“Don’t leave home without one. Anyway,” she laughs, her tone back to its usual playfulness reserved for the people she doesn’t want to kick in the penis. “What’s going on with you and the job search?”
“Don’t start. It will take more than a week to sort out my life.” My clothes are still in boxes. “I don’t know who’s worse, you or our father. Acting like I’m a baby,” I sigh.
“You are the baby.”
“I’m thirty-four with a whole doctorate!”
“Dr. Baby.” The clementine I toss at her head misses its mark. She pulls the bowl from the middle of the table to her chest. “Age-wise, you’re grown and smart as hell.”
“But?” Because there is always a but, and it’s fat and intrusive in my family.
“But,” Marcela says gently, “your life experience could fit on a report card. Let our father help.”
“You tell me all I do is spend time in a classroom, and now you want me to go back inside one?”
“How do you plan to use the doctorate that took five years of your life?”
“I—” Don’t know.
I want to pop the smug smile off of Marcela’s face, but I know better. I’m not a fighter, and she’ll have me cowering behind a locked door like she did the mayor. She and my father mean well, but, goodness, would it be nice to have a little time to figure out who I want to be now that I’ve finished school.
Do you know how diverse the field of mechanical engineering is? I could create technologies to address world hunger, the climate crisis, transportation needs, and fix every McDonald’s ice cream machine in the country.
I just parted ways with my lab wigs, and my family expects me to decide if I want to spend the rest of my days in academia, industry, or the public sector.
Hell if I know!
The minute you hit thirty, every piece of who you are and what your purpose is needs to click into place. God forbid you’re in your mid-thirties and still trying to figure it out. Apparently, the world will end if you don’t have it together.
Marcela pats my hand. “No need to talk to yourself, Miri. You’re turning red.” Dang it. “Your savings is a good cushion. Sooner or later, though, you need to find something that willkeep the lights on. Our father is a lifeline if it comes to that. Just expect strings.”
He’s a loan shark with a heart. Minus the extortion.
Excellence is in our DNA, a reminder he sends in my annual birthday card. Years of his sacrifice working for the State Department came with long hours, divorce, and an understanding that the next generation of Beckfords will carve out their own pathways to success.
Engineering is honorable so long as I don’t act like Lynn fromGirlfriends, earning degree after degree with only student debt, a band, and “the Lynn Spin” to show for it. I can’t carry a tune or twirl on a ding-a-ling to make anyone proud.
“Hey, it’s Friday,” Marcela says to lighten the mood and the pressure to solve the equation of my life. “You’re out of wine, and I need something stronger than filtered water. A few sorors are meeting at The Pine Room. Get dressed. We’ll leave in twenty.”
I glance at my leggings tucked into knitted socks. The Sunnydale sweatshirt hanging off my shoulder doesn’t constitute “going-out attire.” Not that I planned to leave the house.
“I’m staying in.”
Marcela’s brows knit. “Are you not the one who told me you wanted to do stuff outside the house besides grocery shopping? This is stuff.”
“I do, but tonight isn’t good for me.”
“Why not?”
The doorbell rings.
“Because I already have plans,” I say.
The heavy lashes shadowing Marcela’s cheeks fly up. “Plans? Who is making house calls?” She hops up from the table, the determination to sniff out my business set in her smirk.
“Nobody.”
The doorbell rings again.
