The waiter nodded respectfully, because the world rewards confidence even when confidence is ridiculous.
My mother laughed too loudly at everything Lauren said. My father kept bringing the conversation back to how “special” and “visionary” she was. A few family friends had joined us, people from my parents’ country club circle, and they asked Lauren the kind of questions adults ask children when they want to flatter them into performing. “What’s next for you?” “Where do you get your creativity?” “How do you stay so motivated?”
No one asked me anything except whether school was “still going well.”
School was always going well. Teaching was apparently a weather condition, not a career.
At some point between the oysters and the main course, I realized I had barely spoken ten words. It didn’t matter. Nobody had noticed. I could have slipped out of the room and stood in the alley for twenty minutes and they would only have cared when the check arrived.
