It was those nights when Weezy felt she’d accomplished the most, when the quiet of the house buzzed through her, made her feel like she’d won a prize.
Maybe it would have been different if she’d majored in something besides education, something that she was interested in. But then again, maybe not. Her parents had always told her she was the smart one, right in front of Maureen, like Maureen wasn’t even there. In their eyes, Maureen was the pretty one. “Maureen will marry well,” her mom said once, but that wasn’t true. Maureen had married an awful man, and they’d stayed together long enough to have two kids and then he’d left, moved clear across the country and barely saw his children.
No, it had been Weezy that had married well, married a kind man who was a caring father and a good provider. It had been Maureen who had found a career she loved and raised Cathy and Drew practically on her own. Sometimes Weezy wondered if they’d almost done it on purpose, fulfilled the part of their lives that their parents doubted they would, just to show them they could.
Weezy found herself overcompensating when she talked about women in the workplace, as if her children were going to pick up on her desire to stay at home and get some sort of subliminal message that told them women couldn’t make it. No, she didn’t want that. She couldn’t raise two daughters and let them think there was anything they couldn’t do.
Her rants became almost background noise to her children. They were so used to hearing her go off on the way the world viewed women, in a commercial, or a TV show, or a billboard. She wanted to make sure that they knew it wasn’t right, but sometimes she wasn’t even sure if they were listening.
She remembered once overhearing a friend of Claire’s say that she “wasn’t a feminist or anything,” and Weezy had scolded her. “Do you know what a feminist is?” she’d asked. “Do you even know what you’re saying by denying that? Do you think you’re worth less simply because you’re a woman?”
The girls had all giggled at being called women. They were twelve and uncomfortable at the thought. Claire had sat there, her face red and hot, trying to get Weezy to stop talking, rolling her eyes to the top of their sockets, saying, “God, Mom, come on, stop!” But Weezy didn’t care. So her child was humiliated by her—so what? Wasn’t that the job of a parent? And when Claire was embarrassed enough to answer back, embarrassed enough to react, well, then at least Weezy knew that she’d been heard.
WEEZY COULD HEAR WILL WALKING around in his office upstairs on the third floor. Sometimes it sounded like he paced back and forth across the room all day long. Will was the head of the sociology department at Arcadia University, a small liberal arts school near their house. He’d started working there in the eighties, when it was still called Beaver College. It had existed as Beaver College for over a hundred years, but as the Internet grew, parents who went searching for “Beaver College” didn’t find the school’s homepage—instead they found themselves on some pretty disturbing pornography sites. And so the school decided to reinvent itself.
Will was a popular professor at the school, teaching classes in sociology and in cultural anthropology. His most popular class was Society and the Cyberworld, which looked at the way culture changed because of technology. He used the name change of the college as his first example, pretending to be a prospective student as he searched the Internet, then faking his surprise at what he found. He always made the kids laugh, as he covered his eyes and shook his head at the results. His students loved him, found him entertaining and engaging. They begged to get into his classes, even after they were already full. He was almost a campus celebrity.
Will had written a book in the late eighties called Video Kids, which had become something of a phenomenon. It was a look at the effect that television and video games had on children. He hit something in the culture at that moment, and his book had become a best seller. He’d appeared on talk shows, and was still invited to sit on panels and give speeches.
It had been somewhat of an amazing time when the book came out. They’d been plugging along just fine, and then all