“Anna Taggert,” I replied automatically, not even bothering to check the caller ID.
“Anna, this is Laura Brandeis calling.”
I focused immediately. Yikes! Had Mimsy complained about me?
“Is everything okay?” I asked nervously.
“Everything is wonderful. I’m calling with good news,” Laura answered. I was convinced she could win the lottery and still remain deadpan.
“What’s up?” I relaxed, eyeing the Chanel clutch and wondering if I could bear parting with it. Mom would love it.
“What are your plans for winter break?”
“Um, I was actually going home…tomorrow morning?” What could Laura Brandeis possibly want from me during winter break?
“Please let me know if that is set in stone. I have twelve clients for you. Just for the break. They are college students with papers.”
“How can college students have papers? The semester is over. Their classes are over,” I argued. Twelve clients?
“That may very well be. But not all students were successful in completing their courses. For some of them, well, let’s just say that their return to campus depends on completing their papers over the winter break. For college students you can charge $450 an hour, and you can keep $360. If you decide to accept, you will be tutoring up to seven hours a day.”
“I’m not really trained to tutor college students…”
“Ms. Taggert, you did go to Columbia University?”
“Of course I did!” I responded hotly.
“And you did major in English?”
“Yes, of course….”
“Then all that I need to know is if you are willing to accept these clients. I have three other teachers who I know will gladly accept. I’m calling you first as you have had such success with Jake Herring, who I know is a very difficult client.”
“I accept,” I said automatically, finally realizing what Randi was talking about. I spent the next forty-five minutes taking down names, addresses, assignments, and other vital information from Laura. A part of me couldn’t help but think that in five years I would be taking down Benjamin Kensington’s name. Having coasted on a tidal wave of his parents’ influence, he would graduate Langdon with top honors and go to whichever Ivy his parents had the most connections at. Once admitted, however, he would realize that entrance to a prestigious university didn’t automatically result in growing a brain over the summer.
23
What do you mean you aren’t coming home for winter break? Your brother is home! Everyone is with their families!” Mom was unrelenting.
“Mom! I’ll come for Christmas Day!” I shouted back into the phone.
“Oh, thank you ever so much,” she said sarcastically. “Wow. Really? The whole day? Nobody wants to be tutored on Christmas? Are you sure? You better check carefully with your guru, Laura Brandeis.”
“Well, they might…,” I answered fairly, wondering how much I could charge.
“I’m putting your father on the phone.” I could hear her covering the mouthpiece and mumbling something to my dad. Ten seconds later, he was on the phone.
“How much?”
“What?”
“Anna, I’m so disgusted that I’m even saying this, but how much? I’ll write you a check. It will break your mother’s heart if she knew I was asking this, but I can’t stand to see her disappointed this way. Christmas is her favorite time of year and you are killing her.”
“Close to ten thousand dollars,” I whispered hardly believing the sum of money myself.
“Excuse me?”
“Close to ten grand,” I repeated more firmly.
I heard him whistle. “And you’re sure this is legal?”
“Dad, I’m working through a company! They’re writing me formal checks. Yes, it’s totally legal. I’m not sure how moral it is,” I admitted, “but honestly, working this break will let me finally get a new apartment. I really want that. And I want to pay you and Mom back for all this furniture.”
He was silent.
“Okay, Anna. You’re an adult now and these have to be your decisions. I’ll explain it to your mother. I still don’t like it, though. Something about this just doesn’t smell right.”
“I can’t win with you, Dad! When I’m making no money you feel sorry for me, and when I actually find a way to make a decent living as a teacher you question me!”
“I’m just not sure what you’re doing is called teaching, Anna.”
The phone line went dead.
My winter break clients had three things in common:
They were going to fail a class if they didn’t turn in a paper by January 1.
They were in a deep depression about having to skip their family vacation to write that paper.
They were physically incapable of writing said paper.
“I feel like it’s not worth it,” I grumbled to Randi on the phone. “I’ve never had such a splitting headache and I can’t keep any of these papers straight. They’re all starting to blur into one gigantic term paper for the University of Spoiled Brats.”
“It is worth it,” Randi urged confidently. “Believe me, when you move into my building, you won’t be crying then. Just push through it. Think of it like…a really hard spin class.”
Spin class my ass.
Twelve stacks of books were piled neatly in my living room. In essence, I was writing twelve term papers for “students” who were only a few years younger than me. Each student, and their parents for that matter, seemed to have been produced by the same dysfunctional assembly line: Create child, send to 92nd Street Y nursery school, bribe head of admissions at select private school, then coat all assignments and work with a glossy tutor. Drive smoothly off conveyor belt and straight to Harvard!
My first client, Emily Schwartz, had set the tone for the others that followed. In fact, it was difficult to differentiate between them.
The Schwartz family lived on Park Avenue in the high 80s. No surprise there.
“Are you Anna? From Ivy Tutoring?” A frazzled but attractive woman stood in front of me in minuscule tennis whites. It was 20 degrees outside.
“Um, yes, I’m here to see Emily?”
“Oh, Emily.” The woman rolled her eyes. “What are we to do with Emily? Please come in and meet my husband. We only have a few moments before we have to leave—we’re going to the Dominican Republic—but Larry and I do want to touch base with you. After that, the two of you are on your own!”
I nodded mutely and allowed the already tanned Mrs. Schwartz to lead me into an oak-paneled room that appeared to be her husband’s study. Larry Schwartz was sitting at his desk reading the Wall Street Journal. Cigar smoke spiraled up from behind the paper.
“Oh, Larry, really! So early in the morning!” his wife sniffed with disgust. The newspaper crinkled and lowered to reveal an attractive man in his mid-fifties. He, too, was wearing bright tennis whites. I imagined that the Schwartzes would go straight from their limo to their private jet to the tennis courts in the Dominican Republic.
“The tutor,” he sighed. “The million-dollar tutor. Can I work for you?” he chuckled madly.
“I’m Anna,” I replied, extending my hand.
“Larry Schwartz,” he grinned gamely. “And you already met my wife, Bunny. Bun, where’s Pookie?”
“Emily’s in her room, dear. She’s depressed.”
“I would be, too, if I had to miss winter break!” Larry laughed uproariously, as if this whole scenario were exceedingly hilarious. “Those bastards don’t cut these kids a break. Now listen here, Anna, my daughter’s a smart cookie. A real winner of a girl.”
“I can’t wait to meet her!” I said brightly. Winner. Yeah, right.
“She just had the bad luck of getting one stinker of a professor at Yale this past semester. Won’t let her out of this one damn paper,” he continued, shaking his head in disgust.
Bunny Schwartz nodded in agreement, her blue eyes tearing. Were these people mad? Th
is was Yale they were talking about. Forget Yale, I couldn’t think of any college or university that would consider a professor a stinker for making a student write a paper.
“What’s wrong with Emily? Why couldn’t she do it?” I asked, then immediately regretted the question.
“Anna, I’m going to ask you to please refrain from speaking about that which you do not know,” Larry said, suddenly icy. He sat up in his chair and peered at me. “There is nothing wrong with my daughter. On the contrary, you will find her to be quite bright—brilliant—actually. She’s just depressed. She needs motivation and encouragement. She needs a…work buddy. That’s where you come in.”
“You’ll be like a big sister,” Bunny agreed. “My Emily knows what to do, she just doesn’t want to stay home and write it all alone. Larry and I are much too responsible as parents to take her along for the vacation. If she doesn’t finish the paper, she must face some level of repercussion.”
“It’s called tough love!” Larry boomed, getting out of his chair and swinging a tennis racket over his shoulder.
“Emily’s in her room, Anna. I know you’ll get along famously.”
And with that the tennis players bounded out of the apartment.
“They’re such fucking assholes.”
I whirled around. In front of me was a girl who looked exactly my age. She was still in her pajama bottoms and was wearing a tight Yale T-shirt. Emily.
“Hey…Emily. I’m Anna.”
Emily looked me up and down. No doubt about it, she was appraising me.
“Are you, like, my age?” Emily asked accusingly.
“Twenty-two,” I answered. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-one.” She suddenly grinned. “It’s my last year. Just my luck I get this fucking English professor who couldn’t cut me some slack. I have this goddamn Yeats paper to write. It’s supposed to be twenty pages.” She headed down the hall toward what I guessed was her room.
“I love Yeats,” I responded honestly. “I wrote a term paper on him at Columbia!”
Emily whirled around and looked me square in the face. “Do you have it? I swear I won’t tell my parents. They’ll still pay you for the week.”
“Emily, I can’t!” I cried, appalled. We were only a year apart. If she got caught, then I got caught, and that was the last thing I wanted to deal with.
“Just kidding!” She grinned, although I caught a glimmer of annoyance in her eyes. I followed her into her bedroom, which looked like it hadn’t changed since she had been in the seventh grade, with its massive pink canopy bed and array of stuffed animals.
“So…” Emily looked at me with interest. “You one of those high moral tutors who’s gonna make me write this paper, or are we gonna get it over and done with and take advantage of this empty apartment for the week?”
“I mean, I don’t think I could write this for you,” I replied awkwardly. “How about you tell me how you got into this mess, anyway?”
Emily shook her head in frustration and flopped onto her bed. Leaning over to her bedside drawer, she took out a pack of cigarettes.
“Ciggie?”
The last thing I was in the mood for was a cigarette, but I figured that since Juicy Couture was compelling to a seventh-grader, sharing a cigarette might help me bond with this world-weary college student. I nodded and Emily quickly popped out a neon pink lighter, thrilled.
“Thank God, you’re not totally Mother Teresa,” she drawled, inhaling deeply. “Okay, so here’s what happened. I try and stick to the lecture classes that require one test at the end of the semester. I’m an amazing listener, I really am. Like, I have a photographic memory. But these papers fucking kill me. Usually I have this kid who helps me with them on campus, but I totally forgot about this one until it was too late. And wouldn’t you know it that damn kid got mono and went home in November and I got totally stuck.”
“You have a kid who writes them for you?” I echoed.
“Just this guy who’s, like, obsessed with me.” Emily rolled her eyes. “But he likes to do it, so it’s not like I’m forcing him or anything. Anyway, so I thought my professor would just let it go. I went to like fifty zillion office hours begging him to let me do something oral instead. I’m amazing at oral assessment.” She looked me in the eye and grinned suggestively.
No. No. No…she didn’t mean…she couldn’t?
I forced myself to put the image out of my mind.
“But he wouldn’t go for that?” I asked, dryly. I thought of the hours I had spent on my papers at Columbia. The idea of having someone else write them had never crossed my mind. But I was quickly learning that Emily was of the same breed as most of my students at Langdon: They found tutors to do their work in high school, even more tutors to get their work done in college, or in Emily’s case people who were “obsessed with them,” and parents who paid every bill, no questions asked.
“No! Would you believe it?” Emily wailed. “So listen, I’m not, like, a total cheater or anything. It’s basically on the poems he wrote that involved Greek mythology—like “No Second Troy,” “Leda and the Swan,” and…some other ones I can’t think of. And weave in some outside stuff about his life and how it relates and all. Maybe you can just…write the introductory paragraph, conclusion, and all the topic sentences for the rest of the paragraphs? If I have topic sentences, I’m amazing at writing the rest of it.”
For someone who had clearly never written a paper in her life, Emily’s self-esteem was rock solid. Write all the topic sentences? That would mean researching the whole paper and basically outlining and, well, writing most of it.
“My mom ordered a bunch of books from Amazon,” Emily said quickly, nodding to an unopened box on her desk. “You can have them all if you want. And yeah, any quotes you can pull out from them that we can sprinkle through would be great. Finding quotes is the only other thing that I can’t really do.”
“So what are you going to do while I do all of this? Your parents booked me for three-hour sessions a day,” I asked, completely bewildered. The pile of books glared at me menacingly.
“Well, today we can just have a quiet work session. You can start thumbing through the books and getting yourself familiar with the subject. Maybe get the introductory paragraph and a couple topic sentences done?”
“What are you going to do?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Well, today there really isn’t anything I can do,” Emily responded, looking at me as if I had asked the dumbest question in the world. “I’ll just be in the other room. You can use my desk, and if there’s anything you need, just ask Tildy—she’s in the kitchen. You’ll love her.”
I sat there, frozen. Had I been ordered to sit here and research Yeats alone? I heard the TV go on in a distant part of the apartment and it was pretty safe to assume that it wasn’t Tildy who was watching the E! True Hollywood Story of Nick and Jessica. In under three hours I had to report to my next client, Jonas Lippman. Furious at myself for being in this predicament, I texted Randi:
Am sitting here alone researching a paper. Is this what u deal with?
She responded immediately.
Writing paper on War of 1812. Think of new apartment.
Miserably, I opened the first book and started scrolling the index. Five minutes later, I snapped the book shut. This was ridiculous. I marched out of the room and followed the sounds of E! Sure enough, Emily was sprawled on a leather couch, her wide blue eyes riveted to the biggest plasma screen I had seen in my life.
“Emily.”
“Hey, everything okay?” she asked calmly, her eyes not leaving the screen.
“Emily, why don’t you sit with me? If you’re not good at finding quotes, maybe I can help show you the process. You know, teach you how to do it?” I struggled to keep the sarcasm out of my mouth.
She turned and looked at me.
“Oh, Anna, I can’t do that,” she said simply.
“Excuse me?”
“If I was capabl
e of doing that, my parents wouldn’t be paying for your help. If this is not something you want to do, please tell me. I can call Mom and Dad right away. I’m sure their plane hasn’t left yet.” Emily reached for her cell phone on the table.
New apartment. New apartment. New apartment.
“No, that’s okay, I just wanted to offer,” I said quickly.
“Oh! Thanks, Anna. No, really, I’m fine. We’ll work together tomorrow, I promise,” she responded sweetly, turning back to the TV.
Christmas Day I was back at the dining table, facing a family that had grown increasingly hostile since Thanksgiving. I was slumped in my chair, nursing a headache that had started with Emily and had continued through all twelve clients. Tomorrow I would be back in the city. Too bad for me, not one of my students had any intentions of completing their own papers. Emily had compromised the most by dictating paragraphs to me while lying on her bed. A brilliant bullshit artist, she found a way to repeat the topic sentence I wrote for every paragraph in fifteen different ways, and then would ask me to “sprinkle in a couple good quotes,” as if I were merely providing the seasoning.
“You look terrible,” Mom said flatly.
“Exhausted,” Dad agreed. “Are you sure you’re not just in the city going out and drinking every night?”
“You don’t look that bad,” Jonathan said sweetly. I looked over at him gratefully, but was immediately betrayed. “Kinda heroin chic.”
“Jonathan!” Dad yelled, not amused.
“Anna,” Mom began, placing a heaping spoon of vanilla custard in my dessert bowl, “your gifts this morning were amazing. I loved the Chanel clutch. Your father has never had a Cartier wallet. And Jonathan’s Barneys gift certificate is beyond generous. We are overwhelmed by these gifts.”
“But Anna,” Dad jumped in, “these gifts mean nothing to us if you’re going to come home looking like this. I take everything Mom and I said in the beginning back. If you want to teach, go for it. Please. If it brings you true joy, then we’re not going to stop you. I was just concerned that you wouldn’t be able to afford a lifestyle that Manhattan dangles in every twentysomething’s face.”
Schooled Page 21