“No.”
“So, it sounds to me like the feedback was completely unwarranted and this partner is a jerk.”
“I don’tgetto feel like he’s a jerk, Mom. He’s head of the group. My only chance of making partner is ifhethinks I deserve it.”
My mother didn’t speak for a moment.
“I know that’s your goal, honey, and I support you. I’m justfrustrated on your behalf that it seems like they keep moving the goalposts. You work so hard…”
My mom paused but my throat was too tight to fill the silence. My head hurt, and the comedown from the intense distress of earlier had left me wrung out. Still, the anxiety over what this lapse might cost me hummed in my fingertips.
“I’m really proud of you, Val,” she added finally. “Please eat something and get some sleep tonight?Pleasetell me you don’t have to do more work.”
“A few emails and then I’ll get in bed. Promise.”
“Okay. I’m bringing you some groceries this weekend when we visit, too. No objections,” she added before we hung up.
Crap. I’d completely forgotten they were visiting me this weekend for my dad’s birthday. But we probably wouldn’t get the contract back from the counterparty until Sunday or Monday at the earliest, so I should have time to hang out with my parents while they’re here.
As I watched the little tray of frozen mac and cheese spinning in my microwave, I mulled over my mom’s choice of words:“I know that’s your goal.”Wasn’t making partner what she and Dad wanted for me, too?
My parents had always encouraged Drew and me to work hard, and to go to schools and go into fields where we’d have financial security. It wasn’t as easy for them, they’d say.
“I don’t think anyone in high school expected me to succeed,” my dad had told us over dinner one Sunday when Drew and I were still in grade school. “No one was more surprised than your mother when I came home in my Navy uniform, flight-school bound… Well, except for maybe your grandmother.” He chuckled, but pride shone clear in his blue eyes.
“I wasn’tthatsurprised,” Mom had insisted.
“We’ve done well for ourselves as a team.” He tapped her thigh and scanned the kitchen of the newer, nicer house we’d moved into on the other side of town the year prior. “And the sky’s the limit for you two.” He pointed his raised fork at Drew and me inturn. “Got way more opportunities than I had, and you’re much smarter than me, too. Got your mother’s brains to thank for that.”
My dad’s stories always inspired me, stoking flames of motivation in my belly. They all had the same refrain: prioritize striving and achieving and work tirelessly toward success and financial security for you and your family. So, for my whole life, that was the objective: work hard, excel in school, get a prestigious, lucrative job, succeed at it, and attain even more than my parents had out of respect for their hard work and the opportunities we had that they didn’t.
All of that had been going pretty well for me before today.
After one scorching bite of macaroni, my phone buzzed on my coffee table. I groaned and answered.
“Mom told me what happened.” Drew’s confident, slightly accusatory voice emanated from my phone speaker. “Why’d you tell her not to tell me?”
“I’m embarrassed, and I don’t know, Drew, I didn’t think you’d understand. You’ve never fainted at work. And you’re not, like, the most sympathetic person.” I wasn’t sure how slinging insults at my brother was supposed to make me feel better. It didn’t. I braced myself for his defense, for the conversation to devolve into a spat like it almost always did with us.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
My jaw fell down to my chest. Was he really just apologizing and letting that comment go?
“Okay,” I said quietly, frozen in shock.
“But in any event, fuck him.”
“What?”
“Fuck him. The partner that criticized you. He sounds like a sexist, small-dick asshole who needed to knock his all-star female associate down a peg to make himself feel important.”
I couldn’t help the smile that tugged on my lips. Not that Drew could see it.
“Drew,” I said, low and admonishing.
“What? You know I’m right.”
Isighed in defeat.
