Does he really believe I can get another job that will support a family within two to three weeks? I spent months applying for jobs before I got this one. I spent months saving enough money to get us by until that first paycheck.
How long will that last us if I’m unemployed? Not all that long. I could conceivably sell my aunt’s house, but I doubt it’s worth much and I assume I’d have to split that with Jeremy. I could never buy a new place with what would be left over.
I collapse into the desk chair and bury my face in my hands. God, I’m foolish. There I was, wondering if it was fate that we met and eager to find out where his life had taken him, while he was simply trying to figure out how to get me out of his company as soon as possible.
But if he told the board he’d give me three months, he’ll have no reason not to give me three months as long as I can impress them tomorrow. I just need to create a miraculous program by the end of the day, despite having no idea what the budget is and no real-world job experience. Great. Super. No problem.
I always think of Ruth during moments like this, panicked moments when I’m not sure I have what it takes. She’d spend the day on conference calls while I sat by quietly, and between each of them she’d give me advice—all these sayings that were utterly meaningless to a little kid who just wanted to go outside: Work smarter, not harder; don’t recreate the wheel.
Those meaningless phrases of hers have helped me out of more than one situation and—because I have to pick up the twins in seven hours, and that’s not nearly enough time to come up with an idea of my own—not recreating the wheel is decent advice.
I start looking at what larger companies offer their employees, and though every idea seems like a terrible one when it has to be perfect or else—‘Perfect is the enemy of good’ Ruth says in my head—by the time I leave to get the twins, I’ve at least chosen something and started to pull together a presentation.
“Finally,” my friend Molly says, picking up on the first ring. “I texted you a million times.”
I look both ways before I take a left out of the parking lot. “I couldn’t text. I couldn’t do anything. I’m already about to get fired.”
She laughs. “That can’t be true.”
Molly is the one person who knows everything about me. She knows who my dad is, she knows about Jeremy’s cheating and overall ugliness. But she is endlessly confident and competent, at least where work is concerned—as the only Black supervisor at a research lab, and one of only three females, the nonsense she hears is endless, so she’d have to be. I’m not sure she can even imagine getting fired because she’s too damned good at what she does for anyone to want her gone.
“My boss—there’s a whole story there too—basically told me he needs me gone. He said he’s giving me a couple weeks to find another job and that’s it.”
“Shit,” she whispers. “Have you met with the divorce lawyer yet? You need child support if nothing else.”
The lawyer, who is booked out for weeks and wants five hundred for the first meeting. “It’s next month.”
“I still think we should just poison Jeremy. It would solve so many problems.”
I laugh wearily. “That’s a pretty bold plan coming from a woman who can’t even tell her boss she likes him.”
She hasn’t been on a single date during all the years I’ve known her. There was an ugly break-up in grad school, and ever since she started at her current job, it’s been Michael, Michael, Michael—the boss she lusts after from afar.
“Here’s what we do: apple seeds,” she says, ignoring my point. “They contain arsenic. We crush them up and put them into his food. Nothing ever gets traced back to us.”
“Unless they test for arsenic and someone wonders why I recently bought ten bushels of apples. I’m not ready to turn to murder yet.” I pull into the parking lot of the twins’ school and let her go, as St. Ignatius doesn’t allow cell phones to be used on the premises, and it’s the kind of place where you follow the rules, because we need them more than they need us. I’m still not sure how Jeremy got the twins in when we’re pretty much the only parents here who didn’t attend St. Ignatius ourselves and couldn’t afford to build the school a new stadium if necessary. Jeremy comes from money, at least, but me? I spent my entire childhood moving from one guy’s trailer home to another guy’s apartment, and now—broke and soon-to-be-divorced—I don’t see myself fitting in any better.