The Latecomers Fan Club

by Diane V. Mulligan

  Maggie felt her impatience rising. To think about what, mother? she thought. About my failures? About my utter lack of prospects?

  “So, you know, Frank and I were wondering if you’ve started to make a plan for yourself.”

  Maggie was surprised that she brought Frank into the conversation. So far, Maggie had found Frank to be polite and aloof. Of course Gloria and Frank would have talked about Maggie and her situation, but she hadn’t thought of him as having any input. Yes, he was married to her mother, but she didn’t think of him as her stepfather. She was too old for that.

  “I don’t know,” Maggie said. “I mean, I know I have to get a job. I can’t just keep freeloading.”

  “I don’t mean that,” Gloria said, reaching a hand across the table to touch her daughter’s wrist. “I do think a job would be good for you, but not because you’re a freeloader. It’ll help you to get out of the house. You’ll feel better about yourself. You need to start moving forward with your life.”

  But I’m not moving forward, Maggie thought. All I’ve done for months is move backwards. She slipped her arm from her mother’s grasp, took a piece of bread from the basket on the table, and buttered it slowly, still not looking at her. What could Maggie possibly say? Gloria was right, but Maggie still didn’t know what to do. And did she really need to be reminded that she needed a job?

  “Frank thinks, and I agree, that you need to put more effort into applying for jobs.”

  “I have been.”

  “How many actual applications have you put in?”

  Maggie shook her head. The answer was four. Four applications for jobs that required no skills or previous experience. Four applications for jobs where she’d earn little more than minimum wage and be bored to tears every day.

  “You just need something to hold you over,” Gloria said, reading Maggie’s thoughts. “It’s not forever. It’s just to get some references and cash while you figure out what you really want to do.”

  “So I should suck it up and apply at McDonald’s or something like that?”

  “If that’s what it takes, yes.”

  Their food arrived, but Maggie had no appetite. She cut her chicken and pushed it around the plate. Her mother was the one who raised her with the mantra that she could be anything she wanted to be when she grew up. Maybe Gloria should have given her a little more guidance when she went to college, instead of letting her major in something as completely useless as studio art. But no. Gloria let her make her own decisions, always insisting she had faith in Maggie. When her advisors at her fancy liberal arts college said that a degree in the humanities would help her gain a wide range of experiences and skills that would translate well to the workplace, Maggie asked Gloria what she thought, and Gloria agreed. She encouraged Maggie to pursue her love of art. And when she was finishing college and all her friends, with their trust funds and BMWs-as-graduation-presents, were going off to grad school to study things like anthropology and Victorian literature, her mother congratulated her on her acceptance and scholarship to a master’s program in studio art. She should have been offering a reality check. She knew what the real world was like. She had to know Maggie was being impractical. Why couldn’t they have had this little chat twelve years ago? Twenty-one-year-olds shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions, Maggie thought. She knew nothing back then, so she made choices that left her utterly unprepared for life after school.

  “I didn’t go to college and grad school to work at McDonald’s,” Maggie said at last.

  “Well then think of some jobs where you can put those degrees to work,” Gloria said. “But you may need to accept that in this economy, the best you’re going to do is the service sector.”

  “Right.”

  “You need to stop this,” Gloria said, her tone shifting from gentle to stern. “You know, I’m trying to be supportive of you, but to be honest, you’re letting me down. I know you have big dreams for yourself, but I would think that the one thing you learned from me over the years is that there is no shame in an honest day’s work, no matter what the work is. Look at the jobs I’ve done in my life. Do you think I was too stupid or talentless to get something better?”

  Maggie felt her face turn red. She breathed deeply through her nose but didn’t respond.

  “I know you were embarrassed sometimes,” Gloria continued, “but I think you also know that I did the best I could with what I had.”

  Maggie did know that, and she knew that her mother was smart and capable. What she had never understood was why she resigned herself to such crappy jobs for so long. Wiping old people’s asses and cleaning up messes at a nursing home for years. Once she got that job, was it just easier to stay than to find something better, or was there some other reason? Maggie didn’t know. The only way Maggie could comprehend it was to think that her mother needed job security with two kids at home. But that justification didn’t seem like enough. If motherhood meant compromises like that, Maggie wasn’t fit for motherhood, of that much she was certain.

  “I have done everything in my power to give you the opportunities I never had,” Gloria said. “Maybe some of those opportunities haven’t paid off yet, but you take too much for granted. Instead of working hard, you just drift from one thing to another. You’re always looking for someone to take care of you and to solve things for you, but at some point things aren’t handed to you anymore. At some point, it’s up to you. Maybe it’s time for you to start respecting the hard work most people have to put in to earn that nice life you dream of.”

  Maggie could hardly believe these words were coming from her mother’s mouth. Gloria never talked like that. She was always positive and supportive, and now here was she was calling her daughter a lazy ingrate.

  “Mom, I—”

  “Maggie,” Gloria interrupted, “I love you very much. I have always wanted things to be easier for you than they were for me. Up until now they have been. Hell, they still are. At least you aren’t trying to start over with two little kids. If I could spare you this pain, I would, but I can’t. No one else can fix this for you.”

  Gloria signaled for the check, and neither of them spoke on the drive home. When they got back to the house, Maggie went straight up to her room and stayed there for the better part of two days. However much she wanted to believe the story she had been telling herself about her life and her perpetual status as victim of her circumstances—the poverty in which she grew up, the oppression she’d felt as Andrew’s wife—she had to face the facts. The story she’d been clinging to was based on the faulty assumptions of a snotty kid who watched too much TV and developed unreasonable expectations about life.

  During her second day of wallowing in her misery, something unexpected happened: Nathaniel called. Maggie had given up hope that he would, and she had never worked up the nerve to call him. When his number popped up on her phone screen, she was so surprised and nervous that she dropped her phone in an effort to answer it. He was coming out to Worcester on Saturday for his mom’s birthday, he said, and he wondered if she wanted to get together in the afternoon for a coffee.

  “Coffee Kingdom isn’t there anymore,” he said of their old high school hang out, “but there’s a much better place on that same corner.”

  Maggie agreed and they made plans for him to pick her up at two o’clock. For the first time in days, Maggie was smiling, and when she emerged from her bedroom to take a shower and start acting human again, she couldn’t wipe the smile from her face. She hadn’t felt so giddy and nervous about a date—if getting together with Nathaniel even counted as a date, which she was not sure that it did—since high school. Certainly she’d never felt this way about going out with Andrew, even in the beginning. Usually she approached those dates with a slight sense of dread, which probably should have been a sign that something was not right.

  Still, for all her excitement, she couldn’t help but wonder: If she hadn�
��t been good enough for him when she was young and ready to take on the world, how could she possibly be good enough for him now that she was older and disillusioned with the world? But then again, he had seemed fairly disillusioned at the New Year’s party, too. She supposed they had both grown up a lot since high school. She wondered if anyone got to enter adulthood without a profound sense of disappointment.

  Nathaniel

  Abby agreed to wait three months to tell anyone about the pregnancy. Nathaniel hoped that would give him time to figure out how to proceed, but he didn’t think she’d really hold out that long. When he ran into one of her friends at Starbucks on the way to work one morning a few weeks into the whole ordeal, he half-expected her to congratulate him. Thanks to the misery of social media, he knew that once one person knew it wouldn’t be long before word got to his friends, and then he’d have to face reality. Publicly. But Abby’s friend brushed by him with only a brief hello. Safe for one more day.

  Abby didn’t give him a moment alone to process any of it, which didn’t make things any easier. Every time he turned around, she was there. He cursed himself for giving her a key to his apartment, which he only did in a moment of weakness and guilt. What to do about their living arrangement was a source of constant friction. So far Abby had found two places she loved, but by the time she got Nathaniel to agree to look at them, she called the agent only to learn they had already been rented. Nathaniel knew he couldn’t put off making a decision for long. Either he’d have to go look at the apartments or he’d have to be honest with Abby and say he didn’t think they should move in together. The problem was that he wanted to live with his child. He wanted to be an amazing father. But he also felt certain that if the only reason he stayed with Abby was for the sake of the baby, they’d all be doomed. He didn’t know exactly what they’d be doomed to. The most dramatic scenario he could think of was that they’d live quiet lives of misery. What seemed more likely was that they’d become a totally ordinary family—sometimes happy, sometimes sad, never remarkable. Nathaniel felt like no one had ever prepared him for the simple reality that most adults lead utterly ordinary lives. He resented that.

  He had never been so grateful to drive to Worcester as on the morning of his mother’s birthday at the end of January. Abby had lobbied to go with him—after all, she said, soon they’d all be family. Nathaniel wondered what she meant by that. Did she expect him to marry her before the baby came, or did she mean they’d be family because she was carrying his mother’s first grandchild? Nathaniel put her off. She could pout all she wanted, but he knew that she only wanted to be included so she could make the big announcement in front of the whole family.

  “You know we can’t tell people yet,” he insisted.

  “I won’t, but still, we’ve been together for years. Don’t you think they think it’s weird that I never come with you?”

  “My family isn’t like yours,” he said.

  “I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.”

  “It means we’ll tell my mom when you’re three months along, and today I’m going by myself.”

  Nathaniel felt a twinge of guilt because his mom liked Abby. She had seen how Abby took care of him after his dad died, and she often remarked on what a lovely, “down to earth” girl Abby was.

  What she meant by “down to earth,” was that Abby was a simple girl from a blue collar family. Neither of Nathaniel’s parents ever understood his love of music, theater, or philosophy. His mom managed the Economy Paint store in town and his father worked for a heating and cooling contractor. In their worldview, boys should love cars and football, so Nathaniel was a total mystery to them. His younger brother, Eddie, was the jock his father could watch a ballgame with, the sort of big strong boy his mother considered a real man.

  While his father was likely to make fun of Nathaniel for his “pansy-ass” interest in theater, his mother always supported him, even if she didn’t understand what motivated him. But Nathaniel knew both of his parents felt like he was trying to prove that he was better than them, which in a way he was, although he never thought of it like that. From his father, this belief manifested itself in sneering resentment. From his mother, it came through in little comments about how Nathaniel was going to move away to someplace bigger and better and never come home to visit. When Abby became a part of Nathaniel’s life, his mother was relieved. Maybe he wasn’t a total snob after all.

  If Abby hadn’t been so clingy for the past few weeks, Nathaniel might have let her come to dinner with him and his mom for her birthday, but after all her badgering, he told himself that what he needed was time alone.

  Besides, he needed a break from Abby and her relentless questions. Every conversation about the baby was a variation on a theme: She would ask what he was thinking. He’d say he still didn’t understand how this had happened. She’d tell him it was a good thing. That it was meant to be. If he didn’t offer resounding agreement to that sentiment, she would corner him with his least favorite question: “Do you not want this baby?” And the thing was that Nathaniel wanted to be a father. It was that simple. He loved kids; he always had. Some days as he hurried between campuses to teach, he would pass kids playing at recess and think that he really should have been an elementary school teacher. Instead of trying to explain ancient philosophy to bored community college students, he should have been getting six-year-olds excited about reading and math. Once in a while he’d see a young father pushing a baby stroller or playing with a small child in the park, and he couldn’t help but imagine himself doing those things, being a stay-at-home dad. He’d be good at it. It was exactly the sort of thing his own father hadn’t understood about him. If only he’d loved rockets, the Red Sox, and chopping wood. He remembered the way his father would shake his head at him when he was younger, muttering to his mother about their son, “the fairy.” Well, he’d be a better father than his own old man, of that much he was certain. So in response to Abby’s question about whether or not he wanted the baby, he’d have to reassure her that it was going to be ok, and then she’d start a new line of questioning, about apartments or careers or child care.

  But he didn’t want it to be this way. That he didn’t love Abby was only the start of the trouble. He wasn’t ready. He wasn’t at a place in his life where fatherhood made sense. While he had long since given up on his dream of a career as a musician, he was by no means satisfied with his existence as an adjunct professor. If he couldn’t be a rock star with widespread acclaim, he’d settle for being a campus celebrity, the professor whose classes everyone wants to take, regardless of their major. That would be good enough for him. He needed to get a tenure track job at a nice, prestigious, little liberal arts college somewhere in a small town where the picturesque campus could inspire him. He needed to establish himself and gain respect on campus, publish in journals, distinguish himself in his field. He’d buy a cozy little house with a fireplace in the living room and big maple trees in the yard. His colleagues, scholars in diverse and interesting disciplines, would come over for dinner and his smiling baby would charm them completely. His child would grow up with respect for him and his career.

  And of course he needed to stop drinking—really stop, cold turkey—and he needed to start taking care of himself. How could he be a father when some days he could hardly get out of bed? Some days all he could think was that he should have had the balls to be honest a long time ago. He had fucked everything up, and now God was punishing him.

  Nathaniel knew that wasn’t a good line of thinking. For one thing, Abby hadn’t done anything wrong, so God had no reason to punish her. For another thing, Nathaniel didn’t believe in God. He just wanted someone to blame for the miserable randomness of life.

  He wished Abby would stop constantly asking him what was wrong. She stayed at his apartment most nights, and every time he tried to get her to go home, she’d get upset (rightly so, Nathaniel could admit, but he just wanted a
few moments of peace). She needed too much. He was going to support her and the baby, he was letting her stay. If he couldn’t give himself over entirely to her, that was the price they’d both have to pay.

  On the nights when she worked it wasn’t so bad. He had classes most evenings, but he still had the apartment to himself for an hour or two between when he got home and when she did. Unfortunately, she’d cut back her hours. She felt exhausted all the time, she said, and her frequent bouts of nausea made work hell. Nathaniel had no clue how she planned to pay her bills, but if she thought he could help, she was wrong. He was barely managing his own expenses.

  One night, the third straight that she was at his place when he got home from class, he felt so hostile that he was afraid to be around her. If he tried to swallow his growing rage, he was likely to say something regrettable.

  “I’m going out for a while,” he said, knowing that the only reason he was angry with her was that he knew he was being an asshole.

  “Where? To the bar? Don’t you think it’s maybe about time you cut that out?”

  “I need some fresh air. I need a walk.” He felt his fists tighten and forced his hands into his pockets.

  “Fine, I’ll come, too,” she said, getting up.

  “I need to be by myself for God’s sake.”

  She dropped back down into her chair. He could see tears welling up in her eyes.

  “Abby,” he said, sighing. “Please, just—”

  “Just what? Go home? Fine.” She stood up again.

  “Look, I didn’t mean—”

  “I get it Nathaniel. This isn’t how you wanted any of this to happen. Well guess what. Me either.”

  He waited to see if she had more to say. They stood under the harsh fluorescent light of his kitchen, facing each other for the first time in days. Nathaniel could see the circles under her eyes. Her face was drawn. She hadn’t been eating much—morning sickness that lasted all day, she said. Instead of a pregnancy glow, she looked plain exhausted. Nathaniel’s anger melted into tired resignation. He dropped his jacket and put his arms around her.