Try to help.It’s a phrase I’ve underlined in my notes. As I say it, though, it feels like one big lie. The truth is that I just do what the client wants and count down the days until I can get promoted and move on and up. If I was actually trying to help, I wouldn’t be working as a sycophant for a big oil client that’s polluting the very water cycle that the kids are learning about.
Perhaps Rory can tell I’m having a moment, because he tactfully moves on to the next speaker in the panel.
At the end of the session, Mala’s mom turns to me with a smile and asks which one my child is. It startles me, realizing that I’m old enough that I could have a kid in this class. I have that cold-sweaty sensation that life is moving way too fast, that I’ve missed the boat.
“Oh no, I’m not a mom,” I stammer. “I’m just friends with Rory—Mr. Cooper,” I correct. “We’re from the same place back in the States.”
“Ah, bless him,” the mom says. “Mr. Cooper is just lovely. Isn’t he, Mala?”
“He’s quite splendid,” Mala agrees.
Her mom dashes out to collect Mala’s younger siblings at playgroup. Mala asks if I’ll stay, and I readily agree. I’ve already taken the rest of the day off, and I want to see more of Rory’s teaching.
After a snack break (I collect my Kit Kats and Mars bars), Rory passes out construction paper and crayons and asks the class to write down their own dream job and draw a picture of it.
I’m certain that no one will choose consultant, but a few of the kids write it down, with various misspellings. It boosts my ego at first, almost like it’s proof that I’ve chosen something noble. But then it dents my heart, picturing these free-form children having to dim their colors, clip their wings, and develop scaly exoskeletons to fit into the constrictive corporate box.
These kids seem so young, way too young to be thinking about careers. But when I was just about their age, I’d decided I wanted to be a CEO.
I watch Mala as she draws in every color crayon. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I ask, trying to decipher the bright flowery shapes and squiggly lines.
“Happy,” she answers through a gap-toothed smile. “I’d quite like to be happy. See here, this is the sky,” she says, pointing to the shapes on the paper, which I now see are clouds and suns, not flowers. “I’m going to live up there and dance in the sunshine every day.”
Another boy overhears her from down the table. “Don’t be daft, Mala,” he sneers. “Happyisn’t a career.”
Mala looks dejected, her little shoulders slumping as the grin slips from her face.
“Don’t listen to him,” I tell her. “Happy is a very good thing to want to be.”
“You reckon so?” Mala says, perking up just a bit.
“Very much so,” I affirm.
I feel Rory looking on. He says something quietly to the kid who made fun of Mala, making the boy wriggle sheepishly in his seat.
Then, pulling up a chair beside Mala, Rory picks up an orange crayon and starts drawing on his own sheet of yellow paper. “You know,” he says, adding some smiley face suns. “I’d like to be happy when I grow up too. Is it okay if I steal your idea, Mala?”
Mala appears thoroughly cheered up by the idea that her beloved Mr. Cooper is taking her ambition seriously. “But Mr. Cooper,” she says, with great solemnity, “you’re already grown up!” Then she bursts out giggling, like this is just the funniest prospect in the world—Mr. Cooper trying to figure out what he wants to be when he grows up!
“I’m not so sure about that,” Rory says as he continues to fill his blank canvas with color. “I don’t think we’re ever done growing up.”
His gold-brown eyes catch mine, making me feel a little less lost. Or at least a little more okay with feeling lost. Because here we are, two people who were raised within a few miles of each other in small-town America, who are still growing up across the ocean here in the sprawling city of London.
Growing up together, perhaps.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“The happiness thing stays in my mind for a while. The bright look on Mala’s face when she’d said it—”I’d quite like to be happy.”
It makes me wonder why I’ve never thought of my goals like that—as a feeling rather than a title. Why I’ve always been wired toachieverather than simplybe. I guess my logic has been that achievement will bring happiness. That one is a prerequisite for the other. But I’m not so sure of that as I used to be.
What if Mala’s dancing-on-the-clouds drawing came true? What if you could fly through the sky without climbing a rigid ladder to get there?
I wonder how Rory would view it. It feels like he’s always thinking about other people’s happiness—his students’, Emily’s. But what about his own?
He called me after Career Day, but because of my acute phone phobia, I let it go to voicemail. The message he left had some really nice things about how great I was with the kids and how they’reasking when I’m coming back next. I’ve taken to replaying it some evenings when I’m anxious to hear an update from HR or stressing about the promotion or wondering if I should re-download the dating apps. Hearing Rory’s voice doesn’t fix anything, but it calms me down so the breaths come from my belly rather than my throat.
One Friday evening, I’m walking along Upper Street on my way back from Sainsburys, carting two tote bags of groceries—mostly crumpets, peanut butter, and precooked roasts. I’d meant to go shopping last Sunday but haven’t gotten around to it until now.
