An Education in Ruin

by Alexis Bass

  “I’m not asking because I want to gossip.” A little too defensive, maybe. Theo gives this infuriating yeah, right kind of look as he shoves two more fries in his mouth. “I’m worried it’s not completely over.”

  His forehead scrunches with concern. “Why do you say that?”

  I tell him what happened at the pool last night.

  “What the hell?” he mutters, shaking his head. “She can’t do that. It’s not allowed.”

  Not allowed? “What do you mean?”

  “It’s creepy!” Theo says. “She shouldn’t be tracking his whereabouts just because she can.”

  “She was very eager to talk to him. Alone.”

  “I’m sure she was.” Theo rolls his eyes.

  “But why?” I say, not caring that I might be coming off too pushy.

  “Listen, everyone falls all over themselves for her and thinks she’s brilliant, but that’s—that’s by design. Do you get it?”

  “Not really.” Except I was completely under her enchantment last night, the way I had been when she’d spoken at Rutherford. But what’s so wrong with thinking a brilliant businesswoman is a brilliant businesswoman?

  “She’s got a great new invention and a whole company to develop it, the richest people in the country tossing money at her, but what really skyrocketed her to success is that she has this persona that draws people in. People want to believe in her. They want to root for her. They want to be a part of whatever she’s created or is going to create. She’s like a magician. But with Jasper … the spell is broken. She can’t stand that.” He looks over my shoulder and starts waving. I glance behind me to see Jasper and Stewart walking toward us. “Does that make sense?”

  I’m nodding as Jasper and Stewart join us at the counter.

  The four of us finish off another plate of fries, and after we sign the bill to our parents’ rooms, we head to the aerial tram that goes to the mountain. The ski runs are closed because of too much snow, but the tram continues to operate, taking guests to the exceptional views.

  We have the tram to ourselves, and when we file in, Jasper stands next to me instead of at the other side of the tram, not spreading out the way that Theo and Stewart are. He puts his hand right next to mine on the railing as we glide above the forest to the neighboring mountain.

  Because the mountain isn’t open for skiing, we aren’t allowed to leave the docking station, but we can walk on the covered deck to take in this view, which is even vaster and more extravagant than the view from the sky lounge. I stay near Jasper as we look out at the mountains in the distance, and the snow falls down around us in large flakes. He leans against a pole at the end of the deck, and I lean on the other side. Carefully, I place my hand around it for stability. Jasper lets his hands wander up and down the sides, and it seems like a nervous fidget at first, but when his hands stop moving, they rest next to mine. An inch away or less.

  I like this game more than I care to admit. It’s an afternoon of almost-touches, and I wonder if he’s holding back on purpose or if this is all he’s brave enough to do in front of Stewart and Theo.

  When we return to the sky lounge, it’s noticeably more crowded. People surround the corner of the bar area. The three of us look at each other quizzically, wondering what’s gotten everyone gathered. The answer comes to us through the speakers.

  “I’d like to thank you all for joining me at Hylift this holiday season.” Rob James’s voice booms throughout the room. She sounds like the Rob James I’d expect, a confident and friendly voice. A tone that makes you want to hear more. “In the meetings to come, we’ll discuss the great strides we’ve made in this innovative breakthrough that’s going to revolutionize the way we treat so many diseases. Our research has come a long way. We are making waves in product development.”

  At this, some people in the crowd start to clap. I can hear that she’s smiling even though I can’t see her through the thick sea of people around her. “I’m so pleased that you’re all here to learn more about where we’re headed and to celebrate the new deals being brokered, ensuring that our product will have a place in the market sooner rather than later.” She pauses, and the whole room holds its breath, waiting for her to go on. A glassful of sparkling water rises in the air, a few feet away. The hand holding it has clear but perfectly polished nails and a golden chain dangles from the wrist. “Hear, hear!” she says.

  The room erupts so suddenly it makes me jump. I spot my father in the group. He’s got his champagne flute in the air like everyone else, but the expression on his face isn’t joyous. It’s set in concern. And when he brings the drink to his lips, he finishes the entire glass. Across the crowd, I look for Mrs. Mahoney and find her on the other side of the room, standing with Mr. Mahoney. They clink their glasses together before they drink, laughing and smiling.

  After the toast, the crowd thins, and I catch a glimpse of Rob. She looks radiant, like her face on the cover of Vanity Fair come to life—her hair wild but still contained, pulled back with a golden ribbon. She’s in a long white coat and a thick gold necklace. With her looking so sophisticated and otherworldly, effortless in the way she captivated the room, it’s hard for me to picture her dating Jasper—any boy at Rutherford, really—and hard to reconcile what I saw of her in the pool, the expression on her face when she was pleading with him.

  She moves through the pack, stopping and clinking her glass with those she passes as she smiles that megawatt smile and thanks them for coming.

  I turn around to see what Jasper makes of this—of Rob James getting closer to us. But it’s only Stewart and Theo standing next to me. Jasper is gone.

  Thirty-one

  Later, when the sun’s going down, I take photos of the mountain backed by a brilliant sunset from the sky lounge and send them to Meghan and Cadence. We don’t have this view from the outskirts of Madison, and I think they’d like it. They text me back a selfie of the two of them at Meghan’s house, where they are eating popcorn and watching movies and sitting in front of a blazing fire. This is how we used to always kick off winter break. I’m staring at the familiar, distant scene when they call me.

  “Hello!” they shout into the phone at the same time.

  I move into the hallway near the elevators so I can hear them better. They’re talking so fast, telling me about their plans to sleep in and go sledding every day and asking about Hylift and Rob James.

  “You are coming back eventually, right?” Meghan says.

  “Eventually, yeah.” Though I don’t know when.

  “Oh, good,” Meghan says, her voice full of relief.

  “We saw the For Sale sign at your house and got super worried,” Cadence says.

  “What are you talking about?” This has to be some kind of mistake—I don’t believe Mimi would leave the country with Rosie without knowing her home would be there waiting for her when she got back.

  They respond at the same time. “We can’t believe your mom is selling the farm!” and “You didn’t know?”

  “Mimi would never sell the farm. There’s no way.”

  “Um, we saw the sign, Collins!”

  “Kimberly’s mom is the Realtor.”

  This sudden urge to prove them wrong, to get confirmation that it can’t possibly be true, surges through me. A mix of panic and determination.

  “I—I have to go. I’ll call you guys tomorrow.” I hang up quickly, even though Meghan is midsentence in protest. I ignore them when they call me right back. I don’t check the message they left. I’m too busy searching for our address online, watching as our house comes up on all the real estate listing sites. Our farm, for sale.

  It doesn’t make any sense. Why would she do this? I tear back into the sky lounge, approach my father where he’s in a friendly conversation with some man dressed like he thinks we’re at an ugly sweater party.

  I show my father my phone, the sites with the farm posted for sale, not caring that I’m interrupting in the rudest way possible.

  “Did
you know about this?” I demand as my father smiles and apologizes on my behalf to whoever he was talking to. He takes my arm gently and leads me to a less crowded area.

  “Mimi didn’t talk to you about this?”

  I shake my head. “Cadence and Meghan told me.” He still doesn’t know Mimi and I haven’t been speaking.

  “Well, this is something she needs to talk to you about herself.”

  “Why is she doing this? She loves the farm and that house.” Our house. “It was her dream.”

  “Dreams change, Collins.”

  “So traveling the world with Rosie is her new life now? She doesn’t care about having a home anymore?”

  “This is a conversation you need to have with her yourself,” he says as calm and cool as ever. “I don’t question your Mimi when she makes up her mind. If she hasn’t told you yet, then maybe she’s waiting to do it in person.”

  “Is this because of you?” My heart starts going wild as soon as the words come out, and my father’s expression turns shocked. I don’t like making his face change like that. I don’t like bringing conflict into our relationship when we’ve never, ever had a reason to fight. But I don’t feel like I have any other choice.

  “Why would you assume this has anything to do with me?”

  I can think of many reasons that her selling the farm is centered on him, starting and ending with him being the one who gave her that farm in the first place.

  “It’s technically your farm, right? Since you’re the one who bought it. You’re the one who pays for the upkeep.” I know it hurts him, my talking about the farm like it’s his property that he was simply allowing us to use, when it’s never felt like that’s the case and he’s never done anything to make it feel that way. But that was before he fell under the spell of Mrs. Mahoney and before I knew that he was hiding things from me.

  “That’s your Mimi’s farm.” His voice gets stern. “I might have paid for it, but the deed is in her name. It’s hers alone. Period. It’s her business if she wants to sell it.”

  I hate the tension between us, hate that I can see how it hurts his heart the same as it does mine for us to have this kind of back-and-forth—me pressing him, him having to defend himself about his place with Mimi in our family. His eyes search mine, like he’s waiting for me to confess the truth about where my accusations are coming from, the way I always do eventually with him.

  “He would be crushed if you said the things to him that you said to us,” Rosie had told me that week before I’d left, after she and Mimi and I had all calmed down as much as we could. After I’d turned shocked and stoic and Mimi’s crying had leveled out even though her eyes were swollen. The pieces of the plates she’d thrown at Rosie had been swept up and put in the trash. Mimi got a distant look in her eyes, and I knew she was thinking about how my dad wouldn’t be able to handle any of this because the only thing that could truly break him was my hating him the way I’d claimed to hate the two of them. It breaks my heart thinking about it. About losing him. Shattering the life he’d thought he’d had with us, the way it was shattered for me. Sure, it wasn’t fair that he was as guilty as the two of them were, but he hasn’t had to suffer the consequences of my refusing to speak to him like they did. But I’d lost Rosie and Mimi in a sense that day, the way I’d lost a part of myself. I don’t want to lose him. I can’t. Not when he needs me now more than ever.

  “I understand,” I say to him. His eyes turn relieved before his stare travels past me. I don’t even have to turn around to understand he’s made eye contact with Mrs. Mahoney, like he needs to see her in this moment of disagreement between us as much as he needed me to tell him I understand that Mimi selling the house has nothing to do with him. I think of the way my dad and Marylyn didn’t talk much in the sky lounge this evening, but wherever my dad was standing, he always had a perfect view of her.

  “I’m in shock,” I say. “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

  His gaze returns to me. His demeanor changes back to the calm and cool dad I know so well. “You don’t have to say sorry. Come on, kid; I get it.” He puts his hand on my shoulder. “It must’ve been quite a surprise. But look, if you want to, talk to your Mimi about it. Now that you’re at Rutherford … maybe she has something else in mind.”

  We get a table a few rows away from the Mahoneys. After our drinks are served, I catch Mrs. Mahoney stealing glances at my father, subtly shifting her eyes in his direction as she sips on her white wine, whenever Jasper, Theo, and their father are participating in a conversation that doesn’t involve her. I catch Jasper stealing glances at me, too. He is less inconspicuous. He outright stares. Smiles when I look back at him. I think my father notices, the way I hear his chair creak as he shifts in his seat, suddenly finding himself uncomfortable, needing to fidget. I think Mrs. Mahoney must pick up on it, too. Her eyes trail Jasper’s whenever his attention is away from the table.

  She sits in between her sons at a corner booth. Rosie was right when she said that Mrs. Mahoney adored them the most in the world. Her eyes light up when they speak. Theo gets passionate talking about something, and she leans toward him, placing her hands over his as they pound against the table. She nods, encouraging him to continue, and shushes her husband when he interrupts. She turns sad when they broach some topic that has Jasper sulking. She lifts his head, placing her fingers under his chin, a worried expression on her face as she examines his eyes, red from lack of sleep. She even orders him a whiskey, like she thinks this might help, and when he doesn’t touch it after the first bitter sip, she lets her husband have it.

  “You’re still going to help him?” Rosie asked the day before I left for Rutherford. “You’re going to do what we talked about?” I’d nodded and told her I would try. “You can do it because I’ve done it,” she said. “Now you know.”

  Thirty-two

  My father wakes me up the next day by blasting “Build Me Up Buttercup” through our suite. He comes in my bedroom and pulls back all the curtains, filling the room with light.

  “It’s too early.” I glance at the clock on my nightstand. It’s 10:00 a.m. It would be a reasonable time to wake up if I hadn’t stayed at the sky lounge until 1:00 a.m. “Leave me alone.” I pull the covers over my face.

  “But I’m ready to go!” He tugs away the comforter. “Come on, I presented my proposal to the team this morning and don’t have meetings to attend again until after Christmas. We’re not going to waste this holiday sleeping! You can sleep when I go back to work.”

  I glare at him as he takes my hand and drags me up, all the while singing along with the music. He leads me to the tableful of breakfast food and pours me a cup of coffee.

  We spend the day on the snowshoeing trails, hiking through the trees and past frozen lakes. Firepits are lit at night, when the snow lets up for a while, complete with a hot chocolate stand and a s’mores bar. We roast marshmallows by the fire and reminisce about the last time we did this, camping near Maroon Lake. At a neighboring firepit, the Mahoneys are preparing their s’mores. I watch over the flames as they talk and laugh, teasing each other when their marshmallows catch on fire. They seem very close and as though they actually like each other. Even Mr. and Mrs. Mahoney. He stands behind her with his arms wrapped around her, warming her in front of the fire, and she leans into him with reassurance, smiling and holding his hands. Being with my father might be helping secure them financially, but would she really want to risk losing this?

  On Christmas, we stay in our suite and open presents in front of our own roaring fire. My dad has us call Mimi and Rosie, and the three of us do a great job of pretending it’s not the first time in months that we’ve spoken. There’s a wild relief and lots of emotions in Mimi’s voice, even as she tries to cover it. But my dad doesn’t think this is that out of the ordinary since it’s our first Christmas apart. We don’t bring up the farm at my dad’s insistence that this is something Mimi will discuss with me when she’s ready, on her own terms.

  I’m aw
oken the next day around seven in the morning to my dad’s voice, getting angry as he talks on the phone. I move closer to the door to hear what he’s saying.

  “She thinks rejecting my proposal is a viable option,” he says. “But she’s going to have to reconsider. I’ve gone over this a thousand times, and it’s the only solution! She’s managed to convince you and the rest of the board that this lawsuit isn’t going to crush Robames—but, well, I’ve seen how this can play out before, and they’re very wrong. Go over it again—tell me if you come up with anything better!”

  I hear a thump and imagine he’s thrown his cell phone in frustration. He sighs, and a few seconds later, his phone rings.

  “Hello,” he says, sounding calm. “You know I can’t tell you that right now. I don’t know where you heard that, but—yeah, I understand. I get what’s at stake for you with Robames and this lawsuit.” He takes a deep breath. “I don’t want you to feel like that. I’m sorry. My hands are tied. No—I’m telling you, my proposal and the response to the lawsuit has nothing to do with that. I can’t—yes, I know. I do know how important your family is to you, come on. And I know this complicates things for you. I hope it’ll be okay, but there’s no guarantees. Yeah. Okay. Sure thing.”

  I hear the hanger in the closet collide against the wall as he grabs his coat and then the low thud of the door closing.

  His voice was soft on that phone call. Like he was talking to someone he cared about. Like her. But why would whatever troubles Robames Inc. is having complicate things for Marylyn or her family?

  With the idea that I’ll find his proposal—or something akin to it—that will tell me more about the lawsuit, I trudge up the spiral staircase to his loft. I heard him say last summer that Robames was under investigation—not uncommon from what I understand, as many companies have rocky starts. According to that angry phone call he was on before Mrs. Mahoney called him, it’s still happening, now in the form of a lawsuit. But what does that have to do with the Mahoneys? I do know how important your family is to you, he’d said to her. This couldn’t be at all related to how Rob and Jasper were involved, and Jasper’s internship, could it? That seems too small and too hard to prove—not something that would require my father to present some big proposal to the other investors about.