PRESENT TENSE
Chapter Eighty-Two
Monday, July 31, 2006
Rose swung Lizzy up into her high chair,
setting her dinner before her. The other two adults were already eating, so she
quickly sat down beside Jack and joined them, giving Lizzy a stern look when
she tried to drop her broccoli on the floor.
Jack had just come home, arriving late after
going to a job interview with a small publishing house in San Bernardino. Today
had been his last day with the Messner Agency, a job he had given up
reluctantly. He had enjoyed working there, but it was too far to commute there
from Riverside, especially when he would also be a student. For the last month,
he had been looking for another job closer to their new home. Rose would be
working on campus, but her part-time job wouldn’t pay enough to support the
three of them.
Rose helped Lizzy hold her spoon correctly,
then turned to Jack. "How did the job interview go?"
He smiled, the first smile he had given her
when asked about the job search. "I got the job."
"Great! Finally, somebody recognized
your talent! What will you be doing?"
"I’ll be an assistant manager in the art
department for Vandekar Publishing, working from twelve to seven Friday through
Tuesday. It won’t be quite full time, but it’ll be enough, and I’ll still have
time for classes." One of the problems they had found with their chosen
university was that it did not offer night classes. Students had no choice but
to go to class during the day and try to find work at other times.
"Oh, management," Rose teased him,
knowing how he often felt about those in charge.
"Assistant manager," he emphasized.
"I won’t really be running anything. And I’ll still get to do some
artwork."
"I’m glad you finally found
something," Rose told him. "I was beginning to worry you’d get stuck
working for Mari’s old nemesis."
"I avoided that, thank goodness. They
sounded an awful lot like Sunpeak. And that building—I don’t think they ever
fixed it after the earthquake a few years ago. It had water marks up to the
second floor from when the dam collapsed." Jack had applied with every
place he could in the Riverside area and the surrounding cities, even those
that he really didn’t want to work for. When there were hungry mouths to feed,
especially tiny ones like Lizzy’s, enjoyment of the job came second to the need
to make a living. But he had finally succeeded in finding a job he wanted.
"It was actually easier to look for a
job this time," Jack went on. "I got a lot more interviews, even if
nothing came of them."
"It’s probably because your record has
been cleared. With no felony conviction in your background, employers are more
likely to trust you."
Jack tugged at his collar, not liking the
suit and tie he’d had to wear for the interview. He didn’t mind dressing
nicely, but in the summer heat, a suit was torture. He glanced over at Tommy,
who was dressed similarly.
"Didn’t you have a job interview today,
too?"
Tommy nodded. "Yeah. Up in Redlands,
with a garage that needs a manager."
"So that’s why you’re dressed up,"
Rose commented. "I didn’t think mechanics usually needed to dress
up."
"Not around all that oil and
grease," he agreed, grinning. "But this was just an interview."
"So how did it go?"
"It seemed to go pretty well. If I get
the job, I’ll be moving to Redlands."
Rose laughed. Ever since she and Jack had
announced that they would be moving to Riverside, Tommy had been looking for a
job in another city. He could easily have stayed in Masline, but the old house
was really too big for one person, and he didn’t have any particular attachment
to the town. It hadn’t escaped anyone’s notice, though, that he did most of his
job searching in Redlands, where Sophie had chosen to stay after she had
graduated from college in June. Tommy and Sophie had been dating off and on for
a couple of years, and were closer than either would admit. Sophie hadn’t been
at all sorry to see Tommy trying to find a job near to where she lived, though
she had insisted that she and Tommy were mostly just friends when Rose had
asked her about it.
"When are you leaving?" Tommy asked
them, looking from Rose to Jack.
"August eighteenth," Jack told him,
breaking off a piece of toast and handing it to Lizzy. "We’ll be moving
into married student housing on campus."
"You’re lucky they have that. You won’t
have to go very far to get to class."
"I don’t know," Rose told him.
"UCR is a pretty big campus. Not as big as some, but it does take a lot of
walking. But I’m sure we’ll do fine. I like it better than Elias University,
anyway."
"Of course, no one is making you
go to UCR," Jack commented. "And no one is telling you what to
study."
"That does make a difference," Rose
agreed, smiling. Much to her surprise, when she had applied for graduation from
Masline City College a few months earlier, she had been told that not only had
she earned the Associate’s degrees in music and political science that she had
been working toward, but she had also earned sufficient credits to qualify for
degrees in dance, theater arts, and English. Most of the courses she had taken
in these subjects had been for fun—she could have graduated the previous
December, but she had been unwilling to head for a university without Jack, so
she had taken five classes simply because she was interested in them, and with
that, combined with the variety of classes she had taken before and the intense
coursework she had completed at Elias University, she had wound up with five
Associate’s degrees. Jack had been a bit envious—he had only earned two
degrees, in art and psychology—but he had congratulated her anyway, proud of
her accomplishments.
Seeing that Lizzy had finished eating and was
getting restless, Rose picked her up, carrying her to the sink to wash her
hands and face. Propping the living room door open, she set the toddler on the
floor and sat back down at the table.
"Well, I should know about the job in
another day or two," Tommy told them.
"It’s kind of sad, seeing everyone go
their separate ways," Rose commented. "It’s like the end of an
era."
"We’re not all going our separate
ways," Jack reminded her, a twinkle in his eye. "We’re going to the
same place, along with Lizzy."
"And anyway, after all these years
together, I think we’ll always be friends," Tommy added, smiling.