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“So what’s the trade-off?” Elizabeth asked me during a lull in our conversation over lunch.
“The… excuse me?”
“The life I’ve led, Aileen, I do feel sometimes like I’ve lost so many brain cells it’s like I was just born yesterday, but I don’t forget all of the lessons I’ve learned along the way. You never take any advice from me normally, you don’t take anything from me if you can help it. You’re trying to butter me on both sides.”
“I was sort of hoping you’d be able to give me some help,” I admitted. “Not a handout, or anything, but… I thought maybe you’d know someone who could give me a decent job.”
I felt uneasy as soon as I saw how big her smile was. “You don’t have to suck up to me for that, Aileen. I’d be happy to put in a word for you at my own office. We’re looking for secretaries at the moment, we’ve had a couple leave this month.”
I’d had it in my mind that she might endorse me to someone else she knew. The thought of going to the same workplace as my mother every day was daunting, and not for the usual reasons girls didn’t want to be around their mothers so much. I’d already gotten it fixed in my mind that Elizabeth and I were going to have this particular amount of contact, and I was comfortable with that. I knew what to expect, and what not to expect. This would be a complete re-negotiating of our relationship.
Elizabeth was giving me this shrewd look I was having enough trouble getting used to. When we’d first gotten to know one another, she’d been a lot less sharp. “I know better than to be surprised you haven’t asked me if I could do something for you before now. The question is why you’ve changed your mind?”
“I need to figure out a way we can get more money,” I told her. “Marcia’s going to move away with the boys, and if Dad and I can’t afford to fly to them and visit… we’ll just be shut out of their lives forever.”
“You’ve known about this for a few weeks now,” Elizabeth said. “Your dad told me you found out about it before he did. I know it didn’t take you this long to figure out you couldn’t afford to make regular trips across the country on your dad’s salary… and I also know your dad is working a new job, making a lot of money compared to what he was previously pulling. He was pretty pleased with himself, if he can keep up the work with that much enthusiasm you should have no problem making a few visits a year.”
“You’re supposed to be a lawyer, not a detective.”
“Same damn thing, sometimes.” She stared me down. “What’s really going on here?”
“I’m thinking of going to law school,” I admitted. “It’s not because of you, it’s just… something I feel I’d be good at. It was in my head before I knew you’d moved on to that career actually.”
“Well you couldn’t have me thinking you were doing it on my account,” said Elizabeth. “So you’d like to get some experience and contacts working in an actual law firm.”
“I feel like that’s the logical next step here. I might be wrong, you can correct me.”
“It seems sensible,” Elizabeth agreed. “And I would be happy to help, you know that.”
She kept studying me the way I imagined she studied her clients when they told her they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I had no idea if she chose to believe them or pry their secrets out at that point, not being in the business yet; I was leaning towards the latter when she leaned all the way back in her seat, her expression conspiratorial.
“University, huh? And years of challenging study, no less.”
I felt a dig at me somewhere in this. “Am I not university material, then?”
“Oh, you know what I mean. You’ve never presented yourself as the type. I know you’re entirely capable but you tend to take your brains out of centre stage with jokes. I wouldn’t have thought you would have the ability to stay serious enough, with that character.”
“Words of encouragement already!”
“See, there you go.” Elizabeth shook her head at me and stole one of my sweet potato fries from my plate. I wanted to joke that she really didn’t need it, but she was obviously not going to laugh at that any more than she did at most of my jokes. I thought maybe I reminded her of Dad too much when I was like that. “The thing is, you’ve changed a lot lately. You have an entirely different energy these days.”
“I wonder how that could be,” I muttered. There were only a couple significant events in my recent history that could have changed the way others saw me, and I knew which o
f them was the most likely culprit. But how had it changed me, that I didn’t even realise? I didn’t want to probe Elizabeth for further answers. I didn’t want to know about it at all.
Elizabeth too seemed surprisingly incurious. But perhaps her life history had taught her that it was better not to go nosing into someone else’s shit.
“I look forward to helping you take this most unexpected step,” she told me.
That evening, I let Matt know his capricious date was on again.
Chapter Eighteen
I was still nervous as I stepped out to meet Matt’s car on the street. I kept coming up with elaborate scenarios for how Axel was going to humiliate me over the course of the evening. Maybe he could cause my dress to fall down, start rumours on how I’d had reverse breast implants since the photo leak. Maybe figure out a way to have the whole graduating cohort hear about my university plans and laugh at me, treat me like a joke the one time I was actually serious.
I told myself that was how someone like him worked: he did the absolute minimum and let my own insecurities do the rest. But what you told yourself and how you behaved in reality were two different things, for better or worse as that might be.
I waved to Matt and then jumped in with Phil in the back. He was eyeing me around boob level, but in that dress at least he was probably thinking about what he saw at present and not something else he might have seen at some point.
