Free Why Are You So Sad? by Jason Porter Page A

when they want to tell something important to their parent, but their parent isn’t nearby, and you, the only adult around, offer to help, and the child tells you, reluctantly, what is on their mind, but they say it in such a way that makes clear that they see you as a substitute, and that telling you isn’t going to satisfy their needs to the degree it might if you were their mommy or daddy. It was in this same way that Nora finally spoke to me. She said, and she seemed genuinely upset by it, “I work in Employee Regard. Obviously you know this.”
    â€œUh-huh.” My ass was getting sore on the lousy Winnebago bench.
    â€œThis self-appraisal thing should have come from Employee Regard. Right?”
    I hadn’t thought about it.
    â€œWhere else would it come from? But I
am
Regard, and I didn’t know anything about it. Zilch.”
    I took another sip of Jerry’s coffee and made a mental note to make the next cup stronger.
    â€œSomebody’s trying to steal my thunder,” she went on, “with this fucking survey. It doesn’t even make sense. Some of these questions don’t make sense, unless they are some kind of mind trap. But it doesn’t matter. Somebody came up with it, and it wasn’t me.” There was a territorial animal in that curly headed little acrobat. Her teeth looked sharper as she spoke. “Why didn’t I think of it? All I ever thought up were karaoke parties in the parking lot and all that obvious holiday-themed bullshit. Foosball Thursdays. Banana split Wednesdays. Putting Jerry in a dunk tank. Over-the-top shit, heavy on razzle-dazzle and streamers, excuses for people to get boozed up a little. But now this fucking survey comes along. Whoever is behind this is going to out-kudos me. I want a promotion to Customer Acclaim. I always have. They get to travel to Dallas every year. I want that.”
    â€œBut you are very good at what you do.” Was she? Did I care? I imagined her in her teens, bouncing around on blue tumbling mats. I pictured her spinning in the air, a leotard clinging to her lean body, moist spots under her arms, her toenails painted with flags on them, her head of curls tamed by high-performance hair spray. Spinning like a competitive maniac and then landing perfectly and breaking the judges’ hearts.
    A tear fell onto the orange cheese. Apparently she really wanted to go to Dallas. I offered her a napkin in case she started to have a full cry. The napkin had a picture of a home on it. The home was smiling. She blew her nose right into the mouth.
    I wanted to tell her the perfect reassuring thing, but I wasn’t sure what that would be. So I told her about my sadness, figuring we were on the same side of the virus. I said, “Sometimes I close my eyes and I try to look deep inside my body; even though there is no real location for our feelings, I imagine they are housed somewhere in my thorax, and I picture dipping my hand in to get a look at them. But what I pull out are broken objects—pots, urns, plates, unidentifiable fragments. I look at them and I hold them and I have no idea what they were originally used for.”
    She took a bite of her breadless sandwich and made a sour face. She threw the rest in the trash. Then she said, “I have to get back to planning the travel barbecue launch party.” Her indifference hurt, but then she handed me her survey, a minor consolation for being so aloof.
    â€œTake this,” she said, “and put it with the rest of the fucking surveys. I don’t think I answered it correctly, but at some point I stopped caring.” She paused and thought about what she’d said. “Don’t tell anybody. Especially Jerry. I know how word gets around. I said I stopped caring. But I care. I do.” With a smile that looked practiced, she walked away, erect and spring-loaded.
    If she was willing to stop caring, then I was willing to stop caring if anybody saw