We were given the boot around noon.
It came as a shock.
Does this happen to you? At times in my life when something unexpected occurs that I haven’t confronted before, it’s like I watch as my mind begins a search. I become a spectator as it runs through scenarios and offer me options.
In a sense it’s like my brain, off its own bat, starts devising a multiple choice questionnaire, in effect saying: “Come on. You don’t know how to deal with this one. You don’t know how to think. You don’t know what to do. But I’m giving you choices. Which one of them are you going to settle on?”
It happened the time I looked under an ex-husband’s pillow — we’d been living in different towns for a couple of years when I paid the surprise visit — and found a woman’s nightie.
A very drab nighty, I might add. This was was reassuring. My brain went to: “He’s cheating on you with a frump.”
Then it went to: “This must be a long-time and comfortable relationship.”
Then it went to: “She must be a frump anyway. I mean, who would wear that thing?”
As I noted the thoughts on that occasion, I also noted my lack of emotion. Like, “He’s having an affair. And so what?”
But then came the thought: “That’s wrong. It can’t be ‘so what.’ You’re supposed to feel something. You’re supposed to do something. You’re supposed to react.”
And then I watched my brain search through the blankness for How. It went to movie scenes; then to books; then to TV shows; like it was looking for inspiration.
I watched it pick up snippets of scenarios, and drop them.
And then came the idea that I should dive into a mini hysteria because, really, I wanted a divorce. Yes. Here was a perfect reason. I could blame him. I could be righteous.
The scary thing is, I’ve noticed that once the choice is made, the mind globs on, perspective goes Poof!, and what follows takes on a life of its own.
I watched the whole process happen with my ex, as if in slow motion. It seemed to take a long time. In fact, I know it took only a few seconds.
And it was only very much later, long after the marriage had ended, and after the emotion of ending it had faded, and after I’d come to identify with that bumper sticker “Don’t believe everything you think” through tortuous long hours spent in meditation, that I was able to look back and clearly identify the steps.
How this relates to the firing is: We were fired and I knew it was dramatic. I watched people around me begin to react. I knew that I would need to react.
But — I had a lunch appointment.
And not just any lunch appointment.
I was due, in an hour, to speak to a group of businessmen.
What I was due to speak to them about was the amazing work the incredible organization I’d just been fired from had been doing, was currently doing, and would be doing in the future.
I was going to tell them about our mission and our successes and our focus and our plans.
I knew the ropes.
In the weeks I’d been there, I’d set up appointments and gone with the director and his sidekick to the offices of all the editors who’d become friends during my years as a journalist.
Some of the personal dynamics at the nonprofit had surprised me. Like the musical beds. Who the hell was the man huff-puffing and the woman with the shrill “Don’t stop, Don’t stop” as a bed thump, thump, thumped against the wall from the next door room for half the night when we were on a weekend staff retreat discussing strategy and a new name for the organization (that in fact had not been renamed The Peace Foundation, as I’d been told it had)? And what about the ex-wife who popped into my office almost daily to lay claim to her ex-husband, who everyone knew was screwing his secretary?
But these were not the topic of my speaking engagement.
Rather, my stockbroker, a friend, had asked me to come and speak to his luncheon group about serious matters. And it had been no ordinary request. At least for him.
The institution he’d invited me to speak at, and which he’d recently been accepted into, was the old Durban Club. It would, one day many years later, be purchased and owned by a black South African woman.
But at the time, it had a men-only membership and, at the time, women still had to enter through a side door. Or maybe that part of it had just changed.
Why had I said yes, given the sexist nature of the place?
Because it was a friend who had asked me. And, much as I hated to speak in public and felt enormously inclined to say no, my job was to communicate the message of my organization.
My friend, I knew, was eager to make a good impression. For some reason, he had decided to bank on me giving it a tweak.
When he’d asked me if I’d do it, about two months ahead of the day, he’d harped on — and on: “You have to do it if you say you will.
“You can’t bail out.
“This is important.
“They only have one speaker a month.
“You will definitely come, won’t you?”
And on and on he went, through several follow-up calls during subsequent weeks.
I could hear his voice in my head as I sat at my desk thinking: “I’ve just been fired. We’ve all just been fired.”
What was I going to do?
OK.
So I went to the lunch. And I spoke to the group. And I told them exactly what I had planned to tell them.
I put what had just happened out of my mind, just like it never had.
I felt like two people. One went through the motions. The other watched.
After it was all over, I walked back to the suite of offices, feeling shell-shocked and not a little stunned.
To this day, when I think about it, I feel embarrassed and uncomfortable.
To this day, I wonder what I should have done.
I think, had I been confident and a good speaker, I would have told the full and real story. But we’d been told not to go public with the firings.
So, would I have snitched? Should I have snitched?
And with whom should my loyalty have been?
Should I have canceled at the last moment and not gone to the lunch?
Amazing how things we do can live on. When I think about it, this comes alive for me like it happened last week.
I wish I had gone and told the truth.
The next day, our firings made front page headlines in The Daily News.
Ironically, while I had kept mum, the organization’s director blamed me for leaking the news to the Press. He and his sidekick were peed off. I was the bad guy.
Was I the bad guy?
Firings are complex things, as I say. Unexpected things happen. Life goes on.
Is anybody left unscathed?
