“Drawing,” I said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know, because I like it?”
“You sure have a lot of drawings here. You’re not sacrificing your study time to do these drawings, are you?”
“I—”
“You need to be focusing on keeping your grades up, studying for the SATs, and college applications, Sam. Not on goofing off drawing all these worthless drawings.”
“I’m not goofing off! I have to do these drawings for the art schools!”
“Art schools?” my mom sneered. “We never talked about any art schools.”
“So?”
“So? You’re not going to any art schools.”
“Why not?”
“Because we already discussed this with your father. We’re looking at business schools.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “You’re looking at business schools.”
My mom’s brows knit together. “Don’t take that tone with me, young lady.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I sighed. I almost gave up. I was about to stack my drawings up and set them aside to make room for my school books. But I couldn’t. I had to say something. “Mom, I really want to go to art school. I’ve been looking at a bunch of different programs online, and I think maybe I could get in. I read the different portfolio requirements, and you can’t get into an art school without submitting artwork. It’s not just grades and SATs.”
My mom looked at me, assessing me. “Is that so. How long have you been thinking about this?”
“A few months?” I was so unsure of myself.
“Have you looked at tuition?”
A felt a glimmer of hope. “Yeah.”
“How much is it?”
It always came down to the bottom line with both my parents. I sighed heavily. “It’s almost double.”
“Double?!” my mom blurted. “You’re kidding,” she laughed.
“No.”
“It’s out of the question, Sam,” she said with finality.
“But what if I can get a scholarship or something?”
My mom put her hands on her hips and her lips welded together sternly. She picked up my drawings and flipped through them so heatedly I thought she was going to tear them up. But I kept my mouth shut, hopeful.
She nodded with increasing intensity as she flipped. “Mmm-hmm. Hmm. Mmm-hmm.” She dropped them on my desk dismissively. “I don’t think you’re good enough for a scholarship.”
My jaw dropped. “Who are you to say that?”
“I’m your mother, Sam,” she growled.
“Mom, you don’t know anything about art!” My face was hot with anger.
“I know enough to know you’re probably not going to get a scholarship.”
“But shouldn’t I try?” I struggled to hold back my tears.
“Not when it means taking time away from your studies and your other applications.”
“But I’m getting A’s in all my classes! And I have time left over. How do you think I’ve been able to draw all these drawings and still keep my grades up?”
“Yes, but you have SATs coming up. You need to be focusing on your SAT study guides.”
“I have been!” I protested. “And I still have time for drawing!”
“I don’t want to hear it. No more drawing, Sam. We’re not paying double for some fancy art college. Your father and I simply can’t afford it. And that’s final.” She marched out of my bedroom.
When my father came home, I didn’t even bother to mention it. I didn’t want to have him look at my drawings and tell me I wasn’t good enough, too.
Over dinner that night, my mom just had to bring it up. Dinner with my parents was never actually fun.
“Do you know what crazy scheme your daughter has been cooking up?” my mom orated as she scooped a spoonful of carrots onto her plate before passing them to Dad.
“What’s that, dear?” my dad asked, spooning carrots.
“Sam has the crazy idea she can go to art college. And get a scholarship, no less.”
I felt like the literal translation of my mom’s words would be “Our daughter is insane, isn’t that a laugh riot? What an idiot.”
“Art college?” my Dad frowned. “We’ve never talked about art college. A good business college is the proper place for her.”
They were talking like I wasn’t in the room.
“That’s what I said,” Mom said, chuckling.
Was it okay to think your mom was a total bitch? I mean, not every second of the day. But more often than not?
My dad turned and addressed me directly. “Sam, art colleges are generally private universities, and therefore, significantly more expensive.”
“I already knew that,” I sniveled. Demonstrating that I wasn’t a completely ignorant idiot was my only remaining defense. Sadly, I didn’t think it was going to get me anywhere.
“Knowing doesn’t pay for anything,” my mom laughed.
Called it.
“Your mother is right, Sam,” Dad said. “We don’t have the money.”
Called it again.
“But I could get loans, maybe even a scholarship!” I protested.
“That’s all well and good, Sam, but how do you plan to pay off those loans? Have you thought about what kind of a job an artist can get? Do you intend to draw caricatures at the county fair? Sell watercolors on the boardwalk in Atlantic City? How could you possibly support yourself making twenty dollars here and there?”
“I wasn’t talking about that kind of an artist!” I argued. “There’s other kinds of artists everywhere. What about that painting you guys bought, the one of the waves that hangs in your office?”
I was grasping at straws, and my parents knew it.
“Sam,” my dad said condescendingly, “I paid one hundred dollars for that painting. How long do you think it would take you to paint such a painting?”
I didn’t want to say that I didn’t know how to paint an oil painting. I’m pretty sure if I had, my dad would’ve said “Check and mate, game over.”
“Your daughter doesn’t know how to paint in oils,” my mom said. “She just draws in pencil.”
Thanks, mom. I rolled my eyes. They were both playing with me like cats before the kill.
My dad was smiling now, always happy to run the numbers. “Now hold on a second, Linda. Let’s think this through. Sam, how long does it take you to finish a drawing? And I mean a good one?”
Why did I feel like I was walking into a trap? “Um, all day?”
“Okay. Let’s call that eight hours. So, for eight hours of work, you make one hundred dollars. That’s $12.50 an hour.”
My dad was a human calculator, and quite proud of it.
“That’s pretty good, isn’t it?” I knew minimum wage was $8.25 in D.C. $12.50 sounded pretty damn good to me.
“Hah!” my mom bellowed. Her eyes twinkled as if she enjoyed the way my dad was shredding my artistic dreams with practiced ease.
Groan.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Dad said. “You have to assume the cost of supplies. Conservatively, let’s say ten percent for paint and whatever other materials artists use, another ten for the frame. I’m sure the gallery gets some kind of commission, so another, oh, fifteen for that. Now we’re down to $65.00 for that painting of yours. That comes out to $8.13 an hour, Sam. You’d make more pouring coffee at Starbucks. And I hear some of the big corporate coffee chains have decent health insurance plans these days, which aren’t cheap. Working as a barista would put you significantly ahead of the guy who painted that painting in my office.”
My mom smiled at me with a mixture of superiority and, I hate to say it, glee. “Your father’s right, Sam. Being an artist is a bad idea.”
I felt something close inside me at that moment, like my parents had somehow proved with total certainty that it was impossible to be an artist.
I remember trying to swallow a bite of mashed potatoes, and it knotting in my throat
like a ball of lead. When I went to my room that night, I buried all the drawings I’d been working on in the bottom of my closet.
SAMANTHA
PRESENT DAY
Christos said, “That’s rough.”
I wrapped my free arm around his chest and hugged him while I sobbed weakly. “Now you know why I don’t want to tell my parents.”
“I don’t know if you realize this, Samantha, but your parents are ignorant.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, there’s thousands of different jobs out there for artists. Your dad, as smart as he may be with numbers, doesn’t know shit about the art business. He is literally ignorant of the options that exist for artists.”
“But I still have to convince them of that. I don’t know what you know, so I feel like they’d try to change my mind over the phone, and who knows, maybe by the end of the call, I’d be agreeing with everything they said all over again.”
“That’s not true,” Christos said encouragingly. “Didn’t you tell me you took Life Drawing last quarter, even though they wanted you to take Economics instead?”
“That was an elective class. I had to take one anyway. Actually changing my major is a whole ‘nother level.”
“If you want, call them while I’m here. I can cheer from the sidelines. I’ll get some pom-poms and do those goofy clapping high kicks. Then you’ll be able to see my underwear,” he chuckled. “Not that I’m wearing any.”
The idea of Christos, in a skirt, with no underwear, kicking his legs high while his jewels jiggled made me wrinkle my nose.
“Okay, maybe I’d wear underwear for the high kicks,” he grinned. “But seriously, I’ll totally back you up. I’ll talk to your parents if I have to. Whatever you need, I’m here for you, agápi mou.”
“Thank you, Christos. That means so much, I can’t even tell you.”
“You want to call them now?”
I almost said no, but then I felt something I’d never felt before. Anger. I was suddenly mad at my parents. No matter what I’d tried to do to shape my own future, they’d always pushed back, steering me away from where I wanted to go. I could let this go on forever, always caving into them, but I was tired of being bullied by everyone, and that included my parents.
I’d chosen San Diego University for college because it would put me far away from their constant control, and I would be free to make my own choices for myself. And I had stood up to Damian when I’d broken my silence about Taylor Lamberth.
Back then, Damian had threatened to kill me. Now, my parents were threatening to kill my dreams. It almost amounted to the same thing, in my book. One just took longer.
Screw it.
I was going to call them.
It wasn’t quite 10:00pm on the east coast, and my parents were usually awake until eleven. I dialed the house and put my phone on speaker. My nerves went nuts before the phone even rang. I stood up from the couch and started pacing my living room. I held my finger up to my lips and made a shhh face to Christos.
He nodded understanding.
“Hello?” my dad said.
“Hey, dad,” I sighed.
“What a pleasant surprise. It’s so good to hear from you, Sam. Your mother and I thought you wouldn’t call for a few more weeks. How is Micro Economics?”
Jesus. A “How are you?” would’ve been nice. In general, I felt like my father was more of a manager to me than a father. His relationship with me was something he calculated, weighed, considered. The feelings and love parts were glaringly absent.
“Sam?” he prompted.
I steeled myself. This was it. “I’m not taking Econ.”
“What?” My dad was shocked. “Sam, we talked about this.”
I rolled my eyes to Christos.
He made a compassionate sort of wince. At least he understood.
“You talked about this, Dad. I mostly listened. I don’t want to take economics.”
My dad pushed out a hard sigh on the other end of the phone. “Fine. But you can’t keep putting it off if you plan to graduate in four years. What about accounting? How is Managerial Accounting? I always enjoyed that topic.”
OMG. “I’m not taking it. I dropped the class.”
“What?!” my dad panicked. “Sam, what are you doing? You can’t take the upper division classes for an Accounting major if you don’t finish the lower division foundation courses first!”
“That’s okay.”
“No, it’s not.”
“It is, because I changed my major.”
“What?!” My dad was going to explode at this rate. “To what?”
“Art.” I expected him to explode. A hot flush bounced through my body, and not in a good way. I fanned my face. This was about to get ugly.
“Hold on, Sam. I’m going to have your mother join us on the extension.”
Like I said.
While I waited for doomsday, I glanced at Christos. He took the cue and walked over to me. He placed a comforting hand on the small of my back and rubbed it gently.
A moment later, I heard my mom pick up the other line. “What is going on, Sam?” she demanded sternly.
“I’m changing my major to Art.”
“You can’t do that!” my mom said.
“I meant, I already changed my major.”
“Then change it back,” she said stridently.
I’m pretty sure my apartment was shrinking around me. Was I sweating? My arm pits felt like furnaces. I took a deep breath.
“Sam? You will change your major back. Immediately,” my mom commanded.
This was it. “No.”
I think I had expected the ground to open beneath my feet or maybe a giant asteroid to crash into San Diego at that moment. But all I heard was silence.
I had never stood up to my parents like this. Could it be this easy?
“Bill?” my mom asked. “Did you hear what your daughter just said?”
I’d always loved how my mom disowned me the second I disobeyed.
“I’m nonplussed,” my dad said. I don’t think I’d ever heard him sound so exasperated before. “Aaaah…” he mumbled. “Linda?”
I had the distinct sense that the phone in my hand had started to heat up to like two hundred degrees. I know that was silly, but I knew something was about to go thermonuclear.
“If you insist on disobeying your father and I, then you—”
I cut her off. “Disobey? This is my life, mom. I don’t want to be an Accountant. I want to make my own decisions about what I’m going to do for the rest of my life. I’m nineteen, for god’s sake!”
“Watch your mouth, young lady!” my mom barked. “And don’t use that tone with me! You will march down to the Registrar’s Office first thing tomorrow morning, and you will change your major back to Accounting. And that’s final!”
“Do what your mother says, Sam,” my dad grumbled.
I sighed petulantly. Did my parents still believe I was in junior high? “No, mom,” I said softly. “I’m not changing my major.”
“Do not disobey me!” my mother shouted.
“I’m not doing it, mom.”
“Bill! Talk to her,” my mom said, flustered.
There was a moment of silence.
“Bill? Say something.”
“Hold your horses, Linda. I’m thinking.”
I didn’t know if that was good or bad. I looked at Christos. He shrugged his shoulders. There was nothing he could do.
“We have an opportunity here, Linda,” my dad said calmly. That always worried me. “I think it’s time Sam learns the true value of a dollar and an education. I suggest we terminate the subsidization of Sam’s living expenses.”
“What?” my mom and I asked in unison, although the tone of our voices was quite different.
“Yes, I think that is a terrific idea,” my dad continued. “Sam, your mother and I will no longer pay for your apartment. In addition, any incidentals that we have been funding will be your respo
nsibility. Linda, does that make sense to you?”
“Perfect sense,” Mom said victoriously.
“Wait,” I said, “You guys can’t—”
My mom cut in. “Oh yes, we certainly can, young lady.”
I goggled at Christos, unsure what to do. “How am I going to pay my rent? I don’t have any money!”
“I’m sure there are ample opportunities for work-study programs on campus,” Dad said. “Failing that, there is a myriad of unskilled jobs available in the labor market. I suggest you try the shopping mall or fast food restaurants. Either will be more likely to hire a young, able-bodied person with no work experience. You are intelligent, and if you are enthusiastic and ready to work hard, you will find a job in short order.”
“I can’t argue with that,” my mom said, a smile in her voice. “This will be good for you, Sam. I promise, when you look back at this experience, you will thank your father and I.”
I glanced at Christos. The expression on his face was what I would imagine a normal person would look like if they arrived at the scene of a terrible traffic accident and discovered all their children had been crushed under an over-turned delivery truck. I kind of felt bad for Christos. I was used to this sort of behavior from my parents. He wasn’t.
I sighed.
I had always suspected my parents were insane. Now I had proof. They were trying to blackmail me, or maybe bribe me, into following their abhorrent order to become an accountant no matter how much the idea sickened me.
How had my life managed to take a nose dive in less than twenty minutes?
Oh yeah.
My parents.
CHRISTOS
I was grinding my jaw the entire time Samantha talked with her parents. For all the shit I’d dealt with after my parents split, I’d never gone through something like this. My parents never forced me to do something I hated. Sam’s parents didn’t even seem like human beings to me. More like robots.
After Samantha said goodbye to her parents, she stared at me with watery eyes.
“Agápi mou,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
She reached out to hug me.
I wrapped my arms around her and squeezed her tight. “That was total bullshit.”
“What am I gonna do?” she said, panicked.
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