The Opposite of Loneliness Essays and Stories(49)
Tommy’s daughter, Anna, who now lives in Arizona, explains, “I usually call home about once a week, and Dad will sometimes tell me the same story twice in one phone call.” She pauses. “I mean, he’s always been like that with jokes, but now it’s other stuff too.” She stops again, then laughs slightly. “I don’t really understand why he’s still working. Forty years . . . Forty years killing bugs and rats. Well, it sure beats me.”
Growing up with an exterminator as a father was always slightly embarrassing for Anna and her brother, Kevin. “I remember,” Tommy begins, “one year when Anna was about eight, and it was ‘bring your daughter to work day.’ That was a big thing back in the eighties,” he chuckles. “Well, I remember Anna came down to breakfast that morning and told me she didn’t want to come.” Tommy half smiles, but shakes his head slightly and closes his eyes for a second. “ ‘Dad-dyyy, bugs are nasty. Why can’t you be a pilot or a doctor or something cool like that?’ I didn’t even argue with her, I just let her go to school.” Tommy sighs, “I told her I was sorry I didn’t have a cooler job.”
Moving with deliberation, Tommy slowly disinfects the bed by spraying the clear and odorless poison over the frame, edges, and then center. Peering close enough to the mattress, he can see the tiny black bedbugs writhing and shaking in agony for a few seconds before they fall still. “When I see bugs outside I never kill them. There’s no real satisfaction in killing them.” Tommy pauses as he watches a particularly twitchy one. Walking back and forth along the side of the bed, he switches between the three red tubes, each spraying in a different shape: fanlike, mist, and jet. “All insects and rodents and stuff play a part in Mother Nature’s scheme of things. It’s a balancing act. I mean, I could technically get arrested for this because it’s breaking the law, but when I catch squirrels in people’s houses, I usually sneak them into my truck and let them free in the woods somewhere. The law says you’re supposed to drown them, but I just can’t do it.” Tommy sighs and shuts off the machine, a new silence hovering in the room. “That should do,” he proclaims, standing back to observe his work, then walking over toward the wall next to the bed. Through his fogged-up gas mask, Tommy’s blue eyes gaze out the frosted window at the street below. Moving closer, he presses his hands up against the cold glass, cooling them off from the heat of the machine. “I don’t know,” Tommy sighs. “I just don’t know.”
Tommy suddenly picks up his stuff and starts walking down the stairs. “I’m honest, I’m never late, I respect people, I try my hardest, I’m friendly, I love my wife, I love my children,” he rants as he makes his way out of the building and toward his truck. “It’s just like, no one wants bugs around, so no one wants me around.” Tommy shakes his head and shoves his supplies into the truck. “I mean, why do you think it’s unlabeled?” He waves an arm outward toward his truck. “Because people would be embarrassed to have it in their parking lots, that’s why.” He shakes his head, suddenly stops talking, and sighs. “Ehh, stupid landlord. He’s just an * anyway. What do I care?” Tommy smiles and his body becomes less tense. “Hey, here’s one I’ve never told you, my dear. What do you get when you cross a centipede and a parrot? . . . A walkie-talkie!” He gags, and bends over laughing. Tommy slides into the driver’s seat of his truck and shuts the door, sealing the plain white shell around him.
Even Artichokes Have Doubts
If this year is anything like the last ten, around 25 percent of employed Yale graduates will enter the consulting or finance industry. This is a big deal. This is a huge deal. This is so many people! This is one-fourth of our people! Regardless of what you think or with whom you’re interviewing, we ought to be pausing for a second to ask why.
I don’t pretend to know any more about this world than the rest of us. In fact, I probably know less. (According to the Internet, a consultant is “someone who consults someone or something.”) But I do know that this statistic is utterly and entirely shocking to me. In a place as diverse and disparate as Yale, it’s remarkable that such a large percentage of people are doing anything the same—not to mention something as significant as their postgraduate plans.
I want to understand.
*
In the spring of my sophomore year, I got my first e-mail from McKinsey & Company. “Dear Marina,” it read, “Now that you have finished your sophomore year, I am sure that you’re starting to think about what the future may have in store for you.” (I hadn’t.) “Perhaps you are starting to experience that nervous, exciting, overwhelming feeling that comes with exploring the options that are coming your way at Yale, especially given your involvement in the Yale College Democrats. To help you get a better sense of what is out there, I thought I would take the opportunity to provide some more insight into McKinsey & Company.”
This weirded me out. How did they know I was involved with the Yale College Democrats? (How did they know about that nervous, exciting, overwhelming feeling!?) As a sophomore, I’d hardly settled on a major, let alone a career path. But despite myself, it made me feel special. Who were these people? Why were they interested in me? Why were they inviting me to events at nice hotels? Maybe I perused their website, WHO KNOWS? The point is: they got me, for at least an evening, to look into this thing and see what it was all about.