Most Likely to Succeed

“I learned a lot from that,” I said.

“You are grounded,” she said. “Your father is not going to talk me out of it this time. You may go to school and come home.”

“You just made sure I won’t get into Columbia, then. Nobody’s going to write me a stellar recommendation letter if I shirk my responsibilities for student council. We’re building the homecoming float every day after school next week—”

“You may build the homecoming float,” she said stiffly.

“—and I’ve figured out a place to hold the homecoming dance. Actually, Sawyer figured it out. Do I get to go to my own homecoming dance?”

“Yes,” she said carefully, “but not with that boy. Your father and I will volunteer as chaperones to make sure.”

“Fantastic,” I muttered. I’d gone to all the trouble of saving this dance for my friends. I was rewarded with a date with my parents.

When we got home, Dad was watching a pro football pregame show with his feet up on the coffee table. “Did you bring me a rock?”

“Shut up.” My mother disappeared into her office.

“Hey, my Kaye,” he said. “Get changed and meet me on my boat in five minutes.”

“Really?” I whined. “I just went through this whole thing with one parent.”

“Please,” he said.

Obediently I changed into a bikini and a hat, smeared on sunscreen, and galloped across the yard and down the pier to the sailboat. I was still angry and not looking forward to whatever Dad had to say. But at least his run-up to a scolding was more enjoyable than my mother’s. He’d made me a picnic basket full of breakfast, for one thing. The boat puttered through the lagoon on its impotent motor, but as soon as we hit the open Gulf, Dad unfurled the big sail. We sped through the sea breeze, past the harbor and Harper’s granddad’s beach and the public park that had caused all the trouble. I sat in the bow, enjoying the wind in my face. The late morning sun was warm and kind.

Finally I asked, “Well? When’s the lecture? Let’s get it over with.”

“No lecture,” Dad said. “I thought it would do you good to get out on the ocean.”

Moving with uncharacteristic speed, he wound and unwound ropes until the sails dropped and the boat slowed to a crawl. He offered me his favorite fishing pole. I shook my head. He baited the hook for himself and skimmed it out over the sparkling water.

I shifted to sit close to him on a lawn chair in the stern. “Can I ask you something?”

He glanced at me like he was very afraid.

“You and Mom both majored in finance at Columbia.”

“Yes.”

“You both worked in Manhattan for a couple of years. Then she got an offer for a great position with the bank here. She grew up here, but you’re from Boston. You didn’t want to move to Florida. She bribed you by buying you this boat, and the house on a lagoon with access to the Gulf.”

“Yes.”

“Why did you give up?”

He gave me a look like that was crazy talk. “I didn’t give up, exactly. Everyone seems to forget this, but I do have a job.”

“I know. I didn’t mean—”

“And in that job, I wrote a headlining article for GQ on how the hardest thing about being a writer and the secondary breadwinner and the primary caretaker is that your own kids think you’re a loser.”

I raised my voice, and it echoed back to me over the waves. “I don’t think you’re a loser. But you and Mom both had these power jobs in New York. She got her own bank. You became a writer. Something happened to you.”

He reeled his line all the way in and flicked it out again before he said, “Being a stockbroker is very stressful. I couldn’t handle it.”

“What do you mean, you couldn’t handle it?”

“I just couldn’t.”

I tried to picture what he meant, and what this had looked like. “Did you go to a counselor?”

He laughed bitterly. “Of course not. Men don’t do that.”

That sounded familiar. I said, “That’s dumb.”

He shrugged, zigzagging the line across the water.

“So what did you do, when you couldn’t handle it?”

“I quit. In the worst, most public way possible, sabotaging myself so I wouldn’t be able to work in the finance industry in Manhattan again for a while.”

I’d never heard this story before. I was dying to know more about his meltdown. But he seemed so traumatized describing it, even now, that I decided to press him for details another day. I only asked, “Did Mom lose her mind?”

“No.” He sounded surprised. I couldn’t tell whether he was surprised at my question, or surprised that my mother hadn’t blown her top two decades ago. “She helped me brainstorm for another job I could get with this degree, a job that wouldn’t drive me crazy. We figured out that I loved writing. I could write books and articles about finance, interpreting the stock market for lay people. And she said I might like living in Florida and slowing down. She promised that if I would let her have this bank, she would let me have this boat.”

That didn’t sound like my mother at all.

“You’ve been traveling a lot more lately,” I said. “Are you trying to get away from Mom? Truthfully.”

He gave me an expression of utter shock. “No!”

“Would you tell me if you were?” I kept on.