AVERY
“You have to come out tonight,” Tasha insists as she looks at me with puppy dog eyes and her lip all pushed out in a pout.
Tasha is the closest thing I have to a friend, and her pitiful look does make my resolve weaken. Just not enough. My gut is screaming at me that going out is not going to help me. Not when the burden on my shoulders feels so fucking heavy.
Sure, I could ignore my problems for a minute, an hour, maybe even the whole night. And then tomorrow it’ll all be there again. I sure as hell won’t be any closer to figuring out how to get out of this life, one I don’t want, after going out.
Going out tonight won’t change how I’ll wake up tomorrow to find everything the same with the addition of a headache.
No thank you.
“I can’t, Tasha,” I keep my voice soft, not wanting to offend her.
She’s coming from a good place. A sweet place. I know it, but that doesn’t mean I’m capable of letting her do it.
Or letting her in beyond us working together.
And if my father has anything to say about it, my gut keeps reminding me, one day she’ll be my sister-in-law.
It’s almost impossible to keep the cringe off my face with that lovely thought, but I manage it. Barely.
“You have to,” she begs, her hands coming together like she’s praying.
As she tilts her head to the side and bats her eye lashes at me, I almost give in. It would be so easy to say yes. Admittedly, I’d probably have a good time.
“I really can’t,” I insist. I lower my voice and lean toward her slightly, “You know I’ll probably be called in to work tomorrow even though it’s the weekend.”
It sounds reasonable and it’s not a lie. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been expected to work Saturday, and far more Sunday’s than I even want to think about, since I started working at my father’s law firm. But I guess it’s just what happens when being a lawyer here doesn’t mean much since I also happen to be a woman.
My father being a founding partner certainly doesn’t matter. He’s the one who treats me like a paralegal with a law degree. And everyone follows his lead.
The culture in this firm is a misogynistic nightmare.
I walked right into it with my eyes open, but it wasn’t like I could really avoid it. The expectations wrapped around me have been there for so long and I can’t remember a time when they weren’t my burden to bear.
I’ve never been stronger than those expectations. Never been able to find my voice when it mattered to tell my father about how I wasn’t interested in the life he envisioned for me.
And here I am.
“Fine,” Tasha holds the word out, a whine in her voice.
The ironic thing, the thing I’ll never say out loud, is that Tasha is a paralegal here at the firm, but she’s never worked on Saturday or Sunday. Her father, the other founding partner, treats her like window dressing and expects everyone else to as well.
Tasha gives me a glimpse into what my life would have been like if I weren’t an only child. If I had a brother, the burden would have been put on his shoulders. Then I would have just been expected to become like my mother.
A trophy.
A clone.
A woman with no agency for herself.
At least I have an education I’m capable of using. For the last thirty years, my mother let her paid for and forgotten degree live in squalor, while steeping it in alcohol and prescription drugs.
She’s no role model to me.
Her silence was deafening in the spaces when I needed her to speak up, when I needed her to just try. She never did and loneliness became my second skin. It wouldn’t have been easy for her to defend me, to protect me, but I guess what she could have lost was worth more than me.
At least that’s how it has felt like. With the way she’s paraded around in her designer clothing and her expensive bags while dripping with jewelry she never needed, she’s never refuted the assumption.
