by Emily Nealis
I didn’t have time to lament my decision not to return to school, nor did I feel the need to. I didn’t think much about this decision—a decision I made almost 12 years ago—until this coming school year when Vivian would enter the first grade. For the first time in 10 years, neither June or Vivian was at home with me. The first few days, when I realized how eerily quiet the house was, it occurred to me that something had profoundly changed. I never doubted that I was accomplished; I’d successfully raised two little girls to the point where I could send them off to a full day of school and be confident they would behave and make friends.
June and Vivian are great kids anyway. I’ve always been incredibly entertained by which qualities from Adam and I each one possesses. Both have Adam’s smile and his dark hair, although June has the same lighter shade of brown hair I had when I was her age. Those girls are more like Adam than he would care to admit—June with her snarky attitude and Vivian’s quiet scheming—the quiet part she learned from June. June is like me in the sense that she is tall and thin, and she loves to read. Although she runs around and doesn’t mind getting dirty, she would prefer to do it quietly. Even when she was little, I knew I would never have to worry about June because she liked to follow the rules—sometimes to a fault—and she didn’t tolerate nonsense from anyone else. June is the calm and level-headed big sister, not prone to outbursts of emotion. She needs structure, and that’s where she finds security.
Vivian, on the other hand, will be lucky if she makes it to her 10th birthday without a broken bone. There’s no mistake she’s Adam’s daughter—jumping her pink bike off the grassy hills in the backyard and getting into trouble at school for punching a boy who made fun of her sister. Although kind and fun-loving, Vivian’s high energy and short fuse often gets her into trouble. Vivian is a shadow of Adam’s own childhood recklessness, which he tries to deny every chance he gets. But he and Vivian have a different relationship, like the way June and I can relate better to one another because of our interests and temperament. The times Vivian’s short fuse results in a full-on tantrum, it’s a stern look from Adam and the threat of reprimand that calms her down. It was bizarre at first, because what child finds reassurance in a father who looks like he’s about to beat her senseless? It was only after watching this same routine play out over and over that I began to realize that Vivian would only listen to someone with the same level of intensity as she has.
It used to bother me. I would think, I’m her mom, she’s home with me all day, and she knows she needs to listen to me. It wasn’t like I doled out empty threats. If she didn’t listen, she would be punished accordingly. Vivian doesn’t constantly act out, but the times she does, she might as well be possessed by a demon. The fascinating part about all of this is that if any of her bad behavior was discussed when Adam got home on a given day, the girl fell to pieces. Her dad’s disappointment in her was enough to make her melt into a blubbering mess on the floor. Maybe it was embarrassment or some profound respect she had for him that I did not command, but it looked like I’d just thrown her to the wolves from the way she acted.
I envied Adam in this way. He did command that kind of respect, which is harder to get from a six-year-old than most people can imagine. He never yelled at Vivian—he didn’t need to. He could look her in the eyes and speak to her with such stoic authority that there was no confusion who was in charge. Whenever this happened, June had a habit of vacating the premises, as though she couldn’t handle that kind of drama. If she had to witness such a spectacle, it was usually with a perpetual eyeroll and periodic comment questioning why Vivian couldn’t just listen. Although a difficult and annoying part of parenting, I think Adam secretly enjoys going head to head with a six-year-old version of himself. Inevitably, for each unpleasant face-off between them, there are ten times as many moments where they appear to be the only two people in the world. He hopes she won’t inherit the arrogance that’s nearly gotten him killed in the past, but I think he secretly takes pride in the possibility of her growing into a force to be reckoned with. I believe Vivian will grow into an amazing and successful woman, but I plan to do my own part to mold her. I won’t tell Adam this, but I hope she doesn’t end up with the overblown sense of self-absorption and cockiness that he has.
Ironically, I know this is what initially drew me to Adam when we were kids. However, possessing this mentality in high school is much more forgiving than it is when you’re in your twenties and must function in a world that doesn’t care if you live or die or end up in prison. I don’t want Vivian to develop the same rage and volatility he used to have whenever someone got in his way. I think I overlooked this characteristic in Adam for the first few years because I was always on the beneficial side of it, but having children causes you to reflect on obscure things of the past that may or may not influence the development of these little humans.
Fortunately, for every ounce of rage Adam tries to suppress, he has just as much love within him. The same arrogance and self-importance he has also translates into an ability to appeal to the needs of others. He knows how to talk to people, genuinely care about them, and attract friends better than anyone I’ve ever met. This was part of the reason he finally had to make a change and tell his company he would need to decrease his hours or he would need to leave. Adam works hard, and he can’t say no to someone unless it interferes with his family, which is what ended up happening last year.
He was exhausted, the girls and I never saw him because he was constantly working late, and we just couldn’t seem to get on the same page about anything. After my conversation with Carolyn during the party on the farm, I spent the weekend considering the prospect of helping Adam start his own business. It had been months since we discussed it. In the meantime, Adam was still working, being successful, and I was still stuck in a strange limbo somewhere in our wonderful life. This time, I really sounded like a brat, complaining about a lack of purpose while living the life people like Carolyn had only days ago described as perfect.
As if I weren’t having enough of an existential crisis, Adam had even decided to get up earlier each day and start working out at the gym down the street from his office building. I should have been happy for him. He is my husband, after all, so why should that bother me? I knew it probably had something to do with the way things were changing. It was incredibly immature, the more I thought about it. What Adam did during the day shouldn’t have initiated such a negative response from me, especially when everything he was doing was beneficial to me. Was it possible that I was jealous of Adam? Maybe. The idea of how stupid that sounded was all I needed to decide I had to do something. The more I thought about my desire for a new purpose of some kind, I decided to bring up the business idea again with him one day at the end of March.
“Have you thought any more about going into business for yourself?” I asked him from the corner of the sectional in our living room. Adam sat perpendicular to me, facing the television, his legs outstretched on the ottoman. The anchors on ESPN debated vigorously whether the Dallas Cowboys would be any good this year. Adam didn’t follow college sports; he was a die-hard Cowboys fan. Rather, he ridiculed the fans of the college basketball team in the town we both grew up in, branding them bandwagon fans, even though my family and everyone we knew had been Wildcats fans from the moment they were born or set foot in Kentucky. The irony was that the Cowboys were the definition of a bandwagon team, but I knew better than to point this out or say that the Cowboys from the 1990s were dead and never coming back. I’m sure that would have resulted in an instant divorce. I also knew better than to point out that the Wildcats consistently won national championships. But people see what they want to see, and the Cowboys were Adam’s thing. It didn’t matter in the big scheme of things, I guess.
Adam glanced over at me and paused in consideration.
“A little bit. I’m not worried about the volume of business—that’s never really been a question—but there are a few things I need to work out as far as
logistics. You know, like the ancillary functions.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I was taking jobs on the side before, it was just however many I could fit in after work. It was all people I knew personally or through mutual acquaintances. After a while, I was even turning people down and it didn’t matter because I still had my day job. But if I’m running a business and want to attract and maintain new clients, I need the infrastructure to do that. I need a solid system to maintain schedules, do the bookkeeping, ordering equipment, all that.”
I marinated on this for a few minutes, considering the work that goes into the back end of any business. I didn’t know much about running a business other than what I’d observed Adam do whenever he took on a side job. Then again, what else did I have to do at this point except learn?
“What if I helped you do all of that?”
“What, like run the administrative portion of it? Is that something you’re interested in doing?”
It might have sounded ridiculous, but at that point, I felt like the woman who started things, but never finished them. Whether it was college, teaching kids, baking cakes, or the slew of other dead-end jobs I started in between, I forced myself to admit that I needed a purpose—a goal to stick to. I also didn’t want to be the only one not financially contributing to our household. Before the girls were in school, we didn’t have to pay for daycare because I was home with them. But now—I didn’t know what to say. I grew up watching both of my parents go to work. I didn’t want my daughters growing up thinking that moms don’t work, that after they went to school, I stopped working for anything. There are plenty of people who say that what I do by staying at home still counts as contributing, but it loses its luster when you realize other people who work 40 hours outside the home still come home and do their laundry and clean their house just like everyone else.
“I want to do something else—I need to do something else now that both girls are in school all day. I feel like I have all these ideas, but it never ends up going anywhere. I mean, I quit school, and now that the girls don’t need me at home, I have no plan.”
Adam shook his head passively.
“I didn’t ask you to do that. You decided you wanted to leave school and you decided you wanted to stay home and raise our kids.”
Sometimes he could be infuriating, the way he interpreted certain statements. It was like walking on eggshells—or more like a minefield at times—with him. It could take a while to figure out whether he was being reflective or defensive. I suppressed an eyeroll, trying to refrain from becoming annoyed, lest I lose my train of thought and derail into a quagmire of our past. Nothing was his fault, it was always someone deciding to do something, even if it was in response to his actions.
It was true, Adam didn’t ask me to leave school and marry him; that was my choice, and one I made with the most indignance and disdain for my parents that I’d ever had. I thought it was a good decision at that time, and I will stand by that decision for the rest of my life. But this time, it wasn’t about him, it was about me and the direction I wanted my life to go. Often, it’s just best to overlook such asinine comments.
“I’m not saying it’s your fault. I’m saying that now things are different. If I help start this business with you, then I’ll be contributing to our livelihood. And you said yourself the volume isn’t a problem, but you need someone to take care of the logistics on the back end.”
Adam nodded in agreement, his expression softening.
“It would decrease the overhead costs,” He smiled, glancing back at the television, “If you really want to, I’m not going to argue. It would simplify a lot of the infrastructure issues involved, especially since I could essentially work out of our house rather than require additional space, at least at first.”
“Well, you tell me what we need to do to make this happen and we’ll do it. What kind of timeline would you be looking at? How long would you stay with GenTech after officially going into business?”
“That’s the other thing—I’ll need to build back the business I scaled back when I stopped working on the side. Once I do that, I’ll have a better idea of when I can transition into going full-time. But in the meantime, you can start learning how things should run and we can get those issues ironed out. It’s one thing to have the work, but you have to be able to manage it or it doesn’t matter.”
“Can you do that—get the business back that you used to have?”
Adam grinned. I’d seen this same look countless times, when I was worrying about something and he was already two steps ahead, waiting to tell me I didn’t have anything to worry about after all.
“There’s no shortage of people still asking, so I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”
That told me all I needed to hear. I began scheming, planning what I needed to do to make this a successful endeavor. At that moment, I committed myself to a new path; one that involved Adam and I doing what we started out doing almost 12 years ago—embarking on some journey all on our own. This time, I doubted there would be as much yelling and screaming.
It hadn’t been that long since we had that conversation, but I was growing restless and impatient. I glanced at my watch, pulling myself back to the present. It would be time to pick up the girls from school in a couple of hours. I crumpled the empty pretzel bag in my fist and picked up my water glass in the other. Mental note—add pretzels to the grocery list, or else lunch for the girls the rest of the week would be a disaster. I walked back into the house and deposited the bag in the trash can next to the counter. Recalling the conversation between Adam and I about the prospect of starting a business, I felt the anticipation begin to grow within me. It was something new and exciting to look forward to, if Adam decided to do it, that is. I had a feeling he would, though. He wasn’t ever one to be complacent, satisfied with mediocrity. He was independent; he was the kind of person who could be successful going into business for himself. I couldn’t imagine that he would turn down that kind of opportunity. I tilted my glass back, finishing the last of the water before picking up my phone from the countertop. Walking across the living room toward the hallway, I began typing out a message to Adam, asking him how his meeting went.
5
April 9 – THE 6-MONTH-LONG COFFEE
DATE ON EXIT 9
Diana
When I began searching for a place to live before I moved back to Lexington last year, I knew I was finished with apartment complexes and neighborhoods of broken down rental houses—and people who still lived like students. I had no use for people who partied late into the night or camped out on their tailgates in the parking lot, hollering at anyone who walked by. I found an advertisement on a real estate website less than an hour after it was posted and inquired immediately about the townhouse on Pine Needles Lane. I was familiar with the small cluster of townhouses on the south side of Man-O-War Boulevard, and the location was ideal. This part of town was filled with families and old people—exactly the kind of neighbors I wanted to reside with, if I had to reside near anyone at all.
When I called about the rental, which I was surprised was a rental at all, I spoke with an older woman, Phyllis Dewberry, who told me why the townhouse was being rented. Phyllis Dewberry and her husband, Richard, were retired. They lived in the townhouse for 10 years before recently deciding to purchase a home in Madeira Beach, Florida. When I asked who I would contact if any issues arose, Phyllis explained that the Dewberry’s son, Randy, owned multiple rental properties in the area and would be managing the townhouse on Pine Needles Lane. I met her at their home the following day to view it.
Phyllis Dewberry looked nothing like what I thought she would. From how many times she called me “Dear” on the phone, I envisioned an older lady with a perm who wore turtleneck sweaters and orthopedic shoes. Phyllis was older—probably in her late 60s or early 70s—but she answered the door in a flowy wrap-around V-neck shirt that tied at her waist, skinny jeans, and bare feet with fuchsia toenail p
olish. Her hair was a deep chocolate brown, her grey roots beginning to peak out of her scalp, and she wore gold chandelier earrings and a diamond on her finger no less than three carats.
Phyllis extended her arms and invited me inside, offering me a glass of sauvignon blanc. She never drank red, she informed me.