chapter
Six
On my third day, my office phone rang for the second time, but it didn’t scare me out of my wits as it had the first time because I’d successfully turned the volume to a normal level. I answered, “JMCH, Erin McIntyre speaking,” with as much courteous professionalism as I could muster. Playing hostess at a posh restaurant for three years had come in handy for more than bankrolling my shoe addiction.
There was a pause, and I almost said Hello? But then an equally formal but far less courteous voice (he was definitely not smiling) said, “Isaac Maat here. Please come speak with me when you have a moment. Before you leave for lunch.” There was another short, weighty pause. “Or the day.”
I pondered what the hell that meant and how to respond, but it didn’t matter because the click and dead air told me he’d already hung up.
“Yes sir, your assholiness,” I mumbled. I hung up more forcefully than intended and forced myself to do two minutes of ujjayi pranayama to take the edge off. Day three and I was resorting to yoga breathing. Not good.
When I walked into his office, his eyes didn’t budge from his monitor. I took a seat in front of his desk and waited as I had yesterday, making an all-out effort to channel positive energy.
Finally he turned to me. “You were out all afternoon yesterday—”
My hackles rose like I’d been plugged into some sort of auto-defensiveness device. “You were gone when I got back.”
He stared.
“I mean, it was nearly six, so I didn’t expect you’d still be here or anything.”
“Six,” he said, head cocking to the side, skeptical. He didn’t believe me.
My hand flew to my mouth and then dropped into my lap. “Oh my God—did you think I just ditched?” I’d left yesterday afternoon and—as far as he knew—had never returned. “I should have emailed an update. I just ran in to grab a few folders to take home and I was starving since I missed lunch, so I forgot.”
“Update?” he repeated like a disconcerted parrot.
“I could give it to you now? Or would you rather I go to my desk and email it?” I started to rise.
“No.” He leaned back, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair, and laced his fingers. His thin smile was more derisive than pleasant. “Now is fine.” He was, I thought, attempting to seem laid-back, but his entire posture was a dare.
Perching on the edge of the chair, I said, “Okay. Well. I met Iris Hooper at her current home instead of the site because she’s got a little kid and also their house isn’t that far along, so I didn’t think it would do any good to meet there. Plus hello—June in Texas. Excess heat and humidity don’t exactly inspire equanimity, right? When I met Wayne Jansen to walk through his place, my antiperspirant was working like a moth— Um, anyway—I told Mrs. Hooper I’d be happy to drive over with the proposed blueprint copies and discuss her issues there.”
He didn’t respond, so I continued. “Basically, I think Mrs. Hooper has been indecisive when it comes to the house because she’s felt unsure about making those judgment calls.”
Once I had diverted her by spreading the blueprints onto her kitchen table—people are eager to examine the plans at that stage of a project—I’d surreptitiously analyzed her current home. The architectural style and the décor she favored, the toys stacked everywhere, the books, magazines and art displayed, the family photos revealing that Mr. Hooper was considerably older than his wife. I began probing for what sorts of changes she wanted to see in her new home and wasn’t surprised to find that she knew exactly what she wanted, but her husband’s sporadic, lackadaisical input confused her. He would insist she make decisions only to circle back and question her choices. Her authority felt more theoretical than real to her, so she second-guessed everything before he had the chance to.
Isaac Maat’s forehead was creased. He was either perplexed or agitated.
“I’m going to work with her on that,” I said, which didn’t seem to help.
Without meeting Mr. Hooper, I wasn’t certain whether he was purposefully undermining her or attempting to placate her anxieties with input. Either way, the result was a feeling of powerlessness leading to perpetual vacillation—and that had to stop or little Morgan would be getting her driving permit before their house was completed.
“I’m confident we can get the Hooper project on track.”
“It sounds as if you’re psychoanalyzing our clients,” Isaac Maat said.
I gave a cursory, faintly guilty shrug. “Figuring out who people really are and assessing their inner workings is my strength. I might as well use it to do my job.”
He looked dumbfounded. And more distrustful than ever. His left hand was a tight fist, as though his state of mind was held constrained within its grip, and he drummed a pen on a blank notepad with his right. Tap tap tap. He noticed me looking, dropped the pen, and loosened his fist, but his chin was still tucked low like a grouchy turtle. As if I’d verbalized that thought, his chin popped up and out. His whole body was poised for conflict.
Maybe because I was staring at every move he made. I began to inspect his office instead, giving him time to unwind and hoping for clues to why he didn’t want me here—aside from the obvious.
“So, Wharton MBA, huh?” I commented.
“Hank tell you that?” The words rang subtly, like a curbed accusation.
I pointed over his shoulder where his diploma—in all its triple-matted, professionally framed glory—hung. His magna cum laude architectural undergraduate degree hung just below it in a matching gilded frame, the archival mats Pantone-matched to the schools represented.
“Ah,” he said, caught off guard. “I forgot that was there.”
“That’s pretty impressive.”
“Does that surprise you?” he asked, his words low but snapping like hot oil.
Holy banana nuts—what had I said now? “Why should it?”
“Why remark on it, then?”
“I was trying to make conversation. Futile endeavor, I guess.” I rose and stomped toward the door, muttering, “I withdraw the commendation.” As I reached his doorway, the implicit meaning behind his comments became appallingly clear. “Wait.” I turned. “Was that some sort of assumption of micro—what’s it—microaggression? Like, a racial thing? Because I’m not like that. I don’t think like that. You don’t even know me!”
My anger dissipated before I stepped foot into my office, to be replaced by unanticipated insights into my supervisor, and right on the heels of those, nagging questions. Had I meant it like that? Even if I didn’t see it?
I’d never known anyone who went to Wharton, though Christina—my studious chore of a roommate for the past two years—had mentioned it once, when we were still on limited speaking terms. Our rare conversations had been ninety-five percent me asking questions that she answered with barely veiled annoyance and five percent stuff like “Excuse me,” necessitated by the cramped shared quarters. She had never inquired about my life, goals, or relationships. I’d been evaluated as deficient the moment we met—chirpy, airheaded sorority girl—and her initial estimation never changed. Senior year, I hung out at the Chi-O house to study and socialize, and our dorm room became little more than the place I slept and kept my stuff.
In a singular show of insecurity during junior year, she’d confessed her first choice for grad school, Wharton, and her concern about being accepted. “I’ll have to work for two or three years after graduation before even applying—something innovative and distinctive that will stand out to the graduate committee—or I’ll never get in.”
I knew her grades were stellar; I’d once overheard her tell someone that she’d had “another” 4.0 semester, and her tone was more blasé than thrilled. The fact that she had fretted about getting into Wharton left me with the impression that it was a top-tier school, but that was all I knew about it.
I considered my father’s company a last-ditch springboard for me to ever go on to be anything, yet here was this guy with an MBA from a big-deal university, working at a Podunk construction company. Okay, so it wasn’t exactly Podunk. We did build multimillion-dollar mansions. But still—why would anyone be here, with a degree that could open doors anywhere? Not to mention his with-honors degree in architecture.
He’d identified my amazed response correctly, but not the reason behind it. I’d told him he didn’t know me, but the truth was I knew as little or less about him. Those degrees and our combative exchange told me two things though. He was brilliant, even if his social skills needed some serious work. And he was defensive about being a highly educated black man.
Defensiveness is often rooted in fact, and I got the feeling that Isaac Maat relied heavily on facts. Either he’d experienced racism personally or knew he was susceptible to racial prejudice because he’d observed it firsthand. I considered the possibility that he’d encountered it here, in my father’s company. From Joshua Swearingen, maybe, with his “uppity” comment and his unjustified grandstanding posture.
From me, when I appeared to be surprised that he’d earned a degree from Wharton. That wasn’t what had surprised me, but he couldn’t know that.
He was defensive because he had to be. Anything could resemble an affront because anything could be an affront.
After my sorority sister, Mindi, was sexually assaulted at a frat party, a restraining order and even her rapist’s eventual incarceration wasn’t enough to quell her disquiet, because the threat wasn’t confined to him. Once she was aware that evil could exist in plain sight—in a place she’d felt safe, in the guise of someone she’d trusted—she knew it could lie in wait anywhere. Every shadow on the wall was a potential menace, and if the danger turned out to be real, survival depended on an immediate, suitable response. Her personality around guys went from convivial to cagey in the space of that one night. Now, after almost three years, she’d made transformative progress, but she would never be that trusting, bubbly girl she had been.
My mindless reaction to Isaac’s response—my own defensiveness—had done nothing to alleviate the perceived offense. I’d only made it worse. With my training, I should have recognized his reaction for what it was. I should have known better, but where Isaac Maat was concerned, I couldn’t think straight.
Sounds like a personal problem, as my brother Pax would say.
When I’d agreed to work for Daddy and Hank, the last thing I’d expected was a supervisor so blazing hot I just wanted to stare at him. He was what—twenty-eight, thirty? He could have at least had a little gut going on, for chrissake. Hair loss? Dry skin?
Freshman year, I had compared life-with-brothers notes with my lab partner. She’d had to teach her skin-care-clueless sibling how to exfoliate. “Him and his cheap soap and ‘moisturizer is for girls’ foolishness, taking twenty-minute, use-all-the-hot-water showers. He looked like the black undead, I swear to God.”
I’d snorted. “Brothers and their long showers. Like—we know what you’re doing in there. Ugh.”
“Right?” She’d laughed. “Boys are so nasty. It’s a miracle any girl with brothers ever wants a man at all.”
Isaac Maat’s chestnut-toned skin had no trace of undeadness, and his stomach looked flat in his fitted dress shirts, which strained across his wide, rounded-with-lean-muscle shoulders just enough to flaunt the chiseled definition underneath. Even his hands were a perfect balance of rugged and refined—as he was tapping his pen with irritation. At me.
He’d seemed appalled that I was psychoanalyzing our clients, which made no sense considering the fact that it appeared to be working. I wasn’t doing anything I hadn’t done my whole life—encouraging people to talk to me, to like me, making them happy so I got what I wanted, whether that was a better grade, a social invitation, or the loan of a pair of killer boots. I simply observed people’s fears and insecurities and quirks, drew conclusions about what they wanted, and then I gave it to them—or didn’t, depending on my objective. Admittedly, some—like Christina—were so resistant to forming attachments that there was no altering their initial reserve. I wondered if Isaac was like that.
Maybe he thought I was analyzing him? He was my boss, but my father owned the company that employed him. That had to be awkward but didn’t account for his unease over my opinion of him, unless he thought I would go crying to my daddy if I got sulky. Which I would not do, but he didn’t know that.
“I owe you an apology.” I stood in his doorway, hands loosely laced in front of me. “I made that about me, and it wasn’t about me. Or it was, but I shouldn’t have made assumptions or taken offense like that. I’m sorry.” He watched me, deconstructing my words to extract the truth or deceit in them, perhaps. I moved into his office and lowered my voice. “The thing is, I’ve grown up with Jeffrey McIntyre Custom Homes. I know it’s a successful company and it makes total sense for you to work here. But I know just enough about Wharton to wonder why you do.”
“I don’t follow,” he said, but then he seemed to understand. “Are you saying you think I’m too educated to work for your father’s company?”
“That’s not what I—” I stopped. Only honesty would work here. “Okay, yeah, I guess that’s what I meant. But—”
“I took the job I could find at the tail end of an economic recession—a downturn based on a rupture in the housing market. Just because you and your brother landed well-paying jobs through no personal effort of your own doesn’t mean the rest of us get that opportunity, Ms. McIntyre.”
Ouch. “You’re right, of course.” I nodded and backed toward the door, volcanic insecurities erupting from the accuracy of his words. “I’m just gonna go contact the next client.”
“Wait,” he said, and I froze two steps from the door. “You didn’t finish giving me the details about the Hooper project.”
“Oh.” I straightened my posture and cleared my throat like a kid giving a book report, trying not to fidget under the teacher’s gaze. “Where was I?”
“You were psychoanalyzing the client.”
Iris Hooper had been unreceptive at first, but I’d pretended I didn’t notice. “Many clients who travel full-time are less confident in their spouse’s judgment so they check up on every detail, micromanaging from afar. We turn into amateur marriage counselors just to get their house built. Ha, ha.”
“My husband hasn’t called you—?” she began.
“No.” I suspected the primary conflict might not be confined to the home build. I was prepared to hold her hand until the project was done if I had to, but I hoped to actually help her. I inched out on a limb. “Perhaps he just worries that you’ll think he’s not contributing if he doesn’t give feedback?”
She sighed. “Maybe?”
We went over the items at issue. That activity, coupled with a little positive feedback, proved that as long as she ignored how or why her spouse might object she had no problem identifying what she wanted.
“Well?” Isaac asked now.
“I’m going to work with her on trusting her gut and sticking to her decisions.”
One eyebrow rose. “You’re going to ‘work with her.’ How, exactly?”
I shrugged one shoulder and he rolled his eyes and tapped his pen.
“I can do this. Just… trust me.” I was floored by how much I needed his trust. “I know I’m not what you imagined for this position.” My chin rose a fraction of an inch. Acknowledging that I knew he hadn’t wanted me here was mortifying, but I persisted. “But this company is my father’s baby. He built it from the ground up. I wouldn’t do something stupid and cause problems for him. I want to do a good job, I swear. So I’m just going to believe you’re willing to reconsider your incorrect preconceptions about me. And… I’m sorry for any I had about you. Maybe we can start over from here?”
His assessment was guarded, searching my face for clues while giving nothing away, but he was diplomatic, if reluctant. “All right.”
I left before he could rethink it.