The north wind slams down on de Maisonneuve Boulevard like an incessant hammerfist. Her blue fingers instinctively tangle in her gray scarf, which is lost halfway between her shoulder and the sleeve of her fraying coat. The wind forces her eyes to squint until she can barely see the building she is walking toward. Her fingers gratefully twisted in the warmth of the scarf, she gropes her way to the four concrete steps leading to the building’s entrance. She notes that the structure is one of those newer, glass and metal towers whose message is matched by the shrieking wind: “Keep Away. I am Impenetrable.”

The front doors are ten feet tall, constructed of inch-thick beveled glass set in bulky, polished bronze frames. She pulls open one of the impossibly heavy doors, assisted by the rage that has been accumulating inside her since her alarm clock went off at 7:30 that morning. It is now about 11:20 a.m. This is the third unemployment center she has been directed to and she refuses to go any further. The first center, the one she was directed to when she called the unemployment bureau’s general information department, turns out to be located on Decarie Boulevard, three buses from where she lived. After taking a number and waiting from 9:05 to 9:40 a.m., an officer informs her that she is in the wrong center. According to her home address, she is expected to report to a building on the corner of Van Horne and Cote-des-Neiges. Two more buses and thirty-five minutes later, the officer there informs her that due to administrative changes, the office to which she is expected to report is downtown on de Maisonneuve Boulevard. As she storms out of the Cote-des-Neiges building and runs to catch the bus, she repeats to herself that if it wasn’t for the money, the unemployment checks she will need to survive on in the weeks ahead, she wouldn’t put up with a tenth of such red tape.

As the ten-foot tall door heaves shut behind her, a huff of indoor air carrying the moneyed scent of the silk flowers stacked in the lobby’s fat marble urn, erases some of the frostbite from her cheeks. It also snuffs out all but a grain of the determination that gave her the energy to force herself out of bed that morning. The flowers’ yellow, purple and white remind her of a funeral offering.

The elevator slides open like an oiled secretive capsule. There are two others along for the ride, a man and a woman whose profiles are as winter-bitten as her own. The man is wearing an army jacket and a baseball cap and keeps pulling self-consciously at his beard. The woman holds a red scarf over her mouth as if she is afraid of breathing somebody else’s germs. All three of them press the fifteenth floor button. She eases toward the back of the elevator and loosens her gray scarf, whose scratchy wool is coated with delicate beads of perspiration. The elevator eases to a halt and she blinks. Where is that usual fluttery sensation one expects from being rocketed skyward? The man and the woman exit and hurry to the right, down a dull beige corridor. She steps out of the elevator and finds herself eye-to-eye with an art print depicting two small but piercing panther eyes, their red-as-fresh-blood drowning in a black background. The print is double-matted, its plump silvery frame inlaid with red lacquered flowers. Is this the unemployment office? she wonders again. The panther’s red eyes seem to disagree.

She follows the beige corridor, whose muteness and static calm press down on her until she is tempted to let out a ridiculous, maniacal scream. The corridor leads her into the orange universe of unemployment center number three. The orange in this district, she notes, resonates more cleanly, more sharply than the worn offices she has visited so far. The white-eggshell-finish walls are saturated in orange stripes that escalate thin, thinner, thinnest. The orange indoor-outdoor carpeting smells gluey-new, although it is already pocked by the tarry remains of hurriedly-smoked cigarettes. There are also gobs of discarded bubble gum, their circus pink tarnished by grit. She casts a quick look toward the reception area, around which about fifteen people are clustered, their arms raised like question marks, demanding the full attention of the woman seated behind the oblong desk. Beyond the reception area are meters and meters of partitions, all orange scratchy fabric pressed into rectangular yellow frames.

Why is every U.I.C. office she has ever visited permeated in orange? As an artist, she has always been more captivated by manganese blue. Even muted greens. Is there a psychological factor behind those blasting orange stripes and solids? Orange is composed of red and yellow. Poets and psychiatrists would agree that red is representative of anger, strength or passion, as in the traditional red rose exchanged by lovers. Yellow, on the other hand, symbolizes hope, loyalty. Yellow and red. Loyalty and rage? Fidelity and passion? Yes, she decides for once and for all, I definitely despise orange as a central shade.

Across from the main desk there is another section of partitions serving as bulletin boards, dozens of white index cards pinned to their fabric. Those cards, she already knows, contain no employment opportunities for her.

“Yes, yes. This is your regional center. Take a number and wait over there.” The receptionist points blandly to a section of orange fabric chairs. “One of the officers will speak with you.” She is nodding at the woman behind the main desk as the crowd around her jostles impatiently. She makes a supreme effort not to elbow them away. “Meanwhile, why don’t you have a look at today’s job offerings?” What a waste of time, she fumes to herself.

The receptionist scribbles something on a pad of paper and turns to the man on her right. “You don’t understand. I can’t work. I’m mentally ill. My wife just walked out on me. I couldn’t take another minute at that factory.” She recognizes one of her elevator companions, the man in the baseball cap and army jacket. His face is wet with tears and he continues to pull at his beard. She glances at the receptionist’s desk before walking toward the bulletin boards. Why should I resent this woman? There are two objects on the oversized, walnut-veneer desk: a cheap glass vase containing three stale carnations and an acrylic photo frame from which a straw-haired boy of about four or five is beaming. Where would this woman choose to work—if she could choose? Does it ever bother her that her employment depends upon the unemployed?

Heaving a sigh, she approaches the bulletin boards whose constant emptiness she has learned to loathe.

“Wanted. Executive secretary. Starting salary, $24K. Minimum five years’ experience.:

“Wanted. Receptionist for clothing wholesaler. Must be a size nine and enthusiastic.” She has heard stories from women who worked for that company. One had walked out during her second day there when the boss cornered her, told her she reminded him of his mother and asked her to go to bed with him. Was it worth the woman’s time and trouble to take her predicament to court?

“Wanted. Administrative Secretary for Westmount legal firm. Two or more years’ experience in the legal field essential.”

“Wanted. Receptionist for east end importer. Must be fluently bilingual.” She is sick and tired of the same interview: one or two questions fired in rapid, colloquial French followed by her self-conscious reply and the familiar glint of condescension in the prospective employer’s features.

Worse were the negative responses whenever she made the mistake of revealing that she had a university degree. “Overeducated,” the would-be employer would inevitably mutter, “You’ll get restless and leave at the drop of a better offer.” When she persisted, even to the point of offering them her services for what would amount to a free trial period: “We’ll call you.”

The last time she heard that line she had dropped all diplomacy and retorted: “You have no intention of calling me. So do me a favor, tell me the truth and stop wasting my time with empty promises.”

Her eyes scale the next index card. “Wanted. Secretary for packing firm. Must be fluently bilingual and have command of conversational Mandarin.” Mandarin? No way could I fake that one, she concedes, along with a faint urge to laugh.

When her number is called she walks away from the orange maze of bulletin boards past the receptionist and into the larger jungle of orange partitions that define the counseling zone. A short man with black wooly hair and a meticulously-trimmed beard motions her into one of the cubicles. Along the way she can hear the voices of unemployment officers and their subjects.

“But I’m a writer. I can’t wait on tables for the rest of my life.” How many writers are there? She wonders whether her designated officer will label her a welfare prospect or completely unfit for unemployment when she states that she is an artist, a painter. How many “artists” has he interviewed that day? She turns a corner and finds herself standing I a cramped space where there is barely room for a desk and two chairs. Pin cushioned to the orange “walls” are family snapshots, newspaper clippings and a lopsided papier-maché bird whose single blue-painted wing is tilted downward. The bird, she concludes, was probably made by the little girl whose smile sparkles from three of the snapshots. Otherwise, the “room” exudes an uncomfortable sense of control.

“Sit down, please.” The man with the impeccably-trimmed beard breezes through the opening between two orange partitions and motions to a chrome-and-orange chair facing his desk. There are no vases or family photos on the desk, which is a smaller version of the receptionist’s desk out front. There is only a green box of a pencil holder filled with blue ballpoint pens and a green blotter teeming with doodles onto which the man tosses a beige file folder. “So,” his smile is as brisk as his demeanor, emanating the same uncomfortable sense of control as he leans back to scrutinize her. “What’s the problem here?”

Clutching in her lap the black purse that has lasted three winters, she goes into detail about the part-time position she had endured for the last ten months. She tells him about the employer who didn’t want her there to begin with, the man who has tried to force her resignation by hiring three students to share the miserable handful of floor plan sketching assignments that amount to anywhere from four to twenty hours a week. Barely enough for rent and food. How she had finally caved in and resigned, rather than continue accepting a weekly paycheck averaging twenty-three dollars. “I’m wondering,” she concludes, “why you penalized me six full weeks when I filed for unemployment. I thought that penalty only applied to those who resigned from a full-time position?”

The man seems pre-occupied with the notes he is busy scrawling on the top sheet of a pad he pulled from the top drawer of his desk. “You resigned. Isn’t that a fact?” She squints at his question, feeling hemmed in by the absolute context wit which he has infused it. There is something in his tone, an insinuation mingled with sarcasm that threatens to re-ignite the angry fuse that had fizzled when she entered the domineering office tower. “Did you or did you not quit your job?” the man asks again, more pointedly.

“Technically, yes,” she nods, “but—”

“When somebody quits their job outright, they are subject to the full penalty.”

When she protests that the job was disintegrating, that she had hung on as long as she could, that her paycheck had dropped to six dollars a week, he shakes his head. “In the eyes of the law, you resigned from gainful employment. Six dollars a week is better than nothing at all.” Her throat is dry and she can feel the skin on her face and neck turning white. Six dollars a week? “As far as U.I. is concerned, your sole motivation should be gainful employment. Have you been seriously seeking employment?”

Yes, but there is nothing for her. And shouldn’t her sole motivation be survival? “How could anybody survive on six dollars a week?”

“That is the wrong attitude,” he states in the same stern tone one would expect from a high school principal. He tears the top sheet from the pad and places it inside the beige file. When she reminds him that Montreal is weathering the middle of a recession, and that the situation has disintegrated to the point where she has found herself lining up with hundreds of others for minimum wage work at a fast food chain, he says: “For those who have the right attitude, there is always employment.” She brings up her last job again, the former employer’s hiring three students. “I can’t do anything about that,” he taps a ballpoint pen on his doodle-filled blotter, “unless—” An enthusiastic flicker plays in his eyes. “Were you at any time sexually-harassed while you were employed by that company?”

No. The question makes her speechless.

“Are you absolutely certain of that?”

Of course.

“Because there have been major changes in the law that now make it easier for a woman to sue for harassment.” She remembers the woman who was cornered in the clothing factory and tells him that there job offer continues to hang on U.I.C. bulletin boards. “Maybe,” he snaps, “that situation wouldn’t exist if your friend had the guts to take her harasser to court.” The angry fuse within her sputters and grows. “If I were you, I’d go out there and keep looking. I can’t do anything about the six-week penalty.”

 At that point, she can’t help but comment on the availability of nude dancing jobs and flourishing escort services. “Those are perfectly respectable jobs.” There is a singsong sarcasm in his voice. Yes, she nods, and so good for the crack and heroin trade. He pretends not to hear. “Pathetic, some of the women who think they’re cut out for that job. I mean, the transvestites are bad enough. But oh, some of those biddies should be allowed out in public, looking the way they do.” The fuse sputters, threatening to fly out of control, but she is too overwhelmed by disgust, too sickened, to respond. How easy it would be to kick down those orange fabric walls. She focuses instead on the papier-maché bird dangling behind his shoulder, suspended on a piece of string held in place with a red thumbtack. “Just keep looking. I expect to see a list of prospective employers, proof that you are actively seeking work, the next time I see you. If you see something on the bulletin board, give me a call. Here is my card.” She shoves the white card deep inside her coat pocket and crumples it in her fist.

She is angrier than she was when she exited from the first U.I.C. building that morning. As she leaves the third center with its ten-foot tall, beveled-glass doors, she pulls her beret down over her ears. The wind is still crashing down on de Maisonneuve Boulevard and the lunch hour crowds are beginning to swarm. Her future? The thought of continuing on a treadmill, any treadmill, makes her sick. Ten months have passed since her first day as a junior draftsperson and she hasn’t painted a line in that time. Three hours’ travel to and from work, along with the unpredictable pace of incoming floor plans and the fear of scant paychecks have conspired to peel every grain of mental energy until there is nothing left with which to create, to dream. Ten months, wasted.

Tomorrow morning, she decides, I will get up at seven o’clock, drink my coffee, go for a walk, come back and begin the first canvas. She doesn’t know what she will paint. Maybe she will simply dabble, experiment with colors, coating the canvas until its blank expanse no longer intimidates her. She will try not to think about living on unemployment insurance or keeping lists of prospective interviews. She will banish all reminders of failure, every negative impetus, until the last canvas is completed. She will try not to surrender to failure.

~

© 1992 Sonja A. Skarstedt
[Appeared in Room of One's Own Vol. 15, No. 1]

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