“Nana and Grandpa will be slighted that they’re leaving early,” Foster told me.
I had no problem imagining the whole scenario. “And Mom will take that offense up like a torch. Daddy too.”
For once in our lives, Foster and I wanted to be wrong.
I slumped onto the end of my bed and towel-dried my hair. “I wish I was going with y’all.” Bailey had no idea how strong that desire was.
“I’m sorry it had to come to a head right after I met all of you, in the middle of a holiday meal.” She sighed and leaned down to zip her bag.
“Grandpa’s been saying shit like that his whole life, or at least all of mine. I don’t know if anyone’s ever called him on it. I’ve never been prouder of Pax. Whatever you do, don’t tell him I said that. His fat head is big enough.”
She shouldered her bag and smiled. “I think I’m going to like having a little sister.”
Once they were gone, I would be left alone with Leo, my parents, and my grandparents for two days. I didn’t relish the daunting thought of saying my piece with no one there to back me up. Then I remembered the things I hadn’t said to Joshua months ago, how they had backed up in my throat, suffocating and shameful, when Isaac walked into the room.
I couldn’t stay silent anymore, even if I didn’t say the exact right thing in the exact right way. Maybe there was no right thing, no way of fostering empathy in a heart determined not to feel it. Maybe there was only the rebuke of the wrong thing, even if no one accepted it.
Me: May I ask you something? It’s personal.
Isaac: You can ask.
Me: DWB – is that something you’ve experienced?
There was an intermission of two or three minutes, with no blinking ellipsis to indicate that he was answering. No furious response—yay. But no reply at all would mean I had colossally overstepped. The dots appeared and I stared at the screen, waiting.
Isaac: Why are you asking this? Why are you asking ME this?
Me: I trust you. You’ll tell me the truth.
Isaac: And/or you don’t know anyone else to ask.
Well, fuck.
Me: Ok. Yes. No one I know well enough.
Isaac: And you think you know me well enough?
Me: I’m sorry. This was rude of me. Please forget I asked.
The ellipsis appeared immediately, blinking happily. Or furiously. My palms sweated, watching it. And then it disappeared, not replaced by text, or more dots, or even a poop emoji. I couldn’t put the phone down. It might as well have been glued to my hand. I walked into the bathroom, squeezed toothpaste on my toothbrush, and brushed my teeth, still holding the phone. Finally he answered.
Isaac: I have experienced it. It’s real.
Me: I didn’t doubt it was real. I just didn’t know how widespread it was. How common.
Isaac: Widespread enough. Common enough.
Me: And you’re sure it was that, not a legitimate stop?
Isaac: I have no way to be sure, do I? But I have a question for you.
Isaac: How often have you been stopped for nothing? Asked to step out of your vehicle? To put your hands on the car and keep them there while they run your license, your plates, your description? How often have you been patted down for weapons for no reason you’re ever told? And then let go with little to no explanation?
Angry tears blurred my vision. He was telling me how it felt to be purposefully reminded again and again how little power you had over your life. Some would be inspired to keep fighting to obtain that promised freedom from discrimination. But for how long, if those toxic reminders never stopped? If no means of dissent was ever acceptable to the other side because of course it wasn’t. At what point in a lifetime of resisting do you lose hope?
Me: Once I got a ticket for running a stop sign when I was sure I’d stopped. The jurisdiction was one of the tiny towns between Austin and the coast. The ticket was $200 and I was really angry about it. That’s the sum total of my grievance over unjust treatment by law enforcement.
Isaac: What prompted this line of questioning? TV show? Tweet? Outraged NYT article? Outraged network pundit?
Me: Something that happened to a friend of my brother. Not Leo. Pax.
Isaac: The Isotope
Me: Yes. Thank you for answering. Sorry for bothering you.
Isaac: You aren’t a bother, Erin. I’ll see you Monday.
chapter
Twenty-four
When my conversation with Isaac finished, I perceived raised voices coming from the main room. Everyone had figured out that Pax and Bailey were leaving early.
“The tickets have already been changed. We’re leaving this morning.” Pax and Bailey stood near the front door, holding hands, their backpacks propped against Foster’s wheeled carry-on behind them. They faced Mom and Grandpa, whose backs were ramrod straight with indignation, like father like daughter. Nana appeared at the doorway to the kitchen, arms crossed. Her expression—shifting from piqued scowl to wide, blinking eyes to a trembling lip—couldn’t decide between anger, confusion, and hurt.
Daddy came up behind me, holding his razor, his face lathered with shaving cream. “Goddammit,” he said under his breath.
Foster stood a few feet away, typing on his phone. “Our Uber will be here in ten minutes,” he murmured, sliding his phone into his front pocket. He shrugged on his coat. Pax and Bailey were already zipped into theirs.
“So you’re just going to run off two days early because of a difference in politics?” I had rarely heard my grandfather sound incredulous, and it struck me that there was an obvious reason for that: things usually went his way. You’re used to getting your way, aren’t you? Isaac Maat had once asked me. He’d found a sore spot and pressed it. I had squirmed away from the truth before realizing that I didn’t want to be a woman acting like a spoiled child.
My grandfather was in his mid-eighties, and was a man with a lifetime of experience in getting his way. That was the reason for his disbelief that someone, anyone, would openly defy something he thought or said. For decades now, challenges had almost never transpired—not within his family or among his subordinates—and he’d grown so used to his status as a man never naysaid that he was floored by it.
In old photos, Daddy and Grandpa stood shoulder to shoulder. He was no longer quite as big as my father. Age had shrunk him. I thought of Joshua’s comments. The venerable Leonard P. Welch, he’d said before asking me how much money he had. Grandpa’s wealth and reputation were the only things important about him now, aside from his value to those who loved him and those who were financially dependent on him.
Grandpa Welch had doted on his only daughter. He had been a kind, benevolent grandparent to my brothers and me. For those reasons, we had respected and humored him. We had loved him despite his flaws. The unfortunate consequence was his present belief that he had none. No one in this room was perfect, and if we refused to hear that from the mouths of people who loved us apart from our imperfections, we would never hear it.
Pax’s jaw flexed. “This isn’t politics.”
“What the hell is it then? Moral judgment?”
“Your words.”
I couldn’t see my grandfather’s face from my position, but his ears and the back of his neck went red. “Well then, I guess you don’t need your trust fund if you’re gonna judge the hand providing it to you.”
“Leonard—” Nana began.
Pax chuckled and shook his head. “Really? Okay, sure. Cancel it. I don’t need it.”
“Pax,” Foster said. “Give everyone time—”
“I’m not going to have my ethics dictated by a bigoted old man with money.”
Everyone but Bailey gasped. Over my shoulder, Daddy cursed under his breath again.
“No one’s trying to dictate anything here but you, Paxton,” Nana said, stepping forward. “We’ve been around a lot longer than you, and we see things more clearly. You’ll understand when you get a little older. Don’t throw your family away over this s
illiness.”
“I’m twenty-six, Nana. Believe me, the world has never been clearer. And there’s a difference between throwing people away and calling them on their racism. I’m doing the latter.” He looked at our grandfather. “I don’t need your money. I wasn’t ever here for that. And if you can’t see that, I feel sorry for you.”
“Our ride’s here,” Foster said. He hugged Mom, who remained stiff, and came to hug Daddy and me. He stopped before Grandpa as Nana moved to his side. “Sir, you and I see eye to eye on a lot of things. I tend to agree about the protests and riots, but I think Pax has the right to feel differently. To be worried for his friends.”
“Not when his friends appear to be more important to him than family.”
“I don’t think that’s true, Grandpa.”
I walked forward to hug Pax and Bailey, wishing now more than ever that I was leaving with them.
“Come visit us anytime, little sis,” Pax said into my ear.
Bailey added her agreement, and then they were gone.
“What’s going on?” Leo appeared, his hair going in every direction. He’d slept through the whole row, a sort of metaphor for his life.
“Your inheritance just increased, that’s what,” my grandfather growled, stalking down the hallway toward his library.
Nana followed. “Leonard, give him time…” Her voice faded as she went around the corner, leaving the four of us standing alone in the great room. The decorated tree twinkled cheerily in the corner. A fire crackled in the enormous fireplace, its stone column extending to the vaulted ceiling, its mantel draped with garland and fairy lights and topped with Nana’s collection of antique Christmas snow globes.
Leo was smiling. “Sweet.” He lumbered toward the kitchen in search of food.
“Jesus Christ,” Daddy murmured, turning to finish his shave.
I was left alone with Mom.
Her arms crossed tight, as if she were on the verge of freezing to death, she stared into the blaze. “You haven’t said much, Erin.”
If you didn’t know her, you might think that was an impromptu observation. I knew from the pitch of her voice and the rigidity of her spine that she’d just drawn a calculated line in the sand and her remark was a demand to know on which side of it I stood.
“I agree with Pax.” I forced my balled fists to relax, my lungs to take normal instead of shallow breaths. There would be no flight-or-fight. I had just watched my brother walk away, possibly disinherited, and instead of being terrified, I was realizing all at once that the only power my family had over me was what I allowed them to have.
“I see.” Her mouth, lips as full as they’d been at my age, produced a ghostly smile. She continued to stare at the fire.
We were on our way home Sunday morning before I recognized the fact that she must have taken that knowledge and used it, with Nana’s help, to steer every conversation away from anything that might make me voice my opinion to my grandfather. That was a protective gesture. But she hadn’t looked me in the eye even once in the past forty-eight hours, so I wasn’t sure who she was protecting–me or herself.
• • • • • • • • • •
Monday morning, my inbox contained an email. Its subject line reminded me that I had worked at JMCH for six months. I had known Isaac Maat for six months.
From: Maat, Isaac
To: McIntyre, Erin
Subject: Six-month performance evaluation
Erin,
I’ve attached the standard employee review paperwork. There’s a short self-review section you’ll need to fill out and return to me by end of day tomorrow. Check your calendar for Friday. We can do your review anytime before noon. It will only take half an hour or so.
Isaac
The first section of the self-review asked me to assess my performance over the review period, noting accomplishments and strengths. The second asked me to comment on challenges that prevented me from working effectively and how those challenges might be overcome. “Challenges” seemed like a polite way to keep from saying “failures.” The final section asked me to list my future goals.
In six months, I had moved twenty folders from below-green status to green. Several of those deals had closed successfully—the Andersons and the Hoopers were the most notable. I had a dozen current, active clients in various states of uproar, but only one threatening to slide to red, and they had good reason as the subcontractors working under their foreman—Leo—had fucked up one thing after another. The rest were moving the other direction thanks to my guidance.
I felt positive about those achievements, as distant as they were from counseling students about anxiety and class load, or coming out to their parents, or sexual assault, or being bullied. I had alleviated our clients’ stress in making a new house a home, and along the way I’d helped a father reconnect with his daughter, a wife stand her ground, and a gifted artist get some justified recognition from a new patron.
I left off the bit about Leo since that was something for his review, not mine, and I listed the Anderson disaster as my lesson in abiding by tried-and-true procedures and following directions from my supervisor. I came to the section about my future goals and was stumped. Having already confessed to Isaac that my future was not with JMCH, pretending now that it was would be tantamount to lying.
And then there was the real issue: Did I have future goals at all, let alone pertaining to my father’s company? Keep doing what I’m doing and keep putting Jacqueline off when she asks about grad school until she gives up hardly seemed like a goal, but it was all I had.
In the large blank space given to list my goals, I wrote: Continue working to resolve any impediments keeping our clients from having a satisfying home-buying experience and help JMCH give them a quality custom home they and their families will enjoy for many years.
I dithered over the wording on all three sections until I wasn’t sure and no longer cared whether any of it made sense, and then I returned it to Isaac a day early with a brief message:
From: McIntyre, Erin
To: Maat, Isaac
Subject: Re: Six-month performance evaluation
Self-review attached. I can meet with you anytime Friday morning. I don’t have any appointments until the afternoon.
He beat my brevity:
From: Maat, Isaac
To: McIntyre, Erin
Subject: Re: Six-month performance evaluation
Friday 9:30
• • • • • • • • • •
Cynthia Pike asked me to join her for lunch on Wednesday. She ordered in deli salads, set up at the turquoise acrylic bistro table in the corner of her mod office, which looked like a pop art, DayGlo set in an Austin Powers movie. (Leo owned all three; they’d come out when he was a teenager. His sense of humor had never matured past thinking a character called Fat Bastard was hilarious.)
When I arrived, she shut the door behind me. “I wanted us to get to know each other a little better. See what I can do to convince you to come work for me.” She smiled, unabashed, opened a tall, chilled bottle of mineral water, and poured us both a glass. We slid into the molded seats. “My proposal is that Hank and I swap you and Ashley. Not that she could client liaison as well as you do—she’s sweet and dependable but no miracle worker. But she wouldn’t need to work miracles, because you, in Sales, could prevent problems from occurring.”
I took a sip of water to stall. “Have you discussed this idea with Hank? Or Ashley? Or… Isaac?” I prayed not. I remembered his reaction when I’d told him, flippantly, that Sales wanted me. The flash of his eyes and tension in his jaw. Either he didn’t want me to leave, or he wanted me all the way out the front door. At the time, I’d been certain it was the latter.
“I did broach the subject with Hank. Ashley will never be a hungry piranha like Joshua or Megan. As the client liaison, however, she could problem-solve without the pressure of making sales quotas. With your bubbly personality, shrewd people skills, and loyalty to the company—
even if in your case that came with the surname—you would shine in Sales. You remind me of a younger me!”
With effort, I smiled as if delighted by that comparison. She saw me as someone she could mentor, and that was a huge compliment. But sales of any kind were as far as could be, vocation-wise, from working as a high school counselor or a therapist on a college campus. Not that being a client liaison was in the vicinity either.
She lowered her voice as though someone might overhear through her door. “And don’t be concerned about Isaac. If you decide to jump over to my department, I’ll make sure it’s a smooth transition, and Ashley will do a good job in your stead. No burned bridges, I promise.” She mistook what worrying about Isaac entailed for me.
I didn’t want to work in Sales, shoulder to shoulder with Joshua Swearingen on the daily, comparing quotas and suffering through his competitive crybaby denigration when I beat him month after month. Because Cynthia Pike was right about one thing: I would be a bang-up addition to the sales team.
When my sorority had hosted our requisite bake sales, I’d been renowned as the girl who could sell our priced-for-profit treats to anyone. My sisters would designate a hopeless target—a slim bookworm who veered to the other side of the sidewalk to avoid us or a cranky-looking professor who’d been teaching since the dawn of time—and I would choose their poison. A baggy of Rice Krispy squares for this one, a thick slice of pound cake for that one. Homemade salty-sweet granola. Fudge brownies with icing so thick your face and fingers would be covered in chocolate by the time you’d consumed it. Owl-shaped sugar cookies, our specialty.
More often than not, I returned to the table, cash in hand. I was legendary.
Of course Cynthia would want me.