Perhaps not.
Whatever the reason, I was ignored, not invited, left to my own devices.
The secretaries, I must admit, did seem to be nicer to me than everyone else. Hope, our department secretary, always treated me well. She had the calm, kind, perpetually friendly air of a stereotypical grandmother, and she greeted me each day with a cheerful smile and a heartfelt “Hello!” She asked about my weekend plans on Friday afternoons; she asked how those plans turned out on Monday morning. She said good-bye to me each evening before I left.
Or course, she was equally nice to everyone within the department. She talked to everyone, seemed to like everyone, but that didn’t make her interest in me any less genuine or any less appreciated.
Likewise, Virginia and Lois, the women from the steno pool, were decent to me, friendly in a way that separated them from everyone else within our department.
Or within the building.
The guard in the lobby still paid no attention to me, although he seemed to be jovially familiar with everyone else who passed through the doors of Automated Interface.
To Jane, I continued to give a fairly neutral account of my days at work. I told her of my frustration with Stewart, complained about some of my bigger problems, but the day-to-day difficulties, my seeming inability to fit in with my fellow workers, the sense of social ostracism I felt, these things I kept to myself.
It was my cross to bear.
A week after I’d distributed the computer manuals, Stewart walked into my office, waving a sheet of blue interoffice memo paper. I was on break and reading the Times, but Stewart slammed down the memo on top of my newspaper. “Read that,” he demanded.
I read the memo. It was from the head of the accounting department and simply asked if we could send an extra copy of the computer manual since Accounting had recently received a new terminal. I looked up at Stewart. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll make another copy and send them a manual.”
“Not good enough,” Stewart said. “You should’ve sent them the correct number to begin with.”
“All I had to go on was Gabe’s distribution list,” I told him. “I didn’t know they’d gotten another computer.”
“It’s your job to know. You should have asked each department head how many copies he or she needed instead of relying on that outdated list. You screwed up, Jones.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You’re sorry? This reflects on the whole department.” He picked up the memo. “I’m going to have to show this to Mr. Banks. I’ll let him decide on the proper course of action to take with you. In the meantime, get that manual to Accounting ASAP.”
“I will,” I said.
“You’d better.”
My workday went downhill from there.
Things did not improve when I got home. Jane was cooking hamburger casserole and watching an old rerun of M*A*S*H when I arrived. I’d always hated hamburger casserole, but I’d never told her so and it was not something she’d ever been able to figure out for herself.
I walked over to the TV and switched the channel. I liked M*A*S*H but I was a news junkie, and from the moment I got home until the start of prime time, I liked to watch the news. It made me nervous not to know what was going on in the world, to be oblivious to brewing disasters, but it didn’t seem to bother Jane at all. Even when the news was on, she paid attention only to movie reviews, and she preferred to watch reruns or films on cable.
It had been the source of many fights.
She knew my position, she knew how I felt, and I couldn’t help thinking that her choice of TV fare tonight was a direct provocation, an attempt to goad me. Usually, she had the news on when I came home. The fact that she didn’t this evening seemed to me to be a direct slap in the face.
I confronted her. “Why isn’t the news on?”
“I had a test today. I was tired. I wanted some light entertainment. I didn’t want to have to think.”
I understood how she felt, and I should have let it go, but I was still pissed off at Stewart, and I guess I had to take it out on somebody.
We got into it.
It was a big fight, almost a physical fight. Afterward, we both said we were sorry, and we kissed and hugged and made up. She went into the kitchen to finish making dinner, and I stayed in the living room and watched the news. I kicked off my shoes and lay down on the couch. I hadn’t told her I loved her, I realized. We’d made up, but I hadn’t told her I loved her.
She hadn’t told me she loved me, either.
I thought about that. I did love her and I knew she loved me, but we never used those words. Or at least we hadn’t for quite some time. We’d said them at first, but strangely enough, though I’d told her that I loved her, I wasn’t sure at the time if I meant it. I’d said it, but the words had seemed hollow and clichéd, almost false. The first time, it had been more of a hope than an admission, and I felt no different after than before. There’d been no surge of joy or relief, only a vague sense of unease, as though I had lied to her and was afraid I’d be found out. I’m not sure how she felt, but for me “love” was a transitional word, an acceptable way to escalate the relationship from boyfriend/girlfriend to live-in lovers. It had been necessary, and not necessarily true.
After we moved in together, I stopped saying it.
So did she.
But we did love each other. More than before. It was just that… it wasn’t the way we’d imagined it. We enjoyed each other’s company, we were comfortable together, but when I came home after work I didn’t rip off her clothes and throw her on the kitchen floor and rape her then and there. She didn’t greet me wearing nothing but a G-string and a smile. It wasn’t the intense passionate romance we’d been promised by books and movies and music and TV. It was nice. But it was not all-encompassing, not constantly exciting.
We didn’t even make wild passionate love after an argument, the way we were supposed to.
We made love that night, though, before going to sleep, and it was good. It was so good that I wanted to tell her that I loved her.
I wanted to.
But for some reason I didn’t.
Five
At work, my duties became more substantive. I don’t know why this was, whether my success with previous assignments had proved me capable of handling more difficult chores, or whether word came down from on high that I should be pulling my weight and earning my salary by doing real work. Whatever the reason, I was given first one press release to write, then another, and then a full overview for a set of previously written instructions for something called FIS, the File Inventory System.
Stewart made no comment when I turned in the first press release, a two-page piece of unabashed hype modeled after a press release of his own. I attempted to be a little less Madison Avenue in the second release, putting forth the positive attributes of the product in a more objective, journalistic manner. Again, no comment.
The overview was harder to write. I was supposed to describe what the File Inventory System accomplished and how it worked without getting bogged down in too much technical detail, and it took me nearly a week to finish it. When it was done, I made a copy on the Xerox machine and took it over to Stewart, who told me to leave it on his desk and get out of his office.
An hour later, he called.
I picked up the phone. “Hello. Documentation. Bob Jones speaking.”
“Jones, I have some things I want to add to your FIS overview. I’m going to mark up the copy you gave me and let you type in the additions.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I’ll look it over one more time after you’re finished. I have to approve it before we send it on to Mr. Banks.”