I Was Told It Would Get Easier(7)
Emily huffed her way to the door and slammed it. Door slamming—if I may digress for a moment—is a matter of art for my daughter. If Emily wants to express herself, she’s adept at threading the needle between firm closing and actual slamming. Then, when I yell, “Stop slamming the goddamned door,” she achieves plausible deniability with an injured tone. Of course, if she’s leaving the house, she has more options. Emily would probably say she shut the door firmly. I felt a slam. Maybe the slam is in the ear of the beholder. Or be-hearer?
Anna, our live-in nanny, was standing there, patiently waiting for this part to be over so she could go back to bed. I’d told her she didn’t need to get up, but she thinks I’m incompetent (probably based on extensive observation). We don’t really need a full-time nanny anymore, but I frequently have to work late, or on the weekends, and get little to no warning. Part of me knows Emily, at sixteen, is totally capable of taking care of herself, but a bigger part of me thinks it’s a good idea not to leave her alone too much. If you think about it, it’s like having an old-fashioned wife waiting for me at home, fall-backing my career so I can excel in that arena, and plastering over any cracks my kid might fall into. I’m not 100 percent confident it’s working all that well, but Anna has been part of our family for a long time, and you can’t fire family.
“Good luck,” Anna said. I’m sure she did wish me luck, but I had a sneaking suspicion she also enjoyed the prospect of me spending seven days alone with my teenage daughter. Anna is from El Salvador, raised her own three kids, and then moved to the States to help Americans raise theirs. She’s an intelligent woman, and I’m confident she appreciates the irony of my situation: I work incredibly hard to make enough money to pay her to do the work that would prevent me from working hard enough to make the money I need to pay her to do the work . . . and so the circle of capitalism goes. Hakuna that matata, ladies.
Anyway, Anna and I get along pretty well, although we’re basically shift workers sharing the same job. Both of us know the job’s coming to an end, because this trip is about looking at colleges, and then, in another year, Emily will leave home and we’ll both be unemployed. The difference being Anna was going to retire to El Salvador and play with her grandkids, living in a house her kids had built for her in the village they’d all grown up in, and I was going to be alone, rattling around in my pod like the world’s biggest loser pea. I’d go to work, forget everything except what was in front of me, and then come home and call Emily’s name before remembering she wasn’t there anymore.
“Mother!!” Emily was shouting from outside. Two full syllables, both exasperated. I won’t miss that part.
I wheeled my bag to the street. “Aren’t you going to say goodbye to Anna?” I swear to you my tone was neutral, but Emily frowned. You’d need a micrometer to measure her hair trigger these days. Maybe that was what I was hunting for in my bag.
“Of course!” she snapped. She ran to Anna, giving her the kind of full-on, 100 percent hug she hasn’t given me in about three years. Anna looked at me over my daughter’s head, and her eyes held apology tempered with a very light sprinkling of pride. We both know Emily loves me, we both know it’s age-appropriate for her to separate hard from her mother, but I suspect Anna enjoys those moments when Emily is nicer to her than she is to me.
I hadn’t told Emily about quitting yet. I didn’t want to freak her out, and I was kind of hoping my power move would work and John would sort things out before I got back. Besides, this trip is about reconnection and bonding. Em and I are going to be alone together, we’re going to talk, we’re going to laugh and cry, we’re going to salvage the shreds of our relationship and weave them into a beautiful blanket that will keep us warm for the rest of our lives. Something like that, anyway. Some thought that can be typeset against a sunrise and shared online.
No pressure.
EMILY
This trip is going to be a total yawn, but I am so glad to dip I wouldn’t care if we were silently touring monasteries in rural Wisconsin. (No, I’m not sure why that popped into my head. I think I saw something online about millennial nuns, don’t judge me.) When Mom originally suggested this organized college tour, I kind of raised my eyebrows, especially once I realized it was a load of kids and parents, and therefore enforced socialization, which I hate. But nothing said I had to talk to anyone, right? Besides, at the rate Mom is going, we’re going to miss the plane anyway.
My mother is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. She’s a lawyer and can see a hole in an argument from a mile away, which makes life a little challenging. However, for some reason, it takes her approximately forever to get out of the house if she’s not going to work. On a workday she clacks around in the kitchen, her wireless earbuds and vacant expression the only clues to the conference call she’s attending, grabbing coffee and unsalted almonds and taking whatever weird supplement she’s trying out that week. She always wears her hair in one of those low knot things at the back of her head, like a ballerina, but I think she’s prettier when she wears it down. If I walk in she points at her ears so I won’t speak to her, and then—if I’m lucky—she’ll throw me a smile before leaving, clicking the car keys in her pocket. On a non-workday, like today, she only has to put her phone in her purse and walk out, but she’s always forgetting something, or going back to turn something off, whatever. Let it burn, I say.