To The Power Of Three

When Josie was thirteen, a stock adviser had done the math for her mom, explained the mysteries of compound interest, and said the boys still had a chance but only a high-risk strategy would work for Josie. He recommended that Mrs. Patel take out a second mortgage and invest that money. He pushed Josie’s mom toward telecommunication stocks, including WorldCom. For a brief, giddy period, it looked as if they would be okay. But it was very brief.

Josie still remembered the shock of finding out that all those headlines about people somewhere in Alabama actually affected her, that a corporation’s accounting fraud had dovetailed with her mother’s incompetence to deprive her of the funds for a college education. By junior year her fund had dwindled to three thousand dollars, barely enough to pay tuition for a single semester at the University of Maryland -and Josie did not have the grades to get into College Park. The chances for a National Merit Scholarship were long gone, not that Josie would have had much of a shot, even with a tutor, and the Patels earned too much for Josie to qualify for a needs-based scholarship. “On paper,” her father said, his voice despairing, looking at how much they still owed on the second mortgage. “On paper, we’re very well-off.”

Forced to confront for the first time the financial sacrifices her parents had made over the years, Josie felt guilty and resentful. She had not asked to move to Glendale. It wasn’t her fault her teeth came in crooked. She had never wanted gymnastics lessons. Well, no, she had wanted those.

Even as Josie stewed, her mother schemed. Nothing motivated Susie Patel as much as Vik Patel’s disappointment. After researching Title IX scholarships and deciding that Josie was too late for lacrosse and too small for rowing, she had found out that College Park was offering athletic scholarships to cheerleaders. It was an odd kind of cheerleading, to be sure, in that the qualified students spent all their time competing while a different group of young men and women cheered for the UM Terrapins. (“Fear the turtle!” was the school’s well-known slogan.) The program was, in short, what Josie had always wanted-a chance to fly and soar on her own, no longer a sideshow to the main event but the event itself. Josie wasn’t crazy about staying in-state, but at least College Park was prestigious now, taking only the top Maryland graduates. No one had to know how close she had come to attending a truly crappy school.

She called to her mother, who was now puttering in the kitchen, “Do I have to, like, make a speech when they give it to me?”

“I don’t think so. Is that what’s bothering you? You’ve never minded being the center of attention.”

Josie thought of herself at the top of the pyramid, airborne in the night sky at football games, flying as Michael in Peter Pan. Yes, she had enjoyed the attention, but what she had really liked was the feeling that she had complete mastery over her body. It was the one thing she could always control.

“Not talking, though. I don’t like to talk in front of people.”

“Well, I’ll make sure you won’t have to talk. Just say thank you and get off.” Her mother returned to the sofa to rumple Josie’s curls. “You have the prettiest hair. I would have killed for hair like this when I was your age. I think I fell in love with your father because of this hair.”

“Mom.” It was far from the first time her mother had shared this anecdote, but it never ceased to embarrass Josie, this vision of her father not as her father but as a boy, someone with hair that a girl could love. And not just any girl, but her mother. She did not like to think of her parents that way. These images had made her adamant in her rejection of Gri

“Wow, I think you got five syllables into that ‘Mom,’ a new personal best for you.”

This was Josie’s cue to say it again, holding the final syllable so it sounded like the “om” chant in a yoga class. But her heart wasn’t in it today.

“It’s expected, you know,” her mother said after realizing that Josie wasn’t up for their usual game. “Being sad. You might be sad for a long time.”

Like the rest of my life?

“It’s not just being…sad,” she said. “It’s…” But there was no way to finish the thought. She felt sad and guilty, yet resentful of the guilt, convinced she didn’t deserve it. None of this was her idea.

She picked up the remote control, began working her way up and down the cha

Josie preferred the local stations anyway, with their cheesy ads for cars and copiers and insurance. This time of day, these cha

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