The Discount Life: Getting to Step Two

The night we dropped the boxes off at the goodwill donations center we were on our way to dinner at our friend’s house. We dropped them off and drove on without talking, NPR in the background. I stared out at the street lamps, dimly light and passing by, wondering what I should do now. Step one had been to clear out my life of DL junk. And that was done, right? What was step two? Make a list? Quit my job? Empty my savings account and travel the world? Marry a man from Paris with Italian hand made shoes and vacation villa at Lake Como and….I’d gotten off track. Focus.


Our hosts were George and Judy. They are the world’s most beautiful people. Married four years with a magazine worthy house, complete with the granite covered island and pot rack in the kitchen. They were happy and smiley and threw an immaculate pre-holiday party every year.

“Chloe!” Judy opened the door and flung her arms up as she called me. “So glad you could make it.” She grabbed me with the force like an old boyfriend’s father who used to pick me up every time he proffered a hug. “Stanley.” She moved in for the bear hug. I stepped aside and surveyed the décor. The dining room was directly to my left. I think Martha Stewart had been there. There were place cards. I couldn’t remember the last dinner I’d gone to with place cards. The centerpiece was fall: colored leaves, gourds, rust and orange colored mums. “Come in. You’re the last to arrive.” She seemed to want to follow up with, as always, but Judy would never insult a guest; Emily Post would have a fit. The others were standing around the table with wine in their hands. Two other couples and a single woman named Charlotte. Judy said, ”Let’s all sit down and have some hor d'oeuvres”. We followed suit.

Charlotte was seated across from me and to my right. I wondered about her story. I theorized divorce or a long term relationship gone bad. Despite my best efforts the gates of pity opened and the frothy waters of sympathy came pouring out on her behalf. Poor Charlotte. She had to answer Judy’s “seeing anyone lately” question with “a couple of takers but nobody worthy yet.” What courage to sit with all her coupled off friends and be single. I glanced at Stanley and felt a wash of warmth run over me. I was lucky to have a good man attached to my place card. Without him, I would be like Charlotte – a glaring sub-entity squeezed between we thought you had it all, what happened? and don’t feel bad darling, you can sit next to me. But I didn’t have to worry. My relationship entrenched me squarely outside the realm of fret.

“So Chloe, what’ve you been up to?” Judy asked, offering up a plate of miniature delicacies.

“She’s been cleaning out her closet,” Stanley answered for me. “It’s a very intensive project for her.” Judy and Charlotte giggled. The men laughed out loud. I reached immediately for the food and laughed off Stanley’s witty slight. His personality always improved in the company of others. Go figure.

“It has been very intensive,” I said, with a note of repartee. “I had a lot of junk. I wanted to get rid of some of it and start anew. But you know how it is, old habits die hard.” I munched down on a bread like hor d'oeuvre with artichoke paste on it and avoided talking again for a bit. The conversation continued about closets and clothes until it slid organically over to clothes for work and landed permanently on work.

Charlotte was a lawyer. She worked for a small law firm four days a week doing boring car insurance cases but her real passion was working with a non-profit organization that helped the poverty stricken with their legal issues. She worked with them twice a week and it “inspired” her.

“Someday I’d like to be able to work solely for the organization but you don’t make much money there. So for now, I work for both.”

Judy said, “We all have our somedays. I would love to own my own restaurant, instead of working for someone else’s. But that’s not in the cards yet.” We all sighed in near unison. The kind of sigh that all women make when they are racking their brain’s for another common ground topic but need a moment to ricochet glances off the corner’s of the room to pick one.

“Chloe, how about you? What’s your someday?” My someday. The thought rose immediately to meet her question: to be a violinist for the symphony. But under the intense glare of their smiling eyes, I had trouble transferring the thought into words. Did Judy even know I played the violin? She would think it was crazy for a woman she had not known to play any musical instrument at all, to suddenly dream of becoming Itzhak Perlman. Which, let’s be honest, I would never become in a million years but he still comes to mind as the only famous violinist people remember. I didn’t need to be that famous. I just wanted to play for my symphony. The one I kept running day after day but one in which I never had the chance to participate. My internal thoughts remained mute and my response, finally, was “Oh, there’s so many things I can’t begin to list them.” I laughed to make us all more comfortable, so they laughed too.

“But really, if you had to pick one? Is there something you’re passionate about?” Charlotte said.

My words escaped before I had the chance to filter their repercussions through my head, “I was thinking of starting this organization….” I stopped. Did I really just say that out loud? I dreaded what was the immediate and inevitable next question:

“Really! What kind of organization?” The Discount Life. But how to explain that to these women. Judy couldn’t understand, could she? She was a chef at a highly successful restaurant downtown. She was frequently featured in regional magazines as the best thing since sliced bread, literally. Her name had stars attached to it. George worked for Capitol One, doing what, no one really knew. But he got dressed up every day and came home to a beautiful house so you could safely assume it was something good. They were planning a trip to Ireland, she said. “It’ll be absolutely freezing but we’re going anyway.” I had always wanted to go to Ireland. Scotland actually but Ireland would do. And then there was Charlotte, who despite being single, had a house in Westwood; the chic urban neighborhood of Philadelphia, a thriving career and was taking the train down to Washington next month to play part in some lobbyist group that was fighting for better funding for education. Against them, my Discount Life theory seemed feeble. Not only did they not suffer from discount life predicaments, they were all the way life kind of girls. So I said, “I have a couple of kinks to work out before I feel comfortable saying.” They nodded politely and smiled without parting their lips, a mannerism that indicates diminishing interest. They were done with me. My inner most self had escaped discovery yet again.


On the ride home I said, “Why don’t we plan a trip to Ireland?” Stanley raised his eyes and said, “We could. I don’t know that we have the money right now though.” His response ignited a small irritable flame under my skin. He was right, of course. His pragmatics usually were. I was just hoping that he’d join me in a daydream and be excited about the possibility. I worked simultaneously to respond lightly and squash the tiny devil flame that burned within and saying, “Well that’s what planning’s for. We could plan a date in advance, save up and then take a trip.”

“We could.” He focused on his driving, gave me a spare glance before returning his eyes to the road. Squash the flame Chloe. Squash it.

“You don’t really want to go, do you?” I spoke calmly with no venom. Patient.

“I do. I would love to see Ireland. It’s not that. Its just that it seems a little big for our budget right now, that’s all.” Squash, squash.

“But if we made a plan it could be a goal for us. Even if we don’t get there right away. At least it would be in the works. Something to strive for.”

“You’re right,” he said amicably. “I would love to see it. We’ll look into it.” It was here that my flame should’ve gone out like a light. He’d said what I wanted to hear. But the flame simply turned to kindle at his commonsensical response. He had not gone willingly into the night. He’d followed me after I noosed his neck and pulled with all my might. In short, I’d dragged it out of him.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll look into it.” The rest of the drive was docile. I battled inner dialogue, a fight between the emotional, unreasonable woman and the sane woman in me and managed to put the flame out thoroughly. By the time we got home I had forgotten the emotion surrounding the discussion entirely and had gone straight on with thinking about goals and how I had so many I had barely touched. It was classic discount life that I didn’t try. Why?

I thought about Judy. Her career. Her home. Her life. She was running a marathon at Christmas. I had always wanted to run a marathon, had always wanted to be one of those people. I asked her at dinner how she had the time to train with how busy her life was. She said, “When its what you want, you make time for it.” I’d argued that training for a marathon took tons of time. She replied, “Well its not like it happens over night.” Marathons were just that, she’d said, a day by day thing you worked at until one day you had the strength to run the race completely. “You make the time and you work at it a little bit by little bit. Baby steps.” Make time. That’s what I needed to do, set goals and make time for them. Maybe I’d start with a marathon. Maybe I’d start with my own trip to Ireland. “No,” I said out loud. “Scotland.”

Step Two: Establish Goals


1) Run a marathon
2) Go to Scotland
3) Become a chef (I liked to cook, why not?)
4) Become a violinist again
5) Actually pick up the violin, its been so long the case has dust on it
6) Cut Dairy Out of My Diet (it makes my skin so itchy and my stomach, well, we won’t go there)
7) Learn to knit a scarf
8) ………(to be cont’d)