by Ariel Kaplan
“But why?”
“The normal reason. Not enough money to pay everyone. So starting next month, everyone has to take five days of unpaid leave every month. Until November.”
I sat down very hard. “But that’s like a 25% pay cut.”
“Fifty points for Gryffindor!”
“Mom. Stop doing that.”
“I suppose it could be worse,” she said. “It was either this or they fired two people.”
“Jesus. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to apply for another job,” she said. “Either another full-time thing or someone who’ll let me freelance on top of Legal Helpline to make up the difference.”
I picked up the notepad and read down the list of names. It was not a long list. I recognized a few of the entries as people who had started at Legal Helpline and then moved on to bigger, higher-paying jobs.
“What if you can’t find anything?” I asked. “Could you…I don’t know. Borrow money against the house? To last until November?”
“The last thing we need is more debt,” she said.
“More debt?” I said, because I didn’t realize we had that much. I know she puts stuff on the credit card sometimes, but only when we have an emergency.
“Never mind,” she said. “It’s fine. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.”
That was two fines too many. “What exactly isn’t fine? Like, are we in a bunch of debt here?”
“No,” she said. “I said it was fine.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
She poured another drink.
“Come on. What is it?”
She said, “I put this year’s Blanchard tuition on the credit card.”
“You what?”
“I didn’t have a choice. We couldn’t manage it.”
“We managed it before.” When she stared into her glass, I said, “We did, didn’t we? Manage it?”
She breathed heavily. “They cut back your scholarship. After freshman year.”
I sat down in the chair next to her. “I’m confused.”
“They’re still covering most of it. But the part we have to pay is higher.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what? I wasn’t going to pull you out.”
“So you’ve been putting my tuition on the credit card for three years?”
“Not all of it. But some of it. Mischa, I didn’t have a choice.”
Back in AP Econ, Mr. Tanen had told us that compound interest was the most powerful force in the universe. I said, “What’s the rate on that card?”
“Seventeen percent.”
Holy hell.
I looked into the bottom of my mother’s glass, which was now empty again. I picked up the bottle and moved it to the other end of the table. When she gave me an irritated look, I said, “Grandma didn’t escape from Communism so you could mess around.”
“Very funny,” she said. But it wasn’t. What Mom was telling me was this: We had a big chunk of debt that was growing bigger by the day. We were going to have to live on 75% of her not-quite-enough salary. And, oh, right! She was expecting to pay tuition bills in a few months. On that point, at least, I could correct her. If only I had the guts.
“Mom,” I said slowly. “What if I didn’t…what if I didn’t go to college right away? What if I took a gap year?”
“No.” she said. “No, you are not taking a gap year.”
I paused. “What if I don’t want to go just yet? What if I wanted to work, or travel—”
“No.”
“But—”
“No. So help me, we have worked too hard for too long to lose that kind of momentum. It’s bad enough that you’re…”
“It’s bad enough that I’m…what?” I echoed, knowing perfectly well what she meant.
“Nothing,” she said.
“You’re a bad liar when you’re drunk,” I said bitterly.
“It’s a global economy, Mischa.”
“Would you stop saying that?”
“Oh, I hoped things would be different for you.”
“You’re ashamed of me.”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Do you not understand?” she said. “Do you get that this is what it’s like for everyone? Why do you think I sent you to Blanchard? So you could find a way out of this! It was our way out!”
Our way out, she was saying. Not just mine. Maybe she’d been hoping that once I graduated from Harvard or wherever, it would open up networking opportunities for her, too. Maybe it would have, if I’d gotten in. “Oh, that’s nice. You thought you could use my great big brain to get us a better life. More money. Fancier jobs. Well, I’m sorry I wasn’t up to the task.”
“Oh, stop with your tantrum. We both wanted things to turn out differently. We both wanted more.”
“Would you stop saying ‘we’? Did it ever occur to you that maybe I was more than just an extension of you?”
“Of course you are,” she said. “I never said—”
“You did say it,” I said. “You’ve been living it. For the last eighteen years.”
“Would you prefer that I didn’t care what happened to you?”
“Sometimes I think it would be better if you didn’t.”
“Right, because it would be so wonderful to have a mother who didn’t care if you ended up dead in a ditch.”
I pointed a finger at her. “And that’s the problem! Right there! There’s a billion possibilities between Ivy League and dead in a ditch. But you don’t see that, do you? It’s either one or the other. I’m either the golden child or I’m worthless.”
“You’re being ridiculous!”
“No,” I said. “I’m not.”
Before she could reply, I went to my room and slammed the door.
* * *
—
I pulled out my phone and went through the pictures of Jill and Bob and Matt and the plane we’d jumped out of, and I thought about how my problems had seemed so tiny and antlike. The problem is, though, that you can put an ant in front of a mirror and show it that it is an ant. It can understand, to the depths of its soul, that it is an ant. But it can never stop being an ant.
I opened Google and typed, What is the meaning of life?
The first answer was: Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women.
I ran a hand over my eyes. I typed, What is the meaning of life -“Conan the Barbarian”
This was only slightly more helpful. The first link was an article about Buddhism and how attachment causes suffering, and the end of attachment leads to enlightenment. But that didn’t answer my question. I typed, Why am I here?
I got the number for a suicide hotline.
I closed Google and called Nate. “What is the meaning of life?” I asked, in lieu of a greeting.
He laughed a very, very long time.
“Is that your answer?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s my answer. What’s up? I thought we had fun today.”
“I did have fun. It was fun.”
“Why do you sound like that, then?”
I didn’t really want to explain about my mother’s financial catastrophe, because this was not the kind of thing Nate understood. To him, money was just money. You spent it, you made more, and you always assumed it would stay where you put it. I said, “If I was having a nervous breakdown, would I know?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You definitely would. Are you?”
“I’m not sure. I’m trying to make sense of the person I’ve been for the past eighteen years, and it’s not working. Google said something about how striving leads to expectations and expectations lead to suffering. Mayb
e that’s my problem? That was your problem, right?”
He was silent for a minute. “My problem was other people’s expectations. Not mine.”
Yes, I could see that. My mother’s expectations were definitely the source of several of my problems. In fact, I could probably write a list of the problems those expectations had caused. But my mother wasn’t the only one who had weighed me down that way. “So what are your expectations?” I asked.
He chuckled. “If I say, ‘I expect you to come to my house and take my clothes off,’ does that count?”
“Nate.”
“Fine,” he said. “Let’s see.” There was a long silence. Eventually, he said, “I want to go to college and learn some stuff. I want to meet some cool people and go to some parties and maybe take a class that turns out to be so interesting it changes my life, and then I can somehow parlay that life-changing thing into something I can use to support myself.”
“That’s kind of vague,” I said, frowning at the phone.
“Well, I gave you something specific and you rejected it. That still stands, by the way.”
“So you just want to have fun and do interesting things and then die,” I said.
“Isn’t that what everyone wants to do?”
“No,” I said. “It isn’t what I wanted to do.”
“What did you want to do?”
“I wanted to be the best. At—at something. At everything.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. To prove I deserved to be alive? To prove I mattered? I don’t know.”
We stayed on the line for a while without talking. Finally he said, “Do you think there are people who don’t deserve to be alive?”
“What? No. What do you mean?”
“I mean, if there’s some person who’s too poor or too sick or too, I don’t know, disabled to do what you’re talking about, do they not matter?”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” I said.
“It kind of is,” he said. “When I was so sick I couldn’t leave the hospital for five weeks, I’d like to think I still deserved to be alive.”
“Of course you did. That’s not what I mean. I just mean, I should have to do the best I can with what I have. That’s all everyone does.”
“So you think you should have to do more than other people because you’re better.”
“No! Stop putting words in my mouth.”
“Well, what is it, then? You think you deserve more? I don’t get what you’re after, Mischa.” His voice was strained, and I realized he was really angry. I don’t think, in all the years I’ve known Nate, that I’ve ever seen him really mad. Everything rolls off him. But he was mad now. At me.
“You’re being unfair,” I said.
“I don’t think I am,” he said, and then he hung up.
I stared at the phone in my hand. Nate had hung up on me. NATE had hung up on me. Maybe this was how things were going to be, now that we were together?
I texted him and said, I’m sorry.
It was a long time before he texted back. He said: Are you actually sorry, or are you just saying that because you don’t want me to be mad?
For Christ’s sake. I don’t want you to be mad.
Do you even know why I’m angry?
Not really.
I stared at the three little dots that indicated that he was typing. He typed for long enough that I figured I was going to be getting an essay-length description of why he was mad at me. Instead, when the text finally came through, it said: I am hanging up on you again.
I waited for Nate in front of his locker until thirty seconds before the first-period bell, at which point I accepted that he wasn’t coming. While I jogged to class, I sent him a text saying, Are you at school today?
My phone pinged and I jumped, but it was just another group text from Penny Ford in Students for Sober Driving.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I hate drunk driving as much as anyone. It’s a terrible, terrible thing. But I joined SSD for one reason only: it’s a thing I could list on my resume that only involved two series of meetings per year, one before homecoming, and one before the spring formal. We did two things: we put posters up around the school telling everyone not to drive drunk, and we raised money so we could call Lyfts for anyone who was drunk anyway. The money for Lyfts was a really great idea in theory, but the reality was that pretty much everyone either came to these things in a limo or had enough money to get their own Lyft, so we’d been holding on to the same two hundred dollars for the past three years.
I was in charge of posters, which had become somewhat more odious after last year, when Penny had called a vote where it was decided that we could not use poster designs from previous years, because everyone had already seen them and would therefore not pay attention. I had to make ten: two for the cafeteria, two for the wall by the front door, and six others to go in various bathrooms, which would probably be defaced within a few days.
Despite the fact that we didn’t really do anything, we still had to meet every week in the spring to get ready for formal/graduation season. We’d talk about our mission (drunk driving = bad) and see if we had any new ideas (nope). Then Penny, who was the president, would get in a fight with Brian, who was the treasurer, because Brian wanted to have a bake sale to raise more money, even though we’d never used any of the money we already had. Then someone would cry. Then we’d eat pizza.
The text said, Meeting today at four. Please remember your supplies!
The last thing I wanted to do was make posters. In fact, what I really wanted to do was walk into an airport and get on the next plane I saw, never to return.
I can’t make it, I texted back.
Mischa, you’ve already missed the last two meetings.
Crap. Had I? I didn’t even know. I scrolled back through my texts from Penny; there had been a couple of others in the last few weeks. I’d been ignoring her. Probably I should have felt bad about that.
I’m sick, I said.
I just saw you five minutes ago and you looked fine. And don’t even TRY telling me you have mono.
Look, I texted, I’m really sorry, I just can’t do it this week.
YOU MADE A COMMITMENT, was the reply.
I’m sorry, I said.
I’m going to go to Ms. Johnson about this. Ms. Johnson was our faculty adviser. She taught Latin and coached the girls’ golf team, and she nearly always seemed to wear the expression of the recently Botoxed.
Fine, I said. She can’t make me stay in SSD, though.
Wait, you’re quitting?
Was that not clear?
I can’t believe you.
By then I was in calculus, and Mr. Bronstein was giving me the death glare, so I stowed my phone without answering. I’d quit. I’d told Penny I’d quit. And that, I decided, was the end of it.
I had no word from Nate when I checked my phone after class. None after French. I was on my way to look for him in the dining hall when Ms. Johnson saw me passing and called me into her classroom. Lists of Latin declensions lined the walls, along with blown-up pages of Winnie-the-Pooh translated into Latin. Winnie ille Pu. Ms. Johnson was eating a salad out of a plastic box on her desk while staring at a huge paper day planner. Every day had its own square, which was filled with notes in her tiny cursive. “Is everything okay, Mischa?” she said. “I’ve heard you’ve been missing a lot of the SSD meetings. Anything you want to talk about?”
I wasn’t sure how Penny had managed to talk to her so quickly.
“Did Penny email you?” I asked.
“She was in my last class,” she explained. “She expressed some concerns.”
Oh, ha. Concerns. I’m sure Penny was REALLY concerned about me. My welfare was probably keeping her up at night.
“I just decided I’m kind of overcommitted
right now,” I said.
“It’s important to honor your commitments, though. And you have been in this club a long time. We’ve really come to depend on you.”
“Yeah, I understand that. It’s just that I—”
“I know you’re probably frustrated about your”—she dropped her voice—“college situation.”
She said “college situation” the way one would discuss some embarrassing medical condition. Like head lice, or hemorrhoids.
“Um. I didn’t realize you knew about that.”
“Well, you know how small this school is,” she said. “Word gets around.”
“Okay.”
“My point is,” she went on, “that even when things are bad, it’s really important to keep up your routine. For your mental health.”
“My mental health. That’s very important. To you.”
“Of course it is, Mischa, and also, you did commit to this club, and you’re leaving a lot of people in the lurch.”
“I’m uncommitting,” I said.
“You’re—”
“Quitting. I’m quitting.”
I’d already said as much to Penny, but apparently she hadn’t relayed this part of our conversation to Ms. Johnson, because she looked surprised. And that’s hard to do with a face full of botulism toxin. Her eyebrows almost went up and everything.
“You know that means you’re going to have to take SSD off your resume,” she said.
“Oh, gee!” I said. “I never thought of that. Maybe this will go on my permanent record.”
“There’s no need for you to take that tone.”
“See, I think there is a need. Listen. I’ve been in this club for three and a half years? And I can tell you this, after three and a half years in this club, there’s not one person in it who cares about drunk driving. You know why it exists? So we can say we’re in a club. Have you not noticed that everyone in it has a leadership position? For God’s sake, I’m the vice president in charge of media outreach. Do you know how stupid that is?”
“Your position is very important—”
“I MADE POSTERS. Making posters is not a leadership position!”