The Switch - A Short Story
Linda Johnson
The Switch – A Short Story
Linda Johnson
Copyright 2012 by Linda Johnson
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
The Switch is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
To say I was born with the proverbial silver spoon in my mouth would be an understatement. More like a fourteen karat gold spoon embedded with diamonds. I came from the oldest of old money. My great-great-grandfather made his fortune in railroads. My great-grandfather started an institutional investment firm managing pension funds for large cap companies. My grandfather took over the firm when his father retired; my father took over when my grandfather died. As the only child born to my parents, my career path was preordained before I pushed my way out of my mother’s womb. Except that I veered off-course.
Not initially though. For the first part of my life, I marched along the straight and narrow path my parents had plotted out for me like an obedient soldier. I grew up with the rest of the old money families in the Hamptons, attended private schools, and entered Harvard to earn my bachelor’s degree in finance and then an MBA. After graduation, I intended to go straight into the hallowed halls of my family’s investment firm. That was my plan, which, of course, was really my parent’s plan, which they thought was God’s plan. Whoever came up with it, my destiny was written in stone.
But then I met Rita and my life changed. Rita was a bartender at one of the popular university haunts. What started as a harmless flirtation turned into a few casual dates and before I knew it, I was head over heels in love and couldn’t imagine my life without her.
And to say that Rita was from the wrong side of the tracks would also have been an understatement. Her father was a convicted drug dealer serving time in prison. Her mother had died of a drug overdose when Rita was ten. Her grandparents took her and her eight year-old brother in after their daughter’s death. No criminal history there -- just a hard-working plumber and a housewife. But that blue-collar existence was as distasteful to my folks as Rita’s parent’s drug lifestyle.
When I brought Rita home to meet my mother and father during Christmas break of my sophomore year, they were as cold to her as the icicles hanging from the roof. After she left, my father sat me down for a heart-to-heart. I still remember what he said.
“Michael, there’s nothing wrong with sowing a few wild oats, but that girl is not marriage material.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“You know exactly what I mean. She’s not one of us.”
When I pushed back, he pushed harder. He thought he held all the cards -- like a poker player with a royal flush. Marry her and he would disown me. He underestimated me. Choosing money over Rita was never an option. If I had to spend the rest of my life hauling trash, so be it. As long as Rita was by my side, I’d be the luckiest guy in the world.
We got married in a courthouse with Rita’s grandparents, her brother, and a few friends in attendance. Just her friends -- my Harvard buddies dropped me as quickly as my parents had. When I called my mother and father with the news, they hung up after informing me my “actions would have serious consequences.” My bank account, which had been jointly held with my father, was frozen, then emptied. I moved into Rita’s apartment and started thinking about my future. For the first time in my life, I felt like a free man. In the past, I had all my parent’s resources behind me-- as long as I followed their rules. After they pulled the financial plug and stopped brainwashing me, I could finally decide what I wanted to do with my life. And it wasn’t sitting behind a desk studying stocks and bonds.
I had always loved history. I could lose myself for hours studying and researching American and European history. I decided that I wanted to share that passion with high school students. I wanted to teach kids when they were on the cusp of adulthood -- when they were deciding what to do with their lives. And so that became my goal: I would become a high school history teacher.
Financially, Harvard was no longer an option, but there were plenty of good public universities that were happy to accept me. Rita’s brother, Andy, had married a woman from New Jersey and had moved there to be near her family. After sharing their traumatic childhood, Rita and Andy were close. So Rita and I decided to move to New Jersey as well. Rutgers University offered me a scholarship and Rita landed another waitressing position. Between my scholarship, Rita’s salary, and my part-time paycheck, I made it through college with a double major in history and education. By the time I graduated, we had settled into the area and I was lucky enough to get a job at one of the public high schools there.
The next five years were the happiest of my life. I loved going to work every day and I loved, even more, coming home to my beautiful wife every evening. We went off birth control the day I started my job and ten months later, our first child was born -- a daughter as gorgeous as my wife. One year later, we added another daughter and two years after that, a son. Our lives were complete.
Then one day, the principal called me into his office. Thanks to a recession and state budget cuts, I was laid off. Rita and I talked about relocating, but every state was going through the same situation and we had put roots down in New Jersey that neither of us wanted to yank out. Luckily, her brother came through for us and offered me a job with his painting company.
Andy painted houses to pay the bills; on the side, he painted canvasses. Although he’d managed to get a couple of galleries to carry his work, the few sales he’d made were not enough to live on. But his painting business was successful enough to add me to his staff when I got laid off. My principal had assured me I would be one of his first hires back when the economy improved so I figured I would work for my brother-in-law until then. I didn’t mind the work. It was a good crew, the hours were decent, and the pay covered all of our expenses with one exception -- health insurance.
I had six months of coverage after losing my teaching position, but then my policy lapsed. I checked into individual policies, but the rates were exorbitant. Rita and I talked about it and decided to take a gamble. We were both healthy. The kids were fine. The economy was starting to improve and I was pretty sure I’d have my old job back before too long.
In spite of my career setback, I still felt optimistic. Life was good.