“I can get another job, okay? They need accountants everywhere. That’s not going to be a problem.”
I sighed. This plan had clearly been in the works for a while, which was the part that bothered me most. “Why didn’t you tell me you were thinking about this?”
“I was worried you’d try to talk me out of it, and I had to figure out whether I even wanted it first. Can’t you just be happy for me? You know I never really got over him. And we have a kid together, so I’d like to give it a shot. Come on, Abby. Please.”
I saw in Laura’s eyes that she meant it. She was happy and hopeful, and she wanted me to be happy and hopeful, too. So I told her I hoped it worked out, and that I was happy for her.
And I was happy, I guess, the way you’re happy for a friend who announces they’ve sold all their possessions to embrace the ‘freegan’ lifestyle or that they’ve finally found true love with their surf instructor in Daytona Beach.
“You could move to Atlanta,” Laura added. “It’s a really cool town.”
Something inside me hardened at the words.Move to Atlanta?Move away from my friends and my apartment and my very slow-paced yoga classes?
Laura pressed on. “You work from home, right? You said they never ask you to go into the office anymore.”
This was technically true. My job in financial writing had gone through a weird transformation over the years. After my long-time boyfriend left me, I went through a depression that doomed me at my full-time job as a journalist, so I took a freelance job I saw posted on craigslist. A business school graduate named Kedar was starting a small online magazine that was supposed to make financial writing fun and sassy. (“Those Horrible Warehouses Popping Up in Cute Rural Towns May Be Your Next Investment Opportunity!”) He hired me despite my lack of business knowledge because I could deliver enough snarky articles to keep his readers amused, which he said was the ‘special sauce’ that was missing from other investment magazines. Kedar would pitch me article ideas and I would write them up like they were monologue material for a late-night show. It quickly turned into a steady gig—no healthcare or retirement plan, but I could live on what I made.
Then two years into the job, Kedar’s magazine was purchased by a hedge fund, and we were incorporated into their larger business as a fun and sassy internal newsletter, and since then, my job has fallen under the umbrella of a big firm. We have office space on 47th Street, and I get regular paychecks and discounts on my gym membership. It’s a reasonably cushydeal, except when the corporate execs look over our shoulders because we made the wrong investment recommendation or delivered a non-corporate dose of sarcasm about some environment-killing business. But the best part of the job is that after Covid started, I was allowed to do my writing full-time from home, and I could spend a lot of time watching my niece Hannah in the process. She’s seven years old now, and very funny, with a smoky voice like a tiny Natasha Lyonne. Watching her after school Monday through Thursday was the best part of my week.
All the same, Laura’s assumption that I would simply follow them to Atlanta rankled.
So Nick had screwed up his marriage, and now I was supposed to pick up my entire life and move to hot, sprawling Atlanta in the middle of summer to support his attempt to win back my sister, keeping my fingers crossed that he didn’t blow it again? This after listening to her cry about him for the last five years?
Was I supposed to keep babysitting Hannah? Was that the plan? I wondered if Laura was ready to quit her job partly because of my assumed availability to continue providing free childcare if Nick decided to take a gig out of town.
“I am not moving to Atlanta,” I snapped.
Laura looked startled, then annoyed. I wondered if some part of her, even after all these years, still assumed that her kid sister would follow her wherever she went. I was the gum-snapping sidekick on our sitcom, making smart remarks straight to camera, but I was not the lead.
“Okay, well…” Laura looked at the sky, as if asking for patience.
“I hate hot weather. I don’t even like New York in summer. And if you and Nick don’t work out…”
“Okay—”
“I mean it’s possible you’ll get there and after two days you’ll realize it’s a disaster.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so, Abby. I invited you because I assumed you’d still want to see Hannah.”
Ouch. She was going for the jugular, knowing how much I loved that kid, and it made me even angrier. “Or you assumed I’d provide free babysitting when Nick starts to flake out again.”
Laura’s eyes flashed with anger. “That is completely unfair.”
Did I mention that we were having this whole conversation in Prospect Park, with children playing in the background? I was watching Hannah running around in an impromptu game of tag, like kids do in New York, making instant friends with strangers—and I thought about how I was probably never going to have kids of my own, and I wasn’t sure whether to feel angry at Laura for using my love of Hannah against me or ashamed of myself for abandoning my favorite kid.
“Laur,” I said, “I love Hannah. But watching her has kept me from doing other things, so if you’re going to be leaving town, I may have other priorities.”
“What priorities?” Laura looked skeptical. I felt like we were teenagers again, and she was asking me to do her chores while she went out because what else would I have to do on a Friday night?
“Well,” I began, “I’ve always talked about moving overseas, and I never did it because you needed me.”
“What, so you’re going tomove to France?”
“Maybe.” My anger was gaining momentum, like it had reached the top of the roller coaster and was about to drop. “I could. I was helping you, okay, by watching Hannah, but now Nick can do that, right? So there are other things I’d like to do. So yeah, maybe I will move to France.” This was a bit of a test: if Laura needed me for babysitting, she was going to have to admit it.
Instead, she said with fake casualness, “Sure. If that’s what you want.”
I could tell from Laura’s tone that she never thought I’d do it.
