PixelVixen707

Not ten minutes after my parents stepped in the door, we had the money talk.

No, that’s not fair - it wasn’t a talk, just a quick, 10-ton exchange. Mom and Dad came east on a New York trip, to catch some snow between Christmas and New Year’s. Christmas, they host the rest of my family back in Cali; New Year’s, they leave to us. But this weekend we had ‘em, shopping frugally, sightseeing timidly. Dad in his silly bulky L. L. Bean coat that he saves just for this trip, and his unfashionably clunky eyeglasses - thanks for the nearsight there, dad - but sharp, quiet and funny like they don’t make anymore. Mom at his side, sweeter, softer, and a little rounder. Not much to say about mom, because she was just always by my side too, even during my teenage escapades. They’re the kind of parents you’d pick for yourself if you could: steady and sane.

But we can’t talk about money.

I dreaded the talk even though I knew it would be short. In fact, the whole thing was two sentences long. My father and I were in the kitchen, where I mixed us a couple drinks (Scotch on the rocks - that’s what he drinks, so I did too). Mom was in the other room with Zach, taking an interest in his art. We were catching up and had just clinked our glasses in a toast, when he asked question one:

“How’s work?”

That’s the New York Journal-Ledger, my one real job - because no offense to this blog, but it ain’t paying for more than beer just yet, and beer won’t stop rain. The rent, the food, and the little bills and expenses that Zach’s equally paltry paycheck won’t cover all depend on the paper where I work, and as you must know, the news business isn’t what it was. Everyone’s cutting staff. I’m in research. I don’t have a byline. I’m cuttable.

“Not bad,” I answer, and add, “Just got a raise. They even fixed the coffee machine.” Implication: I won’t lose my job. Really.

“Tough time to be in the news business,” he tells me. I know what that means too: Remember when we talked about law school?  We’ve had that conversation. I’m smart, practical, anal(ytical), and only 27. It’s not too late.

To this one, I have no answer.

But I’m saved by the dinner bell, because Zach comes in to hustle us to the restaurant he picked out. Not that I couldn’t pick a restaurant, but as the son-in-law, he wants to do something sonly. I let him. I’m still fuming about money.

Fact is, I’ve fumed about this, for days leading up to this visit. Because something’s weighing on my mind, and I can’t explain it to them. And having no money is just the start of it.

And yes, at dinner, we let them pick up the check.

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Dad knows the news business far better than I do by now. He’s a journalist, an investigative reporter from wayback - in fact, why mince words, the man has a Pulitzer.  His blood runs ink. And he’s frustrated. I think they’re going to offer him a package soon, and when they do, he’s done.

He doesn’t see a future for me in media. I know this. Newspapers are horses and buggies, and as for this Internet thing? Generationally, he cannot like it. “You can’t make money writing on the ‘Net, can you?” he’ll say. Translation: scribbling on this blog here does not matter.  It’s a frivolity - or worse, just a dream.

But the problem isn’t between my dad and myself. That old fight’s been raging on since the first time I gummed up and refused a spoonful of baby food. What bugs me is that it involves Zach.

See, when your darling daughter lives an unconventional lifestyle, you support her - but you pray she lands someone with a paycheck. But to see your daughter, who’s one more bad quarter away from a layoff, shacking up with an art therapist at a dead-enders asylum? A guy whose check is barely worth the cost of an envelope? That’s a recipe for a furrowed brow.

But whose fault is it - mine? Or Zach’s?

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My mom is not “edgy.” She knits, she bakes, she and goes to a book club - a book club where they actually read the books. We have little in common, but I love her. She may not get me but she’s never been fazed by me, even as a teen. I used to bring home guys with faces full of metal, and she never batted an eye making breakfast.

For Christmas, she bought me a book that looks dreadful. It’s one of those books women of a certain age give each other. No, not Anne Lamott: this one’s Gift From the Sea, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Ms. Lindbergh, better known as Mrs. Charles Lindbergh, wrote the book to share her “meditations” on age, love and marriage. And each one is framed by, you guessed it, a seashell.

Last night I flipped through “channeled whelk.” Lindbergh gripes a lot about the hired help and her house in the suburbs. But for a couple pages she starts talking about the distractions of life - home, work, community, intimacy. “What a circus act we women perform ever day of our lives. … This is not the life of simplicity but the life of multiplicity that the wise men warn us of. It leads not to unification but to fragmentation. It does not bring grace; it destroys the soul.”

Embarrassingly, something struck me there.  Because well into my twenties, I’ve landed in a circus act myself: two longshot writing careers, and now this relationship with Zach, which is … what?

Over a year into my relationship with Zach, I wonder where we really stand. I don’t mean love: we hold each other tight, and marriage is in the cards, though we’re not even ready to crack jokes about it. But are we partners? And I mean equal, share-and-share-alike?

I’ve wondered ever since the Martin Grace case - the one I mentioned in November, the one that’s strained our relationship more than anything yet. He still hasn’t told me everything about the case. He’s protecting me. I know that’s how he thinks about it - protecting me when the shit went down, protecting me now. But the funny thing is, I feel like I should protect him. When he needs a hand with a case, I’m there. When I can’t be, it eats me alive.  When his nerves are raw, I soothe him. When he’s scared, I’m the one who’s not.

In other words, I’m the mature one in the relationship. I got my brains from my dad, my heart from my mom. And both of them are steadier than Zach’s. Sometimes when he’s lost in a painting, or he’s laughing at a joke with his brother - when his bangs get in his eyes just right - I realize how much older those two years make me. Some nights when the fear hits him he starts shivering so hard, I squeeze him. I try to crush him in my arms, because I’m the stronger one.

He’s the hero. But I’m his savior.

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The New Year’s here, and I’m frustrated. With my dad for reading me like a book, with my mom for suggesting sympathy instead of having answers, and with Zach, because that’s what love is.

But mostly, I’m just frustrated with myself.

But in a few hours? It’ll be a new year.