Tracy Flick Can't Win (Tracy Flick #2) (25)

That spring, though, their conspiracy collapsed. Shirley’s daughter, who lived in Virginia, gave birth to twins. Shirley and her husband, Joe, wanted to go there for a couple of weeks, meet the new babies, and pitch in with child care, but they were worried about leaving my mother alone in the house.

She’s not in great shape, Shirley told me. The stairs are hard for her. Everything’s hard. She needs a lot of help.

I remember standing there, my mind going quiet, the way it does sometimes when you get bad news you don’t want—can’t bring yourself—to believe.

Honey, she said. Are you there?



* * *



I put a few things in my backpack and got on the train. I didn’t know that I was leaving law school forever. I thought I was going home for a few days, a few weeks at the most. But she was so much sicker than I’d imagined. I ended up taking my final exams from home—I aced them, for what it’s worth—and canceled my summer internship, which was a huge disappointment. Then I took a leave of absence for the fall semester, and another for the spring.

At the time, these seemed like temporary setbacks—until she got back on her feet—because neither of us could have accepted the possibility that our new arrangement might be permanent. Two years went by before I was able to admit to myself that I was no longer on leave from Georgetown. I was just living at home, taking care of my mom.

Those years are a blur in my memory, but not a bad one, not completely. We watched a lot of old movies and played way too much Scrabble. We sat in waiting rooms, nodding politely to the other sick people, many of whom told us we looked like sisters, which always made my mom very happy. I learned to cook and clean, which I hadn’t been allowed to do in the past because she hadn’t wanted me wasting my valuable time. I took up long-distance running, leaving the house at the crack of dawn, regardless of the weather, pushing myself past the pain into a state that on good days was something close to bliss, or at least as close as I ever got. I became very familiar with my mother’s body. For a while, this embarrassed both of us, and then we got over it. It was a comfort to me, being a comfort to her.

The Del Vecchios were so generous. They actually paid out of their own pocket to install a stairlift, and they let us build a ramp for her wheelchair. They’re gone now—they moved to Florida—but that ramp is still there, and I still think of their kindness every time I drive past our old house.



* * *



My mom retired on full disability, but the benefits only covered a portion of her salary, so I worked when I could to help keep us afloat. I spent my first summer at home as a market research associate, which is a nice way of saying that I harassed people at the mall for minimum wage, stepping into their path and saying, Hi there, can I ask you a few questions about athlete’s foot? It was horrible work, full of frosty brush-offs and rude comments, made even worse by the fact that I sometimes accidentally accosted former classmates, who couldn’t understand why the person they’d voted Most Likely to Succeed was standing in front of them with a clipboard and a frozen smile, demanding to know their opinion about sugarless gum.

After that I signed on with a temp agency. I spent my days filing invoices, sorting shipping manifests into color-coded piles, making copies of annual reports. One week the agency sent me to an insurance company in the World Trade Center—the only time I ever set foot in those doomed towers—where I typed rejection letters to heartbroken people, explaining that the cause of their loved one’s death—lightning strike, small plane crash, hunting accident, suicide, avalanche, every sort of random tragedy—was not covered by their life insurance policy, which meant that no payment was forthcoming, and no appeal was possible.

Substitute teaching felt like a big step up from that. The pay was okay, the hours were decent, the schedule was flexible. More important, it seemed professional in a way that temping hadn’t, and more personal too, like I could be my true self again, and not just an anonymous cog in a commercial transaction. School had always been my chosen arena, the place where I shined the brightest. I still remember my first day on the job, standing in front of an Algebra 2 class in Grover Township, writing Tracy Flick on the board like an autograph. It felt like a homecoming, like my exile was over.



* * *



You failed.

That one blinked in my mind like a neon sign.

You failed.

It was irrefutable. I wasn’t a Congresswoman. I wasn’t a Senator. I wasn’t the President. I wasn’t even the Principal of Green Meadow High School. But I also understood that failure wasn’t the whole story.

You did the best you could.

I was a dedicated, hardworking sub, and they liked me at Grover. I got certified and taught there for eleven years. I advised the Student Government, supervised Mock Trial, and helped create a Model UN program that’s still going strong. All that time, I was caring for my mother, and attending graduate school on nights and weekends. I had a child, earned my PhD in Education Administration, and took the job I have now. That’s not nothing.

I’m not ashamed of the life I’ve made for myself. Or at least that’s what I thought, until this Hall of Fame thing started up. It saddened me in a way I hadn’t anticipated. I kept imagining what would happen if my old high school started a Hall of Fame and my name came up for consideration. What would people say? She’s an Assistant Principal. She helped her mom when she got sick. That wasn’t gonna cut it. Nope. Not good enough. No Hall of Fame for you, Tracy Flick.