Page 11 of Goodbye Note

“This isn’t a maybe.” I was going to do it either way, but it would be a lot easier with their support. “The record is already platinum.”

“How many bands fail, Arik? I want you to look at the numbers. You are making your future uncertain.” It was all by the numbers, and I guess I should have expected that, considering she and Dad both worked in big law.

“A lot, but we have so much momentum right now. I can always go back to school. I can’t recreate the excitement around this album.” I didn’t know how to get it through to her.

“You know how competitive Chicago Law is. T14 schools aren’t going to like the appearance of taking a semester off, and neither will law firms. You have to show you are serious.” Her tone wasn’t mean. It carried concern, and I guess I understood where they were coming from considering my father was a second-generation immigrant and both my parents were the first in their family to go to college.

But no one thought they would succeed, so wouldn’t that make them want to see me succeed? I guess only if measured by their metrics.

“It’s one semester, and didn’t you say it was better to be well-rounded?” I didn’t know how to tell them I didn’t want to go at all and this was a compromise. “Maybe they’ll see it as getting it out of my system.” I had to try every angle before I gave up.

“How are you going to take the LSATs while touring?” She crossed her arms and leaned against the counter.

I rubbed a hand over the back of my head, trying to think of a way to deflect her question. Or to admit I had no plans of studying for or taking the LSAT. I’d tried but none of the information stuck in my brain, so I’d slacked off the last six months.

“Arik.”

“What?” I lifted my eyes from the floor, realizing how long I’d been silent.

“You can’t throw away your entire future for this.” My mom pleaded with her eyes and I felt bad. The guilt was real, and my mom knew just how to drive it home.

“You act like law school isn’t a maybe. I might not get in anywhere.”

“You’re a legacy. Of course you’ll get in.” Mom and Dad met at the University of Chicago Law almost three decades ago. It was everything to them.

“That’s not a sure thing. They tell you that.” It basically was, but they did save that for total fuckups. They weren’t letting someone in who had a 2.0 and got a 150 on their LSAT. They had a reputation to uphold. But I didn’t think anyone who was a legacy had that issue. Most of their parents were big-shot corporate lawyers after going to a T14 school. And maybe I should want that for my life. My brother wanted it, my sister wanted it, and here I was, the little punk of the family with my long hair, painted nails, and no intention of ever being a lawyer.

“You have a 3.95 GPA in pre-law. I think you’d get in even if you weren’t a legacy.”

None of that was really the point. I was hyperlexic, and I loved words. They made sense to me, so I had an easier time with English than most kids. But that was undergrad, and law school was entirely different. I couldn’t skate by in something I don’t love. I didn’t want to dig through case law for hours on end. I didn’t want to be in college at all. The only reason I’d gone was because it was the thing to do, and in my family, you didn’t just not go to college.

“Not if I fail my LSAT.” It was a bit of a dick move, but I didn’t know how to get the point across to her.

“You need to speak to your father about this when he gets home.”

This whole conversation made me want to drive back to college to spend spring break on the empty campus, but I knew that would only push it off with them, and I didn’t think I could handle being alone right now. The thoughts were too loud. “What do you think he’s going to say?”

She lifted her shoulders. My parents held onto this idea that poor was the worst thing anyone could be in life. And I understood it was rooted in trauma and how their generation saw the world, but it wasn’t my view of the world. I’d rather be a starving artist than stuck in a high rise all day.

I should probably crave stability, but I didn’t. Law would bore me out of my mind.

My mom pulled her legal pad out of her briefcase and took the pen from behind her ear, clearly done with this conversation until my dad got home. She’d made the move to corporate before he did, so while she’d made partner, he hadn’t yet and worked longer hours. Not that mom ever stopped working. She was as much a workaholic as my father. She just did it in different ways. Hers were all last minute. Lots of nights and weekends.

I abandoned the living room when she began speaking into the little tape recorder she took with her everywhere.

My father walked in the door at a quarter past seven to my mother finishing dinner. He slipped in behind her at the stove, and she half-turned to greet him with a kiss. They were so sickeningly in love I never hoped to live up to that kind of thing. They’d been obsessed with each other since the day they met. No one else mattered in their little world. I didn’t want to be jaded, but what were the odds of finding anything like their love? It seemed like this far-off concept that I’d never grasp as all my friends’— parents went through nasty divorces.

When you grew up watching two people drenched in love, anything less sounded like a waste of time.

I hated how it made me think of Nicole and what she’d done to throw so many years down the drain. Would I always be bitter? Maybe I didn’t have the capacity to love like they did. I felt too broken.

“When will dinner be ready?” Dad asked.

“In about twenty minutes. I got stuck on a call and started late.” Mom grabbed a spoon and dipped it into the sauce she had on the stovetop, then held it out to him.

Dad tasted it and moaned softly. “I don’t know how you do it all. But you are my favorite cook.”

Mom laughed. “Because I’m super-woman. You could never dream of doing what a woman does.” She liked to tease him about it, but the truth was cooking for dad was part of her love language. She loved taking care of him and even when he offered, she wouldn’t let him do a thing in the kitchen. “Arik has something he wants to speak to you about. Why don’t you two set the table and do that?”

---