By the Numbers (5 page)

I say, “How's the styling part of your business coming? Any new clients, exciting new projects? Didn't Kelsey say you had a lead with that actress from the ballet movie?”

Everyone digs talking about her job, right? Heck, I
wish
someone would ask me how my career is going. I live to discuss work! Although I don't do nearly as much hands-on analysis as I used to, which is a shame; and if I'm promoted to executive vice president (fingers crossed!), then I'll be completely removed from that part of the job. I'll miss the data analysis, because running the numbers was always my favorite challenge, but becoming an EVP is the next logical step in my career path.

As I moved up the corporate food chain over the years, my managerial duties expanded and so did my travel schedule. For a while I was a serious road warrior, gone Monday mornings until
Thursday nights. Wasn't my preference, but because of Chris's business, we didn't have a lot of choice, not with teeth to straighten, three sets of college tuition to pay, and cars to buy.

I glance over, hoping Jess gives me the inside scoop like she used to when she did photo shoots with famous people for her designer boss. I couldn't always keep every star's name straight, but I got such a kick out of recognizing them in the nail salon magazines. No one was ever who they seemed to be, from the squeaky-clean tween heartthrob who'd bang groupies in the bathroom between shoot takes, to the alleged drug-addicted punk rock queen who sent every person on the staff a handwritten thank-you note and homemade toffee.

“This town is stuck in a time warp,” Jessica hisses.

No work chat, then. But maybe she wants to complain about her old hometown in front of an audience. If that means more than one word at a time, I'm all for it. Although it seems like the only thing New Yorkers enjoy more than telling you why
their
city is so great is dissecting exactly what's wrong with
yours
. Personally, I don't mind because I've never once needed to have Afghan food delivered at two o'clock in the morning and I like living without bars on my bathroom window.

Jessica gawps at a father and son on the bike trail. “My God, are those people on an actual
bicycle built for two
? I didn't know they existed except in an old-timey song! And them! Look there!”

I glance to my right to see an effervescent young family, the father clad in a pair of khakis and a pink golf shirt, being dragged along by an enormous golden retriever. The dog's mouth is comically agape with two tennis balls jammed in his maw. While I hesitate to call the dog a quitter, if pet pictures on the Internet have taught me anything, it's that he could stuff in a third one if he tried.

The mother of the group is wearing a splashy tunic covered in a sea horse print, cut in a way that makes her look almost completely asexual, as is the style around here. (We WASPs will never be accused of bringing sexy back; just ask Patrick.) The mom's paired her top with leggings and Jack Rogers sandals, and her two young daughters are wearing little dresses in the same print. They're so cute I kind of want to stop the car and hug them all.

“The McMatchingshirts are carrying a legit picnic basket, not a cooler or an insulated bag, but old-school wicker. I bet they have red-checkered napkins in there and real silverware. Holy shit, they have the same hair color as the dog! Who color coordinates with their pets? These people! Ten bucks says they have a flag in front of their house with a watermelon and the word ‘summer' embroidered on it. Oh, and I can't
even
with the woman's outfit. I bet she isn't even thirty-five, yet she dresses like she's fucking
fifty
.”

“To be fair, when she's eighty, she'll probably still dress that way,” I reply, remembering all the octogenarians sporting big ol' hair bows in Marjorie and Max's West Palm senior living community. My parents moved there mostly full-time after my father retired and my brother, Foster, took over the company.

Jessica gives me one of her trademark grimaces. “The dog's leash matches the dad's belt. Who has time for that? Who wakes up and is all, ‘What should I wear today? I dunno, lemme see what the dog's in the mood for.' Ugh. Killing self-comma-others now. What planet do these people come from?”

I focus on the road again. “Planet Glencoe, same as you.”

“Then I amend my statement about Glencoe being in a time warp, because this place was never about bike rides and matching belts and family picnics for us,” she says.

Oh, good.
There's
the vitriol.

I steal a glance, and her face is stony. “Come on, Jessica. We did plenty of family activities exactly like that when you were a kid.”

She snorts. “Is that how you remember it?”

This again. Maybe I had to put in a few hours on the weekend here and there in the beginning when I was restarting my career, but trying to argue that point isn't worth it. Reasoning with Jessica is as impossible as it is with Marjorie. I can have all the facts and figures in the world at my disposal, and if one of them disagrees, that's it. End of story.

For example, Marjorie's primary care physician suggested she eat more protein, so I said she should add a chicken breast to her daily plate of lettuce because it's low in calories and God forbid she beef up to a size six like all the fat fatties out there. She dismissed my suggestion immediately, saying chicken contains no protein. I explained, no, in fact, each three-point-five-ounce serving contains thirty grams of protein, which is fifty percent of the recommended daily allowance, and again she explained I was wrong, which, argh! Just because she
says
I'm mistaken doesn't
mean
I'm mistaken, especially when the entire United States Department of Agriculture requires that irrefutable proof be placed on every food label.

Anyway, Marjorie came up with her own solution—now she subs out one of her beloved Gibsons for a White Russian made with Ensure each day.

Point is, as I can never win with these two, I do my best to not engage.

“Some people appreciate the consistency around here,” I say, deliberately switching the topic away from Jessica's childhood, which, if you ask anyone but her, was idyllic. Maybe she didn't
have two parents at every single event, but one of us was always there.

We've reached the wide, tree-lined boulevard where I live. The stately old homes here are set far back from the road and wide apart, which is apparently a tremendous selling point, according to my listing agent, who can't wait to do a walk-through with me. “I was talking to a Realtor, who tells me that even after the housing bubble burst, places on the North Shore were still selling at a twenty-two percent higher asking price than the national average. She said that people will always want access to excellent public schools, shopping and recreation, and low crime rates.”

Jessica says nothing, and her silence feels oppressive. Suddenly, I long for her one-word answers.

My hometown of Glencoe is one of the sleepy suburban cities along Lake Michigan, spanning from Evanston to Lake Bluff. This area was made famous in movies from
Ordinary People
to
Mean Girls
and every John Hughes film in between. I've lived here my entire life, save for college and a couple of years after graduation when I lived downtown.

“If you're so Team Glencoe, then why are you even moving to Chicago?”

I don't explain that I'm ready to travel lighter, to start anew, to leave behind painful memories, largely because I'm far too distracted by the enormous antique claw-foot bathtub blocking the driveway to my house.

I slam on the brakes before I hit the damn thing, mom-arm automatically flying out to brace Jessica in case of impact.

A quick aside—why do I still do the nonsense with the arm? How reckless is this? Wouldn't everyone be better served in case of emergency if I kept both my hands on the steering wheel, preferably
at eight and four? I'm a risk-management professional—one would imagine I'd know better, yet here we are.

“What in the
actual fuck
?” I crane my neck to the right to get a closer look as I back out of the drive.

“Whoa, language! Do you kiss your mother with that mouth, PBS?” Jessica laughs, so shocked to hear me drop an f-bomb that she momentarily forgets she's mad at me for supposedly turning her childhood into a Charles Bukowski novel.

“No, I do not, but that's mostly because she tastes like cocktail onions and Kahlúa,” I reply. Jessica snorts and I'm two for two. Woo-hoo! I should drop the mic and peace-out right now because I've never had a winning streak like this before.

“Is that a . . . bathtub?” Jess asks, squinting through the windshield.

I park the Camry (an Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Top Pick Plus, Midprice Moderately Sized Division) in front of the house and hop out to take a look. “Yes. This is definitely a bathtub. I've been watching a lot of
Antiques Roadshow
, so I'd say this is a nineteenth-century double-slipper claw-foot cast-iron tub, if you want to be specific. She's a beaut. A real two-seater. I guess the question is,
why
is it here?”

“Kelsey mentioned she was looking for one to hold craft beers at the reception,” Jess explains.

“Will the caterers not bring coolers?” I ask. “I can pay extra for coolers. Or is this an aesthetic thing, like the straw hats and all the burlap?”

“It's definitely for a
look
,” Jessica confirms. But from her expression, I can't tell whether or not she approves of said look.

“You're a design person. Do you like what you've seen so far?” I query. “Seems like Kelsey's been pretty creative.”

Personally, I've been to so many cookie-cutter-Martha-Stewart-North-Shore-country-club weddings where everyone asks for the same exact Crate and Barrel casserole dishes and Pottery Barn tablecloths that it's refreshing to encounter something offbeat, even if that offbeat item is currently obstructing my driveway like so much butter in a fat guy's artery.

“Honestly?” Jessica says. “The whole thing is ultra try-hard. Found objects are pretty 2014, you know. I feel like Kelsey Googled ‘Hipster Wedding Clichés' and then started a Pinterest page. Even the whole hipster thing is passé. Yuccies are what's next.”

“What's a Yuccie?”

“Young Urban Creative.”

“Like the Yuppies from my generation?”

“Sort of like Yuppies, only less fun and more smug. And they use hashtags and smoke high-caliber weed.”

“They're basically Sasha and Ryan?” I say, referring to Karin's self-important “social media expert” offspring who refuse to leave her house.

“Exactly. Back to Kelsey, did she even run any of this wedding nonsense past you?”

While Jessica's speaking, I attempt to lift a side of the tub, but this thing must weigh a thousand pounds. I may be strong, but I'm not moving it on my own, that's for sure. “In the beginning, yes, but she thought I was being critical when I was only trying to help, so she stopped. Now the extent of my involvement is writing checks. A lot of checks.”

Jessica laughs.

Jessica laughs?

Jessica laughs!

Whoa! Look at us, having a hostility-free conversation! I love
seeing Jessica's now-impeccable straight, white teeth when they're not exposed via snarling or grimacing or being bared at me. Hey, everyone on Sheridan Road—
I made Jessica laugh!

Granted, I'm not so comfortable discussing one kid with another, but at least Jess is speaking to me in full sentences—paragraphs even, and not paragraphs about how she has to pay a therapist one hundred and thirty-five dollars an hour to repair all the damage I've caused by missing her semifinal tennis match in ninth grade, where Chris, Mimsy, Gumpy, Num-Num (Chris's mother), Uncle Foster, Aunt Judith, Topher, Kelsey, and a passel of assorted cousins all sat in the front row, cheering her on while I was on a plane coming home from Kansas City, having just run the project that allowed us to pay for the tennis camp that gave her the skills to make it to the semifinals in the first place.

Sometimes it feels like neither Jess nor Kelsey ever grew out of the surliness and drama that pits mothers and daughters against each other during their teen years. I've been waiting for us to find common ground, and this silly little conversation is a tiny life preserver in the middle of a roiling ocean. Sure, we'll probably all still drown or have our Botox-filled feet bitten off by sharks, but not right this minute. For the first time, I wonder if it's possible we could actually have a functional adult relationship someday. Dare I hope?

While Jessica speaks, her eyes keep flicking down to her phone. “Has she thanked you for anything, PBS? Like, at all?”

“Of course she has.”

No.
Not at all.
Not once, with zero probability of this happening in the future.

Eyes cast down, Jessica says, “I feel like . . . this week can't be easy for you, you know? With Daddy and all? I mean, Stassi's sort
of chill, and maybe under different circumstances you'd vibe with her, too. She's smart, actually. She's an interior designer with a LEED certification, which is apparently pretty tough to get. She and Dad were working on a place with a lot of environmentally friendly components; that's how they met last year. Anyway, this sitch can't be how you pictured your first kid's wedding. What I'm saying is it sucks to be you and I'm sorry.”

“Jessica,” I say, fighting back the welling tears, lest she sense my weakness and use it against me. “You have no idea how much it means to me that—”

Her phone
ping
s and she glances down. “Shit, I've got a crisis.” She reads and shakes her head. “Everything's on fucking fire. Shit, shit, shit!” Then she stalks off in her fancy tall shoes faster than I can walk in a pair of Nikes.