So

A text message pops up on my screen: I am calling you. 

Not May I call? or Are you busy?  The name under the message is Diane Bismark. 

Toby reads my mind and leaps off the desk, kicking back and up a desperate wave of papers, still kicking back as he runs through the stack, hitting solid desk and leaping as I lean too late to catch him.  

The phone rings and I tense.  “Hey, Diane.”

“So, Loch…”

In the absence of a real office to prowl, the office managers, in the time of the virus, have been taking turns spot-checking our work, reading through file notes, listening to calls.  Diane Bismark is the quintessential uber (see footnote) -manager.  She knows everything, she can do anything, and she has the managing stamina of a border collie.

“…First of all, how are you?” she asks.

I hear the effort in the nicety.  Not that Diane isn’t nice.  But she was made to do business, not chit-chat.

“Pretty good, all things considered.”  I look down at the floor and see Toby’s head sticking out from under the bed.  On his back, he looks up at me, inviting me to run.  “I hope you are.”

“So…Loch.”  Back to this.  “I have been listening to your calls.  Some of them, they are kind of long.”

“Oh?”  At this point, stupidity is my best defense.

“Yesterday, you spoke with Teri Lin.  Twice.”

“Yeah.  I realize our conversations weren’t all work-related.  But being stuck at home by herself for such a long time, she had a few things she wanted to get off her chest.  And then she wanted to get them off again.”

“You are very generous with your work time.”

How should I interpret that?  Is this a prelude to a write-up?  I look to my sympathetic cat.  Still on his back, he retreats under the bed like a cat on a slow spring.

“So.”

This could go anywhere.  

“Like Teri Lin, we have all been working from home several weeks.”  Diane’s voice sounds tired and reflective.  Not-Diane-ish.  “Sometimes I forget what personal things I left on my desk.  They said a cleaning crew was going to come into the office and sanitize.  I hope they don’t break anything.”

I want to respond, but her comments are so far outside the scope of my expectations that I don’t know my own words yet.

“I see my home every day,” she says.  “In the breakfast room where I work, all the walls are yellow.  In the morning, squares of sunlight from the window move across the wall.  By nine, they are already losing definition, that which makes them square.  By ten, they expire into yellowness.”

“Diane.  That’s quite poetic.”

“It’s yellow.”  She drops her first correction.  “Like a school bus with four walls.  You know.”  She waits for me to get onboard with her analogy.  “Did you know that if an angry or violent person is left in a pink room, that person will gradually calm down; but if they are left in the pink room too long, they will become more enraged than before?”

I consider the room Diane is in now.

“All this yellow,” she says.  “It is so annoying.  You know those retractable measuring tapes that springs back?”

I tell her I know exactly what she is describing.

“Well, I used a yardstick to measure the dimensions of each wall.  These walls I see now, eight and ten hours at a time.  My mother told me when we bought the house, I should paint with neutral colors and add red or green accents using seat cushions and pictures.”  

I want to ask her what happened to the retractable measuring tape. 

“Don’t tell me how to paint my own house!” she shouts at the past.  I hear what sounds like a gasp with a general mix of incredulity with accents of regret and insight.  “I have lived with these yellow walls so many years, Loch.  How many more years can I do this?”

I’m still not certain where she is going with this.  But by calling my name, she tries to pull me with her, into the middle of an untold measure of yellow. 

“My husband has also been working from home.  His job is not essential enough to do some place else.  So, I see him all day.  Every day, Loch.”  The caller pauses.  Her silence builds.  “He is sooo annoying.  Sometimes…”  She considers her next confession.  “Sometimes….I cough.  You know, like maybe I have the virus, to justify social distancing with him.”  She hesitates before she laughs.  “Listen to me.”  She invites me to chuckle respectfully with her.  “Next thing you know, I’ll be telling you about our sex life.” 

And then she proceeds to relate her first-hand experience with intimate conjugal relations at six feet. 

That respectful laugh is a little more difficult the second time. 

But I understand now what I am hearing.  The Office-Diane I know is too rock-solid, too uber (remember the footnote) to be pushed around by any mere person or virus.  But she has finally met her match in Home-Diane, her self-reflective equal, a manager of a different sort, conducting spot-checks internally.  Now she is forced to consider just where she stands in a room of yellow as annoying to her sensibilities as the man she married.

Diane is not alone.  So many of the people who get me on the phone have encountered their reflective self in this time of isolation.  In addition to getting their vehicles back on the road, they want to improve their health, take up yoga or contra dancing, return to church after a long hiatus, get involved in local politics.  Repaint the breakfast room.

“So.”

This unassuming two-letter pivot is a transition Diane knows how to use.  She springs from it and retracts to it, like a person trying to measure herself now against the person she was before the extended lockdown. 

“It is always good to speak with you, Loch.  Hopefully, we will be in the office soon.  Remember to watch the length of your calls.”

…The footnote: Not the company. Think Frederich Nietzsche.

The non-essential husband.