Food, Home and Style

Love in the Time of Layoff: Honey, They Shrunk My Job

Ten in the morning and the phone rings. Marco’s voice sounds wrong. “Are you ok?” I ask. “Not really,” he says. And in the next breath, he shares the news. “I just got laid off.”

Silence on my end. Shock, dread, then sudden relief. At least he hasn’t been hurt, or told me that someone died. But wait—this is really, really bad news. Laid off. Laid off. What kind of phrase is that anyway? How are we going to make it on just my freelance income? How will we buy that stroller for the as-yet nonexistent kid we’ve been trying to have? Does this mean I have to learn to cook? Mortgage payments. Utility bills. All I can muster is a lame “Oh. My. God.” And later, “I love you.”

“I’m coming home to be with you,” says Marco. We’re newly married, squished in our apartment, trying to move. This recession’s timing stinks.

By the time Marco arrives, I’ve recovered enough to do what any wired writer these days is pretty much trained to do. I email, Twitter, Facebook and start pimping my husband on my blog. There’s something oddly exhilarating about all of a sudden finding yourself living the headlines that only just yesterday were somebody else’s news. Crisis is a stimulant, better than coffee. I trip on the water bowl, caught up in a kind of morose euphoria, and scare the cat.

That night, Marco and I head out for a cheap bite at the corner diner, needing to get out of the apartment. We order one entree and share. It’s impossible not to eavesdrop in New York City restaurants, the tables are so close. The two women at the table next to us gesture intensely. Words like “severance” and “leads” waft up with the steam from their vegetable soup. On our way home, I feel that same eerie interconnectedness I felt on 9/11, when all of a sudden the whole country became New Yorkers. Only those of us in New York felt it that much more.

Marco tightens his grip on my hand.  Tonight, we join the ranks of American couples across the land:  just a tad overweight and very much underemployed.  At least we’re among the lucky ones in love.

Deborah Siegel is the author of Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild and creator of the group blog Girl w/Pen.

Tags: Food, Home and Style, Love in the Time of Layoff