Chapter Sixteen Sassy
sixteen SASSY
The following Monday, Sassy bused to her father’s office building then climbed the stairs to the third floor, more apprehensive with every step. She dreaded the start of her new job and burned with shame every time she thought of how rude she had been to Tom on their first meeting. It was easy to blame her unpleasant stay in jail, but that didn’t excuse the hostility.
At the top of the stairs, she paused at Miss Sloane’s desk, waiting for her to hang up the telephone.
“Ah, Susan. Welcome to the office. I think you’ll like it here.”
“We’ll see,” Sassy muttered, then she snapped herself out of the mood. She had to start off on the right foot if she was going to get anywhere. “I’m sure I will. I guess I’m a little nervous.”
“That’s only natural, dear. Why don’t you go set up your desk how you like it. It’s that one over there, outside of Tom’s door. He’ll be in soon to see you, I’m sure. He usually arrives at—” She checked her watch. “He gets here just before nine, so about ten minutes from now.”
“Thanks, Miss Sloane.”
“Oh, please. Now that you’re here, you must call me Betty. Otherwise, I’ll feel old.”
“All right, Betty,” Sassy said with a smile. “Thank you. Then please call me Sassy.”
A slight scowl. “How will your father feel about that?”
“He won’t say anything. He’s the only one in the world who calls me Susan anymore.”
She walked to her desk and braced herself with a positive attitude. When Tom arrived exactly ten minutes later, she had pasted on a tranquil smile. He took off his jacket then stopped at her desk, and just from the casual expression, she could tell that Tom Duncan was a better person than she was. Without even a hint of a mention of her jail time and their ensuing conversation, he greeted her with a surprise cup of coffee, then he introduced her to her responsibilities and placed a file on her desk. His niceness almost made everything worse.
“This might be a little unprofessional, but I’m hoping you’ll call me Tom. I mean, if there are clients around and it seems better to go with Mr. Duncan, that would be all right, but I’m more of a first-name person. How do you feel about that… Susan?”
“Sassy,” she allowed. “Of course you may call me Sassy, Tom.”
She was painfully aware that no matter how polite and professional he was, her actions of last week were imprinted in his mind. Even if he’d planned to get along with her from the start, he now couldn’t help but see her as a spoiled little girl who could do whatever she wanted under Daddy’s watch. To make matters worse, he was right. She had to change that perception. She set her mind to demonstrating that yes, she had been that way, but she had changed. This sassy cat was changing her stripes.
She got to work, following his instructions, determined not to mess up. And yet every time she looked at him, her mind seemed set on misbehaving. Sarcasm bubbled to the surface when he spoke to her, as if he turned a tap in her head, so she zipped her lips and fought the urge to banter with him. He was her boss, after all. She had to be professional. It was a strange feeling. She wanted to like him, and yet she constantly felt like challenging him.
Working in this office for Tom was a much better fit for her. For one thing, she wasn’t in a pool of secretaries. She was the only one, and her desk was just outside of Tom’s windowed office. Just like at Jamieson, Baines, and Brown, she typed and filed, but it was more than that. She hadn’t expected to enjoy working for him, but the more he talked and the more they worked together, the more intrigued she became. Her desk was physically close enough to his office that she could hear him talking on the phone, and he was constantly dropping things off on her desk, so she started to get a feel for some of what he was doing. She still disliked the overall idea of their business: buying houses, upgrading them then selling for a profit, thereby making neighbourhoods unaffordable for real people, but she kept quiet about that. Tom seemed keen to teach her, so she listened and learned, resolved not to disappoint either him or her father.
Her father worked down the hall in his own office, though she hadn’t seen him today. She knew some girls might feel smothered, having to work near their father like that, but Sassy was quietly elated. She had always loved being close to him, and it was even more special now that she didn’t live with him.
At lunchtime, Tom showed Sassy the boardroom, where they occasionally entertained clients. On Fridays, he said, either he or her father brought in lunch, and they ate it in there. Sassy was to clean up after, but she had expected that. Thinking of being fed even one day a week was a welcome bonus. There were only so many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches a girl could eat.
At the end of her first day, to her great surprise, Sassy was smiling. Things were looking up. She liked her job, the sun was shining through her very own office window, and last Friday she’d made a new friend in Marion, just when she’d really needed one. Marion was a little older, she guessed around Tom’s age, but she was pretty cool. She’d run into her in the hallway on her way out this morning, and Marion had invited her over tonight. Sassy said yes right away, then volunteered to bring wine. Now she wanted to tell her about the new job, see what she thought.
Sassy said goodbye to Tom at five o’clock, and he gave her a cheery nod.
“Good work today, Sassy. Thank you. I think this is going to go well, you and me working together.”
“I do, too,” she managed, though she couldn’t hold his gaze. “Listen, Tom, I… I need to apologize after last week.” She inhaled a little confidence then lifted her eyes to his. They were a sharp, intelligent blue, and she was reminded of Sean Connery again. “I was incredibly rude. I’m sorry.”
That curl at the side of his mouth lifted, and she wished she could read what thoughts it was hiding. She didn’t know him well enough yet to ask. She would have to fix that.
“Apology accepted. You’d had a bad day. I get it.”
“You didn’t deserve that from me.”
“Sure didn’t.”
Was that laughter? Or was that little half smile an expression of acceptance? Either way, his answer struck her the wrong way.
“I said I was sorry.”
The other side of his mouth rose as well, curving into a full smile. “Are we starting up again, Sassy? I mean, I can keep up, but it’s going to be harder to work together if you’re going to freak out at me every time you think I said the wrong thing.”
What was it about Tom Duncan that made her want to get in his face and, well, be right? To win every time? It was ridiculous. Grow up, Sassy.
“No. We’re not starting up again. It’s me. I’m tired. Thanks for putting up with me,” she said.
“It’s not a problem.” He lifted a charming black eyebrow. “How about we start over again, you and me?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’d like that.” She stuck out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Tom.”
“I’m glad to meet you, too, Sassy.”
She did like that smile of his.
It really had been a good day, and she was feeling more upbeat than she had been whenever she’d left the law office. Maybe it was like Davey said once, that everything happens for a reason.
After leaving the office, she walked a couple of blocks to the LCBO. As usual, the big room was quiet, and four or five people stood at counters, filling in their order form. The LCBO wasn’t much different from a bank, except with booze. With all the paperwork involved, it felt suspiciously like the Liquor Control Board of Ontario was keeping track of what people drank.
She stopped at one of the counters then ran her finger down the list of wines to choose from. Using a pencil chained to the counter, she filled in her name and address, the brands of wine, how many bottles she wanted, and the prices on a specially printed pad of white paper. She brought the paper to the short queue at the till, having signed the bottom line to certify she was over twenty-one, and when it was her turn, she slid her order through a hole at the bottom of the window. She paid the man after he rang it up, and her change jangled down a metal tray as he passed the form back to her. She brought that to the next desk then waited in a second line to hand it to another man, who went back to his shelves and wrapped her two bottles in brown paper bags. What a rigamarole.
On the bus, she held the paper bags on her lap and watched out the window. Her gaze was caught by the sight of a man in a long black coat, walking the other direction. His beard was long and matted, and long hair stuck out stiffly from beneath his cap. He kept stopping in front of passersby with his hand out, but it remained empty. Most people walked around him without a backward glance, but some did give him a second look. Those were rarely kind, and Sassy felt a deep and helpless sympathy for him.
The transient was still on her mind when she knocked on Marion’s door after her supper. Marion praised her wine choices, and they settled in with a couple of glasses. Sassy brought the poor man up to Marion right away.
“He looked so tired, you know? Like he maybe hadn’t slept or eaten in forever. Nobody was paying any attention to him, but I wanted to, like, jump out of the bus and give him all the cash in my purse.”
“Wouldn’t have been a good idea,” Marion murmured. “You didn’t know him.”
“Don’t talk to strangers, you mean?”
“Well, yes, but these days it might be a little more dangerous. And I expect you’ll start to see more and more people like him out there.”
Sassy frowned. “Why do you think that?”
Marion finished her wine then held out her glass for more. “The Ontario Hospital, where I work, is shutting down. It’s a huge mistake. They’re calling it ‘deinstitutionalization.’?”
Sassy frowned. “Are you losing your job?”
“No, no. I’ll be working at a new community centre.”
“But I’ve heard that’s what’s best for the patients, isn’t it? They deserve freedom, just like everyone else.”
“I know that’s what people say,” Marion replied, her expression tightening with frustration, “but tell me how that can be true, Sassy. Some of my patients are extremely unstable. They are unpredictable, and they don’t know how to live outside of the institution. If a patient doesn’t know enough to take their medications, if they forget to eat, if they bang their heads against a brick wall until they crack their skulls, how can that be good for them? What’s to stop them going out in the middle of a snowstorm and freezing to death? I know what people say, but the truth is that these patients need to be in a hospital.”
Sassy’s mouth opened slightly with concern. Nothing she’d heard or read in the papers had suggested any of these things. Everyone seemed fully in support of letting the patients out of the hospitals. The picture Marion painted was alarming.
“It’s horrible how this whole transition happened with so little thought to consequences,” Marion continued, “because there will be plenty of those.”
Sassy swallowed some wine. “Like what?”
“Do you really want to hear me complain about this all night?”
“Absolutely. If it matters to you, it matters to me.”
“All right. Well, as they are discharged, the patients will mostly be released to their families, but in many cases, their families won’t be able to care for them. They won’t know how. Then what? If their families kick them out, where will they go? The community health centres are like regular offices, only open during the day. There is nothing set up to provide full-time care for those who need it, and so many will be in need.” Her fingers curled around the stem of her glass. “It’s not just our hospital that’s shutting down, remember. Lakeshore will be emptying out at the same time, with the same problems. And what about the veterans returning from Vietnam, and the generations of suffering veterans before them? I’m not exaggerating when I predict that in the near future, hundreds of transients with psychiatric troubles will be wandering around the streets, sleeping on sidewalks or in parks with no protection, no food, no medicine, or anything. Some of those could be dangerous to the public if they aren’t monitored. Others will be tossed in jail, where they will get lost in the system.”
“So the government is more keen on saving money than people?”
Marion gave Sassy a flat look. “Sure feels that way, but I can’t imagine that overloading the jail system will save any money.”
“But there are some places for them to stay, aren’t there? What about social housing? The government is supposedly building twenty thousand houses across Canada every year.”
“Of course,” Marion replied. “Affordable housing. Like when they built Regent Park back in the forties. But those don’t provide what so many of our patients need, which is specially trained doctors and nurses to help them survive. Otherwise, it’s not freedom for them, Sassy. It’s a life sentence.”
“What about rooming houses?”
“There is no care at all for the patients in those houses, just slumlords, basically.”
Sassy shook her head, thinking of the man in the black coat. “What will he do in the winter? Where’s he going to sleep?”
Marion raised one cynical eyebrow. “On park benches or in alleys, probably.”
As they did so often, Sassy’s thoughts went to Joey. “You said that some of those patients who are being let out of the hospital are veterans.”
“Yes. Of different conflicts. We even have men from the Great War with us.”
“Do you think Joey will be all right when he gets home?”
Marion observed her over the rim of her wineglass. “In what way?”
“I don’t mean physically. Nobody can predict that. But what about… the other thing? Will he be crazy? Will he be like one of those rubbies in the street?”
“Those ‘rubbies’ are people, Sassy. People who need help.”
“Sorry. You know what I mean.”
“I can’t say if Joey will come back all right. It varies with every man. Some of them live at home with their families.” She hesitated, deliberating what to say. “My father has had trouble for twenty years, and yet he has lived what many would consider a normal life.”
“I’m so sorry, Marion. Thank goodness he has you.”
Marion’s cheeks reddened. “I wasn’t always the most supportive daughter. When I was young, I felt embarrassed by him. I saw him as weak, which I suppose is natural. We’re used to men being, for lack of a better word, bulletproof.”
“But now you help him.”
“When I can.”
“If Joey comes back… that way… what can I do to help him?”
Marion let out a long breath. “I wish I had better answers for you, but that varies, too. You will have to wait and see what he needs.”
Would she still know him when he returned? Would he know her? Would there be room for her in his life? Would he even want her help? Would she know what to do?
Every time she wondered about how he would be, the inevitable question cut through the noise in her head. A question she would never ask out loud.
Would he come home?
She dropped her gaze to her glass, not wanting Marion to see the doubt in her expression, but her friend seemed aware of most things that were going on around her. She probably knew exactly what Sassy was thinking.
“You have to think positively,” Marion said.
Sassy had been doing that for so long. Without any answers, it sometimes felt like she was lying to herself. But Marion was right. There was nothing else she could do about it, and living in fear would ruin her life.
So she ordered herself to be positive. Sassy would see Joey again. He would be all right, and even if he wasn’t, she would stick with him. She couldn’t let herself think any other way. She needed her brother, whoever he turned out to be.