That cliché, “Women: can’t live with them, can’t live without them,” has always bothered me immensely. But the same sentiment does apply well to work. In many ways, I can’t live with it, but I also can’t live without it.
After Ethan was born, I actually tried staying home. I took a semester off from law school and considered never finishing. I felt so overwhelmed with the baby, and so desperate to be a perfect mother, that I thought the only way I could do it was to do nothing else.
I hated that few months of my life. I’ve always been the kind of parent who loves being a mom. . .and needs to do other things in addition to mothering. I’ve learned, over the past few years, that I’m a better version of myself when I have more than one thing on which to focus. Lately, as I’ve been working extra in order to prove to the partners that I’m qualified and capable, especially from so far away, I’ve felt this even more keenly. And for the first time in over a year, it’s not only my work schedule that’s monkeying with my life.
“Wait, you have to work tomorrow?” I exhale into the phone a little too gustily. “I thought you were off for the next few days.” I really wanted to talk to Steve about the whole Ethan at Rice versus on a ranch thing. And also have a real, no kids, no lake date, of course.
“I was supposed to be off.” He clears his throat and drops to a whisper, as if he’s sharing a government secret. “You didn’t hear this from me, but one of the docs at my hospital was recently fired.”
“How else would I hear about employment details of a doctor in Wyoming?”
“You’re hilarious. But seriously, don’t tell anyone I told you.”
“I only know you. Who would I tell?”
“You know Jeff and Kevin, and Eddy, sort of.”
“You think Kevin’s high risk? I had to show him how to set up a Facebook account on his phone.”
“It’s a small world over here.” He sighs. “This guy apparently forced not one, not two, and not even three, but four different nurses in the hospital to sleep with him.”
“Is his last name Clinton?”
Steve doesn’t even laugh. I suppose if someone I knew had turned out to be that horrible, I’d be upset as well. “Sounds like a delightful guy.”
“I never liked him,” Steve says. “And now I feel justified. The problem isn’t that I’m upset about him being a jerk—although I feel really bad for the nurses—but there aren’t many docs here, so covering all his scheduled shifts is killer.”
“When’s your next day off?”
“Eight days away, now.” He groans.
Eating dinner after his shift was fine, but between driving and working, he just doesn’t have a lot of time. If he teaches the kids a horseback lesson, he basically needs to sleep the rest of the day. “What about Saturday night?” I ask. ”After your shift?”
“I’m switching to nights that day,” he says. “Could I interest you in a nutritious breakfast?”
“Sure,” I say. “Breakfast sounds fine.”
“It’s a date,” he says.
“Since the first one ended with a dunking, does that make this our second date?”
“I hear that’s the most important one. Vogue magazine says that’s when a girl can decide whether the guy’s a creep or a hero.”
“Shut up,” I say.
“I really should be heading to bed.”
I yawn. “Me too.”
After he hangs up, I brush my teeth and get ready to sleep. As always, I refresh my inbox one last time, just in case. In case of what? I don’t know. Except again, like with Gus earlier, a new message does pop up. This time it’s from Robert, and with a header like Bad News, I can’t help checking it.
Abby,
Just got in from that trip to Atlanta and had this waiting on me (see attached). I’m so sorry—I know you weren’t planning to be back yet. I don’t think it’s wise to refuse the request. Don’t want to predispose the judge to rule against us. If you want to skip this one, I can grab Bev to fill in for you. We’ll come up with another way to show the partners you’re ready. No stress—we can always push the vote.
Robert
No stress? My success at this case was supposed to be the thing that convinced the partners to bring me in. How can I just pass the ball off to Bev at the ten-yard line? I click the attachment and find that the judge had a vacation change and two other cases cancel and can move the trial up to the last week of July. Which means I need to be there for pre-trial prep as soon as possible.
Like, within the week. I doubt I can even stick around long enough to honor our plans for Saturday.
I feel a little bit like Amanda. I shouldn’t care about leaving early—I barely know Steve. It’s not like I was ever planning to stay permanently, but my feelings of disappointment and alarm are real. For the first time in six weeks, I wonder whether I’ve been a little bullheaded. Am I wrong not to even consider giving Ethan what he wants?
Could he stay here himself and handle the ranch alone? I haven’t even contemplated that option. I’ll be sending him off to college alone soon enough. How would coming here be different? A college dorm is much safer than riding on a trail with hundreds of cattle, for one. It’s also safer attending classes than working underneath a tractor, trying to drop the transmission, or whatever crazy thing he did yesterday that resulted in him having quarts and quarts of toxic waste dumped on himself.
I’m staring at my phone, debating whether to text Steve, when I hear a tap on my door. I glance at the clock. It’s nearly ten o’clock. Pretty late for my early-riser kids.
“Come in.”
I expect Ethan—but it’s Izzy. “Hey, Mom.”
“Is everything okay?”
She nods. “Can I come in?”
“Of course.”
She perches on the edge of my bed.
“What’s up?”
“I know Ethan just gave his presentation,” she says, “and I know he really wants to stay.” She drops her eyes to her hands. “I just thought you might want to know what the rest of us thought.”
“The animals are a lot of fun,” I say. “We could increase the frequency of your lessons back home.”
“I just wanted to say that Whitney and I were talking, and she agreed with me.”
“Okay.”
“For the first time since Dad died, we actually feel like we’re a family again.”
“With Aunt Mandy and her kids here too?”
“Actually, we wish they’d stay,” Izzy says. “Maren was a brat, but even she’s getting better, and none of us want to go back to Houston. We like the animals, but we also like the rest. It’s not even just the horseback lessons. We’ve also just been together more.”
“Sweetheart, I can’t work remotely forever.” I’ll never make partner from here, either. “And once school starts, you’ll be just as busy here as you were back home.”
“Maybe.”
“I’m sure of it.”
Her face turns upward. “Can you just promise me you’ll really think about it?”
“Is everything okay?” I brush the hair away from her eyes. “I’m surprised you’d even want to stay. What about all your friends back home?”
“I don’t have any,” she says. “And neither does Whitney.”
Their words barely make sense. “What about Reese and Harper? Liz? Or Shayla?”
“No one knows how to talk around me,” she says. “Or at least, that’s how it started. When they made some kind of joke, like, ‘I’d rather die than drink a pumpkin latte,’ they’d all freeze and look at me, as if they’d broken some rule by using the word ‘die.’ And then they just kind of started hanging out with other people, and there wasn’t room for me at the lunch table any more.” She shrugs. “I’m fine. It’s okay. But we all like the idea that we’d have new schools and a fresh start.”
“The new school would be really small,” I say. “They probably aren’t very academically rigorous, with the limited funding they have and the large geographic area from which they all pull.”
“You don’t know that,” Izzy says. “You’re guessing.”
I shrug. “It’s an educated guess.” I grab her by the shoulders and pull her close for a hug. “No matter where we are, no matter what happens, we’re always a family. I don’t want you to lose that feeling.” She doesn’t seem to take the encouragement from my words that I hoped she would.
Usually I go right to sleep, but that night, I lie awake for hours.
When my alarm goes off, I want to hit it and roll over. For just one day, I want to pretend that I don’t have to tell Ethan he’s going to Rice and watch as his face falls and his hopes and dreams are squashed. I want to pretend that my kids will be eager to go home—to the home we were giddy to buy and have lived in happily for years. I want to pretend that I don’t have to answer emails, review trial plans, feed animals, make food, clean common areas, and fold laundry.
But most of all, I wish I could close my eyes and get my life back, the one I worked so hard to create. I want my husband back—I want the future to be secure. I want someone else at my side who agrees that the things I’m doing are right. I want someone else to be the bad guy, just for once.
I take five minutes to pretend that I can have all that.
And then when my alarm goes off again, I groan and whine and whimper as I roll out of bed and pull on a pair of jeans. “They want to stay—here—where we’re constantly feeding something and scooping poop for something else. Where riding isn’t fun, where it’s a chore. Where cows are constantly trying to injure themselves just to ruin my entire week.” I push my door open and nearly run right into Ethan. “Oh, good morning.”
“You seem chipper,” he says.
“I’m tired.”
His shoulders droop. “I’m sorry.” He looks broader than he did before, and bulkier too. His eyes are brighter, and his skin has a healthy glow from being outdoors. All of that will disappear when he’s stuck in a classroom all day.
But his future will be safe and secure.
“Ethan—”
He shakes his head. “It’s okay, Mom.”
“What’s okay?”
“I know you want me to go to Rice. I got an email saying they need my tuition deposit soon.”
This is when he’ll do his final push. He’ll argue. He’ll plead his case.
“You really pitched in here,” he says. “You got us horseback lessons and took them yourself. You made meals and did grocery shopping at a hardware store. You fed animals. You did a trail ride to herd the cattle.” He grins. “You held up your end of the bargain. I’m not going to complain or guilt you. And I swear, once school starts, I’ll work my hardest at Rice, too. I won’t waste your money.”
“Whoa, have you changed your mind?” I ask. “Do you want to go?”
He wraps an arm around me, his expression wistful. “I’d way rather stay here. I’m dreading college, to be honest, but if I survived high school, I’m sure I can survive college, too.”
“Why aren’t you upset?” I ask. “Why aren’t you arguing to stay?”
“More than I want to run a ranch, and I do want to run this ranch a lot, I want you to be happy. I realized yesterday that even if you let me stay, you’d all be leaving.” His voice becomes very small. “This has been the best summer I could have imagined without Dad, but I don’t think I’d have liked it much if you guys hadn’t come with me. It was even fun sharing a room with Gabe. He’s a funnier little dude than I realized.”
Gabe’s actually hilarious, with his incessant drawing and his overblown vocabulary.
“I really appreciate you getting me into Rice, by the way. I know it took a lot of work on your part and stressed you out. I’m sorry I put you in that situation to begin with. I should never have thrown out all those applications.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t had as much time as—”
Ethan says, “Don’t apologize for that. It’s what makes you the best mom. You want what’s best for our entire family, and you’ll work as hard as it takes to get there—at work, at home, on a ranch. It was actually watching you give 125 percent out here that helped me be okay with going back.”
He’s giving me more credit than I deserve. “I hope you’ll still think that when you hear about the email I got last night. The court changed the docket and now my trial starts at the end of July.”
Ethan frowns. “What does that—”
“If we don’t leave by the end of this week, my case will go to Bev.”
“Crazy Bev? The lady with the beehive-mullet? The one who accused you of dressing like a sex-kitten?”
My jaw drops. “How do you know about that?”
“I heard you and Dad talking once. He thought it was the funniest thing in the world, and he said she was unhinged. Would Robert really hand it over to her?”
“If I don’t head back, he won’t have a choice. Many things can be done remotely these days, but trials still happen in person.”
“She seems like the kind of person who’s secretly plotting to kill everyone in the office. You can’t let her have your case.” Ethan forces a smile. “Plus, it’ll give us all time to relax before school. Who needs horses and manure when they have an Xbox?” But the light disappears from his eyes.
“Thank you, for supporting me. Izzy came to beg me to stay last night, you know.”
“Izzy? Why?”
“She loves it here. I feel like I’m breaking everyone’s heart.”
“It’s alright, Mom.” Ethan hugs me, and it almost feels like I’m hugging his dad. “Do you remember how, when I was a little kid, I hated eating broccoli?”
“You called them tiny trees,” I say.
“No matter how much I cried, you made me eat them, because they were good for me. I’m sure you’re right about this too. I may want to work a ranch, but I bet in five or ten years, I’ll be thanking you for making me do the work to get a corporate job.”
I sure hope so.
“What did Steve say?” He shakes his head. “If you’d told me last year that you’d date again and that I’d actually like him, I’d have called you a liar, but he’s a good person.”
“I haven’t told him yet.”
“Oh.” He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “It’ll probably be fine. I mean, you don’t know him that well, and we all knew it probably wouldn’t go anywhere.”
“How did I get you?” My one desperate hope in coming this summer was that I would get my sweet son back. I didn’t give him what he wanted, but my plan worked in spite of that. Even with a bump on the trial date, even telling him no about the ranch, the old Ethan is back. He’s worried about his mother, he’s comforting me.
All is right with the world.
“You should probably tell Mr. Steve,” he says. “I mean, if I were him, I’d want to know sooner, not like, via postcard after you’ve left.”
Guilted by my teenage son. “I’ll take it under advisement.”
I compose a few different texts while I supervise the kids feeding the horses. Their fuzzy noses and stamping feet soothe me. Even the smell of manure doesn’t bother me like it did at first. They predominantly eat grass, after all. Once I let them into the pasture, I expect them to take off in a bunch like they usually do.
But Snoopy sticks around. “You have more than just horse sense, huh?”
“He does,” a man says behind me. “He can sense when someone has treats.”
I spin around, shocked to hear Steve’s voice. “I thought you were working.”
“Midday shift today,” he says. “Tomorrow we have the morning horseback lesson, remember?”
I shouldn’t be smiling, but I can’t help it. Anytime I get to see him, I smile. “I’m afraid I have bad news.” My smile melts. I want to wait, but I ought to tell him in person. “I won’t be able to make it for our Saturday date.”
“You hate breakfast?” He tilts his head. “You don’t need to try intermittent fasting. You already look great.” If I didn’t already know, his half grin tells me he’s making a joke to cover his confusion.
“We have to fly back early,” I say.
Snoopy gives up on me and jogs toward Steve, bumping him over the fence. Steve pulls out a carrot and breaks it into pieces, giving him the first piece. “Why?”
“The trial date on the big case I’m in charge of moved up.”
“Does that happen often?”
I shake my head. “Usually one party would complain.” I frown.
“But neither did?”
“The judge sent a request.” I consider the language. Robert could have simply signed the bottom, indicating he had commitments that couldn’t be changed.
But he didn’t.
“We didn’t really have a choice.” But I wonder whether that’s strictly true.
“I’m guessing your friend Robert was all for the shift.” He shakes his head. “That guy doesn’t play fair.”
“He wouldn’t have encouraged something that wrecked my plans.” But I wish he’d tried a little harder to discourage it.
“Ethan’s going back too?”
“He got into Rice,” I say. “There was apparently some kind of foul play with an admissions test and a bunch of kids got scratched. It was a lucky break for him.”
“Sounds like it.” Steve hands the last piece of carrot to Snoopy and stuffs his hands in his pockets.
“I’m sorry to duck out before our breakfast.”
“Did I ever tell you that my little sister died?” Steve’s not looking at my face. He’s staring at Snoopy’s hooves.
“No.”
He inhales. “I was young—in high school still. She was just a kid. Not even fifteen.”
How tragic.
“Before she drowned,” he says, “we did everything together. We rode horses. We swam in the creek. Every time we went into town with Mom or Dad, we’d spend every dime we had on baseball cards.”
Weird.
“She loved baseball. She’d watch it every chance she got. Her favorite player was Mike Piazza.” He shakes his head. “We had Becketts and baseball cards hidden all over our rooms.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I say.
“After she died, I kept spending every dime I had on baseball cards.” He finally meets my eye. “My senior year, my friend Beth came over. She looked around my room and said, ‘I had no idea you even like baseball.’”
“Did you?”
He chuckles. “Nope. I actually think it’s boring, but I kept right on collecting cards until Beth pointed that out, because that was our dream—to have the biggest baseball card collection on the whole West coast.”
“But it wasn’t your dream.”
“I never bought another card, not since that day.”
“Do you still have the ones the two of you bought?”
“Even packed up, they take up three boxes, but I still have them all.”
It’s pretty neat that he’s held onto them all this time. “I wonder if any of them are worth anything.”
“They’re all worth something to me.” His hand reaches across the fence and catches mine. “I hope all your dreams come true, Abby. I really do.” He pulls my hand toward his mouth and presses his lips to the center of my palm. A thrill races through my entire body and my fingers curl, their tips brushing against the scruff on his face.
Then he turns and walks away.