Chapter 6
“Why do you think it is that you’ve put more effort into plotting against your neighbor than in making a plan for how to reach out to a person you have romantic interest in?”
I look up at the clock to try and avoid Ari’s words. We still have five minutes left in our session, and I’m not sure which situation I’m hoping for more—if it ends quickly, then that means I’ll have to face Friday night Shabbat dinner at my parents’ sooner. But if it drags on, then I might have to actually deal with more of my own crap.
Unfortunately for me, I don’t get to decide the pace of time, so I’m stuck with everything.
“Can’t I do both?” I finally ask.
“You could, yes.” She leaves the rest of the sentence— but you’re not —unsaid.
I pick at my fingernails so I still don’t have to look at Ari. “I haven’t found a natural way to tell him I’m going to London.” I know it’s a weak excuse, but it’s kind of the truth. “It’s sort of a hard thing to slip into a conversation that’s usually about an advice column.”
“Let’s set a goal, all right?” she steers, ignoring my protestations completely. She always does this when she knows I’m waffling. I’m a task-oriented person, and I hate leaving a dangling thread. If she turns this into an assignment, she knows I’ll do it. I’m surprised she didn’t pull this tactic in the last few weeks, but maybe she felt I needed a minute to let the idea settle. After all, with J, it’s an addition, not just an obligation. Turning J into a real person when my life is already pretty great and stable is a potential complication that a part of me feels I don’t need.
Yet what Ari’s saying is small enough that it doesn’t feel like it’s going to upend anything.
“Okay . . . ,” I finally say, cautiously.
“Next Tuesday, when you get your edits back, mention your trip. You can also hedge by asking for his advice about where to go when you’re in town, and then just say, ‘Oh, and wouldn’t it be nice to grab a drink too!’ That way you mitigate the fear of rejection for yourself.”
“Therapist and dating coach now, huh?” I joke, avoiding again.
Ari leans forward in her chair and clasps her hands together. “It’s understandable that this is making you nervous. You’re used to your role as the rooted center, and taking a chance on someone is very much outside your comfort zone. But just because you exist among bigger risk-takers doesn’t mean you can’t take smaller risks for yourself too.”
I know this is pointed not just at J but at all parts of my life. Most of our session today, before this conversation, has actually focused on my family. At Ari’s insistence last week, I finally got my brother to stop evading my calls, and he agreed to come to family dinner tonight. I need to have an unpleasant conversation with my parents, and he owes me enough to be there for it. I’ve taken the lead on corralling our parents most of our life, but I’m tired of doing it alone. Ari helped me articulate that, and now she’s prepped me for what I need to do this evening.
Thank god for Ari and her inability to not share her opinion, because I always need it. And today I apparently need it across all dimensions, because she’s done double duty with my family and J.
“All right,” I say quietly. “I’ll mention it on Tuesday when I get back his edits.”
“You owe it to yourself.”
She sits back and watches me, as though by never letting her eyes drift off me, she’s making a point that I’ve been avoiding looking at her.
“I’m scared to lose this one easy, happy thing I have,” I admit.
“I know,” she says kindly. “But having something halfway also isn’t fulfilling. So don’t keep yourself in a holding pattern.”
With Ari’s advice rumbling below the surface, I rush from my session back to my apartment to grab George, and then I hop onto the bus heading east to my parents’ apartment. They’re lucky they bought their space thirty years ago, when everything downtown was cheaper. Although, in some ways, that dumb luck is part of why they keep acting the way they do.
I should be happy that they seem to scrape by without consequences, but it’s always one step from the edge. They’re like the Cat in the Hat, bumbling around having fun trying to balance insane things, and I’m that fish in the bowl just waiting to be dropped.
I enter their apartment with a knock and a shout hello. The smell of delivery Chinese food is wafting my way and relaxes my hackles. At least there’s one advantage to our untraditional Friday night Shabbat dinner.
“Oh, honey, hi!” my mom shouts from the kitchen.
I walk over and give her a hug, setting down the black-and-white cookies I made last night. My mom squeals—whether at the cookies or my presence, we’ll never know—and she envelops me, her warm, zaftig figure pressed against me for longer than necessary, her wild, curly hair tickling my nose.
This is the part that makes my relationship with my parents so hard. They’re loving. All their intentions are good. So it makes my frustration with the rest of their behavior tinged with guilt.
“Hi, Mom,” I murmur, gently extricating myself from the squeeze. “Food is already here, I see?”
“Your dad was worried they’d take a long time with the duck.”
“Even though they never do.”
“Well, there was that one time ...”
“When he didn’t even order duck,” I remind her.
“Well, it’s here now.” She waves the entire conversation off.
She grabs some plates and takes them to the table. I follow with cutlery, and we lay everything out together, busying our hands.
At our presence, my parents’ two large dogs start circling us with excitement. “Hey, Waldos,” I say, reaching down to give both pit bull mixes a pat. One is tan and black while the other is a blueish gray, but yes, both are named Waldo. My parents thought it was easier because “then they both feel loved whenever we call for them.” I think it’s more that they never get sick of saying “Where’s Waldo?” and then cracking themselves up, as though it’s a joke they’ve never said before.
George trots away the minute the Waldos arrive, and I don’t really blame him. He can hold his own, but they’re bumbling, and it’s not worth it for him to stay near their increasingly speedy tails.
“Whatcha reading lately?” my mom asks. This is our safest subject. I got my love of reading from her, and even while other topics remain fraught, we can always find common ground with books.
“I’m reading this series about a female detective after World War One. There’s like fifteen books, so it’s been nice to just keep reading.”
“Are you sure it isn’t World War Two?” she asks, abandoning table setting and now on the floor with one of the Waldos.
“Nope,” I say, trying to not let her airiness irk me this soon after arrival. “I’ve read four books already, so I’m pretty sure when it’s set.”
“Huh,” she says, standing up. “I must be thinking of something else. How’s the endings?”
She winks at me, and I hate when she does this playful dismissal of my reading habits. Yes, I do skim the last chapter of a book before reading it. I don’t like the stress of not knowing. But ever since she found out a few years ago, she’s loved to tease me about it, despite my asking her about twenty times to stop.
“They’re good,” I reply. I want to say, once again, that the journey is still there even if you know it turns out okay. But I also don’t want to get into this again with her. “What are you reading?” I ask, switching gears onto her, a surefire tactic to change the subject.
“Oh my goodness .” Her eyes light up as though I’ve just asked her the most exciting question on earth. “I discovered this new writer, and I think you’re going to love her. Her name is Glennon Doyle.”
“Is the book ... Untamed ?” I ask, trying to keep my voice flat.
“Yes!” she says. I don’t need to mention that that book has sold millions of copies. “It’s very powerful. Important stuff about breaking free of society’s expectations.”
I look around this kooky room, stuffed from floor to ceiling with bookshelves and bric-a-brac, walls covered in nude abstract paintings, deflated beanbags lining the floor, and a chandelier made of clock sculptures. No one could be confused about whether my mother was living a life constrained to society’s expectations.
“I’ll have to give it a look,” I say, hoping that will save me from a lecture about embracing my true self or whatever else is probably coming to me.
“You really should. It’s very powerful,” she repeats as she wanders away. I sigh and go grab the glassware to finish the table. “Nathan!” I hear her shout at my dad from another room. “Where’s the treats for the Waldos?”
“Tina? Did I hear Nora’s here?”
He’s shouting from the bathroom, and lord knows why they couldn’t have this conversation once he finishes.
“Yeah, she just got here!” she shouts back. “But the treats?”
“Oh, I think I put them on the bookshelf.”
“Good thinking!” she says, inexplicably. Good thinking?
I never know whether to believe that my parents were made for each other or that two such similarly harebrained people never should’ve been allowed to partner up. I know I’m lucky to have parents who still love each other (and perhaps show that a little more openly than I need sometimes). But I also remain shocked that they haven’t imploded on themselves at this point.
But maybe that’s just because we’ve always been so different. I’ve always taken life seriously and gravitated toward others who do too. I preferred puzzles to make-believe as a kid. My parents loved me for who I was, but I’m not sure any of us ever truly understood each other, even from a young age.
My dad comes out of the bathroom and gives me a suffocating squeeze. He’s a brawny man, tall and totally bald and always, no matter the weather, wearing a flannel shirt. I sometimes think he doesn’t realize his own strength when he hugs so tight.
“You look too skinny,” he says, eyeing me up and down.
“We don’t say things like that to people anymore,” I point out.
“You therapists and your sensitive language,” he laughs, and I resist the urge to tell him that it’s not just therapists who want people to stop commenting on women’s bodies. But again, intentions. So I let it go. “Do you know if your mom got the duck?” he asks, wandering off to the kitchen.
“Yeah,” I say, hoping that my assumption is true.
I hear the door open, and turn around to see my brother, Ike, stride in. Yes, my mother’s name is Tina, and yes, she named her son Ike. She oscillates between saying she named him that to be “funny and subversive” while simultaneously claiming that she “just liked the name, who would’ve known.” So that is what it is.
“I’m here,” he says, heading straight to the bar and pouring himself a bourbon. He gives me a pointed look, and I try to give him my most understanding smile back.
Ike and I both eschewed our parents’ creative career paths—I went into therapy and Ike became an accountant—so I like to think that at some point soon we’ll be on equal footing as responsible adults. But no matter how much time goes by, we never seem to shed the little brother / big sister dynamic.
He’s five years younger, and for the majority of our childhood, I was the surrogate parent, the de facto babysitter. Both my parents worked in advertising before retiring—my mom as an art director and my dad as a graphic designer—so they always made work excuses for why they needed to go to parties or shows or wherever. They were generally present and loving parents, but if I didn’t want a dinner thrown together from leftovers of wilted lettuce and stale taco shells, it was on me to make it happen. It all fell to me to make normalcy happen for Ike. My pencil sharpener did double duty as I marked up two sets of homework; I had to drag my mom into a kid-clothing store when Ike’s pants were looking too short; I held out my arms as his little feet slapped against the slippery pool deck to make sure he didn’t fall in prematurely while he attempted cannonballs without real adult supervision.
So now, even though we’re both fully fledged grown-ups, there’s still this expectation from all three of them that I’m handling things. The residual emotional exhaustion of that is something I’ve never quite been able to shake.
And Ike doesn’t see it, because he’s never had to. When I nudge him toward coresponsibility, he sits back and lets me take the lead. Those are our entrenched roles, and at this point it doesn’t seem like it’ll ever change.
He’s been feigning busyness for weeks to get out of having this conversation. And because he’s him and I’m me, it worked for a while. I completely understand his urge to take a break from our parents. But I couldn’t hold off any longer.
My parents come in and coo over Ike, like he’s a long-lost baby bird. They practically pinch his cheeks, they’re so excited to see him. He hugs them both and acts as though his absence was entirely obligatory, and they eat up the excuses. It’s sweet if you ignore that it’s masking his suffocation and avoidance.
“Well, the food’s hot, Fischers,” my dad says to everyone, as though we’re some kind of unit. “So let’s sit and eat.” He grabs the take-out bags from the counter and spreads them out on the table. It’s been long enough that I’d probably describe the contents as lukewarm rather than hot, but I know it’ll all taste good.
We go along for a while in a sea of simplicity, everyone talking over everyone else so no one has to actually engage. This beef and broccoli is always so good. Did you see the Rangers score? What summer travel do you have coming up? Ike is always a superior buffer. They lower their guard around me, for whatever reason, but with Ike they like to behave a little better. It’s almost as though they know he can distance himself when he wants to in a way I never could (or would).
I wish I could be annoyed at him for it, but mostly I’m simply jealous of his ability to set better boundaries and the positive results that yields for him. I’m fighting the low-key buzz of sensory overload, and he’s just eating some duck.
The Waldos sit under the table, hoping for whatever scraps will inevitably fall from my mother’s clumsy fork. George has been napping, elevated on a beanbag chair, for the entire evening, deliberately safeguarding himself from potential interlopers. As always, I wish I could be more like George.
But when it’s clear dinner is over, I know I have to bring up the topic I’m dreading.
“I had my annual chat with my financial adviser,” I start. I can see Ike tense a bit, but thankfully my parents don’t clock it. They’re oblivious. Which I guess is why we have this problem in the first place. “And as you know, my financial adviser also does your planning as well,” I say, hoping that they might start to realize this conversation is going to be about them.
“Right,” my mom says, “that’s so nice of her.”
She smiles at me, and I want to roll my eyes but I don’t. It’s not nice that my financial adviser does it. I pay my financial adviser to do it, because ever since my parents retired early for no discernible reason, I’ve been justifiably worried about their finances. And my parents, who have no sense of propriety or embarrassment—which I suppose for this at least is good—thought it was a great idea at the time.
“Right,” I repeat, taking a deep breath. “So she’s concerned. Again.”
At that, my parents look at each other. I wish the look was of the uh-oh variety, but I can tell what’s passing between them. It’s their oh, Nora, always worrying little commiseration. That annoys me enough to barrel ahead.
“As you know,” I repeat, “she tracks your spending and what you have in savings. She’s been a little concerned generally since you retired, as she’s mentioned, but she wanted to talk to me on this particular call specifically about a few large purchases you recently made. She said you made some rash stock market investments that immediately tanked and that you also spent ten thousand dollars on something from a place called PetWorld?”
At that I see the light bulbs finally light up. “My tank!” my mother exclaims happily. I shoot her a confused look, but I don’t have time to ask before my dad starts talking.
“I admit the stock thing was a little foolish,” he says. “I’ve been enjoying talking to some folks on this website—it’s called Reddit, and it’s really wonderful.” I can see my brother roll his eyes from the other side of the table, and I have to look away so I don’t laugh. “I started going on there because your mother and I got very into that show Outlander , and I wanted some people to talk to about it. Did you know there’s communities to talk about just about anything? I’m now in subreddits on ancestry, and sous videing and the East Village, and of course my Outlander friends. Anyway, I somehow got into a group looking at stock recommendations, and I thought they knew what they were talking about, the way people seem to know everything about Outlander .”
I try to nod along in the hopes that if I say nothing, this wild yet entirely predictable story (which is roughly what I imagined it would be when my adviser said a large chunk of money was lost in the span of a few days on E*Trade ) will end. And true to form, when I say nothing, he doesn’t continue. But then my mom butts in.
“You do have to come see the fish tank, though,” she says, making me relieved that at least the word “tank” refers to a fish tank and not some inexplicable weaponry, because I wouldn’t put anything past her. “I just felt like our room needed more movement, and Shelley said she and Dave got a fish tank and it was actually very sexy and soothing.”
Ike puts his head in his hands. I wonder if it’s frustration or the need to never hear his mother refer to anything as “sexy and soothing” again.
“It’s four hundred gallons!” my mom continues gleefully, as though the size is the best part.
“Okay, well, respectfully,” I say, wishing that chastising your parents about money could ever stay in the realm of respectfulness, “you guys don’t have the funds to make large purchases like that and stay financially afloat for the duration of your lives.”
“No one knows how long they’re going to live, honey,” my mom points out, as though I’m a toddler learning about death for the first time.
“Of course not,” I reply, taking a deep breath and trying to not give in to my greater impulse to flee the room. “But that’s why a financial adviser is helpful. They’re there to make assessments about what you have and how to plan.”
“I know that’s a comfort to you,” my mom says, as though this is all a fantasy and I’ve got some crystals and dream catchers to help me divine the future.
“She recommends,” I plow on, ignoring the commentary, “that at this point you put the majority of your money into an annuity. I already have you in long-term care insurance, which is automatically withdrawn from your account, so that covers you if anything catastrophic happens. But the annuity would cover that as well as give you a monthly income to live on.”
“Income is good!” my dad says, and I can tell he has no idea what I’m talking about.
“So we just give them our money and they give it back to us?” my mom questions. At least someone is listening.
“Yes, it’s a way to have a guaranteed income for your lifetime. That way you can’t spend it all. The way you’re sort of doing ... now.”
Everyone is silent for a moment. I look over at my brother and see he’s carefully looking through everyone so he doesn’t have to make eye contact with anyone. He’s such a coward when it comes to anything like this. He and I agreed that we needed to convince our parents to do something to keep them more financially stable. They’ve never been in debt, so obviously they’ve had some sense of what’s in the bank. I’m hoping if there’s a limit, they might actually adhere to it.
“How much of a dent could a fish tank really make?” my mother says, waving everything away the way she does when she wants to minimize.
“Mom, you spent ten thousand dollars on a four-hundred-gallon fish tank. That’s absurd, even for you,” my brother finally says. “In your financial bracket, with your low expenses and your mortgage paid off, you should be spending that amount over two months, not one day in a pet store.”
I knew the accountant in him would be bursting to speak eventually, even if he always takes too long to join in. But I wish it didn’t have to come out so harshly. I guess I wanted backup, though, and beggars can’t be choosers.
“I’ll do whatever you want, Nora,” my mother says, ignoring Ike and turning to me. Maybe the bad-cop thing is good for me, because if she can feel smug for giving Ike the cold shoulder, then perhaps I can get her to agree with this more quickly. “You always take care of everything, and I’m so happy to let you.”
She leans over and touches my cheek. I know she meant her words as a compliment, yet I can’t help but have them land with a thud in the pit of my stomach. She has no idea how much extra time this setup is going to add to my life, even if she wants to maintain an unwarranted belief that this is all no big deal. Annoyance creeps and winds its way around my center, but I have to push the feeling aside. I need to close this out.
“Okay, great, so I’ll bring the paperwork to dinner next week,” I mention, shrugging off any other commentary I might want to inject.
“Lovely!” my mom says. She’s clearly ready to move on, petting one of the Waldos under the table, and he’s now begging for scraps and not-so-discreetly getting them from her. “Who’s up for pie? I bought it with my own hands!”
My dad snorts at her terrible and overused joke, and my mom hops up to go grab dessert. I’m relieved the conversation is over, even if the topic isn’t really resolved. I don’t want to be the person haranguing my parents over fish tanks and online-forum idiocy. But I’m not sure what the other option is. At least getting their finances under control will take them off my back a little bit. This is what kids do for their parents.
I’m going to keep telling myself that anyway. And eat a piece of pie while I’m at it.