“My dear, the word is uptight. Do you know what makes your dad impossible to live with?”
“His ego? His ridiculous demands? His I-don’t-care-about-anybody-but-me attitude?”
“No. He cares about what everyone else thinks and how he compares to them. Why do you think he has that bizarre competition with Josh Singer, which Josh doesn’t even know about? In case you weren’t aware, before he started this competition with Josh, he imagined he was in competition with Salazar Pryce. And before that, he was in competition with Jerry Michaels, who produced three blockbuster movies that your father just couldn’t beat until three years ago. Your father is a miserable little person, because unless you help him look better than those people, he’s going to make your life hell. Who wants to be with a person like that? And you are acting like him. Unless the people around you make you appear to be a respectable professor of economics,” she intones dramatically, “you don’t want them around. Why, I’d bet my villa in Venice that you dumped Sierra over the sex toy thing.”
I say nothing. Mom is making me sound like an absolute asshole, and I’m not that bad. I’ve done everything in my power to be the exact opposite of my parents.
“I knew it,” she says.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Exactly. If I were wrong, you would have.” She snorts. “It’s a shame you dumped her. She’s a nice girl, and you could do much, much worse. Somebody who only wants your money, or the respectability of being a professor’s wife. Or just falls in love with your face and body. That’s also thanks to me, by the way. Again, you’re welcome.”
“Fine, we broke up. But it isn’t because I’m impossible.”
“Of course not,” she says. “Everyone has a blind spot they can’t see. When somebody points out, they deny it. I’ll tell you this: you’re never going to find a better match than Sierra. I’ve seen you together, and I can just feel it.”
“Right. Like how you felt the same with all my girlfriends before. You know, the ones who decided they didn’t want to stick around anymore once they got to meet you or Dad.”
“Which shows they weren’t right for you after all. If they can’t take the bad with the good, what’s the point? Not that I’m the bad here, of course. That would be your father. Anyway, don’t you guys have this thing in economics about nothing being perfect?”
“No.”
“Well, you should. What about sinking cost?”
I roll my eyes. “You mean ‘sunk cost’?”
“Pfft. You conjugate it your way, I’ll conjugate it mine.”
I let out a puff of reluctant laughter at her shamelessness. But that’s Mom. She’ll never admit that she’s wrong about anything.
“I’m saying that what happened before is a sunk cost. So you shouldn’t think about it, but only about what you can do from now on. Ask yourself: Am I happy the way I am?” She huffs. “I can’t believe I have to tell you everything. You’re the genius economist. Anyway, I need to go. I have a party.”
“Listen, I—”
But there’s nothing but silence coming from my phone. Typical. On the rare occasion that she doesn’t have some drama to unload on me, she just says whatever she feels like and hangs up.
I stare at the dark screen, my mind whirring. Am I really that uptight and judgmental? I’m willing to see things from other people’s point of view. No matter what she says, I’m not closed-minded.
What did Sierra do that was so awful…?
I sit back and stare at the ceiling.
She didn’t tell me about the sex toys.There’s a weirdly stubborn part of me that insists she should have.
And then…what? Dad made everything about him and his ego. I couldn’t have stopped that any more than I could’ve stopped his sending me a hooker. And his reaction isn’t her fault. My students posting about it… Unless I confiscated all their phones, I couldn’t have stopped that. So that wasn’t her fault either. I was just angry because I feared losing something I’d worked hard for.
Am I happy? Alone in this house, which smells like generic store-bought air freshener, with my non-pink sheets and no red Ferrari in the driveway?
I think back on my time with Sierra. When she told me about the babies.
Sierra wanted somebody to be a good father to her babies—her family…
The air freezes in my lungs. Holy shit. How could I have been so stupid?
Her babies are her family. And the father of her babies is also her family. When she told me about the triplets, she was dreaming of having a family with me, building a future together.
I misunderstood everything, and I fucked it up in my temper and fear. I’ve thrown her away, and along with that a chance at happiness because I want my colleagues to respect me.
Grant said that love is fake, that it doesn’t exist—a lot of problems are caused by the wrong assumption that love is real.
But I think about Emmett. He was miserable because of love, but he’s also very happy because of it. Grant might be right, but who cares about living in a delusion if you’re happy? We might all be in a Matrix-style simulation anyway.
I know I can be happy with her. There might be some bad from time to time, but there will be more good.
Fixing it will require an apology. But given how I embarrassed her at the faculty social, a simple “I’m sorry” isn’t going to cut it. I’m going to have to make a gesture of commitment so big, she knows I mean it.