“I was serious about Ted,” Brigitte said quietly.
“Not as serious as you needed to be, nor was he. You both thought you were still kids.” Brigitte knew she was right about that too. Her mother usually was. It had been easy living that way, but it had all blown up in her face. “Now he’s going off to Egypt, and you’re all alone. That’s very sad.” She sounded sympathetic. She felt terrible for her.
“Yes, it is. But maybe it’s destiny or something. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be.” Brigitte was trying to be philosophical about it.
“I wish he’d made that clear earlier.”
“Yeah, me too.” But Brigitte also realized that they had both been emotionally lazy, cavalier, and immature. They were grown-ups, not kids.
“Let me know if you want to come down. Your room is here for you anytime, and I’d love to see you. I’ve been making some real progress on the genealogy. I want to show you what I’ve found recently. If you get tired of working on your book, you can help me with it.” Brigitte couldn’t think of anything she less wanted to do right now. The history of her mother’s family all the way back to the Dark Ages in France had always been more interesting to her mother than to Brigitte, although she admired her mother’s hard work on it. It had been her mother’s hobby and passion for years. Their family history was a legacy she had always wanted to give her daughter. Brigitte preferred historical mysteries, and their very proper ancestors always seemed too tame and mundane to her.
Brigitte visited Amy and her boys later that afternoon, and on Sunday she got started again on her book. And for the first time ever, she found the material she had gathered and the whole issue of women’s suffrage tedious and dry. It no longer seemed as important to her as it once had. Everything in her life seemed lackluster and dull now, and without meaning. Without Ted and her job, she even hated her book. She felt as though she’d reached a dead end in every aspect of her life. What was the point?
By Tuesday, she was bored stiff with what she’d written. And she had heard nothing from Ted since the week before. She pressed on with the book, but by the following weekend she was ready to scream and felt like throwing it all away. She was getting nowhere with it. She was too depressed about Ted and losing her job. She had sent her résumé out to other colleges, and it was too soon to hear anything back. She realized that this time, if they offered her a job, she’d have to be willing to take more responsibility than she had before. Her unwillingness to take on greater challenges had made her easy to replace with a computer and had done her out of a job. But she didn’t expect to hear from the schools for a while.
And after working on the book for a week, it finally ground to a stop. She had nothing left to say, no energy to say it, and too little interest in her subject. She was blocked. She was beginning to think about Amy’s suggestion to go to a beach, just to get away for a while. It started to snow again and everything about Boston depressed her. She hated knowing that Ted was getting ready to leave, and suddenly in the space of ten days, she felt as though she no longer had a life. Without a job or a man, she felt like she didn’t have much to keep her in Boston at the moment, and on the spur of the moment, she decided to fly to New York. She needed a break from everything, and her mother was delighted when she called her from the Boston airport.
Brigitte looked out the window on the brief commuter flight. She felt childish doing it, but with everything in her life topsy-turvy, it felt good to be going home. She knew that she needed to start over, but for now, she had no idea where to start, and a few days in New York would do her good. Her mother had suggested that she send her résumé to NYU and Columbia too, but Brigitte didn’t want to live in New York again. It was raining, and as the plane landed, she had no idea where her life was going. She wanted to spend a few days with her mother in the cozy apartment she had grown up in. And after that Brigitte planned to go back to Boston, although she had no idea where her life would lead. All she knew now, after the recent changes in her life, was that she wanted it to be different from before. Settling for “easy and comfortable” no longer seemed like enough.