The Butchers Daughter
It had to be my second day on the job. We passed each other in the hall; her walking with a couple of co-workers and I headed to the cafeteria were I would discover that they were still feeding adults the same grayish patties that had been fed to us since the first grade and had always been best described as ‘hamburger-like’. It was one of the few times in my life where I have actually been brought to utter speechlessness and the only time that wasn’t the result of coming over the top of a remote ridge line and taking in a magnificent landscape or stepping in to the nave of a Gothic cathedral and feeling like God had just welcomed me in for the grand tour. It is her beautiful black curls that I see first. The distance between us closes in, I bring my eyes to hers and there is a slight glimmer of recognition. It was the start of an internal conversation that I would carry on with her to this day. A conversation that at first existed only in my head, migrated to actual inter-locutions for a brief, surreal moment and has now receded in to the deep interiors of my mind. A place reserved for misty mountain lakes, the touch of God and the butcher’s daughter.
I live in one of those cities in Middle America where everyone is separated by a matter of just a few degrees. Mike and I first met in Mrs. Park’s kindergarten class. His house was the first that my mom let me ride to on my bike all by myself as he lived just a few streets over in our tree lined suburban subdivision. In the years to follow Mike, myself and the rest of our crew would run these streets with slingshots tucked under our shirts, Rollerblades strapped to our feet and stolen cans of beer rattling around in our backpacks as we ran through gardens and hurdled fences; narrowly evading the cops and breathing a sigh of relief when we finally slid back beneath the sheets, laughing ourselves to sleep. Michael A. had always been the most grown up of our tight group of three. While my biggest requirement in a college was that they offered a student discount on ski-passes, Mike looked for a solid Business Administration program. While I was back putzing around at community college after a fun-filled year of skiing and backpacking, Mike was taking internships and meeting his future wife. While Mike found a great job with one of the city’s most respected employers, I decided to take an English teacher job in Europe. So it was that I found myself coming back to my hometown; a broke, car-less college grad that could speak French, ski moguls and quote Joyce but was pretty much lacking in any skill that could be effectively parlayed in to health insurance and an apartment of my own. My job search consisted of exactly two interviews. The first was a call center rep for some company that I had never heard of but needed someone that could take calls from their customers in Quebec. The next and final interview was with the HealthCare system that Mike worked for. As I was waiting in the reception area of the HR department I noticed some recruitment advertisements hanging on the walls and flashing on the screens of the computer terminals lining one side of the office. Their employment slogan was something along the lines of ‘Only the Best’ and I immediately knew that I was screwed.
I am sure I was hired partly due to the fact that my aunt's friend personally knew the HR Director and mostly due to the fact that the hiring manager, a woman that I could only describe as grandmotherly, had a photograph of Paris taken from the heights of Montmartre hanging on the wall behind her desk.
“I recognize that picture. You must have taken it from the little look-out point just beneath Sacré-Coeur.”
“I sure did! Don’t you just love Paris?”
In fact I didn’t love Paris but decided it best to reign in my negativity. Two minutes in to the interview and I knew the job was mine. Maybe that year abroad wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
A few weeks after I started, Mike left the company to take a Business Manager position with a group of radiologists and invited me to play golf with the guy that would be taking his old job; a guy that was his neighbor and whom he affectionately referred to as ‘The Baby Gorilla’. Any guy with a nickname like that is alright by me so The Baby Gorilla and I started grabbing lunch together and meeting up for drinks. It was just a month or so after I started when Brian (as the Baby Gorilla was called by his wife) invited me down to his office to meet his co-workers. I followed him through the door and the first person that I was introduced to was the girl with the curly black hair. Speechless. Somehow I managed to spit out my name which is monosyllabic and, even in a non-stressful social encounter, still sounds like something that would be grunted by Chewbacca with a mouth full of caramels. Before she had the chance to say it, I looked at the name plaque on her cubicle. It was a French name.
“Hello Jeanne I'm Bill.” I said, pronouncing it the way she later said her mother did.
“Hello Bill, nice to meet ya. Nobody has ever gotten my name right on the first try. I’m impressed!”
