HAZEL WOKE UP an hour earlier than normal—for a workday, that is. For nearly the past month, while on her first extended vacation in years, the time needed to handle all the details after her mother’s death, she had lived without the tyranny of the alarm clock, and she had enjoyed that freedom immensely. This morning her early awakening provided extra time and allowed her to have two additional cups of coffee as she glanced at the newspaper—“glanced” was the operative word, since none of the stories seemed to make any sense to her today.
The jumble of thoughts and emotions kept her from thinking clearly, or focusing on the news from the Middle East.
She dressed carefully, wearing one of her more sedate outfits—dark pants and a dark blouse with a matching jacket. It was old and loose and comfortable. She did not want to think about her outfit, at least not today. Instead of catching the bus, she chose to drive her car to the office.
Parking was a bit of a problem, and expensive if one had to park in one of the area’s parking garages every workday. But for once, Hazel did not factor into this week’s budget the dollars spent on parking.
She arrived ten minutes before her usual ten minutes early and went to her desk and just sat behind it, waiting for the rest of the staff to arrive, waiting without looking around or adjusting her computer screen or cleaning out the break room.
Today, she just sat.
On the one bookcase in her office was a framed picture of her mother, a picture Hazel had taken several years ago. Her mother was seated in her backyard, sunlight illuminating her smile.
Hazel had never realized, or perhaps never saw it, but her mother’s smile was somehow incomplete, a half-smile, as if she was happy, but knew that she could have been happier, as if there was something holding her back from truly being lost in happiness. Or that her life wasn’t totally complete. Something appeared to be missing.
You can tell a lot from a smile. Or a half-smile, I guess.
Perhaps that was just what Hazel saw in the picture this morning as she sat and waited.
Mr. Shupp, the owner, was a stickler for promptness. His office looked out on the main entrance to the agency, and anyone who came in late would get a baleful glare from the owner. If one’s tardiness became commonplace, like several times in a single week, the lateness marked that employee as a “short-termer” who might well be replaced at the next opportunity.
Hazel was never late. And on those few occasions when cars broke down or bus drivers went on strike, she notified Mr. Shupp immediately, always offering to make up the lost time after 5 p.m.
He always accepted her offer to work a full eight hours regardless of the starting time.
Hazel smiled.
I should have strolled in ten minutes late this morning. Just to see what would happen.
Too early for pretending to be late, she gave Mr. Shupp ten minutes to get his coffee or whatever it was he did in the morning, then she stood up, tugged her jacket into place, took a deep breath, and marched slowly, with even steps, toward his office.
“Mr. Shupp?”
The older man, wearing a tailored three-piece suit, the kind of suit that no one, other than undertakers, perhaps, wore anymore, looked up. He was not smiling. He seldom smiled.
“You’re back. Good. What?”
He was a man of few words as well.
“Mr. Shupp, I am leaving the agency.”
Mr. Shupp looked at her the way a dog looks at complex machinery—with little to no comprehension.
“What?”
Hazel was afraid that her resignation would be difficult. She had never quit anything before, other than her job as a waitress in college, but that was decades ago, and she remembered it as being difficult as well.
Hazel did not like to disappoint anyone.
“I am resigning. I wrote out a resignation letter,” she said as she looked down at her empty hands, “but I must have left it in my office.”
“What?”
“Resigning, sir. Quitting.”
The color in Mr. Shupp’s face went from a cold pallor to a somewhat more crimson hue.
“Why? What? Resigning? You’ve been here forever…Ms. Jamison. This seems like a most rash decision. Jobs don’t grow on trees, you know.”
His features grew sharper, his angular jaw growing more angular as he thrust it out at her decision.
“You’re not going to another insurance agency, are you? Not the Gibson Group, are you? That might be problematic, you know. Noncompete clauses and the like. You did sign one of those, right? You all did, right?”
Hazel closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and smiled.
“I might have, Mr. Shupp. But I’m quitting…and not going anywhere. Workwise, that is. At least for a while.”
That surprised the old man more than anything else that morning.
Hazel turned her head, just for a moment, and stared out at the beige walls of the office, and the beige fabric on the walls of the cubicles, and the beige-tinted fluorescent lights overhead, and the beige window blinds, and the beige carpet.
My mother never left Portland, not really, but said she wanted someday to travel the world. And now I can do what she wanted to do. And maybe look for some truth out there. Isn’t that what they said on the TV show, The X-Files? “The truth is out there”?
“Not work? That’s insane, Ms. Jamison. That’s for millionaires and people who win the lottery. You didn’t win the lottery, did you?”
Hazel shook her head. “I’ve never played the lottery, Mr. Shupp.”
“Then are you sure you’re feeling all right? It’s not because of one of those female problems, is it?”
Hazel laughed to herself, mostly at the agency owner’s inelegance with a phrase, or his ineptitude.
“No, Mr. Shupp. I feel fine. But I’m leaving. I have made up my mind.”
Mr. Shupp stood, trying to look more august and somber than he typically did.
“You know that you have to work two more weeks. In order to get your last paycheck, that is indeed what you have to do. Otherwise, you will not get any vacation pay due you.”
He was no longer smiling, and he let his non-smile curve into a semi-frown, semi-sneer. Hazel had expected as much.
“Fine,” she replied, and she walked back to her office, took the photograph of her mother off the bookcase, slipped it into her purse, looked around the rather spartan interior of her small office, her home for the last several decades. She knew, right then, without a shadow of a doubt, that she could never return to this place again. Not with the world waiting for her. She touched her desk with a fingertip, then walked out, and walked past the desk of Henry Karch, who offered her a hopeful, almost leering smile, and kept walking, through the front lobby, and out the front door, and into the sunshine, smiling broadly now, feeling suddenly free, if not freer than she had ever felt in her entire life.
Gretna sat in the large, open foyer of the senior apartment complex and watched two old women, each holding a magnifying glass, working on a massive jigsaw puzzle—a picture of a seaside village, probably in New England somewhere. The picture included a large swath of blue sky and blue water.
The puzzle had remained half-completed for the past several weeks. Gretna scowled as she watched. That same puzzle had been put together several times over the course of her residency—put together, admired in its totality for up to a week, then returned to its box, and brought back out after most everyone forgot that they had once put it together.
“Like Sisyphus,” Gretna mumbled to herself. “But he remembered how useless his task was. No one here remembers.”
She sat in one of the upholstered chairs, feeling the afternoon sun on her face. Her apartment only caught the morning sun.
“The afternoon sun is better,” she said, self-narrating again, and closed her eyes, just for a few seconds. “Just to rest them for a bit.”
A moment later, a wheelchair wheezed closer. Gretna could hear the familiar squeak of the wheels.
She opened her eyes.
“Lucille,” she said loudly, knowing Lucille’s hearing was not very acute.
“But then no one here can hear worth beans,” she said quietly, again self-narrating. “Lucille,” she said with more volume, “I was with your daughter-in-law yesterday. A lovely person.”
Lucille, a small frail woman, appeared to brighten.
“Emily? Yes. Yes. She told me. Thurman. That’s the dog, right? She said she met Thurman. She liked him, she said. A good dog, she said.”
Gretna leaned closer.
“She did. Thurman is a good dog.”
Lucille looked over Gretna’s shoulder as if remembering a time long ago when perhaps some dog was in her life and when things were good and memories were still being made and remembered.
“Emily is a very nice person,” Gretna said.
Lucille nodded.
“She is so good.”
Then Lucille’s face grew somber. Her eyes reflected pain.
“Emily is married to my son, isn’t she?”
Gretna was not sure where Lucille was at that moment, but she decided to stay positive.
“Yes, yes, she is.”
Then Lucille sniffed.
“He’s dead. Isn’t he? My son. He died.”
Gretna reached over and took Lucille’s hand.
“I believe he is gone, Lucille. You told me that before.”
Nodding, Lucille replied, “Yes. It was the war. Not in the war. After. He came home. It was after. Something was wrong. After the war, that’s when it happened. Even I could tell something wasn’t right. Poor Emily.”
Gretna was at a loss for words, unsure if offering comfort was the right response, or if simply listening would offer some small amount of solace.
“I don’t remember what happened. But he doesn’t come here anymore. I have his picture. He was handsome. Did you see it? The picture.”
Gretna had not, but she said that she did.
“Poor Emily. Maybe God will help. Do you think God would help?”
Gretna leaned closer and hugged the woman.
“I’m sure he will, Lucille. I am sure he will. Have you asked him?”
Lucille looked at Gretna for a long time.
“About what?”