Chapter Five
My first week at Ryser Cares passes in monotony, punctuated by the decisive strikes of air hockey mallets and overdramatic dialogue from whatever episode of Love Island Jen, the crocheter, is watching behind me.
The start of my day is a solitary one. I quickly learned that the only reason my colleagues were in the office so early on my first day was because the AC repairman gave them an early-morning time slot. Once he fixed the AC, they returned to their usual schedule of midmorning arrivals.
Then I hunt for a project to work on, which always goes nowhere.
Asking Jen for an email list of Ryser Cares donors elicits a sympathetic shake of her head.
When I ask Randy (the actual name of the Pink Floyd shirt–wearer) what media contacts Ryser Cares is in touch with, he winces, shrugs, and goes back to his book.
One morning, I catch Arun (who was wearing swim trunks, I discovered; he left early that day to take his niece to a water park in Falls Point) staring at his computer in concentration.
I race over and offer to help with what he’s working on, only for him to tilt his monitor toward me and ask if I think the sunglass frames in Electric Tangerine or Pink Lava would suit him more.
Then, with nothing else to do, I put on my headphones and make my way through the backlog of professional development recordings I’d bookmarked but never gotten around to watching.
Though they can never fully drown out all that swirls around me, air hockey and Love Island and pleasant chatter that has nothing to do with work.
Every so often, a cheery chime breaks up the sound.
It always makes my heart thump. When I hear it for the first time this morning, a muggy and overcast Tuesday, I sit up straighter, minimize the window I have open to a webinar on evaluating the effectiveness of PR campaigns, and click over to my inbox.
Maybe this time it’s Amanda, begging for me to take my old job back.
Donuts in the 12th floor kitchen!
I breathe out a disappointed sigh through my nose. Being on the DC office email list is a special kind of punishment. Every office-wide announcement salts the wound of my exile.
I go back to slouching and return to my webinar. As the presenter dives into engagement metrics, my mind wanders to the dismal prospect of being stuck here with no end in sight.
I could make a drastic move, quit and get a new job.
But then what would have been the point of the last ten years of my life, my plan to get promoted, do good, and retire early?
What would have been the point of my dreary apartment, my sense of morality screaming from its cage every time I wrote the words to gloss over Ryser’s latest catastrophe?
How could I shrug and accept the fact that leaving Ryser now, with my mission incomplete, means I’m every bit the hypocrite this town—and Marina—undoubtedly thinks I am?
Quitting isn’t an option. I can get my old job back if I try hard enough. It’s why I haven’t asked to be taken off the DC office email list, why I’m still holding onto my apartment in DC. Some part of me is certain I’ll be back there soon enough once this whole misunderstanding is sorted out.
But that does little to assuage the way I feel now: utterly aimless and hopelessly stuck.
My mom used to talk about feeling stuck a lot.
She saw the way Greenstead had been steadily shrinking since the flood, and she wanted to get out.
But she had my dad, who was happily employed as a high school history teacher and unbothered by Greenstead’s slow pace.
She had me, who, at ten, wasn’t all that interested in the idea of moving unless I could take my life with me: my best friend, Marina, the toy store that special ordered gradient puzzles at my request, our neighbor’s affectionate poodle mix who I got to walk sometimes.
My parents started arguing, a lot. I spent more weekends sleeping over at Marina’s to escape it.
When I was twelve, my parents divorced and my mom took off.
She moved to New York, started working as a flight attendant, and began a new phase of her life.
She’d zip around the country, call me every couple of weeks, send postcards imprinted with Hawaiian palm trees or the Space Needle.
She sounded happy when I spoke to her. Free.
It made me start rethinking my own life, wonder whether the itch beneath my skin was just the typical adolescent feeling that I didn’t belong, or if it was something more, that stuck feeling starting to take root.
I may take after my dad physically, from the brown skin and high forehead all the way to the string-bean-like physique.
But did I inherit my mom’s restlessness?
I’d stare at the postcards on my wall, then I’d look out the window at our front yard with its patchy grass that never grew back right since the flood, and I’d tell myself my best chance at happiness was leaving.
An acceptance email from Georgetown University was my ticket out.
I soaked up DC’s bustling pace with bliss.
At the end of my freshman year, when Ryser called to offer me an internship, I leapt at the chance.
Never mind that it was technically my first day interning for a dull accounting firm in Greenstead.
Ryser’s busy atmosphere and promise of opportunity felt like Greenstead’s antithesis.
I accepted the Ryser position with relief and quit my Greenstead internship on the spot.
It was a decision that made my dad raise an eyebrow, but he didn’t comment on it.
My mom, of course, understood the necessity of taking a drastic step to escape Greenstead.
I told myself it was just a summer internship, that I’d work for a place that didn’t make me feel like a hometown traitor once I graduated.
But as graduation loomed ever closer, that last semester a blur of cover letters and job rejections, hearing my classmates talk about needing to move back home scared me into deciding I’d do whatever it took to put Greenstead behind me.
I couldn’t be picky, I reminded myself. I’d apply for every listing I remotely qualified for and take the first job I was offered.
And when a Ryser recruiter called to tell me I’d gotten the job, that was it. I accepted in an instant.
I carved out a life for myself that gave me everything I needed: a well-paying job, a city that was growing instead of shrinking.
I’d see Mom whenever she had a layover in DC.
And I was close enough to see Dad throughout the year—mostly from the comfort of my new life in my new city, where I could forget all about my decaying hometown.
And here I am again.
My gaze flickers when something moves in my peripheral vision.
It’s Tessa, passing by with a plate of muffins.
Our eyes meet, and she stops, a flash of alarm passing over her.
No doubt worried I’m about to hound her with questions about community impact statistics like I did yesterday.
As if to distract me, she shoves the plate of muffins in my face.
I pause my webinar and take off my headphones in time to hear her say, “Blueberry muffin?” As I consider them, she peeks at my monitor, showing a graph from the webinar, and lets out a relieved sigh.
“What?” I ask.
“Just checking that this isn’t a The Shining situation.” When I blink at her, she gives me a playful smile and adds, “Arun said if we see you typing ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’ over and over again, he’s hiding the scissors.”
I force a hollow laugh and grab a muffin.
As she takes her leave, I remind myself she was just teasing, but a lonely feeling grips me at the image of Tessa and Arun joking about me behind my back.
Even if it’s good-natured, even if it means nothing, it’s another reminder of how out of step I am with the rest of the team here.
But I have to be, if I have any chance of getting out.
I watch Tessa head toward the back of the office with the others. Arun leans against Jen’s desk, gesturing animatedly with a blueberry muffin in hand as he talks. Randy emerges from the kitchen and hands them paper towels; only then does he unwrap his muffin and join the conversation.
I don’t get up to join them, but I don’t put my headphones back on, either.
I bite into my muffin—which is as moist and flavorful as it looks—and listen to their chatter.
Arun’s passionately explaining why Jen should give the Fast and the Furious franchise another chance.
Tessa delights in pointing out plot holes (“Okay, but they’re family !
”), and Randy eventually interrupts their banter by asking who wants tea.
They seem so… happy here. They’ve been demoted and sent to a dying town to sit in an empty office where nothing happens, and they couldn’t be more content.
If I weren’t so afraid of becoming them, I’d feel for them.
This is what happens when you’re stuck. You fall into quicksand, and you don’t realize you’re sinking until it’s too late.
It’s why Mom left when she did. She saw the signs and knew she had to save herself, even if it meant breaking up our family in the process.
If I continue to stay here, what will happen to me?
My dad seems pleased to have me back home.
He’s been cooking all my favorite childhood meals: chicken and dumplings, tortellini in Alfredo sauce, spaghetti and meatballs.
Then we go around the table talking about our days, and he seems blissfully unaware of how dull it is to live here.
He recaps the events of his morning run, which, at its most thrilling, includes waving to more than one neighbor.
Wendy shares an anecdote from her job at the dental office downtown.
Yesterday, it was her observations on which of their new polishing paste flavors, pina colada or fruit punch, is more popular.