I shook my head and she gave me a tired look as she sighed, “But I do know where you getthatfrom, though. Just like your father. Quiet but opinionated.”
I swallowed my immediate response. Because while I was like my father, inheriting his ability to have thoughts about a situation without feeling the need to voice them whenever the opportunity presented itself, I had really learned the behavior from my mom. From this family. It was hard to deny that things were changing. After Tiney’s whole situation and especially after her accident and subsequent health scare last winter, the dynamics in our family were shifting like gears in a clock. But from the very beginning I’d learned that even when I used my voice and spoke my mind, nothing ever changed. It never mattered in the eyes of the family. The only thing that mattered was the family business and the caveats that came with it.
Which is why, in a way, I couldn’t wait to get away from it. To start out on my own and to make a way for myself doing what I actually wanted to do. In other ways I felt stupid for even thinking about it. Thinking I could start my own company when I lived in the shadow of this generational success of a business. One my mom would love nothing more than to shove down my throat.
Mom’s intuition zeroed in on me. She always did this, always knew when there was more on my mind than I was letting on. It was the same now as she narrowed eyes on me and squared her shoulders with mine. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
I shook my head, “I’d like to know what you have to say first.”
She made a face. “I shouldn’t have to say more. It should be‘yes ma’am’and that’s it.”
Clay scoffed, and I narrowed my eyes. “But you do have more to say, don’t you?”
“I do,” she sniffed. Leaning back against Clint’s desk she crossed her arms over her chest and sighed dramatically. “I didn’t want to have to intervene boys, but it seems I’m going to. The bottom line is, you’ve had your fun, now it’s time to start thinking about your futures. The future of your careers, this company, and your lives.”
“Our futures are fine, mom.”
“They’re not, Clayton,” she said. “I did not labor over fifty-two hours with your stubborn behind for you to just lay over and accept things the way they are. It’s time you stepped into your rightful position here. No more lollygagging around.”
“That’s going to be a fuck no for me, Ma,” Clay said borderline snarling as he huffed and tightened his arms over his chest.
“Clayton Ferguson you better watch your mouth before I watch it for you.” Mom scowled, but quickly turned back to me. “And you. We let you play with your little toys for long enough. We even let you head a department in it, but it’s time you let someone else handle that and come upstairs with your brothers.”
“Computers mom. They aren’t toys, they’re just the groundwork of every streamlined operation in the company,” I said. “And they’re much more complicated than anything you have in mind for me‘upstairs.”
She waved a hand, “They aretools,Connor. Tools are things to be used. You are an asset, not something to be used and forgotten to get from one point to another.”
Funny you can suddenly tell the difference, I thought but dared not say.
“Hmm,” I said, my face screwing up beside myself. Because there went that. Any hope of my family accepting my aspirations gone before they were even put out into the world. “Clint’s already CEO, Clay will be Vice President one of these days, what is even left for me to do, Mom?”
“CFO.”
“You’d rather me push money in different directions than secure it all because of a title?”
“You aren’t some kind of security guard, Connor. You went to Oxford for Christ’s sake. Use your brain for something useful.”
“I guarantee without a security system on the technology here, you’d see very quickly just how useful it can be, Mom.”
She pressed her lips together, taking a deep breath “That’s not what I meant. It’s useful, Connor, it’s just not you.”
“No, it just isn’tyou,” I corrected, arms folding over my chest as this ball of helplessness started to form there.
Years. It had been years of this, and still I had no confidence to speak up about what I wanted, yet no intention of letting it go.
Mom had no intention of letting her side of it go either, judging by the way she huffed in angry irritation at my answer. “Do the two of you have to be so goddamn difficult?”
“Do you have to control everything?” Clay asked. “So Connor wants to work with the nerds. Let him. CFO’s fine being Bill. We like Bill, right?”
Bill was our current CFO, and he was fine, if not a little bland.
“I hate when you all talk about my profession like it’s some kind of weekend pastime,” I added.
“Isn’t it?” Mom asked, her venom starting to leak the more she failed to get her way.
“No,” I said, jaw tight enough to ache. This rush of unsureness spilling over me all of a sudden. I could tell them all right now. Tell them how pointless this conversation (if you could even call it that) was when I didn’t plan on being here forever. I could come clean right then and nip this debate in the bud. But that would mean me opening myself up for judgment and it was obviously no secret what they thought of the things I loved. So, could I tell them? I wasn’t sure. But I could try. “I—”
“You are young, but you won’t be young forever. It’s time for the two of you to settle into serious roles. We’ve let you fool around enough,” Mom started, but a muffled buzzing interrupted her from somewhere we couldn’t see. We watched in irritated silence as she dug through her bag to retrieve her phone. Reading the screen, she pressed a few buttons before bringing the phone toward her face. Stopping halfway she peeked up at us, and the look she gave us was not one of her‘playing around’looks. The look she gave us was one that officially said she meant business. And I guess that’s all she really had to relay as she started turning toward the office door. But not before she added a stern message of parting.
