A project manager immerses herself in her work in Andrea Bishop’s touching “Quantifying the Dent of Bob,” the newest entry to our New Voices catalog. Beth was Mr. Carter’s first hire, and it was through work that she met her husband, Bob. Now that Bob is gone, Beth uses her work not to distract herself from the grief, but to understand its extent.
I’ve been arriving early and staying late to get a side project done, a surprise for my boss. We project managers take turns planning the monthly staff social, but I’ve done one better and developed a spreadsheet identifying venues and activities that will maximize company joy per dollar spent. When I open my laptop to show him, my boss slumps over his large corner desk. From this angle there’s an oval of smooth scalp I never noticed before. I detect a slight rise in my heart rate and take note. I’ll record this data point for another side project, a personal one.
“Mr. Carter, heads up, I’m not quite finished.”
He says, “It’s Kevin, Beth! Just Kevin. I’m getting tired of this fucking Mr. Carter business.”
He sounds angry but he’s not. I’d know. I was his first hire, before I even met my husband, Bob. Later, Bob and I were appointed godparents to Mr. and Mrs. Carter’s kids, both grown now.
Mr. Carter has told me many times our initial success was largely due to my excellent analytical abilities. Lately I’ve been leaning into that. It keeps my mind off less desirable thoughts.
“Mr. Carter, this spreadsheet lists possible caterers and adventures up to a twenty-mile radius, sorted by age group most likely to appreciate each, and providing a cost per employee with a factor difference for length of time with the company.”
“So, no actual plan for the staff social tomorrow?” he asks, flinging his palms in the air. Hand gestures can be ignored. They’re an inexact method of communication. I don’t get a chance to explain how employees will rate the amount of fun they’re experiencing at regular intervals throughout the social (good in-the-moment learning for interns), because he cuts me off to tell me I’m missing the point and to ask me for God’s sake to pull myself together.
“I don’t think Bob would have wanted this for you.”
“Mr. Carter, deep breath. With this spreadsheet, your assistant can take on the rest. No need to waste valuable project manager time planning, or even attending, staff socials ever again. Win win.”
Recently, I performed a study on mourning and found a high correlation between familiarity of subjects, time spent together, and possible future suffering. The most practical response to that data set is to distance oneself from social ties and events.
I never get a chance to tell Mr. Carter I only factored the kids in at a .75 value which in the old days would have made him laugh. We call them the kids because young people intern and onboard and quit so often it’s hard to keep track of their specific names. Which is good, by the way, for reducing intimacy. But Mr. Carter is not in a laughing mood.
Jokes aside, I only see young people at work and do find them refreshing. After analyzing the pros and cons, Bob and I decided not to have kids ourselves. We didn’t want anyone in our lives that might disturb our perfect equilibrium. We did not factor in heart attacks though. That was an oversight in my calculations.
After another desk-slump Mr. Carter says for my own good I’ll need to take a leave from work until I take him up on his offer to speak with a grief counselor from the Employee and Family Assistance Program.
I feel conflicted about staying home. On the one hand, it will give me more time to work on my latest analysis. Each day I update the ratio of time Bob and I have spent together versus apart. In the mornings over the coffee that I now prepare myself, I can almost hear Bob’s responses to my thoughts. So, he’s not still here, but not gone either.
On the other hand, at the office I’m more productive. Things are getting crowded at our house—flipcharts in the dining room, whiteboard on the kitchen table. Bob would have shuddered. He preferred a tidy home. We divided our chores by whose contribution had the most impact, and Bob always joked around, nicely, about what the place would look like if he wasn’t there to pick up after me. Now dirty dishes are piling up. Compost is rotting on the counter, but since that’s the end goal of food scraps anyway, maybe it’ll be more efficient to bring the worms inside? (Noted on mental to-do list.)
Mr. Carter looks fragile.
Perhaps a grief counselor could explain the physics behind the recent change in the weight of air in our apartment. Even pushing open the door after work takes more energy than before, like a cloud of translucent molasses has silently moved in where Bob used to be.
The objective of my latest analysis is to mathematically pin down the essence of Bob-ness that has now vanished. (To where exactly? TBD.) Is it possible the echo of his unique laugh still reverberates ever so slightly through the house at a rate too low for the human ear? That tinkle of a chickadee trill followed by a donkey bray that used to peal through the house after we recounted stories about our respective days. It has been confirmed there are no remaining signs of the almost infinite quantity of tears that used to roll down his face at the first hint of sadness in a movie. (Fridays were our movie nights but have since been discontinued.) The scent of Bob—cinnamon, woodsy, hint of vanilla smoothy—is gradually dissipating, although every effort has been made, including halting the laundry cycle, to retain it. In our bedroom, there’s just a dent in our mattress, in its ninth year of our ten-year mattress replacement cycle. I’ve since modified the timeline to reflect reduced usage which will allow me more time to lie beside the dent of Bob and better understand the hollow spaces he left behind.
Andrea Bishop lives in Vancouver, Canada. Her work has been published in Grain, The Fiddlehead, trampset, BULL, Orca , and elsewhere. Andrea’s a morning person who has a deep respect for spreadsheets, forests, dogs, and quests. When not writing or reading for her day job, she improves healthcare programs. She recently completed a short story collection and is putting the finishing touches on her first novel. She welcomes visitors at andreabishop.ca and dialogue on Twitter @_AndreaBishop.