Tucker brought me my omelet and it really was delicious.
“Maybe you should become a chef?” I said, half in jest.
“I think that’s a great idea,” Holly said. “I’d hire you in a second.”
“You think?” Tucker asked, sounding pleased.
I wondered if there were courses he could do without having finished high school. Maybe an internship or on the job training? Tucker had no qualifications, no real education to speak of. But he was bright, before he dropped out, his grades had been good. I didn’t want to talk about it now but perhaps I could convince him to finish high school by attending night classes or something. He needed to think about his future.
That night, over dinner with Sam and Ethan, I spoke about the possibility of helping Tucker through school. Sam was quiet.
“You don’t think it’s a good idea?” I asked.
“No, I think it is a great idea.”
“But…?”
Sam finished his food and put down his fork.
“You need to manage your expectations here, I think,” he said, looking at me. “You want so much for him, I know, but he has to want it too.”
“He does! I know he does!”
But I didn’t really know.
We continued the conversation later when Ethan had his bath and was tucked up in bed. Sam opened a bottle of wine and poured me a glass.
“You must know that most junkies relapse. I am not saying that Tucker will start taking drugs again, but I want you to be realistic. Do you understand?”
I tried not to get angry, but it felt like Sam wasn’t rooting for Tucker and that in some way, made it more likely for him to fail.
“You know, my father used to work for a company,” Sam started. “He was a technician or something. He met my mom at a hairdressing salon where she worked. He told her about this business that he was going to start and how he only needed a small investment. She gave him all her savings. It wasn’t a lot and they got married and moved into a little house. I came along and still, no business was started.”
He took a breath. “Then, he quit his job, started hanging out with these unsavory guys who’d sit around our kitchen table at night, drinking and talking about this importing business they were going to start. Turns out, they were bringing in sneakers and clothes from China, illegally. They got busted by the cops, my dad got off with a warning though.”
I knew Sam had a bad relationship with his father, but I never knew why. This was the first time he’d spoken to me about his family. “My father always had some scheme going on. But nothing ever worked out and the only money we had, came from my mom, working all day at a hair salon, cutting and bleaching and perming hair.”
“My father went to prison for fraud too. Two years. While he was inside, my mom started having back problems. She couldn’t be on her feet all day anymore. When my dad came out, he had a job as a janitor for a while at some school downtown. But even that didn’t stick. It was beneath him, he said.”
As Sam got deeper into the story, his voice shook with contempt, and I saw how much anger he had inside of him. “The moment I could get a job, I started helping my mother. I was packing groceries most weekends, flipping burgers in high school. She and I worked ourselves to death. And what did he do? He drank.”
I didn’t dare say anything to interrupt him. For the first time, I was given a peek into the years that had shaped Sam. I could see where his anger and his drive came from. How over the years, the only thing that kept him going was the belief that he would not be like his father, sitting around and blaming others for his failure. He’d worked part-time at a local insurance company as a freshman and had heard the boss complain about the project management system. He started thinking about ways to monitor employees and manage their tasks. He spoke to a friend of his doing computer science about developing a product and together, they came up with the idea for Luma. He worked day and night to sell the software to the first company, the small insurance firm he’d once worked at. Then it was about tweaking it for bigger organizations.
“I get it,” I said, quietly. “You think Tucker is like your father.”
Sam shook his head. “I was a kid, you’re an adult. And Tucker is nothing like my father, at least he went to rehab and tried to address his problems! My father never accepted any responsibility for his actions, ever!”
Sam stopped talking, abruptly, as if aware of raising his voice. He shook his head, put down his glass.
“I’m sorry,” I said, putting my hand on his chest. “I am so sorry you had to go through all that.”
He shook his head and closed his eyes.
“I had to become a machine. An uncaring machine that kept going like an engine, no matter how cold or harsh the weather. I would never stop, never quit.” His voice shook with the determination that I knew he had been feeding, like stoking a fire, since he was a little boy.
“But you know you can slow down now, right? I’m not saying you need to stop, but you don’t have to keep going so hard, all the time.”
He nodded slowly. “It’s almost impossible after all these years. I feel guilty if I’m not working. Like I’ll drop the ball, let go of it all.”