The Consultant - Neighbor Wives Ch. 01
(Author's note: all characters in this story are pretty clearly over 18.
Many thanks for Ravenna for her help in making this a better story and for her continued patience with a newbie.)
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A Tale of Joanie
I love telecommuting. There have been various times in my professional life in IT, going back to the late '90s, when I was in a position to work from home and I've loved every one of them. Then I got laid off after over 20 years with one company and turned to consulting. Telecommuting really became a hit-or-miss proposition then, depending on the requirements of whatever contract I found myself on. Sometimes I'd need to spend a lot of time at a customer site, but I still managed long stretches of working from my home office. It really does not suit some folks, who need to be around other people all the time in order to function, but it worked perfectly for me. Don't get me wrong - I like people, a lot. But I like them in small doses and in situations where I have more control than I do in your typical business office.
After my divorce (luckily an amicable one), I had moved back to the college town where I'd done my undergrad work and bought a nice little house in a small neighborhood on the edge of town. I paid way too much for the privilege of living in such a desirable town but it was worth it and my needs in a house were not that great. In addition to a bedroom for me, I set up my home office in one bedroom and a small photography studio in another (I'm a fairly decent photographer and have managed to sell quite a few shots on the side).
After a few contracts that kept me out of town a lot for a couple of years, I landed a project that not only allowed me to work from home most of the time, it almost demanded it. I'd get up early (I mean *early*) and work with the customer in a couple of countries in Asia and then work late with their US West Coast team, leaving me the middle part of the day when I could take a break, get some exercise, take care of the house and the like. I was dealing with a bit of tendinitis so running wasn't an option at the moment, leading me to take long, brisk walks in the middle of the day.
In addition to helping keep me in reasonable shape, it also allowed me the opportunity to meet a lot of my neighbors. When I was a 9-to-5 commuter type, I assumed that everyone else was too and that neighborhoods were dead during most of the day. What I found was the complete opposite, although maybe my neighborhood and town were a bit different, given the large state university that was the dominant employer. Between the stay-at-home parents (most were moms but I think there were a couple of dads too), the shift workers (we had at least two nurses and a doctor that mostly worked nights) and the retirees, there was a surprisingly large amount of activity at all hours.
My daily walks were how I met Joanie. We passed each other during our walks for a couple of weeks, saying hello and occasionally stopping for a short chat, before we eventually decided to start walking together. Joanie was a great conversationalist and made the walks go by much more quickly than walking solo. And she was a treasure trove of neighborhood gossip, having lived there since it was first built out fifteen years or so before. She was a couple of years older than me, early 50s, but you'd swear she was at least a decade younger. Blonde-ish hair, usually in a no-nonsense pony tail, blue eyes, a wonderfully large, bouncy chest and an rear that made guys twenty years younger stare in wonder. She looked exactly like what she was - a hot soccer mom. Only now her daughter was in grad school in Boston and her son was in his first semester at Maryland on a partial lacrosse scholarship.
And she was bored. She and her husband had agreed early on that one of them was going to stay home with the kids and given their difference in salaries at the time, she was the one that agreed to put her career on hold. Mark, her husband, had done well enough to support the family, but it had required him to work long hours for years as well as spend a lot of time on the road. After a few conversations with her, it was clear, even though she'd never say it, that she was bored, lonely and frustrated. We talked a lot on our walks about ways she could return to the work force but, while she wouldn't come out and say it, that was not her biggest problem. That didn't become apparent until later.
We had gotten so regular on our walks after a couple of months that we'd taken to texting each other if we weren't going to make it, due to weather or illness or whatever. So I was surprised one warm Monday in late October that she wasn't out on her porch waiting for me as I walked by, despite not getting a text from her. I stood around for a few minutes, enjoying the Halloween decorations on the houses in her cul-de-sac, but I got a little worried when no Joanie appeared.
Her car was in the driveway, so I walked up onto her front porch and rang the doorbell. I heard rustling after a minute or two but still no Joanie. I rang again, a little more worried now, and I finally heard the lock being turned. The door opened about a foot, and I could see my friend, looking like she hadn't slept for crying all night. I knew that look well from my divorce. She looked up at me with her red, puffy eyes and said, "I just can't today." She started to close the door but I stopped it, firmly but hopefully not aggressively.
"Joanie, can we talk? What's going on?" I asked.
She didn't answer but she didn't close the door either. She turned and slowly made her way to the living room sofa, leaving me to close the door and follow her. She sat down on the edge of the sofa, staring into the distance with her hands in her lap. I sat down next to her and took her hands in mine and tried to catch her eye and said, "Honey, what's wrong? Talk to me."
She finally looked at me and shook her head. She sighed, "I really can't, Jim." And then she proceeded to open up anyway. A lot of things that I'd suspected started to come out. She was lonely, neglected, frustrated, bored, and really wasn't sure that it was worth it anymore. It wasn't clear what "it" was at first, but that became crystal as she continued. Mark was always out of town working and when he was home, he was too tired or too distracted or too something to give her much attention. He wasn't abusive, he wasn't mean - he just wasn't... anything. She admitted quietly that they hadn't had sex in over a year, even when they had gone on a vacation together, just the two of them without the kids, to try to rekindle something. It had taken Mark a couple of days to start to relax and then his boss had called him about a customer issue and that was all there was to that. She had let her inner voice convince her that she was of no use to anyone anymore, with her kids grown and her husband no longer interested in what she had to offer. She and Mark had gotten into a big fight before he flew out to Kansas City that morning, over something that she couldn't even remember, and she'd been crying ever since.
She had slumped back against the back of the sofa by now, looking at the ceiling instead of at me, just letting the words that she'd never said to anyone come tumbling out. She admitted to herself (and to me) that she'd almost stopped trying a few months before and having me to walk with was the only thing that got her dressed and out of the house most days. She looked over at me as she said that and managed a small smile.
"I guess I can talk about this after all," she said, her eyes finally softening a bit.
I'm a tech guy and problem solving is what I do for a living. I'm also old enough and experienced enough to know that troubleshooting was the last thing she wanted just then. She wanted to be heard and I was happy to be there for my friend, to let her talk through things she'd only barely allowed herself to think about. I took her hands back in mine and told her, "Honey, you are a beautiful, vital, incredible woman and don't you dare ever think otherwise." |
