So he scanned the interior of the refrigerator. Was there Sunny D inside? Milk? Something he’d want to down first thing in the morning? His mom hated it when he drank coffee. Said it might stunt his growth, when nothing seemed to stop him; his arms and legs already felt too long for his body, but whatever. He drank coffee every day at school, hoping to be normal.
“Yeah, I guess so,” he said, finally answering her question. “I guess I had a good time, yeah.”
He lifted out a gallon of milk and brought it to his lips. He took a long slug and put the container back inside. He turned to her, hoping what, that he could talk to her? That she would rescue him?
She turned off the stove. The teakettle hadn’t even boiled yet. How could he tell her about hooking up with Daisy? Giving her that shove? Drinking too much? His mom was always going on and on about how grateful blah blah she was that she could trust him.
He was hoping she could magically intuit all of this, hoping that she could read his mind and instantly forgive him, like she used to; she could read his mind and forgive him all in an instant when he was young. Instead, she said, “All right, then, Mom’s got a hangover,” and sidled past him, almost like she wasn’t his mom, almost like she was a roommate or a grown-up stranger who lived in his apartment. As if she really didn’t know or care if there was anything wrong with him or not.
“Way to go, Mom,” Jake said.
She shuffled off to her room to sleep it off.
It was already there. By noon, she’d already shot the damn thing and sent it to him. [email protected]. The email was in Jake’s in-box. He downloaded it and couldn’t believe what he saw; Jake had never seen anything like it before—even at McHenry’s, even when they were at McHenry’s and McHenry Googled stuff like “Big Booty” and “Two Girls One Cup” and they all gathered around until they got bored. But this was not boring. Jake was the opposite of bored. Right now, Jake couldn’t believe what he actually was watching. Was he supposed to be watching this? Was it legal?
He turned the computer off. He turned the computer off just by pressing the button. He didn’t hit the Apple and cursor down or any of the stuff that he always did every day by rote. He just shut it down. You could lose data that way, but he wasn’t thinking at the moment. He just did it. It was what his science teacher would have called an autonomic response.
He waited a minute and breathed hard. There was sweat running down the back of his T-shirt. Then he pressed the button and turned the computer back on.
Then he had to wait, he had to wait so long, he couldn’t believe he had to wait so long. He should never have turned the computer off! Now he had to wait first for the black-and-white pinwheel to whirl around and then the rainbow-colored one—which he despised. And then he realized he’d already downloaded the thing. He didn’t need to log on. So he just double-clicked and he watched it again. Daisy in that skirt. Daisy with that music. Daisy with no underwear. Daisy.
Was this pornography? Was it even sexy? He thought it was sexy, but he wasn’t sure. He felt hard and he felt soft. It was like a hot potato. He had to fling it to someone else.
“Check it out,” he typed. Then he forwarded the email on to Henry.
He watched the video again. He watched it over and over.
His phone began to vibrate. It made a horrible sound as it buzzed against the floor in the pocket of his jeans, where he’d left it. He looked up, and the jeans looked like they were shuddering, like they were ashamed and shuddering. Like they felt guilty about where they had been the night before. On his body. On his horrible, disgusting body. Jake reached out and pulled them over with his foot—there were hairs on his toes; when had he gotten hairs on his toes? He was so gross!—and then he leaned over and picked them up. By the time he’d worked the phone out of his pocket, the caller had gone to voice mail. He phoned in for his message. It was Henry.
“Jake, dude, what the fuck? Call me,” said Henry.
So he did. He called Henry. He called him right back, but it was too late. In the thirty seconds it had taken him to retrieve and return the call, Henry had already forwarded the thing on to James and Davis. James was sitting in front of his laptop in the next room in their apartment. “Whoa, shit,” he yelled. “C’mere.”
“No, dude,” Henry called out to him. “You come here.”
Neither brother could stop watching.
By Monday, it was all over; all over school. Everyone had seen it during the weekend, and the ones who hadn’t, they heard about it as soon as they touched down on campus. Kids were downloading it and watching it in the library. Henry had forwarded it to James and McHenry. James had instantly downloaded it, watched the thing, and once summoned, gotten up from his desk and walked into Henry’s room while Henry was taking Jake’s freaked-out call. By that time, McHenry had forwarded it on to Django and Davis, and then McHenry sent it to five or six other guys—only three from Wildwood, including Luke, and then two or three more from camp. And then forgot about it. It was all over the school and all over the city. Connecticut. Kids were finding it on porno sites. It was all over the country, maybe the world, even. So fast. Just like that. Forward and Send. It was kind of incredible how fast it went. Faster than fire. Practically the speed of sound or even light.
(By the end of the week, Jake was forwarded the video by a friend from Ithaca who didn’t even know it had started in New York, even though it had made the news by then, even though there had been helicopters from Eyewitness News up at school, even though it had been in the New York Post.)
Daisy. “Daisy Up at Bat.” That was the porno listing that Henry forwarded to Jake, Monday morning before they left for the subway, neither of them sleeping the night before, trying breathlessly to keep track. The fucking video was everywhere. It clogged up Jake’s in-box; people sent it to him without knowing it was meant for him, that he was its inspiration and its muse, that he was its disseminator. It was just everywhere.
“Ubiquitous,” said Henry on the subway. “Ecumenical. Panoramic. Catholic.”
“Broadcast,” said Jake, miserably. “She sent it to me,” he said to Henry, for like the fifty-eight millionth time.
“Her choice,” said Henry.
“She knew it was forwardable,” said Jake.
“Yes, indeed,” said Henry. “She probably wanted you to forward it. She was asking for it. You’re innocent, dude. Don’t worry about it.”
When they hit campus, Jake kept his head down. Henry walked broad-shouldered beside him. Like a bodyguard. But it didn’t take long, really. “Later, dude,” said Henry, peeling out to go to Conceptual Math. It was all Jake could do to keep himself from running down the hall after him. He’d felt oddly protected, having Henry there. Jake had science first period, and when he slid into his seat just as the bell rang, Zack Bledsoe whispered into his ear, “Way to go, babe.” Zack Bledsoe called him babe, which was weird in and of itself, and slightly nauseating. Jake spent the whole period internally freaking out; he didn’t hear one thing Mr. Carmichael had to say about chemistry. When the bell rang, he blinked and looked around like he’d had a seizure or something, like he’d just woken up from a coma.
“Hey, Zack,” Jake said, “do you think I could take a look at your notes?”
“Sure, babe,” said Zack, “if you share your beauty secrets with me.” Then he laughed way too loudly and his belly shook.
Jake had gym second period, which was great because he could shoot hoops and let off a little steam. But when he was changing in the locker room, Django came up to him and asked, “Did you tell Daisy to do that?” Which was weird, because Django never said very much, and why would Jake tell Daisy to do a thing like that?
“No,” said Jake.
“My cousin in New Jersey saw it,” said Django. “He sent me the link.”
This made Jake feel a little bit sick. Like maybe he should go to the nurse and go home?
“I feel a little bit sick,” said Jake to nobody. And nobody said anything.
After gym, Jake hurried over to the History Building without taking a shower. He had basketball practice after school, and days like today often he didn’t even bother to change. He was still wearing his basketball shorts and school jersey when he entered the building. He saw his own reflection in the glass of the building door and he read the Wildwood Wildcats logo backward. So it was him residing in his body even if he felt like an imposter.
“Pond scum,” whispered some girl Jake didn’t know, right into his ear, as he held the door open for her. He almost jumped out of his skin. Does she mean me? he thought. He watched the girl walk down the hall, trying to figure out who she was . . . just another brown-haired girl in a ponytail, a tank top. How does she know who I am? he thought.
A group of kids in the back of the classroom snickered when he entered.
“Yo, Casanova,” this kid Eli called out. The girls giggled. Karenna Mercer said, “When are you going to make a video for Daisy? You know, the boy version . . .”
“Virgin or version?” said Eli. Everybody laughed.
Why? Jake thought. Was that a funny joke?
Then Ms. Hemphill and Ms. Schwartzman, his Deconstructing America co-teachers, entered the room. Ms. Schwartzman was so pregnant; sometimes you could see the baby kick beneath her shirt, like an alien, like it was trying to pop out. Now and again she said, “Oooh,” when her shirtfront jumped, and some of the girls screamed.
“Settle down, everybody,” said Ms. Hemphill. “Karenna, let’s hear your oral presentation on the Alexis de Tocqueville essay ‘Why the Americans Are So Restless in the Midst of Their Prosperity,’ from Democracy in America.”
Jake started to relax as Karenna gathered up her notes. He could zone through the whole period while she droned on, and then maybe go to the nurse’s office after all. That’s when the classroom door opened and the assistant head of the high school, Ms. Rodriguez, walked in.
“I’m here for Jacob Bergamot,” she said, and for one bizarre moment, Jake wondered, did my dad have a heart attack? Because why else would the assistant head of school come calling? But of course that’s not why; he knew that was not why, as he gathered up his stuff, his books and his backpack, and, still in his basketball uniform, followed Ms. Rodriguez and her clicking heels out of the classroom, the hot stares of his classmates focusing on him like eighteen laser beams, his heart beating wildly in his throat. It felt like the other kids could see right through his skin and into his churning gut. Kind of like the cow with the plastic window in its side that he’d seen every year at the Cornell Ag School fair growing up—an open display of its digestive system. Ms. Rodriguez had come because of Daisy, because of Daisy and her video. Everyone knew that. Everyone knew this moment was coming, except Jake, who’d been lying to himself. This much was clear, the sheer inevitability of his downfall, from the disgusted look on Ms. Rodriguez’s face as she marched him out of the room, to the way everyone gaped at his disgrace like he had a porthole window in his side, like they could see his innards grinding into shit.
The Upper School librarian had caught sight of the video over some girl’s shoulder on one of the school’s PCs and that was that. Jake was pulled out of third-period history, and Henry and McHenry and Davis and Django were pulled out of AP Chemistry and Advanced Math. By noon, Jake’s mom was on her way to school, and he had already been suspended. His dad was in a very important meeting at work and could not be disturbed.
He learned all this in the head of school’s office. Mr. Threadgill. Mr. Threadgill appeared to be enjoying himself as he told Jake how much trouble he was in before Jake’s mom arrived, but Threadgill waited until his mom got there to view the video. Then it was Jake, his mom, and Threadgill, sitting together in Threadgill’s office. The guy was balding but with a beard, a Van Dyke, as if he could make up for the lack of hair on his head with hair on his chin. It reminded Jake of pubic hair, of pubic hair on his face, under Threadgill’s nose, which was small and quivering with repressed rage, and surrounding his lips, which were too red, like a monkey’s anus. He was wearing a shirt and tie, but no jacket, as if it was too steamy in his office and he’d had to sling his tweed jacket over the back of his chair. Jake’s mom was wearing a skirt and sweater set; he couldn’t recall ever seeing her in that outfit before. Pink top, cream-colored bottom. She was dressed like a pretty suburban mom on TV.
“Jake!” she’d said when she arrived, like she’d just come upon him in a hospital emergency room, like he was on a stretcher, hooked up to some machine that beeped, although Jake was just sitting on a wooden bench outside Threadgill’s office, waiting for her. Threadgill moved him into a conference room to wait by himself, while Threadgill filled her in, or threatened her, or threatened Jake—whatever Threadgill wanted. Jake waited on that bench forever. Through the window in the wooden conference room door, Jake saw Henry and his mom walk by.
And then, finally, Jake was called in by Threadgill’s secretary, and when he walked back into the head of school’s office, he saw that his mom had been crying. Her eyes were red and her nose was pink. She had a balled-up tissue in her fist and she kept dabbing at her nose, which was running. She did not look Jake in the eye when he walked in.
“Take a seat,” said Threadgill, gesturing toward the empty chair leaning against the wall, across from his mother. Jake noticed that his left leg was jiggling.
Jake pulled the chair away from the wall and set it in line with his mom’s.
“Jacob, I wanted your mother to see this with you in the room,” said Threadgill. He said this with certainty, like he was certain he was doing the right thing. Then he swiveled his PC monitor around so that all three of them could see the screen and he scooted his own chair back. The computer looked a little like E.T., Jake thought, with its long black accordion neck and wide white monitor. (His dad had ordered E.T. on Netflix; Coco loved it, but Jake had found it too sad to watch and wandered away into his bedroom.) Then Threadgill, smug and plump and trying hard to look blank beneath his beard, hit the Play button.
And there it was: Daisy. The zits on her cheek. The earrings on her ear, that awful dyed hair. I love to love you, baby. Beyoncé. Jake knew what was coming next. Daisy and her sex dance. Jake’s mom, Threadgill, in the room. Daisy lifting up her skirt. Daisy’s vagina.
He could not look at the screen. And he could not look at his mom. He thought he would die if he saw his mom’s face. So he focused on Threadgill’s knee, bouncing up and down, nervously. The knee, more than the video, made Jake want to throw up. The knee, even more than the video, felt perverted.
It was horrible. The worst day of his life, until the next one. Worse than anything he’d been able to imagine. But the most awful part had already happened. It was between first and second period, even before the hideousness in Threadgill’s office, and Jake had been heading out of the building and toward the gym, still believing the whole thing might blow over, still pretending to himself like it had never happened, blurring the edges of what he knew and what he hoped, when he saw Daisy Cavanaugh for the first time ever in school. He saw her down the hall.
She was autographing baseball bats. Some of the kids on the team had brought them to her as a goof. They were taking pictures of her with their cell phones and she was posing. Until she saw him. Daisy Cavanaugh in her too-tight jeans and her UGG boots, one hip jutted out, a hand on that hip, smiling broadly for the camera. Daisy Cavanaugh with too much eye makeup.
When she saw him her eyes gaped open like endless holes, ragged and raw, like two wounds that would never heal. Jake felt vertigo just looking at them, like if he got too close he, too, could fall down that well of pain into hopeless misery. He was the creator of her torment and he knew it. At that moment, inside him the twin ruling deities of the rest of his life, a giddy recognition of his own powers and a crushing sense of shame, were born. Both paled before the desire to save himself.
Daisy looked at him and stuck out her tongue.
“Thanks a lot,” she said. Her voice was trembling.
>
Then whatever had opened up inside her closed over, and she went back to signing bats. Giving the people what they wanted.
She was famous now. He’d made her famous. She was autographing the bats and smiling a big, broad, winning smile.
4
Once, he was a golden boy.
Now he is a golden man. Handsome, smart, silver-haired Richard, Richard at forty-five, still with the tight abs and runner’s legs, Richard in the hound’s-tooth sport coat and black jeans, the clean white shirt, self-made Richard with his preternaturally cool, casual, youthful elegance. He is on the phone. He is on the phone with his distraught wife, Lizzie, in the middle of one of the most important meetings of his career, and he remains calm. For most of his life, Richard Bergamot has been allergic to failure. He isn’t about to allow for a reversal of fortune now.
He sits with one hand curling around his BlackBerry, the left one, with the simple gold wedding band, those long “piano” fingers, his father’s old Timex encircling his wrist for luck, his leather chair swiveling just enough to face away from the eclectic group of enemies and advocates it has taken him so many months of careful diplomacy to assemble, but not enough to relinquish his authority and control.
How can I possibly walk out now? Richard thinks, as he peers sideways at the gathering through long, dark lashes—they grow so ridiculously thick at times they actually obscure his vision; they “flutter” when he blinks. This is a phenomenon Richard has grown used to, although as a kid he’d trimmed them back with a nail scissors, sick of hearing the ladies at his church stage-whisper, “Wasted on a boy.”
“Been dipping into the interferon again?” Lizzie teased the first time they slept together.
This Beautiful Life Page 7