“Look, he came tonight. He seems happy. Wouldn’t you have heard immediately if he never wanted to talk to you again?” Jeremy switched off the burner under the tea kettle I didn’t need. “C’mon. This was why you invited him over, right? To tell all?”
“But in my own words: ‘Dad, there’s this podcast out there that puts your wife and your marriage in a terrible light.’”
“If you want me to, I could say there’s a Nielsen rating for podcasts, and—trust me—this one’s a stinker.”
“I thought you had to go learn some lines.”
“I do. All six of them. Leave this.”
I poured another shot of vodka into the pitcher of cosmos and refilled my glass. I returned to my guests, sat down, and said, as calmly as I could, “So what was your coffee with Geneva about?”
“That thing she’s doing—the radio show.”
The distress must have been registering on my face and possibly excreting from my pores because Kathi asked what was wrong. I said, “He’s so calm! I was scared to tell him about it. I thought he’d be furious and I’d get blamed because I let the stupid yearbook fall into her hands!”
“Furious?” my dad repeated. “Why?”
“It’s about . . . people. Alleged people. From Pickering . . . friends of Mom’s.”
“I know all that. She told me that she had hired actors to play the roles of people a small-town teacher might have known. She explained that it was an adaptation. That’s what Hollywood does: They take someone’s life and they turn it into a musical, or put in a car chase, or set it in space.”
“And didn’t she tell you it was a comedy, hon?” Kathi asked him.
I could utter only a faint “Comedy?”
But the look I was getting from Jeremy was plainly Leave it alone.
“I listened to it for him,” Kathi said.
“Apparently, it takes a special thing on a phone that I don’t have,” my father said. “A map.”
“App,” said Kathi. She shot me the same cautionary and conspiratorial look Jeremy had dispensed, adding, “As you know, you need the right phone, and it’s very hard to install. Then the episodes get erased once you listen. Gone for good.”
“So they are,” said Jeremy.
It was clear: Kathi had screened the episodes and reported back something like That podcast has nothing to do with you. You’d be bored stiff.
Was this morally right? Did someone need to tell him the truth, and would that truth teller have to be me? Or had this been put to rest? Could I report to Holly, Mission accomplished? Dad already knows about the podcast, period, case closed. By the way, never, ever discuss it with him. And if you ever write a memoir, I’ll kill you.
I told Jeremy I had enough chicken if he wanted to stay. But he was checking his phone again, which made me say, “Never mind. Obviously, you can’t.”
“Can I take a rain check?”
“Sure. Whenever.”
He grinned, flashing a newly liberated smile. “Will there be drunken thighs again?”
Why was he acting this way? I said, “I’m not promising anything.”
31
Judge and Jury
Eventually, Geneva returned to discover that The Monadnockian was missing. Prime and only suspect: me. She called, ranted, and threatened. I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The yearbook’s gone! It was in my study! I know you stole it!”
“What would I want with the yearbook at this point? The damage is done. I don’t even know what you’d want with it at this point.”
“I’m not done! I haven’t even scratched the surface of the documentary. You have twenty-four hours to return it.”
“How can I return something I don’t have?”
“I’ll get a search warrant!”
“You do that. I’m sure judges give search warrants to private citizens who think they lost someone else’s high school yearbook.”
“You think you’re so clever? I’m calling the police as soon as I hang up.”
“Good. Call 911. And you know what they’ll say? ‘Ma’am, really? You’re missing a book? Are you sure you didn’t return it to the library?’”
That took the wind out of her hysterical sails. “You still there?” I asked. “Did you take your meds today?”
“I’m fine!” she yelled. “I don’t need meds!”
“Keep looking. It’s probably somewhere logical in the apartment, like the clothes hamper or the refrigerator. You did have a bad knock on the head.”
“I have other ways of making trouble for you,” she warned.
She did, and soon I found out exactly how. As reported by my most loyal doorman, she complained about me—the professionally jealous me; the evil, criminal, and spiteful me—to everyone she encountered. The topic must have done double duty—yearbook talk was podcast talk; one missing item could be interpreted as an assault on all documentarians and artists. She worked it and worked it.
Finally, she must have found an interested party.
When the school director called, asking me to meet with her the following day before the children arrived, I had no reason to connect the summons to Geneva.
“May I ask about what?”
“A rather serious matter,” she’d said.
I spent the rest of the day doing what I hadn’t done since I’d starting teaching: catching up on my chocolate curriculum. I covered “Bean Sources,” “Time and Temperature,” and “Chocolate Culture in New York City.” The kitchen hiatus seemed to have done me some good because the tempering and the molding and even the flavoring was a success. I knew this because, by bedtime, I’d eaten every morsel.
We spoke privately in the director’s office, which was decorated with photos of parents studying Dr. Montessori’s The Discovery of the Child and The Absorbent Mind. Her hands were folded on her blotter, and her expression was bordering on the tragic. She told me that she’d received some distressing news from a parent.
My stomach and heart lurched. “Which child?” I whispered. “What happened?”
“Child? No. It’s not about a child. The parent raised a rather serious concern about you.”
“What concern? What parent?”
That earned a prim, silent rebuke, at war with her happy-lumpy papier-mâché necklace.
What she did share with me was that the unnamed parent had reported that a Daphne Maritch had stolen some valuable property from a competitor’s apartment. He and his husband were not comfortable, to put it mildly, with her teaching their child. In other words, either I go or they withdraw their gifted, full-tuition son.
All I could do was sputter an inarticulate string of syllables expressing outrage and denial.
“Are you saying this is a false accusation or mistaken identity?” the director asked.
“Both! And what do they think I stole?”
“A valuable book that was—I’d have to consult my notes—one of a kind and irreplaceable. Inscribed throughout. And the source material for many media projects.”
What hope did I have from a woman who’d never been a particularly sympathetic boss? I told her I wanted to talk to these accusers face to face! Like the U.S. Constitution guarantees, I improvised.
“Out of the question. I promised them my utter discretion.” The director consulted a peach-colored index card. “You do live on West Fifty-fourth Street, apartment 11-D, down the hall from the apartment of the aggrieved party?”
With all the dignity I could muster, I said, “The book in question belonged to me; actually, it belonged to my mother who bequeathed it to me in her last will and testament.”
That managed to evoke something that looked like uncertainty, so I embellished it with “In a handwritten codicil.”
She checked her notes again. “What about this part, that the book is the basis of a movie script and other media?”
“First of all, there’s no movie. And by the way, this source material? It’s a friggin’ yearbook, li
ke fifty years old.”
“Then . . . I don’t understand.”
“Because whoever told you this is misinformed. How can you steal what already belongs to you? I’m the aggrieved party.”
“Daphne. I can hardly let this go. What would you do in my shoes if parents came to you with a serious charge against a teacher? They also said the police had been called—”
“I’d have heard if the police were called. More like the police were dialed. If anyone did the stealing, it was this crazy woman who—”
“Do you realize that if you’re arrested it would make the papers, and every article would identify you as a teacher at Belvedere Montessori? I shudder to think of the consequences.”
“Well, there was never anything to make the papers. And do you really think I’m capable of a felony—if you can even call the repossessing of a book that belonged to you in the first place a felony?”
“That’s your story: You repossessed the book?”
“Yes, because it’s not a story! The book belonged to me! And just in case you’re thinking breaking and entering, you should know I was able to return the book to my own possession because I was inside her apartment saving the alleged owner’s life!”
“Motive and opportunity,” said my director, as if I’d uttered the exact inculpatory thing she was hoping to hear.
What else did I have to shake her up with but “I’m guessing these snitches were Logan’s fathers?”
No affirmation or denial. What I next heard was “I’m sure you can appreciate that I have no other choice.”
I never liked this woman or this job. But still I said, “What about ‘innocent until proven guilty’?”
“It’s all about the children. If there’s even a scintilla of truth—”
“I’ll sue those parents for defamation. And Belvedere Montessori for wrongful termination!”
Judge and jury was shaking her head emphatically. “You misunderstand. Danielle is coming back from maternity leave. You were hired on a temporary basis to fill in for her during her confinement. She returns on Monday.”
“Since when? When you offered me the job, you hinted that Danielle might take a maternity leave that lasted until she had the next kid!”
“Then you misunderstood.”
Perhaps, in the interest of keeping my job, I should’ve listened respectfully, maintained my innocence, and asked for another chance. I didn’t. I stood up and stated with utmost dignity, “Well, fuck you, then.”
Who to call for commiseration? My dad? No. He already had enough to worry about in the Daphne department. Jeremy? Another no. We maintained that we were still friends, but that was only our going through the motions of civility due to geography. Attorney Cousin Julian? No, once again. Neither unfair termination nor defamation was his kind of law. There was only one avenue, one person, one target: Geneva Wisenkorn, bane of my existence, source of all misery in my life—not counting my ex-husband, my ex-boyfriend, Tina the interloper, my sister the memoirist, Peter Armstrong the statutory seducer, Maria Montessori, and my own self.
I still had Jeremy’s key. I found the yearbook nearly in plain view—if you’d call the top drawer of his bureau plain view. I took it, thoughtfully leaving a note explaining that I’d been fired and needed the yearbook for reasons I’d explain if our paths ever crossed again.
I Googled the service required and found a place right on Tenth Avenue. The pages of The Monadnockian were easy to rip out of their fifty-year-old binding. Without ceremony or regret, I shredded them, a handful at a time, and collected the fragments in a clear plastic bag. Even reduced to shreds, slivers of eyes, noses, ears, teeth, lips, bangs, pearls, headbands, bow ties, signatures, and ambitions made their source recognizable. My first thought was to leave the remains outside Geneva’s door, silently demanding, You wanted your precious stolen yearbook back? Well, here it is.
But it was mine to keep, and its destruction had given me solace after the morning’s indignity. Hadn’t this caused me nothing but trouble for months? So, like a good kidnapper, I photographed the bulging bag propped between its two covers lest there be any doubt as to its identity. I texted the photo to Geneva, unaccompanied by words. I did, however, put some time into choosing emoji, and settled on three: a scissors, the scales of justice, and a middle finger.
32
No Turning Back
While shredding and stressing, I’d forgotten that I’d left a note for Jeremy announcing the end of my Montessori journey. He called, and we went over the conversation I’d had with my director, culminating in her big lie that the job had never been anything but temporary.
“Is it true?” he asked.
“No! She’d said Danielle might be coming back, but it was with a verbal wink, as in ‘Her maternity leave is open-ended.’ The truth is that I was fired for being a burglar.”
That required me to backtrack to Geneva’s bigmouthing my alleged crime all over the Upper West Side until her slander reached the unforgiving ears of two Belvedere parents.
“Can you pretty much reconstruct the conversation?” Jeremy asked.
“I just did.”
“No. I mean in writing.”
I told him I had a whole document on my laptop titled “Yearbook Stuff.” But if he was thinking it could be ammo in a lawsuit, forget it. I had no case since I happened to be guilty of that which I’d been accused.
“Are you going to be all right?” he asked.
That was delivered in a sympathetic voice that made me think he meant “all right emotionally” until he added, “Because I’m pretty sure you can collect unemployment from the state when you’re fired.”
“That won’t be necessary. I get alimony and”—what to call my Peter Armstrong allowance?—“money from a kind of trust. I’ll be fine.”
I took a stab at sounding as if I could live outside my own head. “What about you? Work good? Timmy happy?”
“Very. He’s writing for the Blue and Gold. And he kissed a girl.”
I chose not to pursue that. I asked, “What about the other work, the secret screenwriting I knew nothing about until you told Kathi. Anything to report there?”
“Actually, yes, but it’s still in the note-taking stage.”
“Can you talk about it?”
“I’m afraid to.”
I assumed that meant he was keeping the idea close to the vest, guarding his premise against copycats. I said, “I get that.”
“When I have more on paper, I’d like to run it by you.”
That was flattering, especially since I had no experience with scripts except for the times I’d rehearsed lines with him. I’d always been happy to be asked, especially when I got to read for Timmy’s drunk mother. I asked which medium he was writing for, TV or movies?
“Neither.”
“Please tell me it’s not a podcast.”
“It’s not.”
I asked what was left.
“The stage.”
I’d been in New York long enough to recognize a pipedream when I heard one. “Wow. Good luck.”
“Really? ‘Good luck’? That sounds like ‘Nice knowing you.’”
Did he need reminding about the obstacle in our path? Apparently, yes. I asked, “How is the adjunct professor? Are you having sex yet, or is that another thing you’d rather not discuss?”
“Correct.”
I wanted to ask, Is she as much fun/readily available/raring to go as I am? Or Are you falling for her? Instead, I announced, “I shredded the yearbook.”
He yelped. “No, you did not!”
“I did.”
“Literally shredded?”
“Every page. And I kept the shreds as evidence that the yearbook’s not hidden in a vault somewhere.”
“What made you do it? I mean, if you had to describe your motivation . . .”
Motivation? Despite his day job, Jeremy rarely used director-speak. I said, “I couldn’t stand to look at it. I didn’t want it lying around. I could’ve
hidden it—”
“Or kept it at my place. It was very happy here.”
“Except it was radioactive back in my apartment.”
“But you can live with the shreds?”
“It’s like saving someone’s ashes. Maybe I’ll scatter them from the top of Mount Monadnock.”
“Do that. I’ll drive you up there,” he said.
Why did he keep saying things like that, implying that he welcomed my company? I said, “We’ll bring Geneva, too. She can make it the grand finale: I scatter the ashes and then get pushed off the mountain and die. Cue ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’”
The old Jeremy had been a much better audience. “Does she even know the yearbook’s been destroyed?” was his unsatisfying response.
“I bagged the shreds and texted her a picture of them.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
“Did you hear back?”
“No, and I don’t want to.”
“She must’ve gone ballistic. I’d lie low for a while if I were you. And maybe not answer the door.”
Doubts were creeping in. Book shredding, discussed aloud, was sounding less and less like the act of a stable person. “Be honest. Did I do a really stupid, impulsive thing? Maybe I should’ve copied the pages first, then shredded the fakes. I did think of that, but the originals are on that nice glossy stock.”
“No turning back. You have to own it. And I must say, it’ll play beautifully.”
“Play where?” I asked. “Why did you say that?”
“Just a figure of speech,” Jeremy said.
33
Two Birds with One Stone
Was Peter Armstrong really marrying his newly divorced ex–office manager and defacer of thank-you notes? Apparently so, because I was invited to their wedding via Paperless Post.
I called his cell and, without greeting or preamble, went straight to “Isn’t this kind of sudden?”
“I’m sixty-eight years old. How can a wedding be sudden at sixty-eight?”
“I meant how well do you know her?”
Good Riddance Page 19