How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater

by Marc Acito

  There are moments in your life when you see yourself through someone else's eyes, when your only hope of believing you're capable of doing something is because someone else believes it for you.

  This is one of those moments.

  “I've got to get out of these wet clothes,” she says. “We'll talk again, okay?” She gets up to leave, but then turns and looks back at me. “Remember what I said, Edward. I'm on your side.”

  Kathleen.

  I put Kathleen's glass in the sink and am startled when a voice behind me says, “Jeez, herpes. Gross.”

  I turn around. “Natie, don't you have any respect for privacy?”

  “Not particularly,” he says, “and it's a good thing, too, 'cuz you're going to need my help.”

  Kelly comes back in and nuzzles against me. “You okay?” she asks.

  “Don't distract him,” Natie says. “We've got work to do. I've got it all outlined.” He slides a piece of notebook paper across the kitchen table. “Take a look.” It reads:

  WAYS FOR EDWARD TO PAY FOR COLLEGE

  1) WORK

  2) SCHOLARSHIPS

  3) THEFT

  4) MURDER

  “Murder?” I say. “This is a viable choice?”

  “Don't get ahead of yourself. I'm just examining all your options.” He puts on his glasses. “Let's start with number one: work.”

  Just hearing the word makes me tense up. “It doesn't seem right that someone as talented as me should actually have to work,” I say.

  “You work,” Kelly says. “We're getting paid to choreograph Anything Goes.”

  “That's right, we are.”

  “Terrific,” says Natie, clicking his pen. “How much are you getting?”

  “Five hundred dollars.”

  Natie writes down $500.

  “No, no, no,” I say, “that's for the two of us.”

  Natie scratches out $500 and writes $250. “Maybe I better use pencil,” he says, pulling one from his pocket protector. He writes $250, his tongue sticking out as he does. “Okay, Anything Goes,” he says. “That kills weeknights.”

  “And after school there's play practice,” Kelly adds.

  Natie scrunches his doughy face. “That doesn't leave a lot of time for a job.”

  “The shows are both over by Thanksgiving,” I say. “I could get a holiday job.”

  “That's right,” Kelly says, smiling. “You could wrap gifts or, like, hand out samples or something. You'd be good at that.”

  “Yeah, how much money could I earn doing that?”

  “Well,” Natie says, “let's say you get a retail job that you can keep the rest of the year at twenty hours a week . . .”

  “Twenty hours? Do I really need to work that much?”

  “How much does Juilliard cost?”

  “Ten thousand dollars a year.”

  He shoots me a gimme-a-break look.

  “Okay, I get your point,” I say. “What does twenty hours a week add up to?”

  “Twenty hours a week from December through June is, let's see, seven months or twenty-eight weeks. Twenty-eight times twenty hours a week is 560 hours, at minimum wage of $3.35 an hour equals $1,876.”

  “That's it?”

  “Calm down, will ya'? I'm not done yet,” Natie says. “If you work full-time during vacations and all next summer, you could presumably earn another fifteen hundred bucks, which brings the total up to $3,376.”

  “Plus 250 from Anything Goes,” Kelly says.

  “Three thousand six hundred and twenty-six dollars. That's more than a third of the way there!” Natie looks up and smiles his lippy, no-tooth smile. He's got tiny little teeth like a row of Chiclets, which embarrasses him, so he's gotten in the habit of smiling the goofy way he does. He glances at his list. “Number two: scholarships.”

  My head droops. “Al earns too much for me to be eligible for scholarships.”

  “Don't be so negative,” Natie says. “You're bound to get a couple of talent scholarships. Let's say $1,000 to be conservative. That's $4,626. Now we're almost halfway there. See how easy this is?”

  “Assuming I don't spend any money between now and . . .”

  “Number three: theft.”

  “You're not really suggesting I should steal, are you?”

  Natie takes off his glasses and gazes upward like he's pondering the cosmic ramifications of theft. “Steal is such a cold, ugly word, don't you think?” he says. “Think of it as simply borrowing money that you don't intend to give back. Think embezzlement.”

  “Is that as bad as theft?” asks Kelly.

  “It's better,” Natie says, his button eyes bright. “That's when you steal from a company. It's a victimless crime. Or fraud. Oh, fraud is good.”

  “What kind of fraud could I do?” I say.

  “Oh, I don't know, send bills to old people for stuff they haven't really bought . . .”

  “That's not very nice,” Kelly says.

  “I'm just brainstorming,” Natie snaps. “What about defrauding an institution, like a college or a university? When you consider how many of them fund research that supports Reagan's missile defense plan, fraud is really more an act of civil disobedience than an actual crime.”

  “I don't think Juilliard is researching missile defense.”

  “Good point. Let's stick with embezzlement. Does Al have any bank accounts you could siphon money out of without his knowing about it?”

  “Are you kidding? Al knows where he keeps every nickel he's ever earned.”

  “There's just got to be another way for you to raise that kind of cash,” Natie says. He gets up from the table and paces, tapping his forehead the way Winnie-the-Pooh does when he's trying to think. “Oh! What about blackmail? Blackmail's a great source of income.”

  There's something about the way he says it that makes me uncomfortable. The voice of experience, perhaps?

  “Don't look at me that way,” he says. “Just add it to the list.”

  Kelly takes his pencil and writes down the word “blackmail,” dotting the “i” with a little smiley face.

  “Blackmail is a perfectly fair exchange of money for services,” Natie continues, “in this case Al's money for our silence. It's pure capitalism; criticizing it is practically un-American. Now think, Edward, you must know something juicy about your dad.”

  Aside from the way Al cheats in line at the bakery by pretending it's his number when no one else claims it? “No,” I say.

  “Well, maybe you could get your mom to tell you something,” Natie says.

  Kelly casts daggers at him and I can see he immediately understands he shouldn't have brought up my mother. Just the mention of her instantly makes me sad. Sure, Mom could probably tell me something, if I knew where to find her. I told her not to go to South America. I told her it's full of Nazis and drug lords and dictators but, no, she just had to climb Machu Picchu and get in touch with her past lives. I push my chair away from the table and go to the fridge.

  “Murdering Al is starting to sound better and better,” I mutter.

  Kathleen returns, her freckled face scrubbed shiny, her blond hair dark with wetness.

  “Then we better think about killing Dagmar, too,” Natie says, “just in case he's changed his will.”

  Kathleen puts on a kettle for tea.

  “It wouldn't be hard,” I say. “I'm sure my sister could get us something from the pharmacy to poison them.”

  Natie scratches his frizzy head. “Then all we'd have to do is burn down your house to make it look like they got killed in a fire.” I imagine Dagmar's fascistically finished floors buckling while her freaky photographs curl up on the walls and disintegrate. I smile as I think of her lifeless body melting away like the Wicked Witch of the West. But then I think about losing my father. Right now he's worth more to me dead than alive, but he is still my dad, after all.

  I turn to Kathleen. “We're not really serious about murder,” I say.

  Kathleen reaches into the kitchen
cabinet and pulls out a mug with the words LIFE IS SHORT. EAT DESSERT FIRST on it. “Oh, homicidal thoughts don't scare me,” she says. “It's the suicidal ones I worry about.” She smiles at me and I feel buoyed by her concern.

  Maybe she's right. Maybe I am capable of doing things I haven't conceived of yet.

  I turn to Natie. “Suppose I worked twice as hard,” I say. “Suppose I work forty hours a week instead of twenty, or find a job that pays more, or start working right away. I might be able to sock away $10,000 all by myself, couldn't I?”

  “It's possible,” Natie says.

  Kathleen reaches for a jar of honey.

  “Then that is what I'm going to do,” I say. “I'm going to join the working class.”

  Kelly squeezes my shoulder. “Good for you,” she says.

  “After all,” I say, “how hard can a real job be?”

  I rise the next morning feeling very I-did-it-my-way-ish and ready to lick this thing. The crisp early autumn air makes me feel focused and brittle, like the way you imagine preppies in New Hampshire must feel. Even the thought of going back to that necessary evil mandated by law, physical education, doesn't get me down. In fact, I'm actually looking forward to gym for the first time in my entire school career. You see, seniors at Wallingford High get first pick of the sports, so naturally they always choose the blow-off ones like archery or golf or badminton, sports no one is good at or, even if you are, who really cares?

  So after changing into my appropriately irreverent gym outfit (tie-dyed T-shirt and flowered Bermudas—it's a statement about what a joke this class is), I head into the gymnasium looking for Ms. Burro, the phys ed teacher and my archnemesis.

  Teresa Burro has movie-star looks. Unfortunately for her that movie star is Ernest Borgnine. Thus cheated by fate or genetics, this dump truck of a woman is obviously determined to make as many people miserable as possible. Her tragic flaw is that she's a stupid, ugly cow.

  She's parked in the middle of the gym floor when I come out. “Glad to see you've finally joined us, Zanni,” she sneers.

  “I'm feeling better, thanks,” I say. “So what are we doing, square dancing?”

  This is a dig on my part. Burro and I haven't gotten along since the tenth grade, when I protested the exclusion of boys from square dancing on the grounds that it was discriminatory.

  “Lemme see,” she says, sticking her pen in her mouth as she consults her clipboard. I contemplate her hairy upper lip, dyed blond to no avail. It must suck to be ugly.

  “You've got flag football, then basketball.”

  “What? What about archery or . . .”

  “You missed the sign-up.”

  “But I had a medical excuse.”

  “Too bad. You shoulda signed up anyway.”

  I watch the other seniors pick up their bows and arrows, languidly squeaking their way across the gym floor in their sneakers, laughing and chatting in a congenial country-club way. Meanwhile, overzealous sophomores fight for the football and start whizzing it back and forth across the room.

  “That's not fair,” I cry.

  “Tough,” she says.

  Evil. Evil. Evil. I'd drive across her lawn except she probably lives in a cave.

  I trudge out onto the field and am mortified to discover that I am the lone senior in a group of pea-brained pituitary cases, the kind who actually like gym, probably because it is the only subject in which they excel. From across the field the other seniors stare at me like I'm some kind of reject who's been held back or has to ride to school on the short bus.

  The day gets worse when I actually have to do the unthinkable and quit the school play. I've never quit a play in my life (why would I?), but Mr. Lucas completely understands my totally fucked-up situation. “The important thing, Edward,” he says, “is that you get into Juilliard. I wouldn't be surprised if that didn't change your father's mind when the time comes.” His voice is low and sincere and it makes me feel kind of shitty that my life sucks so bad he has to be nice about it. “Don't give a second thought to The Miracle Worker,” he says. “It's completely actor-proof. You could cast Sylvester Stallone as Helen Keller and the audience would still cry their heads off.” Seeing an opportunity to play a character who has actually been through puberty, Natie convinces Mr. Lucas to cast him in my role. Never mind that Natie is the same height as the girl playing his six-year-old daughter; in true Lucas style, it becomes part of the concept. “Mr. Nudelman's diminutive stature underscores the idea that the father is a petty, small-minded man,” he says. I tell Natie to think of Al Zanni.

  So once again I'm forced to break out the “F” encyclopedia and try to commit to memory football's seemingly arbitrary rules. Despite an ability to memorize pages of iambic pentameter, I still can't seem to understand what a “down” is, so I ask Doug to come over and give me a few pointers. The prospect of tossing a football around my yard feels very masculine and autumnal to me, and I even go out and buy a football jersey at a sporting goods store to get into character. What's more, I'm pleased to see that some of my dancing skills can be transferred to the language of sports.

  “How am I doing?” I shout as I jeté through space to catch the ball.

  “Looks more like fag football when you do it,” he says.

  I flinch reflexively at the sound of the other “f” word, but Doug just smiles his satyr's grin at me and I think perhaps all is well with the world. I charge toward him like I'm a fullback who just got the ball (See? Look how much I learned), and manage to knock him over. I straddle his waist and try to pin him down, but he's too strong for me and he flips me over and climbs on top of me, which is, of course, exactly what I'd hoped he'd do.

  “Unsportsmanlike conduct,” I yell. “Fifteen yards! Fifteen yards!” and Doug laughs. I love making him laugh.

  We're interrupted by the sound of the back door banging open.

  “Tsat is enough!” Dagmar yells. “I cannot verk vit such noise. Go avay! Go avay, boys!”

  Dagmar's fetish for silence is working my last nerve. Claiming that music irritates her, she actually asked me to refrain from humming, whistling, or singing in my own home. She's like Julie Andrews's evil twin.

  “We were just leaving, anyway,” I say, then fake like I'm going to throw the ball at her. Bitch.

  I stop going into the city to take classes, but I do continue choreographing Anything Goes because Kelly and I are getting paid. Our usual method of working together is that I'm in charge of telling people where to go and Kelly is responsible for the actual steps. But I'm totally distracted, so Kelly practically takes over. I'm relieved to see she's good at it, much more inventive and commanding than I gave her credit for, and the cast really likes her. She's patient and understanding, even after somebody's tap shoe comes flying off during a number and nails her right in the gut. She'll do well in the dance program at Bennington.

  Me, I've got other tasks to attend to.

  My first job is as a parking valet at an expensive but tacky Mafia-run Italian restaurant in Cramptown. It's easy work plus I get tips and the opportunity to drive some really nice cars, which suits my self-image. But then I lock the keys in someone's Jaguar while the motor's running and the owner of the car insists I be fired on the spot. It seems to me that someone who could afford a Jaguar could also afford to be a little more generous of spirit.

  I'm okay with losing that job anyway because I immediately get hired as a delivery driver for Petals Plus, a local florist. This is a terrific gig. First off, you get to be around flowers all day, and what's not to like about that? Secondly, when you're delivering flowers everyone is always really happy to see you unless, of course, you're delivering to a funeral. Or if you happen to back the delivery van into someone's BMW, which I do on my third and final day of work.

  Kathleen says I'm subconsciously taking out my aggressions against my father by sabotaging luxury cars, but just to prove her wrong I purposely seek out another driving job delivering pizzas. Once again, this is a situation where ever
yone is always really happy to see you. I mean, it's not like anyone's ever going to say, “Shit! The pizza guy's here. Quick, turn out the lights and maybe he'll go away.” And this time the accident is with a Honda Civic, so there goes Kathleen's theory.