Part I
From my window over the manufacturing floor I could make out the two figures huddled together at the far end of the #1 Line with their animated gestures and exaggerated responses. If the conversation limited itself to just that, all was probably fine. If it escalated then I would need the shop foreman to step into intervention mode no matter how much it pained him to do it. The couple is married and she had recently discovered her husband was having an affair with a young machine operator over in Finishing. Unfortunately my foreman was the brother of the wayward husband.
When your business is the largest employer in a small town it's impossible to segregate the drama and intrigue from the necessities of the work world. At least half the employees here at VA-Kraft are related with some of them representing three generations. Our oldest employee is 79 and the youngest is 18 out of a workforce of 450. In a very real sense, the fortunes of the company are tied directly to those of the town.
I think it was that sense of connectedness that spurred me to put my office up on the upper mezzanine out on the floor rather than take the nice corner office that my late father always occupied. I spent a good bit of the last twenty years working in various parts of this plant that constituted the view I now had and I knew just about everybody out there on a first name basis. There were deep roots in this business.
The couple on the far end of #1 Line was getting into it a good bit more aggressively now. She was yelling at him and just when I thought she was going to turn and walk away she instead turned back toward her husband and slapped him full force across the face. That was a bad move on her part. As bad as things might get, the last thing you want to do on the floor is strike someone. We can handle words and anger but hitting someone is bad news.
I have what some might call a modified zero tolerance policy. We are an industrial site and OSHA rules. Any violence and you are out the door. This kind of incident would not go well. Later that morning, my floor supervisor, Jim Reed, talked to me in the office.
"Carl, I know she's sore as hell and sorry for what she did but I had to send her home. She reddened Johnny's face some fierce. I know the policy calls for terminating anybody who hits someone but in this case, she might have been patting the side of his head, you know?"
Jim was grinning when he said it but he had a point. She would probably end up taking her husband back when it was all over. They had five kids to feed and while they made ends meet one of the kids had several medical issues and was running back and forth to the hospitals and doctors in Charlottesville. Besides all that, she went through her own affair a few years earlier.
If I treated this as a rough housing incident, it would still merit a suspension without pay. That was unavoidable. So to keep the peace and to be as compassionate as I could, HR gave both of them a one week suspension without pay and required counselling for two months unless a court orders otherwise if they take it to a divorce.
At the end of the day, I sipped a mug of coffee and reflected back on my own life. My father, Carl Harvey Sr., passed away unexpectedly at the age of 60 a couple years ago and left me in charge of the company he built from the ground up starting 35 years earlier. Being the only child of a hands-on entrepreneur and a star struck artist of a mother who abandoned the family 15 years ago, it fell on me to continue the business. As I noted the fortunes of 450 people depended on somebody being at the helm.
The floor was running fine when I turned the key to my office door at the end of the day and after wishing the security crew a safe night I turned the Dodge toward my home. The drive was empty when I pulled in as was the house. My wife Lucy had left the previous Friday evening and now it was just me, the television and some leftover pizza in the fridge.
----
Six years earlier she had showed up at the office wearing skin tight beige slacks and matching blouse that did nothing to minimize her abundant bosom and somehow maneuvered the office floor wearing four inch pumps and a smile to match. Her name was Lucy Crane and she was the new administrative assistant to Tommy Jones, our HR manager. For a guy with a penchant for a frown he sure kept a wide grin on his face when Lucy started working for him.
"Good morning, Mr. Harvey. I hope you are having a great day!" She smiled as she gracefully strode past me on her way to my father's office.
"Ms. Lucy, if you'll greet me every morning like that, every day would be great." I replied while watching her delightful ass sway down the corridor.
We kept that banter up for a few months before I finally worked up the courage to ask her out. She turned me down with a smile. I guess it's not every day that a beautiful girl turns down the "boss's son" for a date but she had an excuse.
"I can't, Mr. Harvey. Somebody beat you to it and I've been seeing him for a little while now." She informed me.
Honestly, I think I respected her more because of it. She didn't lie and she didn't break her commitment to the lucky fellow who beat me to it. That said, I didn't ask her again. I always looked at relationships like a marriage. A guy just doesn't intrude on a couple that might be getting serious about a life- long commitment. The world is full of available women. They just didn't all look like Lucy Crane.
About six months after my 'rejection' I received an email from Lucy that shifted the paradigm of my world from that point on.
"Carl Harvey: Will you go out with me Friday nite? - Lucy"
That was it; just a one line email, no sweet talking or anything like that. My reply was just as straight forward.
"Lucy Crane: Maybe - Carl"
Three and a half minutes later, Lucy was standing over my desk.
"So, Carl, does maybe mean you will or you won't?"
"Lucy, it depends." I said as I adjusted myself in my new reclining office chair. "It depends on whether you are still in a relationship with that lucky fellow you have been seeing for the last few months. If you are then my answer is no but thanks for the offer. If you aren't, my answer is yes. Hell I'd love to."
"Carl, I broke that off a couple months ago so here's the deal ..."
Lucy went on to explain that she wanted me to take her out to dinner with a couple friends of hers and their husbands which is just what we did. We had a great time and did it again sans the friends the following week. On the 3rd date, she fucked me senseless and we became a regular couple after that. We went out together 2 or 3 times a week and stayed in a couple evenings, mostly spent in the bedroom. Two years later we were married.
The marriage was a major event. My side of the family was pretty small since I was an only child and my father only had one sister who I rarely saw. Her daughter, my one cousin did come at my insistence. Ruthie was her name and she always stopped to visit when she was free and driving through. Lucy's family on the other hand was enormous. She has four brothers and three sisters and both sets of grandparents came as well along with what seemed like a dozen aunts and uncles with their broods. In addition to those guests, we each had our assortment of friends and standups.
The big surprise for me was when my mother showed up. It took me a moment to recognize her. I had not seen her in five years even though she looked remarkably young for her 55 years. Deborah Harvey had always looked young. My father married her when she was 18 years old and he was 22. She had been knocked up with me at the time and her father made sure that 'daddy' Carl lived up to his responsibilities. So Carl Sr. slipped the gold ring onto Deborah Johnson's finger to make me legitimate.
She didn't come alone. The smarmy looking bastard with her was a fellow named Dale Rhodes and he had on enough jewelry to put a Gypsie to shame. One thing absent was a wedding ring, on his finger as well as my mother's. Trotting behind both of them were two identical twin girls, maybe 11 or 12 years old. I had seen many twins in my day but I had never seen a pair of them that looked damn near identical to my own mother.
The twins were introduced as Tammy and Tonya Harvey. My mother introduced herself to other guests as Deborah Harvey and Rhodes just kept his mouth shut.
"Carl! You are looking so wonderful." She gushed over me while hugging me uncomfortably close.
"Mother, it's certainly a surprise, in more ways than one." I replied. I glanced over at my father who just shrugged. He had conveniently stayed well out of the way and was not coming to intervene in any fashion.
Rhodes piped up with something about it being his fault because he had set the invitation aside and forgotten to tell Deborah until just a couple days ago. Well of course, that had to be a bunch of baloney because as far as I knew my father and I had never sent an invitation. It didn't matter really; she was here now.
The wedding reception was actually a grand affair even with the surprise visitors. Everybody got damn near smashed except for my father and I. I don't know what his excuse was but I planned on consummating my marriage that night with my new bride. The two of us took off for a couple days and nights at the Peaks of Otter Lodge before flying off to Martinique for two weeks. I set aside all the revelations of mother and her daughters or my sisters until I returned. Lucy was my sole focus of our entire time together.
When we returned from the honeymoon we were in for a bit of a surprise. Mother and the twins were still here while Romeo Rhodes had returned to NYC. They were staying at a Holiday Inn not far from the plant. Lucy and I had just returned the previous evening and were enjoying a nice Saturday afternoon as newlyweds might be expected to, both nude and lounging around the pool. We had spent nearly two weeks soaking up the sun and it had become an enjoyable addiction.
