My mother set fire to my college diploma before fifty guests at my sister’s celebration for landing a $12,000-a-month position. “You’ll always be the family failure!” she mocked. “Now wash the dishes!” Vanessa grinned, unaware that a limousine was arriving with her new CEO. He approached me and announced, “Ma’am, the board is waiting for your decision.” My sister turned pale when she learned why.
Mom held my degree above a candle as fifty guests laughed, then let the document representing twelve years of sacrifice burn before demanding I clean up.
“You’ll always be the family failure, Emily!” she announced. “At least your sister knows how to make something of herself!”
Uneasy laughter filled the dining room. Beside the marble fireplace of Mom’s enormous Connecticut mansion, I watched my diploma blacken and curl.
Vanessa, my younger sister, lifted her champagne.
“Don’t look so miserable, Emily. Tonight is about success. You should try it sometime.”
We were celebrating Vanessa’s appointment as senior director at Sterling Technologies, a billion-dollar software business, with a monthly salary of $12,000. Mom had invited fifty acquaintances, but expected me to serve rather than attend as a guest.
“Mom,” I said quietly, “that diploma belonged to me.”
She merely shrugged.
“Then perhaps you should have used it.”
Everyone knew Mom’s preferred version of our lives: I was Emily Carter, thirty-four, an underachieving elder daughter supposedly squandering my education on vague consulting projects. Vanessa, thirty-one, was the glamorous executive success.
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