Reconstructing Amelia
Read Reconstructing Amelia Online
Authors: Kimberly McCreight
Let us again pretend that life is a solid substance, shaped like a globe, which we turn about in our fingers. Let us pretend that we can make out a plain and logical story . . . —Virginia Woolf,
The Waves
Contents
Amelia: September 14, 12:16 pm
Amelia: September 30, 10:12 pm
Kate: August 15, 1997, 4:18 am
Kate: October 19, 1997, 3:56 am
SEPTEMBER 5TH
Because there are 176 definitions for the word
loser
on urbandictionary.com.
Don’t Be a Statistic
Hey bitches!
Ah, the beginning of another school year. And I’m back with all the shit that’s not fit to print . . .
So while you’ve all been whiling away the summer in Southampton, or on Nantucket or in the South of France, perfecting your tennis game or your pas de deux, or training for your first marathon, or basking in your latest chess championship, I’ve spent the summer keeping track of the back and forth of our dear faculty members. Mr. Zaritski went out to UC Berkeley to teach at a science camp for crazy-smart kids. Word has it the parents had him fired week two because he smelled. Mrs. Pearl took a Latin lover and learned to pole dance in Miami. Kidding. She didn’t actually have a lover, of course. Who would ever want to sleep with her?
Ah, and sweet delicious Mr. Woodhouse. Who wouldn’t have wanted to see him in a Speedo somewhere? Alas, his whereabouts lo these sultry months is unknown, though I have it on good authority that he spent at least one long weekend snuggled up with our beloved English prof Liv. To which I say, bravo.
As for all of you, I’ll be covering a summer wrap-up as the updates flow in over the next few days—and do send them along to [email protected]. Because here we are, another year where every loser has the chance to finally be cool and the fat kids might turn up skinny.
And the same old questions: Will lovely little Dylan ever come clean about who she’s screwing? Will Heather and Rachel ever admit they’re screwing each other? Will Zadie stay out of jail long enough to graduate? Which senior girl will our resident sophomore hottie Carter sleep with first? And who is this Ian Greene and is he as sizzlin’ as his meet book pictures suggest? Outlook doubtful says my own personal eight ball. But y’all will be the first to know.
In the meantime, keep those new shoes shiny and those smiles bright. And buckle up. Because it’s going to be one hell of a ride . . .
SEPTEMBER 14, 7:37 AM
AMELIA
when did u know?
BEN
know what?
AMELIA
that you liked boys?
BEN
idk, always I guess
AMELIA
no way
BEN
it’s true, seriously
AMELIA
and you just told everybody
BEN
pretty much; who cares what people think
AMELIA
I can’t imagine being that sure about anything. or that brave.
BEN
u might surprise yourself
AMELIA
nah
BEN
u r stronger than you think
AMELIA
thx. what wld I do w/o u to pump me up?
BEN
die? I like to think lives depend on me
AMELIA
ha ha. when are we going to hang out 4 real?
BEN
this isn’t real?
AMELIA
u know what I mean
BEN
I might come to NYC in a few weeks; my dad’s going on a business trip
AMELIA
and I’d get to see you?
BEN
totally
AMELIA
OMG! Seriously? I can’t wait!!!
OCTOBER 24
Kate knew Victor wasn’t happy, even before she looked up from her notes to see the anger settling over his face in a heavy cloud. The room was silent, everyone—five lawyers from Slone, Thayer; ten from Associated Mutual Bank—waiting for him to say something. Instead, Victor leaned back in his conference room chair, hands folded neatly in his lap. With his salt-and-pepper hair and perfectly tailored suit, he looked handsome and dignified, despite his obvious annoyance.
Amid the uncomfortable quiet, Kate’s stomach growled. She cleared her throat and shifted in her chair, hoping no one had heard. She’d been too nervous this morning to eat. There’d been the meeting, but there’d also been the argument she’d been bracing to have with Amelia. The argument had never materialized. Instead, Amelia had left for school with a smile and a cheerful wave, leaving Kate late for work and with an excess of unused adrenaline.
Kate glanced longingly at the endless array of bagels and fruit and sweets laid out on the conference room sideboard. But when you were running a client meeting in the place of Jeremy Firth, the beloved head of litigation at Slone, Thayer, you didn’t get up to grab a snack in the middle of it.
“You do realize,” Victor said, pointing at Kate, “that complying with this subpoena will nullify any later objections.”
“I understand your frustration, Victor,” Kate said calmly. “But the SEC is within its rights to—”
“Within its rights?” Victor snapped. “Overcompensating is more like it.”
Kate held Victor’s stare, which had morphed into something more of a glare. Vacillating now, even in the slightest, would be fatal. Victor would surely demand to see Jeremy, and while Kate might be a partner, she was still a junior one. She needed to be able to handle this on her own.
“And what about merit? Doesn’t that—” Before Victor could finish his thought, the phone in the conference room rang, startling everyone. Rebecca, the junior associate, dutifully hustled to answer it as Victor turned back to Kate. “I want our objections made part of the official record, and I want a budget for this whole mess before anyone opens a single box of documents. Do that and you’ve got your document collection, agreed?”
As though Kate would be pocketing the extra firm earnings herself. In fact, she wouldn’t benefit at all, beyond Jeremy’s appreciation. That wasn’t inconsequential, of course. Remaining one of Jeremy’s favored disciples mattered, a lot.
“Absolutely, Victor,” Kate said. “We’ll certainly do our best to—”
“Excuse me, Kate,” said a voice in her ear. When Kate glanced up, Rebecca looked petrified to be interrupting. “Sorry, but your secretary’s on the phone. She says there’s a call you need to take.”
Kate felt her face flush. Taking a call in the middle of a meeting with Victor Starke was even worse than grabbing a bagel. Kate’s secretary, Beatrice, would never have interrupted that kind of meeting, but she was out sick. Kate had told her replacement not to disturb her unless it was an absolute emergency, but the girl had had such a blank look on her face that Kate was convinced she was high. Unfortunately, refusing the call wasn’t an option either. Kate was waiting to hear back from a judge’s clerk about her application for a temporary restraining order for another client.
“Excuse me, for one moment, please,” Kate said, trying to make it seem as though the interruption was all very expected. “I’ll just be a second.”
The room was quiet as she made her way over to pick up the receiver. She could feel everyone staring at her. Luckily, as she pressed down on the flashing Hold button, the conversation behind her finally picked back up. Victor’s associates laughed obediently, probably at one of his jokes.
“This is Kate Baron.”
“Yes, Ms. Baron,” said the woman on the other end. “This is Mrs. Pearl, the dean of students at Grace Hall.”
A call she needed to take. How could her daughter not have even crossed her mind?
“Is Amelia okay?” Kate’s heart had picked up speed.
“Yes, yes, she’s fine,” Mrs. Pearl said, with a hint of annoyance. “But there has been an incident. Amelia’s been suspended for three days, effective immediately. You’ll need to come down and sign an acknowledgment form and take her home.”
“Suspended? What do you mean?”
Amelia had never been in trouble in her entire life. Her teachers called her a delight—bright, creative, thoughtful, focused. She excelled in athletics and was involved in every extracurricular activity under the sun. She volunteered once a month at CHIPS, a local soup kitchen, and regularly helped out at school events. Suspended from school? No, not Amelia. Despite Kate’s crushing work hours, she knew her daughter.
Really
knew her. There had been a mistake.
“Yes, Amelia has been suspended for three days,” Mrs. Pearl repeated, as though that answered the question of why. “For obvious reasons, we can only release her to a parent or guardian. Is that going to be a problem, Ms. Baron, for you to come and pick her up? We are aware that you work in Manhattan and that Amelia’s father is unavailable. But unfortunately, school policy is school policy.”
Kate tried not to feel defensive. She wasn’t even sure that it was judgment she was hearing in Mrs. Pearl’s voice. But Kate had suffered her share of uncomfortable questions, quizzical looks, and thinly veiled disapproval over the years. Her own parents still seemed to regard her decision to carry her unplanned pregnancy to term while still in law school as an especially depraved form of criminal insanity. The decision had certainly been out of character. Her whole life, Kate had always done the right thing at the right time, at least in all respects other than with men. The truth was, with men, Kate’s judgment had always been somewhat flawed. Keeping her baby had not been a decision Kate had made lightly, though, nor was it one she regretted.
“I’ll come right now, immediately. But can you at least tell me what she—” Kate paused, the lawyer in her suddenly aware that she should choose her words carefully. She wasn’t about to admit her daughter’s guilt. “What is Amelia accused of doing exactly?”
“I’m afraid disciplinary issues can’t be discussed by telephone,” Mrs. Pearl said. “There are confidentiality rules, procedures set in place. I’m sure you understand. Mr. Woodhouse, the headmaster, can provide you with details when you arrive. Which will be when exactly?”
Kate looked down at her watch. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“If twenty minutes is the best you can do,” Mrs. Pearl said, sounding as if she really wanted to say something far less accommodating. “I suppose that will be fine.”
Twenty minutes had been a vast overstatement. Victor had balked, loudly, when Kate tried to end the meeting early. In the end, she’d had no choice but to call Jeremy.
“I hate to do this,” she said to him in the hallway outside the conference room. And she did hate leaving. It was something that childless and long-divorced Daniel—her ultracompetitive former law school classmate, now fellow junior partner—would never have done, even if he’d been hemorrhaging internally. “But Amelia’s school called. I have to go pick her up.”
“Not a problem. In fact, you’ve just saved me from having to meet with Vera and the contractors at the new apartment. I’d take a client meeting with Attila the Hun over conversations about load-bearing walls any day,” Jeremy said, with one of his trademark smiles. He ran a hand over his prematurely silver hair. He was tall and handsome and, as usual, looked elegant in his pink-striped shirt. “Is everything all right?”
“I don’t know,” Kate said. “Apparently Amelia’s gotten into some kind of trouble, which doesn’t make sense. She doesn’t get into trouble.”
“Amelia? I’m fresh off singing her praises in that recommendation for the summer program at Princeton, so I may be biased, but I certainly don’t buy it.” Jeremy put a sympathetic hand momentarily on Kate’s shoulder and smiled again. “You know these private schools. They blame first, ask questions later. Whatever happened, I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation.”
And just like that, Kate felt a little better. That was Jeremy, always with the perfect empathetic aside. It came across as genuine, too, even for Kate, who should have known better.
“Victor isn’t happy,” she said, gesturing toward the closed conference room door. “I feel like I’m throwing you to the wolves a bit.”
“Don’t worry.” Jeremy waved a nonchalant hand. He could work until dawn, head into court with a losing case to confront an agitated adversary and a dissatisfied client all at once, and never lose his we’re-all-friends-here air. “I can handle Victor Starke. You go take care of Amelia.”
Kate opted for the subway to avoid Midtown traffic, but she was still forty-five minutes late when the number 2 train lurched to an unexplained halt just before Nevins Street. Fifty, fifty-five minutes late, that’s what she’d end up being by the time she got to Grace Hall.
If
she was lucky. Surely the school would take it as a sign of her poor parenting. Mother late, derelict child. It was an exceedingly direct line.
And the more Kate thought about it, the more she was convinced that whatever Amelia was accused of doing must have been bad. Grace Hall prided itself on being liberal, open-minded, student-driven. Founded two hundred years earlier by a group of New York City intellectuals—playwrights, artists, and politicians—the school was revered for its excellent academics and unparalleled arts program. While it was often spoken about alongside the old vanguard of Manhattan private schools—Dalton, Collegiate, Trinity—Grace Hall was in Brooklyn, and so came with a more bohemian pedigree. As such, the school shunned textbooks and standardized tests alike, in favor of experiential learning. Given the school’s dearth of formal rules, Kate could not imagine what a student would have to do to warrant suspension.
Suddenly, the train hissed and sputtered forward a few feet, before jerking again to a halt. Kate checked her watch. One hour and five minutes late, at least. Still four stops away.
Goddamnit
. She was always late, for everything. She stood up and went to hover near the subway door, doubt creeping up on her.
Recently, Amelia had seemed distracted, even a little moody. She was fifteen, and moods were a part of being a teenager, but it did seem like more than just that. There had been Amelia’s questions about her dad, for instance. Apparently, Kate’s stock explanation for why she didn’t have a daddy—that, after a single brief encounter, he’d gone off to teach children in Ghana and had never returned—was no longer holding water. There’d also been Amelia asking to go on that absurd semester-abroad program just the morning before.
“Mom, can’t you just stay and listen to me for
one
minute right now?”
Amelia had been leaning with her arms crossed against the kitchen counter in their narrow brownstone. With her long blond hair falling in waves over her shoulders and her miraculous eyes—one blue, one hazel—glinting in the warm morning light, Amelia had looked so much older, and taller, than she had only the day before. With Kate’s high cheekbones and heart-shaped face, Amelia was a beautiful girl. Sexy now, too, in her low-rise jeans and fitted tank top. Thankfully, she was also still a bit of a tomboy.
“Yes, Amelia, I can listen, for a minute,” Kate had said, trying not to lose her patience. From the sour look on her daughter’s face, the Thanksgiving trip to Bermuda Kate’d just suggested had been akin to offering up a weekend of dental work. “I’m always here to listen.”
“I want to spend next semester in Paris,” Amelia said.
“Paris?” Kate jammed her laptop and a handful of files into her bag, then resumed her search for her phone, which she thought she’d left on the counter. Kate ran a hand over her hair as Amelia stared at her. It was still wet, and yet she could have sworn she’d dried it. “For a whole
semester
? And Paris is so far away.”
Despite Kate’s best intentions, she was getting aggravated. It was hard not to see it as intentional that Amelia was insisting on having this conversation when she knew Kate was already running late. Kate wondered sometimes if Amelia wasn’t more strategic than she gave her credit for. She said yes to a lot of things—late nights out, sleepovers, parties—because Amelia asked when Kate was stressed or in a rush. But a semester in Europe was a different story. Kate wasn’t going to cave to that simply because it would be easier. But it would have been. Much, much easier.
“What does it even matter?” Amelia made an annoyed, guttural noise. “You’re never here anyway.”
Kate’s long work hours weren’t something Amelia usually complained about. Kate had always assumed—
hoped
maybe was a better word—that it was because having a single mother with a demanding career was the only life her daughter had ever known. But Kate was always bracing herself to discover that her daughter still felt the holes, despite her frantic efforts to cram them full of love.
“Amelia, come on, that’s not fair. And a semester abroad is for college, not high school.”
“It’ll be educational.”
Kate looked over at her daughter, hoping she’d see some hint of humor around her eyes. There was none. She was completely serious.
“Amelia, I wish I could just blow off my meeting and stay to talk this out,” Kate had said, and she’d meant it. “But I honestly can’t. Can we please talk more about it tonight, when I get home?”
“Just say yes, Mom!” Amelia had yelled then, startling Kate. Her daughter wasn’t a yeller, certainly not
at
Kate. “It’s really easy, listen: yes. Just like that.”
This is it
, Kate had thought.
She’s officially a teenager. It’ll be her against me from now on, not us against the world.
The worst part about their argument was that Kate had then ended up getting home the night before too late—late again, late always—to talk about the semester abroad. But she’d been ready when she’d gotten up the next morning—that morning. She’d even woken up early—despite the fact that the meeting with Victor was bound to be one of the most stressful of her career—so she’d have plenty of time to talk to Amelia about Paris. She’d planned to stay firm on her no, but had decided to offer up a trip there together at Christmas. Kate had planned to apologize for not being home more, too, especially lately. She’d still been managing to keep her and Amelia’s Friday dinner dates and their Sunday movie nights. But their weekend adventures had been in much shorter supply.