Aging gracefully—surely an oxymoron if ever there was one—is wonderful, but this is beyond graceful. It’s
Star Wars
meets
The Swan.
Weird. Sad. Unnerving.
Finally, the other moms start to arrive, and our one table becomes two tables and then finally three as more tables are dragged over to accommodate all the binders and planners and calendars.
I don’t want to say it was a waste of time being there, but I’ve nothing to contribute. I’m not even sure I understand the point of yet another school fund-raiser. How much money does the school really need? And how much time is this auction going to take?
But this time, wisely, I voice no opposition and sit there instead, taking notes and nodding my head, trying desperately to fit in and be a good Bellevue mom.
It’s not until a half hour later when my phone vibrates in my purse that I actually come to life. Checking the phone, I recognize Frank Deavers’s number and my insides jump.
I’ve been waiting for this call.
Motioning to the others that I’ve got to take the call, I start walking toward Tully’s glass doors even as I answer. “Frank,” I say. “How are you?”
“Good. And you?”
“Great.”
“Is this a good time to talk?”
I push open the doors and step outside. It’s a gray day, overcast, with the big trees lining Points Drive pale and nearly leafless. “Yes. I’m glad you called.”
I wait for him to make the standard preliminary chitchat we always have before we launch into business, but this afternoon Frank’s abrupt and right to the point.
“We didn’t go with you.” His rough voice sounds almost like a bark on the phone line.
For a moment, I think I’m going to drop the phone. I go cold and numb. My heart plummets. “No?”
“No. And I called as soon as I found out. I didn’t want to leave you hanging, and I didn’t want you to hear it through a third party.”
I’m quiet and shaking inwardly. I should have expected this—who doesn’t prepare for failure?—but I didn’t. I hadn’t. I never attempt anything that doesn’t have a chance of succeeding. I never doubt my ability to succeed. It doesn’t make sense to think anything but positively.
“You had some good ideas, great ideas, but the general consensus was that Z Design doesn’t have the resources to get Freedom Bikes where we need to go.”
I’m still silent. I’m holding my breath, trying to take it all in. I’ve thought of nothing but Freedom for weeks. I’ve worked, eaten, slept, dreamed this deal. I wanted this deal.
“It wasn’t personal,” Frank adds even more gruffly.
I suppose I’m silent because I’m afraid I’ll blurt out something stupid, somehow make things worse. I’m silent because a little part of me hopes that this isn’t happening, that it can’t be true.
“If anything, Marta, we respect you tremendously and admire the passion and vision you brought to the meeting.”
“I’m sensing a strong ‘but’ here,” I finally say, finding my voice and gratified it sounds almost normal.
“As I said, you have some fantastic ideas, and obvious energy, but the overall feeling was that you’re pulled pretty thin and we need someone who can give Freedom their all.”
“I can. We can.”
“Marta . . .” Frank’s deep sigh is audible, and I can almost picture him rubbing his salt-and-pepper-speckled beard. “You’re a single mom.”
“I am.”
“Most of us are married. Most of us have kids.”
“Uh-huh.”
“We know what it’s like to juggle work and home.” He pauses, and the silence lengthens. “Marta, I don’t know how to put this.”
“Frank, just say it. Get to the point.”
“Leaving the meeting early hurt you. I know it had to be important for you to walk out in the middle of the presentation, but for the management members riding the fence, it cast the deciding vote.”
This is not what I want to hear. I want to have a family and a career. I don’t want to have to make a choice between them. Men aren’t forced to make these choices. “I didn’t leave in the middle. I left near the end.”
“Regardless—”
“You said, and Chris said, that the rest of the presentation went well,” I protest, clamping my elbow to my side. I’m trying to keep my teeth from chattering, as I’m shivering from cold and shock. Glancing into Tully’s, I can see my coat hanging on the back of my chair.
“It did. But Chris isn’t Z Design. Chris isn’t a bike enthusiast. Chris isn’t
you.
”
“And you have me.”
“Then you should have stayed till the end.”
“Despite Eva throwing up like Linda Blair?”
“Kids throw up. It’s what they do.”
And he doesn’t say this next part, but I sense it, hearing the unspoken:
Daddies don’t race home from the office just because Timmy has the stomach flu.
I shake my head, my teeth gritted. My throat feels raw from swallowing so hard.
This is ridiculous. This is so unfair.
“Marta.”
I can only shake my head silently. I don’t trust myself to speak. I’m too hurt, too disappointed.
Frank sighs tiredly. He doesn’t like playing the bad guy. It doesn’t help that we’ve known each other for years. “It would have been better if you’d had someone else pick her up from school,” he says flatly. “It would have looked better, Marta. Would have solved a lot of problems.”
I don’t think he’s reprimanding me, but I do know he’s disappointed, maybe even feeling let down.
“I had high hopes,” he adds. “I’m just sorry it didn’t work out.”
“It’s fine, Frank,” I say, eager to just get off the line.
But after I hang up, I know it’s not fine.
It’s not fine because men aren’t penalized for working and being a father.
It’s not fine to have a man criticize me for going to pick up my child when she’s ill.
It’s not fine to assume that just because one day I drop a ball, I can’t juggle my commitments.
It’s time corporate America realized that working moms offer our companies the same thing we offer our families: ethics, integrity, and loyalty. Just because we love our children doesn’t mean we don’t love our jobs.
Still shivering, I go back to the class auction project meeting, sink into my chair, and wrap my coat around me, but I sit catatonic for the rest of the meeting.
I wouldn’t say I’m shattered. But I’m certainly not all here.
The next day is hard. I’m working the same long hours, but now the time seems to crawl by, and before it’s even lunch I’m aching to cut loose, leave the office, and do something else.
I think about calling Luke back. It’s been two days since he left me a voice message, and while I want to call him, I’m not sure what I’d say now. He’s not who or what I thought he was. He’s far wealthier, far more powerful, and I don’t know that he’d even understand just how bad I’m feeling right now about losing the Freedom Bikes account. With his company and success, could he relate to my disappointment?
I don’t call him. And I finish the week at work knowing that everyone’s walking on tippy-toes.
By the time Friday afternoon rolls around, I’m just glad it’s Friday, although everyone’s staying late today to cope with four deadlines that have all hit at once.
Eva, not knowing that my bad mood has infected the rest of the team, trips happily through the studio door. “Hey, Mom,” she sings as the door bangs open. “Look what I have!”
Chris, who’s on the phone, looks up irritably and hushes her even more irritably. Allie sighs, rubs her temple. Even Susan frowns at yet another interruption.
Poor Eva, I think, shutting the door quietly and drawing her toward my desk. It’s got to be tough enough having a mom who works from home without being made to feel as if you’re a nuisance in your own home. “What do you have?” I whisper.
“What’s wrong with everybody?” she whispers back, rummaging through her backpack. “It’s like somebody died or something.”
“It’s just work.” I smooth the wispy brown black hair from her pale oval forehead. “Everyone’s really stressed.”
“Why?”
“It’s the end of the month, and it means everything’s got to wrap up or roll over.”
“Crunch time,” she says wisely.
“Exactly.” A better answer, I think, than explaining to her that I laid out a fortune to land Freedom Bikes and we still didn’t get it, which means we’re in the hole, and people will be mad if there aren’t holiday bonuses.
Eva finds what she is looking for, retrieving a small square orange envelope from the front pocket of her backpack.
“An invitation,” she says triumphantly, opening the envelope and pulling out the card, which is black and white with dancing skeletons on the border. “Phoebe’s having a Halloween party on Halloween before everyone goes trick-or-treating!”
The invite’s cute. I admire the font and print style. It’s been professionally done, and I like the card stock. “See, you have friends.”
“Well, she invited the whole class, but still.” She flops into Robert’s chair and sits Indian style. “She lives in Clyde Hill on this big acre and a half, and kids were saying there are ponies and a tractor pull and lots of games. Phoebe’s family has a Halloween party every year, and everyone dresses up.”
“Sounds fun.”
“Can we go buy my costume tonight? Halloween is just five days away.”
The phone on my desk rings. I glance at the number. Jet City Coffee. I don’t pick up. I need to finish running some numbers before I can call them back. And before I can run their numbers, I’ve got to upload the winery’s holiday calendar to the printer and double-check the PowerPoint presentation for Ewes and Lambs Maternity Clothing Store. They’re a regional upscale clothing chain about to take their stores, and brand, national. It’d be a great account, and I could use Shey and her models, which would be fun for me.
“So can we get my costume tonight?” Eva repeats.
Frowning, I look at her and run my hand over her head. “Baby, I’m so behind. I’m going to have to work tonight.”
“Again?”
“Unfortunately.”
“But why? Why are you working so much at night?”
I think back on the week, on the parent meeting at school and the case of the blues with not getting the Freedom Bike Group. “I’m working as hard as I can.”
“But all you do is work.”
“That’s not true.”
She clamps her jaw. She’s furious with me. “Fine,” she says smartly. “Whatever.” And she marches into the house.
The next morning, I’m back at my desk the moment I wake. It’s Saturday, and hopefully Eva will sleep in so I can get a jump on the work still piled high on my desk. But Eva doesn’t sleep in. She’s at my desk in less than a half hour, a gloom-and-doom expression on her face.
“There’s no milk,” she says tersely. “And no bread. No frozen waffles, French toast, or microwave bacon left. There’s nothing to eat, Mom.”
“How about eggs?”
“They’re old.”
I lean away from my computer, sigh, rub at my neck and then my nape. “Can you eat cereal dry?”
“No!” she explodes. “No, I can’t. And I’d go to the store myself if I could drive, but I can’t. I’m nine. I’m your kid. I’m a child.”
Oh. Right. Right. I know that.
I push hair behind my ears, struggle to smile. “You want me to go to the store?”
“Yes. Please.”
“Now?”
“Right now.”
I nod. I expected that. I knew it was coming. “Do you want to come? Keep me company?”
She’s still angry with me, angry that I’m working too much and not spending enough time with her. Angry that she’s an only child living with a single mother. “No,” she answers bluntly.
I should have expected that, too. I reach for my sweater, tug it on. “I’ll be back soon.”
I race around the aisles of QFC, trying not to feel guilty that we have no groceries and that I’ve left Eva home. Eva, being nine, has already taken a junior baby-sitting class at Overlake, where they taught her basic CPR and infant and child care tips, but I’m never quite comfortable with her home alone, even if she is.
I shop quickly, grabbing bagels and bread, frozen waffles and French toast, fruit, milk, yogurt, eggs, butter, cereal, coffee, and just for good measure, I go back for a box of doughnuts.
It’s while I’m deliberating on the kind of doughnut—-miniature chocolate-covered or miniature powdered sugar—that I sense someone behind me. Turning, I see Luke examining loaves of bread.
He sees me about the same time I see him, and he straightens, broad shoulders just getting wider, bigger.
His head’s taller than the top shelf, and he dwarfs the bakery section, making the aisle even narrower.
He’s wearing a navy cotton shirt, long sleeved and clean, and faded jeans that just barely outline the hard quads and hamstrings beneath.
How can this man be a CEO with millions (billions?) in the bank? It’s impossible.
“Hi,” I say, my voice less than steady.
His expression is somewhat quizzical, definitely reserved. “You’re bad at returning phone calls.”