The Company Party

For months Joanne the Irascible Secretary had been asking when Benjamin was going to make an appearance in the office. My responses were always guarded. Partly, this elusiveness was due to the fact that arranging a family outing downtown, in the middle of the work week, with a wife and a child and all the attendant prodding and swaddling and cooing and coaxing, the traffic, the parking, and the general pandemonium, had become an Enterprise of such gargantuan dimensions that I felt it beyond my powers. But partly too it was because the grandmotherly Joanne is batty as a spring loon, and some primal protective impulse suggested keeping kids in one place and madwomen in another.

I have, I should admit, a weird relationship with secretaries. In some way it is a lot like Fellini's relationship with clowns: they are sources of sociological fascination, epistemic angst, metaphysical curiosity, and spiritual disquiet. I ride the crest of their goodwill with an abiding sense of escape, and as we exchange pleasantries, discuss deadlines, find forms, or curse the copier, I watch them for signs that the my reprieve has ended, opinion shifted, sins been exposed and all the goodwill gone. At the root of this pathological conception lies, doubtless, a kind of class consciousness: having always pegged my identity to that of the underdog, there is a sense of guilt that goes with 'having a secretary', even if she's doesn't work for me personally and even if I don't ask her to do anything. Men who have secretaries are men who wear fat yellow power ties, close big business deals, cheat on their wives and have dysfunctional relations with their children. Perhaps it is the nagging conviction that in spite of my best efforts to live la vie bohéme, I'm linked at some deep and irredeemable level with exactly the sort of the blind, upward guppy-thrust of the bourgeoisie that I have always detested. No one sees this motley, unwilled double life quite as nakedly as the Secretary.

Whatever my relation to some Secretary-in-the-Abstract, however, it had become obvious to me that my relation to Joanne was fast deteriorating, and that my days of grace were numbered. So last week, when after another tense conversation in which she made very little eye contact and seemed deeply entranced with some icon in the upper right hand corner of her screen, she happened to mention the Departmental Christmas Party, I seized the opportunity for redemption. "Hey, Josie," I ask coyly, "would it be OK if I brought little Benji to that party?" Her eyes light up, her mouth dissolves into a smile, she looks me in the eye for the first time in months, and says "that would be lovely" with such warmth, energy, and obvious goodwill that I'm convinced my days in the doghouse are over.

Absence being the better part of prudence, however, I keep a low profile for the next couple of days. In spite of this precaution, I find myself growing increasingly nervous that something has gone wrong. Some small voice in my gut is whispering words of warning, telling me that my good credit had slipped, the karmic debt collectors are after me, and that merely sacrificing my son will no longer cut it when it comes to appeasing the primal pagan deities of the secretarial underworld. My doubt reaches the point that I almost decide not to go. But though the day of the party dawns gray and miserable (like most other days in Pittsburgh), and I get cold just glancing out the window, at the last moment I summon my resolve. Wide eyed Benny in tow, and Catalina out parking the car, I enter the party.

Math company parties are not the same as Company company parties. Company parties in real companies involves gimlets, toothpicks, swanky music and at least the possibility of embarrassment. The aforementioned deal maker in a yellow tie watches patiently as the boss hits on his wife. Deals and promotions are worked out in between paté runs. In a math company party, on the other hand, there is barely conversation, let alone dealmaking. The food consists of one vat greenbeans, one vat potatoes, and two vats chicken (one thick cut, one thin cut, just for variety.) There is no alcohol. Stanislav's wife makes her famous creampuffs, of course, which everyone formally praises. A half dozen forlorn graduate students stand in the hallway talking among themselves and trying to look involved.

Joanne is seated on her swivel stool when Benjamin's left cheek crests the sill of the door. She rises like an Egyptian priestess, dignified, semi-smiling, fully conscious of her ritual function as she moves toward the offering. Her hair is a grumpy red cactus, parched and spiny, the only one of its species for miles. Earrings that could double as clappers in the village bell oscillate wildly, trying to find some native frequency in the bedrock that separates them. Her fingernails are lacquered lollipop red, her eyeshadow is visible from ten paces, and her blouse is decorously loose. "May I?" she breathes in the husky voice of a Pittsburgh lifer. My brain is reeling, my hands trembling. With trapped-animal cunning, I blurt "hang on, give this little guy a moment, he just got up from a nap." The God-head moves back, stunned, confused. And I, I stand by the counter, a faithless Abraham, my Isaac unoffered and my covenant broken, I stand by the counter breathing the cool air of the outcast, feeling my Cain-hood spread and darken, stand and watch the gawdy angel of death beat a howling retreat to her cubby hole, and my spirit shivers, and my heart is at peace.

It occurs to me that I may need to see a shrink at some point.