So back at home, I put my tea in the microwave for a minute and twenty seconds, a duration of time so internalized that I can walk away, lose myself in thought or in a newspaper article, and return to the microwave just as the bell chimes. I add the Half and Half and in the midst of the first satisfying moment in a long and tiring day, my father yells my name as only my father has ever been able to, driving a quick surge of dread in my gut.
I walk with tea in hand down the long hall. Oriental throw rugs run the length of the corridor, carpets which took over a year to arrive, and on which we kids were all but forbidden to walk upon for the first three years of their existence.
I knock lightly on the door and stick my head in. My father is seated at his desk and motions for me to sit opposite him.
Another interview.
“Have you called The Heathman, yet?”
“No, I, uh . . .”
“Why don’t you call them now?”
My father opens up his Rolodex and starts thumbing through the cards. He pushes the “speaker” button on his phone. The dial tone chimes.
“Look, Dad. I . . .”
My head is dizzy. My throat is dry. My heart is beating between my ears. I take a drink of tea.
“I, uh, . . . To be completely honest, um, I . . . don’t want the job.”
He hangs up the phone. “Why not?”
“It’s . . . You see, the job is . . . below me.”
My father says nothing, but the silence is deafening. He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose.
“How long have you been unemployed?”
San Diego. June, 1980. I dove under the approaching wave and swam out into the sea. Salt was on my lips, in my mouth, sand in my shorts, water in my ears. I laughed because I felt alive.
“May, June, July, August . . . About four months.”
“How much money do you have in the bank?”
“Not much.”
“How much?”
“Not much.”
“What are you doing for money?”
An economist was interviewed this morning on National Public Radio about the state of the economy. He said the prospects for university graduates were the dimmest he had ever witnessed. “There is no precedent for anything like this,” the economist said. “For certain sectors of our economy, especially for these young graduates, the situation is worse than the Great Depression.”
I think about my friends, most of whom are unemployed or under-employed, or stuck in dead-end jobs. McJobs, they’ve been calling them. And then, there are unintentional “slackers” like myself.
I went for a swim in the sea but the current was too strong, the waves too high. The riptide pulled me out.
“I’m collecting unemployment,” I tell my father.
“The Dole. Never. Never in my life did I ever, ever, take a handout! Not even once!” He speaks forcefully, each word cutting through the air between us. “When I was discharged from the Marines, I had five mouths to feed and no job. I went to the Welfare Office, but I was so ashamed of myself that I never cashed the check. I threw it away! Threw it away, I did! The next day, I knocked on doors until I found a job at five the next evening. The warehouse had a ‘No Positions Available’ sign in the window, but I went on in anyways. The trouble with you is that you expect everyone to do everything for you. You want to do everything the easy way . . . you . . .”
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah . . . My father’s lecture drones on for another thirty minutes.
I couldn’t see the beach because I had been pulled out too far. The waves became stronger and stronger and I was being tossed around like a buoy. One moment I was carried high by a wave and could see the thin white strand of beach and barely, just barely, could I see the small figures of people. I tried to wave but dropped below the water’s surface. When I came up for air, I was hidden in the trough between waves. I lay on my back to try and float with the current. As a large wave approached, I swam with it. As it crested, I yelled for help to the people standing on the beach.
“Swallow your pride, son. Take any job.”
“Dad? I went to college, private college, got in debt doing so. I had to take out an IOU, just to cover my final semester. And now you’re telling me to just take any job? What was the point of going to college if all I am able to do is be a bellboy? Yes, that’s what the position is. Bellboy! Can you believe it? I went to university and studied hard for Chrissakes. I was on the President’s List my last two years! Yeah, so my grades were lousy at the beginning, but they were better than just about anyone’s by the time I graduated and my great reward for busting my butt is being allowed to haul someone’s bags, someone who was fortunate to have been born ten years before me when the economy was good? Really? Really?”
As the wave pulled me upwards I screamed as loudly as my strength would permit: “Help!!! Somebody, help!!!”
“Don’t come back to this house when the checks stop coming because I will NOT give you any money.”
My father has nothing more to say, so I stand up to leave his office. At the door, I turn around and say, “You know, Dad, sometimes I still feel like I’m at that beach again. Only this time, I’m alone. I yell, but no one hears me. And it’s scary as hell.”
I return to the kitchen and dump my lukewarm tea into the sink.
My mother is sitting at the counter on the island. She’s got my father’s reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose as she tries to thread a needle with those big fingers of hers.
She looks up at me over the rims of the glasses and says, “You know where you can find sympathy?”
“Huh?”
“You know where you can find sympathy?”
“No, Mom. Where?”
“In the dictionary.”
Water washes over my head, washes down my throat, and I sink like lead into the deep blue, inhaling water.