Color the Sidewalk for Me (4 page)

On the other end of our new client spectrum was a young company that managed the personal finances of entrepreneurs who were bootstrapping their high-potential, high-risk business ventures while still needing to make mortgage payments. The principal of Partners Corporation, Gary Stelt, was driving my poor coworker Matt crazy, rejecting one creative idea after another. At 3:00 p.m. a rumpled-looking Matt stuck his head in my office and pleaded for help. He was meeting with Stelt—again—and getting nowhere. He was afraid he'd lose the account.

“Sure. Okay.” I pushed aside my scribbling for Southern Bank and followed him into the conference room, wishing I could as easily cast aside my tumultuous emotions over Mama's phone call. In light of my father's needs, I was amazed at my own selfishness and fear. How ironic that I, who had helped many a stroke victim while volunteering at the nursing home, would think twice about caring for my own daddy. Lunch with Carrie hadn't helped one bit. I was still smarting over her response.

“Look, we want something
catchy,”
Gary Stelt declared after brief introductions. He was leaning back in his chair with a make-my-day expression, his suit coat unbuttoned to reveal a middle-aged paunch. His face was round, the corners of his mouth turned down. As he spoke, he hit pudgy knuckles together for emphasis.

I smiled indulgently.
Catchy.
How many times had I heard that term? What did our clients think, that Sammons prided itself on being dull? The catch was,
catchy
meant different things to different people. Over the years I had honed my observation skills until I was adroit at discerning what clients would and would not like. I listened to Gary Stelt's lengthy explanation of how efficiently his company managed its clients' money, putting them on a budget, paying bills, helping them save. “We take care of their personal business so they can concentrate on building their new companies,” he continued. “Without us a lot of them would go under.”

Unobtrusively I glanced at my watch. My Cellway meeting was scheduled for 3:45. For the next ten minutes I spoke softly but decisively to Gary Stelt, soothing his frustrated feathers, complimenting him on adhering to his vision for his company's image, assuring him that Matt and I would come up with the right words to summarize the essence of his business—a catchy, memorable phrase. He was, for the moment, placated as Matt ushered him out. Feeling drained, I returned to my office to gather the Cellway files, my mind on Daddy.

I By 7:00 p.m. my head was pounding and my back muscles tight. I was gathering some files to stuff into my briefcase for work at home when Quentin Sammons appeared in my doorway. Inwardly I braced myself. He was my boss, but he and his wife, Edna, were also parental figures, and I'd known that sooner or later he'd want to talk about the phone call that had stalled our rare office party.

“Congratulations again on ten years,” he said, gracefully lowering his angular frame into a leather chair across from my desk.

“Thanks. They've been good ones.”

Fleetingly I thought of what my career could have been like had I remained at Grayland Advertising, which offered me my first job after I'd earned a degree in graphic arts through the University of Arkansas. Grayland Advertising had been a flailing mom-and-pop affair that could not keep its clients, due to Ed Grayland's ineptitude and Dorris Grayland's constantly simmering argument with life. But it was work, and I gained experience that year until Quentin “discovered” me, as he liked to say. Alvin Kepler, the owner of Kepler Electronics, a chain of local computer stores, made good on threats to pull his account from Grayland and huffed over to the offices of Quentin Sammons' agency. Kepler didn't have enough derogatory words to describe Grayland, making exception only for “the lovely young blond gal” that created their logo and newspaper ad copy. “She's sure wasting her time with that pair!” he'd declared to Quentin, who promptly called me for an interview after ushering his new client out the double mahogany doors.

Quentin Sammons was fifty when I met him, a tall, lanky figure with the most graceful, spindly fingers I'd ever seen on a man. He'd steepled them above the stacks of paper on his desk as we talked. Obviously impressed with my portfolio, he'd questioned me about my goals in “the business.” His thick hair was beginning to gray. I was struck by the aura of his agency—an insistent hum of associates hurrying to meetings, sketch pads and draft copy thrust under their arms.

“I've never sought out anyone to work for me before,” he'd said. “In fact, I've turned down many. But you show promise. If you stay at Grayland, you'll soon be out of a job. Work here and you'll earn a higher salary, plus I'll be around to help you really learn the ropes. That's my part of the bargain. Yours is—and I don't mind telling you—that you'll work like crazy. Nights, weekends. You'll spend hours to come up with a brilliant advertising campaign only to hear that the client's girlfriend thinks it's too cute or not cute enough, and the opinion of a layperson will send you back to the drawing board. You have to possess both talent and a high degree of diplomacy in leading clients to accept what you know is right. If you can manage that, you'll do well here.”

The talent I'd possessed. But diplomacy? I'd spent the previous seven years drifting away from people, swimming in my grief and guilt. Then again, I thought, the promised hours were appealing. I figured I could lose myself in the work's hectic pace and have little time left to mourn all that my life was lacking.

“I'll manage it,” I'd declared, holding out my hand. We shook on it. Now, ten years later, after a few minutes of chitchat as he sat in front of my desk, Quentin Sammons artfully steered our conversation to the morning's event. Matter-of-factly I told him of Mama's request. “I need to go but I don't see how I can. I've got two new big accounts, plus now I've been pulled in on Partners, not to mention all my old clients.” I dropped my head and rubbed my temples.

Quentin was silent. I heard his chair creak, knew he was leaning back to gaze absently out my window, chin puckered, hands clasped across his chest. After Carrie's words I now found myself waiting for his response like a child pleading for a benevolent uncle to whisk away a daunting burden. At least he wouldn't preach.

The chair squeaked again as he leaned forward to place both elbows on my desk. He cleared his throat, his words careful. “I don't think work is the real reason you're reluctant to go.”

I stared at him, a denial dying on my lips.

“Celia,” he said gently, “I'm about to say some things that until this moment I've kept to myself. In all the time I've known you, you've never once talked of your parents except in grudging answers to Edna's prying questions. You've never taken a real vacation. Your holidays are spent nursing old folks and working on accounts at home. We're like family here, and you're one of the most liked and respected of all my employees. You have such a giving spirit—yet you only allow your friendships to go so deep. I don't know what happened to you in that little town where you came from, but I think you fear facing it. Your parents won't be around forever. So go. We can handle the work while you're gone, and with all your accrued vacation time, it'll be a paid leave. Take care of your personal business. Then come back and get on with your life. I think you'll be happier for it.”

Echoes of Carrie. Once again I was betrayed.

I After Quentin left, I gazed unseeing out my window, wishing he'd minded his own business. My thoughts tumbled from our conversation to Southern Bank, from lunch with Carrie to Partners and Mama.
Partners.
My eyes narrowed. Out of nowhere a catchy phrase for Gary Stelt began forming in my head. With sudden inspiration I reached for the phone to dial Matt's extension.

“Still here, huh? Look, I've got an idea for a slogan for Partners. How's this: ‘When you
want
someone minding your business.'”

He repeated it, rolling it over his tongue. Thought it had promise. “Hey, thanks!”

“Anytime,” I replied.

Mamie rubbed against my hand as I sat on the patio Friday night, head tilted toward reluctant stars, a mug of tea balanced on my lap. My irritation with Quentin Sammons and Carrie had seeped away, leaving me with the old emptiness and longing.

The neighborhood was quiet, children gone to bed, their bikes and balls stored in overfilled garages. I was the only single homeowner on my tree-lined street, the helpful person who could always be counted on to feed my neighbors' animals and watch over their homes while they were on vacation. I occasionally spent time with Carrie or other friends, went to movies, sometimes hosted dinners in my small dining room. But Quentin was right—Celia Matthews' friendships merely skimmed the surface. Like the purring of the cat at my feet, Quentin's words rolled over me in undulating waves. I'd learned so well to gloss over my loneliness, filling my time with busyness. And for years a lulling “there's still time” thread had woven through the tapestry of my estrangement from my parents. Now with one phone call that thread was rippling apart.

How could I return to Bradleyville and face Mama?

The day I'd fled Bradleyville, clutching every penny I owned, I took a cab to the Albertsville bus station, prepared to catch the next bus for anywhere. The next one turned out to be an overnighter to Little Rock. I remembered that ride so well—the countless stops, people getting on and off, tepid yellow lights washing over fuel-stained parking lots at midnight and 3:00 a.m. I remembered how I focused gritty eyes out the window, inviting no conversation, wondering at the sun's audacity as it rose. I could not cry. There is a pain that finds release in tears. There is a pain so deep, so enmeshed within the very core of your being, that tears cannot touch it, and so do not fall.

I landed in Little Rock and fainted in the bus station. For days afterward, as I stayed in a hotel, I remained in a state of near catatonia. In time I pulled myself together enough to find an apartment and land two jobs—providing maid service at a hotel by day and stocking shelves at a grocery store by night. I didn't care that the work was hard; I needed to be busy every moment so I wouldn't have time to think. In the fall of the following year I enrolled in the University of Arkansas, keeping the grocery store job. For five years I worked to earn my degree in graphic arts. I did not date, had no friends. Like a beaten dog skulking into the forest to lick her wounds, I kept to myself. I merely studied, worked at the store, and practiced art projects over and over, defining and refining my skills. I kept telling myself I'd call my parents, let them know where I was, but every time I picked up the phone, my heart would race, my hands shake. What could I possibly say to Mama? Would she even want to hear my voice? And how to apologize to Daddy? The longer I waited, the harder it became.

It took six years to make the call.

By that time I was working at Grayland Advertising. The company had shut down between Christmas and the new year, and, desperate with boredom and loneliness, I found myself propelled almost unwittingly to the phone, heart pounding.