The first callback became an interview. The interview was at a mid-sized logistics brokerage twelve miles from my apartment. The role was senior account manager, overseeing a regional portfolio. The hiring manager was attentive and the questions were intelligent. I answered them well, I thought.
They called me two weeks later to say they’d gone with a candidate with more direct brokerage experience in their specific vertical.
I sat with that for a day. Then I applied to three more companies.
Family Pressure and Grace’s Changing Interpretation
My mother called every Sunday, which she had done my entire adult life and which I had come to think of as a fixed point regardless of what else was going on. The calls after the dismissal had a different texture than the ones before.
In the first week, she was solicitous in the way that mothers are solicitous when they know they are adjacent to something painful and cannot quite figure out their own role in it. She asked how I was doing, using an intonation that suggested she both wanted and did not want to know. I said I was adjusting. She said that was good.
By the third week, the calls had shifted.
“Your father is wondering if you’d be willing to sit down with Luke,” she said. “Help him understand a few things.”
I said Luke had my handover document.
She said the handover document was helpful but there were some questions about account specifics.
I said that Luke could call me if he had specific questions, which he was welcome to do and which I would try to answer within reason.