I make my way to 3B, my most preferred seat. Because I’m right-handed, I want the aisle on that side for the elbow room. For most domestic flights, the seat numbers start at 3, not 1, so 3B is always bulkhead, which means more legroom. I’m just claustrophobic enough to need to spread out as much as possible. I arrive at my seat and stow everything in the overhead compartment, save for a padfolio and a pen. I’ll take down my laptop once we reach cruising altitude. (By the way, I won’t pay to sit in first class—instead, I use miles to upgrade. I have so many banked, I could take the whole family to Europe, a few times over. That is, if I could afford the time to get away.)
I’m reading e-mail on my BlackBerry when I hear a softly accented voice say, “Excuse me, is this seat taken?”
I look up, noting the neatly combed black hair and brilliant white smile in contrast to cocoa-colored skin. “Raj Bhalla! You’re not Team Thursday Afternoon!”
I’ve flown to New York dozens of Monday mornings with Raj, as he’s a Deloitte network security consultant currently working for a Wall Street client. He opts for 3A whenever it’s available, so we’re often seated next to each other on the ride out. Granted, we’d both be forty percent more likely to survive a crash were we seated near the tail of the plane, but as the risk of perishing in a crash is one out of eleven million, I’m willing to live on the edge to stretch my calves.
“I am today,” he replies, placing his computer bag next to mine in the overhead bin. “My Simi—she’s the youngest—has a violin recital tomorrow afternoon and I will not miss her performance. I could have left tomorrow morning, but with air travel today, you cannot be too careful.”
I nod, cringing inside at everything I’ve missed through no fault of my own. The friendly skies have let me down so many times, and often for no good reason. Any road warrior can tell you horror stories about boarding a plane on time and pushing away from the gate only to then sit on the tarmac for four hours before the flight’s eventually canceled. I’ve taken flights that have been diverted to other airports, that have turned around midair and returned to the airport of origin, that have been delayed for hours on end and then, just when you think you’re finally going to leave, the crew’s declared illegal because their time’s run out and you end up waiting again while the airline rustles up fresh pilots.
My new assistant, Adrienne, tells me that Vanessa is attempting to frame my maternal duties as a reason I’m not qualified to run this project, and that’s so upsetting. Who pulls something like that? I can’t imagine this happening to a male coworker.
“Raj, has anyone given you grief about leaving a day early to attend a family event?”
“Who would give me grief?” he asks. “What I’m doing or why I am doing it is none of their concern. I perform well; that is all that matters.” He knits his brow and peers at me. “Does someone give you grief, Penny?”
“Sort of, yes. There’s a woman who wanted to be on the New York job and she didn’t get it. She’s always asking after my kids, especially my daughter Jessica, who’s about to go on her college visits—or will, as soon as I can figure out a time to take her. Turns out, she doesn’t care about my family. She’s just trying to use my responsibilities at home as leverage to advance herself. Right now my strategy is to clam up and tell her nothing.”
Raj tents his hands and nods. “Here is what I believe, Penny. I believe someone will always gun for what you have. That is human nature. It is probably a wise choice not to share information with her. But be careful that she does not begin to occupy real estate within your head. Do not let her prevent you from fulfilling your family obligations out of fear she might use them against you. Your children will not make music for long, so go enjoy their concerts.”
I want to comply, but I’m not sure how easy his advice will be to put into practice. I say, “Is Simi a talented violinist?”
He laughs. “Oh, no. No, no. She makes the sound of a cat caught in a food processor. Truly terrible. The screeching! Sharp to the point of pain!” He rubs his ears as he speaks. “But I would not miss this performance for my life. I do not go for the music. I go for the joy on her beautiful, beautiful, tone-deaf face as she massacres her Mozart. Really, she kills him until he is quite dead again.”
The flight attendant comes down the aisle to make sure we’re buckled in. “Why do you encourage her to keep playing if it’s a lost cause?”
Raj slides closed the window shade and adjusts his air vent. “Ah, but nothing is a lost cause. I encourage her to keep trying, so she practices all the time and she finds ways to improve, like by seeking help from her music teacher and by looking at videos on the Internet. Right now she is terrible. But she is less terrible than she was six months ago. In another six months? Maybe I will not need to wear earplugs in the house. At present she does not have much talent, but she has passion. Talent can always be developed through practice, but passion is the fire that burns from the inside.”
Kelsey and Jessica are just the opposite. They’re both talented at so many things, but I don’t know that they have any interior fires. Kelsey can master almost any kind of dance step after watching the choreography only once. Jessica can assume any character onstage, is an ace on the tennis court, and sees everything through the eyes of an artist. At the moment, Jessica says she wants to study fashion design, which is part of my hesitation on the college visits. I’m reluctant to spend a week on the road visiting universities she’ll be bored with after a semester. She’s only interested in schools like Parsons, FIT, and RISD right now. I’m trying to talk her into a traditional college with design options like Columbus College, University of Cincinnati, or Kent State, so if (and when) she changes her mind, at least her initial course work will count toward a different major. She can’t exactly become a psychologist or marine biologist with credits in Intermediate Fabric Draping.
Why are both girls so mercurial? I don’t remember being this changeable in my teens. I’m not so different now than I was back then. But those two? It’s like they’re constantly trying to reinvent themselves, along with all their likes and dislikes. For example, they say they love platform boots, they can’t live without platform boots, so I’ll surprise them with a couple of pairs from New York and then they’ll tell me, “No, we hate platform boots; we want ballet flats.” Or, I’ll hear them go on and on about how much they adore Sydney Bristow, so I’ll watch Alias on Netflix DVDs while I’m on the road only to find out they don’t like Alias when I arrive home, that now they’re into Lost. I’m perpetually two paces behind them.
“How do I figure out what my daughters’ passions are?” I ask.
“You are asking the wrong question, Penny.”
“Am I?”
“Oh, yes. The question is, ‘How do my daughters discover their passions?’”
I lean forward in my seat, my mind already racing, anxious to book whatever guru could assist them, to send them to whichever camp would most benefit them, to sign them up for any program they need to figure out who they are and what it is that drives them so that they can have the best shot at becoming successful adults. “And the answer is?”
“They need you to be patient while they take their time.”
I slump back into my seat.
Time and patience, those are my two most limited resources.
• • • •
“Why can’t she just come with you and stay in your corporate apartment? You’re in New York. Parsons is in New York. FIT is in New York. Fly out there together; you can work Monday and Tuesday if you have to, do NYC schools on Wednesday, rent a car and drive to Rhode Island on Thursday, fly to Savannah on Friday, and come home Saturday. You miss, what, three days? This seems pretty simple to me,” Chris says. He’s standing at the kitchen island, hands splayed on the marble countertop, in what seems to me like a very aggressive posture. I don’t care for his tone. At all.
“It’s not that simple,” I a
rgue. “I work twelve to fourteen-hour days when I’m out there. I can’t leave Jessica alone in some corporate apartment while I’m gone for that long. What will she do?”
“She’ll figure something out. She’s not a child, and she’s not incompetent.”
“I am not comfortable with her being alone in the city. Anything could happen.”
He throws his hands in the air. “Okay, then take the week off. You’re certainly owed the time. You can’t just abdicate your family because you’re busy with your job. I mean, which is more important to you?”
“That’s insulting. How can you even ask me that?”
“Because I legitimately want to know. In terms of priority, in terms of attention, in terms of who you put first, I’m telling you right now, from where I stand? It’s not the Sinclairs.”
I exhale heavily. “And whose fault is that?”
He clenches his jaw. “You’re going to keep pinning this on me? Yes, I made a bad investment. I know. You’ve mentioned this many, many times. I realize I’m the reason you had to take this job until we were back on solid ground. However, the decision to continue to climb the corporate ladder was not something we made together. That was all you. We were getting by on your initial salary.”
“It wasn’t enough.”
“It was. You kept saying you wanted to advance because it would mean more for the kids, but stop lying to yourself; you wanted more responsibility because you liked it. Because you were good at it. Because dealing with your facts and figures was easier for you than figuring out your own flesh and blood. Your job gave you an excuse to hide from what was hard.”
I try to protest, but Chris doesn’t let me interject.
“No, I don’t want to hear it. I’m telling you this right now as your husband, as your partner, as your best friend: These kids don’t want stuff from you; they want time.”
Chris steps out from behind the counter and comes to sit by me at the table in the breakfast nook. “Don’t you get it, Penny? These college visits are your opportunity to bond with Jessica. Take a road trip and listen to her shitty music—and I assure you, her music is shitty; in twenty years, no one is going to form a Nickelback tribute band. Have the experience. Buy terrible snacks at gas stations. Eat nachos made with liquid plastic cheese and petrified hot dogs from those roller things. Stop along the way and see the world’s largest ball of twine. Have an adventure. Make some memories.”
He puts my hand in his, rubbing my knuckles with his thumb. “Just take that week and figure out what makes her tick. She acts like she has her guard up, but I know she’s still open to letting you see who she is. That won’t always be the case. The door between you will eventually close. Get in while you can. I’m worried that if you don’t do something to change your trajectory with her, you’re going to wind up with the exact same kind of distant, formal, awkward relationship you have with Marjorie.”
I snort. “Yes, but that’s entirely her fault.”
Chris looks at me for a long moment. “Is it?”
I bristle and snatch back my hand. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He gets up from the table. “That means figure out a way to get your daughter out on her college visits before it’s too late.”
• • • •
“So . . . what’s happening with Jessica’s college applications? I haven’t heard anything!” Vanessa says with false bonhomie as she sidles up to me after our staff meeting. I tried to escape the conference room quickly, but apparently I wasn’t quick enough.
“Are you going to be road-tripping soon?” she asks. “She’s got to be excited! I understand most kids apply in the summer now. You’d better get on that, right? It’s almost August! Will you need me to cover for you in New York? It’s no problem. My schedule is wide-open, and I’ve been dying to become better acquainted with the clients.”
“Handled,” I reply. While I’d prefer to say nothing, I can’t, because no response would be blatantly rude.
Vanessa stops in her tracks, her smug smile faltering ever so slightly. Her eyes seem especially hard behind all that heavy liner. What led her to believe that the key to success in corporate consulting is to steal Pat Benatar’s look from the “Love Is a Battlefield” video? I wonder. “Handled?” she asks.
“Yes, handled. But thank you so much for your offer. If I do need to take time off, which is unlikely to happen before the New York project ends, seeing how we’re almost done, you’ll be the first one I call.” I begin to walk down the hall in the opposite direction.
Vanessa scrambles after me. “Is she not going to college now?”
“What gave you that idea?”
“But her visits . . . You haven’t been anywhere. . . .”
I reward Vanessa with my brightest smile. “They went so well, thanks for asking. She loved FIT and Parsons, so she may have a bit of a Sophie’s Choice on her hands. We’ll see what happens. Listen, Vanessa, I have to hop on a conference call. Bye!”
As Vanessa has been ratcheting up her level of aggression over the summer, I knew I couldn’t let her take over the New York project, even for a week, so I came up with a compromise. I brought Jessica and Marjorie out to NYC to visit schools. I put them up at the Plaza for the week, and the two of them hit a slew of New York colleges with fashion programs. Instead of road-tripping to Rhode Island and Georgia following New York, I promised she and I would do that together when my project is put to bed.
Except that’s not going to happen because Jessica has found her passion and apparently that passion is New York City. After less than a week, she’s more familiar with the place I’ve practically been living in for the past couple of years. She said she wanted to see the city like a real New Yorker, so she pocketed the cab money I left her and she and Marjorie figured out the subway system on their own. They visited all the schools on the list, but also made time to shop and sightsee and hit Bleecker Street for pizza (which is far superior to Chicago-style, according to them) and discover places I’d never even heard of, like the hidden waterfall at Greenacre Park.
Chris was right—spending a solid week with her is really all it took to figure out what makes her tick . . . at least according to Marjorie. Those two always had an amiable grandmother-granddaughter relationship, but now they’re the best of friends, with inside jokes and the ability to communicate entire thoughts with nothing more than a wink or a raised eyebrow. When I’d meet them for dinner to download about the schools and how their day had gone, they behaved like sorority sisters and I was some unwanted rushee they were stuck entertaining for the hour. So the trip was a wonderful bonding experience.
Just not for Jessica and me.
CHAPTER TWELVE
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Date: June 22nd
Subject: Yes
I’m still thinking about you, too.
XO,
A
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Date: June 22nd
Subject: ???
Um . . . do you, like, not live here anymore? There’s someone else in your apartment, with, like, not your stuff. Am I fired? Is this because I ate your caviar?
If I don’t hear back from you, I’m going to take the rest of the day off, cool?
XO, Cassie
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Date: June 22nd
Subject: You are amazing
You are beyond compare. You are the best. You rock my world.
• • • •
“You are never going to guess who I heard from on Match!” I exclaim.
“Hold up, do I hear a car radio? Are you driving? You’re actually talking to me on your mobile
while you’re behind the wheel, Miss Nine Americans Die Every Day Due to Distracted Driving? Miss One in Four Motor Vehicle Crashes Involve a Cellular Device? Miss Talking on the Phone While Operating a Car Makes You Four Times More Likely to Have an Accident?” Patrick fires back at me.
“I waited to dial until I pulled into the driveway, you jerk.”
He immediately turns chatty. “Oh, okay, then who’d you hear from?”
“Remember Wyatt? Anagram Wyatt?”
“The world’s most boring attorney, or the Natter Yo?”
“That’s him. Interesting news. He lives in Lake Forest and he’s recently divorced. We’re going to meet up for a drink on Friday.”
“Huh. On the one hand, congratulations; I’m proud of you. You’re very brave to step outside of your comfort zone like this. And, on the other, I’m really underwhelmed and you can do better.”
“Can you put Michael on the phone? Because I hate you and I’d like to speak with someone I don’t despise.”
“What?” he says, indignant. “You wanted me to lie? My job is to tell you the truth, so, yes, those pleated pants make your ass look wide, yes, you have spinach in your teeth, and yes, you’ve told me the story about how you once met Kelly Clarkson on a plane and, yes, it gets more boring with each and every retelling.”
I grab my purse and computer bag and exit the Camry. I don’t bother parking in the garage during the summer because I’m not trying to keep snow off the car. I head toward the back door and turn to double-check that I’ve pressed the remote locking key. The car’s lights flash reassuringly and the horn rewards me with a jaunty honk. (I love this vehicle about a million times more than that horrid string of minivans.) I’m about to climb the stairs to the back porch when I realize they’ve been replaced with a very long wheelchair ramp.
“Mooooooootherfucker.”
“Listen, Penny, if you want someone to sugarcoat things for you, call Karin. I’m sure Kelly Clarkson was sweet; no one’s arguing that. But she—”
By the Numbers Page 18