by Jane Porter
As I talk, I glance around the conference table, assessing the response to the presentation. There’s definitely interest, and more than one man is nodding or leaning forward—in terms of body language, a very good sign.
Frank’s expression is probably the most open. He’s got a half smile, and his eyes crinkle at the corners. He’s impressed and proud.
My confidence soars, and I continue to describe how the TV spots will translate into print ads as well as the virtual realm.
Chris explains that more companies are using the virtual realm to reach out to potential customers, including appealing to a younger generation, a generation we at Z Design feel is a perfect consumer fit for Freedom Bikes.
As Chris describes in greater detail some of the approaches we’d use—video game advertising, a development of a virtual world, a free Internet-based game that would allow users to design and build a bike—I slip out the conference room door and check my voice mail.
It’s the school nurse. Eva has the stomach flu, has a fever of 103, and is throwing up.
With a glance at my watch—it’s one-fifteen, the school day won’t end for another hour and a half—I call the school and speak to the nurse. The nurse has Eva lying on the cot, but I hear Eva crying in the background.
“I feel so sorry for her,” the nurse tells me. “She’s thrown up three times in the last hour, and I wish I could give her something for her fever and pain, but we’re not allowed to.”
“I’m in downtown Seattle,” I tell the nurse, “in the middle of a meeting, but I’ve got another half hour here, at least, and that’s not including the drive. I’ve no idea if there will be bridge traffic, either.”
“Oh dear. Who else can we call? Who is on your emergency contact list?”
My emergency contact list has my dad on it, but I can’t have him get Eva and risk exposing my mom to something so virulent.
“Is there no way you can come now?” the nurse presses. “She’s just miserable.”
Glancing at the boardroom, I can see the flickering colors of the PowerPoint presentation through the frosted glass of the conference room window. Chris’s presentation should be nearly over. And then it’ll be back to me again.
I’m to bring the meeting to a close with my concluding speech, which again touches on the necessity for brands to engage their audiences emotionally and how we must introduce and rebuild the Freedom brand with edge and relevancy.
I haven’t written down the whole spiel since I know it so well, but Chris has seen my notes and is familiar with how I wrap my conclusion into an open Q&A period with the executive members.
My talk will last only fifteen minutes or so, but the Q&A could go an hour or more. It just depends on management interest.
I hear the toilet flushing in the nurse’s office, and the nurse is running water, giving Eva a wet towel to wash off her face.
“I’m coming now,” I say to the nurse, steeling myself not to think about the presentation. It’s nearly over. Chris can handle this. He’s smart, talented, together. He can easily wrap up and handle the questions. “Tell Eva to hang tight, someone will be there very soon.”
Hanging up I try the office but my call goes straight to voice mail. Next I try Allie—same thing. Robert is my next call, and he picks up but he’s in the middle of a meeting.
Back in the conference room, I listen as Chris wraps up his talk. I wait until he’s done, and then I thank Chris and ask everyone if we can take a brief recess.
The Freedom management seems happy to have a few minutes to stand and stretch their legs. I use the break to corral Chris and let him know Eva’s sick, everyone at the office is busy, and I must go.
Chris just shakes his head. “Don’t go now.”
“She’s really ill.”
“She can make it another half hour, can’t she?”
She could. She’s got the flu, not consumption. But I know she’s miserable, and I know she could use a bath and some Children’s Tylenol and comfort from me. “Chris, you’ve got my notes. You can do the wrap-up and handle the Q and A.”
“Marta, this is your dream. This is the account of your career.”
He’s right again. It is. But he doesn’t know what it’s like, needing to be in two places at once, torn between responsibilities, needing and wanting to let neither side down. “If we weren’t at the end of the presentation, I wouldn’t do it—”
“Then don’t do it now.” He drops his voice, looks over his shoulder. “Marta, they like us. They like what we’re doing here today. They love Robert’s film. But it’s not a done deal. You’re our closer. You’re the one that gets the ink on the deals. You’re our big gun.”
And I’m also Eva’s mother, the only family Eva has. She doesn’t have a dad. She doesn’t have brothers or sisters. It’s just me. And if I don’t come for her, no one will. “Chris, I don’t have a choice.”
He glares down at me. He doesn’t approve, not at all, but he’s not married, he doesn’t have a kid, and he doesn’t understand how I can be more afraid of failing Eva than of failing professionally.
“Come on, let’s just get this moving,” I say, making eye contact with one of the executives and then nodding at Frank, who has taken a seat again at the table. “I’ll start us again, let them know I’ve got to leave due to a family emergency and that you’ll be wrapping up.”
Chris is stony-faced, but he can’t make me stay. Yes, he’s smart, successful, and the second in command at Z Design, but boss trumps, and I’m the boss.
Fifteen minutes later, as I take the elevator down to the parking garage, I’m hit by the strongest wave of regret. What I’ve done by walking out on the meeting isn’t acceptable, not in the business world. Successful executives have families, but of course those families don’t intrude, and in the workplace, family issues are carefully concealed.
But leaving isn’t easy for me. It tears me up. I’ve worked hard preparing for today, looked forward to it. After starting my truck, I back up and then brake, tempted to park again and run back up. I can nail this account. I can get this.
But what about Eva? What do I do with her? Leave her in the school office until I’ve answered a dozen questions that Chris is just as capable of answering?
If I were the one who was sick, and if I had been throwing up and running a fever, what would I want?
I’d want my mom to come and get me.
I’d want my mom to take me home and hold me and let me know that I’m not alone.
Fortunately, traffic on 5 North is light, and the 520 bridge heading east isn’t too slow. I’m able to reach the 84th Street exit in less than fifteen minutes and have Eva home in another ten after that.
Eva’s sick the moment we walk through the door, and after she rinses her mouth and washes her face, she collapses on the carpet in the hall, just so she “can be near the toilet.” I get her pillow and a blanket and cover her and then track down Tylenol for her fever.
She throws the sticky pink syrup right back up and then lies down again, wan and exhausted, on the floor.
Once she dozes off, I head to my room, strip off my clothes, and shower, then change into a T-shirt and sweats. Being a single mom is never easy, but when kids are sick, it sometimes feels impossible. Nights like these, I think I’d do just anything, give anything, to have another adult here, helping out, running errands, giving me a smile.
In short, reminding me that this, whatever the difficulty is, won’t last forever.
Chapter Fourteen
Nine o’clock comes, and I finally, thankfully, have Eva in her own bed sleeping soundly. I’m just about to call it a night, too, when the phone rings.
The house phone never rings this late, and instinctively I wonder if there’s been an accident or if Mom has taken a turn for the worse. But it’s not an emergency or Dad calling, it’s Taylor Young phoning to discuss the field trip I’ve signed up for. I think she’s double-checking the number of kids I can accommodate in my car, but it’s not t
hat at all.
She’s calling to lobby on behalf of a friend. Her friend really wants to go on this field trip, especially since all her friends are chaperones, and Taylor is asking me to skip this field trip and wait for another one so Andrea Carter can participate.
For a moment I’m speechless, amazed—even impressed—by Taylor’s audacity, but as soon as my shock wears off, resentment sets in. It’s been a long day, and I’m not in the mood for this. I’m exhausted, Eva’s ill, and it’s Taylor’s daughter making Eva’s life at school a living hell.
It’s Taylor’s control freak nature that’s making this school year more miserable than usual.
Taylor doesn’t own the school.
Taylor doesn’t get to decide who’s in, who’s out.
Taylor’s not in charge.
“I’m looking forward to chaperoning the field trip on November third,” I say in my nicest voice possible, considering I’m so tired that I could fall asleep standing up. “Eva’s so excited, too. It’s the first time I’ve chaperoned a field trip since we moved here.”
“Would you be willing to chaperone a field trip later in the year instead?”
Maybe Taylor didn’t hear me. Eva’s excited about my chaperoning the field trip to the Pacific Science Center. She wants me to chaperone the field trip. I’m not going to cancel out on her. “Eva’s looking forward to my going.”
“Yes, I understand, but we’re in a bit of a bind, and I was hoping you could help us out. Andrea really wanted to chaperone this trip, and she’d thought she’d sent her form in early enough to be one of the moms picked.”
I’m not sure I see the bind. Andrea didn’t get her form in in time. “Hopefully Andrea will be able to chaperone one of those other field trips you mentioned.”
“But Andrea is so disappointed. She was planning on going on this one, and she’s made arrangements for her youngest. She hired a baby-sitter—”
“I’m sure she could cancel the sitter. The field trip isn’t for three weeks.”
“I just thought perhaps you could switch. It’s not as though it’s a big deal to you—”
“Why isn’t it a big deal?” I interrupt Taylor, the softness in my voice hiding my anger. Taylor should not push me this hard. She doesn’t realize I’m not like all the other mommies around her. I don’t need her, like her, or want her. She’s nothing to me, and I have no problem squashing her, if that’s what I’ve got to do.
“It’s not as though all your close friends were going, and if Andrea doesn’t go, she’s going to feel left out.”
“Which confuses me,” I say quietly, “as this is an educational field trip for nine-year-olds.”
Sensing she’s stepped into something foul, Taylor backpedals with a faint laugh. “You know what I mean.”
I say nothing.
“It’s just that we’ve all been doing this together for years,” Taylor adds. “And it’s become something of a tradition, as well as a chance to help the school.”
“So that’s why everyone chaperones field trips? To be with their close friends?” I now laugh a little. “Funny, I thought everyone rushed to chaperone field trips to become the teacher’s best friend.”
Taylor’s not laughing anymore. There’s definitely tension here, and I’m glad. I’m so ready to take off the gloves and get down to business. Taylor and her daughter are selfish, shallow, and insensitive, and they represent everything I detest about my gender.
Social climbers, opportunists, and power hungry, they have a double agenda: They intimidate and manipulate others to further their own cause as well as maintain control.
You see, they’re not just bitchy, they’re bullies. They use language and social intelligence as a form of indirect aggression. Instead of weapons, they use words. Barbed remarks. A sharp tongue.
And until this very moment, I don’t think I fully understood what I was dealing with. Taylor isn’t merely a pretty petty annoyance, she’s a danger, because she’s teaching her daughters to perpetuate unkindness toward others. She’s teaching her daughters to become hurtful women.
But Taylor doesn’t know what I’m thinking, and she presses on in the same sickly-sweet tone of voice. “Seeing as you have only one child, you can’t know how difficult it is for those of us with three kids, but we don’t have your flexibility. We’d love your flexibility—”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have had more kids.”
Taylor laughs, but it’s not a light tinkle. She’s beginning to sound brittle. “That’s funny!”
I will smack her. I will knock her down. I will ride my motorcycle all over her and leave skid marks from here to kingdom come . . . Okay, I won’t, but the thought is so highly satisfying that I calm down.
“Taylor, I have to go, and I’m sorry for Andrea, but I promised Eva I’d chaperone this trip and I’m going.” As gently as I can, I hang up the phone.
It takes me another hour to realize why I’m so angry.
I’m not on the A team. I’m not even on the B team. I’m on the Team That Doesn’t Matter.
I wake up with a raging headache the next morning, pound a huge glass of water and two Advil before going to check on Eva.
Eva’s up, curled on the couch with a blanket over her lap. She’s holding her book How to Be the Most Popular Girl in Your School, but not reading or writing. Instead, she’s just lying there with the book clutched against her chest.
It still blows me away that she actually takes notes from that book.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, approaching her to put my hand on her forehead.
“So-so,” she answers wanly.
So-so is right. She doesn’t look good at all. “Have you had anything to eat or drink?”
She pales, shakes her head.
“Still queasy?” I ask.
She nods.
“But you do need to get some liquids into you.” I head for the kitchen, where I make some very watery grape Kool-Aid. “Drink this in tiny sips, see if you can keep it down.”
Eva clings to the plastic cup along with the book but doesn’t try to drink. I head back to the kitchen, where I make coffee, hoping it’ll help my headache.
As I grind the coffee, I glance at her on the couch, see the book under her arm, and wonder how to broach the subject of what she’s been reading. I’ve never had a hard time discussing anything with her before, but suddenly we’re on such opposite sides of the fence. I never wanted to be popular. She wants to be the queen bee. How can I help her on this one?
As I empty the ground beans into the coffee filter, I think about the different ways I could bring up the subject. Maybe I should tell her that I know Allie gave the book to her and ask her if she likes it.
Maybe I’ll just ask her which chapter she’s reading and if the notes help her remember the main points.
Coffee brewing, I wander back into the living room and curl up in a chair facing the couch. “Is that a good book?” I ask casually.
Eva nods, deep purple crescents beneath her eyes. “Yeah.”
“Is that the same book you’ve been reading for a while?”
She nods again.
“It’s the one teaching you things?”
She closes her eyes. “I don’t feel good, Mom.”
“Maybe you should just sleep more,” I say, feeling guilty for even trying to have this discussion when she feels so bad.
“Okay,” she whispers, eyes still closed, thick black lashes fanning her cheeks.
After her breathing slows and grows deeper, I return to the kitchen for my coffee. Filling my mug, I flash back to a time before I was officially a teenager, a time when anything remotely grown-up sounded wonderful and desirable and the discovery of Seventeen magazine’s Guide for Young Ladies at a neighborhood garage sale seemed to be the most exciting find ever.
I bought the book for twenty-five cents when I was just a little older than Eva is now. The book was at least twenty years old, and for months I pored over it in secret, committing to mem
ory necessary facts and tidbits like how to sleep in rollers to give your hair the proper bounce, why proper hygiene is important, how to sit properly, hold a teacup, file your nails.
I can still see the tips written in big swirly cursive script and illustrated with sketches of a delicate red-haired beauty putting on her gloves or checking to make sure her purse matched her shoes.
I would never have admitted it at twelve, but a big part of me wanted to be like that illustration—lithe, pretty, elegant, so very proper. I wanted to astonish people with my perfect rightness, my delicious sense of etiquette. I wanted to be Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady after the whole Pygmalion project.
But every time I looked in the mirror, I saw a skinny, big-eyed, big-lipped, fourteen-year-old misfit. A misfit who was teased by the popular girls at school.
We get through the day without Eva getting sick again, and later when she goes to bed for the night, she’s managed to get a little soup down. I tumble into bed soon after, as everything hurts.
Even though the night’s cool I’m hot, too hot, and with the window open wide I lie on top of my covers, watching shadows creep across my ceiling as the moon shifts in the sky. The moon outside is big, bold, one of those huge harvest moons that cast long fingers of light and illuminate the night.
I don’t feel well. I’m hot and ache in funny places, with pain in my shoulders, elbows, and other joints.
I’m not coming down sick, I tell myself. I’m not getting Eva’s flu. I’m still just upset about last night’s call from Taylor.
Maybe it’s because I put my all into the presentation yesterday yet felt criticized when I had to rescue my daughter.
Maybe it’s because sometimes your best just doesn’t seem good enough.
