“Are you sure this weekend is okay?” I say, knowing that weekends are her busiest times. “Because Ellen said she could take her….”
“It’s totally okay,” Mom says. “Now. Go have fun with your husband.”
“Okay,” I say, kissing my daughter goodbye, fighting a wave of distinct sadness and separation anxiety, and trying not to imagine a life of every-other-weekend goodbyes.
—
ONCE NOLAN AND I get out of Atlanta traffic, the drive to Tennessee becomes pleasant and easy. Few cars on the highway, bright blue skies. It doesn’t yet feel like fall, the trees still green and lush, but the high heat has finally passed and I’m wearing a light sweater for the first time this season. Nolan’s mood is always pretty good—but it’s downright chipper today, as he whistles, chats, and cranks the volume on his quirky, high-energy “road trip” playlist. As he belts out the lyrics to Katrina and the Waves’ “Walking on Sunshine” and then Wham!’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” it’s hard not to feel happy.
Our plan is to drive the whole way and arrive hungry, the Blackberry cuisine rivaling the mountain vistas, but two hours into the trip, we break down and stop at Cracker Barrel—which Nolan unabashedly loves as much for the food as for the peg game and gift shop.
I start to order a salad with grilled chicken but at the last second copy Nolan’s order of dumplings—essentially a big bowl of starch and empty calories. We play the peg game, taking turns until Nolan steals a second board from a nearby table and we begin frantic parallel play. My best is a pathetic four pegs remaining—while he reaches three, then two, looking jubilant.
“We should do this more often,” he says after our food arrives.
I butter an already buttery biscuit and murmur my agreement.
“You need to get away from that firm,” he says.
“You mean quit?” I ask, feeling a hopeful surge.
He laughs and says, “No, I meant more vacations…weekend getaways…but you could quit. If you want.”
I shake my head. “No. We need the money,” I say, taking a small bite of my biscuit.
“No, we really don’t,” Nolan says. “What part of ‘successful family business’ don’t you get?”
“The part that feels dirty,” I say with a smile although I’m only slightly kidding.
He smiles back but looks a little offended. “Dirty? What the heck does that mean? You act like it’s mafia money or something.”
“Okay. Strike ‘dirty,’?” I say. “It’s just that sometimes…I wish we had made our own way, Nolan. Your money comes with strings.”
“Our money,” he says. He stirs sugar into his tea, as I wonder what I always do—why doesn’t he just order it sweetened? “And there really are no strings. I like working with my dad.”
I think of the occasional skirmishes he gets into with his father, and start to contradict him, but then decide, for the most part, I’m being unfair. I’ve been very lucky in the in-law department.
“I mean, look at Ellen and Andy,” Nolan says. “You think they could afford that house of theirs, plus their New York City apartment, on his salary and her part-time photography work?”
“Probably not,” I say, knowing from my mother what they paid for their house. Plus another half million, at least, for their renovation. And Nolan is right—Ellen seems to have no problem with it. Her mother-in-law sometimes annoys her, but she mostly just adores the Grahams, thrilled to be part of their clan. Maybe that’s the difference, I think, the dumplings suddenly looking like they’ve been marinated in Elmer’s glue.
“And we live in your old house that we paid for ourselves,” Nolan continues, “which is perfectly nice, but far from…lavish.”
I nod, thinking that he is the one who always insists that we can never move, never break that tie to Daniel. After several years of following my mother’s lead and treating his room like a museum, we finally packed away most of his personal stuff and got a new queen-size bed to replace Daniel’s twin. Ostensibly, it is now set up for guests, but we seldom use it that way and often still refer to it as “Daniel’s room.”
“So anyway…the point is…you don’t have to practice law.”
“I know,” I say, conceding this much.
“You just seem so miserable there….What’s the point in that?”
I nod, thinking this is the perfect opening to begin a serious discussion, but also wondering if maybe what I’m doing isn’t a bigger problem than who I’m with. After all, if you’re not happy with your own life, can you really be happy sharing it with another? It sounds like something Amy would say. In fact, I think she has said it. “You’re right,” I say. “I’m not happy.”
It feels like a huge first step, a breakthrough of sorts.