Tomorrow May be Better

As Ethan reached for the handle, Victor's flat, heavy voice cut through the air from behind his newspaper. It was the voice of a man who'd spent forty years in corporate law and had perfected the art of making simple statements feel like legal summonses.

"Ethan."

"Yes, Dad?"

"The hedge outside my study. It still isn't level," Victor said. This was the third time he'd mentioned the hedge in two weeks. It was, by all accounts, a perfectly level hedge. Victor just needed something to mention.

"I measured it with a level. It's not level. How do you fail at hedge trimming? The hedge doesn't move. It's not complicated. It's just... sitting there. Being a hedge. And you still couldn't make it level."

"I'll trim it after breakfast," replied Ethan.

"The garage door is squeaking," Victor continued. "It squeaked twice this morning. Twice. I counted. It woke me up. I'm not a heavy sleeper, Ethan. I'm a light sleeper. I've been a light sleeper since the Reagan administration. I need my sleep. And your squeaking garage door—which you said you would fix last week—is making that impossible."

"I'll oil it," offered Ethan. "Again," he added. He had particularly oiled the garage door not quite up to a week ago.

"You do that... And oh! The guest bathroom faucet," Victor pushed on, warming to his theme. "It drips. It's been dripping for three weeks. Three weeks! That's water waste. That's environmental irresponsibility. That's also just... annoying. Drip. Drip. Drip. All night. And worst of all, that's an extra water bill excess you, particularly, cannot even afford to contribute in this house. So why waste what you cannot afford?"

Victor paused for dramatic effect before continuing.

"I can hear it from my study. I can hear it from my bedroom. I can hear it in my dreams, Ethan. I dream about dripping faucets now. Is that what you want? Is that your goal? To haunt my dreams with your incompetence?"

"I noticed it yesterday," Ethan said smoothly. "It's a washer issue. I'll repair it today. I already picked up the replacement part from the hardware store on Tuesday. It's in the pantry, next to the extra coffee filters."

Victor turned a page—snap!—the sound sharp in the quiet room. "Good..." Then, he lowered the newspaper again as he seemed to remember something else to say. "And... lest I forget..." he thought about what he had remembered to say, then realized he had forgotten it. "I'll tell you when I remember," he said and went back to reading his newspaper.

It was the longest conversation the two men had shared in over a week. Neither acknowledged it.

Ethan reached for the coffee cup again, but Derby wasn't finished. "Oh... one more thing."

Ethan paused, his hand hovering over the saucer like a hummingbird at a particularly dangerous flower.

"On your way out today..." Derby smiled, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness that had roughly the same nutritional value as high-fructose corn syrup. "...don't forget to look for a job, you know. And just in case you've forgotten what a job is, it's that boring thing you do outside the house from 9 to 5 every day, that contributes something on the table."

Snickers rippled through the young cousins. It was the old reliable. The classic. The joke that never got old, apparently, because they'd been telling it for three years and still found it hilarious.

"I know it's become quite the hobby of yours," Derby continued, her eyes locked on his like a hawk sighting prey. "You've turned job hunting into a lifestyle. You've become a professional applicant. I've never seen anyone apply to so many positions and receive so many rejections. Do you know how many rejection emails you've gotten? I counted once. It was ninety-seven. That's almost a hundred rejections, Ethan. Almost a hundred people who looked at your resume and said, 'Actually, no. No thank you. We'd rather leave the position open. We'd rather have no one than have you.' Doesn't that tell you something?"

"But who knows?" she continued, warming to her theme. "Maybe today you'll surprise us all. Maybe today you'll actually find something. Maybe the universe will finally take pity on us. Maybe pigs will fly. Maybe hell will freeze over. Maybe—"

"I'll do my best," Ethan said softly.

"That," Derby sighed, "is precisely what worries me. Your best has been unemployed for three years. Your best is a collection of rejected applications and a pantry full of replacement parts for faucets you haven't fixed yet. Your best is a pancake that doesn't know what shape it wants to be. Your best is—"

"You know, Aunt Derby," Gavin interrupted, unable to resist, "I think we need to start calling him a 'career optimizer.' He's not unemployed—he's just... aggressively between opportunities. He's taking a sabbatical from productivity. He's on an extended journey of self-discovery that just happens to coincide with an extended journey of not contributing to the household in any meaningful way. It's not a failure, it's a... rebranding."

"A rebrand!" Penelope shouted, nearly choking on her juice. "That's brilliant! Ethan, you're not unemployed—you're in your 'brand development phase.' You're not a freeloader—you're a 'resident lifestyle consultant.' You're not a failure—you're a 'long-term success strategist with delayed implementation.'"

"A strategist!" Marcus bellowed, slapping the table. "That's it! He's not doing nothing—he's strategizing. For three years. That's a long strategy. That's a strategy that would make Sun Tzu say, 'Maybe take a break, buddy.' It's a strategy that would make Machiavelli say, 'I appreciate the long game, but at some point you need to actually play the game.'"

Laughter erupted again, floating around the room like smoke from a dumpster fire. Selin stared down at her untouched plate, ashamed. Her eggs were getting cold, but she couldn't imagine eating them. They suddenly seemed like an indictment of her entire life choices. Only she and Grandma Margaret didn't laugh, Margaret's spoon resting still against the rim of her cup, a silent island of compassion in a sea of cruelty.

Ethan simply nodded, completely unshaken. "I'll still try, mom."

Derby shook her head with mock pity, the kind of pity that's really just smugness in a fancy dress. "That's the difference between you and successful people, Ethan. Successful people try until they succeed. You... you just try. You're like a man who keeps walking into a glass door and says, 'Well, at least I walked.' You're like a man who keeps missing the bus and says, 'Well, at least I made it to the bus stop.' You're like a man who—"

"A man who can't make a round pancake," Landon supplied.

"Yes, exactly!" Derby beamed at her nephew. "A man who can't make a round pancake. A man who can't trim a hedge. A man who can't fix a dripping faucet. A man who can't get a job. A man who can't do... anything, really, except smile and remember insults and make coffee that goes cold too quickly." She sighed dramatically, placing a hand over her heart. "It's honestly exhausting to watch. I need a nap just thinking about it."

Ethan picked up the cup, his hands steady, his posture calm. Before turning toward the kitchen, he offered one last smile—small, private, and meant for no one in particular. It was the smile of a man who'd long ago learned that the only way to survive in a house full of wolves was to become something they couldn't bite.

"Then I'll keep trying," he said softly. "Tomorrow might be better."

He turned and walked back toward the kitchen doors, his footsteps calm and unhurried despite the heavy air left behind him. His back was straight, his stride was even, and he somehow managed to make walking away look like a victory rather than a retreat.

No one noticed Grandma Margaret watching his back as he disappeared through the doorway.

She didn't look back at her tea. Instead, her eyes swept over the dining table, taking in the grinning faces, the cruelty disguised as sharp wit, the comfortable wealth built on a foundation of another man's humiliation. She watched her daughter preen, her grandchildren snicker, her son-in-law hide behind his newspaper like it was a shield.

And for the first time that morning... she wondered if the poorest man in the house was actually surrounded by people who were far poorer than he would ever be.