The Trouble with Lexie

by Jessica Anya Blau

  “You’re right.” Amy threw up her hands. “I’m sorry.”

  “If you give me some chocolate I’ll forgive you.” Lexie pointed to the drawer where Amy kept the Hershey’s Kisses. Amy pulled out a handful and dumped them on the desk. She threw one to Lexie.

  “So where’s Ethan going to school, anyway?” Amy’s voice was back to what Lexie thought of as blond: light, airy.

  “Umm.” Lexie unwrapped the chocolate. “I guess he’ll find out tonight. He didn’t get into UCLA and that was his first choice.”

  “Poor little boy, he’ll probably end up having to slum it at Harvard like his daddy.”

  “Terrible, isn’t it?” Lexie told Amy the story of when she got into UCLA with a full ride. She called every friend she had, and she even phoned Mr. Simms at work, but she neglected to tell her mother. That night, when Lexie, Betsy, and Mr. and Mrs. Simms sat in a booth at Heidi Pies ordering blizzard sundaes, Mitzy asked what they were celebrating. Lexie didn’t realize how cruel her omission was until Betsy blurted Lexie’s good news and Mitzy’s face flushed candy-pink from her chin to her forehead.

  “It’s not like she was Mother of the Year,” Amy said, chomping into a Kiss.

  “It’s not like she was Mother of the Minute,” Lexie said. “She was more like a babysitter I had for a really, really long time.”

  “Kids like Ethan got it made,” Amy said.

  “Yup,” Lexie said. “Must be hard being the son of Daniel Waite.” Lexie popped the kiss into her mouth. It tasted so good that she shut her eyes for a couple seconds while she let it melt down her throat.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING THERE WAS LOTS OF DRAMA: KIDS HUGGING one another, cheering, a few crying. Many students got into their first choice school and the ones who didn’t were trying to put a good spin on the places where they did get in. As expected, the intense overachievers would be at the Ivies and other top East Coast schools; the more courageous overachievers were hitting up Berkeley, Stanford, and the University of Chicago. The artists and writers planned to colonize the schools in New York City, or Bowdoin, Bates, and Bennington. The party crowd was headed for the University of Vermont and the University of New Hampshire. And the rest were filling in the spots at small private colleges that often their parents had attended or maybe their grandparents. Lexie imagined Dot’s list would have been a hundred percent right. What a shame that no one veered off course and surprised them all.

  Ethan Waite was the only student who didn’t share his news. Lexie wanted to call Daniel (surely Ethan would have told his parents what was up) but he was at meetings in Toronto and had told Lexie beforehand that he would be away from the phone all day. The speculation among students was that Ethan Waite had aimed too high and hadn’t gotten in anywhere. Lexie worried over it until she approached Ethan on the way to dinner and he mumbled, his head hanging low, that he would be going to Harvard. She figured he hadn’t told anyone because he wanted to act cool and not brag on a day when bragging was the norm.

  When she left the dining hall, Lexie saw she’d received a text from Daniel. Miss you, beautiful. At cocktails now, will call later. Lexie replied: Miss you! Great news about Ethan—woot woot! She looked up. Janet Irwin was walking toward her. Janet stopped in front of Lexie on the brick pathway. Lexie dropped the phone into her purse. It buzzed with an incoming text and Lexie felt a current run down her right arm.

  “You shouldn’t use your phone like that on campus.” Janet’s long, flat-shod feet created the number eleven on the ground.

  “Are you talking about texting?” Did Janet honestly not know the verb text?

  “Yes. It’s bad enough that the students do it, we shouldn’t have faculty doing it as well. It’s terrible. A technological advancement that has created a serious regression in human development.”

  “So you think we’re all worse off now that we’re in more frequent contact?” Lexie stuck her hand in her purse and fingered the phone. Janet had the distinct ability to make Lexie feel like a teenager, and in being that teenager she wanted to rebel.

  “People are losing IQ points, losing social skills, losing the very thing that makes them human because they are focusing their energy onto an apparatus rather than onto another human.” Janet’s feet remained even, as if she might never take another step. She was upright as a flagpole.

  “Well, I’ll put some serious thought into that.” Lexie pulled her cell phone from her purse as she walked away. She could sense Janet watching her but didn’t look back to confirm.

  Daniel had texted, Yes, I’m very proud. Will you pick up a bottle of champagne and drop it off at my boy’s room?

  Lexie glanced back over her shoulder at Janet, who had entrapped three senior girls. They were probably getting the text lecture, too. Lexie typed, Happy to drop off champagne! Please note that would be my last official act at Ruxton since surely I’ll be fired!

  Daniel replied, Who cares! You’ll be out of there soon enough when you’re my wife. The Boston apartment is too far for the commute.

  Lexie sucked in an estatic little breath. She swiped her ID at the door to Rilke. Once she was in the apartment, with the door firmly shut, Lexie unbuttoned her blouse, lowered the camera, and took a picture of her breasts in the black bra she’d put on that morning. She didn’t want to reply in words, as words could appear either desperate and excessively anxious, or overly happy and needy. A photo would convey her message more concisely: Buy the ring. I’m yours!

  More, Daniel texted, and Lexie obliged.

  Her slacks were around her ankles and her panties were flossed to one side as Lexie was trying to figure out the best photo angle when there was a knock on the door. Lexie dropped the phone to the floor and very quietly reassembled her clothes. Her thoughts zoomed out to the imagined overhead camera shot of herself, half-dressed, acting porny on one side of the door while some upstanding Ruxton citizen, be it faculty or a student, waited on the other side of the door.

  Lexie picked up the phone and opened the door. Cole Hanna stood there, his blue tie knotted like a fist. He held out one of Lexie’s notebooks.

  “I found this on the walkway,” Cole said. He was so conventionally good-looking, nice, and conscientious that Lexie worried he’d live a life as dull as a wooden spoon.

  “Ah! Thanks.” Lexie took the notebook. She must have dropped it while texting Daniel. Good thing Janet Irwin hadn’t found it. Another reason not to text! “So, is there a lot of celebrating planned for tonight?”

  “Some celebrating and some mourning.” Cole, Lexie knew, would be attending Dartmouth.

  “Text me if you think I need to make a surprise visit to keep things under control tonight. I’d hate for anyone to get suspended and have his or her acceptance standing in jeopardy.”

  “Do they do that?” Cole asked.

  “Yeah, they do. There was a kid headed to Duke a couple years before I arrived who got into big trouble at the end of the year and lost his invitation to attend.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “It is. So, keep me in the loop and I’ll try to derail anyone intent on getting suspended.” Lexie couldn’t quite remember the story of the Duke-accepted kid. It was something with drugs and alcohol and defacing school property. Had he gone into the chapel, carved a giant penis into a pew, and vomited on the penis before passing out? Someone had done that, although maybe it was a different boy, a different year.

  The kids at San Leandro High had done much worse on many more occasions. But it was public school, no one kept track of what happened off campus, and even if there was a transgression, there were so many on such a regular basis that it was rare for a detention to be handed out.

  Since she’d been living at Rilke, Lexie had confiscated alcohol three times—two of the three from the same boy. She assumed it was like mice: If you see one, it means there’s a hundred.

  AT MIDNIGHT THERE WAS A RHYTHMIC RAPPING ON LEXIE’S DOOR; IT sounded like the William Tell Overture. She pulled on yoga pants and a T-shirt t
hen went to the door and found a wet-cheeked Ethan Waite.

  “You okay?” Lexie tried to step back as Ethan stumbled in past her, his solid body brushing against hers.

  “Not really.” Ethan collapsed onto the gray chair that he and Lexie had picked out in September.

  “Were you rapping the William Tell Overture on the door?”

  “Yeah! No way! You could tell?!” Ethan was obviously drunk. His gestures were big and sweeping, like he was directing a symphony.

  “I’ve got a good ear for that stuff.” Lexie sat on the matching chair beside Ethan. She remembered one night with Peter in which she had lain naked across his lap and he had patted out songs on her butt. She had to guess what song he was patting. They were both amazed that she could get a good number of them, and when she’d correctly guessed Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” they were hysterical with laughter.

  At the time, Lexie believed that it was a meeting of the minds between herself and Peter that gave her the songs. Tonight, she credited her skills to a simple gift for rhythm.

  “Amazing ear.” Ethan rolled his head back and forth against the chair like he was trying to shake something out.

  “So, what’s up? Is this urgent?”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t get into UCLA.”

  “Well, Harvard’s not as dummy-school slummy as its reputation would have you believe.” Lexie wanted to laugh but she didn’t.

  “We both know I got in because of my dad.”

  “Maybe you did, but I’d never say you were a slacker. What’s your GPA again?”

  “Three point seven nine.”

  “See.”

  “Everyone else who got in has, like, four point seven.”

  “Ethan, you’re not some idiot fool eating cut-up steak with a spoon. You’ll do fine there.”

  “I wanted to be in California.”

  “Okay, it’s midnight and you’re . . . a little out of sorts, so I’m going to lay some truth on you.” If he weren’t Daniel’s kid, if she weren’t certain that this conversation wouldn’t get back to the Spoken Word Police Officer, Janet Irwin, Lexie wouldn’t say what she was about to say. But through her relationship with Daniel, and the simple intimacy she had with Ethan from living in the same dorm as he, Lexie felt her professional relationship with Ethan had become a flimsy pretense. He was her future stepson. And after seven months of dating Daniel, the transition to family status had already begun, if only in her mind.

  Ethan leaned forward and clapped his hands once, like a football coach talking to the team. “Lay it on me!”

  “You are a spoiled rotten brat.”

  “Are you kidding or serious?” He sat back again.

  “Serious.”

  “Why would you say that?” Ethan rubbed one eye with the back of his floppy hand.

  “Because you’re complaining about going to a school that kids all over the world are knocking themselves out to go to. And because you get to go college without even taking out a student loan or going through the seventy-million impossible-to-understand pages of applying for financial aid or scholarships, and because the whole world is available to you, waiting for you to conquer it. And you’re sitting here crying because you don’t get to go to school in California? Fly to California on spring break! Go there for the summer! Go for a long weekend!”

  “I totally get what you’re saying.” His head dropped a little, as if he were ashamed. “And I’m not saying I disagree with you. But this doesn’t take into account that for me, Harvard is a given, UCLA is what I was reaching for and I didn’t get the goal I was reaching for.” Ethan lifted his head and looked at Lexie, as if he were imploring her to agree with him on this one point.

  “Yes, that’s a bummer.” Lexie softened her voice. She didn’t want him to feel bad. “But you need to step back and take a global perspective. You can go to UCLA for grad school, or summer school. We’ll take you to San Leandro to visit my mom and we’ll drive . . .” Lexie stopped talking as she realized she had veered into a reality of which Ethan was unaware: herself, Daniel, and Ethan as a family.

  “We?” Ethan cocked his chin up as a question mark. Lexie was relieved he was drunk. In his current state, she could probably convince him of anything.

  “I meant me. I. I could take you to visit my mom.” It would never happen if she weren’t with Daniel, Lexie thought. She would never be a single “I” who would engage in such an intimacy as travel with a former student.

  “I’d love to go visit your mom, Mrs. James!”

  “She’s never gone by Missus in her life. Her name’s Mitzy.” How odd it would be if Lexie actually showed up at Mitzy’s apartment with Daniel and Ethan. Would her mother want to make a group run to 7-Eleven for Sno Balls and Dr Pepper?

  “Mitzy? We had a dog named Mitzy once.”

  “Most people have had a dog named Mitzy once. You’re the second person in the last couple months who’s told me that.”

  “Who was the other person?”

  “I can’t remember.” Lexie looked off to the right as she rummaged through her brain to come up with who had been telling her a story about Mitzy the dog. She blushed when she remembered it was Daniel. “I have no idea,” she finally said.

  “Well, our Mitzy was a pretty crazy dog. She tried to commit suicide.”

  “Gun? Poison? Knife?” Lexie said, and Ethan laughed. He may have been drunker than she had originally thought. She was certainly more half-asleep than she had originally thought.

  “Jumping. She jumped off the balcony onto the stone patio.”

  “Did she break any bones?” Daniel hadn’t mentioned the jump.

  “One of her legs. But no death. She was catatonically depressed for a couple weeks. My mother sent her to a therapist and she was fine after that.”

  “They have dog therapists in Western Massachusetts? I thought that was only in California.”

  “No, my mom took her all the way to Northampton to see the dog therapist. My dad went nuts. He hated that she was giving money to a huckster.”

  “Did you agree that the dog therapist was a huckster?” Lexie sure as hell did.

  “Yeah, I guess.” Ethan patted out a tune on his thighs. “What song is that?”

  “‘No Scrubs’?” Lexie hadn’t been listening. It was the first song that popped in her head.

  “No! Listen.” Ethan tapped out the rhythm again.

  “What time period of music are we in?”

  “Seventies funk. I figured you wouldn’t know current stuff.”

  “Hey, I wasn’t alive in the seventies! But I do know the music and I know current stuff, too.” Even as Lexie was saying it she knew it wasn’t true. She barely knew current music. She listened to the radio but she had never downloaded or bought music. Lexie’s musical inclinations were dictated by whomever she was with most often: Betsy Simms, her mother, her college roommate, her grad school roommate, the two boyfriends she’d had, her former fiancé (Peter!), and lastly, Daniel, who rarely listened to music at all.

  “Okay, this is seventies. Listen.” Ethan patted it out again. As he did so, he stared at Lexie straight in the eye, his mouth hanging open in concentration.

  “‘Ooh Child’?”

  “Huh? I don’t know what that is.”

  Lexie was worried she was losing her touch. She’d have to try the bare-butt bongo with Daniel later to see if it worked with him. “Do it again. With deliberation, okay? No extra beats.”

  Ethan stuck his neck out a little and patted hard and slow. He rocked his head to the beat.

  “‘Brick House’?”

  “YES!” Ethan threw his fists up and pumped his arms into the air. Lexie laughed.

  “Okay, let’s quit while we’re ahead.” Lexie stood.

  “Are you kicking me out?”

  “Yes. Go to bed. Forget about UCLA. Be grateful. Don’t be a whiney dumb-ass.”

  “Don’t be a whiney dumb-ass. Good advice.” Ethan stood and slowly walked toward the door.

&n
bsp; “It’s life advice. Think about it the rest of your life. Or do it the rest of your life. For the rest of your life don’t be a whiney dumb-ass.”

  “I’m going to miss you when I graduate.”

  “Ah, you’re sweet. But I bet we’ll see each other again after you graduate.” To be safe, Lexie added, “I see a lot students after they graduate.” She held the door open for Ethan.

  “Never again in my life will I be a whiney dumb-ass.” Ethan walked slowly out the door.

  “Sleep well.”

  “Night, Miss James.” Ethan lifted his long arm and waved it behind him as he went down the hall. From the back, silhouetted by the hall light, it could have been Daniel.

  16

  LEXIE’S BAG WAS PACKED. SHE STOOD IN THE DOORWAY OF THE guest suite of the Waite lake house and watched Daniel pull the linens off the bed and shake them out. “What are you doing?”

  “She was nice enough to let us stay here. I don’t want to rub it in her face by leaving a pair of my underwear behind.”

  “Well, check for my underwear, too.” Lexie wondered what kind of underwear Jen wore. How would it look lined up next to Lexie’s collection of lacy, stringy ribbons of fabric? From their one meeting, Lexie imagined Jen as someone with well-made, silky but sensible underwear. No prints. No lace. Nothing that would cut into her flesh, dissecting her body into graspable parts: cheek, cheek, crotch.

  Lexie had wanted to explore the house, to poke around Jen’s bedroom (and her underwear drawer) the way she’d poked around bedrooms as a babysitter in San Leandro (the way all babysitters since the beginning of babysitting have done). But she refrained in an effort to give Jen Waite the privacy she deserved after the generous gift of her home.

  The week had been unimaginably dreamy, holed up together like they were on a luxurious island. In the mornings Lexie had read on the dock while Daniel worked on the computer or took calls. By late afternoon, Daniel put away his work and they putted around the lake in the boat, pausing to drift, kiss, have sex, eat. Each night before Lexie fell asleep, Daniel kissed her and said, “Good night future Mrs. Daniel Waite.” The old-fashioned use of Mrs. Daniel Waite was the kind of thing Lexie and Amy liked to knock and mock. But Daniel had been so earnest and Lexie was so in love that she never clicked on her critical apparatus. She had been drenched in perfect happiness: wanting nothing, needing nothing, only wishing for time to stand still.