Chapter Three
“Oh, a cookie bouquet. Isn’t that cute?”
My mom looks down at the recently delivered confection of chocolate chip and sugar and shortbread.
It came with a note.
Apologies.
Nothing more. The man knows how to keep it brief. Anyway, I decided I can ignore him and mostly deal with Jeremiah—who I’ve come to adore in a short time. He sat with us two nights ago and we watched what he called his greatest hits. Four episodes that let me know that Reid has some deeply minimalist tendencies, and Jeremiah likes to make things pretty.
The houses they design are actually nice. They do a good job of marrying form and function, and it seems like they help a lot of people love their homes. The truth is I’ll mostly work with them on camera. It’s not like they’ll be standing over me watching me restore the hardwoods and making the original marble in the foyer shine.
So I’m cautiously optimistic. At least I was until my mom showed up this morning. I wish she showed up alone.
“Are you dating someone? You know when I dated I tended to send flowers.”
My cousin Paul. Paul is my father’s brother’s son. “Cookies might send the wrong message.”
I hate Paul. By “send the wrong message”
what he means is they could make it sound like the man who sent them to me thinks it’s okay for me to get fat. He’s always on his poor wife to stay in shape. I’ve seen her at family functions while she’s pregnant telling everyone she’s on a diet because she doesn’t want to gain too much baby weight or she might not get another baby.
I was actually quite close to Uncle Alan when he was alive. I sometimes preferred him to my father. My cousin, not so much. “He’s a guy from work.”
Paul’s brows raise. “You’re dating someone from work? Seriously? Who? Is it the new guy?”
My mom gasps. “You’re dating? That is exciting. Do I know him?”
I need to shut this down. If I thought Ivy siccing Emma on me was bad, this would be so much worse. And I never heard why Emma thinks Reid and I might be compatible. We were interrupted by Jeremiah and didn’t get back around to the subject. It’s been bugging me all morning, but I have things to do. “I’m not dating. I didn’t mean from the construction crew. I meant from my side job.”
“Oh, from the fancy project of yours,”
Paul says with a sneer. “You’re going to be a TV star.”
My new project is something of a controversy at my main job. I have my group of supporters. Paul is not one of them. “I wouldn’t say that. I’m helping a friend, and it could help the company.”
His eyes roll. “You doing fancy shit with moldy old homes isn’t going to bring in any clients. We don’t do single-family homes, and we’re not going to any time soon.”
I have to agree with him there. We need big jobs for the foreseeable future. My father left me with fifty-five percent of the family company and all of its IRS debt. Dad was great at construction, but Uncle Alan handled the money. When he got cancer, my dad didn’t pay much attention to anything but making his payroll and getting new jobs. He let things like taxes slide away. Mom wasn’t much help. When they asked her to take over for Alan, she shook her head and said she was just a housewife and wouldn’t have any idea what to do in an office.
She’s still in a house, but she’s not a wife anymore since Dad passed. So she moves around helping with everyone else’s kids and making comments about how she’ll never have grandkids of her own. Always the babysitter but never the nana is her catch phrase. I’ve thought of getting her a T-shirt.
“Is there a reason you’re here, Paul?”
I don’t waste time on my cousin. He’s bitter and angry, and he has reason to be neither from what I can tell. He’s married to his high school sweetheart. They have two adorable kids, and my uncle left them a paid off condo in Little Italy.
He still complains constantly.
My mom sets her purse on the bar and turns my way, her expression going concerned. Which has me concerned. I’ve been hoping this was a friendly visit. “Paul is worried that the company is suffering because you’re changing things too quickly.”
It takes everything I have to not roll my eyes. “I’ve been in charge of the company for years. I assure you we’re not changing too fast. Some of the men don’t appreciate that I’ve been hiring women on the crews. They complain to Paul.”
“Of course they do. Having women on the crew means men have to do more work,”
Paul replies.
I sigh. “I haven’t hired a single woman who can’t lift what she needs to. Don’t come at me with the heavy stuff. We have machines to do that, and the men use them all the time.”
“I don’t like working with them. They distract the men.”
Paul’s arms cross over his chest.
My mom sighs. “You know how men are, dear.”
I do, and most of them don’t blink an eye. The women are their coworkers, and they all get along. However, there is a certain subset of employees—mostly Paul’s friends—who think we’re still living in the fifties and women should exist to have their babies and bring them coffee. The problem is they’re all union, and firing them can be complicated.
Like my life seems right now. “I’m not getting rid of the new hires. The men will get used to them. If they don’t, then they can move on.”
Paul’s eyes narrow. “I told her this would be what you said. You only care about your freaking feminist agenda.”
“It’s not an agenda. It’s about having a good, healthy workforce. Those women you don’t like are more productive than the guys. They’re better at following safety regulations, and I don’t have to worry about them horsing around and wrecking twenty thousand dollars’ worth of tile.”
True story. It happened on one of Paul’s sites. They decided to play forklift chicken and the company lost.
“I told you they didn’t mean any harm,”
Paul argues.
I still ended up paying for it, but there’s no point in talking. “I’m not firing them but guess what. A couple of them are coming with me on the shoot, so you’ll have at least two months without those women around to offend you. Now do you have anything else because I need to pack.”
His eyes roll again. It’s his go-to move. “Yeah, because you’re taking off for Europe when we have five active projects.”
“They’re all going well. Is there a problem I don’t know about?”
It’s not like I haven’t been working. I haven’t even really started on the Banover Place project. I’ve been in the office or on site every day with the exception of yesterday. I’m getting antsy. I hate this feeling. The truth is I want to be alone with my cookies and packing. I’m looking forward to the royal wedding and being with my friends. Now I’m wondering if I have to give up my entire life because my father left me in charge of the family company.
Paul’s head shakes. “Well, if you don’t think we have problems, who am I to change your mind? You know things can look fine on the outside and be rotten inside. Just remember we vote on another CEO in a couple of months. Maybe it won’t be you this time. Aunt Margie, I’ll see you tonight. We need to leave by six if we’re going to make the show. Maybe you can talk some sense into your daughter before it’s too late.”
He storms out, slamming the door behind him.
My mother sighs again. She somehow makes it sound whiny. “You have to learn how to handle him better, sweetheart.”
“Why do I have to handle him at all? You know I’m the boss. His boss. He works for me. I was forthright. I answered his questions and told him what was going to happen. Like Dad.”
He taught me everything I know. He and Paul’s dad.
“But you’re not your dad,”
my mom replies. “Your father was a man and you’re a woman. The world treats and sees you differently. Oh, you have no idea how often we would fight about this.”
“You didn’t fight about anything, Mom. You did whatever Dad told you to.”
I often saw her as Dad’s doormat. Our world revolved around what he wanted. She shoved down her entire personality for her marriage.
“I fought about the way he wanted to raise you. He treated you like you’re a boy but you’re not, and so you never learned how to handle the men around you,”
she says as though she’s making any kind of sense. “He filled your head with a lot of nonsense.”
“I have worked with men all of my life. I don’t have trouble dealing with most of them. If you’re telling me I need to change my personality so Paul feels more comfortable with me, then we’ll have to agree to disagree.”
“If you would only listen to him,” she says.
“About how women shouldn’t be in the workplace? You know he’s not merely talking about at the site. He doesn’t like the fact that I hired a woman accountant,”
I point out. “I overheard him complaining that women don’t have a head for numbers. Should I placate him by firing all the women and then maybe firing myself and finding a good man and settling down?”
“You don’t have to be so harsh. You don’t have to make it sound like a terrible thing to do. Like my life was a waste.”
“I didn’t say that. Not even once. But you’ve been disappointed in me since the day I took over this company. What do you think Dad spent years training me for? I’m exactly where he wanted me to be.”
I step back, not saying what I’m really thinking in the moment. That there are days I wish I wasn’t. That I didn’t have this responsibility on me. My father died young, his illness taking us by complete surprise. He hadn’t prepared more than a cursory will leaving all the money and the house to Mom and his stock and place in the company to me. At the time I had fifty-five percent. I had to sell some to cover the enormous tax bill since it was that or let the company that employed my whole family go under. Now I’m down to a still major shareholder share, but if my cousins decide to back Paul, they can take my job.
Would that be such a terrible thing?
Yes, because Paul will run the company into the ground. The few times I’ve sent Paul to deal with clients, I’ve had to clean up the fires he lights with his arrogance and attitude. I’ll never forget my uncle holding my hand on his deathbed, begging me to take care of things for his grandkids because his son wasn’t capable of doing it.
“Are you?”
She asks the question with a hint of challenge. “You know I haven’t told you this because I wanted to spare your feelings, but maybe it’s what you need to find a way to readjust your attitude. Your father never meant for you to take over the company. He knew Paul would struggle so you were his best bet, but he always meant for your husband to be the one to head Ross Construction.”
The anger that flares inside me is only matched with the hurt. I know I’ve disappointed my mother all of my life. From the way I dress to the men I date, she finds fault in all of them. I can’t please her but she could have left me with this one thing. “Well, then it wouldn’t be Ross Construction, would it? Since I would have to be a good wife and take my husband’s name. Now if you’re through telling me what a failure I am, I have a wedding to pack for.”
She stares at me, tears filling her eyes. “I didn’t say you were a failure. You said I was. You think my whole life is meaningless because I didn’t work some job.”
This is well-worn territory. “Mom, you think everyone who wasn’t a stay-at-home mom thinks you’re worthless. That’s simply not true. Why can’t you understand that we have choices and they don’t diminish the people who make different ones?”
She wipes at her tears. “Doesn’t it bother you that your friends are getting married and you’re alone? Ivy is getting married. I still struggle to believe someone wants to marry her. How did she get picked before you did? Anika, I understand. She’s a sweet girl and so lovely. But Ivy can be rude.”
My mother always hated Ivy. I’m pretty sure she blames Ivy for ruining me since she still believes the combat boots Ivy gave me for my sixteenth birthday turned me into a radical feminist. I can’t explain to her that she did that every time she found out my dad cheated with the receptionist and she ignored it, saying at least he would come home to her.
See, I don’t say everything that hits my brain. I think I’m a fairly good person because I know what goes through my head, and it’s not pretty.
“Ivy isn’t rude. She’s assertive.”
I’m fudging here. She can be seriously rude if you screw with her lunch. She gets hangry. Heath carries around mini candy bars for just such an occasion.
When I get hangry, I have to make a sandwich. If I went to the store. I glance over at the cookies. At least I have a snack.
Gosh, I am jealous, but not for the reasons my mom would have me be. I’m jealous because Heath gets Ivy. He knows her. Luca understands Anika, and they’re working toward something beautiful. They all have these great dreams and dream them together.
I’m not even sure I like my job anymore. I know that many of the people who work for me don’t appreciate me.
But they’ll get rid of my cold, dead body before they force me out.
“She’s awkward and often unfeminine.”
“Only because you have one narrow definition of femininity.”
I’m getting irritated. She’s not usually this bad. Usually she comes over, fusses that the apartment isn’t perfect, makes some tea or coffee to go with the muffins she brings, and then tells me how all of my cousins’ kids are doing. I can listen to tales of Bobby’s T-ball game if it makes her happy, but I’m not going to do this with her. “Sometimes women don’t get the option of being sweet and unassuming. We’re not a monolith.”
“I don’t even understand you when you talk like that.”
She frowns. “I’m sorry you had to find out about your dad.”
“It wasn’t like I thought he was a great guy.”
He was complicated. I won’t use the word complex. He wasn’t. He was simple, but his relationships were complicated. Especially the one he had with me.
You’re a good one, Harper. You’re almost one of the guys.
She’s back to tears. “Well, I can see I’m not wanted here. You have a wonderful time in Europe away from your family.”
“You were invited.”
“What would I do in Europe?”
she asks as she moves to the door. “Besides, I would miss Kelly’s dance recital, and her grandmother is awful. Can you believe she’s choosing a work conference over her granddaughter’s recital?”
I know this story well. “She’s getting a lifetime achievement award for her research into cervical cancer. Janie is missing it, too, because she wants to support her mother. Dave will be there, and he can tape it.”
She pulls her fussy cardigan around her. “Well, that doesn’t make up for having a maternal figure there to watch all of her hard work. Think about what I’ve said, Harper. I know you love running your father’s company. If you don’t start listening to your board members, you’ll be out of a job. I know I’ve always advised your cousins to vote for you, but I have to think about the health of the company and quite frankly, your future.”
“And Paul will run the company into the ground within five years and then where will the family be?”
“He will not. Some things are more important,”
she insists. “You think about that while you’re with your friends. Who are starting their lives with their husbands. A thing you claim isn’t important.”
She’s out the door before I can argue that I never said that. It doesn’t matter. My mom tends to make up her own history. For the longest time after my father died, she simply followed me around and tried to “help.”
Now she’s found a new place in the family as the free babysitter, and she’s back to hounding me to give her what she wants—a model daughter who stays home and knows her place.
He didn’t want me to run the company.
He thought I would get married and my husband would run it.
I can’t help it. The words shake the foundation my life is built on. And it isn’t like that ground was solid in the first place. No, I’ve always known my father wanted a son and I was a disappointment, but at least I thought he came around to the idea that I was competent. When I felt bad that I disappointed my mother, I told myself at least my dad wanted me to work with him. He taught me. I kind of convinced myself it was his love language. My father wasn’t a good man, but I thought at least he cared about me enough to give me the one thing he did love. His company.
I sit at the bar when I should be packing, thinking about everything my mother said to me.
And wondering if there’s a place for me anywhere.