Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother - Amy Chua [37]
“I thought it would be fun to take her with us. It’ll be our first vacation together,” I said.
“It’s not exactly a vacation to drive eighteen hours in two days,” Jed pointed out, a little selfishly, I thought. “And what about Sophia’s broken foot? Isn’t she supposed to keep her leg elevated? How are we going to fit everybody in the car?”
We drove an old Jeep Cherokee. I suggested that Sophia could lie down in the backseat with her head on Lulu’s lap and her leg propped up on pillows. Coco could go all the way in back with the suitcases and violins (yes, plural, which I’ll explain). “There’s one more thing,” I added. “I asked Kiwon if she would come with us and told her that I’d pay her by the hour, including transportation time.”
“What?” Jed was incredulous. “That’s going to cost three thousand dollars. And how are we going to fit her in the car? Put her in the back with Coco?”
“She can take her own car—I told her I’d pay for gas—but actually she really didn’t want to make the trip. It’s a long way, and she’d have to cancel her other teaching hours. To make it more appealing for her, I invited her new boyfriend, Aaron, to come too, and offered to put them up for three nights at a nice hotel. I found an amazing place called the William Seward Inn, and I booked them each a double deluxe room.”
“For three nights,” said Jed. “You’re joking.”
“If you want, you and I can stay at a cheaper place, to save money.”
“I don’t want.”
“Aaron’s a great guy,” I told Jed persuasively. “You’re going to love him. He’s a French horn player, and he loves dogs. He’s offered to watch Coco for free while we’re with Mrs. Vamos.”
We left at the crack of dawn, with Kiwon and Aaron in a white Honda following behind our white Jeep. It wasn’t a pleasant trip. Jed insisted on driving the whole way, a macho thing, which gets on my nerves. Sophia insisted that she was in pain and losing circulation. “Remind me again—why am I coming on this trip?” she asked innocently.
“Because the family always has to stay together,” I replied. “Also, this is an important event for Lulu, and you have to support your sister.”
The whole nine hours I sat tense and cross-legged in the front passenger seat, with Coco’s food, equipment, and fuzzy sleepy mat where my feet should have been. My head was wedged between Sophia’s two horizontal crutches, which were suctioned in place on the windshield.
Meanwhile, Lulu was acting like she didn’t have a care in the world. That’s how I knew she was terrified.
18
The Swimming Hole
“What?” Jed asked. “Tell me you didn’t say what I think you said.” This was a month before our trip to Chautauqua.
“I said I’m thinking about cashing in my pension funds. Not all of them; just the ones from Cleary.” Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen, and Hamilton was the name of the Wall Street law firm where I’d worked before Sophia was born.
“That makes absolutely no sense from any point of view,” Jed said. “First, you’d have to pay a huge tax and forfeit half the amount. More important, we need to save that money for our retirement. That’s what pension funds are for. It’s part of progress and civilization.”
“There’s something I need to buy,” I said.
“What is it, Amy?” Jed asked. “If there’s something you really want, I’ll find a way for us to get it.”
I got so lucky in love. Jed is handsome, funny, smart, and he tolerates my bad taste and tendency to get ripped off. I actually don’t buy that many things. I don’t enjoy shopping, I don’t get facials or manicures, and I don’t buy jewelry. But every once in a while there will be something that I get an uncontrollable urge to own—a 1500-pound clay horse from China, for example, which disintegrated the following winter—and Jed has always managed to get it for me. In this case, I was overcome with a powerful urge to buy a really good violin for Lulu.
I contacted some reputable violin dealers who had been recommended to me, two in New York, one in Boston, one in Philadelphia. I asked