The Hole We're In

by Gabrielle Zevin

  “No, I said that wrong. Not a lawyer. The lawyer. From the O.J. trial”—the Jewish one, he wanted to say, but he wasn’t sure if that was racist—“I don’t remember the name.”

  “Marcia Clark?”

  “No.”

  The professor gathered her curly hair into a loose bun. He considered telling her that he liked her hair that way but decided it wouldn’t be appropriate.

  “You’re a fundamentalist Christian, am I right?” Professor Murray asked.

  “Well ... Yes.” Roger furrowed his brow in a way he both hoped and didn’t hope would be observed.

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  “No. It’s just, we’re called Sabbath Day Adventists.”

  “So you’re not a fundamentalist Christian?”

  “I am. It’s the same thing really.” All at once, he realized he didn’t wish to be having this discussion with this woman. “It doesn’t matter. Go on.”

  “Don’t ever be afraid to correct me, Roger. If the other term is more precise, that’s what I’ll use. And before you came here, you taught for twenty or so years in a Sabbath Day Adventist”—she paused to receive the approval Roger was overly eager to bestow—“high school?”

  “Twenty-one years,” Roger said. “And for half of those, I wasn’t a teacher. I was an assistant principal.”

  Carolyn laughed, though Roger didn’t think he’d said anything particularly funny. “How marvelous,” she said. “Were you aware that I am a nonpracticing Jew?”

  It was Alan Dershowitz, he thought.

  “And now I like to call myself a weekend Buddhist, which is to say, I go on a lot of yoga retreats.”

  Roger wasn’t sure if he was supposed to laugh.

  “The point is, Rog, I think we’d make a very good team.”

  “Team?”

  “We should write this book together. I can offer you resources and experience and a different perspective and—”

  In his mind, Roger crossed Jesus out of the dedication:

  Revision 1

  Roger casually reaches under the table and pulls a published book out from under it.

  “What’s this?” George asks.

  “It’s a book, George,” he says. “Mine and this other woman’s, Carolyn Murray’s. You remember her from the GSE Christmas party? She said she loved your sweater, took great pains to find out where you got it. You thought it was Ross Dress for Less, but you couldn’t remember for sure.”

  “Oh, right,” George says. “Her.” She cracks the crust of her crème brûlée before taking the tiniest bite. “You know, honey, I don’t think she even liked my sweater.”

  “Well, she said she did,” Roger replies. “But back to my book. It’s going to make us very, very rich.”

  “Us and Carolyn Murray,” George corrects him.

  “What about my dissertation?” Roger asked quietly.

  “Oh, well, I imagine you’ll write that on some smaller topic relating to this one. But honestly, Roger, we’re onto something much bigger here. Do you have a notebook?”

  Of course he did. It had a yellow devil gilded to the front and was separated into sections by dual pocket folders—$5.99 at the university bookstore.

  Among other things, Professor Murray described how Roger would give up the four classes he was TAing (–$15,000) and become her full-time project coordinator (+$5,000). Roger decided it would be rude to ask her how in the good Lord’s name he was meant to make up the $10,000 difference.

  “Let me pray on it,” he says.

  “Seriously?” Carolyn Murray raises an impressively plucked eyebrow.

  “What you describe is not necessarily the tack I was planning to take. I’m ... I’m in favor of a religious education, Professor Murray. I’m a product of one, as are my children. And the book I was planning to write was going to be in praise of—”

  “Seriously? Do you know who I am? And do you know who you are? And do you have any idea what I’m offering you? I know you’re Christian, but are you also daft?”

  “Well, let me at least talk it over with my wife. There are financial matters to consider, and—”

  “You mean that woman with the tacky sweater from the holiday party?”

  She knew you didn’t like it, Roger thinks.

  “Honestly, Rog, if you don’t get on board, and right quick, I’ll probably just steal the idea from you and write my own book. And where will you be then? Fifty years old and saddled with eighty thousand dollars in student loans. You and that tacky-sweater-wearing wife of yours will be working until you’re both buried in a hole in the ground. Why don’t you just pray on that, choir boy?”

  The professor smiled at him, and Roger noticed that she had very nice teeth. “Take as much time as you need to think it over,” she said. “It occurs to me ... I know your work from advising you for the past several years, but you might not know mine.” She danced over to the larger of her two bookshelves. “You may have bought some of these for your classes, but just in case ...” She handed him a stack of her books. They had all been published by major publishers—not a university press, and certainly not a religious university press, among them. Her first book, The Wheels on the Bus Go Round, was considered the seminal work about school integration and busing practices. Wheels was still used in education classes everywhere, but it was the kind of book regular people bought, too. Several years ago, PBS’s Frontline had devoted an entire episode to the fifteenth anniversary of the work. Roger had turned up the volume when Carolyn’s interview came on. “George,” he said, “that’s my teacher!”

  “Unga,” had been his wife’s reply. Roger had tried to shake her awake, but George would not be roused.

  Roger wondered how many copies of The Wheels on the Bus Go Round sold each year. All he knew was that it had been used in a half dozen of his classes, and not just the ones taught by Professor Murray either. He contemplated asking Professor Murray to sign the copy she’d just given him, but decided that would irreparably imbalance their power dynamic. If he’d opened the book, he would have discovered that it was already presigned: “Live the dream, Carolyn Murray.”

  She sauntered back to her desk and took off her suit jacket. “Excuse me,” she said. “I don’t normally give my colleagues a striptease, but it must be ninety degrees out there today.”

  “Carolyn”—he had never called her Carolyn before—“Carolyn, of course I know your work. Everyone knows your work. And it would be such an incredible honor to work with you. When you called this meeting, I never imagined ...” He was rambling. “A product of all religious schools—a religious high school and a religious college and ...” She nodded encouragingly but also looked a bit bored or impatient. “Of course I want to work with you.”

  “Good.” She praised him as if he were an obedient dog. In lieu of shaking hands, Carolyn stood to hug him. He could feel her breasts through her shirt. He didn’t want to be feeling them, but the fact was, he was. They felt strange. They felt strangely ... buoyant. They felt like they could bounce or maybe even float. Was it possible that the esteemed professor had had a breast job? Or was it the trick of a clever bra maker? Roger knew little about such matters.

  “Now, Rog, do you mind if I do something?”

  “Um ... no, I guess not.”

  She reached her hand under his collar and lifted the back of his still-blond hair out of it. Her hand was cool and surprisingly soft. “That’s been really bothering me,” she said.

  “I guess I need to get it cut.”

  She didn’t disagree. “My husband—ex-husband—used to go to this terrific guy not far from campus. I’ll have my assistant e-mail you his name.”

  “Where do you get yours cut?” Roger had no idea why he had asked that. “For my wife, I mean.”

  “Me?” She said the name of a place, which Roger instantly forgot and which his wife surely couldn’t afford anyway.

  The meeting was over, but neither was sure how to end it. Carolyn returned to her burnished thro
ne, and she and Roger beamed at each other a bit. She put her feet up on the desk again. Roger could see a pesky corn pushing through the tear in her stockings. Now that they would be working closely together, he imagined buying her a gift certificate for a pedicure for Christmas. Women liked that sort of thing ... Didn’t they? Did Carolyn celebrate Christmas? In any case, for the holidays. Was a pedicure an appropriate gift for a colleague?

  Carolyn had a funny little smile on her face. “What are you looking at?” she asked evenly.

  “Your foot. I mean, there’s a hole. I mean, your stocking has a hole,” he stammered, like it was the first time he’d ever spoken to a girl. “What I’m looking at is the hole.” In pointing at the rip, he accidentally grazed her foot with his index finger, but she didn’t seem to notice anyway.

  “How can you look at a hole?” she mused.

  October

  THE LEAVES WERE not changing, and the air was not brisk, and there was nothing to indicate October except that was what the calendar said, and sons were playing football, and daughters were being tossed from pyramids, and George’s children were older, and George, too, was older, and she still had October bills to pay.

  The painters had arrived early. There were only two of them; they were Mexican and related, though George wasn’t sure how. Either father/son or brothers. The older one had told her, but George hadn’t understood, and at some point in her life she had gotten the idea that it was rude to ask people with accents to repeat things. Both men seemed to be called Ramón, which may have been either their first or last name. She wondered if they were illegals before deciding this was none of her business. She had not personally hired them, after all. She had hired a company who hired them, and this degree of separation removed her from any ethical obligation.

  She could not really afford to take two days off from her job as a data processor. George was paid $16.50 an hour and had herself been hired, not by the insurance company where she worked but by a temporary agency that was paid an additional $16.50 for every hour of George’s labor. George wondered about the ethics of that, too. The agency had tested her typing and computer skills, briefly reviewed her résumé, and called her two weeks later with the job she still had. How much was this worth and for how long? She had been working for the insurance company for a year and had accrued neither sick nor vacation days. (Her own health insurance was covered by her husband.) Still, this gig was the best she had ever had. She had never finished college, which meant that her employment history had included smocks (Slickmart; a brief stint as a lunch lady), standing all day, asking permission to go to the bathroom, a machine that sliced off three of her closest colleague’s fingers, hairnets, and a blue laminated button that read PULL MY FINGER. At her current job, she got to sit, wear her own clothes, and go to the ladies’ whenever she pleased. Paradise.

  But the fact was, she could not really afford the time off. Nor could she afford the paint job that had been needed since the too-large house had been purchased. Nor could she afford many of the possessions that had been bought to fill the too-large house, or even, at times, the cost of regulating its climate. She certainly could not afford to get sick or for any of the rest of them to get sick either. Working at a health insurance company from 7:30 to 3:30, five days a week, she thought a lot about getting sick and what a luxury it really was. She harbored particular envy for rich people who could afford mental hospitals—how relaxing that sounded! Alas, such pleasures were out of her stars. Middle-class folks were forced to go nuts in their living rooms; the rich got to do it at spas. George could not afford to lose her mind or even get the flu. According to a recent spreadsheet that had crossed her desk, for a woman her age, forty-seven, it was cheaper to take a cruise to Alaska than to get a case of food poisoning that required hospitalization.

  She couldn’t afford the wedding she was planning for her older daughter, Helen. The wedding, incidentally, had been the impetus for painting the house. After much lobbying, George had convinced Helen to have the event at home as opposed to at an expensive venue. At the time, George had thought this would save money, but this wasn’t turning out to be the case. Landscaping had to be redone! Wooden floors refinished! Chairs and tables rented! And, of course, the house needed to be repainted. George couldn’t help but think that it would have been cheaper to have had it at the downtown Marriott, which was what Helen had wanted in the first place.

  The doorbell rang. The older of the two painters wanted to know if George would like to look at the paint before they began applying it. George didn’t particularly, but it seemed the thing to do, so she followed the man out to the yard. He opened a can and held it out to her. For a second, she got the idea that she should sniff it like a wine cork, though neither she nor her husband drank. In the can, the hue looked somehow brighter than she remembered from the store.

  “Is all right?” the older painter asked.

  “Um ... Well, it looks a bit light,” said George.

  “Do not worry, missus. Will dry darker.”

  “It’ll honest to God end up looking brick colored?”

  Ramón Sr. nodded, though later it would occur to George that he, too, might have been taught that it was rude to ask people with accents to repeat things.

  It was ninety-four degrees out, and Ramón the Elder was already sweating. Had October always been this hot? George had spent her childhood in Vermont, but of course it had been cooler there.

  “Hot one,” she said.

  “Missus?”

  “Hot,” she repeated. She fanned herself by way of demonstration.

  “Caliente,” he said. He smiled at her and held out the paint can.

  “Caliente,” she repeated.

  “The paint is ... Caliente ... is OK?”

  “Looks”—the phone rang inside her house—“A-OK,” she said. She made a thumbs-up sign then trotted off to answer the phone. She wasn’t normally this excited about a call, but it seemed like a good enough way to end the conversation with the elder Ramón.

  She was winded by the time she reached the phone and considered not answering. She hated the sound of her winded voice—she thought out-of-breath people sounded unhealthy, fat. She was fat and probably unhealthy (she hadn’t been to the doctor in some time, so she couldn’t say for certain), but the person on the other side needn’t know your whole life story.

  Despite this, she answered the phone. It was her oldest daughter.

  “Mother, you sound out of breath,” Helen said.

  “I was just outside,” George apologized. “They’re painting the house today, you’ll be glad to know.”

  Helen said she remembered—obviously, Mother—that’s why she’d called George at home and not at work. “Maybe I’ll stop by to see it tomorrow.”

  Please don’t, George thought.

  “Why? Don’t you want to see me?” Helen asked.

  George wondered if she had somehow spoken her thoughts aloud before realizing that Helen had only been responding to the silence. “It’s just if you came tomorrow you wouldn’t really be able to see it.”

  Helen asked her what she meant.

  “They’ve got two more days of work. And also, the paint goes on a little light.”

  Helen asked her what she meant.

  “The color. The painter said it looks light in the can but dries darker.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mother, did you even look in the cans before they started putting it on?”

  “Of course I did, Helen.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure!”

  “Well,” said Helen, “I really don’t understand why Daddy couldn’t stay home with the painters. It doesn’t make any sense. You’ve got to take off three days from work, and he’d only have to miss an hour or two of classes. Plus, he’s better with these things.”

  “What things?”

  “Maintenance things.”

  Where in the world had her twenty-five-year-old
daughter gotten that idea? George had been “maintaining things” for as long as she and Roger had been married. “Why are you calling, anyway?” George asked.

  “I wanted to make sure you called the invite place with the credit card number. You did, didn’t you?”

  “Um,” said George.

  “Because they won’t start making them till you call with the number. You know that, right?”

  “I—”

  “And if they don’t start making them now, we aren’t going to be able to send them out on time.”

  “I didn’t know they needed to start so soon, Helly. We’re still eight and a half months out.”

  “Well, they do. You said you would call last week, remember?”

  George did remember but decided to pretend she didn’t. “How much is it going to be again?”

  “Three hundred now and three hundred on delivery.”

  “Honestly, Helen, that seems a little pricy. Couldn’t we maybe make them ourselves? I saw these kits at Craft Barn—”

  “No, Mother, we cannot make them. We cannot make them. We absolutely cannot. We’ve ...” Helen sighed. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Making me feel bad about something we’ve already discussed and settled a million times.”

  “I’m not trying to make you feel bad,” George said.

  Helen, a speech therapist, switched into her patient, professional voice. “Mother, do you need the phone number again?”

  “OK, Helen. How you doing otherwise, babe?” George asked.

  “I’m fine. I’m just fine, but Mother, I am begging you. Please don’t forget to call the engraver, all right?”

  “I won’t.”

  “Because if the save-the-date cards don’t get mailed, it’s like Elliot and I haven’t claimed the date. And any one of our friends or family could, like, swoop right in. Plus, we’ll both have a ton of people coming from out of town—”

  “Save-the-date cards?” George asked. “You mean these aren’t the actual invites?”

  “You are losing it, Mother, I swear. I’ve only told you this about a million times.” Helen sighed. “Do you want me to have someone from the invitation place call you? Because I can do that.”