Page 54 of The Plus-One Deal
“I’ll be there.” I turned and made for the elevator, then realized I’d left my laptop behind. Joe watched me narrowly as I went back and got it. I was fine. I was good. I just needed a minute. Some time to work out where I stood on… on babies.
This was huge, life-changing. And what about Claire’s life? What was her plan now? I hadn’t thought to ask her. My first thoughts had all been chaotic and stupid —But we used a condom. But we’re adults. Maybe it’s not mine, but who else’s would it be?I tried to picture myself holding a baby, a burbling little bundle of warmth and pink. It would grope out, new, blind, and grab on my finger. Hold onto me, trusting, and I’d fall in love.
I blinked the image away. Babies were work. And then they grew up, and they were more work, and school runs. And tossing abaseball, and games in the park. Piano recitals. Scraped knees and fevers. Trips to the zoo and Disney vacations.
“Uh, Conrad?” Joe was back again, leaning into my office.
“On my way,” I said, hurrying past him. “Just kind of new to me, dealing with kids.”
Walking into the lecture hall was like taking a step back in time. The kids streamed around me, finding their seats, and I flashed back to the times when I’d been one of them. When my life had been ahead of me, a distant dream, and my most pressing concern was finding a seat. I’d argued with Claire in this very room, fought with her over the fine points of economic theory. Then we’d met up and gone for a bagel, or those giant floats that left us buzzing with sugar.
Those had been simple days, but full of hope. I’d mapped out my dreams by then, my path to success. I just had to stick with it, and my future was sure.
I headed up to the lectern and hooked up my laptop, pulling up my first slide. The kids laughed, and I smiled. I had broken the ice.
“Is that you?” someone said.
I grinned. “Sure is. On this very campus, twelve years ago.”
I turned to look up at my own dorky face, and I felt the smile curdle and freeze on my lips. There I was, sure enough, ready to take on the world, gripping my laptop like some kind of weapon. And there was Claire, caught in the background, laughing at something outside of the frame. Two thoughts hit me hard, one after the other:she looks so young, andwhere did the time go?Twelve years, and it felt like if I were to blink, I might wakeup and find myself in my place off-campus, listening to my roommate scream at her Xbox. College felt like a room I’d just left for a moment, and I could step back in at any time. But that room was gone now, or not gone, but changed. It had a new tenant. New locks on its doors. I could only go back now in my memories.
I turned back to the class, trying to shake my discomfort.
“I took this class,” I said. “And it changed my life.” I paused for a moment to let the murmurs die down. “Everyclass changed my life back then, because I live by one rule: two words,nothing wasted. No moment. No chance.”
If Claire had got pregnant twelve years ago, we’d have an almost-teenager. How would those moments have fit with my dreams? Would I have kept to my path and let them slip past me? Arrived at this moment a stranger to my child?
I cleared my throat and kept going with my speech, how I’d seen every experience as a chance to grow. How everything mattered, every step on the way. The kids were all tapping away on their laptops, but I wanted to yell at them, don’t listen to me. The words I was saying weren’t even my own — it had been my mom who said everything mattered. I’d thought at the time she’d meant with her work. With Dad out of the picture, it had been her life. But she’d said that to me on a trip to the zoo, a rare day together, no phones, no work.
Everything matters,she’d said, and she’d smiled. Pointed out a penguin flapping its wings.You’ve got to grab every moment, every chance that you get.
I’d thought she meant every chance to get ahead. I’d thought she was telling me, try hard in school. But that didn’t make anysense, looking back. She’d been smiling and laughing, watching the penguins. Telling me to seizethis, every chance to be happy.
I frowned at my notes and forced myself to focus. These kids were here to learn from my success, not to watch me live out my mid-life crisis. I’d get through my speech and the Q&A after, leave them inspired, then I’d sort out the rest.
“That’s the boring part done,” I said, when I’d finished. A couple of kids snickered, but most sat up straighter. Several hands shot up, ready with questions. I picked one at random, a boy near the front.
“I wanted to ask about time management, how you plan your days. What does a typical day look like in your life?”
“That’s a great question,” I said, relieved to start with a softball. “There’s no typical day for me, no sort of set schedule. I have meetings with partners and meetings with staff, development workshops, trips out of town. Then, I have networking, social events, and you’re completely right. It seems overwhelming. But the rule I live by is, nothing runs over. If you’ve got a meeting between nine and ten, and it’s nine fifty-five with nothing resolved, you don’t want to let that meeting slop over. What you want to do is say, here’s where we are, and here are the answers I need by tomorrow. Then you head for your next slot, and you don’t fall behind. I might have ten different meetings in the course of one morning, then lunch with a client, and now I’m talking to you guys. After this, I’ve got a call with my London office, a chat with my legal team, then a charity dinner. I’ll be home by ten and in bed by eleven, then I’ll wake up tomorrow and do it again.”
The kid frowned. “What if a meetinghasto run over? Like, if there’s a deadline and you’re going to miss it?”
“You set your deadlines so that’s not an issue. The thing with working with people is, they aren’t machines. Theydorun behind, and the trick is to plan for that. You give them one deadline, when youwantthe work done, but that date should be well before you actually need it.”
A girl stuck her hand up, half-rising from her seat. “What about personal time? How do you handle that?”
“Mostly, you’d schedule that, take as much as you need. I keep Saturday mornings free in my planner, and that used to be my laundry day, but now I go running. Physical exercise is a great way to reset.”
The girl pulled a face. “What about stuff you can’t schedule? Like, what if your friend calls and she’s really drunk, and you have to go pick her up from some party?”
Laughter went up at that, but I raised my hands for quiet. “Again, with your deadlines, you give yourself grace. You’d help your friend with her crisis then get back to your day. Redo your next day to squeeze in what you missed.”
“But, what if the next day, she calls you again? What if she’s going through something bad, and she drinks to deal with it, and you’re all she’s got?”
I shifted, uncomfortable. “I’d say in that case, you can’t take on that burden. It sounds like she needs more help than you can give her. Maybe mental health services, or?—”
“She has a point, though.” A woman stood up, around my own age. “You can schedule a lot of things, but I’ve got two kids. It’s hard striking a balance between work and home. Do you have any tips for us on work–life balance?”