THE DAY HADN’T GONE as planned. I met up with our team and listened to starry-eyed Steven ooh and ahh over being a part of the Stonewood team. I wanted to be frustrated with him, but he had done the smart thing, the thing I would have done, what anyone would have done.
I couldn’t be sure if he’d done it for himself or the company. Either way, it benefited everyone. Stonewood Enterprises always made companies better. I just worried that some of the team wouldn’t be able to move on with the rest of us.
When we got back to the office, it was nearing the end of the workday. None of us were allowed to share the news with the others but I knew some associate lawyers caught on. They eyed me with either sadness or disdain. One colleague, Liz, met me as I was exiting the building. “You don’t have to say what I already know, but I’m probably getting laid off. So, I think you should know that Mark and John have it out for you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Not news to me. They would probably poison me if given the chance.”
Her brown hair blew in the wind as we stepped onto the city sidewalk to head toward the L, Chicago’s elevated subway. “They would probably poison every one of the associate lawyers if we weren’t doing all their legwork for them.”
I nodded and wove through the usual stream of people leaving work. “They don’t want anyone encroaching on their monopoly of Steven’s ear. They practically control his brain.”
She laughed. “But you have Steve’s ear too, right?”
I sighed. “We aren’t dating.”
“Really? Everyone says you are.”
I nodded when we reached the stairs up to the train tracks. “We’re not. Just friends for now. Maybe more in the future.” I shrugged. “I’m this way.” I pointed to the stairs and she eyed them like they might be infested with bedbugs.
“You want to do an Uber with me?”
I shook my head. “I like the L.”
“Huh. Wouldn’t have ever guessed that about you.” She put her hand on her hip, and I decided she meant no harm with that comment. Once, a very long time ago, I might have thought I would end up just like her, a little privileged by my parents’ money. Everything worked in my favor in high school. I saw myself exactly where she stood, with the same mentality, the same outfit, maybe even the same job.
I turned to the stairs that held so much more life above them than people gave them credit for. I surged forward, hearing the man with the guitar who I always listened to for an extra minute. He plucked at the strings and hummed a song that consumed him. I dropped money in his case, and he nodded a thank you without breaking from his song, without opening his eyes. The world had weathered him and his voice. Yet, when he rasped the words to his song, it flowed like a soft breeze through a field, like it was comfortable, like it was home, like it belonged and was right where it was supposed to be.
This L, so full of life, so full of unfamiliar people, and hustle and bustle. This was where I breathed and felt home.
Even on my worst day, I was thankful for the moment, for the opportunity to be right where I was.
My phone buzzed as I got on the train, and when I took my seat, I read my message.
Mom: If you don’t answer, I will come to visit.
Miranda Lambert started singing immediately.
“Hi, Mom,” I answered, my voice high and bouncy.
“Oh, don’t jump right into the sarcasm, Victory.”
“I’m not. I’m happy to answer when a warning is attached.” I rolled my eyes and looked out the window to the streets we passed below. Night and darkness lurked, ready to overtake the city. By the time I reached home, only the streetlights and buildings would light my way.
“Are you on your way home?”
“Yes.”
“What’s that noise I hear?”
“I have no idea.” She was talking about the train.
“Is that the L?”
I sighed. “Why are you calling, Mom?”
“So, you’re on the train? You have a compromised immune system and you’re using public transportation?” Her voice started rising. “Do you know how worried we are about you living in that city?”
“Mom, I can’t keep having this conversation with you.”
“She says she can’t keep having this conversation.” Her voice was muffled and I knew my father was standing over her, rubbing her back. “Well, I don’t want to have this conversation over and over either, Vick.”
I sat up a little straighter. “Then, let’s not have it. I’m fine and I had a long day at work.”
“Work.” I heard my mother physically relax, she sighed into the phone like she was deflating and sitting down. “How is work, honey? I am so happy you are working with Steven.”
She would be. Steven was safe. He followed the rules, he gave the right impression to parents, without fail he acted like a gentleman.
I knew because my family and his had always been close. Before Steven’s father passed away and left him the company, our parents used to double date. Now, my mother stayed in very close contact with his.
“Yes, Steven is a great boss and friend.”
“Isn’t he? And Darcy called me today to tell me they sold to Stonewood Enterprises,” my mother squealed. The Stonewoods were like America’s royal family. “I can’t believe you know them, that Brey married Jax. Who did Samson and Sons have the meeting with? Was it Jax or Jett, the oldest?”
My mother loved celebrity gossip. She loved talking about almost anything, really. The woman could talk for hours about nothing and everything. I liked to think I inherited her uncanny ability to make anyone feel comfortable.
She could almost fool me into having a normal conversation with her. “Yes, but I didn’t say much. I think he’s always amicable because he knows I’m Brey’s friend.”
“Of course, of course. So, are you going straight home?”
As if on cue, the train screeched to a stop, and I shut my eyes as my mother gasped.
“You are on the L, Victory Blakely.” She hissed my name with venom. “I used to ride it, and I know exactly the way it sounds.”
My mother, once upon a time, conquered Chicago by climbing the ranks of the fashion industry here. She took the train every night, walked the streets without supervision, probably did some crazy shit like crossing the street with her eyes closed.
I stood to get off, whispering, “Excuse me, excuse me,” as I made my way down to the street. “So, then you know it’s perfectly safe for most people.”
“You aren’t most people.”
I tried to focus on putting one foot in front of the other, the sound my shoes made against the cement, the way the fall breeze kept the city air moving. “Mom, can we just not?”
“I told you I would get you a driver or a car.”
“I don’t want a driver!” I screamed and then scrunched my face to hold back my emotions. “I can’t talk. I have to go.”
I reached my apartment block and hung up the phone even though I heard her talking. The high rise boasted white-tiled floors in the lobby, as well as a doorman, and an expansive entryway. I never took the elevators, but I knew they were high-end. Just like the building and my apartment.
My mother had made sure of that. She made sure every single thing about my move was a well-laid plan. I should have thanked her. Yet, every day my resentment snowballed and my frustration built. I walked up the stairs to my apartment, each step a nail she hammered into my metaphorical coffin.
She wanted a daughter who would follow her rules, approach life with caution, look both ways and then some when crossing a street.
I wasn’t that daughter. I had been, but I couldn’t go back. Not after all we’d been through.
I set my work bag down and beelined to my cupboard. The wine I set on the counter stood next to a case of pills. The supplements were also my mother’s doing. She and my father had hired a nutritionist out of Portland, the best of the best. I remember her coming to the house, lining up all the vitamins and saying, “Now, these will help. But you have to will it, Vick. It takes the right mentality, besides diet and lifestyle.”
My mom nodded along with her. “We’re taking every precaution.”
My dad, a burly man who never said much, stared at me with pity in his eyes. He didn’t want to speak over my mother but knew the nutritionist was too much. He laid his hand on my shoulder, the best way he knew how to support me.
I stared at the supplements next to the wine bottle, then at my hands gripping the counter. My acrylic nails met the cuticle line perfectly. I’d told the manicurist to make them look natural with a light-pink hue. No one ever caught me with my real nails exposed; they reminded me of the time I’d barely had nail growth. They still grew out damaged, worn out far too early for my age.
The manicurist hadn’t asked questions and that terrible feeling of discomfort snuck up on me. When she’d started filing my nails, words bubbled out of me. “These nails have just never been pretty without a work of art from you professionals.”
She had tsk-tsked and responded, “We’ll clean them up, huh?”
I’d averted her discomfort and gained a new nail artist in a new town. Now, she talked a mile a minute at every session and never blinked twice at the wreckage she covered up.
I laid each of the pills on the counter, then swiped them all to the edge and into my other manicured hand. I poured my wine into a long stem glass and threw all five pills in my mouth. They knocked around in there before the wine washed them down in one large gulp.
My nail manicurist, along with my friends from college, didn’t know the whole story. They didn’t know that those pink nails I used to pop shut the pill case hid just one of the imperfections I’d been hiding for years.
When the leukemia snuck up on my family as I turned seventeen, I’d been a naive social butterfly, fluttering through high school like nothing could go wrong. Sure, there’d been the occasional terrible hair day and awful date, but I’d had friends every which way I looked. I’d had good grades, our volleyball team was going to state, I’d known what I was doing for college.
I gulped more red wine and pulled my laptop from my work bag.
Junior year, during a volleyball game before the state competition, I blacked out. I woke up in a hospital listening to that terrible noise.
The beeping.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
My mother delivered the news with my father standing by, holding her up. Holding my mother, the woman who could plow her way into a CEO position of a Fortune 500 company after coming from nothing, like she was barely capable of standing.
“We’ll beat it, sweetie,” she’d murmured as the shock of her words barreled through me. The beeping galloped faster and faster. Then and there, in that hospital room, I saw the first look of discomfort on my parents’ faces.
“It’ll be okay.” I nodded. “We’ll get through it.”
My mom’s hand shot out to hold mine and she squeezed it so tight I could feel her love for her only child flowing through it. I remember thinking of all the things I would have to get through. I wondered if I would lose my hair, if my friends would make me a card, if my boyfriend would break up with me.
All those things happened more quickly than I could have ever imagined.
I sat down at my kitchen table and opened my laptop, telling myself I needed to work.
I chugged more wine instead and stared at my phone. I’d hung up on her as if she could control the worry and love that consumed her heart. As if she hadn’t torn apart my history trying to find a culprit for the cancer that destroyed her perfect fairy tale. Her family. Her life.
Because cancer did that, infecting not just the patient, but the whole family.
Now, eight years later, I had beaten it and survived.
But my relationship with my mother hadn’t.
Our family hadn’t.
We couldn’t forget. She couldn’t stop bulldozing. Or stop searching for answers. Or stop worrying. My father couldn’t stop holding her up and staring at me with pity.
And I couldn’t stop the damn guilt of never wanting to talk to them, wanting to avoid all the awkward conversations and live harder than I had ever lived before, even if my mother wanted me wrapped in a plastic bubble of supplements, doctors, hospitals, fruits and vegetables. She wanted to place that plastic bubble in her home, in a nice little town away from the big city, and make sure I lived a long, prosperous, very boring life.
I gulped the wine she would scream at me for drinking and got to work, trying to forget about my wallowing. When I couldn’t forget, I drank more wine, and found myself mostly incapable of work.
I almost closed my laptop to go to bed, but the green dot next to Jett’s name on my e-mail list beckoned to me.
I opened our messages.
Me: This bad day started with you.
Jett: You’re up late.
Me: Have to start working like my new boss does.
Jett: I do like my employees motivated.
Me: Do you ever stop working?
Jett: I wasn’t working when I was with you last.
Me: You left me to work.
Jett: We’re still on that, huh?
Me: I don’t know what I’m on. I need to get off it though.
I slammed my laptop shut and unfurled myself from my cramped position, stretching out the stiffness to go to bed. I tossed and turned all night, wondering how I would get through working at Stonewood Enterprises the very next week.
