Occupy

Lindsey’s family was heading to San Francisco to celebrate her father’s journalistic achievement at an honorary luncheon, but she had other plans. She kept this to herself as they piled onto BART, her sister and parents whooping when they found three empty seats in a sea of Oakland Raiders jerseys. Lindsey grabbed a pole ten feet away and shuffled for balance as the train hurtled onwards, rooftops and storefronts zipping past under a blindingly blue sky. The sun was already beating down on the glass windows, the oniony scent of body odor filling the train.

“Yum!” her mother said, and Lindsey turned around to see her squinting as she read something from her phone, projecting her voice to compete with the raucous shouts of football fans. “The spot we are going to has crème brûlée French toast and a side of seasonal market fruit. Has anything ever sounded so delicious?” Her mother was wearing her bohemian mom look: white tank top and a green Pakistani pashmina which, she never hesitated to tell anyone, she’d found at the bottom of a clearance pile at Goodwill. She said it with a pride that Lindsey found gross, as if the anecdote said something about her tenacious, enterprising spirit rather than the fact that they’d been poor the last couple of years and had to settle for scraps. “Richard,” Susan said, “are you going to get something sweet?”

Lindsey’s father’s leg was crossed at the knee and he was wearing a buttoned-up flannel shirt and tortoiseshell glasses, a recent effort to curate his image as a hip but unassuming middle-aged journalist who’d been just as surprised as everyone else to discover he had made it. This new look was just another charade. Lindsey knew that he listened to self-help podcasts at night and was champing at the bit for this moment to arrive, to finally be recognized as the genius he’d always felt himself to be. He stroked his chin as he read something on his phone, and when he finally looked up his eyes were misting, the way they always did when someone complimented him.

“Sorry,” he said. “Randy Kleiner at The Outpost just tweeted me, saying the piece made him cry. And that’s making me cry,” he said, wiping his cheek with the back of his hand.