“We’re finally done wasting money on this failure,” my father muttered at my college graduation.
The dean then called my name, raised a crystal award into the light, and disclosed the one secret I had kept from my family for six months—the secret that caused my mother to lose her breath and my golden-child brother to put down his sunglasses.vr
Like every single big day in my life, the morning of my college graduation began with my family coming up with new ways to tell me that I was the letdown.
I listened to Mom on the phone through paper-thin walls as I sat in my small studio apartment, meticulously pressing the wrinkles out of my gown and hat.
She was saying to someone, most likely Aunt Linda, “Yes, we’ll be there for the ceremony,” but in all honesty, it was really a formality at that point.
“Four years of living in that terrible little place, working at that coffee shop, and barely getting by.” I keep telling David that Marcus’s law degree would have been a better use of the funds.
My older brother Marcus, the golden kid, had never worked a day in his life and had easily made his way through Harvard Law thanks to Dad’s connections and credit cards. At the age of twenty-eight, the same Marcus was living at his parents’ pool house and was in between trust fund disbursements.
