Part 32
Mr. Collins was his usual jovial self at the meeting.
“Anna, we are getting there! I’ll need you to start next month because we have so much to do before the grand opening. We need one officer to be up on everything so the project finishes out as well as it started. That okay with you?”
Anna was a little stunned. She knew that she would be changing jobs, but not quite this fast. She had to give notice at work the next day. Life was going to get crazy now, she thought to herself.
She and Mr. Collins negotiated her salary which was a slight bit less than what she was making at the firm, but with the gas she would save in driving distance and with some of the perks of the center, it would actually come out to be a little more.
Just as she left Mr. Collins’ building, her phone rang. She almost answered it without checking, but at the last second she gave the caller ID a glance. It was Jeremy, again. He still called her about every other week and she always did the same thing; she ignored it.
She went to work the next day and had a hard time concentrating. At the end of the day, she saw that her boss wasn’t very busy. She told him quickly about the new job. He tried to counter with a hefty raise, but she assured him that this was a change that she wanted to make. He was rather surprised that the center would hire her for this important position, but then that’s what he always did. He always made the people working for him think that they were a little less than they could be. And it was his biggest mistake. It might have worked on some of the others, but it had never worked on Anna.
Life started going in fast forward. Two weeks after her conversation with Mr. Collins, the five churches all presented the information about the center to their parishioners. Anna had to be at all the Masses with the three board members from St. Joseph’s. After each Mass, she stayed for questions and asked people for some input via a short questionnaire. The questionnaire was her idea; she thought it would help them know right at the kick start the kinds of programming that they should be considering and how that would affect the hiring process.
Two weeks after that, Anna went to Columbus for a week to get information about a center not far from there. It was a long week of eating restaurant food, having meetings, observing, asking questions, keeping notes, and working into the evenings on the next day’s agenda. She was tired but felt good about the trip.
Anna and board members conducted interviews on various key positions for the center, among them some exercise science people, an athletic trainer, a custodian, and a very key position – the woman who would greet people, process memberships, collect fees, and set the tone for the entire facility. At Anna’s insistence, they agreed to pay a good salary for this position. Anna explained that this was often a business’s demise – not paying enough attention to who the gatekeeper was going to be.
Trips to the various local schools came next so that everyone knew about the center and what it would feature.
As March rolled around, Anna had been missing the usual 10:00 Mass in favor of the five o’clock service on Saturdays because she honestly wanted to sleep in on Sundays a little bit. She knew that the big push for the center’s opening was going to be the worst time and then things would settle down, but she had to get through it first.
One Sunday in March when Lent had just started, Anna chose to go to 10:00 Mass instead. So what about John? She had been seeing John here and there, but they had not been spending much time together. Emotionally, Anna felt caught with feelings that she didn’t know what to do with, and with the fear that those feelings would get her hurt to the quick. So she did what Anna had done at other junctures in her life; she evaded. And she knew she was doing it, but she kept on anyhow.
After Mass, Anna headed out to the parking lot and saw that John was waiting by her car. He was not smiling as usual, but looked quite serious. As she got closer to him, she was just about to ask him if everything was all right and instead he reached out, grabbed her and drew her into a deep hug. She figured it would be one of those, “gee, I just think you’re swell,” kinds of hugs, but as she started to move away, he pulled her back again. People were coming back to their cars and Anna was a little embarrassed, but John just held her tight. She put her head down on his shoulder and hugged back. He sighed. Finally, he let her go and looked at her closely.
“Oh boy, have I missed you!” he said. “You look thin; have you been getting enough donuts!”
Anna laughed and admitted, “You know, I haven’t. It’s been so crazy, John.”
“Well, this morning we are going to have all the donuts you want. Katie is at Janet’s so we are on our own this morning,” he said.
John and Anna spent an hour at the donut shop, catching up on everything and talking nonstop.
“The center is opening in only, what, four weeks? I bet you are excited,” John said.
“You have no idea. It is so beautiful. All of you did a great job,” Anna said.
John drove Anna back to her car and got out, opened her door as he usually did. The parking lot was slippery and so he held her elbow and walked her to her car door. No one was anywhere around; snow was falling softly, the kind of flakes that are just huge.
“Anna, I hope you won’t be upset with me, but I’ve wanted to do this for the longest time,” he said.
John bent down and kissed her.
Just then the bells of St. Joseph’s began to chime.
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