The Language of Sycamores Read online

  What would I do if I had to cut one, two, maybe even three positions? Who would I pick? How would I tell them?

  Reaching for the folder on my desk, I realized I was still holding the bag lady’s rose. I opened the desk drawer, setting the flower inside with my purse. It hardly seemed appropriate for the day—a cheerful pink rose, a symbol of friendship and goodwill. A soft, growing thing in this decaying tower of marble and machines.

  Closing the drawer, I blocked out the thought, getting focused. A management meeting at Lansing was no place to be sentimental.

  I took a minute to look over my budget proposal, getting the figures clear in my head, checking one last time for mistakes, muttering the words just as I would say them in my presentation. With authority, with confidence, just short of a demand—emphasis on all the right points. It was a good budget—a way to cut costs 10 percent without cutting any people. Assuming we picked up a few new accounts this year, we would bring in a solid profit, which was more than could be said for other departments. Besides, it was like Brent said. Tech built the company. They wouldn’t cut us.

  With that thought in mind, I headed for the door, feeling more like myself, ready to take on whoever and whatever got in my way at the meeting. By the time I reached the war room, I had squelched every last ounce of doubt within me. I didn’t know how the rest of the meeting would go, but for my part, I was going to make the brass an offer they couldn’t refuse.

  I settled into a chair next to Brent and waited. He slid an agenda my way, silently pointing out the fact that Sales, Marketing, Admin, and Training had been scheduled to present first. We nodded at each other, taking that as a hopeful sign. Brent smirked wryly and made a quick throat-cutting gesture. It wasn’t very nice, but no one in the room was feeling nice. Sales, Marketing, Admin, and Training were clustered on one side of the table, tech on the other, and the brass on the end by the door. Everyone was giving everyone else the look—the one that said, Hate it for you, but better you than me. The room had the feeling of a pool full of sharks just waiting for the first drop of blood to hit the water.

  Two hours later, it looked like the meeting might not turn into a feeding frenzy, after all. The budget proposals, including mine, had been received fairly calmly. Every department had proposed cuts, and the VPs at the end of the table seemed receptive. In the corner, even the head number cruncher appeared calm, leaning back in his chair, squinting at the rest of us over the top of his Gucci glasses, occasionally jotting details on a notepad.

  He barely looked up as Miles Vandever, our interim CEO, rose from his chair, cleared his throat, and braced both hands on the table. “I’m going to be painfully honest,” he said, and I realized he was looking at me. “While I compliment all of these efforts at trimming budgets, the fact is that it’s not enough. We’ve got a situation spiraling out of control, and it’s going to take drastic measures to keep the company out of bankruptcy.”

  As if on cue, the head of Accounting stood up, pulled out a stack of red folders, and began handing them around the table. All of a sudden, I and everyone else in the room knew that all the budget talk had been only a formality. The brass had already made their decision.

  Vandever went on. “In your hands, you have our plan for restructuring. To survive, we have to narrow the company’s focus, get back to the things we’ve done and done well. It will mean cutting staff, reassigning some management, combining departments where there is overlap. I know it’s hard, but these are lean times in the tech world, and this is what it’s going to take. After you’ve looked over the material, please proceed to your departments and notify your people as necessary. In view of corporate security, the layoffs will be effective immediately. All affected parties will be asked to clear their desks. Personal items should be boxed and clearly marked. All boxes should remain unsealed, and may be either carried out today or labeled with an address for shipping. The network will be shut down this afternoon to protect corporate data, and there should be no copying of files from local machines onto magnetic media.” He checked his watch like a bombardier counting the seconds until his drop hit the target. “A private security firm should be moving into place about now to see that everything goes smoothly and to safeguard corporate interests. Security officers will be present on all floors and at exits.” He paused a moment, surveying the stunned faces, then added, “I’m sorry, everyone,” actually managing to look regretful, even though the cuts in the red folder undoubtedly didn’t include any vice presidents.

  Beside me, Brent was already staring openmouthed at the contents of the folder. He didn’t even notice as Vandever and the rest of his cronies left the room. On the other side of the table, Sales and Marketing started to buzz. The director of Admin slammed her folder against the table and stomped out of the room, and the Field Training manager slumped back in his chair like he’d been struck by shrapnel.

  Beside me, Brent muttered, “This is crap,” then leaned over and held his folder open between us. “They’re cutting Tech Support by one-third. There’s no way, especially with new installations. . . .” He fell silent, looking first at my face and then at the paper in my hand—my page of the red folder. The one that said my entire department was being cut. Including me.

  “That can’t be right,” he choked out, poking a finger furiously at the paper, then flipping through his copy to see if it said the same thing.

  “They’re getting out of the custom-networking business,” I muttered, as much to myself as to him. “This is it.” But even as I said the words, my mind couldn’t assimilate the message. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. I’d been with Lansing for fifteen years, started when it was tiny, worked my way up from a baseline slot as a PC programmer, climbed the ladder as the corporation grew. I’d moved out to California for four years to start a branch office on the West Coast, then moved back without complaint when they decided they couldn’t afford a West Coast office.

  I’d given the company everything I had, time after time after time. I’d watched it grow from a fledgling business in rented basement offices to a major player in systems, storage, and custom networking, a corporation with a ticker on the NASDAQ and an eight-story marble building in downtown Boston. Every time I walked into the building, I had a heady sense of accomplishment. I had helped build this company. I had a part in it. Lansing Technology was my first love.

  All of a sudden, I was realizing that it didn’t love me back. I was nothing more than a name on a list. Six months’ severance and a lump sum to buy out my retirement fund. Two hours to clean out my desk, and a security officer to escort me off the premises like a criminal.

  How could this be happening?

  Beside me, Brent was saying that Lansing couldn’t possibly be getting out of the custom-networking business. They’d be crying at my door in three months, and I shouldn’t worry. The words were meant to be comforting, but they didn’t bring solace. My mind spun ahead to the inevitable question—how was someone who made my kind of salary going to find another job, especially in the current economy?

  And what about the fifteen people who worked for me? How were they going to find jobs? Glancing at the sheet in my hands, I read the names and severance packages, some as low as only a few weeks’ pay. No thank-yous, no apologies. Just a paragraph reminding me that in the short space of two hours, we were supposed to quietly pack our boxes while security officers looked on, and leave for good.

  Anger and indignation boiled into my throat, my fingernails biting the chair arms until they throbbed with a dull, rhythmic pain. I wanted to pick up the chair and throw it through the plate glass window, scatter bits and pieces all over the lobby. Everything about this was wrong.

  Closing my eyes, I tried to rein in my emotions. I had to keep control, to help my people through this the best way I could. “I’ve got to get upstairs,” I muttered. “I have to tell them before they hear it somewhere else.”

  “Yeah, me too. I have to ax four software engineers and a documentation special
ist.” Brent patted me on the shoulder, knowing that my problems went much deeper than his. “I’m sorry, Karen. If I’d caught any word of this buzzing around the network, I would have told you. They definitely kept it under wraps.”

  I nodded. “I know, Brent. Thanks.” Standing unsteadily, I started toward the door, a sense of numbness slowly spreading through me, until I felt detached, as if I were watching the day like a bad movie about corporate greed and underhanded office politics.

  I went through the afternoon with a sense of being out of body. I said the right things, called each one of my team members in and delivered the news, discussed severance packages, health insurance, new job possibilities, all with the door open so the grim-faced security officers could listen in. I offered sympathy and regret, anger at the corporation’s lack of loyalty to longtime employees. I watched the henchmen checking boxes at the elevator and wondered how anyone could do that for a living.

  But even as my coworkers carried out boxes, as one meeting ran into the next, as one hour passed and then another, as I packed my own personal belongings and labeled them so that they could be shipped to my house, I kept thinking that it wasn’t true. This couldn’t really be happening. I was in a nightmare, struggling to wake up to another normal day.

  When it was over, I sat back in my chair, looked around my office, and for the first time in my life, felt completely worthless. What do you do when the thing you’ve put your time and effort, your heart and soul, into, the thing that is the biggest part of who you are, is gone? Where do you go from there?

  The office was empty and silent, yielding no answers. Opening my desk drawer, I reached in for my purse. My fingers closed instead over something soft and damp, alive. Pulling out the bag lady’s rose, I gazed at it, remembering that forgotten part of the day, the appointment at Dr. Conner’s office, the test results.

  The thought made me want to go home and lock the world outside, forget everything. Grabbing my purse, I kicked the drawer shut and headed for the elevator. I didn’t stop to see if anyone was still hanging around the cubicles, or to commiserate with the knot of shell-shocked employees in the lobby. I didn’t wait to see if the security officer wanted to check my purse or briefcase. I walked right past them and out the door, striding faster and faster, running down the steps to the T, taking in the damp air in huge gulps, trying to leave everything behind. On the train, I sank into a seat, leaned my head against the window, and stared dimly at the increasing rhythm of light and shadow.

  A thunderstorm was rumbling on the horizon when I got off at the Leather District. The sound echoed against the old brick warehouses, whipped along by an angry wind laden with dust and the scent of sea-water. I didn’t stop to listen to the musicians or grab a cup of cappuccino at South Station. I didn’t linger by the windows of the art galleries, or stop in J’s Deli for a beef and Swiss, or sit on the bench outside and marvel at the enormity of the converted leather tanneries. Instead, I ran blindly up the street, my breath coming in short, quick gasps, tears clouding my eyes so that the storm and the people on the sidewalk were nothing more than a blur. By the time I reached our door on the lower level of a small building that had once housed tannery offices, lightning was crackling sideways across the clouds and the air smelled of saltwater spray. Turning the key in the lock, I slipped into a safe haven and bolted out the wind and the clouds.

  The growl of thunder followed. Desperate to drown out the sound, the reality, I sat down at the antique piano in the entry and did something I hadn’t done in years.

  I began to play music.

  Chapter 2

  The songs of my childhood flowed through me—songs I thought I had long ago forgotten—recital pieces from Beethoven, Bach, Tchaikovsky, a melody that I’d played for a production of Hair in college. I remembered how it sounded in the theater building at U Mass, how the audience burst into spontaneous applause when the dancers finished the number. I relived the joy of being surrounded by a cast of starry-eyed dreamers, still young enough to believe the world would allow us to become artists and musicians and actors. My parents didn’t want me wasting my time in the arts department, which made the experience all the more desirable, my one act of rebellion before I settled into a practical mold. An engineering degree. A high-profile job.

  Now here I was, fifteen years later, the music rushing out of me like water through a dam left unattended so long that it had finally crumbled. I wished James would come home, hear the music and say, “Where did you learn to play Hair?” He didn’t know this part of me. By the time we met, I was already settled into my job at Lansing, taken in by the rush of money and success. It was a good substitute for the thrill of art for art’s sake.

  I didn’t yearn for music. The piano in our hallway was just an antique left by the former owners because it was too heavy to move. James’s game room upstairs, where we’d decorated the wall behind the wet bar with the old guitars he never found time to play, was just a place to occasionally entertain guests. I’d tried to convince him to sell the guitars before we moved back from California. “Why are we hauling these things around from place to place?” I’d said. “I think we’re past our Jim Morrison days.”

  James just laughed and set the guitars out for the movers to pack. “What will my dad do when he comes to visit if he can’t clean and tune the guitar collection?”

  “That’s true.” Every year or two, James’s dad came from his farm in Virginia and spent a week tinkering with things in our house that needed fixing, cleaning, or tuning.

  “Besides,” James added, “the real estate agent just e-mailed from Boston and said they left that old piano in the loft entry—too heavy to move. I told him that was fine. You and I might want to start a mom-and-pop band, take to hanging out in the T and try to make a little extra change.”

  “With a piano?”

  “Who knows?” He winked at me and smiled. Both of us were so happy to be moving back to Boston that we wouldn’t have cared if the former owners left a four-ton elephant in our loft. California had been hard for us—me working all the time to start the new branch office, and James having to fly out of a new base where he had less seniority and was given less-desirable flight schedules. “Your sister says you’re pretty good.”

  “I don’t play anymore,” I said flatly. “Maybe we can put hooks on the thing and make sort of an eclectic coat rack.”

  When we moved into the loft, I stayed away from the piano the way a recovering alcoholic stays away from a drink. But tonight it felt like an old friend. Music was a hiding place where nothing else could enter. Not the realities of the day, not the sound of the storm. Within the music there was only the peace of memory and melody and emotion, slowly strumming forgotten strings.

  I knew I should try to catch James on his cell phone while he was between flights, tell him about the layoffs at Lansing, but then the growl of the storm would return and I would have to think about everything. I’d start calculating severance packages, health insurance, mortgage payments, doctor’s appointments, more medical tests. It was easier to play melodies I thought I had lost, to let them capture me and take me back.

  The phone rang, and I barely heard it at first. I was a million miles away at a grade school talent contest. I was looking into the audience to see if my father had come yet. I missed a note, and one of the kids backstage chuckled. Suddenly, I was glad my father wasn’t there. Out of all the notes in that piece, he would have noticed the one that wasn’t right.

  The phone rang again. Probably someone from work, wanting to hash over the ugly details of the layoffs, hoping I would join them in raging against the machine. It wouldn’t be James calling. He wouldn’t expect me to be home at six-thirty in the evening. Normally, I would have been at the office with a bag of take-out from the deli down the street.

  I played the music louder, faster, until I couldn’t make out the answering machine’s electronic greeting and someone recording a message. The intonations were familiar, and unconsciously I softened
the music, a little more and a little more, until I could hear.

  “. . . Guess you’re not there. Anyway, this is Kate. Remember me? Your sister? Seems like it’s been forever. Ben was going to e-mail you guys some pictures of the kids, but I don’t know if he ever did. Well . . . anyway . . . listen, James just called and said he’d be coming to the farm Saturday night and staying a couple days while he’s on layover in Kansas City.” She paused for a moment, seeming unsure of whether to bother leaving the rest of the message. “Well, anyway, remember I told you that after the tornado last year we met those cousins who live over in Poetry, Missouri? We’ve been trying for a while to get together, and Jenilee called yesterday and said she could come for the weekend. I know it’s short notice, but I thought maybe, possibly, since James is going to be here, maybe you could get away and fly down for the weekend—use one of those buddy passes the airlines gives you guys. I know . . .”

  I realized the music had stopped and I was across the room with my finger on the answering machine. I pushed the button and picked up the phone. “Hello . . . Kate?” My voice sounded ragged, raspy with tears.

  “Karen?” Kate’s reply was hesitant. “Is that you? Did I wake you up? Are you at home sick or something?” The sentences ran together, conveying that she was nervous and uncertain. Kate and I didn’t talk very often. We didn’t know what to say to each other on the phone. Or in person, really.