Her parents, of course, had always viewed success as a White Man’s construction. Her mother used her letters to continually remind Olga of this, to emphasize the futility of her pursuits. Her mother, though, didn’t know what it was to be deemed the thing less important. Less important than drugs, less important than a cause. Her mother didn’t understand what it required to shake that label—“less”—to prove it wrong to the world. A world that, despite how her parents liked to see things, valued the way you looked, the kinds of clothes you wore, the places you went to school, the people you could access and influence. Even her brother, rooted as he was in his place of good, understood all of this. Olga formed her ambitions in reaction to her mother’s absence, but she surely calcified them in rebellion to the very values that led her mother to abandon them in the first place. Grounding her identity in the realm of the material seemed to her the perfect revenge.
Until one day it didn’t.
After Spice It Up and the Great Recession, Olga began to notice that her clients were growing steadily richer while the people doing the work were getting compensated in exactly the same way. Even the rich people appeared less content than before. Simply existing seemed an immense burden to them. Their wealth bought them homes that were “exhausting” to deal with, vacations that were “overwhelming” to plan for. What was required to please them, to make them feel joy on their most joyful day, became increasingly impossible to achieve. Olga raised her prices, inflated her bills, increased her markups. But the money didn’t make any of it feel better. She began, gradually at first, to find not only her actual day-to-day work tedious and stupid, but also the entire project of her life. Around this time Olga noticed that her mother’s notes no longer filled her, even for a moment, with smug satisfaction.
She began to wonder if the only person she was enacting revenge on was herself.
Sometimes, like now, a feeling of unease would come over her and last for days, a strange kind of melancholy with no starting point or definitive end. A therapist she was forced to see at the fancy college told her this feeling was likely a longing for her mother, a suggestion Olga had rebuffed by storming out of the room. But over the years, Olga revisited this conceit, quietly wondering what her life would be like had her mother deemed her worthy of her time and affections. What would she, Olga, have done with all the energy she’d spent convincing anyone and everyone else that despite this lack, she wasn’t broken? So, although Olga very well knew that her mother’s affections were fickle, when Reggie said that she needed her, Olga could hardly stop herself from wondering, what if the therapist was right? What would happen if she could alleviate that longing? What sense of peace and purpose might she find for herself if given the chance to earn her mother’s admiration?
* * *
GIVEN HER STATE, Olga knew better than to say yes to the producer from Good Morning, Later suggesting she come in to do a live segment. She’d been waiting for the lab to contact her with her brother’s test results when they called. She hadn’t recognized the number and had reflexively picked up.
“The news has been so depressing lately,” the producer said, “we were thinking it would be great to do a nice, happy wedding segment. Weddings make people feel good. And, Good Morning is about the news, but at Good Morning, Later, we’re about making our viewers feel good, you know?”
“Right,” Olga said. “What’s the angle?” There was always an angle with these things—beat the heat, holiday weddings, June brides, do’s and don’ts.
“Well, Tammy’s recently engaged, so we were thinking we could do a ‘kickstart your planning’ thing with her. Sound good?”
It did not sound good. But it was easier to acquiesce than to explain why, so she just said yes.
“Okay, great. Someone on my team will get back to you with a call time and to run through your demo items, but we’re looking forward to seeing you on Wednesday morning.”
* * *
“THE IDEA OF going into a TV studio to get my hair pressed out and a mask of makeup happiness applied to my face feels beyond unappealing right now,” Olga called out to Matteo, who was finishing dinner in the kitchen while she stared at the ceiling in his music room. It was Tuesday night. Good Morning, Later shot in just a few hours.
Matteo had made pasta and he brought a bowl to her now.
“Why didn’t you ask ME-Gahn to do it for you?”
“Oh my God, I wish I could. I wish I could just give her the whole fucking business and never look back.”