The Job (14 page)

It’s
that last sentence that really catches me.

My
phone beeps.

The
new message reads, “Not much you can do. Moms are moms, and in my experience,
there’s not much you can do to change their minds about anything.”

I
write back, “Your mom does this kind of thing, too, huh?”

My
dad’s inside saying, “At some point, you’ve just got to trust that she knows
the right thing to do. That’s our job as parents: To teach our children the
best we can and then let them live their own lives.”

Mom
has apparently either forgotten or has stopped caring that I can hear her as
she bellows with laughter and, in a loud voice says, “Do you really want to
know what kind of a life she would choose to lead if we didn’t give her the
right direction? Do you remember that boy—oh, what was his name?—Billy or
something. He was the one with the Camaro.”

“Dear,
you’ve got to let that go. People make mistakes,” my dad says.

He’s
a great ally to have for about the first ten minutes of every disagreement. The
problem is that he gets tired of arguing so quickly that anything longer than
that ten minutes and he’s just going to say whatever he needs to say to halt
the disagreement.

“It’s
a wonder she knew to use a condom,” my mom adds and my phone beeps again.

“Yeah,”
I call, “that means I can hear you, Mom!”

I
look at the screen and read, “She used to, but we lost her a few years back to
cancer.”

That
was a little more real than I was expecting.

“I’m
sorry,” I write and try futilely to think of something to add. There’s nothing,
so I just send the message.

The
back door opens and my dad comes out.

“Mind
if I sit with you?” he asks.

“Go
ahead,” I tell him.

“You
know, I used to hold you out here when you were just a baby and we’d watch the
stars come out at night.”

“I
remember,” I smile. “Not that far back, obviously, but we did that for a long
time.”

“I
always loved this time of night for that reason,” he says. “You know, your
mother and I just want to have you close because we love you. It’s not that
we’re trying to keep you from having your own life. We just want to be a part
of it.”

It
still surprises me that I forget how my dad can be even more effective with the
art of the guilt trip than my mom can. If
guilting
was a sport, they’d take gold and silver every time.

“You
are
a part of it,” I tell him. “I can
come visit more, but I can’t just give up my life because Mom still wants to
treat me like a toddler.”

“She
loves you, dear,” my dad says. “I love you, too. We just want what’s best for
you.”

“Then
trust me,” I tell him. “I’m doing great on my own. I have problems just like
anyone else, but I find solutions. I’m actually doing some really great things
in the city. My store remodel just got finished, and—”

“Do
you have any pictures?” he asks.

I
waited until after Eric and his guys left, but I did snap some photos with my
phone, so I pull up my picture gallery and hand it over to him.

“Wow,”
he says. “It looks like they did a really good job. I love the sunken floor
right there.”

“Yeah,
and that window used to only go to this corner,” I tell him, pointing at the
picture, “but I had them take it around the side so people coming down the
street can get a view of the window displays before they get to the store.
People are much more likely to see something if it’s in front of them, or close
to in front of them than if they’re already walking past it.”

“Didn’t
you say they started this a couple months ago?” he asks.

“Yeah,”
I answer.

“Why’d
it take them so long to finish it?”

My
dad is probably the only person on the planet in front of whom I’d feel
embarrassed about changing my mind so much, so I just tell him, “Some of the
materials they needed took longer to ship than we thought they would, but it
came out pretty nice, huh?”

“It
looks great, honey,” he says and hands the phone back to me. “How much did that
cost?”

“You
really don’t want to know,” I tell him.

“I
really do,” he says.

“No,
New York prices are different than prices almost anywhere else. It would just
sound like a waste of money.”

“I
know New York is expensive,” he says. “Come on, how much?”

“All
told,” I start, “a little over one sixty.”

I’m
already cringing in expectation of my dad’s response.

“One
sixty what?” he asks.

Now
I’m cringing harder. “Thousand, Dad, it was a little over a hundred and sixty
thousand. It was going to be a little cheaper, but I thought of some changes
before they were done and I had them implement it.”

 
“Where did you get that kind of money? You
didn’t take out one of those payday loans, did you?” my dad asks.

I
laugh. He’s so sincere, and he’s just looking at me with those big eyes, but
that just makes me laugh even harder.

“Dad,”
I wheeze, “I really don’t think those places deal in that kind of cash. I took
out a normal bank loan, but I was able to pay a chunk of it with my savings.”

“How
much?” he asks.

My
phone beeps, but unfortunately, my clandestine friend will have to wait a
minute or two.

“A
little over half,” I tell him. “I like to save most of my money. Investing in
the future is better than blowing all your money for a fleeting present.”

“Well,
I’m impressed,” he says. “That must have cleaned you out, though. We can’t let
you pay for our—”

“I
left about twenty-thousand in my account,” I tell him. “I didn’t want to
completely gut my savings. After all, you never know when times are going to
get tight.”

“Where
did you get all this money?” he asks.

“From
my store,” I tell him. “Despite what Mom thinks, it’s actually a really good
concept.”

“Don’t
be too hard on your mother,” he says. “You know that she has trouble letting
go.”

“I
get that,” I tell him, “but that doesn’t mean that she just gets to belittle me
when she won’t even listen to what I’m doing with my life. I’m not her little
girl anymore.”

I
regret the words because I can already hear the cliché they’re going to elicit
before he says it.

“You’re
always going to be her little girl,” he says.

“Yeah,
I know,” I tell him. “I’ve seen the Lifetime movies, but that doesn’t mean that
she can’t let me grow up. Whether she likes it or not, I already have.”

“I
know, dear,” he says. “You’ve grown up so fast.”

My
phone beeps again.

“So,
who’s sending you messages?” he asks. “Is it a boyfriend?”

“No,”
I tell him. “It’s just some guy. I don’t even know him.”

“You
can block him,” my dad says. “I read that online.”

“We’re
living in a strange world,” I tell him. “It starts with parents coming to a
functional, albeit gradual, understanding of technology and where does it end?
Next thing we know, kids will start doing their homework willingly and
politicians will stop accepting bribes to sway their votes. It would be
madness!”

My
dad chuckles, and it’s still one of the most comforting sounds in the world to
me.

Growing
up, he was always the one cheering me on when I had soccer games or dance
recitals. Mom, she’d always say the same thing, no matter what I was doing,
“Just remember, Jessica, you may not be the smartest or the prettiest, but you
go out there and do your best anyway.”

There
was never any, “I’ll be proud of you no matter what,” or “You’re going to do
great.” It was always, “Do your best even though it’s not going to amount to
much.”

“Dad,
does Mom hate me?” I ask.

It’s
a dramatic question, but maybe it’ll get him to realize that her behavior is
more than a mother just hanging onto her little girl a bit too much for a bit
too long.

“Of
course not, honey. Why would you say something like that?” he asks.

“Well,
I don’t think she actually does, but you know the way she talks to me. She’s
always talked to me that way, and it doesn’t matter what I do or how well I do
it, she never trusts that I’m going to make the right decision about anything,”
I tell him.

“She
just worries about you,” he says. I wait for him to finish the thought, but
apparently that’s it.

I
pull my phone back out of my pocket and check my messages.

“Is
he a good man?” my dad asks.

“I
don’t know,” I tell him. “So far, he’s about the closest thing I have to a
friend besides the people I pay to work for me.”

The
statement was a bit blunter than I intended, and I can see the result on my
dad’s expression.

“You
work too hard,” he says. “I bet if you were to go out there and have a good
time, you’d come home with a bunch of friends.”

“Maybe,”
I tell him and look at my phone.

“What’d
he say?” my dad asks.

“Oh,
you really don’t want to know,” I tell him.

“He’s
not being disrespectful, is he?” my dad asks, and I have to smile. He’s always
been the protector. “You know, despite what you may see on television, it’s not
okay for men to say the nasty, sexual things that they do to women.”

“It’s
not that,” I tell him. “He’s never talked to me like that, actually. I was just
telling him about Mom and the cancer.”

“What
did he say?” my dad asks.

“He
just told me to hang in there—that it’s going to be okay.”

I
leave out the fact that my text-friend’s mom died of cancer. Dad has enough on
his mind as it is.

“Well
that’s good,” my dad says. “Now, why don’t you come inside for some more of
your mother’s award-winning blueberry pie?”

“Dad,
I know you’re the one that makes it,” I tell him.

“What?”
he asks, feigning ignorance. “What are you talking about?”

“Every
time we have blueberry pie, your hands are stained purple,” I tell him. “Mom’s
never have been.”

“She
wears gloves, dear,” he says and gets up from the porch swing. It’s a ludicrous
response, but it’s too endearing to argue with him about it. He smiles and
holds a stained hand out toward me. “Shall we?”

*
                   
*
              
     
*

 
“I think I’ve become my mother,” I write.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love her and everything, but she’s not exactly who I
thought I would be at thirty years old, you know?”

I’m
sitting on the corner of my old bed in my parents’ house, hoping that he knows
male/female propriety well enough to try to convince me that I couldn’t
possibly be anything like my mother.

“Tell
me,” he writes, “if you could go anywhere in the world with anyone in the
world, who would it be?”

Well,
it’s hardly the response I was hoping for, but at least he knows male/female
propriety well enough to change the subject.

“I
don’t know,” I write. “Where did that come from?”

Along
with coming to talk to my mom and dad about the house, I came here for another
reason.

It’s
hardly new. In fact, it’s something that I’ve tried to talk myself into doing
for years now, but I can never find the nerve to just do it.

My
phone beeps.

The
message reads, “In my experience, when someone starts to think that they’re
turning into one of their parents, it usually means it’s time for a vacation.”

I
cover my mouth as the laugh escapes me.

“Well,”
I write back, “you’re right about that. It’s starting to look like you’re right
about a lot of things.”

Even
as a little girl, I tried so hard to impress my mother, to show her that I
wasn’t this frail, stupid thing she’s always thought me to be. Apart from
trying to convince my parents to help them with the mortgage, I’m here to
confront what is quite possibly the saddest part of my childhood.

My
phone beeps.

“That’s
something I never tire of hearing,” he writes. “What specifically am I right
about this time?”

I
write back, “I should start trusting my employees. I’ve had a few lackluster
workers in the past, but the staff I have now is pretty amazing.”

I
joined every club in high school and before that I went for every team,
volunteered for every school play, every bake sale, every fundraiser... One
year, I tried out for the cheerleading squad, but the coach said I didn’t smile
enough.

He
wasn’t wrong.