Love and Miss Communication (14 page)

“Definitely. And I checked with my friend’s husband who trained with him and he said he’s a great surgeon.”

“You spent some time vith him? You veren’t rushing out ze door to get to one of your fakakta exercise classes?”

“You’re the one who lives at Zumba Gold. I did speak to him for a long time, and as good as he seems, I still think waiting for him to operate is ridiculous. Don’t you want to know the pathology already?” Evie was proud of herself for slipping in the medical terminology.

“No. I’ve made up my mind,” she said firmly, and Evie knew the case was closed.

After hanging up with Bette, she hit Book-A-Saurus, a mom-and-pop retailer on West Seventy-Eighth Street. Everything but the megastores were going extinct on the Upper West Side, and Evie wondered if the owners had acknowledged how apt the name of their store was. She waved to Stella, the owner’s college-age daughter whom she’d gotten to know over the past few weeks, and settled on an orange beanbag chair with the latest issues of
New York Spaces, Elle Décor,
and
Veranda
. Evie had grown accustomed to reading there, watching Stella open the delivery boxes, or hearing the locals complain about the erection of a new condominium that would obstruct their views. These little bits of commerce and conversation made her feel connected to her neighborhood—the one she claimed to love but perhaps didn’t quite know that well when she was always at the office.

Studying the shelter magazines, Evie was surprised how easily her mind arranged a comprehensive bulletin board of the images she liked, even without the help of Pinterest. The pictures of one deco-style co-op on Park Avenue were so intoxicating Evie decided on the spot to give her studio a moderate facelift. It would be the consolation prize for not being able to afford the one-bedroom apartment she’d been keeping tabs on when the partner dream was still alive. She would repaint her kitchen (maybe in cerulean?)
and buy one good piece of furniture. Fran would certainly not object to an advance on her Chanukah present.

After picking up a slice of pizza, Evie returned home with her bag of magazines and settled into her coziest sweats for the night. It occurred to her as she channel-surfed that she didn’t know Harry the Greek’s vintage. Caroline had been ambiguous about his work relationship with Jerome. She wondered if he was a fresh-from-business-school associate or someone Jerome reconnected with at his hundredth college reunion. Suddenly John Stamos was looking a lot more like Aristotle Onasis. She called Tracy, hoping she would do the reconnaissance for her.

Tracy’s husband, Jake, picked up on what felt like the ninth ring, although she had lost count after five.

“Hello?” He sounded dazed.

“It’s Evie. You all right?”

“Yeah, I’m just working. I feel like I’m really having a creative breakthrough.”

“Oh yeah. With what?” She wondered what it was this time. Slam poetry? African drumming?

“I feel like my latest script’s got a lot of potential, you know. I was just revising a key scene where my protagonist’s vulnerability really comes through. It’s when we first learn that his piano teacher molested him in his grandmother’s pantry. I need to find a great director for this project.”

Screenwriting. She hadn’t thought of that one.

“Well good luck.” She didn’t dare ask about the children’s music he was supposedly producing a few months ago. “Is Tracy there?”

“Evie, just the person I wanted to talk to,” Tracy boomed into the phone. It was the second time she’d heard that today. Without being able to e-mail her, it seemed like her friends had lots of important information saved up to share.

“Oh yeah? And why is that? And what’s with Jake? I didn’t know he was a screenwriter now.”

“Well, he is. He’s got a lot of different projects going,” Tracy responded defensively.

“Got it. I just didn’t realize. So what did you want to talk to me about?”

“Well, the reason I wanted to talk to you is because I have a job for you. Seeing as you’re unemployed and refusing to use the computer, I wasn’t sure what your plans were to find another, um, revenue source. But it just so happens you’re in luck.”

Evie looked out her window across the street. It was dark, but in the apartment building opposite hers she could make out the silhouette of a man hunched over his computer with mounds of paperwork piled on either side. He looked so damn productive, as did most of the people she took inventory of as her eyes scanned the floors of the high-rise from top to bottom. Her most commercial activity of the last few months was a trip to the bank to deposit a fifty-dollar rebate check. She did need to go back to work. Without a job, she’d fixate too much on Bette, simultaneously worrying about her dying of cancer and wanting to kill her for nagging about her love life.

“Okay, which firm? How did you hear about it?”

“Well, it’s not a firm so much as working around a lot of people who are going to be lawyers.” Tracy paused and asked Jake to bring her three scoops of Neapolitan. Evie begrudged Tracy’s ability to eat anything she wanted now, even if it was only for nine months and she’d look like a house after she gave birth. The forty-calorie no-sugar-added fruit pops in Evie’s freezer were an insult to the notion of dessert.

“So it’s a teaching job? I would take an assistant professorship if some law school would have me. I don’t have any experience, though.”

“Nope. Much better. Working with me. At Brighton.” Tracy literally squealed.

“What in the world are you talking about? I can’t teach high school.”

“Not teaching. Lawyering, or whatever you call it. Brighton’s in-house counsel was just indicted for income-tax fraud, so they need someone to temporarily fill his shoes while they do a proper vetting for a permanent replacement. And I recommended you.” Tracy let the indictment roll off her tongue as if it were sick leave.

“I don’t think I’m qualified, Trace. I don’t know anything about representing a school.”

“Apparently most of the legal work is done pro bono by big firms where the school has connections. You would be more of a liaison. Besides, the headmaster seemed delighted when I suggested an eighth-year associate from Baker Smith. He wants to meet with you right away.”

Evie wasn’t totally surprised. Her firm’s name carried quite a bit of cachet. Bragging rights were among the main things she missed.

“I really appreciate this. I do. And believe me, I could use the money. But I’m not even sure I want to keep on lawyering. Maybe this is a chance for me to start something else. You know, change course.”

“And do what?”

Evie had no answer.

“So it’s settled. You’ll call the headmaster and set up an interview. It’ll be so fun to see each other all the time. Though I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to go in.”

“Why’s that?”

Tracy cleared her throat. “Something like my cervix is shortening. Or maybe it’s softening, and my vagina is shortening. I
don’t know. Jake is freaking out. My doctor said bed rest is a possibility.”

“Sweetie, that sucks. You sure you’re okay?” If Evie’s doctor ever told her something like that, she would spend the remainder of her pregnancy standing on her head. Hypochondria and pregnancy no doubt made for poor bedfellows.

“I’ll be fine. Lots of women get put on bed rest. I just hope we can still have sex.”

Tracy was insatiably horny at this point in her pregnancy, a welcome change from the nonstop puking of the first trimester. Last spring, she told the girls in her class that they should never have sex because it could lead to morning sickness. It was an unconventional abstinence lecture, but Tracy threw up so many times during class Evie wouldn’t have been surprised if a few of her students had thought twice before rounding home plate, which was a good thing, because based on what Evie heard from Tracy, these city kids were running four years ahead of schedule in just about every way.

“I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you. Oh, before we hang up, I need you to look up some guy named Harry Persophonis, or Persophole, or something. You have a job for me and apparently Caroline has a man for me. He works at Jerome’s office. Try to figure out how old he is. I’m worried he’s ancient.”

“Evie, I love you, and I support your decision to quit the Internet. Frankly, it’s a human experiment I don’t think I’d have the strength to endure. But if you’re going to do this, you’ve got to do it right. I’m not going to be your standby Googler.”

Evie grunted into the phone. “Fine, don’t. But if this guy shows up with a spare set of teeth in his pocket, you’re dead to me.”

“You know, I mark my students down if they use excessive hyperbole. I would have to flunk you,” Tracy said. “By the way,
just how long do you plan to not use the Internet for? It’s quite subversive.”

“It’s not so crazy. Have you read
The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
?”

“Um, no. Have you?”

Evie could sense Tracy’s sideways glance through the phone.

“Well, not yet. But I’m sure I’ll be riveted when I do.” Stella at Book-A-Saurus had recommended it to her.

“You’ll have to let me know. Seriously though, are you waiting for the
New York Times
to do a feature on you?”

“Certainly not. I’m staying off-line until I turn thirty-five,” Evie announced, astonished by how naturally the answer came to her. She wasn’t sure she’d make it to May 29, her birthday, but it seemed a logical goal to choose. After all, she was devastated on her last birthday when she’d received only thirty-three “HBD” posts on her Facebook timeline. And she had quit the Internet in June. That would make her hiatus nearly a year long, which had a comforting circularity to it.

When she hung up the phone she snuggled under her duvet, her heels running along the edge of the faux-snakeskin bench at the base of her bed. If she got the Brighton job, even temporarily, she could buy the high-gloss gray lacquer night tables she adored. The modest makeover of her living quarters would certainly get an extra boost. She tucked the covers tightly around her body. Her skin felt electrified as it rubbed against the baby-soft sheets. She had lost her job, lost Jack, and might be losing her beloved grandmother. She had shut off the virtual world—her BlackBerry (if someone had retrieved it from the wastebasket) now in the hands of an eager new associate at the firm and her computer at the bottom of the Reservoir’s murky waters. But still a faint optimism crept through her, from her tingly toes to her flushed cheeks as she drifted off to sleep.

Brrrinnnggg. Brrrinnnggg. Brrrinnnggg. The ringing was incessant. Evie panicked as she watched the bronze bell rattle against the peeling yellow paint on the wall. She gripped her pencil tighter, but her fingers cramped. She wiggled them in an attempt to stop the spasms.

The question at the top of the paper on her desk read:

Discuss the symbolism of ivory in Heart of Darkness. Do you think Conrad intended that symbolism? What are some other possible interpretations of the role of ivory and how would that fit in with the overall themes of the book?

Shit! She hadn’t even read that book. In fact, she didn’t even remember it being assigned. All her classmates had weathered copies with dog-eared pages on their desks. How was it possible? She was an A student.

She was being asked to write about the symbolism in a book she’d never touched. And the goddamn bell was ringing. How could the class be over already? She looked down at the page in front of her. It was blank. Normally she could fill three to four pages in the sixty-minute exam period. She was going to get an F.

The ringing got louder and louder. Why wasn’t it stopping? The teacher was coming down each aisle to collect the papers. How would she explain to Mr. Londino, her favorite teacher, about her abysmal performance on the final? Maybe she could lie and say a family member was sick. Wait, that was actually true.

The bell continued to sound its infernal blast. Instead of Mr. Londino coming toward her to collect the exam, she saw Jack. It didn’t make sense that he’d be there collecting the papers, but all of her classmates were comfortably handing over their papers to him, making easy chitchat with him as he passed their desks. He had a Band-Aid around his pointer finger. Must have cut himself slicing again. There was a succulent turkey on his desk with a first-place ribbon pinned to the wing.

“Evie, are you done? Time is up.” Jack was standing in front of her desk, wearing faded jeans and a flannel shirt. He had a crumpled half apron sticking out of his back pocket, brown spots visible on the loose strings. “You need to put down your pencil.”

Evie didn’t want to look up. She had no makeup on. Her clothes were mismatched. She remembered staying up until 1:00
A.M.
the night before with Jack, making love and laughing intermittently. So why was he acting like she was a stranger, asking for her test paper like she was just any other student?

“I’m sorry, Jack, I need more time. Please come back to me.”
She still wouldn’t meet his gaze. She was whispering, and it seemed Jack couldn’t hear her over the blazing bell.

“I think you mean ‘Mr. Londino.’ Evie, your time is up.” Evie looked up to see his face. It wasn’t Jack after all. It was her high school English teacher, speaking with a Cockney accent, a bizarre perversion of Jack’s intonation. Mr. Londino reached forward with his arm, and she noticed the tattooed inscription of a poem on his bicep, visible through his shirtsleeve, but she couldn’t make out any word other than
ANGUISH
. He started to pull the exam from Evie’s hand, and though she tried desperately to clutch the test booklet, her fingers and wrists were limp.

And still the bell rang out so loudly she couldn’t audibly beg Mr. Londino for five more minutes.

Suddenly she heard the sound of a throaty-voiced woman saying the Dow Jones futures were way up, unusual considering the start of fall was known to be a brutal time for the equity markets. But that didn’t make any sense. Final exams were always in the spring. So why was this woman talking about September in her news report?

Evie’s panic gave way to confusion, and then after a treacherously long two minutes of delirium, to clarity. She located her hand, buried under the pillow below her head. It was tingling from lack of blood flow. The ringing she had heard was her alarm clock, which after five minutes of growing increasingly loud automatically switched to the local news.

It was all a dream. What a relief not to fail senior English. In reality she got an A in that class and earned a five on her AP exam, all thanks to her profound exposition on
Heart of Darkness
. But seeing Jack, even in her subconscious, still left her feeling squeamish. She hadn’t seen his face so vividly since the night they broke up, which was now almost a year ago. The Facebook images of him—the ones where she saw him as a grinning groom—were
grainy at best. But his real face, with its shadowy cheekbones and ski-accident scar that divided one of his eyebrows in half, appeared to her in her slumber. And he looked good, with his beautiful bride reimagined as a juicy bird.
The turkey from Turkey
.

There was no need to disinter Freud, Evie thought as she hoisted herself out of bed. She was headed back to high school that day for her interview with the Brighton headmaster, Thomas Thane, an alumnus of the school and a celebrated Shakespeare scholar. The part with Jack appearing as her teacher—grading her, testing her, making her feel small, that was just another REM-sleep twist on reality.

She dressed quickly in a conservative wrap dress with a subtle checked pattern, downed a fistful of oatmeal squares cereal, and hailed a taxi outside her building. Her cell phone rang as she was giving the cabdriver Brighton’s address.

“Hi, Trace. I’m on my way to the interview.”

“I know. Just wanted to wish you luck.”

“Thanks, I’m feeling okay. Can’t imagine what he’s going to ask me. I hardly think my hostile takeover experience will be relevant.”

Evie felt surprisingly nostalgic referencing her Baker Smith work. She wondered if Marianne liked the new associate she was working for more than Evie and if the Calico merger had been derailed by the commodities crisis in Venezuela. When Annie last called, Evie had prodded her for office gossip but didn’t get much in response. (“Haven’t passed by Marianne’s station lately. . . . No idea if any associates in the California office made partner. . . . The frozen yogurt machine has been broken for two whole weeks and nobody gives a damn.”) A similar call to Pierce, her fellow
Gossip Girl
–aficionado from the office, yielded nothing of note. (“Sorry, Evie, the boss-man is five feet away. . . . Can’t dish now.”)

“Oh, it’ll be fine,” Tracy reassured her. “The headmaster’s nickname is Headmaster Tame because he’s a softie.”

“Well that’s good for me, I guess. I’ll call you after,” Evie said.

“Wait, there’s one thing. I’m sure it won’t come up, but if it does, I wouldn’t really mention the whole off-the-web thing at the interview.”

“Yeah, I can see where that might be a problem if I have to do legal research.” Evie had already fretted about how she would maintain her web celibacy with a job. She vowed to only use the Internet for work if it proved absolutely necessary. If so much as a tempting pop-up ad appeared, she would log off and figure out how to be a lawyer the old-school way.

“There’s that, and Brighton’s whole shtick is technological preparedness. They host these lectures like ‘Teach Your Kids to Google a Bright Future’ and ‘Is Your Child the Next Mark Zuckerberg?’ I think maybe it’s so the parents don’t feel bad that they themselves are always checking their phones.”

“Yikes.”

“Yep. The administration even suggests that faculty members familiarize themselves with the class list, which I’m pretty sure means look up the parents. Sounds awful, I know. But if it weren’t for a few really generous families the school wouldn’t be able to give out any financial aid. I wish I could siphon some of the money for my New Orleans kids.”

Evie recalled Jerome and Caroline making a sizable donation to some prestigious nursery school so that Grace could join the other three-foot titans sucking on silver spoons. And that was just for Finger Painting 101. Evie couldn’t imagine the stakes for high school.

“Got it. I’m sure it won’t come up anyway. I’ll call you after I’m out or maybe swing by your classroom. Thanks again for setting this up.”

Evie tossed her phone into her purse and focused her eyes on the TV in the back of the taxi, a marvelous enhancement to traveling around the often gridlocked Manhattan. On the screen she saw a half-naked perky news anchor with a covetous silky bob being manhandled by a grandfatherly figure in a white coat. She leaned over to the screen to turn up the volume, grateful for the distraction.

“And so, you take your hands just like this,” the man in the white coat said, extending two fingers like he was directing traffic at an airport, “and work your way around the breast in a clockwise fashion, feeling for any new swelling or lumps. If you prefer, you can do a wedge or up-and-down motion. This should only take you one full minute in the shower.”

The anchor kept her plastic smile firm while the old man, who Evie determined with relief was a doctor, squeezed her covered-only-by-a-lace-bra breasts on national television.

“Thank you, Dr. Liman. That was very informative.” She paused to button up her red blouse. Her coanchor, a dapper man about ten years her senior with a thick coat of silver hair, leaned into the camera with a coy smile.

“Of course, JoAnne, all the better if you have someone at home who can do the exam for you.” The anchors chuckled in unison while the doctor, clearly not used to being on camera, stood awkwardly, watching the banter. Evie turned off the television, thinking she really should call the physician that Dr. Gold recommended for a proper checkup.

Brighton-Montgomery was located on the northern tip of the Upper East Side, where Tracy had told her most of the students hailed from. It was housed in a handsome redbrick building with an American flag and another flag, gold and navy blue bearing a lion’s face, hanging from the fourth floor. The marble-stepped entrance to the school was framed by intricate wrought-iron railings,
which she admired as she climbed the steps. The building looked more like an embassy than a high school.

Class must have been in session because she only saw one or two students ambling in the hallway. At the front office the headmaster’s assistant, a barely legal woman named Keli (“with an
i
!” she proudly declared), greeted Evie. She explained that Headmaster Thane was called away unexpectedly to a lunch with an “esteemed” alumnus who was in town from Paris, so she would be conducting the interview. The collage of kitten photos on Keli’s computer screen and her rampant use of “like” relaxed Evie’s nerves considerably. After studying her résumé for a minute, Keli asked a few softball questions about her work style and what excited her about the Brighton job.

After the interview concluded, Evie lingered outside the building, debating whether to wait for Tracy’s lunch break. She leisurely traced her fingertips on the cool metal of the railing, acclimating to the feel of the wrought iron. Everything at Baker Smith was new and modern, with the best in Italian furniture and sleek office equipment, but it felt more satisfying to be surrounded by something historical. When a few teachers burst through the front door and eyed her with a suspicious curiosity, Evie moved on. She alighted the steps and took a left around the corner, heading north on Lexington.

The neighborhood deteriorated quickly and soon Evie was surrounded by run-down bodegas and housing projects. The streets were littered with soda cans and torn candy wrappers that whirled around the scrawny ankles of the kids dancing to somebody’s beat-up stereo. New York City was crazy like that—a few blocks in any given direction could transport you from the lap of luxury to someplace downright Dickensian.

Evie wondered if Brighton students did any community outreach. If not, maybe she could start a buddy program—matching
upperclassmen with elementary school children who lived just a stone’s throw from Brighton’s hallowed halls. At Baker Smith, Evie had done pro bono work for nonprofit organizations, helping them obtain tax-exempt status and reviewing their leases and contracts. It was definitely one of the more gratifying aspects of her job, and something she genuinely missed. When she left, she was in the midst of helping a homeless women’s shelter in Battery Park City file a request for more government aid. She asked Julia to take over the project for her, and hoped she had been more successful than Evie at battling the bureaucratic red tape. The shelter was probably better off with Julia. Not only would they get her attentive legal work, but she’d probably also drop off cherry scones for the residents on the weekends.

The organizational charter for the Brighton mentoring program was already taking shape in her mind when her phone rang. She hoped it was Tracy so she could share the idea with her, but it was Paul. Her impulse for altruism would have to wait.

“Hello there Miss MIA,” Paul chirped. “So nice to actually have some contact with you.”

“And with you, my friend,” she responded, laughing. She had been lazy about making plans recently, paradoxically finding herself less motivated to do so now that she had more time on her hands. When she was working, each dollop of free time was like a gift that had to be enjoyed to the fullest. Now that she could be social whenever she wanted, there was less pressure to reach out to friends.

“How’s life among the Amish treating you? I sent out some racy photos from our jaunt to Ibiza and when I didn’t get a snide comment back from you, I figured you were still unplugged.”

She sighed into the phone. “Yep, still off the web. It’s been okay. Boring, therapeutic, isolating, cathartic. I’ve got mixed feelings.”

“Well, I admire your discipline. What’s new with you?”

“Well, if you can believe it, I’m possibly going to be working at Brighton. I’m worried about Tracy though because—”

“I know, her cervix. She texted me from the doctor’s office.” Evie couldn’t deny the jealousy she felt hearing that Paul was being kept up to date in real time.

“She seems to be taking it in stride, though. Anyway, my other news is that my grandmother’s sick. My father’s mom, Bette. You know the one I’m really close to that I visit in Florida and who comes up to see me every year. She has breast cancer.” The words felt heavy on her tongue, like molasses.

“Oh sweetheart. I’m so sorry. Can Marco and I do anything for you?”