if she had To-Do lists. If you could write out everything you do and how you do it, that would be fabulous. Thanks.”
Great. Like I have nothing else to worry about. I’m going home.
That night I dream about sitting at the diner and Ronald picking hamburger meat with fat fingers out of the space between his two front teeth. He’s telling me that he’s decided to hire Liza’s unborn child instead of me.
I wake up hot and cold and sweaty, tangled in my clean cotton sheets. It’s 4:00 a.m. I can’t fall back asleep, so instead I shower and go to work.
I compose the list of things the MBA should do, and then at eight close my door and begin my morning ritual of calling Ronald.
“Ronald Newman speaking.”
My mouth is immediately zapped of all moisture. He’s alive! He’s alive!
Why didn’t he call me if he wasn’t dead?
“Hi, Ronald,” I say, wishing I had a glass of water nearby. What’s wrong with my mouth? “Sorry to bother you? It’s Sunny Langstein calling? How are you?” Must stop talking in question format.
Silence. Why is there silence?
“Sunny,” he says slowly. “I’ve been meaning to (ahem) call you—” Why the ahem? No one likes an ahem. “I have some bad news I’m afraid.”
Bad news? No one likes bad news.
“It’s very unfortunate, but we found a candidate with more New York experience.”
“More what?”
“More New York experience. Someone more familiar with the bars, the concert venues, the retail stores, the arenas. Television contacts. You don’t have any contacts here, Sunny. We need someone with a higher profile. What would you be bringing to the table?”
My new business experience in the soda industry? “I…um…didn’t you already offer me the job?”
“Like I said, the news is unfortunate. My secretary was supposed to call you and send you a fruit basket. Should I assume you never received it?”
What stupid fruit basket? “Why were you interviewing other candidates after you offered me the job?”
“You can never give up on finding the perfect candidate,” he says. I wish I’d received the fruit basket. I wish he was in the same room as me. Then I’d hurl an apple at him.
“I hope this hasn’t caused any inconveniences,” he says.
I have no job and no place to live, but what inconvenience? “Oh, oh, none at all,” I say in a singsong tone.
He doesn’t sense my sarcasm. “You never know, we could have another opening any day. Why don’t you give me a call once you’ve settled in the city?”
I am not going to cry. “Uh-huh,” I say, then add “’Bye.” I hang up. Rage and frustration and disappointment and what-a-fucking-asshole overwhelm me, and I sink into my fabulous swivel chair that now belongs to the fabulous MBA. I stand up and stand directly behind the closed door because it’s the blind spot, the one corner of personal space in the entire office where no one can see in. No job. No apartment. What am I going to do? I lean against my in-case umbrella and tears spill down my cheeks like rain.
5
The Wonder Years
This is the history of my parents: Father is in business school. Mother is a nurse. Father is Jewish. Mother is Catholic. Father meets Mother in Brooklyn. Father and Mother fall in love. Mother gets pregnant. Father proposes marriage but insists Mother convert, otherwise Father’s children will not be Jewish. Being Jewish is very important to Father because it’s important to Father’s parents. Father’s father, Daniel, died five years ago and Father promised he would marry Jewish woman. Mother cares more about Father than she does about religion so she agrees. Mother’s parents do not agree. Mother’s parents are horrified that daughter is pregnant and converting and tells Mother to never return home again. Mother converts. Process is far more strenuous than Mother imagined. Mother marries Father anyway. Father gets offered high-paying consultant job in Fort Lauderdale. Mother and Father move to Florida. Mother has baby girl, names her Dana, after Father’s father. Mother wants to return to work but has difficulty finding new nursing job with baby at home. Father becomes increasingly distant. Father’s job requires much traveling. Mother tries to have another child. Gets pregnant. Miscarries. Gets pregnant again. Miscarries again. Gets depressed. Gets pregnant again. Carries to term. Mother sees baby as shining light in marriage and names baby Sunny. Sings “You Light Up My Life” to rock baby to sleep. Father leaves Mother for secretary. Mother’s older daughter doesn’t understand where Daddy is and sits on the porch stairs waiting for him to come home. Mother puts three-year-old back to bed and explains to ten-year-old again. Mother gets sick. Mother doesn’t tell children that she is sick, but instead calls her own parents who she hasn’t spoken to in ten years and begs them to come take care of them. Parents come. Grandmother and Grandfather move into Mother’s house until summer when Mother dies and children move into Father’s new house in Palm Beach.
“It’s not the end of the world,” Steve tells me.
My office door is still closed. “Whatever you say, Judy Blume.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” One at a time, I pull unused thumbtacks out of the corkboard walls, and then group them on my desk by color. Red, yellow, green, white.
“So you’ll look for a job here. It’ll be easy to find something once you’re in the city.”
I attempt to keep my voice at a consistent pitch, above the sinking level. “Everything is all screwed up. I didn’t want to move until I had a job. I don’t want to be the jobless girlfriend who has no life and sponges off her boyfriend, all right? How do you know I’m ever going to find a job?” I turn the thumbtacks around and stab them into the wooden desk.
“First of all, you’ll find a job. Second of all, you’re not sponging off me. I’m happy to cover the full rent until you find something. And second of all—”
“You already said second of all. You’re on third of all.”
“Third of all, you never thought you’d get the first job you applied for, anyway. And you only applied to jobs in the beverage industry. Can’t you apply for any new business job? And can’t you apply for manager positions, too? Not just assistant managers?”
“I wanted a job in an industry I’m familiar with. I don’t like not knowing what I’m doing. And I’m not ready to be a manager yet.”
“If you need to make some money, you can wait tables at the restaurant.”
I can’t get sucked up by his world. I need to have my own job, my own life. I can’t depend on him for everything. Is he not listening? “But I wasn’t planning on quitting until I had a job. You don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand?” He sighs into the phone. “Sunny, I know you’re afraid you’ll end up like your mother. But you’re not her, okay?”
My
