“In those two years I came up with a company that is already on the verge of turning a profit because of its low overhead. It’s just me I have to sell. And people are buying my combination of inspiration and aspiration,” Simon flexes. “Outside investment in hard goods is near impossible. It’s all about selling a growth mindset. I challenge you to find me one person who doesn’t want to become their Best U Man.”
“You, man, are a dumbass,” Zwena concludes, but I know Simon is not all wrong. There are now monks making millions from their book deals and meditation apps. Alcoholics turned athletes hosting transformative podcasts with Fortune 500 sponsors. It’s not enough to look good on the outside anymore, you also have to make over the inside, which, I know, is a much harder job. That I have allowed Simon back into my life because it benefits Lou and Coco is yet another testimonialfor a flawed person trying to be her best human. No potion or lotion is going to help me forgive Simon—that is 100 percent an inside job.
“Not so dumb,” Simon responds with a confidence that is at an all-time high this morning, even for him. “I found out yesterday afternoon that I made it past the initial screening forInnovation Nation. Each year ten thousand people apply, but only a hundred make it to the next step. I got in early applying for this season, and I already found out I beat the odds. I’m in the second-round consideration pool. Next week I have a call with one of the associate producers.”
I’m knocked off balance, stunned speechless.
“When I go down to shoot my segment, you and the girls can come with me. We’ll hop over to Disneyland to celebrate. Finally get our turn on the Matterhorn.”
Coming to stand by me, Zwena corrects, unimpressed, “If you get picked.” She grabs my hand to steady me behind my janky fold-out tables pushed together with a worn white bed sheet over them and a Puerto Rican flag hanging on the front to hide the boxes underneath. The flag being Gloria’s contribution to building my brand.
“Oh, I’ll get picked. America loves a transformation story.”
“Even when it’s in reverse?” I find my voice to question.
“From spouse to louse,” Zwena adds, her winning smile back for the first time since Simon showed up.
JUNE
SUNDAY, JUNE 2
For over a week, I stewed on Simon’s announcement that he and Best U Man made it past the initial screening forInnovation Nation. Since my Pioneering Entrepreneurs class ended in May, I’ve rewatched sixty-eight episodes of the show and tallied how many services won funding versus hard goods. I wrote down every new business term I heard come out of the judges’ mouths and cross-referenced it with what I learned at Stanford. If I didn’t know a concept, I looked it up and committed the terminology to memory.
I kept track of how many men versus women were selected for investment and how many people of color made it on the show, let alone earned their first cash infusion. Occasionally there were some on-air dramatics. I noted that thirteen presenters cried, either from nerves or emotions, and that there was one full-on snot bubble blown on national television. I created a contestant chart of who earned funding and tracked who received more. Not surprisingly, on average women were offered 22 percent less funding. Was it the viability of the product? Was it the contestant? Or maybe the marketplace? I don’t know, but I would have to work out my own odds before I considered applying. I was earning my MBA oneInnovation Nationepisode at a time.
I watched the show while I cooked dinner and folded the laundry. I brushed my teeth with theInnovation Nationtheme music stuck inmy head. And at work I perched my phone up on my transportation cart dashboard with my notebook open on the seat beside me. I viewed with one eye on my phone and one eye on the foot traffic as I drove between terminals, pulling over whenever I needed to jot down something relevant to my chances of gaining placement on the show. There had to be an explanation why this program, which I had long admired for its talent and foresight into what would take off in the free market, would consider someone like Simon. If I was going to apply, I didn’t want to only make it on the show, I wanted to beat Simon. I wanted to prove to him that I, too, had evolved in his absence.
With my eyes fried from an overdose of screen time, but my statistics exact, I texted Mrs. Eisenberg under the guise that I would like to bring my mother over so the two of them can meet. And, as a bonus, my mom could do her hair since Mrs. Eisenberg hasn’t been able to get out of the house and to a salon in quite some time. As suspected, Mrs. Eisenberg was giddy for the company and the coif. She insisted I bring a couple of jars of Prunus Dulcis for her and a few Nephelium for her speech therapist. While she’s being rinsed, I plan to dig to find out if, as a new judge, Ash has any pull onInnovation Nation.
“Mi amor, Simon brought the girls over to see me the other day after school. He also brought me a vase of long-stem tulips. My favorite.” I don’t bother responding as Simon’s tactics are so obvious, and we are late getting out the door of my mother’s apartment and over to Mrs. Eisenberg’s. Simon is working my mother, as well as our girls, to get me to agree to let him move back in the house. I believe he genuinely wants to come back home, but I also know he gets kicked out of his Airbnb at the end of the month. “He adjusted the screen door off the kitchen, so it doesn’t catch anymore. Very handy, that Simon.”
“Yep, he’s handy,” I agree as a neutral answer since he did fix the rattle in my garage door recently.
“He seems happy to be home,” my mother persists, not letting the conversation end with Simon’s skill with an Allen wrench.
“If by home you mean the Bay Area, your guess is as good as mine.” I do not want to reveal any of the conversations I have had with Simon about him moving home nor the considerations in my head about us staying married.
“I’m not guessing, Toni, I know these things.”
I’m sure she does. The two of them are most likely scheming behind my back on how to get him through my front door, for good.
Recently my mother has taken to lecturing me on two items: my disinterest in having a quinceañera for her granddaughters and, as Lou and Coco march toward womanhood, their need for an example of a healthy grown-up relationship like I had as a girl. She bugs me about how they are going to learn what love looks like, let alone feels like, if they don’t observe it at home. I want to tell her the chances of Simon and me ever returning to a shining example of marital harmony are slim. With regularity, Gloria takes the opportunity to point out that every woman in her granddaughters’ lives is single. Their grandmother, their mother, Auntie Zwena. When I suggest to my mom that she is free to date and be the image of domestic bliss for her grandchildren, she gives me the sign of the cross and dismisses such nonsense, reminding me she has had her great love. And then she holds up her ring finger, pointing to heaven to show she still wears her wedding band.
For my mother, marriage continues beyond “until death do us part.” Given my marital situation, she has extended that to “until runaway husbands return.” The conversation inevitably concludes that the reason the girls like to spend so much time at the Antonellis’ house is because both parents are around. It takes every ounce of my being to not go nuclear on my mother when that argument arises. Lou and Coco like to hang out at the Antonellis’ house because they have a PlayStation, a Ping-Pong table, and a brooding teenage son who plays the guitar and is captain of his lacrosse team. I’d hang out there, too, if I were a fourteen-year-old girl.
On the way to Mrs. Eisenberg’s, in the waning early-evening light, the houses along the serene streets of Atherton look even more exclusivebehind their manicured hedges and expansive old-growth trees. There is no sense that behind these facades are people organizing for the workweek ahead, tidying up, and making meal plans. These are tasks of their past before financial windfall came their way and made every day a weekend. My mom quiets as we roll through the neighborhood at the required twenty-five miles per hour, real-estate gawking and not wanting to call any attention to our out-of-place secondhand SUV. With each driveway we roll up to, I can see my mom get her hopes up that this is the house we get to visit, and as we pass her expectations drop until we reach the next grandiose driveway much farther down the block.
“I think they filmed a movie here once,” my mother comments, leaning forward in her seat as Mrs. Eisenberg’s pinkish French-inspired chateau with white shutters and dozens of black-lead windowpanes comes into full view. “You know the one I’m thinking of. It’s got that cute Kate Hudson in it.”
“Kate has three baby daddies, none of them her husband.” I spoil my mom’s admiration for the actress by dropping this fact.
“But Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn are the grandparents,” my mom answers, pleased with herself for responding with her own pop culture knowledge.
“They never married.”
“¡Ay, Dios mio! Antonia, give it a rest.” My mom sighs and flips down her visor, exhausted by my less than charming habit of needing to have the last quip.
“You look great, Mom,” I offer by way of apology for my brattiness. She smiles, cleaning up the lipstick in the corners of her mouth with a fingernail. In Gloria’s world, a compliment is an acceptable stand-in forsorry.
