‘I have to say that, without revealing too much of what Ben told me, he still does have a great deal to work through. I know all about him being chosen for that big exhibition in Portland. But like so many creative people he is also wracked by considerable doubt — especially when it comes to the issue of self-esteem. He has told me he is very close to you.’
‘I like to think that,’ I said, also noting her professional silence on the subject of his father.
‘There’s a sister, isn’t there?’
‘That’s right, Sally.’
‘They are rather different, aren’t they?’
Understatement of the year. If Ben is creative and withdrawn and tentative about himself, yet also given to thinking outside the box, then Sally is his diametric opposite. She is wildly outgoing, wildly confident. Dan adores her, as she adores her dad — though his testiness has been getting to her recently. My own relationship with Sally is a little more complicated. Part of this, I think, has to do with the usual stuff that adolescent girls (she’s seventeen) have with their moms. But the other part — the part that troubles me — stems from the fact that we are, in so many ways, such profoundly different people. Sally is Ms Popularity at her high school. She has worked hard at this role, as she truly cares about being liked. She is very all-American girl. Tall, clean-limbed, sandy-haired, always fresh-faced and well scrubbed, with great teeth. Her image means so much to her — to the point where she is already obsessively working out two hours a day and spends at least forty-five minutes every night ensuring that her face is blemish-free. She uses teeth-whitening strips to make certain that her smile is electrifying. No wonder she has half the football team chasing after her, though her current steady, Brad, is the school’s baseball star pitcher. He’s also something of a politician in the making who, I sense, sees Sally as nothing more than a very good-looking girl to have on his arm. Sally knows this too. When Brad was admitted early decision to Dartmouth a few weeks ago, I found her crying in our living room after school. In a rare moment, she confided in me:
‘He’ll be in that fancy Ivy League college in New Hampshire and I’ll be up in Orono at stupid U Maine.’
‘U Maine is where I went.’
‘Yeah, but you could have gone anywhere you wanted to.’
‘U Maine offered me a full scholarship. My parents didn’t have any money and—’
‘Well, if I had the grades to get into Dartmouth, would we have the money to—?’
‘We would find the money,’ I said, sounding a little tetchy on this subject, as Sally will sometimes bemoan the fact that we have to live so carefully right now — though, thankfully, she only targets me for these comments, as she knows it would devastate her father to hear his much-adored daughter going on about the lack of family capital. But she also chooses me to vent her frustration to about most things to do with her life — especially the fact that she wasn’t born into a family of Wall Street big shots. For Sally there are always points of comparison. Brad’s father made a lot of money opening a small chain of big box hardware stores around the state — but still decided to send his very ambitious youngest son to the local public school (I like that fact). Brad’s parents live in a big waterfront house with all sorts of deluxe fittings (a sauna, a jacuzzi, an indoor gym, an outdoor pool, plasma televisions in every room). They now also have a home in ‘an exclusive gated development’ (Sally’s exact words) near Tampa. She spent a week with Brad down at their Florida spread, and went out with Brad and his father on the family cabin cruiser. And Brad already has his very own ‘cool’ car: a Mini Cooper. And.
I truly love my daughter. I admire her optimism, her verve, her forward momentum. But I also wonder often what she’s driving towards.
‘I know Brad’s going to drop me as soon as we graduate next summer and we both head to college. Because he thinks of me as his high-school fun, nothing more. And he’s after somebody who can be a future senator’s wife.’
‘Is that what you want to be — a senator’s wife?’
‘Do I hear disappointment in your voice, Mom?’
‘You never disappoint me, Sally.’
‘I wish I could believe that.’
‘I don’t want you to be anything you don’t want to be.’
‘But you don’t like the fact that I want to marry a man like Brad.’
As opposed to specifically marrying Brad? Was that the underlying theme here — marrying a guy with money who has firmly planted himself on the career escalator marked ‘Up’?
‘Everyone has their own agenda, their own aspirations,’ I said.
‘And there you go again, putting me down.’
‘How is what I said putting you down?’
‘Because my aspirations strike you as small. Because I am not going to do anything fantastic with my life. ’
‘You have many gifts, Sally.’
‘You consider me shallow and vacuous and someone who, unlike you, never picks up a book.’
‘You know that I think the world of you.’
‘Ben is your favorite.’
‘I consider you and Ben equally wonderful. And the thing is, you honestly have no idea what your life is going to turn out to be. Or where it will land you. Even when you think: “So this is what my life is now,” well, things can change in an instant or two.’
‘You think that because you look at other people’s tumors all day.’
Ouch. I smiled tightly.
‘Well. it does give me an interesting perspective on things.’
‘I don’t want to be a slave to routine.’
‘Then don’t be somebody’s wife.’
There. I said it. Sally flinched, then shot back with:
‘You’re somebody’s wife.’
‘Yes, I am. But—’
‘You don’t have to complete the sentence, Mom. And I know if I were a really creative type like Ben. ’
There are certain arguments with children that you simply cannot win.
‘There’s a sister, isn’t there?’
‘That’s right, Sally.’
‘And they are rather different, aren’t they?’
I was snapped back into the here-and-now of Dr Allen’s office.
‘Sally is a rather different person to Ben,’ I said, hopefully sounding neutral.
‘Ben intimated that to me. Just as he intimated he feels closer to you than to his father.’
‘Dan stills loves Ben.’
Dr Allen looked at me with care.
‘I’m sure he does, in his own way,’ she said. ‘But let me ask you something, Laura — do you always feel the need to make things better?’
‘Is there anything wrong with that?’
‘It can be rather disheartening, can’t it? I mean, other people’s happiness — it’s ultimately their own concern, isn’t it? And that also includes your children at this point in their lives. You can’t blame yourself for Ben’s problems.’
‘Easier said than done.’
Half an hour later I met Ben — as arranged by Dr Allen — at a cafй off campus. He’d lost a noticeable amount of weight — and he was already skinny before all this. His face still looked a little pasty. He let me hug him, but didn’t respond in kind. He had difficulty looking at me directly during the half-hour that we spoke. At first, when I told him how well he looked, he said: ‘Mom, you’ve never lied to me about anything. so please don’t start now.’ He then proceeded to ask me how things were going at home, whether his sister was ‘still hung up on Mr Jock Republican’ (I was very reassured to hear his natural acerbity hadn’t vanished), and how he’d actually started a new canvas that was not a collage.