Chatterbox

I have a temporary job with the city coordinating their volunteer recycling program. It has helped to stave off boredom, feed my starving bank account and reaffirm my worth as a productive American citizen.

It's office life. I sit directly across from my boss. Our two desks touch and we are squeezed into a cramped, overflowing, windowless cell. While my boss is immensely good-natured and polite to a fault, her constant chatter, obsession with AP grammar, defense of Walmart and Christian views have started to rub raw a nerve. My mornings are now an endurance test, a mental feat of strength to repress a biting retort or an eye roll.

Besides some of her other peculiarities, one that surfaces most often is her obsession with Maggie, her future adopted daughter. My boss and her husband are in the process of adopting a baby from China. This can be a three to five year fiasco and they are only into their second year. However, this doesn't seem to stop my boss from talking about Maggie as if she were in existence. As well, Maggie seems to be their biological off-spring and has manifested traits of her parents, such as an affinity for board games and a love of dogs.

This morning though, my boss took a moment from her nonstop commentary on her life, past, present and future, to answer her cell phone. Almost immediately she shut the door and had problems speaking because she was choking back sobs. It soon became evident that the caller was a very young mother-to-be. Apparently Maggie will have brothers and sisters. My boss's voice filled with hope and even a bit of desperation as she explained what nice people she and her husband were and if the girl would only meet them and then she would understand how much they wanted this baby and how they had been trying for five years and how they would even hold their little pekingese puppy cradled in their arms because they didn't have a human baby to hold.

One of the cruel ironies of life was right there in our claustrophobic office contained between the two of us, a woman who wanted a baby so much she had imagined one into being and a co-worker who's family was so burdened by two beautiful boys that it almost tore them apart trying to get rid of them. And right then I wanted her to have that baby as much as she did, more than anything in the world, because she deserved it.

As my boss hastily hung up the phone and prepared to rush to a meeting, she looked at me with bright, moist eyes and emitted a girlish squeal. Tears welled up and she had trouble speaking again. "I spoke with her grandma a month ago and didn't think the girl would even call me because the father is reluctant to give up custody." She glanced at her watch, gasped and began hurrying out the door. She peaked her head back in though, blond curls bouncing, "OK, so if I'm like a nervous chatterbox all day, this is why." She squealed again and scurried down the hall, high-heels pattering like rain drops. As my stomach turned somersaults at the thought of the rest of my mind-numbing day, I wondered if perhaps on second thought maybe I didn't want her to have this baby that much.