Digging In: A Novel(2)

So I gave no thought to what “parted” really meant. How unfair it was, how permanent, how out of our control. At his service, everyone said he was still with me, but the truth was that not only was he gone, parts of me went with him. I missed them, too, and like Jesse, they weren’t coming back.

We had a good courtship story because it started with friendship—we found each other in eighth grade, in a rough city school in an even rougher neighborhood. Now the place boasted a Starbucks on every corner, but in the ’80s and ’90s, gangs ran the area—Polish and Puerto Rican, and they weren’t like the carousers in West Side Story. If Jesse and I hadn’t teamed up, our options would have been death, jail, or getting hooked on drugs. Instead, we did our homework together while Jesse’s mom and my grandmother played bingo. We walked home from school, shoulders touching, heads down, minding our own business. Somehow we managed to make ourselves invisible. But I could always see Jesse, and he could always see me.

We were careful with our friendship, because we knew it was the key to our survival. We didn’t hug or hold hands or experiment with each other, and when others sparked our interest, we didn’t talk about it or offer advice. Those infatuations never lasted longer than it took for us to realize relationships threatened our trajectory toward success. Success was all that mattered.

So we remained careful, and we remained together. Junior college to save money, then a state school. I majored in graphic design with a minor in business. He became an actuary. We lived together as friends to save funds, and then, during our senior year, we decided to stay living together. As more than friends.

Forever. Till death do us part.

The thing is, no one tells you what to do when the parting happens. And they forget to explain that when death is sudden, the parting is actually a ragged tear, not a clean separation. It leaves all the ends unfinished, and they just unravel and unravel and . . .





CHAPTER 2

I got to work at eight forty-five, a miracle given that I couldn’t find a single clean item of clothing to wear. Just as I was about to pluck something from the laundry basket and throw it into the dryer for ten minutes, I spotted an old suit still in the cleaner’s plastic hanging around the back of my closet. Sure, I bought it sometime during the Bush administration (the old guy, not his son), but it wasn’t wrinkled, and the gauzy pink scarf I threw around my neck looked nice with the light gray wool. A little heavy for mid-May, but the spring mornings still held a chill in Illinois. It would do.

My employer, Giacomo Advertising and Design, was the newest tenant of Gossamer Space, an old factory converted into open, airy lofts. Our previous address did not hold the same allure. Frank Giacomo hired me seventeen years ago, when I was both a recent grad with no experience and a new mom (also with no experience). He took me on anyway. Short and round, always chomping on a cigar and wearing more gold around his neck than a rap star, Frank was a secret feminist, and he filled his office with smart, talented women. The vast majority of our clients were local, as Frank wasn’t ambitious in the traditional sense. Frank appealed to me because he liked stability, and he appealed to his clients because he had an old-school method of holding their interest—he wined and dined them, asked about their spouses and kids and tennis games, sent them gift baskets at Christmas, and paid his respects when one of them passed on. Everybody liked Frank, because Frank had that one quality no one could resist—he knew who he was and still liked himself.

Our office used to sit above a dental office on Wright Street, beige and bland, nine cubicles in a row, and a cramped, windowless room for Frank. It didn’t matter. Every year I got a raise, and I never worried about losing my job. When I needed a vacation, I took one. When Trey got sick, I stayed home with him. Frank usually called midday to see how he was doing.

Last Christmas, at our annual company party in the back room of Marinetti’s Chop House, Frank excused himself and never came back. He was found slumped in a bathroom stall, cigar still lit. They had to unclench his jaw to get it out. Frank’s heart, as big as the rest of him, had simply worked too hard.

Jesse had only been gone a year, and I’d never had to grieve a father—my own was gone long before tangible memories—so Frank’s death sucker punched me. I felt Jesse’s absence more acutely. Most of Frank’s employees drifted as the company slid into uncertainty, but I stayed on. With both Jesse and Frank gone, even the spare remains of Frank’s company offered some bit of stability.

So Giacomo Advertising and Design survived, helmed by Frank’s only son, Frank, Jr., a graduate of a small, private university on the East Coast who’d worked a series of vague internships in New York. He carried the city in with him when he walked into the Giacomo offices two weeks after Big Frank’s death—skinny jeans and a black leather jacket, expensive sunglasses, and a disdainful expression. Big Frank’s genes came through in ways Frank, Jr. tried to hide, his hair carefully disheveled to disguise a premature bald spot, silver rings to dress up Sicilian workingman’s hands, a laugh that seemed too hearty for his body. These ghosts of Big Frank had me nodding my head in agreement when Frank, Jr. enthusiastically vowed to make the changes his father had only dreamed of. I never thought Big Frank was much of a dreamer; he was a doer. But if his son had both qualities, Giacomo might survive.

I’d met Frank, Jr. a few times over the years, and it was hard to see him as something other than a kid, until he held a staff meeting with his nervous employees: me; Jackie, the shy, acid-washed-jeans-wearing designer who had been at Giacomo even longer than I had, and a random collection of young designers Big Frank hired when he decided to expand the company after we had a good run—Rhiannon, Seth, Byron, and the timid, newest hire, Glynnis.