THE INTERVIEW

5: The Shift

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Q24. "Let's talk about you as a person. Not just an employee."

The shift was subtle but unmistakable. Something in Ms. Vance's posture had changed—a slight forward lean, an opening. The pen rested on the legal pad rather than poised above it. Her eyes held his with an attention that felt different from before. Warmer. More personal.

"Tell me about your family."

"I mentioned Linda. My wife."

"You did. Thirty-one years, you said. That's remarkable, in this day and age."

"We got lucky." The words came automatically, the thing you said when people commented on long marriages. But even as he said it, he knew it wasn't true. Luck had nothing to do with it. Stubbornness, maybe. Habit. The mortgage they couldn't afford to split. "We got lucky, and we worked at it."

"What does working at it look like? For you."

Dale considered the question. It felt strange to be asked—interviews didn't usually go here, into the texture of a marriage, the daily negotiations that kept two people together across decades. But Ms. Vance was waiting, patient, and the silence wanted to be filled.

"Showing up," he said finally. "Even when you don't feel like it. Even when you're tired or angry or disappointed. You show up anyway, because that's what you committed to. That's what the promise means."

"And Linda? Does she show up?"

"She does. She always has." He thought of her that morning, standing in the kitchen doorway, saying the words she'd said twelve times before. You've got this. Showing up even when she didn't believe it anymore. "She's the reason we've made it this far."

"Not you?"

"I—" He stopped. The question had edges he hadn't expected. "Both of us. It takes both."

"But you said she's the reason. Not 'we're the reason.' Not 'I'm part of the reason.' You gave the credit to her."

"I didn't mean—"

"It's not a criticism, Dale. I'm just listening." Ms. Vance's voice was gentle, curious. "Sometimes we reveal things in our word choices that we don't consciously intend. You gave all the credit to Linda. I'm wondering why."

The room felt smaller suddenly. The walls hadn't moved—of course they hadn't moved—but the space between him and Ms. Vance seemed to have contracted, the table narrower, the air thicker. He became aware of his own breathing, the rise and fall of his chest under the ill-fitting suit.

"Because she's earned it," he said slowly. "These past eleven months—she's been carrying us. Financially, emotionally. I've been—" He searched for the word. "I've been dead weight."

"That's harsh."

"It's accurate." He heard the flatness in his own voice, the resignation. "I used to be the provider. That was my role, my identity. The man who took care of his family. And now I'm the man who can't find work, who watches his wife go to work every morning while he stays home refreshing his email, waiting for rejections." He almost laughed. It came out wrong—thin, bitter. "Dead weight is generous, actually."

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Q25. "Does Linda see you that way? As dead weight?"

"I don't know what Linda sees." The admission surprised him. He hadn't meant to say it. "We don't—we don't talk about it. Not directly. We talk around it. How was your day, what's for dinner, did you hear back from that application. But we don't talk about what's actually happening. What I've become."

"What have you become, Dale?"

The question hung in the air. The fluorescent lights hummed. The water stain on the ceiling sat at the edge of his vision, that ugly brown shape he kept not looking at.

"I don't know," he said. "I don't recognize myself anymore."

Ms. Vance was quiet for a moment. Then:

"When did you stop believing in yourself?"

He opened his mouth to answer. Closed it. The question seemed to echo in the cold air, bouncing off the beige walls, the drop ceiling, the spreading stain.

"I don't know," he said finally. "Somewhere in the eleven months. Or maybe before that. Maybe at Morrison, when they let me go. Or at Consolidated. Or—" He shook his head. "Maybe I never really believed. Maybe I was just pretending, this whole time, and it took losing everything to see the truth."

"What truth?"

"That I'm not who I thought I was. That I'm not—" His throat closed around the words. "That I'm not enough. I was never enough. I just managed to hide it for a while."

The silence that followed was absolute. Even the HVAC seemed to have stopped breathing. Even the fluorescent lights had gone quiet, their buzz swallowed by something deeper, heavier.

"Thank you, Dale." Ms. Vance's voice was soft. "That was very honest."

He nodded. He didn't trust himself to speak.

"I want you to know—this kind of honesty is rare. Most candidates give me the polished version, the interview version. You've given me something real." She picked up her pen, made a note. "That matters. It matters more than you know."

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Q26. "You said you don't know what Linda sees when she looks at you now. What do you think she sees?"

"Disappointment." The word came out before he could stop it. "I think she sees disappointment. Not anger—Linda doesn't do anger. Just this—this quiet disappointment. Like she's watching something she believed in turn out to be less than she thought."

"Less than she thought."

"She married someone who was going places. Or thought he was. Someone with plans, ambitions. Someone who was going to build something." Dale looked down at his hands on the table. The tremor was still there, faint but visible. "And now she's married to someone who can't even get a callback. Who sits at home all day in the same clothes he slept in, waiting for the phone to ring. Who's burning through savings and running up credit cards and can't—who can't—"

He stopped. His eyes were stinging.

"Take your time," Ms. Vance said.

"I'm fine." He wasn't fine. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, hard enough to see spots. "I'm sorry. This isn't—this isn't what you asked about. We were talking about my qualifications, my experience—"

"We were talking about you. This is you."

"This isn't the version of me that's supposed to be in an interview."

"Maybe not." Her voice was gentle, patient. "But it's the version that's here. And I think it's the version that needs to be heard."

He dropped his hands. The room swam for a moment before settling. The water stain on the ceiling seemed larger than before—but that was impossible, had to be impossible.

"I haven't cried in front of anyone in years," he said quietly. "I don't—I don't do this."

"You're not crying."

He wasn't. His eyes were wet, but the tears hadn't fallen. Small mercy.

"I used to be good at this," he said. "Interviews. Performing. Saying the right things in the right way. I used to be able to—to hold it together. And now I'm sitting here falling apart in front of a stranger, and I don't even know why."

"Maybe because holding it together wasn't working anymore."

"It's the only thing I know how to do."

"I know." Ms. Vance made another note. Her handwriting was small and precise, unreadable from where he sat. "But sometimes the things we know how to do stop being the things we need to do. Sometimes we have to learn something new."

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Q27. "What does Linda think about this opportunity? Linden Creek specifically?"

The question was simple, professional—a return to safer ground. Dale seized it gratefully.

"She's hopeful. We both are." He cleared his throat, forced his voice back to its normal register. "Linden Creek seems like a good fit. The kind of place where I could—where I could be useful again."

"Useful." Ms. Vance repeated the word like she was tasting it. "That's an interesting choice. Not 'successful' or 'fulfilled.' Useful."

"I'm fifty-four years old. I'm not looking for success anymore. I'm looking to contribute. To do work that matters, with people who appreciate it."

"And if you don't get this job? What then?"

The question landed like a stone in water. He felt the ripples spreading through him—the fear, the desperation, the black hole of what if that opened up every time he let himself look at it directly.

"Then I keep looking," he said. "That's all I can do."

"You've been looking for eleven months."

"I know how long it's been."

"I didn't mean—" She paused, and for just a moment something flickered across her face, something that might have been compassion. "I'm not trying to be cruel, Dale. I'm trying to understand. What keeps you going? After eleven months of rejection, what makes you get up in the morning and try again?"

He thought about it. What did keep him going? The mortgage, the credit card, the practical necessities—those were part of it. But they weren't the core. They weren't what got him out of bed at 6 AM to put on the suit that didn't fit and drive forty minutes to sit in a room like this one.

"I don't know how to stop," he said finally. "I've been working since I was sixteen. Summer jobs, part-time jobs, full-time jobs. It's who I am. The idea of not working—of just giving up, sitting at home, waiting to—" He caught himself. "I can't. I don't know how."

"Even when it hurts?"

"The hurting is part of it. You push through. That's what work taught me, thirty-two years of it. You push through, and eventually you come out the other side."

"And what's on the other side, Dale? What are you pushing toward?"

The question opened something in him, some door he'd kept locked without knowing it. He looked at Ms. Vance—at her patient eyes, her still face, her absolute attention—and he felt the answer forming in his chest before it reached his mouth.

"I just want to feel like myself again. Like the person I used to be, before all this. The person Linda married. The person my daughter—" He stopped. Swallowed. "I want to be worth something. To someone. That's all."

Ms. Vance wrote something on her pad. The scratch of pen on paper seemed very loud in the silence.

"I think," she said quietly, "we should talk about your daughter."

Behind him, the door was still there. He knew it was there. He could feel it at his back, a presence he hadn't acknowledged since he sat down. The door he'd come through. The door he could leave through.

Any time he wanted.

Any time.

"Okay," he said. "Let's talk about Melissa."