Privilege

by Mary Adkins

  The clouds outside the plane reminded her of that wave.

  It was how Bea felt too, in a way. Sometimes she felt as if she were moving forward so fast she might be crashing. Other times she felt as if she weren’t moving at all, stuck in the threads of something invisible.

  THAT NIGHT, AUDREY made spaghetti squash with a lamb sausage ragù and a vegan version of the same for Lorn. The four of them—Lorn, her parents, and Bea—sat at the formal dining room table while Mila, their housekeeper, filled and refilled their water glasses on loop.

  Lorn was trying to explain to her parents the term hypebeast in the context of describing her new career plan of launching a streetwear company.

  “It’s a word for someone who’s fashion-obsessed,” she said.

  “In a good way or bad way?” Audrey asked.

  “Bad,” Lorn said, handing Bea her phone so she could scroll through Lorn’s list of start-up concepts. At some point over the six weeks since they’d started college, her friend had decided that she was going to be a feminist entrepreneur. An ethical capitalist, making tons of money while affirming women. And their bodies.

  subscription box of just red lipsticks

  app for making (women) friends

  app for making apps (for women)

  app for picking a red lipstick

  “And how about you, Bea?” Audrey asked, stabbing at her pile of yellow noodles. “I love living vicariously through you girls! Tell us everything.”

  Bea handed the phone back to Lorn, then held up a finger. When she finished chewing, she said, “I have . . . well, I had, it just ended . . . my first case as a student advocate.”

  “Moot court!” Barry bellowed from the far end of the table. “I was in moot court.”

  “No, Barry,” Audrey said, annoyed. “It’s a real case. I told you that in her program she represents her fellow students. I told you this.”

  “No way. I’d remember that.”

  “I did.”

  “A college freshman providing legal representation? Are you kidding?”

  “I’m more like a support person. He had a lawyer,” Bea said. With Barry, you often had to speak up loudly—or interrupt—to work in your point.

  “What’d he do?” Lorn asked, her mouth full, her hand hovering in front of her face.

  Bea hadn’t yet told Lorn about Tyler’s case. They’d only FaceTimed a couple of times since August, and she hadn’t brought it up. She wasn’t sure why.

  “It was a sexual assault case,” Bea said, a trace of fear in her voice.

  “Oh, my,” Audrey said, dabbing her face with a white cloth napkin. “That sounds challenging. Do you get to pick which side you support?”

  Bea shook her head. “We’re assigned students randomly,” she said, swallowing a slice of sausage and deciding that it might be a good idea to shift the focus of discussion slightly. “There’s this summer fellowship that I really want. I’ll apply this month and find out by the end of the semester if I got it. It’s with the CJRI.”

  “The who?” Barry asked, then suppressed a belch.

  “Barry Birch!” Audrey scolded. “What is the CJ . . . ?”

  “The Criminal Justice Reform Institute,” Bea said. “It’s a nonprofit run by my professor.”

  “So you’re still thinking you’ll go into law, honey?” Audrey said. “That’s lovely.”

  “My CTO’s son just made partner at a firm in the city,” Barry said. “Which one, hon? Cooley? No, Wachtell.”

  “Paul Weiss,” Audrey said. Then to Bea she said, “That’s a better one for someone like you than Wachtell. They do a lot of pro bono. We’ll have to introduce you . . . maybe over Thanksgiving.”

  “She’s in her first year of college, Mom,” Lorn said.

  “Never too early to be thinking about legal internships,” Barry said.

  “I’m planning to be a public defender,” Bea said, her eyes locked on her plate.

  The Birches were moderate Republicans, Romney Republicans. They gave generously to the Susan G. Komen Foundation and the Ronald McDonald House. They attended their Methodist church every Sunday and loathed Donald Trump, but more because they found him crass than that they took issue with his politics. They’d voted for him still, of course, “out of obligation” because of taxes and because Hillary was “at least as corrupt.” They prided themselves on having friends of all political shades. How true that actually was Bea didn’t know, but what she did know was that public defense wasn’t a profession they were likely to rally behind.

  In the heated rise of the Black Lives Matter movement the spring of Bea and Lorn’s ninth-grade year, Bea was spending July with the Birches. Prior to that summer, Bea had followed the stories privately, with horror, from her quiet second-floor guest room. Cops killing black people. Black kids. When the grand jury declined to indict the white cop who killed Michael Brown in Missouri, the four of them—Bea and the Birches—were gathered in their palatial beige living room, watching the evening news. They listened in silence to the prosecutor’s announcement.

  “Let this be a lesson in how the media works. It’s a ratings game,” Barry had said to them, then offered a lecture on how, by running stories about racist cops, media companies made tremendous money.

  “Fine, but also, they are racist,” Lorn had said.

  “What does that mean, racist?” Barry said. “We need better words.”

  “It means we treat people differently based on what race they are,” Lorn said, annoyed.

  “Maybe,” Barry said. “I think I’m more likely to treat people differently based on how old they are or how well dressed they are than what color they are!”

  “So you’re ageist and classist, congratulations.”

  Audrey had thrown Barry a warning glance and stolen a nervous peek at Bea and changed the channel, then the subject.

  The conversation had left Bea frustrated—mostly with herself for not speaking up. Normally Bea didn’t get as frustrated with the Birches as Lorn did. Bea actually found them quite likable, especially Barry, who was amusing and often entertaining. But was it really that hard for him to understand that you’re treated differently based on race? Or did he just not want to know it? Was it that hard to understand that you can have both good cops and bad cops? And that racial bias could be subconscious? And that the media could be making money on sensational stories, and that all of it could be true at once?

  She was in ninth grade and she’d already figured out that much.

  But Bea said nothing. She was in their home. Besides, he hadn’t been wrong to bring up class. They drifted around New England in the first-class cars of trains or in the backseats of Lincoln Town Cars with drivers whose names they didn’t know and didn’t learn, moving from one elegant marbled space to another. Fresh flowers were ever present, fish was always wild and often raw, and the odds were high that a tag on any given item contained the name of a brand with a storefront on Madison Avenue. She’d seen Barry apologize to a friend of Audrey’s for ignoring her when he had assumed she was someone Audrey had hired for some sort of house task.

  So he’d acknowledge his own class bias but refuse to own any understanding of American race dynamics.

  In the intervening years she hadn’t become any more vocal around the Birches when it came to her social and political opinion. She let Lorn be the provocateur daughter, the voice of the leftist youth.

  Announcing her public defense aspirations, Bea saw that they hadn’t expected this from her. For several seconds, everyone chewed in silence. Then Barry began to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Audrey asked.

  “I’m sorry. It just took me by surprise.”

  Audrey set down her fork. “You’re going to represent criminals?” she asked.

  “Mom, everyone deserves representation!” Lorn snapped.

  “Is it that surprising? I am in a program called Justice,” Bea said with a tight laugh.

  “Well, yes, but I’d assumed you were learning about
both sides of justice.” At once Audrey set down her fork and gasped. “Did you all hear? That man who abducted the little girl in Darien was just sentenced. Twenty years. Twenty. Years.”

  “Do you know what she’s talking about?” Lorn said to Bea.

  Bea shook her head.

  “Mom, we don’t follow your local news.”

  “A five-year-old girl was abducted and murdered by this monster whom they had on tape confessing—on tape!—and yet his trial went on for, oh, how long, honey? Months.”

  “Couple months,” Barry said, scraping his plate.

  “He didn’t even get life. He’ll be out again, preying on some other child. I can’t stomach it. I don’t know why I’m bringing it up at dinner. Oh, because you’re going into public defense.”

  Mila entered the room carrying a glass bowl of fresh fruit—sliced kiwi and blueberries and strawberries.

  “Did the guy do it?” Lorn asked. It took Bea a moment to realize Lorn was speaking to her and referring to Tyler, not the Darien murderer.

  “Um, I don’t know,” Bea said.

  “What do you think?” Lorn asked.

  Bea hesitated. “I don’t think it matters,” she said.

  Audrey yelped.

  “Jesus, Mom,” Lorn said.

  “Of course, it matters!” Audrey shrieked.

  “Aud,” Barry said. “Calm down.”

  Bea stood and set her napkin next to her plate as she’d been taught in the etiquette class she and Lorn had been forced to take in ninth grade. She didn’t have to use the bathroom, but she figured that if she left, then by the time she returned Barry and Lorn would have placated Audrey.

  But as she reached the corner of the open dining room into the hallway, Audrey hollered, crossly, “Where are you going?!”

  Bea spun to face her.

  “I don’t care what you think!” she snapped before stomping out of sight.

  AUDREY APOLOGIZED THAT NIGHT and again, more sincerely, the next morning, but it was clear to Bea that she remained troubled. Even Lorn, Bea could tell, was bothered by Bea’s unwillingness to say she believed Tyler was innocent—she could tell because Lorn hadn’t brought it up again.

  They went shopping at the boutiques on Greenwich Avenue, and Audrey bought them both multiple semiformal dresses. Neither cared much for the ones they found, but Audrey was insistent, and they could tell it made her happy, so they walked out with three cocktail dresses each.

  When it turned out that Barry had to head back to Atlanta on Friday rather than Saturday, Bea was relieved that the plane would be leaving earlier than planned.

  As they soared quietly through the sky southbound, Barry looked up from his computer and said, out of the blue, “Proud of you, Bea.”

  “Seriously?” she said, shocked.

  He laughed. “Is it that shocking?”

  Then, because she’d always liked Barry and because she believed him and maybe because she needed to tell a parent figure, she said, “I’m making a D in physics.” As she said it, she looked out the window. There were no clouds, only blue sky. She turned back.

  “Maybe don’t become an astronaut, then?” he said, breaking into a wide grin.

  BACK AT CARTER, the confrontation with Audrey bothered her more as the days passed. She didn’t know, of course, how her own mother would feel about what she was doing in supporting someone accused of assault, or in pursuing a career of defense work, but she knew her mother would have a more nuanced take on it than Lorn’s mother had displayed. Audrey’s knee-jerk reaction (“You’re going to represent criminals?”) had left Bea feeling lonelier than she’d felt in a long time. While she certainly hadn’t made the decision to dive headfirst into her Justice course work in order to please Audrey—she still just thought of Audrey as Lorn’s mom, not as her surrogate parent—Audrey’s reaction had highlighted just how truly Bea was on her own.

  Even Lorn didn’t get it.

  No one but Dr. Friedman and her C.U.N.T. teammates got her.

  The more she did improv, the better she felt she got at it, and the better she got at it, the more she wanted to do it. The “and” was where Bea thrived. The addition of material, the piling on of the things that led to laughter—the absurd, the physically challenging, the silly. She steered away from the intellectual “ands” preferred by some of her teammates—the clever references, obscure and punny and heady. This wasn’t a conscious decision, but more instinctive, a compulsion to delight herself. She was rewarded for it with laughs, sometimes cheers. Compliments specifically to her after shows: Bea, you’re amazing. You’re hilarious.

  Her favorite part was the moment her eyes met her scene partner’s, and both saw that neither knew what was going to happen next: We’re in this together—now what?

  As the end of October approached and regionals were only eight, then seven, then six weeks away, the energy in the group grew more electric, and Chris’s stress level, which was normally low, became noticeably high. He insisted they add an extra weekly rehearsal, then instituted a lecture at the beginning of every rehearsal in which he reviewed “the fundamentals.” He would read printouts from the Internet on what makes great improv and make them watch and discuss YouTube videos of other improvisers, as if they were a football team reviewing plays.

  One afternoon, he was giving them a lecture on listening. The best improvisers in the world, he said, understood that listening was what makes good improv. As the others nodded along, Bea wondered—was she a good listener? She’d been listening her entire life—for clues to the foreign worlds around her as she started over again and again, in Boston after New York, then at Porter’s, then at Carter. She’d never been the first one to speak up or raise her hand; in school, she waited to be called on, preferring to make her points in writing, in her papers. The glory of a point well made aloud in the classroom was never something that seduced her, which is one reason why the draw of improv was so unexpected. Part of the fun for her was the pleasure of the spotlight, the kind of attention that she’d never craved before, even in middle-school theater club, where she was fine to play small roles. She’d thought about it and decided the difference was that improv was not like making a smart point in class. Improv brought people joy. Including, as the hours she spent in improv rehearsal accumulated, friendships. AWGs—“Anonymous white guys”—had emerged as her nickname for her teammates, to keep them on their toes. It had been born when she’d had trouble remembering their names early on; it had taken her weeks to recall which one was Bart and which one was Todd. Only Russell and Chris had been memorable from the start.

  “You all have anonymous white boy names,” she’d said. Having never been around so many white boys in her life, she was amazed: they acted the same, talked the same, looked the same, and had the same names.

  They had happily picked up AWG, too, referring to themselves by the term.

  “How many AWGs are missing?” Chris would ask at the time rehearsal was scheduled to begin. “Two, plus Lez?”

  The intimacy she felt with them stemmed largely from the freedom she derived from their collective determination to mine for the funny, which cultivated in Bea a kind of guarded honesty that allowed her to be more open about her life than she usually was for fear of being pitied. Free to turn her background and circumstances—dead mother, absent father—into humor, she found herself sharing memories she’d not thought about in years. One afternoon, she told them about how, in the handful of plays performed by her middle-school theater club, she was cast in the exotic roles: an Indian once, a gypsy fortune-teller once, the Spanish neighbor.

  “What did the Spanish neighbor do in the play?” Todd had asked. “Besides make tapas, of course.” They were never off, never stopped joking.

  “I had to do a little dance,” Bea said.

  “Wait, was it a musical?” Chris asked.

  “No, she just did a little dance whenever she entered the stage.”

  “That seems highly racist,” Bart said.

  Be
a nodded cheerfully and performed it for them as well as she could remember, the cha-cha flamingo arms, the messy footwork.

  “Bea,” Chris said, “you must hate us. We’re a bunch of assholes.”

  How could she say what she was thinking, that, yes, they were a bunch of AWGs—sometimes assholes, occasionally ignorant, and quite crass a lot of the time—but that she loved them? That she felt more seen by them than she ever had by anyone, even Lorn.

  This included Lesley, the one other girl, but still Lesley herself Bea had not yet figured out. A third-year from the Bronx, she was fearless onstage, sassy offstage, and well versed in pop culture while also casually devoted to studying British literature. An English and Anthropology double major, she’d described her thesis (which she was getting a full year’s head start on) to Bea as follows: structural and thematic parallels in The Bachelor and Paradise Lost. Lesley’s worn, casual confidence was of a kind that Bea didn’t see on girls at Carter. It was uniquely Lesley. It was almost as if she wasn’t a girl.

  Only once had Bea attempted to connect with Lesley one on one. It was the afternoon that Bea had noticed Bart tended to select characters with power over others in a scene: if they were teachers, he was the principal; if they were giraffes, he was a lion; if they were leprechauns, he was the leprechaun king.

  “Bart always does this thing,” she whispered to Lesley one afternoon during rehearsal as they watched Bart play a landlord. The joke in the scene was that a group of guys who lived in his building were smoking rosemary believing it to be weed. Unaware, they were pretending to be high in order to impress each other. Bart as the self-assigned landlord was informing them that they were going to be evicted unless they halted their illegal activity immediately, because the whole building smelled like drugs and Rosemary on the fourth floor was pregnant. She didn’t need to be breathing in drug fumes, lest it affect her baby. He emphasized baby.

  “Oh, I know,” Lesley said. “The film references are never-ending. How many people our age who aren’t film majors have actually seen Rosemary’s Baby?” Bea didn’t say that this hadn’t been what she meant.