Losing It by Emma Rathbone Page A

to
meet
people? I needed to get out of this house and into town.
    This job, part-time afternoon receptionist, was the first thing that had come up for which I looked remotely qualified, and I’d only have to come in after one o’clock every day.
    â€œI facilitated communications by sourcing available online assets about solutions on higher education and applied them to a dynamic Web portal,” I said. “I was the social media pulse of the entire company.”
    Wes and Ed looked at each other uncomfortably.
    â€œWell,” said Ed, “what we really need here is someone to answer the phones for the afternoon shift. Run the odd errand.”
    â€œI think I would thrive at that,” I said.
    Two days later I was in my business clothes, making the twenty-minute drive back there for my first afternoon. The offices were in an old dry-goods store next to the train tracks, repurposed and outfitted with beige carpeting and wallboard and new windows in shiny plastic sashes. I walked inside, letting the glass door sigh shut behind me. Midday light came through some blinds and stripedthe floor. It was quiet except for an ambient electric drone. I looked around—maybe everyone had gone to lunch. I walked past a fraying taupe sofa and a glass coffee table with dingy magazines and up to the front desk, behind which was sitting one of the oldest people I’d ever seen in my life. She had sparse, short gray hair. She was wearing a patterned prairie dress with a frilly collar. Her face was an elaborate network of wrinkles and she looked wind-beaten, like she’d spent her life wandering through desert cliffs. She was trying to pull some cotton out of a huge bottle of vitamins, and her glasses were about to fall off her nose, and everything about her seemed to be teetering on the verge of disaster and I wasn’t sure if I should help or intervene in any way.
    I stood there and waited for her to notice me. She teased out some strands of cotton.
    â€œExcuse me?” I said. No response.
    â€œHello?” I said, and then, after a moment, “Can I help with that?”
    Still nothing.
    I stared at a plushy stuffed dog sitting up and hanging its legs over the edge of the table.
    I was about to go knock on a door when I heard someone bustling down the stairs. It was a woman with a helmet of gray hair wearing flowing pastel vacation clothes. “Hi there,” she said. She arrived in front of me and extended her arm and about fifty bangles slid down. “You must be Julia.”
    â€œHi, yes,” I said, shaking her hand.
    She turned to the old lady.
    â€œCaroline,” she said.
    Nothing.
    â€œCaroline!” She banged on a desk bell a bunch of times.
    The old lady looked up. “Jeannette,” she said loudly.
    Jeannette took the vitamins from her and yanked out the cotton and gave them back. “This is Julia,” she said loudly. “She’s our new afternoon receptionist.”
    â€œHi,” I said.
    We stared at each other.
    Jeannette and I went up the stairs. “She’s James Kramer’s mother,” she said. She glanced at me sideways and rolled her eyes. “She used to be a judge. Down in Florida? Now she helps out around here.” And then, as an afterthought, as if she felt bad: “A lot of grit there. A lot of wisdom.”
    â€œSure,” I said.
    We walked around and she pointed out all the things I would have to do each day. I was to keep track of the supply closet, water the plants, make sure the conference rooms were ready when there was going to be a meeting by putting coffee out, answer the phones at the front desk for a few hours, dust a row of glass clocks that were awarded at a yearly conference, run a package up to the titles office on Green Street now and then, and other low-grade tasks. Since there wasn’t much to say about the job, most of our conversation centered around the cruise Jeannette had just taken with her