To Come

To Come

By LuAnn Williamson

           “Yes Sir, I understand,” Lillian looked deeply at her Boss’s soft brown eyes as if trying to memorize them for the future. Then she looked away, so he couldn’t see the tears pooling in her own smoky blue eyes.

           “Why am I calling him “Sir?” she wondered to herself. Under normal circumstances, he’d be “Jack.” Sometimes, under more formal circumstances he was “Mister Fritz.”

           Tears blurred her vision as she looked at the receptionist desk that had been her second home for the last several months. Although she answered the phone and greeted visitors, she’d been so much more, cheerleader, morale booster, sounding board. Now she’d be gone. She caught a glimpse of a security guard boxing her things up, to be handed to her as she was walked to the car.

           “It’s nothing personal,” Jack tried to smile but it was fake, and didn’t make his eyes crinkle, like a real smile did. “We really loved having you here. But you understand. Last hired, last fired, you know.” His hands, normally so animated as he talked, flopped loosely at his side.

           Lillian surmised that what he was saying without really saying it was that she was a high risk person and there was a virus spreading through the nation. She, as well as thousands like her, were its victims, even if they didn’t contract the disease. She had gone from an asset to a liability in a few days. She’d gone from positive job reviews to the unemployment line.

           Resisting her urge to hug him, to tell him that everything would be all right, a lie she couldn’t even bring herself to say. Instead, she held her own hands up in front of her, as if shaking her own hand, a gesture they adopted instead of shaking hands.

           “Here,” Patrick handed her a folded piece of paper. “My home email address. Email me and I’ll send you a letter of recommendation,”

           She could only choke out, “Thank you. It means a lot to me.”

           Tears clouding her eyes till she almost tripped over a sign just inside the door, advertising the Valentine’s Day party, which brought a fresh pang of pain, realizing she wouldn’t be attending.

           Silently, she followed the guard, not even remembering his name to the car. Once she was off the property, she pulled into a random parking lot and allowed the tears to come.

           The hardest part was telling her elderly Father that she lost her job, again. She felt like a failure. But her Father smiled at her, the old twinkle in his soft blue eyes. “You’ll get another one. I believe in you.” That was his standard reply. When she didn’t get the promotion she wanted, when she broke up with a boyfriend, he’d reassure her with, “I believe in you.”

           The line at the food bank was humiliating. The job service was impersonally filed on line. The job boards were empty.

           There was one bright spot in the futile job search. Once she’s finished sending out a minimum of resumes for jobs that might not be available or weren’t available at all. Then it was time to escape into the world of unreality. She had the story already begun and the first few chapters tucked neatly into the computer.

           After the hopelessness of a job search, there was the hope of a first love, overcoming obstacle after obstacle.

           Between loads of laundry, there was building a world where laundry was cleaned by putting it into a special closet. Then, leaving that world behind for a world where laundry was washed on washboards and water hauled in from their own well.

           “I’ve been doing Reedsy,” her friend, Roger told her. The book club was meeting over Zoom, rather than in the little bookshop on Center Street.

           “What’s Readey?” she asked, just before another member asked, phrasing the question in a slightly different way.

           “No, it’s Reedsy,” he corrected. “It’s online and they have lots of services.”

           “For a price?” someone interrupted.

           “You get what you pay for,” Roger snapped, clearly annoyed at being interrupted. “The best part is the writing contest. Best of all…that part is free.”

           “Free? As in really free?” Lillian wasn’t sure who said that. It was taking her a while to get the Zoom thing down pat.

           “Free as in no charge to enter,” Roger said. “Of course you pay in advertising. Mostly the ads are for their other services. But here’s the best part of the best part. The prize is fifty dollars.”

           All Lillian could think about was how many groceries that could buy.

           “They have these writing prompts,” Roger resumed. “Usually I think about it for a long time but most of the time, I come up with at least one story idea. I haven’t won yet. But I will.”

           The conversation moved on. For some time, they discussed the book. Then somebody made a smart aleck remark. Someone else made a pun off that remark and off they’d go. Each member making a smart remark, a wisecrack or a pun. Eventually the book was forgotten as their collective train of thought went riding off the rails.

           The next morning, Lillian looked up the website. She was pretty skeptical about websites promising to help you write your book and send it on its way towards being a best seller. All these came with a slight fee of course. Those slight fees were far more than her budget on unemployment would stretch.

           She read the story prompts. She even read a few of the stories from the previous contest. Some were good, some bad, and a few very good and a few were dreadful.

           Unimpressed, she moved on with her web surfing. But later that night, she thought about one of the prompts. It was about someone’s Popsicle melting. As she was falling asleep, she thought about why someone would leave their treat to melt in the summer sun. Of course, it had to be to help someone. Yeah, to save someone, maybe a sweet little old lady. No, to save a child. That was noble. 

           After her job search, the next afternoon she sat down at the computer. She knocked out the first draft in a few hours. Even after dinner, instead of watching TV, she worked on her story. After editing it and polishing it till it shone, she submitted the story. She waited patiently, ok, she waited impatiently. She didn’t win. But, undaunted, she tried again. And she tried again. She still hasn’t won but she’s trying. Even when she scored a temp job, she entered. She worked on her novel.

           She believed in herself, just a little bit more. Then a bit more. She got braver and submitted more stories. Every day, she tried to write something, anything.

The rest of the story is yet to come.