Every day, I read about the death of someone I never knew existed. On the front page today there’s an obituary about an author and activist who left an indelible mark on the world. I think, him, too?
On the phone, my mom tells me she has gotten into this writer whose obituary she read on the front page. She says his writing is simple but elegant and really gets at the heart of what it means to live in these systems we have created for ourselves. Or she tells me about a musician she has been listening to who died last week, whose lyrics are elegiac and sorrowful and help her understand the unknowable grief the whole world carries.
From the trellis armchair in the bedroom of her retirement home, my mom tells me about these dead people she loves.
I go to work in the morning, which means I get in my sedan and drive to a squat office park that my mom says looks Soviet. My office is in a chestnut-colored building bearing my company’s bright blue logo on the lip of the roof. I work in corporate communications for an annuities company. Every day I send emails in response to newspapers asking about the company’s practices. I use a prewritten script that I’ve printed out and tacked to the cork wall of my cubicle.
“We work tirelessly to protect our customers’ financial well-being. The death of a loved one or a disability can introduce financial hardships. Our insurance products help provide stability during these times of crisis.”
Sometimes I write variations on the script. When a reporter asks why my company is stonewalling death payments to the beneficiaries of our policyholders, I ask the reporter for the name of the customer he has been speaking with. When he responds, I tell him that we can’t speak to specific cases, but that we work tirelessly to protect our customers’ financial well-being every day, and we are always looking for ways to improve our services.
Whenever we keep an article out of the press, there’s a little celebration at the office. Which usually means my boss buys donuts from the chain store next door. Everyone in the office, except me, calls my boss Goldfish because he has red hair and sits behind tall glass walls in a room filled with gold pearls and kelp.
The boss tells us our new communications strategy is something he has just thought of. He calls it “consumer victimization.” It doesn’t mean victimizing the consumer, he says. It means the opposite. Here’s what we’ll do: we’ll make it seem like we are up to our necks in work, and like when a consumer complains it’s going to tip us over the edge.
I search online for the name of the customer’s loved one and find his obituary. He was a man who once worked as a facilities manager at a college campus. Not someone who will leave an indelible mark on the world. At the bottom of the obituary there is a button that tells me to write the family a condolence.
I type a note explaining that my company’s underwriting process involves complex calculations based on centuries of actuarial science that I couldn’t even begin to explain. I say the process requires a lot of patience. I offer my condolences.
My mom calls from a bench in a veterans’ cemetery stippled with toothy headstones and tiny American flags. She says she is watching a woman wander between graves. “She has looked at each gravestone at least twice,” my mom says. “Someone should tell her that whoever she’s looking for, he’s not there.”
My mom says she has just read the obituary of a man who spent his prison sentence writing a book to prove his innocence. His efforts proved successful. “Talk about a return on your investment,” she says.
It isn’t that I’m embarrassed I don’t know the names of all these dead people who left the world better off. I just didn’t know there were so many of them.
I tell my mom that I work for a company that works tirelessly to protect our customers’ financial well-being every day. Beyond my desk, Goldfish grins at me through the glass. I thumb the donut glaze off a paper napkin. I savor the taste. “We help provide financial stability during times of crisis,” I say.
Sam Pollak is a journalist and fiction writer in Manhattan, where he has been living after spending two years as a staff reporter for the Provincetown Independent. He is at work on a novel inspired by the white-collar scofflaws of Cape Cod.
The Independent is accepting fiction submissions of up to 750 words. Email your submissions to Assistant Editor Eve Samaha: [email protected]. Include your full name, home address, and a telephone number where you can be reached. If your story has appeared elsewhere, supply complete information about previous publication with permission from the publisher if necessary. Editors will work with writers to prepare accepted works for publication.
