably a new client announcement. Our CEO, George, likes to summon us to celebrate those together, like a family.
The boardroom is crowded when I arrive, and I hide my disappointment when there’s not even a box of Timbits on offer. At least the office Keurig supply was replenished, so I snatch a matcha latte, dropping a toonie into the box.
“I’m taking bets on whether he’s retiring or it’s a mass layoff,” says Nadia as I stand next to her. Her mug says Don’t got time for maybes in pink cursive and smells like caramel. She looks remarkably unbothered.
Before I can answer, I catch sight of my manager. He’s frowning at his feet and muttering something to the IT director, who rubs his beard. In fact, the entire leadership team sports expressions from somber to grave.
“It doesn’t look good,” I say, heart sinking. Then I rally. “I could be wrong.”
“I doubt it.” She checks out the crowd over the top of her mug. “I’d say we’re screwed.”
George strolls in, waving cheerfully, with his tousled gray hair curling over the edge of his collar. He looks tan, as he usually does after one of his Palm Beach breaks. “Good morning, Charioteers!” he booms as he bounds up the makeshift riser at the front. He never needs a mic.
He doesn’t wait for the calls of “Hi, George” to finish echoing around the room.
“I have incredible news.” George gives us his trademark boyish smile. “I founded Chariot almost thirty years ago when I saw the need for diversity guidance among…”
Having heard our corporate history dozens of times, I tune out George’s heartfelt exposition and Nadia’s snarky commentary to check the Questie leaderboard, where Teddy9 has moved up a place. He must be completing older puzzles to pull up his score. I message him.
Me: Sneaky.
Teddy: Told you I had a plan.
I don’t like this, but Nadia nudges me as George says, “Diversity and inclusion are changing, and so too must Chariot.”
Nadia leans over. “Looks like he might be retiring after all.”
“After the fuss he made about wanting to be carried out dead in his chair?” I whisper back.
“I’ll be taking on a new role”—George pauses for dramatic effect—“as CEO of my cottage in Muskoka.”
He chuckles, but instead of the laughter he clearly expects, the room fills with whispers. Someone calls out, “What?”
“Thank you,” says George. “In the immortal words of The Byrds, there is a season.”
Nadia snorts. “The Byrds or Ecclesiastes. This is what happens when you don’t do his speaking notes.”
“Nadia!”
“C’mon, I know you do all his writing.” She tilts her mug toward a cluster of blond women standing to the side with neutral expressions. “Like the angels do the rest of his work.”
George spends another few minutes extolling the virtues of Chariot and our achievements before saying, “My season, our season, here is done. I know you’ll keep the Charioteer spirit alive wherever you go.”
Understanding filters through the room, and the whispers grow to mutters. The same voice calls, “Wait, are you shutting Chariot down? We’re getting laid off?”
“Bingo,” crows Nadia in somewhat misplaced triumph. “I knew it.”
“Chariot began with me, and I’m saddened and honored it will end with me.” George dips his head down as if overcome with emotion and clasps his hands over his chest. Then he looks up. “Your manager will be in touch with details.”
I don’t pay attention to whatever he says next as I stand there, nauseous from the hammering of my heart. I’d worked so hard to get this job and now it’s gone? I didn’t even have a chance to show what I could do. I flex my hands to try to physically force my usual positivity back and breathe deep. It’s a shock, but this doesn’t have to be bad. In fact, it’s a good chance to expand my horizons.
We join the escaping crowd after George dismisses us. “You’ll need luck,” Nadia says.
I steer around two women from finance who have stopped in the middle of the corridor, texting frantically as they shake their heads. “What do you mean?”
She sighs. “You sweet summer child. You’ve only been a consultant for two months. You think it’ll be easy to get a new job? It’s back to pension update emails for you.”
“I can find a job.” I trip on the edge of the carpet. “I have lots to offer.”
“You could have a chance given what they pay junior consultants.” Nadia looks thoughtful. “The others will be asking for much more.”
She leaves me at my office, dragging my confidence behind her like tissue on a shoe as I wonder if she’s right. Chariot is as comfortable as a pair of worn sneakers, and I don’t want to break in new ones. Not when I was settling in for a marathon here. My throat tightens and I’m grateful the hallway remains empty so I don’t need to talk.
Forcing myself to step into the office that remains mine for the moment, I sit at my desk and slide my hand up and down the seam of my notepad while staring at an old nail hole in the wall. I should make a list. What about my résumé? It’s up-to-date, but can I add more? Finances. My bank account ends each month perilously close to zero.
When the phone rings, I put it on speaker, relieved for a distraction to stop me ruminating about this setback. No, this opportunity , because I need to start thinking about this in the correct way.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, sunshine. Are you taking advantage of the nice weather?” Mom is a big proponent of taking advantage of whatever the day brings.
“I’m at work.” I’ll tell her about George’s bombshell later, when I’ve processed it enough to be in the proper headspace for her pep talk. I check Questie and see Teddy remains in third place.
“You should go out and get some vitamin D,” she says. “It’s so good for improving your mood.”
It takes everything in me to not make an immature and hugely inappropriate joke. “I’ll go for a walk later.”
“Make sure you do, sunshine. Well, I have some interesting news.”
A chill settles on my skin. I’ve had a long time to learn my mother’s code words, and interesting is as close to bad as she gets. “Is it Dad?” I demand.
“Why would you say that? He’s out for a walk,” she answers breezily. “Did I tell you I’m making yogurt from scratch? It’s wonderful for your gut ecosystem. Healthy body, healthy mind.”
I relax a bit. The yogurt doesn’t surprise me. Since her retirement, Mom has thrown herself into trying all the things she couldn’t do while working, like playing tennis, making jam, and finishing a petit point pillow featuring orange tulips that sits on my pretty teal love seat. She’d been working on it sporadically since I was twelve.
“What’s going on, Mom?”
There’s a brief silence before she clears her throat. “It’s nothing to worry about. You know Grandma had a little problem with her hip.”
It was a severe fracture that resulted in hospitalization and daily physiotherapy. “Is she okay?”
“The most important part of healing is that she keep her spirits up.”
Cheerfulness is not something I associate with my grandmother, who has not smiled in years, at least not at me. I sit straighter. “Mom.”
“Your dad and I have been talking, sunshine.”
I try to hold on to my pleasant outlook, but dread edges out my self-control. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“Grandma’s not able to live on her own anymore, but you know how she feels about moving into a home.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I know.” She told Mom she’d rather be put out on an iceberg where she could die with some dignity. Exact words.
“I can’t do that to her,” Mom says. “She can’t come live with us up north because it’s too far from her medical appointments.”
“Okay?”
“You can say no, of course. We won’t be angry.”
“Say no to what?” I exclaim. “Spit it out.”
There’s a pause as Mom debates whether to scold me for being rude, but she says, “I’d like to move her to your house.”
I say the first thing that pops into my head. “I can’t take care of her. I have to work.”
“We would do that. Your father and I.”
“How are you going to find a place to live?” The housing market in Toronto is so brutal it’s one step away from drawing pistols at dawn for a two-bedroom.
“We’d move in with her,” Mom says softly. “Back into our house.”
Back into their house. Their house, which is supposed to be my house, the home I spent a year and my entire savings getting perfect. When my parents retired and moved up north, they’d generously gifted me the deed with the permission of my sister, Jade, who had no desire to take on what she refers to as the sad urban shoebox. She can take her McMansion Lite north of the city, with its consistent HVAC and enough room for an outdoor pizza oven, because I love my tiny house. Love it with a love that extends past pragma and into agape. Perhaps Eros. It’s my castle, where I can pull up the drawbridge and simply be.
On the screen, Teddy moves to second place, but as of four seconds ago, I have bigger issues to contend with than my game rank.
Although it is annoying.
Mom keeps talking. “This is a lovely opportunity for our family to connect.”
I don’t know why that’s necessary, but I’m careful not to voice this particular thought. It took my grandmother until Jade was born to accept that Mom had married a Chinese guy and to start speaking to him directly instead of filtering comments through Mom, at first claiming his accent was too heavy for her to understand. More than thirty years later, the best that can be said for their relationship is that it’s not uncivil. We’ve been getting along fine barely talking for years.
“What about Jade’s house?” Halfway through, I shift my whine to a more upbeat tone so the question ends in a squeak.
“She has more room but you know how your sister feels.”
I sure do, because if my relationship with Heather Henderson is best described as distant, Jade’s is nonexistent. When Jade came out as bi, Grandma refused to believe it. Flat out told Jade she was only confused and would eventually settle down with a nice boy. Things improved slightly after Jade’s kids came along, but unlike Dad and despite Mom’s incessant pleas, my sister is much less willing to smooth things over for the sake of harmony. She’s waiting for an apology that won’t ever come, because people like Grandma think they’re entitled to behave however they want without consequence.
“Is this the best idea, Mom?”
“That doesn’t sound like my Dee,” she says in a warning tone.
“No, it’s that I wonder if—”
“It will work out fine, sunshine,” she interrupts. “You only need a bit of faith and an open mind.”
I bang my head against the desk lightly enough so Mom can’t hear it over the phone. As if I can say no. It would be monstrous. Unfathomable. Worse, not very nice of me. “Of course,” I say in defeat. “It’s your house. You’re always welcome.”
Which is true, but I pictured it more like a weekend visit, not an annexation.
“Dee, it’s your house. We know this is a change, and we’re grateful you’re such a good girl.”
You don’t have to be good , says the mean and unhelpful inner voice I’ve fought to keep buried my whole life. They gave you the house. It’s yours and you don’t owe Grandma anything. I stuff that down guiltily, knowing how disappointed Mom would be with my negative perspective.
She continues to think aloud. “We’ll need a place for chili, too.”
“Why not the kitchen?”
“I don’t like that. Too messy.”
I don’t have the energy to ask what she could possibly mean by that so I let it slide. “When are you coming?”
“In two weeks. We’re putting Grandma’s town house up for sale, and she doesn’t want to be there for the showings. Does that work?”
“Sure.” I’m not sure what my voice sounds like, but it feels like I’m underwater.
“It’ll be fine,” says Mom cheerfully. “It always is.”
We get off the phone, and I drum my fingers on the table. What’s done is done, and I’ll make the best of it like always. Then my phone beeps and drops down a Questie notification. It’s a message.
Teddy: There we go.
I scramble to check. Teddy9 is number one on the leaderboard.
Thanks a lot, universe.