"Kate Thornton - Too Stupid To Live" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thornton Kate)

= Too Stupid to Live
by Kate Thornton


Dawn's body was found face down in an alley about a block from the office. From the looks of it, she had been bludgeoned to death with something small and heavy, like a hammer. Her pathetic plastic purse and its cheap contents were spilled out next to her and splattered with blood.

I looked at her battered body and sighed. Maybe it's just my middle-aged attitudes, but I tell you, most of the kids we hire in the Finance Department of Western Enterprises have the brains of a soda cracker. They're just too stupid to live.

But Dawn stood out, even among the unpromising younger generation. If anyone ever deserved to be a victim, it was Dawn.

Dawn's murder was the buzz of the office water cooler, and I knew it was only a matter of time before the police would come to interview everyone who worked with her. As head of the Finance Department, I was prepared to tell them how she could screw up the simplest assignment and how her reading skills ranked far below those of a domestic house cat. I was prepared to tell them that her idea of math involved ten fingers. I was prepared to discuss her terrible work habits, bizarre clothing, numerous tongue-and-body piercings and evident lack of common sense. I was even prepared to mention her low and frequent taste in men and her nasty mouth, which had put her on my list of prime candidates for the unemployment line.

But I was not prepared to tell them we were related.

Dawn had been startling in a cheap and painful way, something like a loud and brightly colored tropical bird let loose in a quiet room. I am like the rest of my family--invisible.

When I turned fortyish and put on a few pounds, I became part of the vast army of middle-aged women who blend into the woodwork. We no longer catch men's eyes, and younger women dismiss us as easily as they do their own mothers; we're insignificant and sexually noncompetitive. But don't feel sorry for me--I have learned to use this ability to my advantage.

My brother Billy is also invisible. He is a homeless, mentally disturbed Viet Nam vet. You have passed him a dozen times in the street, turning your face away, not making eye contact as he shuffles by in stinking rags. There's a vacant look on his weathered face, and his wild, dirty white hair is a scary reminder of things you'd rather forget.

I have tried a hundred, no, a thousand, times to get him to come and live with me. But he doesn't want to. He goes to his group meetings, gets his medication at the VA and does a lot of other life-sustaining things. But he won't give up the streets for me and that's that. And I have to respect him for hanging onto whatever shred of independence he can. It spares me the sight of his demons, but it does not spare me the guilt. Billy is my only living relative.

Billy wasn't always the invisible guy on the streets, though. He tried very hard to live a normal life for a long time. He married--several times, in fact--and fathered a daughter. But things were not destined to work out well, and the daughter grew up in a turmoil of parental indecision and neglect. Her mother had custody and committed suicide when Dawn was twelve. Billy was in the VA hospital at the time, and she was sent to live with her mother's relatives. What went on there, I don't know. But when she turned sixteen and came looking for her father, it was not for a reunion but to abuse and castigate him for abandoning her. I had to haul him out of jail, and she disappeared right after that.

I have an assistant who interviews job applicants in the Finance Department, but I do see everyone when they start and they get introduced around. Imagine my shock the morning they brought Dawn by my office on her first day. There was no mistaking it--I could see my brother's face in hers, and she had the family name, too, but our name, Smith, is so common it makes Jones seem exotic. She didn't recognize me, so I let the relationship go unnoticed, and it wasn't long before I began to wish Dawn into invisibility.

She caused a stir without being able to get much work done, and I was about to recommend my assistant put her on performance notice, the prelude to what we like to call "downsizing" these days, but which I still refer to as "firing."

But I decided to have a little talk with her first--it was the least I could do, what with her being family and all. As crazy as my tiny family is, I am almost obsessive about it.

I called her into my office and motioned for her to have a seat while I finished date-stamping the papers Bennie from Accounts Payable had brought. She sat down in the visitor's chair and I winced at her get-up. Western Enterprises is a fairly conservative company, but we don't have an actual written dress code anymore. Too bad. Dawn was wearing a pair of jeans slung so low that her black thong panties showed over the tops. Her midriff sweater stretched over a pushup bra and bared a foot of flesh, including a silver ring through her belly button. She teetered on high heels and carried a plastic handbag with her name spelled out in sequins. Her hair, an unbelievable shade of red--real red, not copper--hung to her shoulders. She chewed gum with her mouth open, had a dozen little earrings in one ear and a stud in her nose and looked out of black-rimmed eyes an ancient Egyptian would have been proud of.

"Yeah?" she greeted me.

I explained carefully and gently that she needed to actually finish her work tasks before talking on the phone, doing her makeup, hanging around the water cooler and leaving work early. I also explained that we at Western Enterprises--particularly in the Finance Department--dressed a little more conservatively in the business environment. I'm sure I sounded prim and stuffy, and probably looked it too, in one of my many black suits. Whenever I go clothes shopping, I still hear my mother's voice telling me what a bargain a black suit is. "It always looks correct, dear, and doesn't show the dirt."

But Dawn wouldn't have listened to my mother, and she wasn't listening to me. She rolled her eyes and cracked her gum. "If I wanted to look like some old bitch, I'd dress like you. So, like, can I go now?"

I nodded, speechless, and she left with a smirk on her face. I fumed as I documented our discussion and got on to other business, but I was interrupted again.

"Miss B." It was Bennie from Accounts Payable. Bennie was another new hire, big and blond and not too bright, but friendly and helpful. "I got another set of printouts for you." He handed them to me with a smile and then hung around, shifting from one foot to the other and fiddling with my nameplate. Even Bennie should know it by heart now--"Miss Beatrice Smith"--so I assumed my name wasn't what he was after.

"Thanks, Bennie," I said. "Was there something else?" I'm telling you, sometimes working there is like running a day care center or something. Where do we find these kids?

He reddened and looked down at his tennis shoes. We used to call them tennis shoes when they were smaller and came in two colors. I guess they're athletic shoes now that they look like club feet and have blinking lights on them. "I, uh, I was wondering..."

"Yes?"

"Uh, is there, you know, any company policy about, uh, you know, uh, dating?" He looked like he was suffering even more than I was.