Eloise & the Director

Eloise glared blue eyes at his suit-covered back as he walked in-step with their mutual boss down the hall. They were laughing about a joke made just out of earshot, and she silently resisted the urge to scream. The successes he was being acknowledged for were a hypocrisy to the grief he had been giving her two years prior. How dare he suddenly have the audacity to pursue the things she, too, had set her sights on. While he gloated about his victories, though, they were because she had helped pave the way years prior. He now taught the content for a software program she helped build though travel and stolen screenshots from neighboring companies. But he was the one presenting it to the masses - he’d get the credit.

Spinning on her heel, she clicked in black heels back to her simple gray desk that sported the four year old laptop she’d be given when she started this job. She plopped on the worn Heather gray fabric office chair that creaked if it took a sudden amount of weight. Sighing, she watched as the lights in the office building flashed as the power tripped. It was always a fast event. The crew never quite lost power for more than a second. Thankfully for her and this laptop, she was spared the grief of suddenly lost work - though the monitor did flicker if it was plugged into the wall. Concerningly, she don’t know why it did that. She’d have to ask Holden some time; he knew a lot about technology.

The Excel spreadsheet of active philanthropy contributors and accounts was the most forefront window. That’s right - she had been working on a local hospital’s account. Ironically, this was the hospital she and her brothers were born at. There had been a recent donation of $32,000 from an anonymous donor. It was her biggest accepting amount since she had started here three and a half years ago.

Three and a half years of the hardest personal and professional growth of her life to date. Between the second marriage and divorce paired with a global pandemic that terrified humanity towards a nearly postapocolyptal season of life, she’d explored what it meant to be truly broken down and built back up in the process. She’d be healing old wounds by experiencing from and growing from new ones. Three and a half years of faking being okay as a means of survival. And the one thing she ultimately learned is that with each through comes a harder challenge needed to continue the trajectory of said growth.

And this was that next challenge.

The art of allowing someone to receive public accolades for work and services not rendered or fully earned. To say that it would be “under serving” would be true and a kind way of describing things. She watched how he quickly he had changed his tune and endured an overnight’s growth worth of knowledge, importance, and willingness to teach his team something once he knew a public title and honor was at stake. She’d find herself rolling her eyes harder and harder every other week when she heard the next “great thing” he suddenly was interested in and an advocate for.

She shook her head at herself. She knew the Hearst behind the intention. She always believing that a swell-intentioned soul always did better work than a perfect hand. Success in life was ultimately judged by the state of the heart - not by the number of degrees that hung in glass frames on manicured walls.

Two hours passed. She sat back in the chair as she mindfully put the stapled reports in a fashion-inspired folder for the afternoon presentation to the board and crew. They were going to be leading that session together, she reminded herself. They really needed to be on the same page with the delivery and petty undermining would weaken the strong front they’d need to garner support. They couldn’t the anything less than equal and supportive leaders - even if she wasn’t the one lacking the ability to be professional. She did not expect or want to be friends with him after all this. She realized the unsealed part of her that wanted “proof of abandonment” in the form of an unavailable cheater. Distractions distract, but they’re all temporary. We still end up back where we left off, and we’re all subject to repeating lessons until they are learned.

“Eloise?” Came that voice.

She looked up, startled back to the present by hearing her name from this god-awful character. She sometimes was very deep in her own brain and wouldn’t hear others until hey were close. This was one of those moments.

“Yes?” She asked simply. 

He’d come to stand on the other side of her desk that sat against the wall of the cubicle. He looked down at her, silently pondering his options for approach. 

Say it, she thought. Be a man and apologize for intentionally being an asshole and hurting people. Fucking say it.

“Thanks for being up there with me today,” he started, shifting slightly and wringing his interlaced fingers slightly. “I appreciate not having to talk so much. Public speaking was never my thing.”

She knew that. She knew he’d hate having the core part of the presentation and had already started memorizing it on the morning trains to work. It was “just a hunch” is what I would tell them when they asked how I knew so much for having “not been on the project long”. Which is fair if they never saw her put in the work or talk about it much.

And now we stared at each other again - waiting for my answer.

“I’m gonna need you to admit it,” she said, resting her chin on the heel of her hand, elbow settled on the desk as she leaned forward. She kept looking up at him, brown eyes lighting up with the challenge.

“Admit what,” he mused with an energy she once found tantalizing and sultry. Now, it just annoyed her and reminding her of a Killdeer. At least the birds had something they could protect.

“Maybe you don’t ever talk about it again,” she started with a sigh. The thunder rumbled outside. It’d start raining soon. “But you’ll think about the terror you left in your wake, all just to prove your point’s sake. You can’t sail very far if you never spent the time setting up the sail itself.”

The cocky look slowly slid off his face and disapproving eyebrows raised. He opened his mouth to say something.

She didn’t give him a chance - she spoke first. 

“It’s very likely you and I never get to have the peace I wanted. But, you and I both know that this isn’t a battle you win. You do not keep control by hurting others. At some point, the damage you have caused with overshadow the good. And you’ll be left to defend yourself in a sea of people who will ignore you due to your lack of integrity.”

“It’s not about us in the end, Eloise,” he said with a reserved softeners.

“Darling,” she sat up straight and pushed up my pastel rose-pink glasses up the bridge of my nose as she declared gently, “It was always about us, and it wasn’t fair because we didn’t ask for it. We just wanted peace and a happy family. It’s not fair that we had to do what we did to survive. We have to break the cycle.”

He gave her a sad nod - not an expression she saw often. “It feels too close and too raw,” he whispered.

She gave a lopsided, sympathetic smile. “It does - and it will for a very long time. I don’t know that I can do this with you for much longer, but I pray you’ll figure it out.” She paused, then added the intuitive afterthought. “Maybe in Glendale?”

Confusion narrowed his eyes. “What? Glendale? What’s in Glendale?”

She offered a shrug. “A lot of consequences. You don’t have much time left before this empire you built starts crumbling.”

Overhead, a warm ruby red light slowly pulsed to life five times - a signal that we’d need to be in the staging area soon. The show was about to start. 

She stood from her seat and pushed the old chair in. “Put on a smile while you’re out there, yeah? We need them to believe we’re unified. They need us to be strong for them.” 

“Eloise,” he abruptly said, stopping her as she started to walk away with the stuffed folder underneath her arm.

She stopped one last time. “Say what you need to say so I can be done. You have ten seconds.” She kept staring ahead.

He swallowed hard. “I just want to belong. I didn’t think it would go this far.”

Damn her understanding heart. She glanced at him over my left shoulder and saw the hunched man who had shoved his hands back in his pant pockets. He was an adult, but he was very much a child standing there.

“And?” She said flatly.

“And I’ll probably be seeing you around after this, right?” There was a glimmer of hope in the question. At least, that’s usually what he made it seem like when he realized that he couldn’t completely cut someone off - that he needed them.

She shook her head slowly. “Not in this lifetime, no. I don’t have any hope for us. Not anymore.”

That red glow pulsed again. It was time.

Nodding towards the room they were all to meet in before we went live, she said it was time to go. 

Still, they silently looked at each other for another four seconds.

Her heart was sad with understanding and accepting that her time was over.

His heart? She didn’t know, to be honest.

It wasn’t her job to heal him, so she had stopped asking.