Chapter 7
It’s a week later, and I am still smarting from everything Mike said. Not that I’m thinking about him or the way his wet hair looked. I’m a big enough girl to separate the message from the messenger.
I’m in a polo and golf skirt and am furiously whisking idiotic waffle batter. Nine freakin’ holes await me and my parents after breakfast, and it is enough to make me scream and throw the bowl of chopped strawberries through the window.
“Morning, Bea,” Dad says upon entering the kitchen. “Good work on those briefs. I saw you filed them yesterday.”
I thought burying myself in work this week would prove that Mike was wrong, but it only proved he was right. I am a parent-pleasing cactus, completely stuck and becoming pricklier by the hour.
Dad helps himself to a stack of waffles I plated with powdered sugar and cut strawberries.
Why am I doing this? I hate waffles, and I definitely don’t need the extra carbs.
Mom click-clacks into the kitchen in her heels.
“Don’t you look adorable in those plaid pants,” she says, greeting my father with a kiss.
“How are you this morning, Bea?” She reaches for the second stack of waffles, this one with blueberries and maple syrup and a tablespoon of clotted cream. “Ready for nine holes?”
I shudder as Mom pours more maple syrup on her waffles. I hate the sticky, cloying smell.
I hate golf and all the prissy etiquette associated with it.
I hate law. I hate spending every last moment of my free time with my parents or hiding from my parents.
I hate that I was so buried in the coursework to become a lawyer that I survived undergrad and law school without even a single friend to show for it.
I hate that two years later I still have no friends, no life, nothing besides my cacti and fiction.
“I want to quit,” I say.
“What?” Mom says.
“I need a change.”
Mom and Dad both look at me like I’m three and I’ve fallen off my tricycle. An abundance of concern, fear, overreaction.
Mom delicately cuts into her waffles. “Why do you need a change, Bea?”
“Because I hate being a lawyer. Because I’m tired of thinking like one all day. Because the constant pressure of trying to get everything right, building watertight arguments on top of the never-ending learning curve, is too much.”
“Nonsense,” Mom says with a little laugh. “You love being a lawyer. You have a great job and a happy life.” Mom pats Dad’s arm reassuringly.
“No! I don’t have any life. I work all day. I come home and work some more. I live with my parents. I live in my sisters’ shadows. I’m a”—I will not say cactus—“a tepid sponge filtering seawater, just standing up day after day and doing nothing.”
“Tepid sponge?” Dad says around a mouthful.
“I can’t work for you anymore, Dad. People will think I’m unhirable, and they’d be right. You’re cushioning all the blows a young lawyer is supposed to take her first few years out of law school.”
“Hold up. I’m confused.” Dad shovels more cut strawberries onto his waffles. “Am I the bad guy for caring too much or too little? Because it can’t be both. Logical fallacy. Etcetera.”
“Either/or constructs are stupid,” I mumble, pouring more batter onto the hot waffle iron. I enjoy the hiss it makes. I want to hiss. When is it my turn to hiss?
“But so effective for the weak-minded.” Mom squeezes lemon over her second waffle. “I think I know what this is. You need a fella.”
Unbelievable. The next words out of her mouth are going to be babies and grandchildren. “No. I’m not dating anyone when I live with my parents like I’m still some brace-faced high school student.”
“Who is that nice boy you interviewed from Yale last week?” Mom asks Dad before she sips her fresh orange juice. “The one who was coxswain of the rowing team?”
“I’m moving out,” I shout, dumping the waffle that was going to be mine into the sink. “I’m quitting law and getting another job. Even if I have to work in Adam’s escape room!”
My parents exchange a long-suffering look.
“Bea. Can we be sensible about this?” Dad says. “You’re bored. You’re feeling overworked. You’re embarrassed that you’re still single and living at home.”
“I’m not embarrassed!” My mind flashes to Mike’s smirk in my bedroom. I’m…mortified.
“Just ready to jettison everything and everyone in your life?” Mom laughs. “That’s not smart. You don’t throw away hard work on a whim. Especially a whim that’s as silly as a little burnout and envy.”
“Envy?”
“I know it’s hard when your sister made partner so quickly.”
“Oh my gosh.”
Dad adds another waffle to his plate. “This is what we’ll do. We can move you to some slower projects. More paperwork. Fewer client consultations—”
“No! Stop telling me what I’ll do. My entire life has been about racing down a well-worn path without stopping to ask if it’s what I want. If it makes me happy. Because whether it’s what I want or if I’m happy doesn’t matter. It’s the family path, so it’s my path.”
Dad’s looking exasperated but stays quiet when Mom lays her hand on his arm. “What do you want to do, Bea?”
“I want a change. More…and less…of everything.”
“More and less?” I know Mom wants to sigh. I can hear the frustration in her voice.
“More free time. More time outside. More time at the beach.”
Dad reaches for the coffeepot. “Oh, she wants to be a hobo.”
“Less work. Less traffic. Less house. More money for…for being young and enjoying life.”
“La Jolla.” Mom says, pressing her linen napkin to her pink-peony-stained lips. “You’re describing La Jolla. Doesn’t Harry have an office in La Jolla? Bea could find a nice little condo downtown. Walk to work. Walk to the beach. Clear her head.”
“Keep an eye on Adam.”
I roll my eyes. “He’s in Pacific Beach, Dad.”
“Close enough.”
“And I’m not trading one law firm for another. I’m quitting.”
Dad drops his plate of waffles in the sink. “Is this because of some boy I don’t know about? Are you wanting to move out to shack up with him?”
“Dad!”
“Because last I checked, you can still be a lawyer even if you’re dating someone.”
“Just not after you marry him.”
Mom and Dad freeze.
“Beatrice.” Dad’s tone is angry. But maybe that’s what I am too. They’ve been dictating my life, spelling out every one of my next steps. And why? Because Mom never got to live her pantsuited courtroom dream? “Apologize.”
“For family history I didn’t write but have to atone for?”
“Young lady—”
“Old man.” Yikes, why’d that just pop out? Am I fifteen?
“Don’t you sass me. I am your father and your employer.”
“George, dear, would you get the peaches from the garage?” Mom asks Dad sweetly. After he leaves, she rounds on me. “You should have told me this earlier, honey. Now your father’s ego is on high alert.”
“I hate being a lawyer.”
“No. You hate being under your father’s wing. I understand. His overprotective streak is in rare form ever since Adam insisted law school wasn’t for him.”
“Maybe it wasn’t for me either, but I didn’t have a choice.”
“Of course you had a choice.”
“No, Mom. Disappointing my parents. Ending a family legacy. Having no time or space to figure out who I am or what my interests are. There was no choice.”
“You may be right, but you’re not being fair.
Your mind is too sharp and your talent too honed to throw it all away.
So this is what we’re going to do. You’re going to find whatever it is you want—your little condo on the beach—and you’ll stick with law but see how you like a more relaxed office.
Having more time to be young isn’t a bad thing.
A year…I think. I think you need a year to figure this out.
Also…you’re going to agree to some stipulations. ”
“No, I’m not. I’m a grown woman. You don’t get to dictate my life choices anymore.
I’m never going to be as good as Portia or Julie.
I’m not going to make partner before thirty.
I’m not going to juggle babies and courtrooms. I’m not them.
I’m not even sure who I am.” Not that Mom hears that last part.
“Is that what you think? Is that what this is about?”
“I made a mistake. I should have spent my youth exploring and learning about myself. Instead, I kept my nose down. I worked hard, pushed myself to clear the hurdles because I thought happiness was at the end of the law school race. But it’s not. I hate being a lawyer. I hate working for Dad.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know! I’ve asked myself this for months, and I don’t know.
All I know is that I don’t want to go back to school.
I’ve been there, done that, and look what it got me.
” Plus, it would mean trading all my fiction in for assigned reading.
Assignments would suck the joy right out of everything.
I’m not willing to risk the one thing I love on a crapshoot that somehow magically retracing my college steps will result in happiness.
“I’m not going to burn myself out again for something I don’t care about. ”
“And you blame us. Me especially. The law school dropout and hypocrite. I should have seen this coming.”
“Yes. No! I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped.
Work is stressful, and…” And I can’t remember the last time I was able to have a bit of fun.
Not true—flirting with Mike was fun…until he hit too close to the truth.
“And I’m a ball of contradictions.” I’m lonely, but I’m complaining of being stifled by my parents. I’m exhausted but also restless.
“You need an adventure… It makes perfect sense, Bea. I’ll have your father text Harry after dinner.
I’m sure we can get you settled in whatever it is he does over there, international law, by week’s end.
The pay might not be as good, but I’m sure we can figure something out if those La Jolla condos are out of your budget. ”
I know a trap when I see one. “You’re not listening. I am done being a lawyer. I hate it.”
“You might think differently when you see the going rate for all those charming condos.”
“I’m working my—”
“Language.”
“—tail off. I’m working harder than any other associate, but my success is credited to being the daughter of one of the partners. That’s not fair. I don’t even get recognition for the work I’m doing. Just accusations of nepotism.”
“From whom?” Dad walks in with the box of peaches.
“All of them! They’re lawyers, Dad.” I am vibrating, shimmering with the weight of my realization. I have a choice, and I’m making it with or without my parents’ permission. “I’m quitting law.”
“You can’t quit. I paid for your law school!” Dad yells.
“That was your choice, not mine.”
“Like heck it was!”
“Language,” Mom mutters. Then to me, she asks, “What are you going to do?”
“I…” My throat feels tighter, and the air has suddenly gotten a lot thinner.
I don’t know. I’ve never had the space to do or be anything apart from what Mr. and Mrs. George McKinney have dictated.
Star pupil, law student, grunt at McKinney, Rosenberg, and Wallace trying to make junior partner.
The thought of having the space and freedom to authentically be me is panic-inducing, chase two Lexapros with a cup of peppermint tea, and curl up with Shakespeare, terrifying.
But it’s also freeing. I’m scared witless of what comes next, but I also, for the first time since ever, feel weightless.
“She doesn’t know,” Dad accuses. “She’s throwing everything away without even a plan.”
“George, please. We raised Bea better than that.”
I smile. “I’m going to vibe.”
“Vibe?”
“Exactly. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some packing to do.”