The Sweetest Revenge Page 5

  I had appointments with the physical therapist every day that first week back at work. I had to leave at three, which really seemed to piss Sheila off. Hell, I was doing my best. Since when was it a crime to have an accident and need physical therapy?

  The atmosphere in the advancement department had taken on a decided chill. It was obvious that Sheila was angry with me, but there was nothing I could do about it. After three weeks of therapy, I was doing much better. But I was still on crutches and would be until I no longer needed the cast.

  I did my work every day, overseeing the communications department and assigning tasks. I wrote and edited copy for the annual alumni magazine, as I had done for fifteen years. I oversaw the production of brochures and postcards. I did everything as I always had, because once I was ensconced at my desk, I put my crutches to the side and got to work.

  After a month or so, the cast came off permanently but I had to walk with a cane. I felt like an old lady as I walked down the hall to my office. I’m pretty sure I saw pitying glances my way. After a week limping with the cane, I felt that I would always have a limp. I couldn’t imagine not walking with a limp, it had become so much a part of me. I imagined that I would have a cane forever, and if not forever, then definitely when I got older.

  Sheila had become more and more edgy. She had taken to arriving at the office at eight, and if I was a few minutes late because things were more difficult for me to manage, she said something about it. Sheila’s attitude did not go unnoticed by the rest of the staff. They began to alienate themselves from me. It was subtle, but obvious. There were no more chats in the coffee room, for example. I hobbled in, got my cup while staff members were huddled together, not acknowledging my presence. I had lost power all around, even though I was the head of the communications department. Carly was the only one who spoke to me.

  And then came the day that Sheila called me into her office. I walked out of my office, using my cane, and walked down the hall to Sheila’s office. I felt the eyes of the staff on me as I made that long trip. I walked into to Sheila’s office.

  “Close the door,” she commanded after I entered. I knew this wasn’t going to be good.

  I closed the door and sat down in the leather chair opposite her desk. Sheila sat there with her hands folded and looked at me.

  “Your performance has not been satisfactory for the past several months,” she said without any preamble. “We are going to have to let you go.”

  Anger boiled up in me. “Are you kidding me?” I said trying to control my rage. “I’ve been here for fifteen years! I’ve given my all to this department.”

  “Still,” the bitch said. “You are no longer meeting expectations. We are offering you a three-month compensation package.”

  “Screw your package,” I said standing up with a little difficulty. “And screw you.”

  I made my way to Sheila’s door and walked out of her office. I went straight to my office and began to pack up my personal belongings. There wasn’t much. I’d never been one to decorate my office with family photos and works of art like other people—namely Sheila—did. Sheila stood in my doorway as I went through my stuff, watching my every move. I put everything I had into a plastic bag I had in my desk in case of emergencies. I left the Christmas cactus that had been a gift several years before from my co-workers. I walked past Sheila, my plastic bag in one hand, my cane in the other.

  “This isn’t the end of this,” I said to Sheila. She didn’t even do me the courtesy of looking me in the face.

  When I got home, I threw the plastic bag on the kitchen floor and sat at the table. Only then did I let my angry tears fall. I wept bitterly. I wept for my marriage, for the children I would never have, for the friends I had lost, for my house I had loved, and for my job—the final thing I could call my own.

  Chapter Ten

  I was so angry at Sheila. The next day after my firing I called Wesley and told him what happened.

  “I think you’ve definitely got a case of wrongful termination,” he said. “You’re dealing with a state institution and it doesn’t sound like they followed protocol on this.”

  “Can you help me?” I asked him.

  “Employment law is not my specialty,” he said. “I specialize in divorce. But I can recommend someone to you. Let me give her a call and I’ll call you back, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. I sat fuming on the couch for a long time. Finally, I got up and limped into the kitchen to make some tea. Midnight, my eternal friend, was in the kitchen to greet me with her meows. I rubbed her neck and got her a plate of food.

  Wesley called back at the end of the day. “I’ve talked to Janice Hobbs and she wants to talk to you,” he said. “She went to a different university and has no conflicts about representing you. She’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Janice Hobbs called me the next morning and I explained everything to her. I had worked for the development department for fifteen years. I had broken my foot, which required me to miss some work to go to physical therapy. I had the sick time, I told her.

  “So this Sheila person just fired you without any warnings whatsoever?” Janice asked.

  “Well, she had been grumbling about some days I had been late due to my having difficulty getting around. I tried to explain to her about that. But I worked over every day I was late and she knew that.”

  “Sounds like Sheila had it in for you,” Janice said.

  “I think so,” I said. “But I don’t know why. I’ve always been a good employee. I don’t understand it.”

  “Sometimes,” Janice said, “when an employee suffers a calamity, the supervisor begins to look on the employee as a weakened person. They go after them. That’s just my opinion, mind you. But I’ve seen it happen over and over in the years I’ve been dealing with employment law. It’s sad, but I think it’s true. Has there been anything else that might have made Sheila see you as a weak person?”

  “I have gone through a divorce recently,” I said. “I was married to a prominent lawyer. Jim Sullivan.”

  Janice drew her breath in. “Yes, I know him. I went up against him in a contract case last year and lost.”

  That didn’t make me feel any better.

  “I’m thinking,” Janice said, “that your divorce and your subsequent accident caused you to be weak in Sheila’s eyes. That’s what I think happens a lot in these employment cases where the employee is long term. I can’t use that theory in a court of law, of course.”

  “Of course not,” I said, wondering what I’d gotten myself into.

  “But you’ve definitely got a case, there’s no doubt about that,” Janice said. “And I’ll drive the point home that they fired you after you had an accident and after your years of service to the university.”

  That sounded good to me. “Okay,” I said.

  “I’ve got trial for the next two weeks,” Janice continued. “Can you come to my office week after next and we’ll hammer everything out?”

  “Yes,” I told her. Janice seemed a little loopy, but Wesley had recommended her, and that meant a lot.

  The thing about it was, I didn’t have to work. I had the assets worth nearly half a million, I had the house free and clear and when I sold it I would have four hundred thousand dollars, minus the realtor’s fee, and I received a regular alimony check of four thousand dollars a month from Jim. But the other thing about it was that I had worked hard for the university. I considered myself a working person. It gave me a sense of value. So I couldn’t let the university get away with such shabby treatment.

  Knowing that I had done all I could for the moment, I allowed myself to enjoy my time as a nonworking person. As I sat in the den or limped through the house, I wondered sometimes how the office was functioning without me. I wondered how the brochures were being handled, the databases for mailing the brochures, the press releases. All of those things I supervised in my job as director of communications. But I didn’t have that job anymore, I reminded myself over and o
ver.

  At the end of the week, Melissa called to say she had some interested buyers for my house. They wanted a second look. That was a big pain, since I was relaxing in my house unemployed. But I had to make accommodations. I had, after all, put the house on the market.

  Melissa made arrangements to bring the buyers by the next day. I decided I’d go to the movies during that time. I hadn’t been to a movie theater in years, not since that movie with Zoey Deschanel and Marky Mark. I couldn’t remember the name of the strange movie about the wind blowing and people going crazy.

  I looked at the theater offerings on the Internet and decided to see The Lone Ranger, even if it had gotten terrible reviews. I loved Johnny Depp, so reviews be damned. It was Disney! How bad could it be?

  I spent the rest of the day watching television. I tried to determine if the male guests on Maury Povitch were or were not the father of the baby. I played Jeopardy, doing pretty well. I scanned for movies and dropped in on a few in progress, watching the last half or even fifteen minutes of some of them. All in all, it was a full day.

  Midnight started to meow, letting me know it was time for her supper. I opened a can of her expensive gourmet cat food and set her plate on the floor. I looked in the fridge for something to eat. There wasn’t much—three eggs and a half dried brick of cheddar cheese.

  Midnight was eating better than I was.

  When Jim and I were married, the refrigerator was well-stocked with condiments lining the door shelves, eggs, several varieties of cheese—Jim loves cheese—luncheon meat, yogurt, cream for our coffee, milk for Jim’s cereal, fresh vegetables, imported beer, wine, and any number of leftovers from the fantastic meals I made.

  In the latter years of our marriage, my cooking was just about all I had to offer to Jim that he wanted. He rarely wanted sex, and that was actually fine with me. I didn’t want his hands touching my rolls of fat; I didn’t want to be naked in front of him. I guess I thought I could make up for it all with a pan of lasagna.

  Out of all the things I cooked on a regular basis, I was known for my lasagna. If we had people over for dinner, which we used to do regularly until the last five years, I always made lasagna and served it with a fresh leaf lettuce salad and garlic bread. If we were attending an event where we were required to bring a dish, it was always the lasagna.

  As I stood staring into the fridge, I realized I hadn’t made lasagna in a year. I was going to have to get the ingredients for that the next time I went to the grocery store, which would have to be soon given the contents of the fridge. I decided to make scrambled eggs with grated cheddar. I drank a glass of chardonnay while I scraped the eggs in the non-stick skillet.

  I settled in front of the TV with my meal and was lucky to find Sleeping with the Enemy right after it had started. I loved the beginning of that movie where Julia Roberts outsmarts her abusive husband and fakes her own death. My heart soared with victory as she made her way across the country wearing a black wig.

  I saved some eggs for Midnight and put the plate on the floor for her to lick. She obliged. When she had removed every semblance of food, she rubbed around my ankles before jumping on the couch to join me.

  Julia Roberts was painting the kitchen cabinets in her new cottage by that time. I had seen the movie many times, and my mind began to wander. I looked at the heart-pine country mantle and remembered Jim in the garage, stripping it of its chipped paint before he lovingly rubbed it with a honey colored wax mixture and buffed it with a soft cloth. That was back when Jim liked to do things with his hands. It hurt to look at the mantle. I supposed I would be leaving it with the house when I moved.

  I resented that I had to move, but Jim had left me no choice. It would have been difficult enough to stay in the home we had created together, but finding Jim in the spare room with Kimberly had completely ruined the house for me.

  I resented that Midnight would have to make a move and become an indoor cat. She was ten years old and used to going in and out. She had her favorite spots—a place on the patio that got afternoon sun, underneath a privet bush near the back fence, in the deep monkey grass so that I couldn’t even see her.

  Julia Roberts was visiting her mother in the nursing home when I finally succumbed to sleep. In my dream, I was walking—no floating—through the house. I floated upstairs and looked into the spare bedroom. It was painted a sky blue color and it had a new bed with a wrought iron headboard. I floated to the master bedroom, which was painted a golden color. The bed, which was on a different wall, had a plush golden comforter spread on it. Downstairs, the couch in the den was a slate blue color and the television was hung on the wall. Everything was different in the house that I knew so well.

  When I woke up at 3:47, I had made my decision. I made a pot of coffee before turning on the TV. I watched the entire previous season of “Dexter” I had missed due to the chaos in my life. It was the only show Jim and I had watched with any regularity.

  At nine, I called the realtor.

  “I’m taking the house off the market,” I told her. Complete silence on her end.

  “Look,” I said. “I’m sorry about this. But I realized last night that I can’t handle a move right now. When I decide to put it back on the market, I’ll call you first, I promise.”

  “I’m a little stunned,” Melissa finally said. “I thought you couldn’t wait to get out of there.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “But since I broke my foot and lost my job. . . .”

  “You lost your job?” Melissa said.

  “Yes. They fired me. I’m just not in a good position to move right now. And then there’s my cat.”

  “Your cat?” Melissa sounded truly confused.

  “Yes, my cat. If I move right now, her life will change completely and I don’t want to do that to her.”

  “Okay,” Melissa said uncertainly. “I’ll let the Danigers know it’s off the market.”

  “Thank you for everything,” I said. “I’m really sorry.”

  Once I had taken care of that unpleasant business, I sat at my computer and researched companies that handled estate sales. That was the time that I really needed a friend, someone to guide me, give me suggestions, but apparently I had no real friends. Apparently, our friends were really Jim’s friends because not a single one called me when he abandoned me. I had gone through the early, difficult days of my divorce on my own.

  The cheerful woman at Estate Sales, Inc. said she could send someone over that afternoon to look over the items in my house and set up a time to have the sale. I would need to clean the house a little before that happened, but first I took a shower and washed my hair. It had gotten longer in the six months since Jim had been gone. I liked the feel of it as it flowed down my back.

  When Rudolf from Estate Sales, Inc. arrived I was ready for him. I knew exactly what I would sell and exactly what I would not sell. We walked through each room and I pointed out a painting of a country farmhouse my parents had given me and said it would not be sold. The bedside table in my bedroom was from my grandmother and would not be sold. Various vintage pieces from my grandmother would not be sold.

  When all was said and done, everything that Jim and I had bought together would be sold. That amounted to most of what was in the house. I would be left with very little furniture or knick-knacks and other decorative pieces.

  “What about jewelry?” Rudolf asked.

  I had already decided to sell my most expensive pieces, including my engagement ring, which sat in the jewelry box now, at a reputable jeweler on consignment. But I had other less expensive pieces Jim had bought me over the years that could go on the block. I showed those pieces to Rudolf.

  “We can definitely sell those,” he said.

  I showed him the set of Lenox fine china Jim and I had received as wedding gifts and added to over the years. White with a fine gold trim around the edges, beautiful in it’s simplicity. I showed him the crystal glasses. I had rarely used the china and crystal, but it had been nice
to have when I wanted a more formal setting, such as that Thanksgiving eight years ago when my parents visited. The Chantilly silver set had belonged to my grandmother and would not be part of the sale. Rudolf took photos of everything.

  When we were finished going through the house, Rudolf said, “You’ve got some great pieces here that I’m sure will sell. Did you say you’re moving?”

  “No, I’m not moving,” I said. “Just cleaning house.”

  We made arrangements to have the sale a week from Saturday. That would give Estate Sales, Inc. ample time to properly advertise it. That gave me time to move items I didn’t want to sell into the spare bedroom. Not a place I wanted to go, but it was necessary.

  Over the next week, I threw myself into moving things into the spare room. After the sale, I would need a new couch, so I went to Fine Southern Furniture on the edge of campus and looked at their selection. They got their furniture from Hickory, North Carolina, so I knew it was well made. I wandered through their shop, which was located in a historic home on a shady street. Each room in the house was set up like rooms in real houses, so you could get a feel of what the furniture really looked like.

  I wandered through the front of the house, looking at the couches. There were mostly floral prints and not what I was looking for.

  “We can order you any fabric you want,” the saleswoman said. “I’ve got all the fabric samples in the back.”

  As I was following her through the last decorated room I noticed a couch against the left wall. I walked over to it. It was a slate blue color, just like the couch in my dream. It had a chaise on one end and the other end was a recliner. The middle seat was stationary. I sat in the recliner and pulled the lever on the side. I sat back and settled in the seat. It was comfortable. I pulled the recliner back down and sat on the middle section before I moved to the chaise part. I could envision Midnight on the chaise, enjoying an afternoon nap. The fabric was micro fiber, so it would be very durable and stain resistant.