Page 20 of The Game

Oh God, I’m making bad tech jokes without even realizing it.

I’m nerdy enough to think that was an awesome joke.

Stop buttering up us poor technophobes. How about a coffee tomorrow to chat?

You’re on.

As I’m about to leave the office for the evening, my phone lights up with a call and I pick it up, then raise my eyes to the heavens.

“Adam!” my mom says. “How are you?”

In my mind’s eye, she’s standing in the hall of the bungalow I grew up in, landline receiver pressed to her ear, the same swirly patterned carpets and embossed wallpaper that have been there all my life. Sometimes I think that, when my parents die, we’ll discover they are closet millionaires from all the money they’ve stashed away. If it was left up to Dad, they’d still be watching a black-and-white television. I settle back in my chair. Has she called to persuade me to come home for Thanksgiving? With the state of the business, I just don’t see how that’s possible. I’ll be working here every weekend.

“Hey, Mom, I’m doing okay.”

“I’m calling to find out when you’re coming home,” she says.

Before I can answer, I’m momentarily distracted when Susie shouts goodbye as she leaves.

My mother adds, “Are you still in the office?” My dad is as quiet as the grave, but my mom is like a restless ferret. She worries all the time and then asks pointed questions.

I glance at my watch: 9 p.m. “Yes, I’m still here.” I don’t want to tell her how bad things are with the business. “I’m not sure. It’s a very busy time for us fulfilling orders.” Although God knows what the runup to Christmas will belike this year. “I’ve got some jujitsu stuff going on, too.”

“Oh! That silly fighting thing! And really, Adam! How can some website take precedence over coming home to see your parents?”

It’s a familiar conversation. I always struggle to get home at this time of year, and she always refers to my business as a website. If what I do interferes with some idea of hers, it’s a useless endeavor. But, surprisingly, she doesn’t pause for an answer but launches instead into an update on all the people we know locally and what their children are doing. I place the phone on my desk and sink back down in my seat, pulling up the PCB I was designing.

“I’ve got some news for you, Adam!” she says eventually.

“Mmm,” I say as I trace out a connection on the board.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Jennifer is getting married. Her parents have kindly invited us to the wedding, despite everything.”

Despite everything?AndJennifer. A girl I went out with in my final year of school, over thirteen years ago. Nonetheless, my chest warms. She’s the quietest person on the planet, and I never thought we had a long-term future together, but she was lovely and we loved each other in the way you do when you’re seventeen. Jennifer wasn’t even upset when I left for NYU and told her gently that it wasn’t going to work anymore. She just nodded and gave me a hug.

“I’ll reach out and congratulate her,” I say.

“Now, Adam, you don’t need to go upsettingthatapple cart again,” my mom says, and my jaw drops.

“What apple cart?” I say, but she tuts at me.

Over the years, it’s become clear my parents expected me to come home after college and settle down in the small town I grew up in, and I never know whether to be amused or exasperated by this. I couldn’t wait to leave the endless gossip, the lack of career opportunities, and how everybody knew everyone else. The anonymity of New York—where so many different people live so many different lives and make things happen—makes me happy. For all I envy Janus, I love his go-getting attitude and the business he’s created from scratch.

“You could have been married by now, too,” my mom says.

My gut roils. “Who to?”

My mother tuts again. “To Jennifer, of course! That girl was head over heels for you and she’s lovely. It was a real mistake to let her slip through your fingers.”

She’s almost humming with suppressed energy on the other end of the line, and too late I realizethiswas the reason she called. She’s been stewing on some nonsense ofit should have been Adamever since she found out that Jennifer was engaged.

Heat creeps up my neck. “She wasn’t the right girl for me, Mom,” I say as firmly as I can.

But there’s no stopping her. “Honestly, young people today, what do they expect marriage to be? It’s all some big romantic ideal …”

Can Dad hear this conversation?

“… spending all this money on weddings. They don’t realize that it’s a lifelong commitment and you need to be with someone solid, not be swept up in some romantic nonsense …”

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