The Promise (6 page)

 10 

T
om was in the handicapped stall in a public library restroom putting on a dress shirt and tie. For him, it was just a few minutes before 10:00 a.m. He remembered the six-hour time gap for his parents in Rome. It was odd to think it was already late afternoon for them.

Here he was, just getting ready to start his day. At his old job, the dress code was “business casual.” That's how Jean would expect to see him as he left their house in the morning, so that's how he looked.

But this morning, Tom had an interview. The first solid bite in over a week. He wanted to look his best. It sickened him to do this, but last night when he'd brought the trash out to the curb, he'd snuck out the suit coat, shirt, and tie to the car.

He put the coat on, looked in the mirror, and straightened his tie. After folding up his casual clothes, he laid them carefully in his brief bag. One more look in the mirror, one release of a deep, pent-up sigh, and Tom zipped up the bag and headed out the bathroom door.

He smiled and nodded to one of the librarians behind the counter as he walked by, a middle-aged woman he saw almost
every day. She shot him a curious look but said nothing. He was certain she was puzzling over the change in his appearance. He opened the glass front door and held it for an elderly couple walking through. Behind them a couple of college students. He loved the look on all four of their faces as they passed him. It was funny how people treated a man in a nice suit with a greater sense of respect. He liked the feeling but, at the same time, was glad he didn't have to dress like this every day.

When he got in the car, he checked the address and directions to Wilson Foods. It was the main office headquarters for a regional chain of upscale steak houses located throughout central Florida. The position was for a network administrator for a small IT team that took care of all the restaurant chain's computers and information systems. The position had just gone online a few days ago. As far as Tom knew, Fred hadn't seen it yet. Of course, he was certain dozens of other people had.

Twenty minutes later, he pulled into a crowded parking lot of a business complex, a full fifteen minutes early. Grateful to find a spot under a shady tree, he rolled down the windows to allow a nice breeze to blow through the car. He pulled the sheet highlighting the job requirements out of his brief bag and read it over one more time, mumbling aloud.

“Maintain secure networks using a variety of network equipment, software, and protocols . . . Recommend appropriate equipment and work with vendors to obtain quotes . . . Assist with backup and restore requests as needed . . . Assist end users with laptop and desktop installs and configuration . . . Monitor systems availability and handle emergencies as they arise.”

He looked down at the bottom half, under the qualifications heading. Especially the last line in the paragraph, which provided a serious glimmer of hope. “Great problem solving abilities and a team player with a great attitude a must. Microsoft MCSE certification a definite plus.”

“It says a definite plus, not a requirement,” he muttered aloud. He had everything else they were asking for, including a bachelor's degree. They mentioned “computer science or network engineering” and then added “or equivalent.” His degree was in business management, but he minored in computer science. And they were asking for three years of experience; Tom had five.

He could do this job. He was perfect for it. This thing described to a T what he'd done for the bank over the last five years before they let him go.

Let me go. Yeah, that's one way of putting it. No, don't go there. Keep a positive attitude. Look him in the eye. Smile a lot. Give short answers. Sit up straight. Don't crack your knuckles. Stay confident. Act like you're perfect for the job, because you are. But don't get cocky. Nobody likes a know-it-all.

He took a deep breath and stepped out of the car.

Tom couldn't help it. He was nervous. There was so much at stake. The starting pay for this job wasn't quite as much as he'd made in his last one, but it was a decent salary with solid benefits. If he got it, his financial problems would be over. They hadn't lost the house, not yet. Foreclosure proceedings hadn't even begun; he'd only missed four payments so far. From what he'd read, he could string this thing out for over a year.

He didn't want to, of course. And he certainly didn't think he could keep up this charade for that long, but if he could start making mortgage payments again, he might still have a chance to restore his credit, maybe get a bank to work with him on some kind of loan modification.

Of course, the tricky thing here was not what to do about the house, or the car loan (which was two months overdue), or the credit cards.

It was how to tell all this to Jean.

No, don't think about that now. Keep a positive attitude. That's what they're looking for.

He looked around the waiting room, which he shared with two other out-of-work IT guys. They didn't talk much, other than to confirm they were there for the job interview. After that, they read magazines or checked for messages on their phones. Tom was the best dressed of the lot. One of the guys wore jeans and a pullover shirt. Was he kidding? Tom thought. What a moron.

Tom was next.

The door opened. A tall, thin, balding fellow with little John Lennon eyeglasses walked out. Midthirties, dark mustache. He was smiling like he had the job but then stopped when he noticed the other guys looking at him. Insecure, Tom thought. Not a leader.
Not so fast, Bub, they haven't interviewed me yet
.

That's right, stay confident.

“Mr. Anderson?” The receptionist called out his name. “You may go in. Mr. Hampton will see you now. The first door on your left.”

Tom took a deep breath and got out of his chair. “Thanks,” he said as he nodded. He walked through the same door the other guy had come out of, then tapped gently on the first door in the hallway. It was closed but not shut all the way. He walked in before being asked.
Be assertive. They're looking for a team leader.

“There you are, Mr. . . .” The man looked down at his resume. “Anderson. Have a seat.” Mr. Hampton had a pleasant face. He was about his dad's age and—Tom was happy to see—he wore a suit. “You're here about the network administrator job, correct?”

Tom sat in the office chair. “That's right, sir.”

“Please, call me Sid,” he said. “I see here you have five years' experience. That's good. Were you the team leader the entire time?”

“For the last three years I was, sir. I mean . . . Sid.”
He's got to be wondering, if you were such a good leader, why'd they get rid of you? No, stop.

“So, tell me a little bit about your old job. What were your day-to-day responsibilities?”

Tom spent the next five minutes running through his checklist, trying to touch on everything he'd read in their online job description. Sid then asked him some specific follow-up questions on several items, which Tom had great answers for (at least it felt that way). Sid smiled and nodded as he listened, wrote a few notes in the margin of Tom's resume.

Then he sat back in his chair, and his pleasant expression became more serious. “I wonder if you could share, from your perspective, why you think you were let go when that big Canadian bank took over your regional bank? Off the record, I mean.”

Off the record? Tom thought. Did he want to know the
real
reason Tom had been laid off? What should he say? That a young man Tom had befriended and mentored, had treated like a brother, had taught all the ins and outs of their system—a guy whose mistakes and blunders he'd covered on numerous occasions, sometimes even taking hits the guy deserved—had stabbed Tom in the back, had painted himself as an IT genius and Tom as an unqualified fool? That this guy had actually told lies about him in the interviews, blaming Tom for everything that was wrong with their system and giving himself credit for everything that had been done right?

“Well,” Tom said, “they told me it was because I hadn't gotten my Microsoft certification yet. I'm working on it now, by the way. And I was actually doing the job effectively without it—not that I think it's unimportant—I'm just saying, it hadn't hindered me from learning and doing everything I needed to do, day to day. But they said when they merged the two companies that they
had an excess of IT guys and decided to use the certification issue as the make-or-break criteria.”

“I take it you don't agree with their decision,” Sid said.

“No, I don't. But there were some other factors. And one of the key guys I had trained had his certification, so they decided to go with him.”

Sid looked down at the resume again. Tom waited a few moments, unsure how that sounded. He'd tried to hide all the bitterness and hurt he'd felt from the betrayal in his answer and hoped he had succeeded.

When Sid looked up again, the pleasant expression had returned. He sat forward and said, “Well, clearly, you do meet all the qualifications we're looking for and have more than enough work experience.” He stood up and stuck out his hand. The interview was over. “I have a few more candidates to talk to this afternoon, but we'll be in touch, Tom.”

Tom shook his hand and said before leaving the room, “Thank you, Sid. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk with you. I know I can do great things for this company, if you give me the chance.”

“We'll be in touch,” Sid said, smiling.

As Tom walked through the hallway, then through the waiting room past the three remaining guys, he had absolutely no idea whether he should be happy or sad. It had seemed to go well. Sid seemed to like him. What he said there at the end sounded encouraging. But he'd been through the same process now so many times.

Why get your hopes up only to have them come crashing down a few days later? What did that proverb say? Hope deferred makes the heart sick? He didn't need any more heartsickness. So, he was all done with hope.

It was a highly overrated emotion.

 11 

J
ean walked back into the kitchen to pour Michele and herself a second cup of coffee. It was a magic moment; Tommy and Carly were both down for a nap. Michele was Tom's sister, and she'd just popped in for a visit after returning some purchases at a nearby store. “You want another cup, right?”

“Yes, I'd love one,” Michele said. “I can only stay for another half hour or so, then I need to get home and start dinner.”

“What time does Allan get home from work?”

“It depends whether he ends his day in the office or out in the field. If he's in the office, like today, he'll be home right at 5:30. His office is only about fifteen minutes from our apartment.”

“So you're off today?” Jean came back to the dining room table carrying both cups.

“Unfortunately. I'm still a substitute, so I don't get to teach every day. But even on days that I do, I'm usually home at 3:00. So, I usually make dinner.”

Jean stirred in enough half-and-half to get the creamy beige look she required, then added one Splenda. “Tom has always worked in an office. What does Allan do when he works in the field?”

“He's an environmental biologist,” Michele said, “so asking him ‘How'd your day go?' usually ends in me staring at him with this blank look on my face. He's getting better at seeing that and skipping the parts that are seriously boring. He does things like check companies' well water systems, making sure the water is healthy. And he makes sure they're complying with county regulations with their retention ponds and wetlands areas. Things like that. All I know is, he loves doing it, and it pays well enough that I can be a stay-at-home mom someday. Like you.”

Jean smiled. Like me, she thought. She was mostly happy that she got to stay home and raise her kids. But some days she had doubts.

“Tell you one thing I'm not overly fond of,” Michele continued. “When Allan does work in the field, I have to do tick checks over his whole body before he sits down to the dinner table.”

“Tick checks? Is that—”

“It's exactly what you're thinking,” Michele said, laughing, then sipped her coffee.

“I'm not even going to let the picture form in my head,” Jean said. “Doesn't sound like a very romantic encounter.”

“No, it's not. I'd put it in the opposite-of-romance category. But every now and then, I find one, so I know I have to keep doing it. Ticks are disgusting.”

“Maybe next time you should try it over a bottle of wine.”

Michele laughed. “Anyway . . . I have some exciting news to share with you. That's really the reason I stopped by. I called Mom and Dad yesterday in Italy and told them.”

“You're pregnant!”

“No. Not yet. But Allan and I talked about it, and he said we can start trying to have a baby right away. So who knows? Maybe I'll be pregnant in a month or two.”

“That's wonderful, Michele. I'm so happy for you. You're going to be a great mom.”

“I hope so. That's what I want to be. More than anything else in the world.”

Jean heard a noise on the monitor in Carly's room. “Did you hear that?” Please don't wake up, she thought. Not yet.

“Hear what?”

“Listen.” Carly made a little singsongy sound through the speaker. “Maybe if we give her a minute, she'll go back to sleep. There's no way she should be up already.”

“See?” Michele said. “That's what I want. I want to know my baby so well I can tell little things like that.”

“You're okay with not being a schoolteacher anymore?”

“I'm sure some days will be a struggle, but no, I'd much rather be a stay-at-home mom.”

Jean hadn't known this about Michele. She'd always wanted the two of them to be closer, but Michele had spent most of the last four years away at school. During the last two, even when she was home, she was always with Allan. Maybe the two of them could finally become friends. “You don't hear too many women with that ambition these days.”

“What? Being a stay-at-home mom?”

Jean nodded, then listened for any more noises from Carly. All was quiet.

“I guess,” Michele said, “but even economically it's not that great a trade-off if you think about it. We've been living on Allan's salary since the wedding. If I work full time after we have our baby, we'd have to pay hundreds of dollars a month for daycare. And keep two cars running, so that's hundreds more for a car payment and insurance, and a lot more for all the extra gas driving back and forth to work. And you know our food bill would be much higher. Who'd fix dinner if we both come home wiped out from working all day? I feel wiped out now some days, and I only work part time.”

As she said these last few lines, Jean noticed a growing
edginess in Michele's voice. “So, you think it's wrong for moms to work outside the house once the kids come?”

“No. Do I sound like I think that?”

“A little.”

“Well, I don't mean to. I guess I've gotten a little defensive about it. When I tell some women about what I want to do, they make me feel like I'm an idiot for wanting to give up my career.”

“You know I don't think that way, right?” Jean took the final sip of her coffee, sad to see it go. She waved her hand. “Obviously, stay-at-home mom, right here.”

“I know.”

“I'm just careful about how I share my views on motherhood,” Jean said. “I know some women at church would love to stay home if they could, but it's not financially possible. And single moms don't even have a choice in the matter.”

“You're right,” Michele said. “The last thing I want to do is tell other people how to live. But I also don't want to feel like apologizing all the time for wanting to be a stay-at-home mom.”

“Speaking of becoming a mom,” Jean said, “can you keep a secret?”

“You know I can.”

“You can't say a thing. I haven't even told Tom yet.”

“What . . . you're pregnant?”

“Maybe,” Jean said. “I'm late, and I started getting queasy in the mornings, several days in a row now.”

“Have you taken a pregnancy test yet?”

“No, I was going to get one the next time I went to the store.”

“Have you and Tom been . . . trying?”

“That's the thing, we haven't.”

“A surprise baby. When are you going to tell Tom?”

“I'm not sure,” Jean said. “He's been so uptight lately.”

“About what?”

“Not sure about that, either. I think he's having problems at
work, but he doesn't want to talk about it. I don't know if he's worried about getting laid off or what the problem is. But he's been all tense about money lately too. Last night, he started talking about couponing, if you can believe that. Said he watched a show all about it and thought I should start doing it. You know anything about couponing?”

“I've been too busy for anything like that. But hey, once I become a stay-at-home mom I can look into it. I know you're supposed to be able to save a lot of money once you get a system figured out.”

“Well, it's something Tom wants me to learn. If I find any great websites, I'll send you the links.”

Michele set her coffee cup down and looked at her watch. “I better get going. I just remembered I have one more stop to make. Hey, do you mind if I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Has your relationship with my brother always been like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like . . . him possibly having problems at work and not talking to you about it. And you possibly being pregnant and not telling him?”

Jean thought a moment. Had they always been this way? Sadly, the honest answer seemed to be yes. “I suppose it has. I'm guessing you and Allan talk about everything freely?”

“Pretty much,” Michele said. “It's just . . . I don't know, Tom has always been so much like my father.”

“He's always admired your dad.”

“That's not necessarily a good thing,” Michele said. “Dad and Mom always kept things from each other, especially when they struggled. Used to, anyway. And look at the kind of trouble they got into.” She sighed. “Well, I better go.” She walked to the front door, turned, and gave Jean a hug good-bye. “I hope I didn't say anything that upset you.”

“I'm a little discouraged,” Jean said, “but not at you. Tom really is like his father in some ways. Well, like he used to be before your wedding.”

Even as the words left her mouth, Jean wished that wasn't the case. As she closed the door, a tear escaped and she whispered a prayer. What had happened to her marriage? Why couldn't Tom be more like Allan, or even the way his father was now?