It wasn’t all fun and games and self-congratulation. I had some hard work to do.
The next Monday, I took Amanda out to lunch. She’d been avoiding me since her outburst at Jisun’s party. She picked up her menu. She put it down again. She glanced at me, then away.
“I’m not angry, Amanda.”
“You should be.” She spoke all in a rush. “I am mortified by the things I said to you. I was drunk, but that’s no excuse. In fact, it makes everything worse. I was so unprofessional. If you want to transfer me to another team, I’ll understand. Maybe—”
“You were being honest,” I said. “I appreciate that.”
“But the way I did it—”
“You were a little rambunctious,” I conceded. “But as you know, I’m no stranger to outsize reactions.”
That earned me a weak smile.
“We do need to talk about a few things,” I continued. “You accused me of being complicit in the ways the firm makes your life difficult.”
“I was wrong. You’re not complicit.”
“Complicit is too forgiving,” I agreed. “I’d say I was more of an active participant.”
She looked at me curiously.
“I entered the firm straight from school,” I told her. “I’d never held a real job before. I thought the professional world would be like the academic one. Work hard, do your best, be present and eager and engaged, and you’ll do well. I soon learned that there were other, less clear-cut signifiers of who was going to succeed. Where you came from. How well you spoke. Whether you played squash or tennis or golf. Who you knew. And whether you were a woman or a man.”
“So you felt it, too,” she said.
“Along with everything else you mentioned. The diminishments, the assumptions. The sexism disguised as gallantry. The sexism that didn’t wear any disguise at all. It was all new to me, and I had no idea how to handle it. At school, you surround yourself with the like-minded. You tune out what you don’t want to hear.”
“You can’t do that out here in the wild,” Amanda said.
“If I was all business, I was perceived as a humorless robot. If I tried to be playful, I wasn’t taken seriously. If I accepted praise, I was cocky. If I demurred, I was weak. I couldn’t be harsh, or pleasant, or mean, or nice, without being judged for it.”
“What did you do?”
“Like you, I loved the work, notwithstanding the hard time I was having. I wanted to excel, and I wanted to be treated with respect. As a person, as a woman. When I realized I couldn’t have both—at least, not without a fight—I settled for excelling. I locked my resentments away—something I was already pretty good at. I thought I was doing it for myself. But I was doing it to accommodate other people—exactly as you pointed out.”
“But, it did work,” she said. “I mean, you succeeded.”
“Did I? I knew an injustice was being done—to me, to other women—but rather than push back, rather than stand up and say, ‘This is not okay,’ I capitulated. I suppressed an essential part of who I was, then I turned that suppression into a work philosophy I preached to others. Women have to lower their expectations, I said. They have to be better, get over it. For someone who spends a lot of time thinking about truth and fairness and the evils of sexism, that’s appalling. And it’s the definition of complicity.”
Amanda was quiet for a while. At last she said, “Thank you for telling me this. It means a lot.”
“I’m glad. But I have an ulterior motive.” I reached into my bag and pulled out a legal pad. “We need more people like you at the firm. More women. I came up with a list.”
“A list?”
“A plan of attack,” I said. “How we’re going to change attitudes. Change the culture.”
“But at Jisun’s party, you said—”
“That people don’t change. Let’s say I’ve recently seen persuasive evidence to the contrary. I think Calder Tayfield is the best place to work in the world. But we can make it better. I want to correct the problems that made Jisun leave and that are making you so unhappy you get drunk and lose your marbles at your supervising partner. So let’s complain. Let’s make some noise.”
Amanda began to smile. “Are you sure about this?”
I smiled back. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
On the television, a dozen beautiful women paced back and forth inside a Lucite cube. They were wearing bikinis, stilettos and handcuffs.
“These top supermodels haven’t eaten in four days!” the announcer cried.
“I read somewhere that we’re living in the golden age of television,” I said.
“Shh,” Maisie said.
“Can’t we watch something good?”
“We are, duh,” Kate said.
A man covered in chocolate frosting entered the cube. The models closed in.
My daughters watched, rapt. I thought back to my conversation with Amanda. I had known her only a few months, and I’d already let her down. I’d been Kate and Maisie’s role model for years. Had I failed them? Had I given them the wrong signals about how to be a woman, a human? Had I—
“Mom,” Maisie muttered. “The staring.”
“Have I warped you?” I blurted out.
“Not lately,” Kate said. “But cheer up. Tomorrow is another day.”
I switched off the television. They turned to me, puzzled.
“I know I give you a hard time,” I began. “I’m dictatorial. I nag. Lately I’ve turned your lives upside down. But I’ve always tried to be a good mother. I’ve done everything in my power to ensure that you’re happy, healthy, good people.”
“You’re great, Mom,” Maisie said. “You know we think you rule.”
“That’s what I’m worried about. I project this aura of invincibility. I don’t want you to think you have to act the same way. I never want you to hide how you feel.”
They exchanged a confused glance.
“We know you’re powerful and all that,” Kate said, “but we’ve never really seen you as, like, omnipotent.”
“Maybe the people you work with do, but we know you better,” Maisie added. “We notice things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Like how you only harangue us when you’re freaking out about work,” Kate said. “How you’re always sneaking in and checking on us. How you compulsively tidy when you’re agitated.”
“I do?”
“There are good things, too,” Maisie said. “The little smiles. The way you drum your fingers when you’re excited. The way your voice goes weird when you’re happy.”
It sounded like my superhero costume had a few holes in it. This was good news.
“Sure,” Kate continued, “you don’t confide everything to us, or try to turn us into your best friends, like some moms do. But that’s okay. We knew you had Dad for that.”
“We’d come in, and you’d be lying with your head in his lap, telling him your troubles,” Maisie said.
I nodded. “Right.”
“Who do you tell your troubles to now?” Kate asked.
They were curious, of course. But I couldn’t talk about any of that. Not yet.
I reached for their hands. “Thank you. I was worried I’d been a terrible role model.”
“No way,” Kate said. “And anyway, it’s not all on you. We have Dad.”
“You’re both crazy…” Maisie began.
“But together you make, like, one sane person,” Kate said. “You’re a good team.”
“Were,” Maisie corrected her. “Were a good team.”
“So that’s the story,” I said. “I wanted to stop by to let you know how everything worked out.”
“This strikes me as rather abrupt,” Bogard remarked.
“It is, but with good reason. And I appreciate what you’ve done. Our talks revealed exactly what you suggested they might. Things about myself that I wasn’t aware of. Things I needed to know. I couldn’t have gotten where I am without you.”
Bogard steepled his gray fingers. “And where are you?”
“Here.” I spread my hands. “Problems solved. Questions answered. I’ve faced my insecurities. I’ve stopped denying what I want. I’m expressing how I feel and allowing myself to be vulnerable. I recognize how much I was relying on other people’s perceptions of me to reinforce my own. I’ve completely conquered my discomfort with sex.”
“And you discovered, what,” Bogard said, “that this man was the one you wanted all along? What does that mean? You wanted to sleep with him?”
“Yes. And more. I wanted to…know him. Be with him.”
“Are you in love with him?”
“No!”
Bogard blinked, startled. I don’t know why I was so vehement. I was smitten with Singer. In my bed, in my life, he was exactly as he had been before—smart and funny, at ease in his skin, happy. I thought about him constantly. Within minutes of leaving him, I wanted to be with him again. I liked how he walked. How he talked to waiters. The glasses he wore when he read in bed at night. The sounds he made when he came. His apartment. His cooking. His laugh, of course. His body. The feel of his hair in my fingers. How he smelled. His skin. His intelligence. His warmth. His eyes.
I liked, I liked.
But love?
“Would it be wrong to be in love with him?” Bogard inquired.
“Yes,” I said. “No. I don’t know. I don’t want to think about this right now.”
“A sign,” Bogard noted, “that you probably should.”
Sure, eventually. But today? Bogard was doing his best, but I wasn’t going to be drawn into another of our roaming, circular discussions.
“I’ll deal with it later,” I assured him. “Right now, I’m happy. And I’d really like to stay that way.”
“What are you thinking about?” Singer asked that night.
I said, “I’m making a mental list of all the places I want to sleep with you.”
“An organized sex fiend. I approve.” His hand skimmed my belly. “Tell me what you’ve got.”
“Number one. On a grassy lawn, under the stars.”
“Natural, but not too natural. I’m in.”
“Number two. In the ocean. Number three. In the backseat of the Fury.”
“We could combine those two,” he said. “I’ve got some scuba gear in storage.”
“Number four. The house where I grew up.”
“The one that’s been condemned?”
I raised my head so I could see him. “Is that weird?”
“Not if you want to roll around in black mold. Next?”
“This one’s embarrassing,” I said. “In a library.”
He laughed. “Neither embarrassing nor surprising. Next time we pass a branch you can drag me in and have your way with me in the stacks. What else?”
“I suppose I should choose some romantic foreign cities,” I said.
He scoffed at that. “Anyone can make love in Paris or Rome.”
“You’re saying we need a challenge. A place where great sex would be a real accomplishment.”
“Exactly. A place like…Ptuj.”
“Ptuj,” I said.
“It’s in Slovenia.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know a lot of things,” he said.
“Ptuj. It’s sounds extremely unerotic.”
“Trust me, it is.” He put his hands behind his head. “There’s also Uzhhorod, in the Ukraine. And Slupsk, of course.”
“Who can forget Slupsk?”
He reached for his phone. “I’m going to google it. I bet they have a hell of a library.”
He was spending the next day with his son, so at midnight I got a cab back to the hotel. We coasted through empty streets. At a red light, I looked out the window. My heart stopped.
Aaron was looking right back at me.
Then the illusion dissolved, and I was looking at an advertisement on a news kiosk. He was smiling, wearing a dorky safari hat, a butterfly perched on his finger. A new season of The Bug Doctor was coming soon.
He looked so boyish. Maybe that’s what happens to people we meet when they’re young. They become frozen in time, their freshness an indelible part of how we see them.
Aaron noticed me at that party, all those years ago. He chose me. But had I chosen him? Would I have wanted him, if he hadn’t wanted me first? Was I attracted to him, or simply grateful?
Maybe these were the wrong questions to ask. Attraction did come, love did grow.
And here we were.
I thought of something Sarah once said. About how furious she’d been that Tad had cheated—until she realized she no longer wanted the thing that had been taken from her.
Did I want Aaron? Would I have lost my mind and tried to destroy him if I didn’t? Or was that my well-documented competitive streak—my unwillingness to lose, even when I wasn’t all that interested in the prize?
The light turned green. The cab rolled down Columbus, leaving Aaron, and my questions, behind.