Driver's Education (37 page)

The flawless product of a mother whose obsessions include
Vogue
and cayenne pepper–based diets and a father who'd wished for an Aston Martin—
not
a daughter—Annalee spent most of her childhood staring into a mirror scrutinizing whatever inadequacy had been pointed out to her that day. (Too thin, too fat, too many freckles, not enough freckles, too
much
Gwyneth, not
enough
Gwyneth, etc., etc., etc.) It wasn't a particularly uplifting activity, though it was one at which she certainly excelled. While many young girls spend their days committing Hannah Montana songs to memory, Annalee could—without stuttering—give you a rundown of the stats surrounding her blemishes: this mole's grown 0.18 inch in diameter since last summer. Seven hair ends have split since breakfast yesterday. When we were younger, I'd found it impressive, if not entirely disconcerting.

As kids in Southern California, we'd always gotten along well, Annalee and I. Our parents—namely, my father and his brother—lived close enough to each other to allow for at least one playdate each week. We'd spend these mornings and afternoons and nights on the beaches of Orange County, dodging not only the Pacific's crashing waves but also her mother's attempts to convert us to whichever fad diet she'd read about that week. (During one such excursion, I'd returned home and had announced to my own mother that I had pledged my digestive tract to veganism. She responded to my proclamation by cooking veal for dinner and telling me that if I wanted tofu, I was more than welcome to eat it with the rest of my burlap-sack-clad friends, but that while I was living under
her
roof, I'd best check my dietary restrictions at the door.)

When she turned eleven, Annalee's family moved to Chicago. My uncle, who had slid comfortably into personal wealth after inventing an obscure (yet highly expensive) bike lock used by nearly every East European cycling team, cited business needs and promptly plucked his wife and daughter from their comfortable California lifestyle and set them down in the wild, wild Midwest. He bought a sprawling mansion in Lake Forest—a decision that at once pleased his wife (thanks to the house's sheer size) and horrified her (thanks to the house's location in a region of the country known for its meat-and-potatoes approach to dieting).

“Business needs,” as it turned out, though, translated roughly to “abandonment.” After the move, Annalee's father was all but present, opting to spend time with his family solely on long weekends and national holidays and the occasional birthday celebration—visits during which he'd forgetten his daughter's name after four fingers of scotch and two illegal cigars that he'd obtained during his latest international jaunt. It was hard, she'd tell me in her monthly letters and during our weekly phone calls, but she had faith it'd get better. Although he'd never said it, although he'd never
expressed
it, she was certain that she was still his princess, still his little girl. Because, really, that's all she'd ever wanted. She was right, I'd tell her, even though it hurt my stomach to do so. He was just a busy man. Always traveling. Always working. What with the bike locks and all.

Despite the infrequent visits from her father and the constant harassments of her mother—despite all that—Annalee turned out all right. She passed through adolescence with unprecedented grace and crystal-clear skin, luck that my aunt would attribute to specific portions of kale she ate during her third trimester of pregnancy. Upon graduating somewhere in the top quarter of her high school class (she wasn't the brightest in our family—though she certainly wasn't the dumbest), she attended Duke University, where, despite meager protests made on my part, she traded her judgmental mother in for sixty judgmental sorority sisters.

She took the hazing in stride, though, and laughed when the older sisters wrote “FAT” across her visible ribs with a red marker during pledging. (“They obviously haven't met my mother,” she said during one of our weekly phone calls—a tradition we maintained through her time in Durham.) Four years later, she graduated, sandwiched somewhere in that same top quarter of her class, except this time she was armed with a Bachelor of Arts in cultural anthropology—a weapon, my brother claimed, that would be less useful than the paper on which it was printed.

And it was. Or it wasn't, depending on how you look at it, I suppose. Using an article she had written on the cultural significance of colored loincloths among tribes in Papua New Guinea, Annalee managed to land a job as a “fashion assistant” at a Washington lifestyle magazine whose name I can never remember, and whose circulation can't be more than three digits. Together we laughed at the prospect—at this
job
—and she told me that it'd just be a stepping-stone until she found something she deemed more worthy.

But this was when we were still talking weekly, before Chase had met her and had called her princess for the first time, before Belize.

I catch her eye again, and this time we share a smile and she rolls her eyes at me as she points to the bouquet strapped to her head.

Chase finishes his champagne and tosses the empty flute to the ground and as he calls me “champ” it dawns on me that I can't remember the last time he called me by my real name. “Let me explain Gold Cup to you. First, you've got the south gate.” He points to the left. “It's for folks coming from towns like Lynchburg and God-knows-where-else. Towns where people wear, like, J. Crew and American Eagle, and
Abercrombie
. I'm not talking about, say, Great Falls, Virginia. Or McLean. I'm talking about
Virginia
Virginia. You got me?” I don't have him but I nod. “Good. Then, you've got the north gate.” He points to the right. “That's where the D.C. folks generally come in. But—and my bet is you'll learn this sooner rather than later—not all D.C. folks are created equal.” He laughs at his own joke. “For instance, you've got the kids who split the cost of a party bus to get them out there, throw on their only pair of Nantucket reds, pack a picnic, and call it a good time.” He pauses. “It's cute. It's nice. And there's always some hot ass over there. State school girls. But it's not us, champ. It's Gold Cup purgatory. You've managed to escape
hell
with the Virginia trash, but you're still sitting on some shit blanket eating Doritos and drinking brut. You follow?” This time he doesn't wait for my response. “Then, you've got
us
.” Chase makes a wide, sweeping gesture with his arm as if he's some feudal aristocrat showing some guest his plots of land. And I'll admit, amid the madras and the seersucker and the tans, the plots are impressive. “Every year, Dad manages to throw together the best private tent at Gold Cup. Check out the
Cap File
this month, I'll bet you a night of drinks that there's a write-up on it, sans mention of the Iranian delight, if you know what I mean, compadre.”

“What about the actual races?” I ask.

“The what?”

“The horse races.”

He throws his head back and howls. “You kidding me, champ? No one watches the races.
No one
. Think about the Derby. You think Jessica Simpson goes down to Kentucky to see some goddamned horse run around a track? No. She goes to wear some hat that cost her a grand and throw back a few mint juleps. I swear,” he says, shaking his head, “sometimes you kill me. Absolutely
kill
me.” And then: “C'mon. Let's introduce you to the masses.”

If I wasn't exaggerating, and if the Latham, Scripps, Howard tent is, in fact, a castle and Kip is its reigning king, Chase its dauphin, and the masses their loyal subjects, then I am the distant relative who's a product of inbreeding gone very, very awry. By any legal standard I'm drunk. My shirt's covered in illegal caviar. I forget the name of every Susan, Bryce, Hunter, Valerie, etc., whom Chase introduces to me almost before I shake their outstretched hands. And then I step on a six-year-old. I manage to spill the remainder of my gin and tonic down the front of an LSH associate's wife's Lilly Pulitzer dress. I stare for a
little
too long when the cocktail forms a sticky river of booze and lime and carbonation that runs through the bronze canyon created by her mostly inorganic breasts.

I'm embarrassed. For her. For me. And in a moment of self-awareness, I worry that this situation, that this scenario and I may not be the best fit.

© SARAH KEARNEY

Grant Ginder
is the author of
This Is How It Starts
. He received his MFA from NYU, where he teaches writing. He lives in New York City.

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ALSO BY GRANT GINDER

This Is How It Starts

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition January 2013

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ginder, Grant.

Driver's education / Grant Ginder.—1st Simon & Schuster ed.

p. cm.

I. Title.

PS3607.I4567D75 2013

813'.6—dc232011048981

ISBN 978-1-4391-8735-7

ISBN 978-1-4391-8737-1 (ebook)