Catherine Had A Secret
What We Didn’t Know Explained A Lot
Catherine was hired in 1985. My employer was a law firm that specialized in real estate with a staff of twelve, most of whom were native Floridians or long-ago transplants like me.
Our office didn’t advertise for a new employee, but Catherine’s unsolicited resume arrived at the right time, just as the partners considered expanding the staff. Her cover letter said she wanted to leave her mid-America state and find employment in a warmer climate. Her interview was conducted by telephone and although her experience as a paralegal was limited and she lacked any experience in real estate law, she was hired, sight unseen. The employees were surprised that someone in another state was hired without the partners interviewing locally, a decision that was completely out of character for them.
I was the early bird of the office, arriving thirty minutes or more before everyone else. On her first morning, Catherine arrived shortly after me, shocked that I was the only one in the building, expecting to be greeted by the senior partner who hired her.
After introductions, she made what I thought was a rude comment about people arriving to work late. “Not late yet, ten minutes to go,” I said, pointing at the clock that said 8:20.
Catherine frowned and pursed her lips, “One should always report to work at least fifteen minutes before the starting time.”
I chuckled, “That doesn’t happen around here. People’ll will start arriving soon though. Occasionally, if work is exceptionally busy, a few people show up a little earlier than usual, but seems like everyone prefers to work past 5:00 or come in on the weekend. I don’t think anyone here is a morning person — even me! I only come in early because I get up at 5 am to take care of my twelve rescue animals. Once my chores at home are done, I come to work. Otherwise, I’d be skating through the door at 8:30 like everyone else!”
Catherine gave a disapproving glance at me and then the door.
It was early spring, which in our area of Florida is like the dead of summer in Catherine’s home state. I was wearing pale gray, lightweight pants with a short-sleeved, purple blouse and flat, white sandals over bare feet. Catherine wore a gray wool suit with a white, long-sleeved blouse that peeked out of the jacket arms and black pumps with stockings. She looked me up and down with disdain, waved her hand in my direction, and said, “Are you not working today?”
I responded that I was, and she questioned why I was dressed so casually. “Well, it gets very hot here. Actually, it’s already hot here, and summer is three months away. Too hot to dress formally. You’ll get used to it.”
She snorted, “I doubt that. I would never appear at work dressed like I was going to the mall or the beach.”
I couldn’t imagine her going to either place.
Not off to a good start, I thought as I showed her around, navigating the honeycomb of hallways and offices, ending with her’s.
“This is your office,” I said, “If there’s anything you need to set up your desk, just let me know. I order the supplies.”
Another snort, “Rather small, but it will do.”
I introduced Catherine to the other employees as they arrived. She was no more friendly with them than she had been with me. Her responses were cold and formal but polite.
As employees gathered in the small kitchen to get cups of coffee from the pot I’d prepared, Catherine commented, “It’s almost quarter to nine. When do people start working around here?”
We ignored her comment.
Catherine worked at our office for eighteen months. She never figured out how to fit in with us or with Florida. Consistently she dressed in suits — always navy, black, dark gray, or brown. Underneath the long-sleeved jackets were long-sleeved white, beige, or light blue blouses. The only shoes I ever saw her wear were navy or black pumps and always with stockings. Her only concessions to the heat were a white purse and one pair of white pumps that she donned between Memorial Day and Labor Day, strictly adhering to the fashion rule that white is a summer color, a rule that is joyously ignored in our semi-tropical state.
Each day from early April until November, she arrived at the office with beads of sweat on her upper lip and along her hairline. Several female employees invited her to go shopping, offering to help her pick out clothes more suited to our hot climate, but Catherine emphatically declined as though the friendly offers were insults.
Try as we might, Catherine remained distant, never warming to us. We were a friendly bunch, quick to invite her to lunch or a girls-night-out, but she declined all but once. To our surprise, she joined several of us for happy hour at a local restaurant to celebrate our receptionist’s birthday. As we drank margaritas, laughing and talking above the jukebox music, Catherine sipped a glass of water, smiling thinly, saying little despite our efforts to include her in conversations.
We tried. We really tried, but nothing could melt Catherine’s cold exterior. Added to her unfriendly demeanor was her propensity for critical comments, always pointing out how things were done better or faster where she used to work. Her sharp-tongued observations about how we worked or about our casual clothing garnered her no friends. In defense of my office mates, no one was ever unkind to Catherine. In fact, most were surprisingly tolerant, choosing to ignore her biting comments rather than reply in kind.
Her reputation with our clients, lenders, and real estate agents was no better. They complained she was unfriendly, inflexible, and demanding. Soon she was assigned only cash, for-sale-by-owner closings as the partners steered her away from the local bankers and real estate agents who supplied the firm with the bulk of its closings.
When Catherine announced her resignation no one was surprised and no one cared.
We had a somber going-away party for her in the office conference room. Conversation was strained as we nibbled on slices of bakery cake, but we managed to get her engaged enough to tell us she was moving to a another city in our state for a different type of work. Real estate law was not for her, she said. We silently agreed.
The fact that she was moving further south was amusing; none of us could see her surviving in temperatures any hotter than the ones in our more northern area of Florida.
Catherine left and was never missed.
In the following years, employees came and went in the firm. I left for three years and returned as an independent contractor. There is only one other remaining employee who knew Catherine back in the ‘80’s. One of the three attorneys in the law firm died, and another went to work for a different firm and then moved away. The senior partner merged what was left of his practice with another firm, a judicious move that served both parties well.
Almost thirty years to the day that Catherine left, the senior partner received a hand-written letter in the mail with a return name and address unfamiliar to him. It began something like this:
Dear Mr. D*****
You probably don’t remember me, but you hired me in 1985 after giving me a telephone interview . . .
The letter continued to say more than Catherine ever said in her 18 months at the firm, and it explained a lot.
In the letter, Catherine wrote that her move to Florida was not for warmer weather but to escape an abusive home, where she was terrorized by her father from a young age. She confessed that she was nearly as frightened to leave as she was to stay, fearing that her father would find her wherever she settled.
Before applying for any out-of-state jobs, Catherine opened a new bank account that her father didn’t know about. After giving her father most of the cash from her paycheck as he demanded, she deposited the rest in her secret account, choosing not to eat lunch so she could save money for her move. By the time she was hired by our firm, she had enough saved to rent an apartment by telephone, wiring money for the first month’s rent and security deposit.
The senior partner gave her one month to move before starting her employment at our firm. Over the following four weeks, she hid articles of clothing and personal items in her purse and then stashed them in a box under the desk where she worked. When she had enough to manage for a few weeks without shopping, she shipped her clothes to the apartment she’d rented in our town.
On the last day in her state, she went to work like usual and feigned illness in the mid-afternoon. Rather than going home, she walked to the Greyhound bus station, bought a ticket and never looked back.
Catherine thanked my boss for giving her the opportunity to have a new life, admitting that she realized she was a disagreeable employee. She felt safe in our office and appreciated that we were kind to her in spite of her unfriendly attitude.
The reason she left those many years ago was not because of a new job but because her father had located her. It would be the last time she needed to run and hide; two weeks after she moved, her father died in a car crash on his way to Florida to find her.
With his death, Catherine experienced overwhelming relief and freedom. She began therapy to deal with her severe social anxieties and paranoia. A short while later, she enrolled in college, received a degree, married, and had two children. And, during all those years, she thought about the attorney who gave her a chance to live a different kind of life and about the employees who were kind to her in spite of her rigid demeanor.
Her last line said:
If any of the same employees still work with you, please let them know that I dress like a Floridian now!
The attorney shared the letter with the two of us who remember Catherine and who still work for him. We may not have missed her but she wasn’t forgotten.
The tone of the letter told us that Catherine was different — a friendlier, kinder, more flexible, and more likable person, the person that emerged when she felt safe to be who she was meant to be. She learned to adapt to her surroundings, how to fit in. All three of us were happy for her, and the senior partner expressed that and our best wishes for her in his reply letter.
You never know what is going on with someone— what battles she is fighting, what demons haunt her dreams, what anxieties prey on her mind. And, you never know when a long ago memory will resurface to remind us that we have a connection, no matter how slight, with each person who has entered our lives, even those who we didn’t know well or didn’t like, even those who didn’t stay long.
