Any iteration of Batman.
“Don’t touch that!” I snatch the issue from under his index finger. “It’s valuable.”
Nick pulls his hand away. “I wasn’t—”
“Sam! Do you want to grab some breakfast while Nick works on the sink?” Mom shouts from the kitchen.
When I hearNick turning the bathroom faucet on and off, I venture out of the office in search of a bagel.
“Those are for Nick!” Mom practically slaps my hand away from the sesame bagel I was reaching for.
“He’s not gonna eat five of these, Mom.”
“He might want the sesame.”
“Fine,” I say, grabbing a plain bagel off the platter.
“Say, I went ahead and called Barbara Silverton yesterday.” Pause. I tear a chunk out of the plain bagel. “Do you think you should email her? She said that her collegedoeshave a graduate program in art education.”
“Art education isn’t my field.”
“And she said she’ll keep an eye out for any job opportunities. Don’t you think she’d be a good connection for you?”
“Mom—”
“Here.” Mom wipes her hands and takes out her phone. “Ican forward you her LinkedIn profile. Or do you want me to send an email and officially connect you? Less awkward?”
“It’s not that it’s awkward.” Itisawkward, but I’m doing my best not to be insolent. “I just don’t see how she could help me. I have a plan. I know exactly where I’m applying. We’ve talked about that.”
“Here, let me slice that for you.” She takes the bagel out of my hand and saws it in half with a serrated knife. “Have you thought about casting the net wider than grad school?”
Her tone is so innocent that I’m 90 percent sure this is a phrase she’s been rehearsing in her head for a week.
“I can’t get the jobs I want without a PhD.”
“Academia is a really tough job market,” she says, like the last several years haven’t made that glaringly obvious. “What about another type of position in the arts? Raising money, maybe? Wouldn’t you like to have more options?”
“I don’t want more options. I want to do something that’s meaningful to me.”
Mom puts down the knife. “You’re working in a restaurant right now, Sam. How is that ‘meaningful’?”
“I’m not going to sit in a cubicle all day pestering old people to rewrite their wills.”
“I’ve been through several recessions, Samantha. I had to find a new job during the dot-com bust. Do you know how many English majors work in PR? They can’t all write the Great American Novel. Sometimes highly educated people do things that they’d rather not in order to earn money and pay rent and buy food. People who have full-time jobs in fundraising have insurance.”
That’s been her bulletproof talking point since I got kicked off her health insurance plan for the crime of being twenty-six.
“What about a life coach?” she whispers.
“I have a therapist.” Whom I haven’t booked an appointment with in…five months because I haven’t had anything new to say to her.
“There are small steps you can take. I have this app that helps you cross off things on your to-do list. Remember how we talked about you getting your driver’s license when you started living here?”
And now she’s playing one of her greatest hits.
“I’m not ‘living here.’ I’m staying here temporarily until I start grad school.”
