“Mom, can we go see the gym?”
“Yes, of course, in a minute.” Mary Ellen stood in front of an abstract pastel sketch pinned to the wall, studying its composition. Bold, widening beams of color slanted through vertical refractions, the whole thing overlaid with sweeps of bright pink. It was impossibly wild and yet so intelligent, so coherent, like a song about light. Like a magic trick. Mary Ellen never really had the magic the way some of the more talented kids in her classes had, but that hadn’t bothered her, somehow. Art was play, it hadn’t had a chance to turn serious, and she supposed that was why she’d left it behind so easily—the way she’d abandoned her Lite-Brites and her sticker collection and her ballerina-topped music box.
“Mom?”
But what if she hadn’t? What if she’d given it a chance to turn serious—or if not serious, at least meaningful? Who would she be today?
“Yes?”
“Can we go?”
Mary Ellen inhaled deeply, one more time, then reached into her purse for a map of the campus. She had no idea where the gym was.
• • •
There were tablecloths at L’Auberge, but they were yellow, not white, and steak au poivre wasn’t on the menu. Fortunately, Mary Ellen’s gin martini was made right, bracingly cold and dry, so she got a second one while the girls fretted over what to order. She did remember the place, could even recall where she’d sat with her father—near the fireplace, under a large, hazy painting of some French-looking cows. It was the kind of place her parents loved: quiet, old-fashioned, reassuringly expensive.
Her parents hadn’t always gone to these sorts of restaurants. They’d both grown up in blue-collar families and worked their way to the top, the hard way (the right way)—her mother a successful rep for a medical device company, her father a partner in his law firm. They’d had Mary Ellen late in life, after being told it was hopeless, and even this miraculous event was understood to be a product of their striving: something to be savored, along with so many other accomplishments, over evening cocktails and little dishes of pistachios.
“Cheers,” Mary Ellen said now, raising her nearly empty martini glass. “To your brilliant careers.” Sydney and Shelby obligingly lowered their heads and slurped soda through their straws. “And to Gramps, who first brought me here, back when I was a naive sophomore.” She tipped her drink back, blinking rapidly.
“This place was here back then?”
“Way back then?” Mary Ellen smiled ruefully. “Yes. Your grandfather brought me here to talk about my future. He wanted to make sure I got the most out of my education.” The waiter brought their food, and Mary Ellen looked longingly at Sydney’s risotto. “I should’ve ordered that. I don’t know why I got the fish.”
“And did you?” Shelby asked.
“What?”
“Get the most out of your education?”
“Well, sure,” Mary Ellen said, wondering if her daughters understood that all of this—the college trip, the dinner, their entire way of life—was in some way or another the result of her choices while at UNC. “Once I switched over to marketing, anyway. Which, incidentally, was your grandfather’s idea.” Mary Ellen took a bite of fish but found it hard to swallow. She had a sudden flashback to that meal, to the steak au poivre, which Daddy had ordered for her. She could remember the way her knife had parted the purplish meat like a scalpel, blood slipping around the edges of the thick, gray sauce and pooling under her green beans. She hated rare meat. She always had.
“Just try to remember,” she said, wiping her lips, “that this is your time.” She lowered the napkin to her lap and twisted it between her hands. “Don’t rush it. And don’t be so damn…obedient.” The word caught in her throat.
The twins glanced at each other, then down and away.
“I mean, don’t be too eager to please. Sometimes I feel like, if you’re just trying to do what everybody expects of you, you miss out. Maybe you end up over here”—she jabbed her hand toward the fireplace—“when you would’ve been a lot happier out there.” She pointed out at the patio. “I don’t know.”
“So you’re saying we should let our freak flag fly?” Sydney said, licking her spoon.
“You do you?” Shelby contributed.
“Right. You do you.” It occurred to Mary Ellen that this conversation was ridiculous; her daughters’ generation considered self-expression and rugged individualism to be their God-given right. They didn’t need to be told not to let someone else order their steak. As far as she could tell, they didn’t need much of anything—from her, anyway.
“Excuse me, I have to…” She got up and found her way to the bathroom. There was a small love seat in an alcove beside the sinks; she sank down and rested her forehead on one hand. She was remembering more now, not just the bloody steak but the rest—the way Daddy had brought up the cost of tuition. The way he’d warned her against wastefulness. Time, money, connections in Philadelphia… They were all precious, and not hers to squander. “You can draw pictures any time. You don’t need a college education for that,” he’d said. “Put your creativity into something more useful.”
Which was exactly what she’d done. Mary Ellen used her creativity every single day: convening focus groups to study the difference between the words safety and trust. Drafting a two-million-dollar budget for the point-of-sale rebrand. Assembling PowerPoints. Tallying travel expenses. Spinning tales about her emergence from childhood into this glorious grown-up life.
She leaned her head against the wall and tried to take some deep breaths. These kinds of thoughts had been coming to her more and more since her father’s death, and they felt like a terrible betrayal. It was as if something inside her had been set loose, something blackhearted and selfish. If this was the way she grieved, she wanted no part of it.
Of course everyone had
