The Trouble with Lexie

by Jessica Anya Blau

  “I forgot about your delicate panties.” Daniel dropped to his knees, lifted the bed skirt and peeked under the bed.

  “Doesn’t a cleaning lady come?”

  “Twice a week.” He got up and arranged the bedding into a heap in the center of the mattress.

  “Where was she this week?”

  “Actually it’s two guys, a couple. Jen canceled them because she wasn’t sure how she’d explain us.”

  “If anyone would understand it would be two gay guys, don’t you think?”

  “No, why?” Daniel visually checked the room from corner to corner.

  “I don’t know. They tend to be more open about nontraditional relationships.”

  “Other than the fact that they’re gay, these guys are pretty straight.” Daniel flung open the closet doors and looked around. “And conservative. They’re friends from her church.”

  “Gay, Catholic, conservative house cleaners?”

  “There’s every type of human out here on the lakes.” Daniel pushed the closet doors shut, came to Lexie and pulled her toward himself. He kissed her in a way that felt like flower petals in her face.

  “Yeah, you’re here,” Lexie said.

  DANIEL LOCKED THE FRONT DOOR USING A KEY THAT WAS HIDDEN under a fake rock in the front garden.

  “You don’t have your own key?” Lexie asked. They had never left the house as there had been enough food and wine for them to have stayed a month without replenishing the supplies.

  “Nah. I gave her my keys when I moved out.” Daniel put Lexie’s suitcase in her trunk and clicked it shut.

  “Why? Doesn’t she trust you?”

  “She trusts me. I didn’t want them anymore. It’s her house.” Daniel opened the door to Lexie’s car and stood there like a valet, waiting for her to get in.

  He kissed Lexie one last time before she slipped into the car. She was parked at the center of the circular stone drive, directly in front of the house. Daniel’s car was parked in front of hers. Lexie started the engine and pulled away, around Daniel’s car. Before leaving the property, she looked in the rearview mirror. Daniel hadn’t gone to his car. He was standing by the front door, looking down at the rock that hid the key. Lexie waved, but he didn’t see.

  LEXIE WAS IN A DREAM STATE AS SHE DROVE THE NEARLY EMPTY highway back to Ruxton. She anticipated a difficult start to the week—her brain felt resistant to work, focus, productivity. Love, Lexie decided, was an ambition eraser. Or maybe contentedness erased ambition. You had to passionately desire more than you already had in order to endure a struggle toward lofty goals.

  A Ben Folds song was on the radio. Lexie turned it up and sang along. Betsy Simms had loved Ben Folds in high school. When the song ended, the froggy-voiced woman deejay said, “It’s ten minutes before twelve and the sun is shining down on Northampton—” Lexie slapped off the radio. She was supposed to be on campus by noon for the early post–spring break arrivals. Even at seventy miles an hour, she’d be twenty minutes late. Hopefully no one would notice.

  At twelve thirty, Lexie dropped off her bag in the apartment and headed over to the dining hall. She scanned the room—it was half-empty as many students weren’t returning until later in the day or early evening. There were two tables with faculty. One was full and the other had a single empty seat next to Janet Irwin (the last empty seat was always next to Janet Irwin). Lexie shored up her strength, crossed the room, and sat.

  “You’re late,” Janet said.

  “I was in my office.” Lexie hated that Janet brought out the worst in her. Not only was Lexie lying, but she was snippy, too.

  “I walked by your office on the way here and you weren’t there.”

  “We must have missed each other.”

  “We’ve been discussing the MILF,” Lenny Bilkin said. He was a history teacher, a child-sized man with an old, hangdog face.

  “What’s the MILF?” Lexie looked at Janet and wondered if she knew what this acronym usually meant.

  “Don’t engage. They’re being rude and unprofessional,” Janet said. Everyone around the table laughed.

  Jim Reiger said, “It stands for Most Irritating Little Fucker.”

  “Oh!” Lexie laughed. “So most irritating student?”

  “Entirely unprofessional.” Janet’s fork clanked against her plate as she stabbed up bites of salad. The sound reminded Lexie that she should eat, but she didn’t want anything that was being served: meat lasagna, salad, vegetarian-looking pasta. There was a basket of French bread in the center of the table. Lexie grabbed a hunk, ripped off the crust and bit into the soft center.

  “We’re only having a little fun,” Lois Wallace whispered. Lexie was surprised she was playing this game. She was usually so docile and well behaved.

  “So what’d’ya say, Lexie? Who would you name as the Ruxton MILF?” Jim Reiger was smiling widely. Lexie could see food in his mouth. She looked away from him, around the table.

  “Who did everyone else say so far?”

  Georgio Profant had picked Robbie Colton, who had once lobbed an orange from his lacrosse stick out the half-open window, shattering a pane of glass. Lois Wallace also picked Robbie because when she’d asked him to stop rocking back on his chair, he’d turned his tie and pretended to hang himself. Janet Irwin, predictably, refused to name the MILF, and the remaining four teachers at the table hadn’t yet come up with one.

  “So I can only name one?” Lexie asked.

  “Yes,” Jim said. “Most. It has to be the Most—”

  “Irritating Little Fucker,” Lois said, and she laughed. Lexie suspected she was laughing at herself for having been brave enough to say fucker aloud.

  “Dot would love this game,” Lexie said, and everyone grew silent.

  “Oh, I have mine!” Nancy Crantz said, breaking the moment of remembrance. “Kennedy Colson.”

  “You people are horrible,” Janet said. “You need to stop this.” Nancy blushed and dropped her head.

  “You know, I think Kennedy Colson would be mine, too.” Lexie was happy to save Nancy from her embarrassment. Kennedy was the only girl at Ruxton whom Lexie disliked. She had even tried to force herself into loving Kennedy. Give love, give love, give love, Lexie would think while waiting for Kennedy to finish whatever perfectly relevent thoughts she happened to be conveying in class.

  “Seriously? Why?”

  “You go first.” Lexie wanted to give Nancy permission to rip apart Kennedy Colson.

  “No, you go. I want to hear your reason.” Nancy was the worst people-pleasing version of Lexie, a version that she had been trying to train out of herself since graduate school.

  “If Dot were here,” Lois said, “she’d say something like will one of you fuckers just go!” Lois was on a roll. Lexie wondered if she were popping Klonopin or maybe was on beta blockers. She’d never been so outspoken before.

  “I’m not sure why I don’t like her.” Lexie was stalling. What she wasn’t sure of was whether or not she should confess the reason she didn’t like Kennedy. The girl was full of herself. At seventeen! When there was no completely-formed self to be full of yet.

  “She’s a gorgeous girl,” Jim Reiger said. Everyone, including dog-faced Lenny Bilkin, shot him a look.

  “They’re all gorgeous at that age,” Lexie said.

  Janet said, “This is disgusting.”

  “Wait, why do you hate her?” Nancy asked.

  “I don’t hate her,” Lexie said. “But I do think she’s the Most Irritating Little Fucker. She sits in my class and I have some cellular reaction to her.” That was all she’d say.

  “Maybe it’s because she’s sleeping with Ethan Waite,” Jim Reiger said, “and he’s your pet.”

  “She’s sleeping with Ethan?” Lexie was surprised by her internal revulsion. Why would Ethan sleep with a girl like that? Did he not want someone more human? Someone who had never dated Skyler Bowden (whom Amy had dubbed Patient Zero in the Ruxton Chlamydia Crisis)?

  “I guess the
y’re not getting their condoms from you,” Lois said, and everyone laughed.

  “No, they’re not,” Lexie said, not laughing. “And why do you think Ethan’s my pet?”

  “I see you joking with him,” Jim said. “You don’t treat him like the other kids. You chat with him like he’s one of the teachers.”

  “He’s more mature than the other kids,” Nancy said.

  “Yeah, he is.” Lexie’s face burned. She worried someone might intuit that the reason Lexie treated Ethan differently was because she was going to marry his father. She needed to push the conversation away from Ethan before someone sensed her discomfort. “Nancy, why do you think Kennedy’s the MILF?”

  “She acts like she’s better than everyone and she kinda is, you know?” Nancy was looking directly at Lexie, who nodded in agreement. She knew exactly what Nancy meant. Kennedy’s abundant confidence—which was backed by her abundant intellectual and physical gifts—could be too much for anyone with a self-critical voice in his or her head to bear. Kennedy Colson made Lexie feel irrelevant. For the insecure Nancy, the experience was probably worse.

  “Something is terribly amiss with you people,” Janet said.

  “How is she better than everyone?” Lois asked.

  “She’s prettier,” Nancy said. “She’s smarter.”

  “She’s my favorite student,” Ben Whiteford said, shrugging. Ben was a schlubby, cardigan-sweater-wearing man. Lexie figured his favorites were arranged by grades: the better you did in his class, the more he liked you.

  “She corrected my pronunciation of vestigial,” Nancy said.

  “She’s certainly going to be more successful than all of us,” Lexie said.

  “As her goals and your goals are different, your successes and failures can’t be compared,” Janet said. “And as far as her behavior on campus goes, she should be admired.”

  Lexie couldn’t help but note that in this particular instance Janet might be right.

  The conversation switched to speculation about which kids might be sociopaths. The faculty were giddy with gossip and conjecture. It was a mood that hit every year when the end of the term—freedom—was in sight. As Lois rattled off the characteristics of the typical male sociopath (they never confess so, like, if you find your sociopath boyfriend in bed with another woman he’ll say he’s getting a massage . . . ) Lexie felt an almost-embarrassing flush of gratitude for the differences between herself and the group: (1) She had never, and would never, be with anyone like the deranged men Lois had dated. (2) She wasn’t sentenced to decades of the repetitive academic cycle. Once Daniel’s divorce was final, Lexie would have a brand-new life. One that wouldn’t end in a dormitory apartment with a 1980s dishwasher and a Crate and Barrel rug owned by the school.

  THAT AFTERNOON, LEXIE AND AMY MET UP IN THE INFIRMARY. LEXIE had wanted to report everything: how beautiful the lake house was; how great the sex at the lake house was; how in love she and Daniel were, at the lake house and now. But before she could get started, Amy launched into her own story. She was in love. And it appeared to be mutual.

  “So, did you not do the sink-strainer gunk when you had an orgasm?” Lexie opened the top drawer of Amy’s desk and looked for the Hershey’s Kisses.

  “They’re here.” Amy opened a side drawer and handed a palmful to Lexie, who dumped them on the sickbed before hopping up to sit beside them.

  “How did it all go down?” Lexie sucked a chocolate. Amy chewed one.

  “I actually waited to have sex with him.” Amy picked through her hair as if she were fluffing it up.

  “No!”

  “Yup.”

  “How long?”

  “Second date.”

  “Hey, for you that’s an eternity.”

  “And he’s every bit as into this thing as I am. I think this one’s gonna stick.” Amy unwrapped another chocolate and stuck it whole into her mouth.

  “Details, y’all! Give me the details!” Lexie unwrapped another chocolate. She swore to herself this would be the last one. Although she did nothing to move away the handful that sat on the bed beside her.

  “Oh, you are so bad with your y’alls. It’s supposed to refer to more than one person, so you could say it to me and Cal—”

  “His name’s Cal? I love that name. Like California.” Okay, this is the last one, Lexie thought. She unwrapped one more.

  Cal was short for Calvin, but he had lived in California for many years. He owned a charming bookstore the next town over. On Friday and Saturday nights he kept the place open until nine, unless there were customers, in which case he’d stay open until the store was empty. (Cal never kicked out anyone who wanted to buy a book.) He’d been married once, had no kids, wore glasses that always looked clean, and he smelled like spicy lime. He was five years younger than Amy, which didn’t bother her, or Cal, one bit.

  Lexie thought there was a nice balance in her and Amy being in love and having boyfriends at the same time. It reminded her of a happy summer in Hermosa Beach when Lexie’s best friend from college was dating Lexie’s boyfriend’s brother. She never had to abandon one person to be with another as they all wanted to be in the same place at the same time. A blissfull synchronicity.

  “I can’t wait for the four us to hang out,” Lexie said. And she popped the last of the handful of Kisses into her mouth.

  17

  IT WAS FRIDAY EVENING AND LEXIE WAS SLOWLY MAKING HER WAY to the dining hall. The topic for tonight was the First Amendment. Normally when she walked to dinner, Lexie gathered her thoughts, came up with questions for the students, and asked herself how she felt about that night’s subject. But there was only one week of school left and Lexie was as unable to focus as the students themselves. An unsettled itchiness had spread through campus and every single human around wanted simply to be free of it.

  Lexie planned to spend most of the summer in Daniel’s Boston apartment. She figured she’d come to Ruxton on occasion—all her stuff was here, she’d have to pick up a change of clothes every once in a while. Don McClear had even mentioned that if Lexie were dating, and if she were particularly discreet, the person she was seeing could sleep in her apartment once the students had evacuated. Surely he had no idea she was seeing Daniel Waite, but he must have guessed she was in love. He’d probably guessed it of Amy, too. The two of them together were, Lexie thought, almost unbearable in their cheerfulness.

  For the fourth time on her walk to the dining hall, Lexie checked her phone for a text from Daniel. He had been in Asia for nearly two weeks and was so heavily escorted that he was able to eke out only a single text each day. Lexie felt pangs of loneliness with him gone but he’d be home in three days, Monday. Out of simple laziness, Lexie had stopped shaving her body while he was gone and had a Fred Flintstone shadow running down her thighs and a goaty tuft of hair on her pubic mound and in each armpit. Sunday afternoon, she was getting her hair highlighted and her body waxed. She’d be as sleek as a wet seal.

  At the dining hall, Lexie took her seat and looked around the table. That week, the kids had rotated groups.

  “This is your final dining group for the year,” Lexie said.

  “Oh my god, I’m going to cry!” Garrison Tauber said. She lived in Arizona and never saw any of the Ruxton kids over the summer.

  “I’ll visit you in Arizona,” The Prince said. “I’ve never been there.” During each of The Prince’s Ruxton summers, he visited kids in states he’d never before seen.

  Leighton Gaines and Piper Riley were getting the food. Lexie wished they’d hurry as she didn’t have the patience or disposition for aimless chatter. She molded her face into a simple half smile, crossed one leg over the other, and floated off in her mind. As Leighton and Piper poured water or milk into the glasses, Lexie thought about the way her naked body and Daniel’s naked body sometimes suctioned together as if they were a single entity. A giant squid that was being rejoined after a temporary split in two.

  “Miss James,” The Prince said. “Can we p
lease start with a general discussion about the separation of church and state and whether or not that idea is being fully practiced in the United States?”

  “Certainly.” Lexie blinked. Did her face look different when she was thinking about sex? “Why don’t we have Kaeli start?”

  Kaeli Tripp was from Nashville, Tennessee. Her parents were famous country singers who fell in love after recording a duet together. Most of the kids at Ruxton didn’t listen to country music so Kaeli wasn’t as sought after as a friend as, say, Cooper McBride, the boy whose mother was the president of one of the major movie studios, or Cece Neale, whose father was a sportscaster who had been a star pitcher for the Red Sox. But Kaeli, as a practicing and faithful Christian and as president of the speech club, would be the perfect person to articulate one side of the argument.

  “I’d love to start,” Kaeli said.

  “Great. Why don’t we have Dewey speak next and we’ll all fall in from there.” Dewey Summers came from a long line of Boston Democrats. Kaeli and Dewey could lead the table into an energetic verbal hacky-sack volley that would relieve Lexie from the burden of engaging.

  The kids talked and Lexie drifted off. In the midst of remembering a moonlit night when she and Daniel had sex on the dock at the lake house, Lexie sensed eyes on her. She turned and caught Ethan Waite staring. Ethan’s eyes so resembled Daniel’s that Lexie startled. It was as if her fantasy had materialized. Lexie smiled. Ethan smiled. They both turned back to their own tables.

  That evening, Amy lay on Lexie’s bed and watched Lexie pick out an outfit. They were going to a local bar for drinks before Amy met up with Cal.

  “This?” Lexie held up a short red dress that she could never wear on campus.

  “That looks like something a reality TV star would put on for a girls’ night out.”