Lisa Owens - Not Working

“…but I have savings. The plan is that I’ll be okay without earning for a few months. A stopgap job might just be a distraction.”

“It isn’t a stopgap for Hilary,” he said, referring to his PA of fifteen years, sounding faintly indignant on her behalf.

“I know. But I think maybe I’m more of a Karen.”

There was a pause while he computed. “You want to become a beautician?”

“A Karen who hasn’t found her niche yet.”

“I’ll email HR just in case you change your mind.”

“You honestly don’t have to do that, Dad—”

“It’s no problem. But remember: no guarantees.”

—

My mother, on the other hand, was much more encouraging.

“Oh good, ” she said. “I never thought that place was right for you.”

Having spent the past two years complaining about it, I immediately leaped to the company’s defense. “They’re very highly regarded in the industry. You know they received more than a hundred applications for my job within twenty-four hours of advertising it?”

When I first started there, in an effort to help my parents understand what I did, I’d email them articles from the trade press that mentioned my employer in a positive light. Fantastic, well done, Claire, Mum would reply. Yes, very good, Dad would add. I stopped when, at a family party, I overheard my mother patiently and repeatedly explaining to a deaf great-uncle that I worked in “COMMERCE!”

“It was a good first job,” she said, “but it was never really you.”

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t know why you’re being so defensive. You said you handed in your notice because it wasn’t right.”

“Okay.” She had me there. “If that wasn’t ‘me,’ though, then what would you say is? When I was little, what did you think I’d be?”

“Well, a mother for one thing. You always loved looking after your dolls.”

I picture my womb, dark and empty. “I meant as a career.”

“Claire, you know I’ve always said you could do anything you wanted.” She sounded like she still believed it too.

“What if I don’t know what that is? Don’t you have any ideas?”

“Ooh. Now. You’re putting me on the spot there. Let me have a think and I’ll get back to you.”

But she didn’t. And then she stopped talking to me.

A man in paint-spattered jeans and Reeboks, holding a newspaper wide open, moves his lips as he reads, like an actor committing lines to heart: lines of devastation in the Philippines, public executions in the Middle East and a review of the latest fried-chicken food truck patrolling a far-flung corner of the capital.

“What did you have for lunch?”

“Turkey sandwich.”

“From the cafeteria?”

“Yeah.”

“Dessert?”

“Apple.”

“Any biscuits or snacks?”

“No. Well, a yogurt. Are you out for a run?”

“What flavor? No, I’m walking. Why?”

“Forest fruits. You sound out of breath.”

“I walk very fast.” I hold the bottom of the phone away from my face to mute the offending breathing. “You know, you never ask what I had for lunch.”

“What did you have for lunch?” Luke says in a monotone.

“I’m not saying you have to ask. Just pointing out that you’re more than happy to say what you had, but when it comes to me, you’re not so interested.”

“To be honest? In this instance, that’s true.”

“Fair enough.” I’m quiet for a moment. “But it’s polite to return the question.”

“Did you have something really exciting? Is that why you asked? Now I’m actually curious,” says Luke.

“No, I asked because it helps me to get a sense of your day. It’s nice for me to picture what you get up to.”

“I drilled a hole in a human skull this morning,” he offers.

“Yeah, but don’t you do that most days?”

“I have lunch every day.”

“Hey, me too!”

He gives a (surely affectionate) sigh. “Go on, then, what did you have?”

“Guess.”

“No, I don’t want to guess. Fine: goose.”

“I’m not going to tell you if you’re going to mock me.”

“Oh my God.”

“Okay, I’ll give you a clue: think fish.”

“I said I don’t want to guess! Tuna,” he says.

“Bingo. Tuna salad. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“What happened to cutting back on fish?” (Last night, over our cod-fillet dinner, I suggested that we should pledge to buy fish only once a fortnight, and then always to be sure it’s sustainably sourced. “But you were the one who forced me to start eating fish in the first place,” Luke said, bewildered. “Now you want to take it away?”)

“It was canned tuna. We had it in the cupboard already. That fish had been dead for a year or more. Plus, I’ve been thinking about our plan to cut down, and on second thought I wonder if we shouldn’t just make the most of it while stocks last.”

“No pun intended,” says Luke.

“No: pun intended, ” I say.

On the doormat, an envelope addressed in Grandma’s gnarled, knotted hand. Years ago, she would send me treats in the post, a roll of Life Savers or Jolly Ranchers. Swaddled in bubble wrap and brown paper, they had the vague thrilling feel of contraband, and I would savor them with rare self-restraint, eking them out for a week or more. Sadly, all that stopped when I graduated, and this particular missive looks flat and unpromising. When I tease out the letter, some newspaper clippings waft to the floor. I pick them up and scan the headlines:

300+ APPLY FOR STARBUCKS JOB

LATER PREGNANCY INCREASES BREAST CANCER RISK

CALL TO CURB SPREAD OF INVASIVE SPECIES

(The latter does not, as I feared, refer to immigration control, but instead her local council’s proposed treatment of buddleias. When it comes to Grandma, you never can be too sure.)

Thought you might be interested in the enclosed. Forearmed is forewarned, as they say.

Fondest,

Grandma

The letter is written on the personalized stationery she and my grandfather have always used; now, however, she has crossed out Gum’s name in a single, thick black stroke.

The fridge has nothing more to give than this packet of old stir-fry veg, marinating in its own brown seepage. The tangled bulk slithers into the wok and I drench it in some sweet, glossy sauce, to disguise its true colors and taste. In the background, a once-charming TV chef is cooking for a man named Gary, and slinging leading questions over his dish-toweled shoulder.

“How often, Gary mate, do you wake up the next day to a pile of greasy takeaway containers and wish you’d had something a bit healthier for dinner?”

“If I’m honest,” says Gary, meek and miserable as though his Internet browsing history has just been published for the world — and his wife — to see, “if I’m totally honest, every time.” The chef smiles knowingly, shimmies his frying pan, tossing cubes of meat high in the air.

Now it’s three o’clock, well into Dead Time: the meal-less stretch of empty hours that span the afternoon. Every minute I’ve spent on today’s job-hunt strategy — a series of impassioned speculative letters explaining why I would make, variously, the perfect literary manager at a theater, projects coordinator at a museum, picture researcher for a fashion magazine and (anomaly among wildcards) resettlement officer for a prison — has been matched by the same frittered away on semi-skimmed, half-digested articles and the live-blogs of an entire TV series I’ve never watched, including all 391 below-the-line comments (which at one stage turned into a heated argument about a different, equally unfamiliar TV series).