Remember to follow, vote, and comment!
Evening rolls in, black and clear as midnight at 6 o'clock. I make a dinner omelet for one and clear away the dishes, then set up on the couch. Austin's key in the lock makes my ears prick up.
"Hiiii..." Comes his familiar, exhausted greeting from the back hall as winter chill oozes into our living room.
I look up guiltily from the bowl of cheap rocky road ice cream that I've been nursing.
"Hi," I say around a mouthful as he sheds his heavy coat and boots. He sighs and enters the bright, cozy room I inhabit and leaves the darkness and cold of the hall behind. He flops down on the sofa beside me and gently takes the spoon from my hand. He scoops half the remaining treat from the bowl and gobbles it before I react.
"Hey!" I say. He smiles as the spoon comes cleanly out of his mouth.
"It's been a long shift," he offers as explanation.
It stays the argument perched on my tongue. I attempt to remember that whatever strife I feel, once during the long school days and now during the long, empty hours of unemployment, that I don't have to see blood, innards, and save people in the middle of thirty-hour shifts.
I try to picture what he has to go through and can't, so I hand him the bowl. He eats frantically, like a dog at his chow, not stopping to say 'thank you'.
As he does, I reconstruct in my mind all that's happened between now and the last time I saw him. Although he knows that I lost my job, he decided we'd ignore it until after his shift rotation. I was happy with the suggestion at the time, but I'm restless now. There's no way we can let this go much longer.
I think of what to say as I leave him with the ice cream and head to the kitchen. There's not much in the cupboards: a packet of noodles, a couple eggs, some frozen peas. But it's enough to make a quick soup.
When I bring it to him, the white bowl dripping milky brown lays abandoned on our ancient, busted-up coffee table: the one we found on a sidewalk one day. The one I looked forward to replacing when we finally bought a home of our own. Meanwhile, his eyes are glazed over. Likely reading the news that casts itself directly onto his retinas via his I-yes.
"Austin," I say his name as gently as I can and he snaps abruptly out of his digital stupor.
"Dessert first, nice!" He says when he sees the steaming bowl of egg and noodle soup and the clean spoon I set before him. He takes it up and ladles broth into his maw before I have a chance to warn him. "Ouch, hot!" He sets it back down on the table and sinks into our couch.
Now's the time. Before he melts away from me, into his personalized world of digital ephemera.
"Austin," I say a nanosecond before he logs back on. His head whips to the side, eyes locked on mine. "There's been some news."
"Oh, yeah?" He's alert now, eager. "About your job?"
"Yeah." I tear off the band aid as quick as I dare. There's rumors, I emphasize. Nothing more. But unions may soon be obsolete. The most insidious type of rumor, the kind that devolves into theories of conspiracy: ones that seem plausible, next door neighbors to reality.
He listens placidly, and when I've talked myself out he picks up the bowl of soup and takes a tentative sip.
Then he puts it back down.
"I mean," he starts. "It's just a rumor, right?"
"I guess so. I just want us to be prepared."
He nods. He likes to be prepared. "But I wouldn't give up on your union just yet. They're not going anywhere."
I'm amazed by his sangfroid.
"Yeah, of course."
"So what's next?"
"I..." I haven't even considered the question. "I don't know. Just wait, I guess."
"Is that really all you can do?"
No, I think. I can help Chris.
"I guess," I say instead. "I haven't heard anything about this from the union."
"There's really nothing else?" He asks. "What about... I don't know, what about government support?"
"What, the government that wants to take out my union?"
"You can't know that for sure. And like, what, you've been paying for employment insurance for what? Your health?"
He has a point, and one I hadn't thought about. As I often do during our conversations, I immediately log into my I-yes. My AR workstation flickers as it materializes in my vision, and as fast as thought I look up employment insurance and its benefits, beyond the weekly payouts.
"They have employment centers. The government, I mean –"
"Ok, well, let's go do that," Austin says with finality.
"What, now?"
"When else?"
"Austin," I point to the darkness beyond our windows as my I-yes turn off.
"Right. Well, first thing tomorrow?"
I hate when he gets like this. All paternalistic, all decision, all dictation. As if I'm just going to go along with what he says, no questions asked. He should know me better than that, he should know by now it's not who I am. What happens if our life together goes on as we planned? Will he pick our house and tell me that I'll be happy with it? Will he tell me when it's time to have kids? Will he pick how many?
He's not always like this. Not even usually. But when he adopts that tone...it makes me want to dig in my heels. Despite my better judgement, I react with rebellion.
"Yeah, I don't know."
"You don't know... what? Do you want to be out of work, Andrea?"
"Look, we can talk about this tomorrow, okay? You're tired, I'm tired, and I don't want to say something we'd regret."
"What do you mean by that?" I can tell by his tone that I've stepped in it.
"I just... look, I know. I know what you're saying. I have to take advantage of everything I can. Every program I can. I just..."
"You just... what?"
"The last time we talked about this... the last time I took your advice, I wound up signing an illegal contract. One that even the union didn't want to defend. I just have to take a minute and think this through. I just need to sleep on it. I need to figure out what my next step and decide that... for myself."
"But it's not just for yourself, is it? This is my life too, Andrea. I thought we were on the same page. I thought we wanted the same things. We want a house, don't we?"
"Yeah, of course. I just –"
"Then we both have to make sacrifices. I'm saving every cent I can. You know I am. Hell, we eat ramen," he points to the bowl of broth, egg, noodle, and peas that moments ago, I was so proud of whipping together. "I just need you to do this one thing for me. Please."
I look at him then. His striking eyes in his ginger-tinged face. Whatever tone he adopts, he must know somewhere deep down the power he has over me. The fact that I could never say no to him.
I reluctantly nod. "Yeah, okay. I'll go tomorrow."
#
As I get ready the next morning, I realize it's officially been a week since I lost my teaching gig. I pad quietly around the apartment, trying my best to let Austin rest on his day off.
I slip out the backdoor, and crunch through the snow in the alley. Austin's words from the night before come back to me in echoes through my consciousness. "Ok, well, let's go do that," as if he had anything to do with it. As if he's the one slinking out of bed at sunrise, shivering in the kitchen over a cup of bad coffee.
Another voice echoes, overlapping with his. "I won't rest until I get your job back for you." Chris - his tone gentle, remorseful, earnest. It distills from a thought to a memory, freezing there as if the weather affects my consciousness.
It doesn't take me long to get to the employment center, it's walking distance from our duplex. But my toes have already frozen in my boots when I arrive.
After a brief intake session, I'm escorted to the desk of a career counselor. Becky. She's a stout, sagging brunette in her mid-fifties. She's ensconced in the cheap metal desk chair behind her shoddy pine desk. My interview with her is not going well.
"What about providing corporate training?" I ask. "Or writing curriculum for corporation education? Couldn't I do something like that?"
She pokes at the tablet laying flat on her desk. It's an aging, boxy rectangle that's got a physical rather than virtual touch screen. "I'm afraid you don't have the right skill set. Not quite," she replies. "But I think I have the information somewhere here..." She nudges at the screen a few more times. It casts a blue light up onto her face. "Yes, here it is. There's a course that you could take to upgrade your skills."
"How much?" I ask flatly.
"Well, let me just..." she trails off. "Here is it. Seventy thousand, nine hundred ninety-seven."
"How much?" I've gone temporarily deaf.
"Seventy thousand, nine hundred ninety seven dollars. Oh, and ninety-nine cents."
I blink rapidly. I studied so hard to be a teacher. I took out loans to get through school. Six years of training: four undergrad, two in teacher's college. I worked three part-time jobs, one of them was always a tutoring gig. They made up the deficit left by the loans I am still paying off.
And after I finally got my dream job? I diligently continued taking courses as my professors told me I should. At five thousand dollars each, I'd taken six-week courses in literacy learning, special education, even French instruction. It was an investment in my career. There was nothing I wouldn't do to be a good teacher. And then the rug had been pulled out from under me for lower taxes and for profitability's sake. For the children, and the future they can look forward to. The one I can't envision.
I can feel the emotion within me about to bubble over. I sigh long and deep to cool it.
"You're kidding?" I ask at last.
"I'm afraid not," Becky looks at me from over her bifocals.
"Okay." I decide to play along. "And what will that get me?"
"It will be an opening into the world of corporate training. It could mean another career for you."
"What if I don't want another career?"
"I'm afraid you don't have much of a choice." Her tone is like that of a mother to a willful child.
I look around the office. The paint on the cinder block walls was once white but now it's grey. The room is crammed with cubicles and filled with aging furniture. Some of the offices are separated by rusting metal filing cabinets that are probably empty. The carpets are a dated beige and are stained with circles of brown.
"Would you want a different career?" I ask Becky.
The stern look falls from her face. "We're not here to talk about me, are we?"
"Yeah. But really, would you want to just leave everything and start all over?"
"You're young. It won't be hard for you." One of my hands rests on her desk and she reaches to pat it. I rip my hand from the surface and slide it onto my lap uneasily.
"I'm not that young. What if I had children?" I feel myself growing hysterical. I need to leave. "It could happen to you. You sit there thinking it couldn't. That's what I was like. Then one day you'll have to come back here and get advice about a second career from a machine!"
I'm shouting as I stand abruptly. People look over the tops of their cubicles at me. I grab my bulky winter coat from the back of the chair. Becky gestures for me to wait.
"Andrea, I –"
"You're going to be replaced." I look around the room, at the fluorescent lights arranged in long rows across the ceiling. "You're all going to be replaced!" I scream at everyone in the shabby room as I rush for the door.
To be continued in Chapter 18...