So here I am standing among my parents and sister, my hair cut, my body in a suit fit for burial, and an empty attaché case hanging from my left hand. I feel like an idiot, yet here they are telling me how “sharp” I look.
“So, you had an interview?” my mother asks.
“Yeah. Two to be exact.”
“Where?” asks my father, putting his Wall Street Journal down on the kitchen counter.
“Downtown.”
“What companies?”
“The Heathman . . .”
“Aah, The Heathman,” says my sister Maire. “It’s nice there.”
My mother asks what position I applied for.
“Um . . . administrative?”
“I know the General Manager,” my father says. “I’ll give him a call.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“Connections are everything.”
“You know what I do,” Maire says. “If I have an interview. I call the place back after I get home to see if they have any questions. See, that way they have to get my résumé out and, well, when they’re finished with it, they put it back on the top of the pile of résumés.
“That’s a grand idea,” my parents chime in chorus.
“You should do it, too,” Maire encourages needlessly. “It always works for me.”
“Why don’t you do it now,” Dad nudges.
“Yeah, well, maybe, you know . . .”
“Really. Do it now.” Now he’s pushing. “Make the call from my office.”
This suggestion actually has quite a bit of weight: normally, my old man would kill me if he found me talking on his personal phone line.
“No. I, uh, just left the place about half an hour ago. I think I’ll let it wait.”
“Wait, huh? You know, you’ll never get anywhere in life if you keep waiting like that.”
“I’ll call the Heathman, alright?”
Christ, I don’t even want the feckin’ job.
My father breaks off into a long tangent that embraces the Universe, God, His Only Begotten Son, “Jaysus”, the Value of Never Giving Up, and concludes with the Grand Unified Theory: “I’ve never been a quitter, son. If I didn’t push every single day, why, we wouldn’t have this roof over our heads.”
Meanwhile, I’m digging through the cupboards, looking for tea. Where’s the Earl Grey? No Earl Grey? Who drank all the feckin’ Earl Grey. Ah, there you are!
“Nobody will come and bring opportunity to you,” my father continues. “No, you have to find the opportunities yourself and pursue them relentlessly . . . Relentlessly.”
A little deeper in the cabinet, I find a Ball jar full of raw sugar and start to set up shop next to the instant hot water dispenser.
“Nobody ever gave me anyt’ing. I had to start from nothing when your mother and I came to this country. And if I sat back on my arse all these years, that’s where we’d still be. You’ve had too much of the good life . . .”
I drop the tea bag into the mug and turn the knob on the dispenser, water comes out, spitting violently, a cloud of steam rises to my face. I place the mug on the counter and let the tea steep.
“That’s the problem with you, I spoiled you, gave you too much.”
I raise my eyes to see if my old man is serious. He is. Dead serious.
My mother echoes my father: “We’ve given you too much.”
“You don’t know how lucky you are, boy, how many t’ings you’ve got going for you . . .”
I’ve heard this homily so many times I could mouth the words as he says them.
“You were born in this great country America; you’re white; you’re Catholic. You’ve had the privilege of an education few can afford . . .”
Nor can I, Dad. Nor can I.
“And you were born into this family. Your mother, God love her, is the best woman . . .”
“I know, Dad. I know.”
When the phone in my father’s office rings, Maire takes off in a sprint down the hall to answer it. A moment later, she shouts that my father’s partner is on the line.
My father starts for his office, but just as he is about to leave the kitchen he stops, turns around and says, “I want to talk to you after this call. In my office.”
I’m left with my mother, who sums up her discontent in three words: “Your father’s right.”
I take the tea bag out of the water, add my raw sugar, then search the refrigerator for the Half and Half. There’s only non-fat milk and I moan: “We’re out of Half and Half! Do we have any whole cream?”
“You know your father can’t eat the fat.”
“Well, I can’t drink this tea if there’s no Half and Half or . . .”
“There’s some milk.”
“That?” I say, pointing at the gallon jug of non-fat. “That is not milk.”
I have to resign myself to drinking the sweetened tea without milk, and as I’m sipping it, I wonder what my old man wants to talk to me about, other than the usual harangue I’ve heard countless times before. And then my mother tells me that I’ve got a number of messages.
“Rowland called. He said he would call again tomorrow. Sorry, that call was yesterday. He said he’d call you this morning.”
“Damn.” I was out all morning getting the haircut and being interviewed. “Must have missed him, then. You want to talk about lucky. That guy is one lucky bastard.”
“That mouth of yours,” says my mother, punctuating her displeasure with a loud tsk.
I look through the messages. A call from the Educational Loan Servicing Center.
“They keep calling,” my mother tells me. The tone of her voice tells me even more.
Citibank . . . a call from the Unemployment Office . . . Wonder what they want . . . Rowland’s call.
“Rowland landed a job in Frankfurt,” I explain to my mother. “He’ll be making fifty-four thousand dollars a year. Fifty-four thousand bucks! That’s an unbelievable amount of money.”
“You’re too negative.”
“Negative? Who’s being negative?”
“You are. You’re too negative.”
“That comment, my dear Mother, is very negative,” I joke, but the woman isn’t laughing back. “Look, I’m just saying I’m happy for my friend. Not only is going to make a ton of money—only two years out of college, no less—he’ll be one of my few friends who has a real job. It’s damn near criminal the salaries and positions my friends have.”
My mother shakes her head. Another loud tsk.
“You want to come to Safeway with me, Peadar?”
“Yes!” Anything to get out of the house and away from my father and his I-want-to-talk-to-you-in-my-office malarkey.