Chapter 1 #2
“I know, but I’m embarrassed. I’ve shown this sign of weakness, hypersensitivity…
” Drew had always been successful. It came naturally for him.
If he found out, he would probably ask me how this episode was going to negatively impact my success at the firm and then try to help me come up with ways to mitigate it. I couldn’t take that right now.
“I don’t agree with that at all,” Mom insisted. “Did you ever miss a client deadline or an internal deadline?”
“No.”
“So, it sounds to me like the feedback was completely unwarranted and this partner is a jerk.”
“I don’t get to feel like he’s a jerk, Mom. He’s head of the group. My only chance of making partner is if he thinks I deserve it.”
My mother didn’t speak for a moment.
“I know that’s your goal, honey, and I support you. I’m just frustrated on your behalf that it seems like they keep moving the goalposts. You work so hard…”
My mom paused but my throat was too tight to fill the silence. My head hurt, and the comedown from the intense distress of earlier had left me wrung out. Still, the anxiety over what this lapse might cost me hummed in my fingertips.
“I’m really proud of you, Val,” she added finally. “Please eat something and get some sleep tonight? Please tell me you don’t have to do more work.”
“A few emails and then I’ll get in bed. Promise.”
“Okay. I’m bringing you some groceries this weekend when we visit, too. No objections,” she added before we hung up.
Crap. I’d completely forgotten they were visiting me this weekend for my dad’s birthday. But we probably wouldn’t get the contract back from the counterparty until Sunday or Monday at the earliest, so I should have time to hang out with my parents while they’re here.
As I watched the little tray of frozen mac and cheese spinning in my microwave, I mulled over my mom’s choice of words: “I know that’s your goal.” Wasn’t making partner what she and Dad wanted for me, too?
My parents had always encouraged Drew and me to work hard, and to go to schools and go into fields where we’d have financial security. It wasn’t as easy for them, they’d say.
“I don’t think anyone in high school expected me to succeed,” my dad had told us over dinner one Sunday when Drew and I were still in grade school.
“No one was more surprised than your mother when I came home in my Navy uniform, flight-school bound… Well, except for maybe your grandmother.” He chuckled, but pride shone clear in his blue eyes.
“I wasn’t that surprised,” Mom had insisted.
“We’ve done well for ourselves as a team.
” He tapped her thigh and scanned the kitchen of the newer, nicer house we’d moved into on the other side of town the year prior.
“And the sky’s the limit for you two.” He pointed his raised fork at Drew and me in turn.
“Got way more opportunities than I had, and you’re much smarter than me, too.
Got your mother’s brains to thank for that. ”
My dad’s stories always inspired me, stoking flames of motivation in my belly.
They all had the same refrain: prioritize striving and achieving and work tirelessly toward success and financial security for you and your family.
So, for my whole life, that was the objective: work hard, excel in school, get a prestigious, lucrative job, succeed at it, and attain even more than my parents had out of respect for their hard work and the opportunities we had that they didn’t.
All of that had been going pretty well for me before today.
After one scorching bite of macaroni, my phone buzzed on my coffee table. I groaned and answered.
“Mom told me what happened.” Drew’s confident, slightly accusatory voice emanated from my phone speaker. “Why’d you tell her not to tell me?”
“I’m embarrassed, and I don’t know, Drew, I didn’t think you’d understand.
You’ve never fainted at work. And you’re not, like, the most sympathetic person.
” I wasn’t sure how slinging insults at my brother was supposed to make me feel better.
It didn’t. I braced myself for his defense, for the conversation to devolve into a spat like it almost always did with us.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
My jaw fell down to my chest. Was he really just apologizing and letting that comment go?
“Okay,” I said quietly, frozen in shock.
“But in any event, fuck him.”
“What?”
“Fuck him. The partner that criticized you. He sounds like a sexist, small-dick asshole who needed to knock his all-star female associate down a peg to make himself feel important.”
I couldn’t help the smile that tugged on my lips. Not that Drew could see it.
“Drew,” I said, low and admonishing.
“What? You know I’m right.”
I sighed in defeat.
Fun fact: Drew was always right.
As early as elementary school, I’d noticed how much easier school subjects came to Drew than they did to me.
He’d spend twenty minutes studying and come home with perfect scores on all his exams. Based on his standardized test scores, he was placed into all the accelerated programs. “Drew is so smart,” everyone would say to him, to my parents.
“You must be so proud.” They used words like ‘advanced,’ ‘gifted,’ and ‘genius.’
I’m smart, too! my little eight-year-old self wanted to say.
But to get the same results, I had to toil at our kitchen table for hours, growing frustrated when things didn’t click.
Sometimes my mom would ask Drew to help me.
He’d sit next to me, solve the homework question quicker than I could read it, and then say something like, “See? It’s easy.
” When I didn’t get the hang of it after a few tries, he’d grow frustrated with me, too.
“I don’t understand, Val. How do you not get this?
” he’d ask me. We’d fight. Sometimes I’d cry.
I wanted to be like Drew. I wanted to be told I was smart and gifted.
But seeing firsthand how much easier it all was for him, feeling his judgment and condescension, made me feel stupid.
Eventually, Mom stopped asking Drew to help me and would sit with me at the table herself. All the better, I thought at the time. She was kinder and more patient than an eleven-year-old boy. And I wanted to do it without his help, anyway.
“You still there?”
“Yeah,” I muttered. I appreciated him taking my side, but it was still hard for me to talk to him about things like this.
“Mom said he’s the head of your group so you have to, like, play the game and pretend to roll with it, but that doesn’t change the truth.
I know how these firms work, how they leverage the associate workforce to the hilt so the partners can take on several deals at once and maximize profits.
He’d be nowhere without you. What an unbelievable prick.
” Drew’s vitriol radiated through the phone.
“Thanks, Drew.” His loyalty was actually touching. Sometimes he wielded his blunt, ruthless tongue for good, I supposed.
“Anytime. You’re okay though?”
“Yeah, I’ll be okay. Sending a couple emails and taking the rest of tonight off.”
“Good.”
Once my emails were sent, I was as exhausted as I had ever been, but I still couldn’t fall asleep.
The chorus of car horns and voices from twenty stories below didn’t faze me.
It was the self-doubt swirling in my mind that kept me up.
I stared at the ceiling as my subconscious poked and prodded at my resolve, asking—for what felt like the tenth time this month—if this success I was striving for was worth everything I’d given up to attain it.