Privileged

by Zoey Dean

  Really.

  As the sun went down to the west, most of the kids were in seriously altered states. The new Gwen Stefani album wailed over the boat’s sound system. Girls were dancing with guys, girls were dancing with girls, girls were kissing guys, and a couple were kissing each other, too, much to the enjoyment of the guys. Everyone had drink or drug in hand. It made a Yale frat party seem like a Quaker meeting, so when Pembroke told me not to look so stressed—we were the requisite twelve miles off the coast that put us in international waters, i.e., beyond the threat of the Coast Guard—I actually did breathe a sigh of relief.

  As the music switched to an old Smashing Pumpkins song, Pembroke pulled me close—well, as close as I could get with his stomach in the way. His eyes were glassy.

  “You’re so hot,” he whispered in my ear, and I felt a bit of spittle hit my earlobe. Oh, ick. “The whole teacher thing is fucking, like, wow.”

  Fucking, like, wow was right.

  Identify the error in the following sentence:

  Elitism breeds (a) elitism, and (b) braking (c) the cycle requires courage, (d) conviction, and grace. (e) No error

  Chapter Sixteen

  When I’d agreed to spend Thanksgiving with James at his parents’ beach house, I’d known the holiday would not be the over-the-river-and-through-the-woods experience I was used to at home in New Hampshire. I would miss the early snow and the crackling fire in the fireplace and my father doing an acoustic run through Bob Dylan’s greatest hits as my grandma made her world—okay, family—famous cranberry sauce (secret ingredient: orange peel).

  I’d spoken to my parents the day before. Lily was going up to New Hampshire by limousine so she wouldn’t miss her Wednesday-night and Friday-night shows. I felt a pang of homesickness made worse by the knowledge of what lay ahead. Turkey Day in Florida with the quasi-in-laws who hated me.

  On Thanksgiving morning, I put the Macy’s parade on the plasma TV and flatironed my hair, a skill that I’d nearly mastered. I was still a walking disaster with makeup, so I ran to Marco’s cottage and let him do me. For clothes, I chose an Oscar de la Renta sleeveless cashmere sweater from Marco’s Ann-Margret phase and a camel-colored Burberry skirt. As I got into one of the spare BMWs for the hour-long drive down to Gulf Stream, I thought I looked pretty good for a girl who was going into battle.

  James’s parents’ place was right on the beach in a town that would be considered extremely wealthy compared to anywhere but Palm Beach. As I pulled in to the driveway, James stepped out the door. The next thing I knew, I was in his arms.

  “Hey,” he murmured into my hair. “I missed you.” Then he held me at arm’s length. “Holy shit, what . . . happened to you?”

  Ouch. And here I thought I’d been looking kind of—you know—cute.

  “Oh, I just changed a few—”

  “You look beautiful.”

  I grinned. “Really?”

  “Spin,” he commanded, managing to make the instruction sound as ungay as possible. “The hair, the clothes . . . Wait till my parents see you.”

  I chafed a little. Had I not been good enough before? But since I knew he meant it in a nice way—that he was proud of me—I gave him a soft kiss and kept my mouth shut. He slung an arm around my shoulders and led me inside.

  If you’ve ever seen Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, you have a pretty good sense of the Ladeen beach house. Starkly modern, all surfaces bled of color, furniture in straight lines. A glass and chrome table in the living room held the only signs of life: the morning New York Times neatly laid out in overlapping sections and an abandoned cup of coffee.

  There were also a half-dozen chrome-framed family photos on the table—the usual portraits and vacation scenes, and one of James from Yale graduation. There was a portrait of the Ladeens laughing on a ski slope: James and his parents bundled in sweaters and parkas, their ruddy-cheeked faces smiling at the camera. All good. But James had his arm around something else as well. Someone else. Heather.

  True confession: It happened after James and I had been together about a month. The morning after a great night, he’d left me in his bed at his apartment to go buy us some breakfast. I was crazy about him but unsure if he was equally crazy about me. Coming right out and asking him seemed way too needy, so I did the only thing a halfway normal girl can do when left alone in a new boyfriend’s apartment: I snooped.

  I don’t know what I was looking for, exactly. Another girl’s undies? Lipstick in his medicine cabinet? My perusing took me to his desk, and in the bottom drawer of that desk, I found a cigar box. Inside were old love letters signed from Heather, and in one envelope was a photo. A naked photo taken in that very apartment . . . in the bed I’d just been sleeping in. It was then that I gave her the nickname by which I’d thought of her ever since: Heather the Perfect. Heather’s body was . . . perfect. When I’d finally met her at one of James’s family’s parties last year, she’d been wearing a Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress that clung to her every enviable curve. Suffice to say, my theory had been more than confirmed.

  And now I was gazing at her photograph again, this time with my boyfriend. At least they had clothes on in this one.

  “Oh, that.” James gave me a little hug when he saw what I was looking at. “My parents must have forgotten about it.”

  “Have a handy flamethrower?” I quipped.

  “Come on.” He took my arm and led me to an exterior patio that opened directly onto the beach.

  “Megan!” Dr. Ladeen greeted me warmly, setting down the grilling tongs he’d been flipping turkey breasts with. “Wow, don’t you look fantastic. Veronica, doesn’t Megan look fantastic?”

  Mrs. Ladeen looked up from the cucumbers she was slicing. She wore skinny jeans, which she was thin enough to pull off, a coral-colored peasant blouse, and a pile of silver and turquoise necklaces. Her dark hair was done in a new short choppy cut not unlike Debra Wurtzel’s.

  “Hello, Megan, dear,” she said, air-kissing me somewhere near my left cheek. “You look lovely.”

  Now, on the face of it, this was a very nice thing to say, so I shall have to try to convey her tone. It was cool, supercilious, and patronizing all at the same time. I would have bet anything that the Ladeens and my parents voted the same way and gave money to the same political and social causes. It was something bigger than politics that made me not measure up to some mythic standard—Platonic standard, actually—of what and who James’s girlfriend should be. A Platonic standard doubtlessly embodied by Heather the Perfect and Heather’s Perfect Family.

  I thanked Mrs. Ladeen and handed over the bottle of 2001 Calera Jensen Vineyard Mt. Harlan pinot noir that Marco had insisted I take from the wine cellar. Apparently, Laurel kept dozens of cases around as small thank-you gifts.

  “We’re doing barbecued breasts this year,” Dr. Ladeen explained. “So much healthier. Tofu and bulgur stuffing, the whole nine yards.”

  “Sounds great,” I told him, though of course it did not.

  “We’ll be inside, Mom, catching up,” James told his folks. “See you later.”

  We went back inside and down the hallway to a den that had as little color and personality as the rest of the house. At least it was filled with books, most of them review copies that had been sent to James’s mother at her magazine, and others that had been gifts from writer friends.

  James tugged me onto the gray suede couch. My body quickly reminded me of how long it had been since it had gotten any attention. His hand crept under my—well, Marco’s—skirt.

  I grabbed his wrist. “Your parents.”

  “What about ’em?” He nibbled at my neck.

  “You know what.” I lightly pushed him away and smoothed down the skirt.

  “Fine.” He groaned. “So, tell me what’s going on. What’re the twins like?”

  I slid to the other side of the couch. “Let me draw you a picture: their brains.” I made a circle with my middle finger and my thumb. Then I puffed some air through it, wh
ich got me a laugh.

  “You getting good stuff for your article?”

  “By the time I’m done, James, I won’t have an article—I’ll have a book.” I told him a few stories from the last ten days.

  “A couple of editors my mom works with are coming to dinner. You’ve got to tell them about it.” He kissed me again, sliding his hand over my chest. “How about if I come to Palm Beach tomorrow?” he murmured in my ear. “You and I can stay at a little hotel on the beach—I’ll show you how much I missed you . . .”

  “I’d love to have you come visit,” I told him, meaning it with every aching-to-be-touched muscle in my body. “But Laurel will be home in five days, and I have no way of knowing if I’ll have a job after that.”

  The truth was, I hadn’t even persuaded the twins to take a practice SAT test. Since getting the girls to sign on as various-degrees-of-willing study buddies, I’d been a heck of a lot more concerned with observing them for my article than with teaching them. Laurel would likely come home, see how little (read: no) progress had been made, and I’d be on my way back to New York—but with article notes in hand.

  “Meaning you need to spend every moment doing research,” James filled in.

  “Exactly.”

  James laughed. “That e-mail you sent me about how you’re pretending to be this blue blood from Philadelphia—funniest thing I ever read.”

  “And as far as they know, Megan Smith from Main Line Philadelphia doesn’t have a boyfriend. You’d be amazed at the dirt I’ve been able to flirt my way into.”

  If I had thought James would be upset at this news, I had another think coming. He actually looked at me with admiration. “With your new look, no, I wouldn’t.”

  I leaned over and kissed him. “It’s only for five days.”

  “Hey, journalists have done a lot worse to get the story. Count me impressed.”

  By the time we returned to the patio, all the guests had arrived. There was Alfonse Ulbrecht, who had just written a scathing assessment of the Bush family that was currently on the Times nonfiction best-seller list. There was Simon Chamberlain, very British, who held an endowed chair in poetry at the University of Chicago and whom James’s mother called, quote, the second coming of T. S. Eliot. There were two editors from New York named Barbara Fine and Janis Lapin. Both were in their fifties and cackled at everything the other one said.

  Dinner was served by a nameless Cuban woman. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was missing her own Thanksgiving to serve ours.

  Janis, cackling editor number one, turned to me as tea was being served. “So . . . it’s Megan, right?”

  “Right.”

  “What do you do?”

  Interesting question. Hard to explain. I went with simple. “I’m a college prep tutor.”

  “Really? And you went to Yale with James?” her partner asked in a way that said, How sad that you couldn’t get a real job.

  “Hey, she’s no ordinary tutor. She’s working for the Baker twins,” James offered. “Did you read the piece in Vanity Fair?”

  Barbara looked over her teacup at me. “They give bimbos everywhere a bad name!” Janis laughed as if this were the funniest thing she’d ever heard.

  “And how can you stand Palm Beach?” Mrs. Ladeen looked closely at me. “It’s full of Republicans!”

  “We haven’t really talked about politics,” I said, despite the uproarious laughter all around the table.

  “I did a reading there last week,” Alfonse reported. “The women looked like they’d been dipped in formaldehyde. I’m actually writing about it in my piece for East Coast.”

  It turned out that he was writing two thousand words for the magazine on the horrors of book tours, with the focus on a fat, middle-aged woman who fancied herself his groupie and followed him from reading to reading, including to the Botox Barbie event in Palm Beach, as he put it.

  An hour later, when I had escaped from the Ladeens’, I was glad. I missed James, and I definitely missed sex, but as I stepped out of their cold and rigid home, I breathed a sigh of relief into the humid Florida air.

  Standing in the crushed-seashell driveway was the Cuban woman who’d served us dinner, packing a brown paper sack into the trunk of her rusting Corolla.

  “Hi,” I greeted her, awkwardly eyeing the gunmetal-silver BMW I’d driven up in. “Did you . . . I was just wondering . . . Did you miss your own Thanksgiving for this?” I motioned back at the Ladeens’ house. “I’m Megan, by the way.”

  “Marisol,” she replied, taking my extended hand. “Yes, but they’ll save me some stuffing.” She winked.

  Another cackling fit of laugher came from inside. We both looked back at the house and then at each other.

  “They think they are very funny, no?” she asked.

  “Sí,” I told her, laughing lightly. “Sí.”

  “Happy Thanksgiving, Megan,” she said, taking her keys from her pocket.

  “Happy Thanksgiving.” I pulled the keys to the BMW from my loaned Goyard bag and opened the driver’s door. “And Marisol?”

  She closed the trunk of her car with a loud clunk and looked at me expectantly.

  “Just . . . thank you.”

  Choose the definition that most closely matches the following word:

  SALACIOUS

  (a)nauseating

  (b)juicy and gossipy, à la Page Six

  (c)cold and withdrawn

  (d)nervous

  (e)a really big trunk sale

  Chapter Seventeen

  By the end of the twins’ Thanksgiving break, we had settled into something of a study routine. This was all thanks to a combination of cajoling, guilt-jerking, and putting the best possible spin on the work that they were actually doing. We’d meet poolside around noon and order lunch from Marco. Prawns, lobster, filet mignon, fruit and vegetables so fresh they tasted as if they had just been plucked from tree or bush, mashed potatoes with capers, yam fries, Italian arborio pearl rice ribboned with shiitake mushrooms and pecans—I could go on. But the twins barely touched their food. They would pick at a lobster salad, followed by half a prawn and maybe one mouthful of mashed potatoes.

  Unfortunately, I not only had touched everything but also had swallowed everything. When I wasn’t wheedling and charming information out of all of Palm Beach, I was alternately working on my story notes and stuffing my face. I didn’t know if I had enough for a decent story, but I did know I would be heading back to New York ten pounds heavier. That morning I’d had to lie on my bed to zip my Joe’s jeans, and even then I’d felt my femoral arteries being squeezed into submission.

  After the twins and I ate we’d put in an hour or so of so-called studying. Then they would go to Bath & Tennis or one of their friends’ mansions, and I would go upstairs to work on my notes or read.

  Today, five days after Thanksgiving, we’d—I’d—lunched poolside on crab cakes and seafood quiche, followed by fresh pears and figs with candied pecans. I’d gone to the cabana for another bottle of iced pomegranate juice and come back to find Sage and Rose in a hell of an argument. Over—color me shocked—an actual SAT vocabulary word.

  “Salacious means scandalous!” Rose maintained, pushing herself upright on her chaise.

  “You’re retarded, Rose. It means something you lick,” Sage shot back.

  “No, it doesn’t. Should I get the dictionary?”

  “I don’t need the goddamn dictionary to know it means something you lick. You think you’re suddenly smart because you’re friends with her?” Sage pointed at me.

  “No. I think I’m smart because I pay attention when we work,” Rose maintained. “You don’t.”

  “Fuck off,” Sage told her sister, flipping her hair over her shoulder.

  “No, you fuck off,” Rose challenged her.

  “You are such a suck-up, Rose!” Sage threw a pencil at her sister.

  Finally, I jumped in. “Guys, stop it,” I told them more forcefully than I’d intended. There was something abou
t seeing two sisters fight that reminded me of . . . well, me. “This is kind of like me and my sister, Lily—” I started, and then I stopped. I’d always felt like I was the everyday loser in the competition that was life with my sister. Instead, I said, “She, um, always wanted to do everything I did—talk like me, dress like me. I couldn’t ever just be, um, on my own, you know?” I’d recently adopted their you know? as an important part of my vocabulary.

  Sage glared at her sister. “Then you know how I feel.”

  “Anyway.” I sighed and sat back down at the table. “Lily eventually started to see herself as a separate person from me, thank gawd.”

  To my surprise, Sage flinched at this comment. The reaction had been subtle—a double blink of the eyes—yet I was sure I had seen it.

  “All right, we’re okay?” I asked.

  “Sure,” Rose was the first to agree.

  “Whatever,” Sage said, but she got up to retrieve the pencil she’d thrown at her sister.

  “Hello, girls.”

  I looked up and across the still aquamarine pool. Laurel Limoges stood in an impeccable fawn pencil skirt and a taupe cashmere sweater. Shit shit shit. She wasn’t supposed to be back until tomorrow, when I’d planned on looking like “before” photo Megan again. I quickly ran my hand through my hair in every possible direction but the right one.

  “Welcome home!” Rose called sarcastically.

  “It’s the Wicked Witch,” Sage muttered under her breath.

  No. It was the end.

  “Hi, Laurel. Mrs. Limoges. I mean Madame Limoges,” I corrected myself, standing. “You’re home.”

  Oh, that was brilliant. Yep. I sure would want the brain trust who’d come up with that observation to tutor my grand-daughters.

  “Girls, could you leave Miss Smith alone with me for a few minutes?” Laurel asked.

  “Take advantage of the time,” I urged the twins. “Review.”