I remember vividly a time when all this happened in the food court at the mall. We ran into Mrs. Shaeffer and her daughter Rebecca, who was in my class, but no one really knew Rebecca, because she was always out of school with severe asthma. If she showed up at school seven times a year, that was a lot. Mom asked Rebecca a million questions about her health, to the point where I was starting to get embarrassed because it was painfully clear that Rebecca didn’t want to talk about it. I remember she kept taking hits of her inhaler after every answer she gave, even though she didn’t seem to be out of breath. The funny thing was that Mrs. Shaeffer watched the conversation with this look that suggested she absolutely loved my mom, simply because Mom was asking her sick daughter questions and looking concerned. Maybe no one else spoke to Rebecca ever. I don’t know. But once Mom finished with Rebecca, she made her move, saying to Mrs. Shaeffer, “So—are you ready to bring that Windex-blue kitchen out of the nineteen seventies and into the twenty-first century? You’ll double your investment when you sell your house. Guaranteed. Money in the bank.”
It seemed like Mrs. Shaeffer didn’t care all that much about updating her kitchen or selling her home, but she didn’t want to disappoint my mother, either. I remember thinking that Mom was bullying her into spending a lot of money on something that Mrs. Shaeffer seemed sort of indifferent about. And it was the first time I ever really disliked my mom. I hated her a little bit that day, even though I fully realized that it was her job to sell, and her ability to persuade people to update their homes was what paid for the lifestyle we enjoyed—only I wasn’t really enjoying “our lifestyle” deep down inside, and I was beginning to believe that neither were Mom and Dad.
When we walked away from them, Mom looked back over her shoulder to make sure Mrs. Shaeffer and Rebecca were out of earshot, and then she said, “If you’re too sick to attend school, how can you be in the mall gorging on Chinese stir-fry? It’s disgusting the way she lets her daughter put on so much weight and blames asthma. So much of life is mental, Nanette. Remember that. I’m glad I don’t have to worry about your mind—or your physique. How did we get so lucky?”
“Why did you push Mrs. Shaeffer so hard to remodel her kitchen?” I asked, and just as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted saying them, fearing that my mother would take it as an attack.
Without missing a beat, Mom said, “I bring beauty, class, and style into the homes of otherwise unremarkable women. Help their self-esteem. Did you know scientific research has proved that a married couple’s sex life improves after a home is redecorated? It’s true.”
It was obvious that my mother completely believed this and was now selling to me, so I didn’t say anything else, even though I secretly wanted to live in an old, outdated home that felt lived in and full of mystery and history and magic—unlike our home, which was sort of like living in a regularly updated catalog. I didn’t want to imagine what that did or didn’t do for my parents’ bedroom experience.
My dad does something with the stock market for a living, but I’m not exactly sure what. He’s always talking about the ups and downs of the various economies around the world the way other people talk about the weather, and I get the sense that the “global economy” is just some never-ending story adults tell themselves. I understand the basic stock market principle of “buy low and sell high,” but that’s about it, even though my father has tried to get me more interested in my portfolio.
I started playing soccer when I was five years old. All the girls in my neighborhood were on a team called the Rainbow Dragons. I liked the smell of grass and being outside and eating orange wedges at halftime. It was nice that everyone came to watch, and it was fun to kick the ball as hard as you could. For some reason, I could kick the ball more accurately than everyone else, and I started to score just about all of the team’s goals. I became a fast runner, and I wasn’t afraid to head the ball, either, even when the coach punted it high up into the air and everyone else would run away. I would always run toward the ball and strike it before it could strike me.
And so my dad made up this game where he’d invest one hundred dollars into my portfolio every time I pushed a soccer ball past the opposing goalie and into the net. When I was little, I had no concept of money or the stock market or anything else. But my father went absolutely nuts every time I scored. He’d practically do cartwheels down the sidelines while screaming his head off. It used to make me laugh when I was little because it was so surprising. My father barely ever smiled, let alone whooped and yelled and danced around.
I liked making Dad go wild.
Whenever I scored, we would sit at the computer together later that night, transfer money from his account to mine, and make stock market trades, investing the money I’d earned by scoring goals. I didn’t really care about my portfolio, especially since I was never allowed to take out any money to spend, so what was the point? But I liked sitting on my dad’s lap and listening to the enthusiastic way he spoke whenever the subject of money came up. Some kids play Candy Land or Chutes and Ladders with their dads, and I played the Dow Jones and Nasdaq. That’s just the way it was.
My dad worked a lot, and I mostly saw him—apart from nightly dinner—only at my soccer games or when I was invited into his home office to invest my goal-scoring money. Because I loved my dad, I tried to score as many goals as I could just to keep our relationship alive.
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