The Sweetest Revenge (9 page)

I was definitely going to have to
leave Marshall. There was no longer any question in my mind.

And then Janice called me.

“
I’ve gotten a call from the
vice president of development, Steve Harrell,” she said. “You’re
not gonna believe this, but the university wants to give you back
your job. Well, actually, they want to make you vice president of
communications.”

“
What?” That’s all I could
think of to say, I was so shocked.

“
They want to give you double
what you were making.”

“
Why?” I finally said.

“
Mr. Harrell said that Sheila
fired you without authority,” Janice said. “If you don’t make
this deal, we’ll get a great settlement out of it. They’ve
already admitted to wrongdoing.”

“
I don’t understand,” I
said.

“
Me either,” Sheila said.
“But the Mr. Harrell wants to meet with us. Can you go tomorrow at
two?”

“
I’m not sure I want to go,”
I said. I was trying to figure out what was going on. Why the
university had done such an about-face.

“
I can tell them that,”
Janice said. “We can continue with the suit and make a ton of
money.”

“
No,” I said. “I want to
know why this is happening. I want to meet with Steve.”

“
Okay. I’ll meet you tomorrow
at his office at two.”

As soon as I hung up from Janice,
I got in the car and drove to an area close to the university that
had bars and restaurants and a hair salon that I had passed many
times. Hair Art had a big sign outside that said Walk-ins Welcome. I
walked in.

I sat in the chair facing myself
in the big mirror. I looked at myself for the first time in a long
time. Gone was my double chin. Gone were my puffy cheeks. I was
looking at the me that I had been, years before.

Bridget removed the comb from my
hair and brushed it out. She led me to a sink and washed my hair. The
warm water felt so soothing. It had been so long since anyone but
Midnight had touched me. She wrapped a towel around my hair and led
me back to the chair.

“
I don’t know what you’re
looking for today,” Bridget said, “but you’ve got some
fantastic natural wave that I’d like to take advantage of with some
point cutting.”

“
What’s that?” I asked.

“
It’s where we make little
snips into your hair to bring out your curls. Believe me, you’ll be
happy with it. Unless you want to go straight and don’t want the
waves, of course.”

“
No, let’s go with the
waves,” I said. I’d never had a hairdresser that wanted to cut my
hair paying attention to how my hair really was. They always wanted
to cut more blunt styles that required me to use a lot of products to
keep it straight.

Bridget snipped away, cutting my
long hair. Then she turned me away from the mirror, thankfully
because I was sick of looking at myself, and dried it very carefully
with a low-heat setting. She sprayed my hair with a sweet-smelling
hairspray.

When she swiveled the chair back
to face the mirror, I was shocked. Pleased, but shocked. My hair
shimmered in waves to just below my shoulders. It framed my face in a
way that was very flattering. I teared up to see myself looking so
good, but I tried to hide it.

“
Thank you, Bridget,” I said.
I almost choked. Bridget looked very pleased with herself.

“
Thank you,” she said. “For
giving me a good head of hair to work with.” That girl was going to
get a huge tip from me.

Bridget led me to the manicure
and pedicure room, and I got both. The manicurist gel-coated my
fingernails in a subtle shade of coral and matched it on my toenails.
When I left, the bill was a hundred dollars. I gave Bridget a tip of
thirty dollars and the manicurist one of ten dollars. Bridget watched
me walk out and mouthed “Thank you” to me. I smiled at her and
waved goodbye.

Then came the hardest part. I
needed to have something to wear. I had no idea what I could squeeze
myself into, but I knew it wouldn’t be my size 1X black suit. I
went into the spare bedroom, a place I avoided but the place where I
had a lot of my old clothes. I pulled several suits from the closet
and carried them into my bedroom where I threw them on the bed.

One thing I knew was that red was
a power color. I picked up the deep red suit I had worn ten years
ago, before I got so fat. I pulled the pants on and they zipped
easily. I put the jacket on without a top and buttoned it. Only then
did I look at myself in the full-length mirror behind the bedroom
door. I couldn’t believe the person that looked back at me. It was
the person I used to be. I was wearing a size ten again. I had lost
the fat that I truly believed was the weight of my cheating,
inattentive, unloving husband.

I sat on the bed and giggled for
a moment in sheer joy. Then I found a white tank top to wear
underneath the jacket. The pants were dragging, so I foraged in the
spare room closet for the black heels I used to wear all the time. I
went through several shoeboxes of shoes I was going to revisit in the
near future before I found the pair I was looking for. Silky black
heels. I put them on and my pants were no longer dragging. I walked
unsteadily into my bedroom. It had been a while since I’d worn
heels.

I looked at my full outfit in the
mirror. My hair fell softly around my face and to my shoulders. I
allowed myself to squeal in delight.

I hung the suit up carefully and
put my jeans back on. But I put the heels back on so I could practice
walking in them. It was an art. I kept them on as I made a salad for
supper. I kept them on for two hours as I did laundry and cleaned the
kitchen. By the time I went to bed, I felt comfortable in them again.

The next day, D-Day, I shampooed
my hair. I was worried I couldn’t get it looking the way Bridget
had, but it all fell naturally into place. That girl was a marvel. I
gently blowed it dry and the waves fell magnificently. I sprayed it,
as Bridget had done. I applied a little make-up. Not much. Some
blush, some gray eye shadow, some mascara and a very faint line of
eyeliner. I glossed my lips with a subtle shade of red.

I literally strode into the
administration building. Janice was waiting for me right inside the
big glass doors.

“
You’ve been hiding
yourself,” she exclaimed.

“
I guess so,” I said,
pleased.

We took the elevator to the third
floor where the vice presidents offices were. Janice told the
receptionist that we were there by appointment with Mr. Harrell. We
only sat for a moment before we were called back.

“
Amy,” Steve Harrell said,
holding out his hand. “It’s good to see you.”

I shook his hand, then he shook
Janice’s hand. “Steve Harrell,” he said to her smiling his big
development smile.

We sat in the leather chairs
across from his big desk. We looked at him, waiting.

“
Amy,” Steve said. “We have
done you a disservice. Sheila terminated your employment without
approval from her supervisor. That would be me.”

“
I don’t understand how she
could have done that without permission,” I said. I wasn’t going
to make it easy for him.

Steve looked a little uneasy, but
he continued. “I know it’s hard to understand,” he said. “But
it’s true she did that. I was quite shocked when I found out.”

“
What does Sheila have to say?”
I asked.

“
Well, Sheila is no longer with
the university,” Steve said. “She decided to move to a different
situation at another state college.”

“
Oh,” I said. I wondered what
that was all about.

“
What we’re offering you,
Amy,” Steve said, “is double your former salary. That puts it at
one hundred and ten thousand dollars. We’re also creating a new
position of Vice President of Advancement slash Communications, which
we are offering you.”

“
I need to talk to Janice
alone,” I said.

Steve stood up from behind his
desk. “Please use my office,” he said walking out.

I looked over at Janice. She was
grinning.

“
Tell them you want a hundred
and fifty thousand. I know what these vice presidents make. And you
want a guaranteed job until you say you don’t want it. In other
words, your job as long as you want it. Make them put it in writing.
And, make them pay my legal fees. You wouldn’t have had to hire me
if they hadn’t wrongfully terminated you.”

“
Something’s fishy here,” I
said. “Why would they be offering all of this to me? Steve didn’t
call me when I was terminated. It’s been two months. No one has
called me about my job.”

“
I agree. Something fishy. But
they know they’re going to have to give you a settlement either
way. For some reason, they want you back on the job,” Janice said.

I stood up and opened the office
door. I signaled the secretary sitting at a desk outside the office
that we were ready for Steve to come back.

Steve ambled in and took his seat
at his desk.

“
My client wants a permanent
position that can only end at her say-so,” Janice said as soon as
Steve sat down. “In writing. She also wants you to pay my legal
fees, which will not be cheap.”

Steve nodded at Janice, then at
me.

“
And,” Janice continued, “she
wants one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to start, with a
guaranteed increase every year of fifteen percent.”

A smile began to play around
Steve’s lips.

“
You drive a hard bargain,”
he said looking at me. “But we can accommodate that.”

“
And,” Janice said, “we
want back pay at the new salary rate for the months Amy has been out
of a job.” I looked over at Janice. She was a bulldog!

“
You’ve got a deal,” Steve
said.

“
I’ll draw up the contract,”
Janice said. “You should get it sometime next week.”

We stood to leave, but I still
wasn’t satisfied.

“
I want to know the truth about
why you’re offering me all of this,” I blurted out.

Janice gave me a look that said
to stop talking, but I ignored her.

“
I told you,” Steve said. “We
value your work and think that what Sheila did was wrong.”

“
That’s not everything,” I
said. “I’m not inclined to take this deal if I don’t know the
full truth behind it. I don’t need to take this deal. I can walk
away and get a good settlement.”

Steve looked at Janice and then
at me. He put his hands in a steeple on the desk in front of him.

“
Okay, Amy,” he said with
resignation. “First of all, we know that Sheila didn’t follow the
rules and we’re willing to admit that in a court of law, if it goes
that far. You will receive a fair settlement. That was the way we
planned to go with things until we got a call from one of our
potential major donors.”

“
What does that have to do with
me?” I asked.

“
Mr. Richmond wants to give the
university the largest gift we’ve ever received. Not only that, he
will bequeath a good amount of his assets to the university upon his
death. But he won’t do it without you.”

“
Me?” I asked. I didn’t
understand what was happening.

“
Yes. He asked that you
personally handle his endowment and the paperwork for the
bequeathment. When I told him you were no longer working with the
university, he demanded to know why. He wouldn’t accept our usual
PR answers about you moving on with your life or anything like that.
He demanded to know why you were no longer working here.”

I couldn’t believe this. I
looked over at Janice, who shrugged. She had no idea what this was
about either.

“
So we explained it all to him.
We told him you had been wrongfully terminated. We said you were
going to be compensated. That wasn’t good enough for him. He said
that he wouldn’t give one red cent to the university if we didn’t
make it right. And that meant, that you were handling his account.”

I was stunned. I didn’t know
what would have caused Keith Richmond to do such a thing. I had only
met him the one time at his mother’s funeral.

“
So, Amy,” Steve said.
“You’ve got us over a barrel here. It’s not that we don’t
want you back or that we won’t welcome you with open arms. You’ve
done a good job for us for fifteen years. But the bottom line is,
we’re going to lose the biggest gift ever if you don’t come
back.”

That’s when I started to laugh.
I could hardly control myself. The whole situation was surreal, at
best. Janice started to chuckle too, and damn if Steve didn’t join
in.

Wiping tears from my eyes, I
stood up. Janice followed suit.

“
Janice will let you know my
decision,” I said.

Janice and I walked out and took
the elevator to the first floor. We were walking toward the big glass
doors, when I stopped.

“
I think I’d like to go see
my former co-workers,” I said.