Displaced (fiction)

            On a blustery morning in 1980, a freighter struck a main support beam of the original Skyway Bridge. The story that snaked its way into elementary school tales was that the storm was so dense and abrupt that it had robbed the morning of vision. As drivers in the two southbound lanes attempted to make their way across the bridge in the storm, they had no idea that the span before them had crumbled, that they were driving into oblivion.

            Ten years later, on another bridge, Stan Mendelssohn's car was overturned when he was sideswiped by a woman who was applying lipstick in her rear view mirror instead of watching the road. Stan was killed. The woman was fine. Stan left behind a wife and two daughters.

            Rumors had been circulating for months, but the mood in the eighth floor conference room was surprisingly upbeat. Forty or so of Miranda Mendelssohn's fellow appraisers and their support staff sat in stiff-backed chairs in the grave, unceremonious room. Waiting. Talking about everything but what was about to happen.

            She had imagined being pulled into an office one by one by the division managers. “You're staying,” or “I'm sorry, but you're going,” they would say. “So, so sorry.”

            Miranda, who usually wore black slacks and a white blouse to work—never wanting to stand out—wore  a fitted skirt suit that day. She went all out: real pearls, hair styled, sheer black pantyhose, and crimson toenails that peeked through the leather peep-toe shoes–plagiarized confidence was all she could muster. 

            Jim Amana, some big shot from the San Antonio office, quieted the crowd. A poised African-American woman stood to his right.

            “I'm here because you've all been displaced,” Amana said.

            Displaced, the polite term for laid off.

            The youngest in the room by at least ten years, Miranda noted the reactions of her fellow employees. Former employees. She seemed to be the only one with tears in her eyes. Blending into the group, as she had fought to do most of her life, she sat with eyes focused on the far wall as everyone was handed the neat folders that held their severance documents.

            Amana and his counterpart from corporate HR told everyone that they had the rest of the day off to absorb the news, and ask whatever questions they might have.

            “Take the rest of the day,” the woman told them. “Today there's no deadlines.” But tomorrow it would be back to work as usual – for another two weeks. Turn in your company car, your laptop computer, your dignity, and you get a severance check. But only after you sign the waiver agreeing not to litigate, that you would leave quietly with a check in hand. Miranda qualified for six months of pay, though she would have traded the last six months' pay if things could have remained the same. The progression of stability had been vaguely nostalgic. So was the feeling of it being ripped away.

            She thought of the cigarettes she had given up just months ago. She looked at the scars marring her left wrist that peeked from inside her sleeve, years-old lacerations from scissors, knives, whatever had been handy. They pleaded for new attention.

            Six months' pay. A payoff. Hush money. Pity cash.

            The money wouldn't last. The first scheduled dispersement from the trust fund her father set up before he died was gone in a matter of months. Twenty-five thousand dollars. Too much for a twenty-one year old. Her mom had always tried to make Miranda feel that the money somehow made up for her dad's death. Everyone tried to buy her off.

            The group was dismissed. When she rose, Stephanie, a co-worker—former co-worker—from the Sarasota office noticed the difference in Miranda's appearance.

            “You wearing a skirt?” Stephanie asked.

            Miranda said, “Yeah.”

            “What? Did you think that would help your chances?” Stephanie asked as she walked over. Miranda stood near the door, ready for her exit. Never one to beat about the bush, Stephanie habitually made comments about other peoples' appearances. Very conscious of her own forty-pound weight gain over the last couple of years, she would say anything to draw the attention away from herself. Stephanie was the kind of “friend” Miranda wouldn't mind losing.

            “Yeah, right,” Miranda smiled. “I dressed for a funeral. Just saying a proper goodbye to what was the best job I'll probably ever have.” The brightness in her face and her casual tone were careful not to give away her true emotional state, though her words couldn't have been more honest.

            “Are you coming to lunch?” Stephanie looped her arm with Miranda's. “All the Sarasota crew, and some of the Tampa people are heading down the road.”

            Miranda begged off lunch. “I forgot to crate my sister's dog,” she said as she twirled her hair with one hand. “Yeah, dog sitting. Pathetic, right?”

            A lie.

            As she walked out to her gold Honda—the bank's gold Honda—she remembered the day a couple of years earlier when she and the other new employees got delivery of their cars. Many things were changing for the better. She had finally convinced herself that she could grow up, no more hanging around bars, partying every night, treating everything as if it were disposable. No more acting out at the slightest indication of rejection. And no more paying for gas, insurance, car payments. Bank management told her she could sell her car, she could use this one for personal use, too. They even let her pick out the color. She belonged somewhere, the bank wanted her, was taking a chance on her.

            Now she glared at the Civic. As she sat in the car, she realized how much stuff she had in it. Maps of the southern counties, tampons, money, shoes, plastic grocery bags. She could smell the spilled lattes clinging to the headliner and the floor mats.

            Miranda turned right onto Westshore as she left the parking garage, but immediately realized it should have been a left. The airport was just ahead of her.

            “Damn!” She slammed her open palm on the steering wheel.

            After taking her first left, she found herself on the Courtney Campbell Causeway. She was headed to Clearwater, not Sarasota. Frustration gave way to tears. She hated driving home from the Tampa office. After ten meetings over the last four years, she still didn't have the hang of it. Adding more than a half hour to her commute was the last thing she wanted right then. She couldn't wait to get back to her apartment and make herself a margarita, extra tequila, no salt. Miranda wanted to stifle the voice inside her head that told her she was a failure, that she knew it would only be a matter of time before everything fell apart. No one, nothing ever stuck it out with her.

            The taste of balance in her life and confidence in her future was slipping away like a mirage upon approach.

            Miranda rounded the bend on Interstate 275 and saw the Skyway Bridge ahead. No lights flashing on the “High Winds” sign. She always checked.

            She paid the toll and avoided the engine-gunners out of the booth. The Skyway always made her nervous. Her muscles tensed and knuckles whitened as her grip tightened on the steering wheel driving over any bridge. Miranda pictured her father's car accident a thousand ways since she got her license. A bridge was the only constant.

            She drove a steady sixty miles per hour, five below the speed limit. Cars passed her on the left, some drivers even flipped her off. As if she hadn't been having a bad enough day.

            As Miranda approached the summit of the bridge, she noticed a state trooper pulled along the right side. No lights flashing. Just sitting. As she was about to check her mirrors to change lanes, wanting to be as far away from a potential collision as she could get, she saw another man standing on the cement guard rail. Not next to it. On it. She slowed, unable to look away. The man, who didn't look much older than herself, straightened his body as he looked ahead at the blue bay two hundred feet beneath him. He raised his arms parallel to the railing, and for a moment he stood still. Then he looked in her direction. Right at her, she thought. He lifted his arms straight above his head, lifted his face upward to the sky, then leaped forward, head first, with the grace and style of an Olympic high diver. He was gone.

            Surely they were filming a movie, or there was a platform set up just below where the man had landed safely. No way she just witnessed someone take their own life.      

            Just as she passed the patrolman, her car slowing to under ten miles per hour, Miranda saw him get out of his cruiser. No hurry, just eased himself from his seat through his open car door and walked the several yards ahead to where the man just dove off.

            Did he just roll his eyes? she wondered. No way.

            She pulled her car over over onto the right shoulder of the bridge. She was stuck, couldn't concentrate on what to do. Miranda shook her head, tried to make sense of what just happened.  She was the only one who stopped, the only one who seemed to want to jump out and throw a rope, a parachute, or a life vest down with him. Cars kept driving. The world kept going.

            When it was clear that no one was doing a damn thing, she picked up her phone and called 911. She told the operator, “He's probably already dead, so I don't know if it's an emergency. I just . . . saw a man . . . jump . . . off the Skyway. There's a cop here, but he's not doing anything. No one is.”

            She wondered how everything was still moving when a life had just been dashed out in the stark daylight before so many eyes.

            The operator was asking for more information, but Miranda just hung up. Her eyes were fixated on the spot where the man had vanished. Someone honked behind her. More horns followed suit. She was the odd one. Concerned for a stranger she couldn't help anyway. Miranda pulled back into the slow-moving traffic and descended the bridge. She wondered if any of the victims of the 1980 tragedy had been there at the wrong time because they had gotten lost, just happened to be crossing when the bridge fell out from under them. She wondered if they had heard the crash of the freighter as it collided with the pier. Maybe they thought it was thunder. She wondered if they knew what was happening as they drove themselves off the bridge.

            Had that man known what was happening as he dove toward the water? Did he change his mind on the way down with no way to take it back?

            Miranda pulled into the rest area at the end of the bridge. Still shaking, she reached for her phone and called her sister. Audrey would be worried. She had made Miranda promise to call as soon as the meeting was over.

            “Is everything okay?” Audrey asked.

            Miranda didn't know how to respond.

             “It's okay, honey. You'll find another job.”

            Finding her words, Miranda said, “I just saw a man die.”

            “What? What happened? Where are you?”

            Miranda could hear Audrey's body straighten and tense with the shift in her tone.

            “I just drove over the Skyway. There was a man at the top, a guy. He jumped. It was like he waited for me to get there. Like he wanted me to see.”

            “Are you safe? Have you pulled over?” Audrey asked, ever the mother figure in Miranda's life.

            “Yeah, I'm at the rest stop.” Her breathing had steadied, Audrey's voice calming her. “I honestly don't . . . I mean, why would he have done that? He was probably your age, and he was handsome!” The details came back to her mind as the scene played over for her in slow motion. “I saw his face, just for a second, and his shoes. He had nice shoes. A well-dressed, handsome, young guy just jumped off a bridge. Why?”

            “It's just one of those things,” Audrey said softly. “You just happened to be there at the wrong time, and I'm really sorry. Especially after the kind of day you must be having. Just take some deep breaths and calm down. There's nothing you can do about him. . . it.”

            Miranda was silent.

            “So, how'd your meeting go?”

            “I've been displaced,” Miranda said. “Maybe he was a murderer. Or a child molester. He must have had a reason. Maybe no one loved him.”

            Audrey said, “Don't lose it, Mira. That guy's dead. Don't make it your problem, you're just going to get yourself more worked up.”

            Miranda didn't want to hear it. “I gotta go. I'll call you when I get home.”

            After she hung up the phone, she drove the next forty-five minutes in silence. No music. No radio. Only a replay of the day spooled through her mind. It was only two o'clock, but she was exhausted.

            Though she wanted to go right home and climb into bed, she willed herself to stop at the Target just off her interstate exit. She bought a liter of water and a package of ivory, linen-finish, embossed paper. She drank half the bottle of water while still sitting in the parking lot. When she got to her apartment, she went to her desk and dug through a mountain of business cards. She found the one she was looking for, lavender with a flower in the corner. Picking up her phone she dialed the number from the card and left a message.

            “Hi, Beth. This is Miranda Mendelssohn. I know it's been a long time since I've called. I hope you're doing well, and I was also hoping that you had some availability maybe this week or next week for me to come in for a session. There's a lot of stuff going on, and I think I really need to talk to someone. Please call me back when you get a chance.”

            Miranda returned the phone to its cradle, opened the middle left drawer in her desk and pulled a photo in a tarnished silver frame from the back. Wiping the glass with her hand, she studied the picture. Her dad was in a dark suit, a smile that radiated love dominated his face as he held a six-year-old Miranda in his arms. Kindergarten graduation. Miranda touched the top of her head, almost expecting to feel the cardboard graduation cap still there. After placing the frame on the shelf above her desk, she leaned over her laptop, ran her finger across the mouse touchpad until the screen illuminated. She went to Google and typed in “resume samples.”