Andi isn’t flying to San Diego today as planned. She’s at home, working in the tiny bedroom she and Dom converted to a shared office during the pandemic. School is out for two days, and Cameron has a Civics project due next week. He claims he’s started it, but given the recent emails from both his English and Biology teachers citing missing work, his word can no longer be trusted. Andi’s sixteen-year-old high school sophomore needs a babysitter.
She can hear him playing a video game through the shared wall. He thinks his headphones disguise the sound, but even the most enthusiastic civil servant is unlikely to regularly holler, “Hell yeah!” at regular intervals. If he’s still at it after she finishes the brief she’s reading, she’ll have to crack down.
Last night, Andi and Dom tried to engage Cameron with a talk about the future. He’d never been a studious kid; they knew this by now. They understood that he was wickedly bright but bored by the classroom—an avid reader who only resists the novels assigned to him. The kid who built his own computer in seventh grade but ditched every session of the middle-school electronics club Andi paid for.
Cameron is going to do something with his life. That “something” just won’t be the result of anyone else’s encouragement or insistence.
The problem they can no longer ignore, however, is that his grades—never equal to his abilities—have slipped. Bs used to be a given, but now they are a pleasant surprise. At this rate, acceptance at a UC school will be a stretch for him. Andi graduated from UC Davis, Dom from UC San Francisco. Their son seems intent on throwing away his chances at either campus.
“I’ll just go to San Diego State,” he’d said while smearing peanut butter on a banana as if one accomplishment were no more difficult than the other.
Dom said, “That’s not a guarantee, you know.”
Andi asked, “Do you have any idea what you’d like to study?”
His response to both was a casual shrug. “I’ll worry about that later.”
Part of her can’t blame him. The pressure put on teenagers nowadays is unnerving. Especially boys. The male brain doesn’t fully develop until around the age of twenty-one, yet we expect them to make decisions about the rest of their lives several years before they’re biologically prepared. Sixteen-year-old Cameron has only recently stopped taking hour-long showers.
And still, he has just two years of high school left. Choices will need to be made.
That is, if he doesn’t fail Civics. Feeling a sudden jolt of anxiety, Andi pounds on the office wall. “Get to work, Cameron!”
Last week, Andi’s mother called to wonder aloud whether he was acting out because she was working and traveling so much.
“I’ve already cut my travel down significantly, if that’s what you’re hinting at. Not to mention that I’ve worked his whole life, Mom. Kids benefit to see both parents pursue their passions.” It’s the line she’s consoled herself with since leaving him with a nanny at six-weeks old.
Her mother, Geneva, had worked, too, as a leader in the Minnesota movement to adopt the Equal Rights Amendment. On February 8, 1973, the day the state successfully voted to ratify, her mother bundled Andi and her toddler sister into the stroller and buried them beneath a pile of blankets, heading out in eight-degree weather to celebrate with hundreds of other supporters outside the capital in St. Paul.
Sometimes Andi wonders if her commitment to women’s civil rights wasn’t frozen into her DNA that wintery day, written in ice on her personal constitution.
“I agree,” her mother said. “Cameron is lucky to see you as a whole person. What worries me is that he doesn’t see enough of you.”
The guilt stabs, sharp and quick. “God, Mom. Do you hear yourself?” It’s a judo move, to turn the pain aimed at her back onto her accuser. “Would you say that to Dom? He travels, too, you know.”
“I do know, and yes, I would say the same to him.”
Andi realizes she doesn’t doubt it for a second. Geneva is not known for withholding her opinions.
“These years go by quickly, Andi. You can’t get them back.”
She knows. She knows. And yet. “You didn’t get to choose the timing of your ERA work. And I don’t get to convince those in power to quit causing so much human turmoil. The crisis is happening now. I’m compelled and equipped to help.”
More than that, she considers her work a moral imperative. One taught to her by her mother. How many nickels and dimes had she collected in her UNICEF boxes as a kid for the starving children in Africa? This isn’t any different. It simply requires more of her.
Geneva wasn’t buying it. “As crass as it sounds, this violence will still be happening after Cameron is out of the house. There will always be people who need you, but those people won’t always include your son.”
“Kids go through phases, Mom. Isn’t that what you told me when he quit eating meat? That as soon as he discovered how hard it is to cook for himself, he’d come back to the family table? You said, ‘Let him experience the consequences of his choices.’”
Andi had supported her son’s short-lived vegetarian pursuits. His rationale was well-intended—reduce carbon emissions, reduce his environmental footprint. But neither she nor Dom had time to cook multiple dinners. They barely managed to sit down together as it was.
“I know you don’t like me butting in, but, Andi, look at the signs. His grades are slipping. He’s not following through on his promises. Heck, he’s brazenly lying to you.” The impetus for their phone call that afternoon was a text in which Andi had been silly enough to tell her mom that Cameron had been busted at a house party, even though he’d explicitly told them he was staying overnight at a friend’s house.
In the car on the way home, Dom asked why he hadn’t tried to run when the police showed up. Cameron said he wasn’t drinking and, therefore, didn’t have anything to hide. His attorney father nearly drove the car off the road in an explosive lecture on reasonable suspicion.
“We’re handling it, Mom.” Though whether that was true, Andi was increasingly unsure.
“The signs are blinking yellow, sweetheart. Figure out what’s going on with him before they turn red.”
She knows. She knows!
Andi’s attention returns to Cameron playing video games in the room next door. She hates to hover, but what choice does she have? She hits the wall, pounding her fist against the yellow paint she’s hated for years but never taken the time to fix. “Cameron! Civics project! Now!”
She feels his urge to procrastinate the way a mama bird feels the gnawing hunger in her hatchlings’ bellies. Obviously, no one wants to put their nose to the grindstone, but that’s what living a full and productive life requires. It was supposed to have been enough for Cam to see his parents show a passion for their professions, to see firsthand what hard work looks like.
He wanted her home more often, so she made it happen, delegating more of her work to her already overworked team. And still, this kid of hers sits on the other side of the wall, ignoring her sacrifices, flaunting the privilege she blessed him with. Daring her to do something. Draining her patience. Forcing her hand.
“That’s it.” She stands so quickly she knocks over a full glass of water on her desk, soaking the briefs she’s yet to read.
He hasn’t even bothered to close his door. Probably for the better, since she would likely have kicked it in. He’s laughing, his gaming headset on, the microphone brushing his chin. “DUDE! What the hell are you doing?”
Andi couldn’t have said it better herself.
She leans over and grabs the PC tower off the floor. It’s heavier than she expected, tweaking her back as she stands. One tug, and the room is aflutter in cords—black, white, and red snakes snapping from the wall, pulling the keyboard and monitor with them.
“MOM!” Cameron’s voice breaks, along with his tether to the imaginary world where he has no homework, no responsibility. “WHAT THE ACTUAL FU—”
He’s raging. But not nearly as loud as Andi’s indignation. She’s going to change this kid’s attitude no matter how many thousands of dollars in computer hardware it costs her.
The heat from the tower’s fan burns her hands as she carries it out the front door and down the porch steps. Cam’s hot on her heels, cursing her with words and images she’ll fret about later, when she’s not busy teaching him a lesson.
Their neighbor Pamela is at the curb checking her mailbox. Pamela has a resale business on eBay. Mostly bras, socks, and underwear she buys on clearance, then lists for a small profit.
“Oh, Pamela!” Andi feels a cord brush against her ankle and prays it doesn’t decide to trip her. “I’m wondering if you might be able to find a purpose for this—maybe for your own use or to resell?”
Cameron is lunging for the computer now, but her grip is tight. All he can do is wrap his hands around cables that break from their ports when he pulls. “Mom! No!”
Pamela is understandably confused, her eyes wide with the instinct to run. “Oh, I’m not sure I—”
Andi doesn’t give her the chance to argue. “I’d very much appreciate if you took this off our hands.” She shoves the machine into Pamela’s arms. “Cameron may have permission to buy it back from you once the school year is over.”
At this, he howls. “How am I supposed to finish my project without a computer?” Tears threaten the corners of his eyes.
Andi’s resolve falters. Her kid is hurting. The neighbor thinks she’s strange as a frog wearing a hat. She hasn’t thought any of this through.
Lucky for them all, Cameron’s teachers have.
“You’ll finish it the same way most of your classmates will finish their projects—with your school-issued iPad.” Every two years, the district provides all middle and high school students with a new tablet and keyboard with which they’re supposed to access classroom materials, take tests, and complete homework. She has hardly stripped her son of his only resource.
“Cameron, your dad and I have given you a thousand chances to get your work done.” She feels tears burble beneath her own lids. “You ignored the warnings. So now you deal with the consequences.”
That night, lying in bed, these same words replay themselves in her head. This time, however, she applies them to herself as a mother. You ignored the warnings, Andi. So now you deal with the consequences.