Today
Today is going to be the greatest day ever.
I remember telling myself that when I was in school and the day turning out to be a dud. In various times and places in my life, today didn’t turn out the way I thought or hoped it would.
These were the times when I should have stopped believing in the God of my childhood, took a U-turn and attacked life from another perspective. But I never learn.
I never learned when I was playing Chinese garter and my playmate tripped the elastic so I fell head first into the concrete flooring of the schoolyard. I wouldn’t stop bleeding for hours.
I never learned when the bullies dunked me head first into the toilet in the faculty CR (the water is colder there because of the air conditioning). I was dunked a total of 3,456 times during my entire stay in that school.
I never learned when a sorority novice took all my books in college and made a bonfire of them over which we roasted marshmallows and made smores. My participation was vital in the public humiliation ritual. Strangely, it felt like I was the one being humiliated.
I never learned when they attached an empty can to my dress during college graduation and everybody cheered when I went up to the stage, dragging the tin behind me to the heckling of my batch mates.
I never learn.
So when I started my first job as a receptionist in this really great building in the central business district, I brought with me all the optimistic hopes and good intentions I have been carrying as my baggage since I was little.
See, I am a self taught optimist. My home life was crap. I lived with a mom who liked to gamble everything in sight and was biologically predisposed to bet on everything (“Bet you this roach will die as soon as I cut its head off”—it didn’t). I suspect that if I fetched a price she’d bet me in the casinos.
Dad is a drunk. I will not elaborate, except say that he is not the kind of drunk that can really hold alcohol well. He pukes every three beers.
Mom and Dad can’t have any children so they took care of other people’s children. There were eight of us kids in their households, some the children of neighbors who had to work abroad for a living, others are the product of a marriage that husband and wife got tired of. In this menagerie I didn’t know where I belonged. Nobody knew who my parents were or how I came to be here. There was a theory going round when I was in third grade that I was the product of the earth and rain’s copulation. I sprang from a geyser, my sisters and brothers would tease.
So how would such a dysfunctional household produce a stubborn optimist like me?
I like to read, and starting from when I was little, I was attracted to stories that had themes of good winning over evil and the knight in shining armor winning the day.
I liked the story about the Archangel Michael driving Satan away from Paradise after a fight.
I like the retelling of the Cinderella story in the movie Ever After starring Drew Barrymore where the wicked stepmother and stepsister were given their just desserts.
I like to read my Bible, especially the part where Jesus resurrects from the dead and ascends to heaven.
I like happy endings.
So now, as I start with my first job here in this towering glass building, I bring with me the optimism of my childhood and my faith in God and all that is good in the human race.
I smile as I hand out guest IDs and ask visitors to register in the guestbook. I assist those who are confused by the information they need to fill out. I nod and acknowledge those who have permanent building passes who go through the metal detector. Until he came along.
His ID says Phillip Anthony Norman and it indicates that he is the Chairman of the company housed in the building across the street.
I detain him and ask him to get a guest pass and register. He smirks and says, “I own the building across the street. What do I need to register for? I always get past security without having to be checked. Are you new here? You smell new.”
“Sorry sir, but rules are rules. Maybe you can ask your Club to issue a permanent pass so you won’t have to register every time,” I replied, smiling still but wishing I could kick his seventy year old butt.
“Oh alright, but let it be known that I am only doing this because you are not worthy of being in an argument with,” he conceded.
He came to the building every day, but he still did not ask for the guest pass from the establishment he visited there. I would have acquiesced at some point that he need not register anymore because he did have face value in the building. Everybody knew him and they did give him special treatment.
I would have acquiesced had he been not determined to make my life hell. Sometimes he’d steal my pens just to make my life difficult. Once I made the mistake of lending him my vintage Waterman ballpoint and the sneak did not return it. When I asked for it back, he was all nonchalance and pretended he did not hear.
Another time, he brought a hundred employees with him and made them register just for the heck of it. It took me two hours to get them all through.
There was also a time when he spilled chili and lemonade on my guestbook. Deliberately, you could tell. I wanted to cry then but I wasn’t going to let him get my goat.
Because I was the way I was, his antics did not annoy me or instigate wrath and vengeance in my heart. I felt…compassion for the poor old fart who would stoop so low as to play mind games with a receptionist. I mean, come on, what kind of Chairman thinks up new ways of making a lowly receptionist miserable every day? I thought, he must be really screwed up.
Today would be the greatest day ever, I said to myself to celebrate my first year at work. I survived a year of hell in the hands of an evil geriatric and I was dang proud of myself.
I waited for Mr. Norman that day, but he did not show up. I waited for him the next and the next and the next but still no Mr. Norman. I got curious. Did he finally kick the bucket?
I thought of him in a sickbed, but the image didn’t fit. I thought he seemed so indomitable he’d scare away disease.
I gave in to my curiosity and dialed the number on his guestbook registration. A cultured voice greeted me with his company name and her name.
“Hello,” I said. “This is Elizabeth Jones. I am the receptionist in the building across yours and I know Mr. Norman. I am just worried about him. We haven’t seen him in a while. Do you have news?”
“Oh. So that’s your name,” the voice on the other end answered. “Mr. Norman took time off indefinitely; his daughter was diagnosed with cancer. He’s taking care of her.”
“I see. Well, is there any way I can visit? Can I get his home address?”
“I’ll ask him first. Call me same time tomorrow,” I was told.
I got his home address the next day and the hospital where his daughter was confined. I made sure the daughter was still in the hospital before I went over the weekend.
“You! I thought I saw the last of you. What are you doing here?”
“Well, I missed your antics,” I said tartly. “I wanted to know what you were up to.”
Then, “I’m sorry about your daughter.”
He did something I did not expect him to do. He gathered me in his arms in a hug and cried silently on my shoulder. It must have been uncomfortable because he was taller than me by at least ten inches.
“Whoa!” I said, rubbing his slim back.
“Elizabeth, I can call you that can I? My daughter and I were estranged before she fell ill. Now I am praying that she live a little longer so I can spend some time with her,” he said, tears still streaming down his face.
“I got a call from the States last week, telling me that my daughter had ovarian cancer. They said she put me down as next of kin in her papers. That’s when it hit me, she could change jobs, change boyfriends or girlfriends, change her name, but even through those changes she cannot change the fact that I am her father.”
That’s how it started he said, their estrangement. His daughter started dating women and eventually told him she was lesbian. He couldn’t accept it and he banished her. He said if she did not leave the country, he would. So she left.
I wish I could tell you Mr. Norman got his wish, but it was too late for him. His daughter died that same year. He stopped coming to our building. Actually, he retired from work and refused to visit the Club in our building, saying it was to snooty for his tastes anyway. That if he didn’t have to take out his clients there, he wouldn’t go there.
There’s a McDonald’s behind our building. I take my lunch there whenever my foster sister forgets to prepare me something for the day. He treats me to a Big Mac too, there, once a week. But there are nice restaurants about and we eat in at least four every weekend.
I can tell he is trying to make up for the time he lost with his daughter by spending time with me. I don’t mind being a proxy. I am just glad I did not write him off as a crazy old coot. Which he is, it’s just apart from that, if you get to know him, he’s a really great guy.
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