Sparks the Matchmaker

CHAPTER 10

Ollie was a walking tower of reluctance. He went through the motions of the paperwork with Lynn, watching himself give in, kneel down, take on burdens that weren’t his own. Once they arrived at their destination— Marie’s apartment— he blurted out, “Lynn, are you sure you really need me for this job?”

“Oh, stop being so dramatic,” she said. “Marie’s easy to work with once you figure her out.”

“Well, I hope so. The episode at the office was kind of crazy. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous about this job.” As the words came out of his mouth, he realized something about Lynn: “You know, there’s something calming about your presence. With Marie, I mean.” It was one of the first times lately that he had tried to compliment a girl without also trying to pick up on her, and it felt good.

“Thanks. Some days I don’t know why I stay with the job, and other days I can’t believe they pay me to do it,” Lynn said.

“I’m hoping for the latter, in my case.”

“Yeah, not so fast. Today is grocery shopping day— the most interesting day of the week.”

“Today is groceries?” Marie interrupted them; she was instantly excited. “I get to make my shopping list this time.”

“Not today,” Lynn said.

“Why?” Marie demanded. “It’s my right! I can make my own shopping list.”

“You know why,” Lynn said.

“No, I don’t!” Marie stomped her foot in protest.

“That’s not what your program says,” Lynn said. “You chose not to go to work today, so your consequence is that you don’t get to make your own shopping list. You know that.”

“You just don’t care about me!” Marie shouted. “You don’t care if I get to eat good.”

“I’m not going to argue with you about this,” Lynn said. “We’re going to just use the same grocery list you made from last week and keep your daily menu the same again.”

“I don’t want to use the same list!” Marie stomped her way over to the couch where she began punching the couch cushions. “Ollie, tell her I can make my own list.”

“Okay, then,” Lynn said. “Marie, you’re on a planned ignore for ten minutes, starting now.”

“No!” Marie yelled, but Lynn didn’t turn to look at her or respond in any way. “You can’t do that to me!”

“What’s a planned ignore?” Ollie asked.

“It’s just ten minutes at a time,” Lynn said. “When she gets too angry or manipulative, then you just tell her that you’re doing a planned ignore, and you don’t respond to her for ten minutes.”

Ollie watched Marie grow increasingly more upset over the next minute while Lynn refused to look at her.

“Talk to me!” Marie demanded, and then punched her large fist into the couch pillows again. “You can’t ignore me! It’s not your right!”

“The company has behavioral specialists who come up with behavioral programs for each individual,” Lynn added, speaking to Ollie. “Marie’s program says that we’re supposed to do these planned ignores when she gets all riled up like this. I used to avoid doing them, because she doesn’t take it very well, but it didn’t take me too long before I saw that they were right. Basically, you can nip it in the bud and do a ten minute planned ignore— which will usually leave her calm and collected at the end— or you can try to work it out with her, which will just leave you both flustered for hours.”

All Ollie could do was stand and observe as Marie got more and more flustered. Finally, around the six minute mark he noticed a change. She stopped punching pillows and stopped yelling. Her bottom lip quivered as she did her best to conjure up fake tears. Finally, her last tactic emerged. She begged and begged, telling them both that she’d be good and cooperate with the grocery list if they would just start talking to her again.

Lynn still didn’t say anything, but periodically looked at her watch until the ten minutes had finished. “Time’s up,” Lynn said with a smile as she looked up.

“Finally,” Marie responded. “That was way longer than ten minutes.”

“Nope. I promise it was exactly ten minutes. I kept an eye on my watch,” Lynn said.

Ollie was completely surprised and relieved. Marie was in a cheerful mood as they began to get ready to go to the store. Oh my gosh, there are actually times when Marie isn’t trying to overpower and manipulate someone! He was happy to see that Lynn truly did enjoy working with Marie and wasn’t pretending just to talk him into the job. He was starting to think he could probably handle his new position once he got the hang of it.

“Marie’s fun,” Lynn said again once they were out on the sidewalk, walking toward the grocery store. “You’ll love her to pieces.”

“You keep saying that,” Ollie said. “Something tells me you keep saying that because a lot of people don’t get to that point.”

“A lot of people have a hard time with her because they don’t follow her behavioral plan,” Lynn said. “She’s easy if you just follow her plan.”

“Like the planned ignore thing?” Ollie asked.

“Exactly. Like the planned ignore thing,” Lynn said. “At first it seems a little insensitive or mean because she craves attention so badly, but she’ll go on for hours if you don’t do it. Some of the staff just don’t ever seem to get that.”

“And what about her grocery list?” Ollie asked.

“Yeah, that,” Lynn said. “The behavioral specialists put that in there because food is her second favorite thing in life other than attention. It got to the point where she has to earn the right to make her own weekly menu. If she ever refuses to go to work, like she did today, she loses that privilege. Besides, it’s not like she’s getting starved, even if she doesn’t get to choose her own meals.”

“Does she have to earn the privilege to drive to the store too?” Ollie asked. “Is that why we’re walking?”

“No,” Lynn said. “We walk because it’s part of her program to get exercise each day and it’s really hard to get her to reach that goal otherwise. Grocery day is the easiest day to get her to go for a walk because there’s food waiting for her at the other end— like literally holding a carrot on a stick in front of her.”

Ollie and Lynn continued to discuss Marie’s different behavioral programs and goals as they walked. They glanced over their shoulders every few seconds to see that she was keeping up, but failed to notice she’d slipped away until they heard her knocking on someone’s front door.

“I need to use your bathroom!” Marie said to the small Mexican lady who answered the door, then pushed her aside and walked right into the house without waiting for a response.

“Marie, wait!” Ollie yelled, but it was too late.

“I’m so sorry,” Lynn apologized to the small Hispanic woman who stood confused and worried in her doorway. Lynn did her very best to explain the situation, but English was clearly not the woman’s first language and the facts ended up somewhere lost in translation.

Ollie tried conjuring up some of the words he remembered from high school Spanish class, but he failed as miserably as Lynn did. Embarrassed and uneasy, the three of them waited inside the front door until Marie limped her way out of the restroom.

“I’m mad at you, Marie,” Lynn said. “I’m writing an incident report about this for your therapist to read.”

“Don’t be mad at me,” Marie pleaded. “I just needed to use the bathroom.”

“You know better than to barge into strangers’ houses,” Lynn said. “That poor lady didn’t know who you were or what you were doing.”

“Are you mad at me too, Ollie?” Marie asked.

Ollie nodded his head, assuming that it was the right thing to do. He was sure it would only be a matter of minutes before he’d be laughing about the incident with Lynn, but they were still embarrassed and couldn’t let Marie think otherwise.

“I’m sorry,” Marie said. “I know better. I do.”

At the grocery store, Lynn followed behind Ollie as he walked up and down the aisles with Marie, checking things off their list of items. Marie was in good spirits. It was difficult for Ollie’s long legs to walk as slowly as Marie limped, but the process went pretty smoothly.

Until they got to the cash register. “That’ll be $81.53,” the cashier said, after ringing them up.

“We need to take something off,” Lynn said. “The office is pretty strict about the food amount. She’s not allowed to spend more than $80 per week. Her check will bounce if we go over.”

“No it won’t,” Marie said. “I got a big cash settlement when I got hit by that car.”

“I know that,” Lynn said. “But there are rules. You don’t want me to get fired, do you?”

“No,” Marie said. “Okay, we’ll take off the yogurt.”

“I think we should take off the soda pop,” Lynn said as she took a case of root beer out of one of the grocery sacks. “You need the yogurt for your lunches.”

“I need the soda pop in my lunches more than I need the yogurt,” Marie said as she grabbed the root beer and put it back into the bag.

The case of root beer made its way in and out of the grocery bag a few times while Ollie and the cashier looked on. Ollie wasn’t sure how he would handle the situation once he finished his training time and had to do the job without Lynn there to help.

“You can make your choice, then,” Lynn said. “You can choose to checkout right now without the root beer, or we’ll just go home without any groceries at all; we’ll have to come back tomorrow. You’ll have to eat your leftover spaghetti for dinner tonight.”

It was on. Marie stared her down.

Lynn stared back.

Marie made one last move toward the root beer.

Lynn closed the checkbook and slid it into her back pocket.

“Okay, fine,” Marie said. “You don’t care if I have good food. You just don’t care about me.”

That’s her answer to everything. “Marie,” Ollie said, “you know that’s not true. Come on. Let’s do the right thing.” He held out his hand, waiting for her to surrender the root beer. After a moment, she relented and they finished the transaction.

When they got back to Marie’s apartment, it surprised Ollie when Marie sat down next to him on the couch. “Ollie, why do you care about me so much?”

“You’re funny,” Ollie answered, not knowing what to say.

“I think you’re funny, too,” Marie said. “And I think you’re cute.”

“Oh yeah?” Ollie said nervously.

“Yeah,” she said. “I have a crush on you.”

“Oh no,” Lynn said with a smirk. “Looks like Ollie can’t work here after all.”

“What? Why?” Marie’s face went suddenly ashen.

“If you have a crush on one of the workers, they can’t work here,” Lynn said. “That’s the rule. Sorry.”

“Oh, well… I was just kidding,” Marie said, an expression of alarm on her face. “I was joking. I don’t really have a crush on him. He can stay.”

“Oh, good,” Lynn said, smiling. “I’m glad, because I like Ollie.”

“Me too,” Marie said. “Are you coming back to work tomorrow?”

“Not till Friday,” Ollie answered.

“Guess what’s happening on Friday?” Lynn asked.

“The Circus!” Marie exclaimed.

“Do I need to bring anything special for that?” Ollie asked.

“Just yourself,” Lynn answered before thinking further. “Actually, if you want to invite a friend, that would be great. Ascend can’t pay for any of them, but if they want to come, Marie loves having extra friends along.”

“The more the merrier, I always say.” Marie smiled.

Ollie knew exactly who he wanted to invite. He couldn’t help but smile too.

He’d thought Sparks would show up sometime during the shift, but he was wrong. After stressing his way through a four-hour training session that felt more like forty without Sparks, we walked back to his car and collapsed onto the seat behind the wheel— only to find a familiar face grinning at him from under that hateful Yankees cap.

“I really need to start locking my doors,” Ollie said, a little miffed. “Where were you? You tell me to do this thing, and you don’t even show up?”

“What am I, your babysitter? You did just fine. Besides, Lynn has everything under control. Anything I could have said would’ve been less insightful than what she knows.”

“Whatever. Marie’s pretty simple-minded. I bet you can read her like a book.”

“Yes and no, but that’s not the point either way. You were better off listening to Lynn.”

“Anyway, Joy seemed pretty interested in my new job even though she didn’t want to quit at the bookstore. I was thinking that the circus could be a good chance to invite her to something fun.”

“That’s a great idea.”

“I was thinking I could stop by her work before she gets off.”

“Great idea.”

“If I hurry right now, I could get there just before she gets off.”

“Great idea.”

“Is that all you’re going to say? Aren’t you going to give me some kind of trick for getting her attention? Shouldn’t you tell me her favorite candy or favorite flower or something like that so I can surprise her with it?”

“You’re making this too complicated. Just go meet her there when she gets off work and walk her home. Sometime along the way the opportunity will present itself and you can invite her to come along to the circus.”

He still needed some sort of excuse, so he grabbed a cream soda and made his way through the bookstore to Joy’s register. He was nervous. As the line got short enough for her to be able to see his face, he was rewarded with a radiant smile.

“Well, you’re a fun surprise,” Joy said.

“I was thinking, maybe you were just about to get off from work and that you could use some company walking home,” Ollie said.

“Maybe I’m not walking home.”

“Is that a rejection? Because I can take a hint. I can take my soda pop and drink it alone if that’s the case.”

“Joking,” she said. “No, I still need a few minutes after closing time to count my till. If you’re willing to wait, it could be fun to have some company on my way home.”

“I’ll just be out on the benches on the west side of the store, then,” Ollie said, and made his way back up the stairs.