Chapter 6, Part Four
WOMEN’S ISSUES SPARKS BOSS WHITE’S IRE; HELEN GOES BALLISTIC.
In our new building, it was my luck to be assigned to a desk behind a religious fanatic, a middle-age woman named Helen, who made it known to everyone in the office that whatever happened happened because it is “God’s will.” One morning, Barbara, a tall blond from the casualty department, stopped by Helen’s desk to see her about combining a property policy with liability. When she left, Helen confided to me that poor Barbara suffered pregnancies that ended in miscarriages. Then her face suddenly lit up in a beatific smile - -
“But, wonderful news! Barbara’s pregnant again! This time, this time,” she said, clenching her fists between ample breasts, “her obstetrician assured her and her husband that this time, she would not miscarry!” she crowed with an authoritative nod. Helen fawned and prayed over Barbara and asked us to pray, too, for a successful, full-term pregnancy.
Men tripped over themselves and Trevor ignored our new employee Phyllis’s habit of coming in late. She’d been hired for a position in Claims, on the other side of the floor from me, behind a bank of file cabinets. Phyllis hailed from Brooklyn and had an accent to match. She was young, thin, and single, and wore expensive, stylish clothes, and her long blond hair in a French knot. We could relate because we both came from historic, sophisticated cities, shared the same sense of humor, and traded snide remarks about the LA scene. One rainy day, we lit up our smokes over the remains of our lunch and relaxed as much as we could on our break-room folding chairs.
“You know,” she said, exhaling after a huge drag, “I’m late a lot. I don’t mean to be, but my boyfriend likes to have sex every morning.” She inhaled again. “And,” she chuckled, smoke coming out of her mouth in puffs, “they didn’t know it when they hired me, but I’m three months pregnant.” My immediate thought was about Barbara and how Helen would react when Phyllis’s condition became obvious.
Barbara wore tent-like, hip-length smocks over skirts with a hole cut out for her growing belly, when Phyllis started wearing fashionable, Empire-styled, calf-length maternity dresses. Phyllis held her head high as she moved gracefully about the office. Seeing Helen clench her fists and grit her teeth in outrage whenever she saw her, Phyllis sensed her dislike; she asked me if I knew why. I told her about Barbara. Phyllis shot back, “Oh, that Doris Day type from Casualty? All she does is complain. She’s in the right department. That woman is one huge casualty.”
Screams came from the women’s bathroom one morning. Someone ran out, shouting for an ambulance. One arrived in minutes; orderlies wheeled Barbara away on a gurney as Helen stood by with her hands clasped to her chest, eyes ceiling-ward. Later, she called the hospital; when she hung up the phone, she announced solemnly,
“Our sweet, innocent has Barbara suffered another loss; we must pray for her and the soul of her unborn child.” Phyllis happened to pass Helen’s desk at that moment on her way to the files. “Oh,” Helen sobbed loudly, pointed a finger at her, and wailed, “if anyone deserved to miscarry it is you! You shameless, fallen woman! Why? Why did Barbara miscarry and not you!” I did not want to get in the middle of it; I could ignore it; conveniently, I was on the phone with an agent.
“Come on, ladies, keep it down!” Trevor said, striding into our department, “What is this? Some ladies’ sob-sister support group? You're shutting down production! We’ve got work to do. I’ve got an agent in my office. You’re antics are distracting.” Helen stared at him uncomprehendingly, her mouth hanging open. Phyllis disappeared down a row of file cabinets.
Sitting behind Helen, subjected to her relentless venom towards Phyllis and her cloying, maudlin, holier-than-thou attitude, I’d had enough. “Helen,” I said, “remember: what happened to Barbara is ‘God’s will.’ He just didn’t choose Phyllis.” She spun around and glared at me, “Why, you! . . .” She turned dropped her head to her desk and cried. Telephones rang and were answered, people moved about, file cabinet drawers slid open and shut; papers shuffled, typewriters clattered and calculators chugged noisily, agents came and went, meetings went on in conference rooms, cigarette smoke rose and hung low against the perforated, soundproof ceiling. In other words, life went on despite Barbara’s tragedy and Phyllis’s snub to the era’s decorum and Helen’s religious convictions.
RUTH’S MAKEOVER; THE ERA’S DOMESTIC CONUNDRUM.
Ruth surprised us one morning by showing up with her mousy-brown hair dyed a deep chestnut, but her wardrobe stayed the same: man-tailored blouse, straight skirt with a slit up the back, no nylons, and white, scuffed, high-heeled shoes. We complimented her; she snickered, her face coloring as she bent over an ashtray to tap ashes from her ever-present cigarette.
The intriguing men in the office were Bunker and a ruggedly handsome, dark-haired older claims adjuster whose name I don’t remember. He looked like a movie star in his dark, pin-stripe, Italian-tailored suits and expensive wingtip shoes. Think today’s David Strathairn. His diamond-studded gold cuff links and tie clip, and 14 karat gold Longines watch led me to wonder about under-the-table rake-offs from claims he settled. Ruth told me he was married. Even if not, I sensed he was way out of my league. Other co-workers - - single and married - - came on to me. Still, early on I vowed never to become involved with a man from the office, a vow I ended up breaking. Somehow, I had developed an aversion to square, uninformed, and unhip “white-collar” workers with pale hands and white fingers; business men in ill-fitting suits and worn shoes - - with the exception of claims adjusters. This was the era of the housewife-and-mother where men were the “bread-winners” in split-level, ranch-style, two-car garage homes. The weight of responsibility for house payments, food, clothes, pocket money, allowances, and education dragged them down. They staved off depression with three-martini lunches and after-hour endless “Happy Hours” at nearby bars; or engaged in not-so-secret affairs, evidenced by flushed faces and slightly rumpled clothes when the assignees came back from lunch through separate entrances. At work, men shambled about in their cheap, dandruff-flecked, brown suits, and worn shoes; grasping files and cigarettes with nicotine stained fingers, aspiring to one day earn the magical annual salary of ten-thousand dollars. They, including Trevor, went around like ciphers. The difference? Trevor wielded power.
Sleeping Beauty's Castle, Disneyland.
OFF-HOUR RECREATION, 
SMOG EFFECTS, "THERE ARE NO CHILDREN IN SAN FRANCISCO."
A friend came down to LA to visit and we went to movies, took the kids to the beaches, sometimes with Russ. We hiked the Angeles National Forest and when my father rode Greyhound down for a weekend, visited Griffith Observatory. Russ took me and the kids spear-fishing and snorkeling at Laguna Beach and to Disneyland when it first opened. So it wasn’t as though all I did was work and come home. Most weekends, the kids and I went to Echo Park, near Aimee Semple McPhereson’s Four Square church, just down the hill from our bungalow, or endured a long bus ride to Santa Monica.
But I hated Los Angeles from the start. It was everything the SFChronicle’s Herb Caen said it was: hot, smoggy, and humid with tall, skinny, sickly palm trees lining every street. A heady, floral fragrance mixed with the odor of rotting garbage hung in the air everywhere. And people swanned around like they were expecting to be Hollywood’s next big discovery. Trendy men (or thought they were) wore skin-tight pants on legs as skinny as their ties and women wore stiletto heels, wigs, or teased their hair into gigantic beehives.
Terrence, my middle son’s asthma was getting worse because of the smog. Our pediatrician advised leaving the area, maybe even think about going back to San Francisco, which I desperately wanted to do. At a salary of two fifty a month, I still managed to put money away for a year, saving enough to send to my father to rent us a flat. He wrote back that he’d found one in the Mission and enclosed the key in his letter. Mr. Loomis arranged a transfer for me to the St. Paul San Francisco branch; and by phone I enrolled my sons in the day care they had attended before our move south. I gave two-week’s notice and trained a woman to take my place. A co-worker asked me, “How can you move to San Francisco? You have kids. I heard there were no children there.” Some in the office spoke of San Francisco as though the city were a dream, a magical place; who flew up often just to spend a weekend there. It was beyond them that I had ever left it for LA. It was for me, too, why I was going back.
AN INTERNATIONAL TRAGEDY.
A little over a week before I left, a white-faced, shaking Trevor stood in the middle of the floor, asked us to stop everything we were doing and listen. Some of us groaned - - oh, boy, not another company restriction. But he seemed about to cry, then in a broken voice, told us that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas and was rushed to a hospital. Stunned silence, shouts of disbelief, and, “No! It’s a joke!” heightened by tears, and panic. Phones rang wildly; people cried, yelled, and sobbed. Pandemonium reigned. Word got out that he was dead. Sobbing, Phyllis and I hugged. We gathered up our belongings and rushed out of the office. Walking quickly on eerily quiet streets, yet with radios and TVs blaring from every storefront and window, I made it to the kids’ day-care and school and found them sitting subdued and wide-eyed. Teachers and staff could barely control themselves. They didn’t want to alarm the children. Roark, my oldest, was in day-care with his brothers because the school had closed. He was old enough to understand when I told him that someone had shot and killed President Kennedy. Russ lent us a TV so we could watch Kennedy’s funeral. Clips of the rider-less horse and the black carriage carrying his coffin played endlessly; I had to switch it off. But two days after Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated Kennedy, I did catch the live, stunning broadcast of Jack Ruby shooting Oswald.
Somehow during that devastating week, I arranged to ship by rail a few furnishings, kitchen stuff, and clothes to be delivered to our new place. I said my goodbyes at a small going-away party held during the afternoon coffee break. I wished Phyllis the best for her, her boyfriend and new baby; sorry I wouldn’t be around to see it. (This was not to be the last I’d see of her or LA.) Barbara never returned to the office. I thanked Helen when she said, "God bless you, dear," clasped my hand warmly and smiled. Ruth said she'd really miss me, smoke veiling her reddening face. Trevor came in for cake and boomed a hearty, "Good Luck! I'll look you up next time I'm in the San Francisco office."
"Swell," I said, thinking "not."
A day or two after a somber Thanksgiving, Russ packed us into his VW bug and we endured a cramped but fun trip almost 500 miles to my mom and stepfather’s place in Chico, north of Sacramento. The next day, Russ drove off to ski near Tahoe; the kids and I took Greyhound to San Francisco and I started work the following Monday.
NEXT UP: You can go home again; The Bureau; St. Paul's Invisible Man; blatant verbal sexual abuse.
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