Chapter 6

I had just finished answering Shirley's question about who I'd decided to give her old assistant's job to.

"Kenny, why would you do that? You knew I wanted you to give Ellen that job. What did Ellen say when you told her?"

"I don't remember what she said. She sounded disappointed though." We were sitting alone at the dinner table, eating a very good dinner that Gerta had prepared for us. She served us in the dining room, treating us both like adults. I had my fork poised in front of my mouth, a piece of beef speared on it, when Shirley remembered to ask me about who I'd decided to hire as my new assistant. There were many good reasons why I'd picked Joyce instead of Ellen. I knew none of them would satisfy Shirley.

I was aware that Shirley was really asking me why I didn't do what she had wanted me to do. I could tell her all of my good business reasons, but I knew that wouldn't matter much to her.

"Well? Why didn't you give her the job?"

"When you quit, Shirley, my father wondered what I was going to do next. If I had hired Ellen, just because she was our friend, or because that was what you wanted me to do, he would have thought I hadn't been serious when I first convinced him to let me have an assistant. I told him then that I wanted to learn how to delegate things to other people."

"That's so stupid, Kenny. Ellen would have been perfect being your assistant. You know that Ellen would have made a wonderful assistant for you."

"Probably, but it would have still been a poor choice for me to have made. Ellen really runs the phone order desk for the whole company. The job she's already doing is way more important than the job of being my assistant could ever hope to be. Her job is really much more important than my job. My father knew that already, and he knows I know it too. I couldn't make a decision, knowing that it would hurt the company, just so you wouldn't be mad at me. If I had hired Ellen, my father wouldn't have said anything about it to me, but he would have been very disappointed. I made the decision that I knew was for the best. I didn't like disappointing you, or Ellen, but, this time, I really felt like I had to."

"What about Ellen? How do we keep her from being depressed?"

"I'll take her to lunch a few times, like I told you. Maybe I can try to find someone down on the loading dock that she'd like to start going out with. There are some younger guys that work there. It shouldn't be my problem though, to keep her from being depressed. I'm not the one who pushed her to try to get your old job." I could see from Shirley's face that she wasn't buying anything I was telling her. To her, it was simple, I'd failed to do something for her that had been in my power to do.

"Its a good thing you didn't tell me about not hiring Ellen before we went upstairs. I would have had it on my mind, and things wouldn't have gone so well."

"I thought you told me not to tell you before we did things? I wasn't trying to hide it from you. I thought I was just honoring your request."

"I didn't say that. Because of that box you brought home, I got distracted, and I just forgot to ask you before now."

"Oh. I guess I also thought that Ellen might have already told you. You said you were going to call her when you got off the phone with me today. I wasn't trying to hide it from you. Maybe, I was just waiting, thinking you would bring it up when you were ready to."

We finished our dinner, and then went back upstairs. Shirley picked up the oven screwdriver, examining it closely, before asking me if I'd brought it home as a present for her. I could see that she was wanting to take it home with her, to add it to her other collection of screwdrivers. I told her that I'd only borrowed it from the maintenance department, that I would need to take it back there. She looked disappointed about that news too. We sat on my mussed up bed, talking together quietly. I guess we were both sated from our earlier activities, although we did manage to keep in some physical contact with little touches and bumps.

Shirley was still worried about Ellen. I told her about Edith not seeming that upset about Earl's announcement. I was trying to suggest to her that Ellen's biggest worry had been that Edith would go back to how she was before, drinking too much, and not letting Ellen live any kind of an independent life. I reminded Shirley that, since none of that had happened so far, maybe it wasn't even going to happen. If it didn't happen, Ellen didn't need to feel that everything in her life was so hopeless.

I ended up our little discussion by telling her that Ellen had to start making some important decisions for herself, by herself, and for reasons that made good sense to her. She needed to find her own reasons for not attempting to take her life again. I felt that Shirley had been trying to give Ellen something she would like, hoping that by doing so, she wouldn't continue to be suicidal. In a way, because of the way Shirley had been treating her, it was like Ellen was being rewarded for trying to kill herself. That was how I saw it, at least, and that is what I said to Shirley.

Shirley disagreed with me completely, saying that friends should always try to help friends. She said that was what you did when your friends were troubled. I didn't have any argument that I felt sure enough about, to try to refute what she said. I didn't agree with her, but I wasn't trained in anything like counseling or psychology. What did I really know?

At ten o'clock Shirley asked me to walk her home. She didn't want me to drive her, so we walked, holding hands, and talking about our plans for the following weekend. I dropped her off at her house, and was home, and in my own bed, before eleven o'clock.

On the whole, I thought Shirley had accepted the news about Ellen not getting the assistant's job pretty well. When I got to work the next morning, at a little past eight, Joyce and Ellen were sitting behind the two desks. Joyce was sitting at the desk in my assistant's office, and Ellen was sitting behind my desk. I approached my desk first.

"Hello, Ellen. I thought I'd be seeing you up here sometime today. Can I help you with something?" She was turning from side to side on my desk chair when I came in. As soon as she saw me, she bounced up from her chair and walked over to close the door separating Joyce's office from mine.

"Shirley says you promised to take me out for some lunches, to make it up to me for not letting me be your assistant."

"No, that isn't what I told Shirley. I said I'd take you out for some lunches, so we could talk. I'd be able to find out how things are going with you. Shirley's been very worried about you."

"Aren't you worried about me too?"

"No. I know how smart you are. If you decide to do something dumb, it will be because you chose to do it. I have confidence that you won't do that again."

"I might. You never can tell."

"I don't like playing that game with you, Ellen. I'm just not going to play it with you. If you want to keep on being my friend, you'll need to find a different way to get attention from me. In the place where I grew up, what you're going through now would be nothing they could understand anyone getting too upset about. You have a mother who loves you, and you get to eat good food every day. I can see how you're dressed, so I know you aren't nearly as poor as all of us were. I don't feel a bit sorry for how your life is now. In fact, I'm not even sure why it is that you seem to feel so sorry for yourself. I feel bad for what happened to your mother, and for what you went through, losing your sister that way. That happened a while ago though, and I can't feel that bad about what you've been going through since it happened. At least you still have your mother. The people I grew up with, most of us had no one, no one at all. Some of them are little kids too, only a year or two old. To kids like that, they would think they were pretty lucky if they had what you have. They would all probably envy you."

I don't think anyone had ever spoken to Ellen like that before. If she made it past me talking to her this way, and if we did go out for some lunches, I knew where I'd be taking her the first time we went out to lunch together. I wondered what she'd think of her own situation, after spending an hour or so touring St. Cecelia's.

Ellen told me she had to get back to the order desk, then she asked me if I was still going to take her out for some lunches. When I said I was, she asked me whether I'd be taking her out that day, or the next day. I told her I'd be taking her out for a long lunch the following Monday. I wanted to call Mother Superior, to make certain that she would allow Ellen and I to tour the orphanage during our lunch on Monday.

I spent an hour with Joyce, explaining what I did, and what I wanted her to do as my assistant. I ended up giving her three things from my Dad's list, and two other things I'd come up with, things that I wanted her to do for me. I didn't really know what to expect from her, and one of my own things I'd assigned for her to do, was to go see Myra, my Dad's secretary, and ask her to give me a copy of the sales and delivery figures from the plant for the past four weeks. I wanted to see if she could get Myra to give them to her. I had asked Myra for them the day before, but she told me I'd have to get my father's approval first, before she'd agree to release them to me. I wanted to find out how resourceful Joyce was. If she wasn't successful in getting those figures for me, I'd have to call my Dad on the phone, and then ask him for them directly. I saw that as being a small defeat for me, a tiny setback to my reputation in my father's eyes.

By noon, the figures I had asked for were sitting on my desk, along with all the other things I'd assigned for Joyce to do. I didn't ask her how she got Myra to release the sales and delivery data.

Joyce was only nineteen years old. She had finished one year of classes at the two year college, before quitting to go to work. This was her first "real" job. She told me that she was an even five feet tall. (She exaggerated by two or three inches at least) She had two bucked teeth up on top, one which seemed to face straight out. She also had a face full of freckles, with eye glasses so thick that it almost hurt your eyes to look through them, at her greatly magnified brown eyeballs. I hadn't exaggerated when I told Shirley that she had bigger breasts than Joyce did. Joyce had absolutely no breasts, at least none that I could discern.

In spite of my description of her, there was this elfin cuteness about her. Her hair was cut short and circular, like she had put a bowl on her head and cut away any strands that still showed. She didn't seem that self conscious about her appearance, smiling often during the time we spent talking about the new job.

I admit that a big part of the reason I'd picked her was so that Shirley wouldn't have anything to worry about, as far as any looks competition from Joyce. Shirley was still pretty insecure about her own looks. I also knew I could concentrate fully on my business responsibilities, and that, with Joyce as my assistant, I wouldn't be tempted to do any fooling around.

Finding out that Joyce was going to be a big help to me had been a really big relief. I didn't know it that early, but Joyce was going to turn out to be a very valuable employee. It was funny how you sometimes did something for one reason, and then, it turned out to be really good thing for you to have done, for another, entirely unanticipated, reason.

Joyce reminded me a little bit of Uncle Bunny. I noticed this quality about her from that very first day we ever worked together. I could tell her what I wanted done, then turn her loose to figure out a way to make it happen. When I gave her my list of things to do, she didn't stop to ask me even one question. That first day she worked for me though, I only got the barest inkling of all of her many talents.

I had eaten breakfast with Mama earlier that morning, and she had been telling me that she was having a difficult time trying to convince Brenda to go back to that school in Ohio. She asked me if I might have any ideas about what else she could do to convince her to go.

"Does she know about Uncle Bunny's bequest to her?"

"Of course. If it wasn't for the promise of money, Brenda wouldn't even agree to speak with me about it. The problem is that Georgia thinks she can successfully contest those bequest conditions that Bunny imposed on all three of them. Brenda is listening to what Georgia has been telling her about that. Now, Georgia has found a new attorney, one who thinks he'll be able to get those conditions set aside in court. I've talked to Walt about it though, and he's decided he's going to be keeping Richard in that forestry program that Bunny signed him up for. At least Walt has enough sense not to risk, Richard's inheritance."

"Do you think Mrs. Connors new lawyer is right? Will those conditions be set aside?"

"I don't know, Kenny. Bunny was very good with wills, trusts and any kind of estate planning. I talked with Frank Clooney, and he doesn't see how any judge would be willing to set aside any reasonable conditions placed on a voluntarily enacted bequest. Georgia might be able to argue that she wouldn't have taken the actions that disqualified her from getting her money, or rather that she wouldn't have, had she known that the condition even existed, but Frank said that Bunny was under no obligation to make any of his conditions, or the bequest itself, known to her. He thinks Georgia is hoping to set up a nuisance suit, believing we'll offer to settle it with her, rather than contest it in a courtroom."

"I don't care that much about giving her that money, Mama, but if Uncle Bunny went ahead and set it up that way, he must have been concerned about Mrs. Connor doing exactly what she later did. I wonder why he never told her about that condition in his will?"

"Bunny changed his will soon after his heart attacks. He was upset with Georgia, and they hardly spoke any more. He was very worried about Brenda and Richard. I don't think he ever thought Georgia would act so quickly, suing right after he died. I don't think he really thought he was going to die so suddenly. None of us thought that."

"Tell Mrs Connor that I'd be willing to let her have the three million dollars that Uncle Bunny set aside for her, but only after Brenda and Richard have successfully completed the conditions that Uncle Bunny set for them. If they don't, then she gets nothing."

"I don't think you're allowed to make decisions like that yet, Kenny. The money from Bunny is all placed in trust for you. I'm pretty sure you won't have any access to the principal, not until you're twenty five years old. That was how Bunny explained it to me, dear. You get some of the income now, but none of the principal. I doubt the income you have available to you is enough to pay off Georgia."

"I mostly want Brenda to get some help from that school, Mama. You know how important she was to Uncle Bunny. He was so worried about what would become of her if she didn't get some help to change how she looks at things. It would be worth it, if our giving Mrs. Connor that money made her support Uncle Bunny's plans for helping Brenda and Richard."

"I could tell her I'll give her the money then, Kenny. I'd only do so if Brenda and Richard both complete all the conditions Bunny set for them. Actually, this is a very good idea you've given me, but I bet Georgia will still try to get us to give her at least some of the money in advance."

"She really isn't in any position to make demands. I'm really only worried about Brenda, but Uncle Bunny wanted Richard to change too."

When I got back home Thursday afternoon, Mama told me that she and Mrs. Connor had worked out some sort of an agreement. Something about the way she made the announcement kept me from asking her for any of the details about how their agreement was worked out. Mama could be very forceful when she believed in something strongly enough. There weren't many around her who could stand up to her. Mrs. Connor definitely wasn't numbered among the few who could.

I hadn't seen Dad all day at the office. He had gone in early, leaving me behind to have breakfast with Mama. At quitting time, I stopped off on my way out the door, and handed him that day's list, and the several pages of figures and notes that either Joyce or I had prepared for him. I could see he was still very busy, so I told him I'd see him later, at home.

At dinner that night, he started asking me questions about Joyce. He told me that she had kept after Myra to go in and ask him for permission to release the sales and delivery figures, refusing to be turned away, like I had been. She kept after Myra, saying I wanted that information, and that Myra needed to go in Dad's office and get his permission for her to give those figures out to me.

"How did you make the decision that she might make a good assistant for you, Kenny?" He tried to make his question sound casual, like he was just making unimportant dinner conversation. I knew him better than that though. When he talked business at the dinner table, which he did almost every night, it was anything but casual or unimportant conversation.

"At first, I thought of her because she was new, and I thought I could teach her how to do things the way I wanted them done, before she got set in doing things in a more traditional way. After I talked to her though, I noticed that she was very intelligent. I didn't know that she was going to be as resourceful as she showed today. She finished all the work I gave her before lunch."

"I would have thought you would pick someone who made a better appearance as your assistant, Kenny. That seems to be the main criteria most of our younger executives use for picking their secretaries. Joyce does have that unfortunate overbite. I wonder why she hasn't had that looked after?"

"Her appearance is just fine for me. I'm not looking to date her. I really want to have someone to help me be more productive. Ellen came up to my office, really early this morning, to check her out so she could report back to Shirley. I knew she would report that Joyce wasn't any competition in the looks department. I don't want Shirley to be worried about things like that."