She pursed her lips. “We invited them because they’re our friends. You’ve known them a long time. Don’t you remember how much you loved it when Diana used to babysit for you? Anyway, it’s a wonderful organization.”
Charities and nonprofits sought out my mother for many reasons. My father’s firm was a generous and reliable donor; she was a lawyer herself and could perform certain legal functions; she was smart and asked the right questions. Her days had long ago become full with assorted obligations, as full as they would have been with a normal job. When I was younger, around eleven years old, she’d considered going back to work. She mused about it out loud, asking me and Elizabeth whether it would be okay by us. Until, abruptly, those musings stopped. Then she’d been brittle with us in the weeks that followed, losing her patience and snapping at us more than usual. It didn’t seem fair; it wasn’t our fault. I knew the reason—I’d overheard the argument—but something drove me to ask the question. Maybe I wanted her to finally lose it, to admit her anger. I felt an anticipation of shame, and a sick curiosity, as I said it: “Mom, why didn’t you go back to work?”
Her cheeks reddened. But that was all I would get. She had too much control.
“Because, sweetheart. I want to spend time with you and your sister. That’s my job. That’s the most important thing to me in the whole world.” She smiled, her face returning to a normal hue.
But I knew the truth. A few weeks before that, the night of the incident, I’d been setting the table for dinner when my dad got home. My mother poured a glass of wine and slid it across the kitchen counter toward him.
“I have good news,” she said.
“Oh?” My dad took a sip of wine. “This is excellent. Is this the Bordeaux?”
“James. I got the job.”
He took another sip, slowly, then set his glass down. “You did.”
I’d rarely seen her smile like that. Goofy, giddy. “They met all my terms.”
“Julia,” my dad said, “why don’t you go see where your sister is?”
I held up the forks and knives, bunched in my hand. “But I’m setting the table.”
“It can wait. Go ahead.”
As I walked out, I tried to catch my mother’s eye. But she was staring at my father, and her smile had disappeared. I ran up the stairs, then along the second-floor hallway to the top of the back staircase, which led down to the kitchen. I climbed down the back staircase as quietly as possible, stopping just before the kitchen came into view. I held my breath and listened.
“But you knew this wouldn’t work, Nina. I told you that weeks ago.”
“No. No. You said you had some concerns, and we agreed that we’d discuss them when the time came. Okay, so now’s the time. James, I had to work my ass off to get this job. This is an incredible opportunity. It’s the best class-action group in the country.”
“This is a terrible idea. The girls need you at home. And we don’t need the money.”
“I don’t care about the money. It’s important work. A third of my cases are going to be pro bono. Do you know how hard I had to push to get them to agree to that? Do you know how unheard of that is?”
“It’s a massive conflict of interest. That firm has multiple cases pending against my clients.”
“So I recuse myself from those cases. We put up a Chinese wall. Plenty of people have done this before. You think we’re the first pair of lawyers to ever run into this?”
“You cannot do this. You will not. You’d be working for a bunch of glorified ambulance chasers. You’d be embarrassing me in front of everyone we know. You’d be embarrassing yourself.”
I flinched at the sound of glass smashing against the wall.
“Nina, stop it.”
“It’s my turn, James.” She was shouting, her voice high and hoarse.
“You’re not thinking straight. You don’t want this.”
“Fuck you. Don’t tell me what I want.”
Shortly after that, my father came upstairs and told us that we were going to McDonald’s for dinner. Elizabeth was gleeful—we never ate fast food—but the whole time I felt a sad lump forming in my throat. Those french fries were bribery. My mother’s car was missing from the driveway when we left, and it was still missing when we got back from dinner. Lying in bed that night, I tried to make myself cry, but I couldn’t.
In the morning, my mother was back, smiling tightly as she waved us off to the school bus. There was a ghost of a red wine stain on the kitchen wall, scrubbed but not quite erased. The next week, she announced that we were renovating the kitchen, a project she claimed she’d been thinking about for a long time. The contractors sealed off the doorways with thick plastic. They let her do the honors. She picked up the heavy crowbar and swung it against the old walls and cabinets, smashing them into dust.
*