"But that's O.K.," Beekman says. "There is still time to revise."
"But not much time," Leffler says. "It's too late to get out in front. But you can still come abreast."
"But, of course, there are better ways to say that nowadays," Beekman says to Leffler.
"But of course, but of course," Leffler says.
Is there ever laughter in an office that isn't at least a little nervous?
Sam Lipsyte on the madness of workplaces.
"So," I say, "as you are both my bosses, not to mention my mentors, do you have any tips on how to best approach this apology revision?"
"Be less tone-deaf," Beekman says.
"Be more sufficient," Leffler adds.
•
I spend the evening on my apology.
Near midnight, my daughter leans into the kitchen.
"Still up?" she says.
"Yes. Just catching up on stuff."
Sophie glides in, takes a seat at the table. "What are you working on?" she says.
"Oh, nothing important."
"You always used to tell me about your job."
"You were always asking. I guess you had a boring life back then."
"Dad ..."
"Just kidding. But you're a teen-ager now. So much going on at school, with your friends... . I can't imagine my work could be that interesting to you."
"It's not," Sophie says. "But your apology sure is."
"Mom tell you?"
We're divorced, Melissa and I, but we still talk, at least about Sophie, or things related to Sophie. We keep each other in a cold loop.
"What are you going to do?" Sophie asks, and with her new acrylic fingernail scoops out a sliver of banana bread from the still cooling pan, pops it in her mouth. Whenever we have bananas that are about to turn, and I feel especially vexed, I bake a loaf.
"Well," I say. "I'm going to apologize. Don't really have much choice."
"Aren't you sorry for what you did?"
Sophie has recently dyed her hair its original color. It's disconcerting.
"I'm sorry people were offended," I say.
"Isn't that a cop-out?"
"Is it?"
"I don't know," Sophie says. "Can I borrow twenty dollars against my allowance?"
•
Beekman says the new draft shows promise.
Less deaf. More depth.
"Still," Leffler says. "It's missing something crucial."
"What is it missing?"
"That crucial element known as remorse."
"Believe me," I say. "I'm full of remorse."
"Maybe," Beekman says. "But it's not coming through in the apology. Do you understand that what you did was wrong?"
"To be honest," I say, "not completely."
"Not completely, he says," Leffler says.
"At least he's being honest," Beekman says.
"Look," I say. "I can understand how, if one does not have all the facts, or a sense of the context, one might perceive—"
"So this is it?" Leffler says.
"This is what?" I say.
"The hill," Beekman says.
"What hill?"
"The mound, or monticule, upon which you yearn to greet your demise."
"There's no hill," I say. "There is just a misunderstanding."
"Very well, then," Leffler says. "I would suggest a complete overhaul. Apology two point oh. There is still time, I think."
"But not much," Beekman says. "It's already too late to come abrea— to come to the side of it. But we can still maybe take this thing from behind."
"Beekman," Leffler says.
"I mean catch it. That's all. Before it's completely out of the barn. Before we're sitting here trying to put the horse poop back in the toothpaste tube. And you're dead on your hill."
•
I get cracking on my newest version, try to craft something a bit more remorse-centric.
Marco, my ex-brother-in-law, who is also a lawyer, calls.
"Melissa filled me in," he says. "I hope you're not apologizing."
"That's exactly what I'm doing."
"Big mistake. The worst thing you can do is apologize."
"How can that be?"
"Because it will never be enough," Marco says. "And it won't change the outcome, either. They've already made up their minds about you, trust me. It's just assets and liabilities. The morality stuff is a smoke screen. Maybe they feel they're paying you too much. Maybe you're not as productive as you used to be. Here's a chance for them to make a change. And they can look good while still earning their profits. Nothing important has been altered to make the lives of ordinary people better. But your bosses can keep coasting along, the pigs. Meanwhile, if you apologize, you'll get nothing from them in court, down the line, because you will have already admitted you did something wrong."
"But I just want to tell my side of the story."
"There are no sides of a story," Marco says. "There are just different stories. People either believe yours or the other one. Usually the other one."
"So, what should I do?"
"Got any bananas?"
"You know me well," I say.
•
Thing is, I am sorry and I am also not sorry. It's all so nuanced. The nuance itself is highly nuanced.
•
Melissa calls to tell me that some of Sophie's classmates have teased and bullied her.
"Because of me?"
"No, but it could have been. Next time it could be. Look, I know my brother encouraged you to do otherwise, but can't you just get this over with? Move on?"
"Move on to where?"
"To wherever people like you go after these sorts of things."
"I don't want to move on! I want to stay on!"
"Then I guess you'd better do what they're asking."
"I'm trying," I say. "It's just not always clear what that is, precisely."
"Figure it out. For your daughter's sake."
•
Beekman and Leffler have given me the remainder of the week to refine my apology.
The problem now is all one of nuance. From a certain distance, the nuance is complex, but coherent. Close up, it splinters into myriad fragments of subtle distinction.
The events themselves—the words, the acts, the intent—are a blur, a frantic smear. A certain phrase, once quite common and, by my lights, benign, was uttered, I admit, by me. Its lesser-known and brutal associations, to which I was not privy at the time, choked the office like a poison gas.
Currents of history pushed this gas, herded it, prevented it from dissipating or exiting through vents. My history seeped into that of the offended party, which collided with the history we'd all been taught in school, as well as the revision of that history we knowing people knew, as well as the revision of that revised history, which had recently gusted in with the force of a reckoning.
Also, it should be noted with appropriate candor that after I uttered the aforementioned phrase and suffered an onslaught of verbal abuse from my co-workers—no doubt unmooring me from my usual sense of decorum—I did, in fact, in plain view of all, urinate on my offended colleague's desk.
That part was wrong (though I guess I can thank stage fright and my middle-aged prostate for the fact that hardly more than a trickle was produced), and I am deeply, hauntingly remorseful, especially since the colleague, a recent addition to our team, had become something of a protégé to me.
Probably anybody else would have been fired on the spot. Or been taken into custody. End of story. Or stories. But with me there are mitigating circumstances. That's what maybe seems to shock my colleagues the most: I opened my fly and made water on my mentee's desk after uttering a phrase that I still insist wasn't always noxious but must have turned so, like a banana, at some point in the recent past, and yet I remain, at least nominally, here at the Beekman/Leffler Group, formerly known, back when Oates was with us, as the Beekman/Leffler/Oates Group, or, to industry insiders, blo.
But my colleagues are not aware of another history, one I share with Beekman and Leffler.
Cartoon by Kim Warp
I was one of their first hires, after all.
I know where the bodies are buried, metaphorically speaking.
Someday, of course, these bodies—including that of Oates—will turn to dust and it really won't matter where they are buried. But, while these metaphorical corpses remain scraps of flesh and bone and curled fingernails and parched hair, it does matter.
Still, it's clear that I do need to apologize. I'm just not sure why I find it so difficult.
•
Doubtless there are reasons—intellectual, philosophical, ethical—why I find it so difficult, but here in my kitchen, with another loaf of banana bread in the oven, and Sophie in her room attacking her schoolyard tormentors with brief, retaliatory videos recorded on her phone, they elude me.
I encouraged Sophie to make the videos, and, as her uncle Marco counselled, to apologize for nothing, despite the fact that her behavior at school has been, according to the latest e-mail from her vice-principal, less than ideal.
"If you apologize," I told her, "you just make it worse. They've already made up their minds."
"Those stupid gatekeepers," Sophie said. "I hate them."
I wasn't exactly sure to whom she was referring, but I concurred. "I hate them, too," I said.
"Wait," Sophie said. "Are we gatekeepers?"
"If we are," I said, "it's a tiny gate, way off on the edge. It's not a gate that opens to much."
"Cool."
Perhaps the main reason I find it difficult to compose what I'd have to call my apology five point oh or maybe six point oh is the absence of ... what's the word I'm looking for?
Reciprocation, maybe?
By which I mean, who the fuck has ever fucking apologized to me?
Did my father apologize for deserting us when I was seven?
Did my mother apologize for subsequently marrying Cleon Teitelbaum, M.D.?
Did Coach Castellano apologize for cutting me from the varsity bowling squad?
Did Professor MacInnes ever apologize for falsely accusing me of plagiarism in my final paper for Medieval Thought and Belief, and thereby causing the university to rescind my scholarship? (She did, sort of, on her deathbed, much too late.)
What about Eddie Kim, my roommate, who slept with Violetta Mendoza while I was home on Christmas break?
What about Violetta, who, before she slept with Eddie, promised me that she would never sleep with Eddie?
What about Aunt Dolly, who refused to pay me—a broke kid who'd dropped out of college after he lost his scholarship—for painting her goddam house while she lay on a beach in Barbados? She said that I'd eaten up my fee with the lavish lunches and dinners I charged to her account at the gourmet delicatessen. Tell me, precisely how many smoked-salmon-and-caviar platters (never beluga, by the way) and filet-mignon hoagies equal a professional-grade sanding, assiduous application of primer, and two beautiful coats of semi-gloss paint on a rambling Victorian plus detached garage? Not so easy to deduce, is it? Maybe it's more complicated than some loathsome burst of snap self-righteousness can adjudicate.
What about Melissa, my ex, who, if you are one of those people who hold the decidedly not medieval but more modern belief that opening one's fly and micturating on an already offended colleague's desk might be a sign of sickness, long ago forsook her vow to have and to hold me in sickness as in health, seeing how it's not the first time my behavior has hinted at unwellness, at least according to the confusing—and ever-shifting—mores of our times?
I mean, what about Melissa? Was it not she who actually uttered the words "you are a sick piece of shit who needs serious help," after that contretemps with the unquestionably sight-challenged Uber driver?