Chapter 19: Lunch

Dexter carried the tray with his sandwich and soft drink over to one of the dozen tables in the chain sandwich place. The sandwich that he ordered had a little heart symbol next to the item on the menu suggesting that it was a healthy choice. He didn’t really know about that, but he liked turkey sandwiches anyway. Of course, drinking a soft drink kind of undermined any healthful effects of his sandwich.

He sat down at a table and unwrapped his sandwich. It had always seemed to be a waste to wrap a sandwich in paper to carry it fifteen feet from the counter. The paper did serve a dual purpose, as it was also the plate.

He took a bite out of the sandwich thinking that he should have gotten potato chips to go with the sandwich. It could have used a pickle to go along with it as a side.

He sighed thinking that if he had wanted a deli sandwich, then he should have gone to a deli, rather than a chain sandwich shop. There was a difference.

“Hello, Dexter.”

Dexter looked up to find his ex-wife standing in front of him.

He swallowed his latest bite of his sandwich and then said, “Hello, Janet.”

“Can I join you at your table?” Janet asked.

This was unexpected. Dexter could feel the old anger rise, but he fought it down. Now that they weren’t married, it just wasn’t worth fighting with her. There was going to be a time when they had to be civil with each other. He guessed now was as good of a time to start as any.

“I guess so,” Dexter said.

Janet frowned at the lukewarm response, but said, “I’ll get my lunch and come right back.”

He watched her go over to the counter. She had lost some weight. She looked more like a woman and less like a Sneech. She actually had hints of an hourglass to her figure. She had also let her hair grow a little longer, and her clothes weren’t so dowdy.

Janet returned after a minute with a sandwich, and a bottle of iced tea. She sat down and unwrapped her sandwich. Dexter noticed that it was a turkey sandwich as well. She basically ignored him while taking the first bite out of her sandwich. Dexter was finding the silence unsettling.

“You’ve lost some weight,” Dexter said.

Janet said, “Yes, I have.”

“You look good,” Dexter said.

“Thank you,” Janet said before taking another bite of her sandwich.

“You’re welcome,” Dexter said.

Dexter took a bite out of his sandwich rather than attempt to continue what was becoming a rather awkward conversation. The two ate without saying much. Dexter wondered why she had wanted to join him at the table if she wasn’t going to talk.

When Dexter finished his sandwich, Janet opened the conversation. “You made the news again.”

“What did I do?” Dexter asked.

It seemed to Dexter that somehow he was always in the news. About every two months an article of his would suddenly appear on the news as if he had proposed something revolutionary. The article about the steak house had made the news and was touted as promoting a new way for restaurants to provide service.

Business commentators were trying to figure out what business practice he was going to change next. To say that they had been taken by surprise at the resurgence of service, would be an understatement. No one was more surprised by the results of his articles than Dexter.

Janet answered, “The Dexter James scholarship.”

“Oh, that. Well, I had a bunch of money and didn’t know what to do with it. Charlie recommended a charity. I liked the idea of helping some kids get through college without ending up in debt,” Dexter said.

He had taken a third of the money from the class action suit and created a scholarship for engineering students. He had never forgotten that discussion with the young man at the hospital who had become a wage slave because of college debt.

“It was nice,” Janet said.

Dexter shrugged his shoulders. “It was a lot of work, getting it set up. I wanted something that would fit kids who didn’t qualify for any of the normal government crap and whose fathers weren’t rich enough to put them through school. You try writing that as a condition on award. I was pulling my hair out by the time we got something together.”

“Is it true that it’s for engineering students only?”

“Yes. I think we need more engineers in this world,” Dexter answered.

Janet sat back and studied Dexter. “Being an engineer was important to you, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was. It still is, but I don’t get a chance to do engineering anymore, and it’s too late to return to it. I’m out of practice,” Dexter said.

Janet raised an eyebrow at the comment about him being out of practice.

He sighed.

“That’s what I hated the most about that company. The only way to move up, was to move out of engineering, and into management. I never wanted to be a manager. All that I wanted to be was an engineer. All I wanted to do was to take care of my family. They used the latter, to deny me the former.”

“You did a good job of taking care of your family,” Janet said softly.

“Don’t give me that,” Dexter said angrily. He hit the table with his fist as he added, “I blew it with the kids, and I blew it with you.”

“I didn’t say that in sarcasm. I meant it. You did a good job of providing for us. You’re still doing a good job of that,” Janet said.

“I sucked at being a husband and a father,” Dexter said.

“Not really. I’ll admit that there for a while, you weren’t a very good at it, but it wasn’t your fault,” Janet said.

“Yes, it was,” Dexter said.

“You were stuck playing a game that was rigged against you. The company was using your desire to support your family to take advantage of you. They made it impossible for you to be a good husband and father. You had a choice: provide for us, or be there for us,” Janet said.

Dexter said, “We all know what I chose. I was never there.”

“You provided for us. You kept a roof over our heads, food in our stomachs, and clothes on our backs. You put the kids into the best schools available to us. You provided them with a chance at a real future. It may not sound like much, but that’s becoming almost impossible, today,” Janet said. “You did it, and that’s an important thing.”

“I should have been there for you,” Dexter said.

Janet said, “It takes two to tango. I wasn’t there for you. For that matter, the kids weren’t there for you, either.”

Dexter was about to make a comment about her knowing all about it taking two to tango, but he bit the words back before they had a chance to escape.

Seeing the expression on his face, Janet said, “I know what you think. You’re wrong, but I understand why you believe the way you do.”

Dexter took a sip of his soft drink through the straw trying to get his emotions under control. He wanted to blast her, but this wasn’t the kind of place for that type of confrontation.