Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [16]
“So,” she sighs. “Your idea was fantastic, obviously. I’m impressed with how well you pulled it all together as one cohesive idea.”
I press my lips together and smile. It was easy, after all. I started with my catchphrase—the one I’d conceptualized all on my own seven years ago—then I poached the ideas that we later incorporated once Coke had signed on. Ben, an account executive, was the one who devised the “people on the street” backdrop, while Susan, our whiz over in graphics, dotted in the floating bubbles that bopped from person to person. Originally, I’d thrown out the tagline like a blindfolded person might a dart: I’d hoped that it would hit something in the vicinity. This time, I wrapped up those darts and handed them over with a bow.
“The plan is this,” Josie continues, rubbing her eyes. “Coke wants the completed storyboards ready next week. Which means that if you have weekend plans, you have to cancel. Pass it along to the team. And obviously, I’ll be here, too.”
She stares at a stress ball that peeks out from under yesterday’s paper on the corner of my desk. I knew she was thinking about her kids. How she’d have to tell them that Mom couldn’t make it to their soccer match or play rehearsal or whatever eight- and ten-year-olds did on their weekends from which parents were supposed to reap complete joy. Josie’s husband, Art, was a set designer for opera houses, which basically meant that he was mostly unemployed and home with the children. And which also meant that she didn’t have a choice: that she sacrificed the opportunity to quit her job or take extended leave because, as she once told me after a happy hour filled with two too many chardonnays, “Someone has to pay the bills, and in my household, that person is me. Me! ME!”
“No, no, no,” I say today. “You stay home. I have it under control.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m the boss. Of course I’ll be here.”
I hear the resignation in her voice and wonder if she worries that her kids hate her. I want to tell her that they mostly came out fine. Yes, that at sixteen, her daughter, Amanda, would break into her high school, falling-down drunk, and get suspended for three days, but that as of now, armed with my glimpse into their future, they weren’t in rehab and they weren’t wearing armbands to symbolize their hatred for their mother, and that mostly, her family unit was intact, even if still, when she e-mailed me, I detected that simmering tone of resentment for the time that she’d lost because she’d spent so much of it at work.
“Josie, I insist.” I lean toward her. “Look, really, I have this all mapped out in my mind. One hundred percent. This is second nature to me, and I absolutely don’t need hand-holding this weekend.” Relief washes over her face. “Spend the time with your kids. I’ll call you if we run into a problem.”
“You sure?” she says, standing to leave.
“Positive,” I reiterate.
“Okay,” she says. “I’ll make you a deal. You deliver on this account, and I’ll single-handedly prime you for my job.”
“Deal.” I nod.
I wait until she’s shuffled out of my office to break into a Cheshire grin. Because Josie’s crown, gold and shiny and so within my reach, feels like just the first of the riches that I’m here now to reap.
FIVE DAYS LATER, a near eternity in my then-is-now-is-then warped world, my phone rings at work. I’m wrapping up the finishing touches on the storyboards, which, my bosses raved, had never been done more cleanly or efficiently, when the yellow light flashes on the phone and the ring bleats through my earpiece. I motion to my team to take a break and press “Talk.”
“Jillian Westfield.”
“Oh Jesus, Jill, I need help!” Megan sobs on the other end. I look at the calendar: I’d completely forgotten. Today is the day she miscarried. “Tyler is out of town, and no one else knows, and I can’t stop bleeding!