The Language of Sycamores

Chapter 1

Life is like the little poster on the wall of the doctor's office—one of those inspirational quotes framed in misty pink flowers.

There are years that ask questions, and years that answer , it says. --Zora Neale Hurston .

It's not easy to be so profound when life actually starts asking questions you can't answer—not just one or two narrow questions, but a barrage of broad, complex, open-ended questions. A flood , my Grandma Rose would have called it. “Sometimes life goes by in a trickle, and sometimes life goes by in a flood,” she used to say. “It's in those rainy seasons, you find out how well you can swim.” When she said that, I had no idea what she meant. I never listened much to Grandma Rose. She had an old-fashioned, bible-thumping, show-me-state Baptist lecture on every subject, and she wasn't shy about dealing them out. I was busy, confident, on top of the world, a modern woman. I didn't have time to listen to what she was trying to tell me. My life was all about things I could program and control--microprocessors, and LAN networks, and wireless links that move at the speed of light.

I had no experience with realities that can't be controlled through data switches and efficiently-written code. I knew nothing about surviving a flood because I'd never been in one. I was safely entrenched—or in a rut—it depends on how you look at it. The problem with ruts is that when it starts to rain, ruts flood easily.

Things were, all-in-all, pretty good in my particular rut. Even with the trauma of September 11 th , and the fact that my husband is an airline pilot, we were fairly content. I had a good career, he had a good career. We had sufficient income for the things we wanted. We had friends, and activities, and, after a few years of living out in California on business, we were back in Boston , where I grew up and where we first met fourteen years ago on an incoming flight. We'd settled into a trendy converted loft in the old Leather District— the place to be, if you knew Boston well enough to get past the tourist hype. Sometimes, we'd both end up there on the weekend. Together.

The day I read that quote from Zora Neal Hurston was the day everything changed.

I was staring at the misty floral poster in Dr. Conner's office when he told me that my second set of tests hadn't come back normal. I didn't hear him at first—I was thinking that I needed to get back to the Lansing building for the two o'clock management meeting about the newest round of layoffs. If Dr. Conner didn't hurry up, I was going to be late. Why didn't doctors realize that everyone else's time was just as valuable as theirs?

“It could be cancer again, Karen,” he said.

That one word sliced through my consciousness with the silent swish of an arrow, bisecting everything I was thinking. Cancer. It could be cancer again, Karen. My mind rushed back eight years to the first time a doctor said that to me. Back to the day I miscarried the tiny baby that was growing inside me, and the doctor, during the D & C that followed, seemed concerned about more than just the miscarriage. He said the same thing then, It could be cancer. And it was. A lab test confirmed it.

Surgery removed the spots, and a hysterectomy took away the chance of ever having children, but it couldn't remove the guilt. It was my own fault for convincing myself that, since James and I weren't at the point of planning any children, I could skip the dreaded annual visit to the Gynecologist. Eventually, I'd skipped for so many years that I was afraid to go back. Even after I knew I was accidentally pregnant following our romantic seventh year anniversary trip to Fiji, I put off going to the doctor for a week, two, three, until ten weeks into the pregnancy, I started cramping and spotting, and I knew something was very wrong.

Now here we sat again, me with my stomach full of the old fear, and Dr. Conner looking at me in that regretful-but-businesslike way.

“Karen?” I realized he was talking to me.

“Wh… what?” I heard myself say. All I could do was stare at the pink poster on the wall.

“Don't start worrying yet. The biopsy is just a precaution, because the lab detected some inflamed cells on your slide. Seventy-five percent of uterine cancer reoccurrences occur within the first three years, and you've been cancer-free for eight years now. Odds are the tissue sample will come back negative, but we need to go ahead with it, just to be certain.”

“Today?” I muttered. I have to go to a management meeting. The company's doing a new round of layoffs today, I have to be there to tell my people…

“No, not today, but let's schedule it soon.”

“Sure,” I said, standing up and reaching for my purse in the chair, feeling my fingers close numbly over the handle. “I'll schedule it on my way out.”

Dr. Conner patted my shoulder again, ushering me through the door. “Good. No point spending time wondering and worrying. Let's just do the test, and that'll put the question behind us.”

There are years that ask questions. Years… “All right.” I started down the hall, and I could feel Dr. Conner watching me. Slowing as I came near the reception desk, I watched the doctor slip into another exam room. When he was gone, I just kept walking, past the desk, through the waiting room door, past the pregnant ladies in the uncomfortable chairs, through the plate glass exit, across the marble lobby where my heels echoed against the silence, and onto the Boston street. I stood there gulping air, leaning against the cool exterior of the building, feeling like I wanted to kick my shoes off and run… somewhere.

This is stupid, Karen, I told myself. You're overreacting because it's already a stressful day, because you're torqued up about the layoffs and the meeting. That's all. This test is nothing. It's nothing. It's routine, just to prove there isn't anything wrong.

Closing my eyes, I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing away the rush of blood in my ears, the blaring of car horns, the rumble of the subway passing somewhere underneath. I wished the day were over. I wished we were already through the meeting, where we would be given the layoff list, and through the inevitable aftermath of going from cubicle to cubicle quietly delivering bad news to the unlucky, telling them how sorry we were. Promising letters of reference and handing out severance packages as if that could somehow make up for the loss of a job you'd put your heart into.

“God, I hate this,” I muttered, even though the situation at Lansing Technology had nothing to do with God and everything to do with corporate higher-ups who spent too much, forged earnings reports too often, overextended credit, lined their pockets, and were desperate to save their own six-figure jobs . “This is so wrong.” Everything about this day felt wrong.

“I know.”

A voice echoed faintly against the doorway, breaking through the cacophony, and I jerked away from the wall, opening my eyes. A bag lady was standing there looking at me, her silver hair tied in a faded pink scarf that made her look like a fortune teller. Her eyes were blue and cloudy, folded like two small crystal balls among the dusky wrinkles of her face. She tapped her fingers against the handle of her shopping cart, pointing expectantly to her bucket of flowers. I assumed she was selling them.

“I'm sorry,” I said, when she just stood there looking at me. “I'm not interested today.”

Reaching into her bucket, she pulled out a rose, pink like her scarf, and tried to hand it to me.

I waved her off, repeating, “I'm not interested. I don't need one. I don't… have any change today.”

Frowning at me, she moved her lips like she was chewing on a thought. For just an instant, she reminded me of Grandma Rose, when she knew I was tuning out one of her lectures. I felt a pinch of conscience that said I should take the flower and hand the bag lady a few dollars.

I checked my purse. Nothing but fives, tens, and twenties. “I'm sorry, all I have is a…”

When I looked up, she was gone, disappearing down the street, probably headed toward Faneuil Hall, where the street preachers and the beggars and the pigeons hung out during the day, competing for tourist dollars and hand-outs from the lunch crowd. Pushing her cart at an aimless pace, she gazed up into the trees like she hadn't a care in the world. I wondered what it would be like to be her, ambling down the street studying the spring growth on the maples, no particular place to be.

The alarm beeped on my palm pilot, snapping me back to the real world, where I was going to be late for an important meeting if I didn't hurry the eight blocks back to the office. “Geez you're a space cadet today, Karen,” I muttered to myself. “Get with it.”

The pink rose was lying on the steps when I looked up, something soft and living, out of place against the hard concrete. Picking it up, I glanced down the sidewalk, where the bag lady had vanished into the crowd, then I turned and headed the other way toward the office.

By the time I'd walked the eight blocks, I was panting like I'd run a marathon, and my mind was fully back to reality. I was sweating under my suit jacket, not because it was unusually hot for spring in Boston , but because my mind was in overdrive and my stomach was churning with a mixture of nerves and hunger. No time to grab a late lunch. Only twenty minutes until the meeting, and I still had to grab the budget spreadsheets from my office, and make it back to the war room on the first floor. Should have skipped the doctor's appointment, I told myself. Should have known the appointment would run late. It seemed like a bad dream, Dr. Conner sitting there telling me about the tests. Abnormal results. Inflamed cells. Biopsy. How could this be happening now?

It had to be an erroneous test result—changes in my body brought on by stress, too much caffeine, and guzzling ibuprofen these past few months since the company's financial problems became public knowledge. It was no wonder my body was run down. After I got through the meeting today, I'd call Dr. Conner's office and schedule the biopsy, get it over with and prove I was OK. I wouldn't even bother telling James when he got back from his trip tomorrow night. There was no reason to worry him. After my first bout with cancer, he tended to overreact to any health issues, because his mother had died of cancer when he was young. After the biopsy is over and everything's all right, then I'll tell him.

The war room was already starting to buzz as I passed by. Brent Giani from Systems Support was waiting for an elevator when I turned the corner into the corridor. He glanced up at me with the wry grin of a techie genius who knew his job would never be on the line. “Funeral flowers?” He motioned, and I glanced down, realizing I was still carrying the rose.

“A bag lady gave it to me. Could be she knows something I don't know.” I held the flower against my chest like a corpse resting in a casket. Black humor, but Brent liked it.

He chuckled, reaching down to hike up his wrinkled khaki pants under a mid-section that had spent too many hours in a computer chair eating Bugles. He was missing a button halfway down his shirt. He probably knew it and didn't care. “You're not worried, are you?” He asked.

I thought about that as the elevator whizzed upward. “I wasn't worried on the last round, but if they're going to cut another 20 percent, that's deep. It isn't all going to be clerical help and people in sales, marketing, and HR. They're going to get some of us . They'll have to. It's the people in tech who make the big salaries.”

Brent shrugged, arrogant despite his rumpled pants and the button missing on his shirt. “It's the people in tech who keep the systems branch of this company going. Don't worry. They'll do the big cuts other places. They won't cut our people.”

I nodded, hoping his confidence came from inside information. Brent was always hacking into confidential company files and secret memos. “I hope you're right.” The elevator chimed seventh floor. “Revenues are down. That's what worries me. It's a hard market these days, less custom installations, more stuff going out plug and play or using local installers. That has a direct effect on my group, since we are custom installations.”

The elevator vibrated into place. Brent gave me a wink that said he knew something I didn't, and whispered, “Don't start worrying, yet,” just before the doors opened and I stepped into my department, where I could feel gazes following me, counting on me to make everything all right.

I hurried to my office, trying to look busy, but confident and calm. I didn't want anyone reading disaster in my expression, or my actions, which was the reason I hadn't canceled my doctor's appointment. It was easier to be there, reading magazines in the waiting room with the pregnant ladies, than here, walking on eggshells, trying not to watch everyone watching me. Hopefully right now they were thinking that if I could spend two hours at the doctor's office, there really couldn't be much to worry about back here at Lansing .

I hoped they were thinking that, and I wished I believed it. So far, the only person I'd had to lay off was a kid who'd only been with the company a few months as an installations tech. He decided to go back to college, so there wasn't much harm done. But looking around now, I couldn't imagine who else I would let go. Everyone in my department was good, dedicated, committed--a team, a family. They were all long-timers with the company. Long-timers with kids in private school, braces, college, with retirement funds and families that needed health insurance. People who had given this company, this department, me everything they had.

What would I do if I had to cut one, two, maybe even three positions? Who would I pick? How would I tell them?

Reaching for the folder on my desk, I realized I was still holding the bag lady's rose. I opened the desk drawer, setting the flower inside with my purse. It hardly seemed appropriate for the day—a cheerful pink rose, a symbol of friendship and good will. A soft, growing thing in this decaying tower of marble and machines.

Closing the drawer, I blocked out the thought, getting focused. A management meeting at Lansing was no place to be sentimental.

I took a minute to look over my budget proposal, getting the figures clear in my head, checking one last time for mistakes, muttering the words just as I would say them in my presentation. With authority, with confidence, just short of a demand—emphasis on all the right points. It was a good budget—a way to cut costs 10% without cutting any people. Assuming we picked up a few new accounts this year, we would bring in a solid profit, which was more than could be said for other departments. Besides, it was like Brent said. Tech built the company. They wouldn't cut us.

With that thought in mind, I headed for the door, feeling more like myself, ready to take on whoever and whatever got in my way at the meeting. By the time I reached the war room, I had squelched every last ounce of doubt within me. I didn't know how the rest of the meeting would go, but as for my part, I was going to make the brass an offer they couldn't refuse.

I settled into a chair next to Brent, and waited. He slid an agenda my way, silently pointing out the fact that Sales, Marketing, Admin, and Training had been scheduled to present first. We nodded at each other, taking that as a hopeful sign. Brent smirked wryly and made a quick throat-cutting gesture. It wasn't very nice, but no one in the room was feeling nice . Sales, Marketing, Admin, and Training were clustered on one side of the table, tech on the other, and the brass on the end by the door. Everyone was giving everyone else the look—the one that said, Hate it for you, but better you than me. The room had the feeling of a pool full of sharks just waiting for the first drop of blood to hit the water.

Two hours later, it looked like the meeting might not turn into a feeding frenzy, after all. The budget proposals, including mine, had been received fairly calmly. Every department had proposed cuts, and the VPs at the end of the table seemed receptive. In the corner, even the head number-cruncher appeared calm, leaning back in his chair, squinting at the rest of us over the top of his Gucci glasses, occasionally jotting details on a notepad.

He barely looked up as Miles Vandever, our interim CEO, rose from his chair, cleared his throat, and braced both hands on the table. “I'm going to be painfully honest,” he said, and I realized he was looking at me. “While I compliment all of these efforts at trimming budgets, the fact is that it's not enough. We've got a situation spiraling out of control and it's going to take drastic measures to keep the company out of bankruptcy.”

As if on cue, the head of accounting stood up, pulled out a stack of red folders, and began handing them around the table. All of a sudden I, and everyone else in the room, knew that all the budget talk had been only a formality. The brass had already made their decision.

Vandever went on. “In your hands, you have our plan for restructuring. To survive, we have to narrow the company's focus, get back to the things we've done and done well. It will mean cutting staff, reassigning some management, combining departments where there is overlap. I know it's hard, but these are lean times in the systems world, and this is what it's going to take. After you've looked over the material, please proceed to your departments and notify your people as necessary. In view of corporate security, the layoffs will be effective immediately. All affected parties will be asked to clear their desks. Personal items should be boxed and clearly marked. All boxes should remain unsealed, and may be either carried out today or labeled with an address for shipping. The network will be shut down this afternoon to protect corporate data, and there should be no copying of files from local machines onto magnetic media.” He checked his watch like a bombardier counting the seconds until his bomb hit the target. “A private security firm should be moving into place about now to see that everything goes smoothly, and to safeguard corporate interests. Security officers will be present on all floors and at exits.” He paused a moment, surveying the stunned faces, then added, “I'm sorry, everyone,” actually managing to look regretful, even though the cuts in the red folder undoubtedly didn't include any vice presidents.

Beside me, Brent was already staring open-mouthed at the contents of the folder. He didn't even seem to notice as Vandever and the rest of his cronies left the room. On the other side of the table, sales and marketing started to buzz. The Director of Admin slammed her folder against the table and stomped out of the room, and Field Training Manager slumped back in his chair like he'd been struck by shrapnel.

Beside me, Brent muttered, “This is crap,” then leaned over and held his folder open between us. “They're cutting tech support by one third. There's no way, especially with new installations…” He fell silent, looking first at my face and then at the paper in my hand—my page of the red notebook. The one that said my entire department was being cut. Including me.

“That can't be right,” he choked, poking a finger furiously at the paper, then flipping through his copy to see if it said the same thing.

“They're getting out of the custom networking business,” I muttered, as much to myself as to him. “This is it.” But even as I said the words, my mind couldn't assimilate the message. It couldn't be. It wasn't possible. I'd been with Lansing for fifteen years, started when it was tiny, worked my way up from a baseline slot as a PC programmer, climbed the ladder as the corporation grew. I'd moved out to California for four years to start a branch office on the west coast, then moved back without complaint when they decided they couldn't afford a west coast office.

I'd given the company everything I had, time after time after time. I'd watched it grow from a fledgling business in rented basement offices to a major player in systems, storage and custom networking, a corporation with a ticker on the NASDAQ and an eight-story marble building in downtown Boston. Every time I walked into the building, I had a heady sense of accomplishment. I had helped to build this company. I had a part in it. Lansing Technology was my first love.

All of a sudden, I was realizing that it didn't love me back. I was nothing more than a name on a list. Six months severance and a lump sum to buy out my retirement fund. Two hours to clean out my desk and a security officer to escort me off the premises like a criminal.

How could this be happening?

Beside me, Brent was saying that Lansing couldn't possibly be getting out of the custom networking business, they'd be crying at my door in three months, and I shouldn't worry. The words were meant to be comforting, but they didn't bring solace. My mind spun ahead to the inevitable question--How was someone who made my kind of salary going to find another job, especially in the current economy?

And what about the fifteen people who worked for me? How were they going to find jobs? Glancing at the sheet in my hands, I read the names and severance packages, some as low as only a few weeks' pay. No thank yous, no apologies. Just a paragraph reminding me that in the short space of two hours, we were supposed to quietly pack our boxes while security officers looked on, and leave for good.

Anger and indignation boiled into my throat, and my fingernails bit the chair arms until they throbbed with a dull, rhythmic pain. I wanted to pick up the chair and throw it through the plate glass window, scatter bits and pieces all over the lobby. Everything about this was wrong.

Closing my eyes, I tried to rein in my emotions. I had to keep control, to help my people through this the best way I could. “I've got to get upstairs,” I muttered. “I have to tell them before they hear it somewhere else.”

“Yeah, me too. I have to ax four software engineers and a documentation specialist.” Brent patted me on the shoulder, knowing that my problems went much deeper than his. “I'm sorry, Karen. If I'd caught any word of this buzzing around the network, I would have told you. They definitely kept it under wraps.”

I nodded. “I know, Brent. Thanks.” Standing unsteadily, I started toward the door, a sense of numbness spreading slowly through me, until I felt detached, as if I were watching the day like a bad movie about corporate greed and underhanded office politics.

I went through the afternoon with a sense of being out of body. I said the right things, called each one of my team members in and delivered the news, discussed severance packages, health insurance, new job possibilities, all with the door open so the grim-faced security officers could listen in. I offered sympathy and regret, anger at the corporation's lack of loyalty to long-time employees. I watched the henchmen checking boxes at the elevator and wondered how anyone could do that for a living.

But even as my co-workers carried out boxes, as one meeting ran into the next, as one hour passed and then another, as I packed my own personal belongings and labeled them so that they could be shipped to my house, I kept thinking that it wasn't true. This couldn't really be happening. I was in a nightmare, struggling to wake up to another normal day.

When it was over, I sat back in my chair, looked around my office, and for the first time in my life, felt completely worthless. What do you do when the thing you've put your time and effort, your heart and soul into, the thing that is the biggest part of who you are, is gone? Where do you go from there?

The office was empty and silent, yielding no answers. Kicking my desk drawer open, I reached in for my purse. My fingers closed instead over something soft and damp, alive. Pulling out the bag lady's rose, I gazed at it, remembering that forgotten part of the day, the appointment at Dr. Conner's office, the test results.

I couldn't even think about that now. I wanted to go home and lock the world outside. Grabbing my purse, I kicked the drawer shut and headed for the door. I didn't stop to see if anyone was still hanging around the cubicles, or to commiserate with the knot of shell-shocked employees in the lobby. I didn't wait to see if the security officer wanted to check my purse or briefcase. I walked right past them and out the door, striding faster and faster, running down the steps to the T, taking in the damp air in huge gulps, trying to leave everything behind. On the train, I sank into a seat, leaned my head against the window, and stared dimly at the increasing rhythm of light and shadow.

 

A thunderstorm was rumbling on the horizon when I got off at the Leather District. The sound echoed against the old brick warehouses, whipped along by an angry wind laden with dust and the scent of seawater. I didn't stop to listen to the musicians or grab a cup of cappuccino at South Station. I didn't linger by the windows of the art galleries, or stop in J's Deli for a beef and Swiss, or sit on the bench outside and marvel at the enormity of the converted leather tanneries. Instead, I ran blindly up the street, my breath coming in short, quick gasps, tears clouding my eyes so that the storm and the people on the sidewalk were nothing more than a blur. By the time I reached our door on the lower level of a small building that had once housed tannery offices, lightning was crackling sideways across the clouds, and the air smelled of saltwater spray. Turning the key in the lock, I slipped into safe haven and bolted out the wind and the clouds.

The growl of thunder followed. Desperate to drown out the sound, the reality, I sat down at the antique piano in the entry, and did something I hadn't done in years.

I began to play music.