couldn’t say she was sorry when they started suggesting they were going to eliminate the position.
The secret she never told anyone—not Will, not Maureen, and certainly not her mother—was that she much preferred the times when she was at home, when she wasn’t working. During those years she was able to make her life more orderly, was able to spend more time with the kids and Will. And even though it had felt chaotic a lot of the time with three kids and a dog, she still loved it.
Her favorite times were Sunday nights, when the house was clean and picked up, the laundry was done, the lunches for school were made and sitting in brown bags in the refrigerator, homework was done, and everyone was asleep. It was those nights when Weezy felt she’d accomplished the most, when the quiet of the house buzzed through her, made her feel like she’d won a prize.
Maybe it would have been different if she’d majored in something besides education, something that she was interested in. But then again, maybe not. Her parents had always told her she was the smart one, right in front of Maureen, like Maureen wasn’t even there. In their eyes, Maureen was the pretty one. “Maureen will marry well,” her mom said once, but that wasn’t true. Maureen had married an awful man, and they’d stayed together long enough to have two kids and then he’d left, moved clear across the country and barely saw his children.
No, it had been Weezy that had married well, married a kind man who was a caring father and a good provider. It had been Maureen who had found a career she loved and raised Cathy and Drew practically on her own. Sometimes Weezy wondered if they’d almost done it on purpose, fulfilled the part of their lives that their parents doubted they would, just to show them they could.
Weezy found herself overcompensating when she talked about women in the workplace, as if her children were going to pick up on her desire to stay at home and get some sort of subliminal message that told them women couldn’t make it. No, she didn’t want that. She couldn’t raise two daughters and let them think there was anything they couldn’t do.
Her rants became almost background noise to her children. They were so used to hearing her go off on the way the world viewed women,in a commercial, or a TV show, or a billboard. She wanted to make sure that they knew it wasn’t right, but sometimes she wasn’t even sure if they were listening.
She remembered once overhearing a friend of Claire’s say that she “wasn’t a feminist or anything,” and Weezy had scolded her. “Do you know what a feminist is?” she’d asked. “Do you even know what you’re saying by denying that? Do you think you’re worth less simply because you’re a woman?”
The girls had all giggled at being called women. They were twelve and uncomfortable at the thought. Claire had sat there, her face red and hot, trying to get Weezy to stop talking, rolling her eyes to the top of their sockets, saying, “God, Mom, come on, stop!” But Weezy didn’t care. So her child was humiliated by her—so what? Wasn’t that the job of a parent? And when Claire was embarrassed enough to answer back, embarrassed enough to react, well, then at least Weezy knew that she’d been heard.
WEEZY COULD HEAR WILL WALKING around in his office upstairs on the third floor. Sometimes it sounded like he paced back and forth across the room all day long. Will was the head of the sociology department at Arcadia University, a small liberal arts school near their house. He’d started working there in the eighties, when it was still called Beaver College. It had existed as Beaver College for over a hundred years, but as the Internet grew, parents who went searching for “Beaver College” didn’t find the school’s homepage—instead they found themselves on some pretty disturbing pornography sites. And so the school decided to reinvent itself.
Will was a popular professor at the
The secret she never told anyone—not Will, not Maureen, and certainly not her mother—was that she much preferred the times when she was at home, when she wasn’t working. During those years she was able to make her life more orderly, was able to spend more time with the kids and Will. And even though it had felt chaotic a lot of the time with three kids and a dog, she still loved it.
Her favorite times were Sunday nights, when the house was clean and picked up, the laundry was done, the lunches for school were made and sitting in brown bags in the refrigerator, homework was done, and everyone was asleep. It was those nights when Weezy felt she’d accomplished the most, when the quiet of the house buzzed through her, made her feel like she’d won a prize.
Maybe it would have been different if she’d majored in something besides education, something that she was interested in. But then again, maybe not. Her parents had always told her she was the smart one, right in front of Maureen, like Maureen wasn’t even there. In their eyes, Maureen was the pretty one. “Maureen will marry well,” her mom said once, but that wasn’t true. Maureen had married an awful man, and they’d stayed together long enough to have two kids and then he’d left, moved clear across the country and barely saw his children.
No, it had been Weezy that had married well, married a kind man who was a caring father and a good provider. It had been Maureen who had found a career she loved and raised Cathy and Drew practically on her own. Sometimes Weezy wondered if they’d almost done it on purpose, fulfilled the part of their lives that their parents doubted they would, just to show them they could.
Weezy found herself overcompensating when she talked about women in the workplace, as if her children were going to pick up on her desire to stay at home and get some sort of subliminal message that told them women couldn’t make it. No, she didn’t want that. She couldn’t raise two daughters and let them think there was anything they couldn’t do.
Her rants became almost background noise to her children. They were so used to hearing her go off on the way the world viewed women,in a commercial, or a TV show, or a billboard. She wanted to make sure that they knew it wasn’t right, but sometimes she wasn’t even sure if they were listening.
She remembered once overhearing a friend of Claire’s say that she “wasn’t a feminist or anything,” and Weezy had scolded her. “Do you know what a feminist is?” she’d asked. “Do you even know what you’re saying by denying that? Do you think you’re worth less simply because you’re a woman?”
The girls had all giggled at being called women. They were twelve and uncomfortable at the thought. Claire had sat there, her face red and hot, trying to get Weezy to stop talking, rolling her eyes to the top of their sockets, saying, “God, Mom, come on, stop!” But Weezy didn’t care. So her child was humiliated by her—so what? Wasn’t that the job of a parent? And when Claire was embarrassed enough to answer back, embarrassed enough to react, well, then at least Weezy knew that she’d been heard.
WEEZY COULD HEAR WILL WALKING around in his office upstairs on the third floor. Sometimes it sounded like he paced back and forth across the room all day long. Will was the head of the sociology department at Arcadia University, a small liberal arts school near their house. He’d started working there in the eighties, when it was still called Beaver College. It had existed as Beaver College for over a hundred years, but as the Internet grew, parents who went searching for “Beaver College” didn’t find the school’s homepage—instead they found themselves on some pretty disturbing pornography sites. And so the school decided to reinvent itself.
Will was a popular professor at the
Similar Books
