Page 7 of Engineering a Love Story

Worst of all, Donny’s cubicle backed up to mine, and he liked to blare talk radio all day. Sitting next to Donny generally involved him chuckling as the on-air blowhard called Hillary Clinton a feminazi or compared Chelsea Clinton, who was fourteen at the time and shared my name, to a dog. Early on, I asked Donny to lower his volume, but this only made him laugh harder. He wanted me to hear. And what could I do about it? Complain to my manager?

During those years, the air was full of news reports of the go-go nineties, the soaring stock market, a dot-com for every whim, a changing of the guard, a new age. But none of that felt relevant to me, not when I was stuck with those crusty guys. After BayBank, I had one interview with a hot Cambridge start-up building new tech to cache content online, but as I sat around a table with the young execs who had all gone to MIT—except for the one who’d attended Harvard—it was clear they weren’t interested in my state school degree or my brief stint at BayBank, a place I’d left without a reference.

So I temped, worked on contract Y2K projects, even programmed at the DMV for a year, trying to decide if I hated software engineering entirely or only all those guys.

Then I landed at Gilroy.

“You’re not making software for computers any longer?” my father asked when I called to tell him about this new job.

“No. Now I help IT people at big companies choose software. Like, at the shop. Do you have a guy who looks after the computers?” And then, after a moment: “There are computers there, aren’t there?” I couldn’t assume. Every time I drive out to Western Massachusetts to visit my father, the brick fortress that trundles on for a half mile in my hometown seems to have sunk a few feet farther into the river that slooshes behind it. It’s not hard to imagine a lot of paper in there. Covered in a dusty grime.

My father said there are, in fact, computers at the brush factory and even a guy who manages them. “Jimmy B., one of the Budreaus,” he said with his usual cocksure certainty, confident I knew who he meant, though I had no idea.

“Right. Okay. So, if Mr. Budreau decides the shop needs new software, maybe to run payroll? He might want advice on what software to purchase. That stuff is so expensive, he wouldn’t want to spend all that money and buy the wrong product. Right? With Gilroy, he could read a report on payroll software, maybe talk to an analyst and get advice.”

“You’re going to give Jimmy advice about payroll?”

Things got murkier for my father after that. I explained I didn’t know anything about payroll. Attempting to hide the incredulousness in my own voice, I said, “My area is online banking.”

“Online banking?” My father has repeatedly refused my offers to set him up with a computer. He’s skeptical of the internet—and most things. And he certainly has no concept of how the internet might relate to his bank account. “Christ. Is that something you know about?”

“A little,” I said. “I’m still learning.” And, hard as it is to believe, I’ve found online banking gets more interesting the more I know about it. Like most things, I guess.

***

In the morning, after my brain whirred and calculated all night, I prepare myself for the office. On a different day, I might work from home—another Gilroy perk. All I need is my laptop and a phone wire, and I can work from anywhere. I’d love to stay in my sweats today and catch up remotely, avoiding all hallway conversations and anyone who might’ve seen me with Walter at The Symp.

But I can’t stay home today. State Street Bank, a large Gilroy client, was unable to attend The Symp this year, and since State Street is local, my boss Howard arranged a mini-recap for them this morning at Gilroy’s Cambridge office. All twenty of us on Howard’s team will deliver our Symposium presentations, which slice, dice, and forecast tech markets related to financial services, an area lovingly referred to as fin-tech.

Given my performance with Walter last week, it’s imperative I nail this presentation. Howard will be in the room, and I need him to see that I’m the steady woman he hired, not the preposterous girl who flounced around The Symp. I have to be buttoned-up and on time, so I dress and pack up early, attempting to ignore the stress and fatigue pulsing in my limbs.

It’s just seven when I step down our front steps, travel coffee mug in one hand and my laptop bag hung over a shoulder. My steps are quick as every minute that clicks by means extra traffic, a situation I’ve battled the whole year we’ve lived on the North Shore.

I’ve just reached my car when Ash’s green Saab pulls into our driveway. He parks his car directly behind mine.

I don’t move, and for several moments, Ash is also still. Then, he slowly steps from his car, and he’s disheveled in a way that isn’t normal for a weekday morning. Usually, he’s up and out at the same time I am, dressed in his teacher khakis and a clean polo. Now he’s in a raggy pair of shorts that he wears to do Boops’s projects at the lake and an old t-shirt with the peeling logo of his high school lacrosse team.

Ash leans against his car door. Sinking hands into his pockets, he asks, “Was it all just a joke to you? Were you always pretending?”

I shake my head, momentarily unable to pull words from my mouth.

“All that time we spent together?” He recounts the college football games we used to attend, the first apartment we shared in Cambridge.

“Ash.” I force myself to inhale and attempt to steady my voice. “We need to have this conversation. We do. But I’m so sorry, I have to go right now. I have a presentation this morning—”

“Bermuda?”

This stops me. I almost smile. The trip to Bermuda was our honeymoon, but we were chased away from the island by a hurricane after only one day. An inauspicious start, we used to joke, though I thought too that the excitement of evacuating hid the fact that we hadn’t had much inclination to spend our days exploring each other in our suite, as honeymooners would.

“Really. I have to go.” I shift my coffee mug from one hand to the other and flex my free fingers. “I’ll be home tonight, and then we can talk as long as you want.”

“And moving up here? I thought we were about to start a family.”

“Do you think you could move your car?”

“And what is it you want to do now? End it? Sell this house? Move? Just start over?”

“Yes. We need to sell the house. I’m going to move back to the city.” A decision I make as I’m saying it. “But please, again, let’s talk later. Howard is—”