An Education in Ruin

by Alexis Bass

  “Whoa, hey,” he says, coming toward me. “It was a bad joke; you don’t have to cry, Collins Pruitt.”

  I cover my face and try to pull it together. He puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes. Then his hand moves to my back, rubbing up and down. I lean forward and start crying against him. He hugs me, and I let myself go.

  “What happened?” he says.

  I don’t know why it all comes spilling out of me. But I tell him the truth—sound bites of the most important parts. The three of them lied. Rosie is my mother, and she had no problem leaving me when I was born and didn’t come back for seven years and left a hundred times after that. Mimi pretended to be my mother because it gave her everything she’d ever wanted—a house and a purpose and the company of my father. Rosie only told me the truth because she wanted to use me to get something from my dad.

  “Money. It all comes down to money,” I say. He nods. He keeps his arms around me, and I keep going, crying, telling him how mad I am, how I’ve barely spoken to them since coming here. All Sebastian has of me is this fantasy, a what-if, and who cares if I ruin that, who cares if this scares him, who cares if he hears this and he no longer sees me as someone he wants to pursue? I need him to see all the things that I’m not. The things I’ll never be. And I can trust him because he says whatever’s on his mind the second it’s on his mind. He’s without a filter and full of genuine truths, no matter what. A rejection from him could never hurt me, and that makes him the safest person I’ve met at Rutherford.

  My phone buzzes again. Sebastian retrieves it from where it landed on the floor and hands it to me. A text from my dad comes through: Cat’s out of the bag because we ran into Jasper and Theo. I’m a day early, and your Mimi and Rosie are here. Surprise! Mimi’s dying to see you! Get back to us when you can. Love you.

  “I shouldn’t’ve told you all that,” I say to Sebastian. Maybe it wasn’t fair to unload on him like this. Especially when I don’t want anything from him—when I could only do it because I don’t need anything from him. “I haven’t told anyone else. My dad isn’t even aware that I know the truth.”

  His eyes get wide because he is that honest and cannot hide his reaction of surprise.

  “That’s messed up, Collins Pruitt. I don’t think that’s the kind of thing you’re supposed to keep bottled up.”

  He gives me another hug, strong arms around me that feel like forgiveness. I close my eyes against him and hear the door open.

  I don’t think it looks that guilty, our hug. It’s arms draped over shoulders, not waists. Jasper still frowns.

  Sebastian says, “I told a bad joke, and she did not take it well.” He playfully punches Jasper on the arm. “But she seems to be done leaking tears for now at least.” He turns back and gives me a wave before he leaves us alone.

  “What the hell?” Jasper says. There’s no anger in his voice, only worry.

  I use the sleeve of my cardigan to dry off my face and wipe away the last of my tears.

  “Jesus, Collins—what’s going on?” Jasper pushes the stray hairs out of my face. He lets his thumb brush lightly over my cheek. “Please talk to me. What’s the matter?”

  I want him to know everything about me. But not this.

  “It’s nothing—I don’t know why I freaked out—Sebastian was in the library and he saw me—I don’t know what happened.” He deserves more than this lame lie, this transparent excuse. But I don’t know how to give him that.

  “Really? Because from where I was standing, it sort of looks like you saw your dad with your mom and aunt and ran away.”

  “Oh.” My stomach drops a little. He noticed this. What else has he noticed? Maybe I can unspool all those secrets I’m ashamed of with him the way I did with Sebastian. Maybe he’s already started to unravel them himself because he really sees me.

  “Is this because of the surprise? Did you not want to see them?” I feel the nervous flutter of his fingers tapping against my collarbone. “Is this because of my mom—you’re worried that with your mom here at the same time it’ll be weird?”

  “It’s not that.” The lie comes out smoothly. “I was shocked, yeah. That’s part of it. They’re supposed to be traveling the world. I don’t know why they came back just to see me.”

  “Just to see you? Are you kidding? That’s your family. Of course they’d stop their worldwide expedition to visit you.”

  “I know. You’re right. I should be glad they’re here. It was an overreaction. I’m fine now. I can go see them.” This room feels small and hot suddenly. I move around him to get to the door.

  “Collins.” He puts his hand against the door, keeping it closed. “You don’t seem fine. Please tell me what’s going on.”

  I don’t say it’s nothing because I don’t want to lie to him again. Instead, I peel his hand off the door and take it in mine. I move closer to him.

  “Jasper,” I say. “Let’s go. They’re waiting for me.”

  Sometimes when I close my eyes, I can see Rosie’s face, her expression full of disappointment because I couldn’t go through with what she’d asked of me. Even though she wasn’t protecting Mimi and me or my dad; everything she wanted me to do was about protecting her investment. And now I have my own something to protect. What would I do to keep from losing it? Or maybe the real question is, what wouldn’t I do?

  FEBRUARY

  Forty-seven

  It’s not fair that they can show up like this, without warning. How easily their deception flows into the scene to look normal, regular. How Mimi sobs when she sees me just like a mother whose daughter is living away from her for the first time would do. And Rosie pats me heartily when she hugs me, like a proud aunt.

  Rosie asks Jasper if he’d like to join us for dinner. He’s excited when he says he’d love to, even though if we meet them, we’ll have to miss the exchange for the game and will therefore have to forfeit to last place. Theo will take the drugs on our behalf and hide them for us. The Mahoney boy, right where we want him, I assume she’s thinking.

  He holds my hand as we walk to the restaurant. He tells me something funny, gently leaning into me as he whispers in my ear. He watches me carefully as I order—so curious to see if I’ll get what he thinks I’ll get, and as we eat, he watches how I react to certain stories shared across the table like it’s his favorite pastime. Throughout dinner, he rests his arm on the back of my chair and sneaks squeezes of my hand under the table. I don’t know if Rosie notices, but I hope she does. I want her to see how much he loves me. So much that he would never leave me.

  Except it isn’t Jasper’s fault that he adores me—and I bet she can see that, too. I had to try, had to push, had to show him why and how he should fall for me.

  As the night winds down, Mimi asks if she can come back and see my dorm.

  “I’d love to see it, too,” Rosie says.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” my dad says to her. “Let them have some time together.”

  Rosie stands next to my dad on the curb as Jasper, Mimi, and I take the car service back to Rutherford, watching as we drive away.

  In the car, Mimi tells Jasper stories about me when I was small, the way I used to pretend to be a dog, my head hanging out the window as we drove the long roads that led from Madison to our house on the outskirts, and about the time I tried to bake a mud pie in the kitchen oven at 425 degrees, believing that the heat would transform it into a real, edible pie.

  Jasper says good night and leaves for his dormitory, and when Mimi and I get to my dorm room, it’s empty. Elena is still out with her parents.

  “I like him,” Mimi says about Jasper. “He seems nice and so smart and like he cares profoundly for you.”

  “Yeah, we’re really happy,” I say, an unintentional defensiveness in my tone.

  Over dinner, Mimi and Rosie had regaled us with stories about their travels. It warmed me a little, thinking of Mimi out of her comfort zone—the place she never leaves—climbing mountains and taking trains across countries and s
eeing the originals of the artwork she’s loved in history books her whole life. Is she running away now—the way Rosie does?

  “Why are you selling the house?” I ask her. She’s more like Rosie than ever before; she has no home to return to. Maybe no reason to come back at all.

  She turns from where she’s looking at the corkboard holding my schedule, various Reminder! Post-its, my field hockey medal, and a photo of Dad and me before the New Year’s Eve party.

  “Jake said you were concerned about that,” she says. “I’m sorry to spring that on you. I wanted to tell you about it in person when the time was right.”

  I wonder when she’d thought the time for this would be. And if it was her idea to come here to surprise me or if my dad pushed it. Maybe if it were up to her, she’d still be in Peru, taking in the Saqsaywaman.

  “I thought that was your dream house,” I say.

  “It was, at one point.” She runs her fingers over the sweater on the back of my desk chair, feeling the Rutherford maroon woven fabric. “When I was twenty-three, that’s all I wanted. Somewhere to be with you, to raise you. But that was a long time ago.”

  “What about the goats? What about your business?”

  “I enjoyed it all,” she says, nodding. “But, Collins, none of it was really mine, you know?”

  It was ours, I’m thinking. I don’t get it. I thought that since Dad had a vested interest in keeping her happy because she looked after me, she was more than willing to take whatever he gave her.

  “After you learned the truth about Rosie,” she says, “I wasn’t sure you’d ever forgive me or that you’d ever want to come back, and when Rosie told me what a trip to another country did to help her clear her mind, I thought, screw it, why not? I was going to try anything to forget how awful I felt, to keep myself from calling you every hour on the hour the way I so desperately wanted to, trying to respect your wishes and give you space from us.”

  There’s a sting in my throat, like I want to cry.

  “You and me, our home, that was all I wanted.” She takes the sweater off the back of my chair and folds it neatly. She places it in my drawer, third from the bottom where the sweaters at home are kept. “But things have changed now, with you away. I’m starting to picture my life differently. And I want to make something of myself, something new, something for me.”

  “You took care of me for him so he could work and stay in New York—I thought you’d want him to support you the rest of your life in exchange for all you did for him.”

  She shakes her head. “Raising you was a privilege, don’t you see? Not because of the house or the goats. It was my dream because you were there. It was a luxury that your dad could give me whatever I thought was best for you and lucky that he agreed with what I wanted for you and trusted me to take care of you.” She wipes a few tears away. “But without you, that house is just a house. You’re so independent now, and I’m very proud of you. It’s inspiring, really.”

  She reaches into her purse and pulls out a thumb drive. “There is something I need to show you,” she says. “I want you to know I don’t blame you for the way you left for Rutherford, for being mad, for what you said, for not wanting to speak to me. It wasn’t right, keeping the truth from you. Jake and I, we could’ve done it differently; we could’ve been honest with you from the start. Maybe we should’ve been. I think we were both living in this sort of fantasy world—making this great home for you, thinking it would distract you until your mother came back. But after seven years, there isn’t really a coming back, and for that, I’ll always be sorry.”

  I start up my computer for her, and she inserts the thumb drive. She sits next to me on the bed, holding the laptop so we can both see the screen.

  “I want to make sure you know you were born out of love. And you were born into love, too.”

  She presses Play. She shows me clips of Rosie and my father, scenes from their life as a couple where they were happy and smiling. Snippets of them camping along the river, on safari in South Africa, having a picnic in Central Park. My father looked the most excited, though, during the clips when Rosie was pregnant, both his hands on her belly, a full smile on his face. Moments of her asleep, him leaning over her, singing to her stomach. And then some I’ve seen before, of Mimi and me and my dad, the two of them clamoring when I took my first steps, gathered around my high chair when I tried real food for the first time, anxious to see what I’d like and what kinds of faces I’d make if I didn’t like something.

  When the recording finishes, we both have tears in our eyes. I’ve looked at Mimi my whole life and thought she was my mom. That doesn’t go away overnight. Maybe not ever. And I don’t think it should have to.

  “What do you want to do, then,” I ask, “if you don’t want that house, if you want to sell the goats?”

  “I was thinking of taking a page out of your book and going back to school.” She shrugs. “Maybe get an apartment downtown, start taking classes. I don’t know yet what I want to study, but I’m ready to start reviewing my options.”

  “And you don’t want Dad to help you with that?” I say, on the brink of understanding. “He’d do that for you, you know.”

  “I know,” she says. “But I want to do it. For me. And the good news is the house sold last month. The new owners aren’t moving in until early summer, so there’s still time for you to make one last visit if you want. And the goats were surprisingly easy to sell.”

  “I think you’ll be great.” I like imagining her out in the world, getting to see how her dreams as a little girl have changed and what’s possible for her, knowing she’ll always have me, no matter what. “And the money from the house will be enough to get you started?”

  “Not yet, but it will be,” she says. “Rosie had a new investment opportunity that seemed very promising. Nearly a guarantee. I bought in with the money from the sale.”

  My whole body goes cold.

  “All of it?” I say.

  She nods. “The money from the house and what I had in savings from the small profits the goats provided.”

  No. My chest gets tight. Rosie took Mimi’s money—the entirety of it—and invested it in Spectacle Barkley because she was counting on me to ruin Mrs. Mahoney and my dad, thinking that if not for his attachment to Mrs. Mahoney, he’d let Robames crumble under the lawsuit, securing her investment with Spectacle Barkley.

  “Did you ask Dad what he thought?”

  “I didn’t,” she says. “Rosie’s reports looked great to me. And you know how you dad is always telling us to trust our gut?”

  “But Rosie is a liar.” She did this to punish my dad so if he put Spectacle Barkley out of business, it’d be Mimi’s investment he was losing, too. I wonder if he knows. I wonder if that will change his mind about pushing the proposal, or if he’ll give up and let Rob have her way. “She’s selfish and conniving.”

  “But she’s also my sister, and despite it all, she wants what’s best for me. She wants what’s best for you, too.”

  If I tell Mimi the truth, how Rosie convinced me to come here and what she set me up to do, she’ll see it as one more thing she didn’t protect me from regarding her sister and the lie they upheld. And this isn’t her fault.

  “Can I stay with you at the hotel tonight?” I say.

  She nods and smiles, as though she also can feel things snapping back into place between us.

  I don’t want her to know that she’s being used by Rosie to manipulate my dad. I don’t want her to know what Rosie wanted me to do at Rutherford. And I don’t want her to know that I’d agreed to do it.

  Forty-eight

  When we arrive back at the hotel, Rosie and my dad are sitting outside sipping wine on the patio of the hotel bar under a heating lamp when we approach them. They don’t look like a formerly in-love couple. They seem like strangers, not sitting close, hardly talking.

  “I’m crashing with Mimi,” I say, holding up my overnight bag.

  “I should’ve guesse
d.” My dad smiles. “Don’t stay up all night talking.”

  Mimi and I sit on the patio with them, chatting for another thirty minutes before my dad heads to his suite. Mimi yawns, and I tell her to go up to the room without me, that I’ll be there soon. She smiles as she gets up to leave, looking at Rosie and me and our similar eyes, a peace about her like she’s happy to give us space to be alone together.

  We’re the only two patrons at the hotel restaurant who haven’t gone inside. The air has turned wet with a misty rain.

  “I know the real reason you wanted me to break up Mrs. Mahoney and my dad.” There’s nothing else I want to say to her, nothing else I want her to know except that this time, I figured out the truth on my own.

  She leans back in her chair and looks out at the dark, deserted street. It’s still and slick, and the rainfall is only visible under the streetlight.

  “I know about Spectacle Barkley and my dad’s proposal,” I continue, “and that you think if he weren’t dating Mrs. Mahoney, he’d let Robames fail because it’s what you want.”

  She takes a slow sip of her wine. “I don’t think that, Collins, I know it for certain,” she says.

  “No, you don’t.” She’s so full of lies, and I can feel her readying to feed me another one.

  “He’s done it for me before,” she says.

  “What—when?” That can’t be true.

  “Sixteen years ago,” she says. “Your dad can resuscitate any failing company. But he let one die for me because I asked him to, because it would make my investment worth more and he knew it was what I’d been counting on. He really did love me once. He didn’t know I’d use the money to disappear, but now he’s used to me being gone. I didn’t leave him entirely alone, anyway.”

  The blood drains from my face. Sixteen years ago. She used the money to get away from us, and there must’ve been a lot of it, enough to sustain her for seven years. She left us, and she wouldn’t’ve been able to do it without him.