Career Decisions

“God, that one exam,” Jennifer said. “She kept me on the phone for hours. It was something about court procedures…?”

Samantha laughed. “Evidence. She called me about that too.”  

“Yes!  She was certain she was going to fail that one. And of course, if she failed that one, she was going to fail out of school entirely, have to move back home—” 

“Yep.” 

“And I told her—I told her, ‘Amy, you’ve never failed an exam in your life. You’ve never even gotten below a B plus in your life—’” 

“‘But law school is different,’” Samantha said, in an impression of Amy’s high panicked voice.

“‘But law school is different!’” Jennifer repeated, her impression much more strident and much more accurate. “‘Everyone is always telling me I’ll ace my exams, but y’all don’t understand—only other law students understand.’ Which made me feel like, okay, why are you calling me then?”

Samantha made a noncommittal sound. Jennifer had always been a tad harsh about Amy’s—admittedly frequent—calls for reassurance and support. As far as Samantha was concerned, everyone had a irritating habit or two that was inextricably tied to their personality and would never change: complaining and catastrophizing just happened to be Amy’s. 

“And then she turns around the next week, calls me up, so excited because she got her Evidence grade back and, big surprise, it’s a—” 

“An A. I know.” 

Samantha was sitting one of the bar stools in Jennifer’s kitchen. She visited Jennifer whenever she was in town, but this was the first time she’d visited since the wedding, since Jennifer and Andrew had bought the condo. The bar was clear of clutter and crumbs, and the appliances looked like they’d been recently cleaned. Andrew’s influence, Samantha assumed. 

Jennifer was, purportedly, making them drinks; though at the moment she was simply leaning against the bar. Samantha hoped she’d just gotten caught up in the conversation.  

“She put us through all that,” Jennifer said, “and now….”

“I know.” Feeling another twinge of loyalty for Amy, Samantha added: “She’s not doing it to spite us.” 

Amy had called them both earlier that week, separately, to let them know that she’d decided to quit her fancy New York law firm job. Samantha hadn’t been particularly surprised—Amy had hated that job possibly more than she’d hated law school—but she had been slightly taken aback by Amy’s further declaration that she wouldn’t be looking for any other legal jobs. That she didn’t want to be a lawyer anymore. 

It made Samantha want to laugh, imagining how that conversation must have gone between Jennifer and Amy.  

“I mean, what is she going to do? She worked so hard for that degree and passing the fucking bar…” Jennifer moved over to the cupboards and, to Samantha’s relief, pulled out two glasses. 

“I know.” 

“And she only has an English undergrad. What can you do with that these days?” 

“She’s smart. She’ll find something.”

“I know she’s smart. But she’s also—I mean, she spent three years in law school, and how much money is that down the drain?” 

“Jenn,” Samantha said. Money had always been a prickly subject between the three of them, starting back in middle school, when Amy and Jennifer had both wanted to go to an expensive two-week horse camp. Amy’s family had been able to afford it, and Jennifer’s family hadn’t. 

Samantha was scared of horses, so it hadn’t been an issue for her. Though, if she’d asked, her parents probably would have paid for it.

“I know. I know. Her parents could probably afford to send her to law school three times over. But Jesus, still.” Jennifer had poured red wine into one glass and was re-stoppering the bottle.

Samantha felt a frission of panic. “Are you not having some?” 

“I’ve been getting into bourbon these days.” Jennifer squatted down and rifled though the cabinets beneath the sink. “It makes me feel very distinguished.” 

Samantha laughed, mostly in relief. “So—like my dad,” 

Jennifer laughed too. “Yeah, I’m trying to be Mr. Bailey when I grow up.” She stood up, holding an amber bottle. “It was actually Andrew that got me into it. He’s very into dark liquors.”

“Oh, is he?” Samantha said, politely. 

“Yeah. His best friend works at a distillery.” Jennifer poured a healthy amount of bourbon into her glass, to Samantha’s further relief. “You’re staying for dinner, right?” 

Samantha should have expected this; she always stayed for dinner when she visited Jennifer. “You know—my mom, she’s making one of my favorites for dinner…”

“Oh, come on, you’ve been home all week. You can stay. Lisa will understand.” 

“I don’t know. I’ll see,” Samantha said. “But with Amy—it’s better she find this out now, right? That she hates being a lawyer?”

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean, as opposed to finding it out fifteen years from now.”

 Jennifer made a dismissive noise. 

“It happens to people,” Samantha insisted. “You have a job hate, and by the time you try to get out of it, you’re forty-five and not qualified to do anything else… ” 

“Oh, I know it happens.” Jennifer had taken a seat at the kitchen table, the chair turned to face the bar and Samantha. “Ask my mother.” 

Jennifer’s parents had split up several years back, and Jennifer’s mom had been forced to go back to work after twenty years of raising Jennifer and her brothers. She’s gotten pregnant with Jennifer’s oldest brother right out of high school, so she had no college degree, no real work experience. It had been a struggle. 

“How’s she doing?” Samantha asked. “She has that job at the bookstore right?”

“Yeah, she’s a manager now. She loves it actually—you know how she is about new people. She gets to tell that story about the runaway parrot ten times every day.”

Samantha laughed. “Good for Mama Cochran.”

“Yeah.” Jennifer tapped her fingernails on the table, her face settling into the considering expression that meant she was trying to decide whether to say something. Jennifer said most everything she thought, so this expression only arose when the thought was especially delicate or offensive. Samantha braced herself. 

“But, I mean—both of us know that Amy would never end up in a bookstore.”

Samantha sighed. “I know.” 

“And that’s the problem isn’t it? She could quit and pick up a new career every month or so, and she’d be fine—her parents would support her; we would support her. Remember how long it took her to decide between law school and all those graduate programs and—wasn’t she considering flight school for a while?”

“That was right out of college. We were all considering a bunch of things.” 

“I wasn’t,” Jennifer said, firmly. She’d gone to their local college on scholarship, completed their nursing program, and gotten a job immediately after graduation.

“I was considering a bunch of things,” Samantha amended.

“Yeah, but you’ve been at your job for four years now! She’s twenty-eight years old and, what does she have? A degree she doesn’t want? She should have a job, at the very least.” 

Samantha didn’t know if “at the very least” that was a jab at Amy’s perennial singlehood, which Samantha considered a low blow. Amy didn’t need to be with anyone, if she hadn’t found anyone who was right. 

“I told Andrew about it,” Jennifer said, “and he said a friend of his is the same way. He hated college, hated all the jobs he’s ever had, so now he’s unemployed and sleeping on his parents’ couch. At thirty-four.”

“She’s not going to end up on her parents’ couch.”

“No, she’s not. But she’s also never going to commit, to anything, ever. Because she doesn’t have to.” 

Samantha took a long draught from her wine glass. She could feel herself getting worked up, and she wasn’t exactly sure why. Maybe it was because it was fine for her and Jennifer to talk about Amy this way, because they’d known Amy since she was five years old, and they loved her, and their exasperation with her would always be mixed with that love, softened by it. 

But it was another thing entirely to imagine Jennifer having the same conversation with Andrew.

“Don’t you think it’s better,” Samantha said slowly, trying not to let her anger creep into her voice, “that Amy tries out a bunch of careers now, when she’s young, so that she can find something she really enjoys? I know not everyone gets the opportunity to do that, but since she does have that opportunity, shouldn’t she take advantage?”

“Sure. I would be all for Amy taking advantage of all of her opportunities. If I thought it would do any good.” 

“What do you mean by that?” 

“I mean that…Amy’s going to hate whatever she does. No matter what it is.”

Samantha bristled. “That’s not fair.”

“It is fair. Nothing’s ever right for her. She abandons her first legal job within a year, the same way she abandoned all those cashier jobs in high school. And remember how many clubs she quit?”

“Those were school clubs! They didn’t matter!”

“But a job does matter! A degree matters! And you know what: jobs, marriage, children, big adult life things—they require compromise and commitment. And I don’t know that Amy is capable of either.”  

Samantha wanted to argue that Amy was just insecure; she would be able to commit with enough support, enough structure. But Samantha was caught on the way “children” had followed “marriage.”  

“Committing just for the sake of it isn’t good either,” she said, quietly. 

Jennifer gave Samantha a sharp look.

“No one’s saying that. But if the benefits are large enough…”  

Samantha realized what Jennifer was implying. “You don’t actually think she should’ve stayed at the firm job, do you?” 

“Do you know how much they were paying her?” 

“Yeah, but that doesn’t—her boss was abusive! He yelled at her when that filing was messed up, and she wasn’t even the one who’d did it. And she was working insane hours….”

“She knew about the hours before she signed on! And if the sum total of Amy’s complaints were long hours and one odd yelling incident…”

Samantha crossed her arms. “Then what? She should’ve put up with it? It was an abusive environment!”

“Amy said it was abusive.”  

Samantha was starting to get the weird, dissociative feeling she got whenever her arguments with Jennifer shifted, became serious. Like she was watching them at some distance. “I think being yelled at regularly is abusive too,” she finally said. 

Jennifer sipped her bourbon and set it back down on the table. “She didn’t say it happened regularly.”

No, Samantha thought, she didn’t. 

“I just think it’s for the best,” Samantha said. “That she left that job. She can find another one.”

“Yes, but if Amy is going to drop every job where someone doesn’t treat her exactly right…”

“That wasn’t the situation. She was miserable—actually miserable.” 

“Yeah, I know she—” 

“And even if she hadn’t complained, even if she told me that everything at her job was great, I still would’ve been able to tell something was wrong. Because I could tell she was different, that being around those people, the way they were treating her—I could tell how much it as affecting her; how much it was changing her…”

Samantha was breathing too heavily, the tips of her fingers buzzing the way they always did when she let her passion get away from her, when she went too far. Jennifer avoided her eyes. She swirled the bourbon around her glass. 

“Yeah, if Amy wasn’t complaining, I’d know something was wrong too,” Jennifer said, finally. 

“Jenn.”

“I’m just saying—if you want things out of your life…the big picture is what matters. And you focus on the good to get through the bad to get what you want. That’s life.”

Samantha didn’t agree. She didn’t think life was just something to be endured; she thought it was always worth trying to make it better. But Samantha knew they were never going to get anywhere, no matter how long they argued. It was Jennifer’s most irritating quality, the one so tied to her personality that it could never be changed: her stubborn belief that she was right about everything.

So, they had moved onto other topics by the time Andrew arrived an hour or so later. He was in a huff about some boxes Jennifer had left on the porch, but his mood smoothed over immediately when he noticed Samantha. He joined her at the bar and they talked about Samantha’s work, while she waited for enough time to elapse that she could leave without being rude. Jennifer stayed behind the bar, fixing Andrew a bourbon and then starting on dinner. 

Eventually, Jennifer resurrected the topic of Amy’s career. To Samantha’s relief, Andrew seemed more interested in speculating on new career paths for Amy than criticizing her decisions.  

“I was thinking that there are a lot of jobs were a JD is a plus, that aren’t necessarily lawyering,”  Andrew said in his even, reasonable voice. He worked in tech, but considered himself an authority in most subjects. “What else is she considering?”

“I think she’s looking into, like, media stuff,” Jennifer said, from the depths of the refrigerator. 

“Advertising,” Samantha said. 

Andrew sipped his bourbon. “A JD might actually be a detriment in that field. Advertisers aren’t fond of lawyers.”   

“Ooooh, we have blue cheese, Sam,” Jennifer said. 

“No,” Samantha said. It was the second time, since Andrew had arrived, that Jennifer had tried to sway her into staying for dinner. 

“Now, policy work,” Andrew said, “that might be—” 

“You could just tell Lisa this is the only night that works,” Jennifer interrupted, closing the refrigerator, a head of lettuce in one hand. “I have a twelve-hour shift tomorrow and you leave Wednesday, right?”  

“Yeah, but I really can’t…” Samantha wanted to say that she’d been visiting for three hours already, but she knew what Jennifer wanted was for her to spend more time with both her and Andrew.  

“Why don’t I call Lisa up and tell her—” 

“If she can’t, she can’t. Stop trying to bully her into it!”

Samantha and Jennifer and every object in the room went still. 

“I wasn’t,” Jennifer said, slowly. “I was just saying that—”

“Don’t you think I can tell she doesn’t like it?” Andrew swept an arm at Samantha, but continued without pause. “Am I supposed to sit here and let it happen, like a bad host—” 

“No one says you’re being a bad host, Baby. I’m teasing; me and Sam always tease—”

“Don’t pretend you don’t do this with everyone, Jenn! You always bully and bulldoze and—” 

Samantha stared out the window into Jennifer and Andrew’s small backyard. It had been one of Jennifer’s non-negotiables with the realtors: at least some amount of grass where children could play. 

Samantha watched a bird hop from one tree branch to another, chirping frantically. The yelling continued and then, as abruptly as it had started, it subsided. Jennifer said something soft and conciliatory, too low for Samantha to hear.

The bird flew off into the white sky. 

After another minute or two, Andrew said, “Anyway, as I was saying—policy work is one area Amy could go into, where her JD would be useful.”

Samantha turned back to him. Andrew’s face was polite and expectant, waiting for Samantha’s response. It was always surprising, how quickly equilibrium was restored; how soon Andrew’s voice was once again even and reasonable. 

Jennifer had started chopping the lettuce, the knife making dull noises against the wooden chopping block. 

Samantha’s heart was hammering in her chest. She wished Amy was there, with her obvious anxiety, her forthright complaints.

“I don’t know that she’d like policy work,” Samantha said.

“Hmmm,” Andrew said, considering. “She could become a professor? Or a recruiter?”

“A professor maybe,” Jennifer said. She sounded normal, but she didn’t look up from the lettuce. 

Amy would hate being a professor. Both Samantha and Jennifer knew it. 

“Maybe it was just a mistake,” Samantha said. “The law degree. She shouldn’t have to try to find a way to use it; she shouldn’t have to be bound to it forever.”

“An expensive mistake,” Andrew said, with a smile. 

Jennifer snorted softly.

“Yeah, it is. But…” Samantha’s fingertips were buzzing. She paused, before continuing:  

“All I mean is…is that sometimes people make mistakes—and they can stay in those mistakes or they can leave. And if they’re young, if they have choices, if there’s something better out there—then maybe it’s better to leave. Even if there are losses, even if it’s not what they planned…” 

Jennifer had stopped chopping, her knife poised over the lettuce. 

“That’s a good point.” Andrew’s expression of placid interest was unchanged. “People have three, four careers these days. She shouldn’t be forced to limit herself.”

“Yeah,” Samantha said. “Yes.” 

Samantha knew that Jennifer didn’t agree with her; that she hadn’t been convinced. Jennifer’s certainty in her own rightness was her greatest weakness and greatest strength. It was so much a part of who Jennifer was that Samantha wouldn’t change it, even if she could.

But Jennifer didn’t say anything. She lifted the chopping block and slid the lettuce into a salad bowl with the edge of her knife.   

And when Samantha left ten minutes later, Jennifer didn’t try to get her to stay.