Betsy Burke - Hardly Working

I went into my office and shut the door. It was opened again immediately by Lisa, who pretended to have important business with me but was really just hiding from one of the needy cases. Every so often, some loafer would shuffle in off the street and say, “Hey, man, I’m a charitable cause, you guys do stuff for charities, so waddya gonna do for me?” And Lisa, being Miss High Serotonin Levels, and “good with people,” had been elected to handle them.

Lisa eyed my collection of office toys then picked up my Gumby doll and tied his legs in a knot. I looked up at her. With her blond hair in braids, her lack of makeup, and loose pastel Indian cottons over woolen sweaters, she looked as though she’d stepped through a time warp directly from Haight-Ashbury, from a gathering of thirtysomething flower children.

I said, “Another passenger from Dreck Central, eh, Lisa?”

“Shhh. It’s that bushy guy again. His name’s Roly. You know the nutty one with the long gray hair and beard who always wears the full rain gear right down to the Sou’wester? He keeps coming around and asking for me. I guess I shouldn’t have been so nice to him.”

“Lisa. You don’t know how not to be nice.”

“Shhh. If he hears my voice he’ll want to come in here. I mean, I feel really awful. It’s not that I mind him really. He’s quite polite. Quite a gentleman really. Not like some of the human wreckage that washes up here. But I just don’t feel like dealing with him today. He’s so darn persistent. He keeps asking me out for lunch. I mean, he’s a street person. Don’t get me wrong. He’s clean for a street person but he wears that nutty rain gear all the time. You just have to look at him to know who’ll be paying for the lunch. Yours truly. If it wasn’t so sad it would be sweet.”

“Hey, but Lise. It’s cool. It’s a date. That’s more than I can say for myself.”

“Sure. Right. And that Penelope’s driving me nutty, too. You know what she said? She thinks we should clean up our image. She says our phone voices are no good, that my way of speaking when I deal with the public is too raunchy.”

“Oh God, Lisa, for her to even use the word raunchy is sexual tourism. What could she possibly know about raunchy?”

My phone rang as if on cue. I picked it up with a voice as smooth as extra-virgin olive oil, and said, “Green World International. Dinah Nichols speaking.”

“Halliwell’s here,” said the phone voice.

I put my hand over the mouthpiece and whispered to Lisa, “The pain-in-the-butt printer,” took my hand off and said, “Hello, Mr. Halliwell.”

Halliwell drawled, “Are we going to get that campaign material some time this decade, Miss Nichols, or should I give you up for dead?”

I watched as Lisa put down Gumby and picked up Mr. Potato Head. She ripped out all of his features and limbs then rearranged them in unlikely places.

I pulled my Magic Eight Ball out of my drawer, gave it a shake, and read the message into the phone, “Well, Mr. Halliwell, signs point to yes.”

“Yes dead? Or yes this decade?” he growled.

“This decade,” I said.

That seemed to satisfy him. He grunted and hung up.

Lisa said, “I guess I better go back and deal with the dreck. Hey Dinah, don’t forget about the protest tomorrow, eh? We should be able to get out and back over lunchtime.”

“Yeah, okay. Where did you say it was?”

But she had already gone.

After that, with Ian Trutch’s nearby presence forcing me into uber-employee mode, I plunged myself into real work and finished all the campaign material for Halliwell that morning.

Around lunchtime, Jake knocked on my door. He looked like a kid on Christmas Eve. “There’s somebody here for you, Dinah. Waiting by the coffeemaker.”

I left my desk and went out to see who it was.

My mother was dressed in her favorite town outfit; hiking boots, anorak, and gold and diamond jewelry. Everyone in the main room was staring at her and groveling and calling her Dr. Nichols with awe in their voices. My mother is, after all, quite a famous scientist. She’s been on TV countless times to talk about the destruction of the natural order and extinction of the planet’s wildlife.

I said, “Mom. You’re supposed to be in Alaska.”

“Cancelled. Sent one of the masters students. Old enough to know what he’s doing by now. Came over with the new undergrads. To break them in, you know.”

She always came to Vancouver in her own boat, unless the weather was really rough. She made her students come along as crew because it was important to know if they were sea-worthy or not. She moored in the marina under the Burrard Bridge.

“Thought we might have a bite of lunch then do a spot of shopping.”

It was a good thing Ian Trutch was out of the room because then she got that tone in her voice. “Di Di. I thought we could make it a belated birthday lunch, poppy. Have a reservation at the Yacht Club. Then we can pick out a nice little birthday treat for you.” It only took those few syllables, Di Di and poppy, to make me feel twelve years old again.

Half an hour later, I was inside the Yacht Club lunching with my mother. She plunged her knife into the thick steak and carved. A mountain of roast potatoes filled the rest of her plate, and on another plate, vegetable lasagna. And after that, she’d be ready for the dessert tray to roll by, perhaps even twice.

I stared bleakly at my chef’s salad. It looked the way I felt; sad and a little limp.

It was unfair, so unfair that my mother should be statuesque and lean, with an aristocratic bone structure, and the appetite of ten men, and I should be like one of the scullery maids in her castle, of the shorter, stockier, full-thighed peasant variety. Not that I’m fat. I’m not fat. My thighs are simply my genetic inheritance. No amount of dieting would ever add the extra length I desired. As I’d often said to Thomas, my mother was Beluga caviar; I was Lumpfish.

“I thought perhaps a rather nice navy-blue duffel coat I saw down in that British import shop near Kerrisdale,” she said, through her mouthful.

Oh great, I thought, then I can walk through the streets looking like an enormous navy-blue duffel bag.

She was the only woman I knew who could wear hiking gear and diamonds together, talk with her mouth full, and inspire the husbands lunching with their wives at other tables to sneak longing glances at her. Even though it was a deception really, my mother’s entire look, her vibration, her persona, said, “Come and get me. We’ll have hours of athletic no-strings-attached sex. After a brisk climb to the top of the Himalayas, of course.” My mother demands a lot from her men, but never in the way that they hope or expect.

“I know what I want for my birthday, Mom.”

“Do you? Oh, lovely. Tell me then.”

I told her.

Her hands froze in midair. She didn’t know whether to put her fork down or move it to her mouth. All the color had drained from her face. “Don’t ask me that, Dinah. You simply can’t ask me that,” she said, quietly.

“Of course I can, Mom.”

“But it would be like opening Pandora’s Box. You’ve no idea.”

“I know. That is the idea. I want to open Pandora’s Box. I have to. It’s me we’re talking about. Not you. I can’t wait forever. You’ve got to tell me. First of all, everyone needs to know about their parents even if it’s only for genetic purposes, to eliminate the possibilities of transmitting diabetes, cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, porphyria…”

“Porphyria, Dinah? The disease of vampires? Good lord, dear, the only vampire in our family was Uncle Fred who worked for the Internal Revenue.”

“Now, Mom. I need to know now. Before something happens to one or the other of us.”