Chapter 7

Phil sat in the cafeteria at the Student Union the following afternoon reviewing notes for an exam he had later in the week. Hailey spotted him as soon as she entered and made her way over.

He looked up from his notes and saw her. She wore a pair of beige Capri pants, sneakers and a green windbreaker over her blouse. Her hair was back in its ponytail but he didn’t see the usual amount of makeup or jewelry that she usually sported.

“Picking a happy medium with clothes,” he asked with a grin when she got closer.

“All my comfy clothes are dirty,” she said as she returned his smile. She put a folder on the table next to him. “I sent this off to your Mom this morning and mailed a copy on my way over. I wanted to deliver yours personally. If you’re busy, I can sit somewhere else.”

“Just looking over some notes,” Phil said as he put them away. “I have an exam tomorrow. It’s in Practical Business Applications so I want to make sure I do well. Grab a tray and have a seat if you want.”

Hailey’s smile widened as she headed over to grab some lunch. Phil couldn’t help but watch her butt as she walked away. He decided it looked just as good in sweatpants and cotton slacks as it did in designer jeans. He pulled his attention away from her backside long enough to open the folder Hailey had put down.

“An Open Letter to Beth Warner and her family,” it began.

“I began this as a thank you letter to you and your family for allowing me to spend time with you over the weekend. Your son was kind enough to go out of his way to include me in his activities and to introduce me to his friends, not only Friday but also Saturday at the company dinner. I could probably spend the next four or five pages listing your son’s virtues but you already know them, I’m certain. Instead I’ll just tell you that you have every reason to be proud of the son you and David have raised.

“When I got into the car with Phil (or Philip as you call him) on Friday, I knew everything about how the world worked and how to leave my mark on it. By the time I arrived back on campus Sunday night I knew nothing. Everything I had learned, everything I had been taught, everything I had always assumed, had been exposed as lies.

“I had always been led to believe that a successful leader had to be callous to succeed. I thought that success came quicker with shortcuts and half measures. I assumed that family was there to give support and not to receive it. I could lay the blame for my misunderstanding elsewhere but the fact remains that if I were half as smart as I always thought I was I would have recognized that I was learning the wrong things.

“Last night your son challenged me to write to you and tell you what I expect to learn from a summer internship at Barton Holdings Group. The easy answer is everything. I realize that I come to you as a blank slate in regard to how a successful woman should behave.

“The sad part is that the entire slate is not blank. A good portion of it has already been filled with the lessons I’ve taken to heart over the last 18 years. Those lessons will not be unlearned easily or quickly and I understand that. What I would like to learn are the same lessons your son demonstrates: humility, charity, compassion and drive. As I’m sure you’re aware, your son could have traded on your influence for any number of favors at college. He has steadfastly refused to do it. Although my mother’s sphere of influence is far less, I have chosen to play upon other, less savory, facets to gain acceptance and special treatment. I want you to know that as soon as I walked out of the hotel on Saturday night I vowed that I would never behave that way again.

“I learned a simple lesson from watching you on Friday and Saturday: a person gains respect by offering respect. I want to assure you that I have taken this lesson to heart and, although I am sure my former persona will rear its ugly head from time to time, I plan to live by that motto. I realize an internship with your prestigious company would not include me shadowing you on a daily basis. I do not expect to become your protégé; I hope to become your disciple – your business disciple. Wherever my future might lead, as the head of a multi-national corporation or as simply a spoke in its wheels, I hope to someday have people look at me as they do at you and your husband and your son – as people who have achieved success without giving up their dignity, their self-respect or their humanity. If I can even start down that road during the summer, I will consider it a great success.

“Sincerely,

Hailey Warren.”

Hailey had returned with her salad and her bottle of water while Phil read her letter. He put it down and looked up into her expectant eyes.

“Well, I’m almost positive that will do it,” he said.

“I meant every word,” Hailey replied.

“I can see that,” Phil told her. “I could feel the emotion as I read them. Have you spoken to your mother?”

“I left a voice mail and asked her to call me back,” she said. “She didn’t call this morning so I sent her an e-mail that laid out the facts of life to her. It might be harsh but I thought it was important that she understand that she is in way over her head. Besides, I didn’t really want to listen to her bitching and whining. If she’d have said something nasty about you or your family I might have stolen your car and driven down there to strangle her.”

Phil nodded but frowned.

“One thing I want you to understand,” Phil said. “We don’t care what people think or say about us.”

“That’s the thing I like best about you,” Hailey said, blushing slightly. “You don’t do the things you do in order to be recognized. That’s just a byproduct. You do them because you should. You treat people well because they deserve to be treated well. I understand your hostility to me in the car on the way home. I didn’t deserve to be treated well so you didn’t. My mother doesn’t deserve anything more than what she’s going to get: a kick in the ass and lesson about life. That’s what I got Friday and Saturday.”

“I hope there were no bruises,” Phil said, smiling across the table. “It would be a shame to mar that cute butt of yours.”

Hailey rolled her eyes but laughed. “I want everyone to view me as a serious future businesswoman and not two boobs, a butt and a vagina,” she said. “I guess I can make an exception for you, though. If you want to look at me purely as a sex object, I guess you’re entitled for a while.”

“Dad too?” Phil joked. “I saw him checking out your rack at the restaurant – and I don’t mean the ribs on your plate.”

“You’re terrible,” Hailey said. “Besides, don’t you have a date with Molly Kelly coming up? Has she called you yet?”

“I just met her last night,” Phil pointed out.

“So?” Hailey said. “I would have called you as soon as I got home – if for no other reason than to make sure you weren’t still hanging out in the room with me.”

“Maybe she’s not a jealous psychopath,” Phil rejoined. He couldn’t believe he was flirting with Hailey Warren – and enjoying it.

“Maybe she should be,” Hailey said, looking into his eyes, “at least when it comes to me.”

Phil blinked first.

“Oh,” he said.

“It has nothing to do with your family,” Hailey put in quickly. “It has nothing to do with the internship or anything but you. I told you last night that I liked you from the start. You made me wonder why I had been selling myself short in the boyfriend field for so long. When I left the symposium the first night, I was happier than I could ever remember being. It confused me because I couldn’t see a single thing that you could do to help me succeed. That was the way I was taught: You don’t spend time with anyone who can’t be of service to you in some way. That’s why I called Mom. She told me not to let a relationship interfere with my plans. That was such total bullshit but I listened and bought in. You know what happened next. I know it might be too late for you to forget how I acted but I hope that somewhere in your limitless virtues you might find a way to forgive the mistake a stupid girl made.”

Phil looked down at the ham and cheese sandwich on his plate and absently picked up a French fry.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“I don’t either,” Hailey agreed. “I don’t think I’d forgive you if the roles were reversed but I still sort of hold out hope that you’re a better person than I am. I’m not going to chase after you or butt into your relationships with anyone you go out with. I’m probably going to look around and see if I can find someone half as decent as you are, too. Maybe in a few months or in a year or two, you’ll be able to consider it. For now, I’d like to be your friend. My friends were all pissed when I didn’t go clubbing with them last night. They’re already pressing me to go to a fraternity party Thursday night. I’m not going. I’ve seen that life and it’s fine so long as you recognize it for what it is.

“I’m not going to become a nun and cloister myself in solitude. I still want to have fun and do crazy things while I can. That life isn’t real, though. I can’t expect to be taken seriously if I get drunk and stupid three times a week.”

Phil snorted.

“There is a picture of my mother in her underwear with Magic Marker all over her from when she was in college,” Phil related. “Once you get to know her better, ask her about the tattoo she had lasered off her butt a few years ago. I know you think she’s this wonderful person who’s never made a mistake in her life but that’s not the case. She’s made plenty of them – for instance she and my father married only six months before I came along (and I was a full-term baby).”

“Really?” Hailey asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Phil said. “A couple of years ago, I had to carry her and Dad to bed on New Year’s morning. They invited some friends over and got totally blitzed. It was all I could do to keep them from running down to the river at midnight and getting a head start on the Polar Bear club.”

“What’s that?” Hailey asked.

“It’s a bunch of dumbasses who skinny dip in the freezing water at daybreak on New Year’s Day!” Phil said. “Can you imagine that? My Mom and Dad’s naked asses turning up on a web site. Right before they passed out it was still their plan. I think they were both a little disappointed when they realized they didn’t stay awake long enough. My point is that it’s OK to be normal. If you don’t want to go to a party because you don’t like the people, don’t go. But if you’re staying home because you think my mother would, well, that’s probably not the case. My Dad told me Saturday that he really got to know my mother while he was holding her hair while she puked at a party. They stumbled back to his dorm room and that’s where they woke up the next morning. It wasn’t a fairy tale. They broke up half a dozen times in college and I wondered a few years ago if a divorce wasn’t in the cards still.”

“You’re kidding!” Hailey said, her mouth agape. “They absolutely adore each other.”

“They do but things were a little tense while Mom was feeling her way into her new job,” Phil admitted, wondering why he was sharing family secrets with someone he despised a week earlier. “She was staying late at the office every night, going in on weekends and basically ignoring her duties as a mother and a wife. My dad is pretty high up at the cosmetics firm. He’s the vice president in charge of development – a job he had while Mom was still working as her father’s administrative assistant. He was the primary wage earner for the first 12 years of the marriage and his pride took a bit of a hit when Mom was suddenly bringing home five times as much as he did. I’m not sure you know this but Mom wasn’t the one who was supposed to take over Barton.

“My uncle – her older brother – was who everyone thought would take charge. He was already in the corporate structure, working at one of the divisions as part of its management team. When my grandfather decided he was ready to retire and spend the rest of his life fishing and annoying Grandma, my uncle Mark decided he liked where he was. He had a nice life where he was home every night for dinner. His wife served on a lot of charity boards where they lived and he didn’t want to relocate. He has two daughters about my age and they were just starting high school. He told his father that he would prefer to remain in North Carolina. That left my mother. She had been Grandpa’s assistant for two or three years but she felt a lot of pressure because of her gender and because she was second choice, I suppose.

“There was a lot of yelling at our house for the first few months of her chairmanship.”

“What happened?” Hailey asked, leaning forward on her elbows.

“Mom was still probationary,” Phil recounted. “That meant that control of the company stock didn’t transfer to her until after the first year. My Uncle Mark and my grandparents caught wind of things and they showed up. They slapped a document down on the table and told Mom and Dad that they would sell the whole company before they let it destroy them. Uh, Barton holds an interest in the cosmetics company, too. My Grandpa said that he would rather see us living happily on Welfare than to watch a solid family destroy itself over something as stupid as a job. He told Mom she had six months to get her personal life back to the way it was supposed to be or he would revoke her chairmanship and sell the company to the highest bidder.”

“Damn!” Hailey said, shaking her head. “I bet that got her attention.”

“It took some time but she and Dad finally put things back together,” Phil said, shrugging. It had been Terrence Grant’s arrival that had eased the tension at the household. It made everyone understand that life could be a lot worse. “It’s probably better now than it was before. Before there were squabbles about money and expenses – something all families go through. Now that’s not much of a worry and they go along like two ducks on a pond. There was even talk at Christmas about maybe trying to add a brother or sister for me but they both decided they would be too old to really enjoy having another teenager in the house when they’re in their 50s.”