Lexie turned onto the highway. She was going in the direction of Amy’s apartment. Hopefully she and Cal were there and not at Cal’s place, as Lexie had no idea where he lived. She needed to make sure Amy would move into Rilke for the final week of school. Lexie didn’t want to leave Don McClear with the same problem he’d had the day Dot died.
Lexie wondered if Dot would have foreseen the series of pitiable events, which ended with Lexie naked in bed with a student. After all, Dot had been entirely correct in pointing out that Lexie could never abide the beautiful small life of Peter. She knew better than Lexie herself that Lexie had been borne out of too much chaos to ever sit still. Dot probably had written on a piece of paper how many years until Lexie and Peter’s marriage ended. Or maybe—even after she bought the dress—she knew it wouldn’t happen; knew the engagement was one of many mistakes Lexie was bound to make as she emotionally worked herself away from San Leandro.
Lexie looked in the rearview mirror. She was alone on the stretch of highway. She saw Dot in her mind, heard her barking rasp as clearly as if she were sitting on the seat beside her . . . remember, the only life worth living is one where there’s been numerous fuckups.
Lexie smiled at her internal Dot. And it was during this smile, these simple few breaths of peaceful relief, that she noticed a red light rotating and flashing behind her.
Lexie was being pulled over.
22
THERE WAS A PAY PHONE IN THE JAIL CELL. A PHONE BOOK DANGLED below it, attached with a braided wire. Half the pages had been ripped out. You needed more than a quarter to use the phone and Lexie had nothing as all her belongings—her purse, her erased phone, her earrings, and watch—had been taken away from her when she “checked in,” as the cop had said.
She’d been arrested for breaking and entering the Waite house. She had also been charged with the petty theft of “one personal appliance,” which had quickly been discovered in the suitcase in her trunk. The theft of the Klonopin hadn’t been mentioned. Maybe Jen didn’t want the local police to know she had a prescription. Although once she’d reported the vibrator, what difference did a handful of antianxiety meds make?
The cement-floored cell had two room-length benches on either side. Lexie and four other women sat on one bench. An enormous woman slept along the other bench. In the back of the cell, behind a wooden plank—like what you might see in an outdoor shower—was a toilet that was currently unflushed and full. On the floor around the toilet, spilling out into the room, were wet clumps of toilet paper sitting in foul water. Amazingly, one or two of the woman in the cell (Lexie wasn’t quite sure who) smelled as bad as what emanated from the toilet. Lexie thought of the Middle Ages—congested cities with dirt roads and horseshit, life before deodorant and plumbing—and figured this is what it smelled like. Humans had likely lived entire lives surrounded by this stink. Lexie only had to endure it for . . . well, she wasn’t sure how long she’d be there. She hadn’t asked any questions when she’d been charged, fingerprinted, and photographed. She’d barely said a word.
Since she’d been pulled over, Lexie had been waiting for panic to hit. Surprisingly, it never did. Maybe anxiety showed up only when your body needed to tell you something you hadn’t yet faced. Currently, there was nothing left to uncover.
Lexie studied the large, sleeping woman across from her. Her white belly fell out of her shirt, the skin shimmery and striped like a fish. A string of drool, like a spider thread, connected the edge of her mouth to the bench. It broke and disappeared.
Beside the toilet, outside the privacy plank, was a small drinking fountain. Lexie stood and went to the fountain, gingerly stepping around the wet areas of the floor. The four women on the bench watched intently. One of them smiled as Lexie held her hair in one hand and started to bend over the fountain. It was a sly smile, an anticipatory smile.
“Should I not drink this?” Lexie asked. She backed away and let her hair fall.
“It’s fine, drink it.” The woman smiled. Her eyebrows were plucked into a graph line chevron; half her teeth were gone. Her face was dotted as if she had acne, but it wasn’t acne: flat, purple, bruisy-looking circles on her pale, pinkish skin.
“Don’t drink it,” a blond frizzy-haired woman said. She, too, had sketch-thin brows. Her long, white, spaghetti-strand arms dangled between her open legs like a macaque monkey. Her eyes were lizard-wide, pale blue, and her nose was so stunted it didn’t seem to be a nose. Lexie figured she had been a fetal alcohol baby. Poor thing, she didn’t have the wits not to end up here. This made Lexie feel only worse. She had a whole working brain, and she and this woman were now equals.
“Why can’t I drink it?” Lexie nodded toward the fountain.
“Girls have been smearing things all over it. It’s gross.”
“Huh.” Lexie wondered why and what they’d smeared over it. An act of rebellion, she supposed. Cage someone like an animal and they’ll behave like one. “I guess it’s a biohazard.”
“Biohazard!” The woman said, and she smiled revealing teeth that looked like canned corn (in size and color). “This whole place is a biohazard.” She stood and her baggy jeans fell to her hips. With one hand she pulled up the jeans, with the other she reached in her pocket and pulled out a handful of quarters. She held them in her open palm in front of Lexie.
“That for me?” Lexie asked.
“If you need them. There’s five bucks here.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Sometimes the cops will give you change if you ask nice enough.”
“Thanks so much.” Lexie plucked up two quarters.
“Take it all.” The woman encircled Lexie’s wrist with her free hand and let the quarters fall into her palm. They were sticky and warm, like hard candy that had already been sucked on. Lexie wondered what kind of biohazard she was now holding.
“I’ll pay you back.” Lexie was touched by the generosity, while also repulsed by the intimacy. She closed her fist and went to the phone. Lexie picked up the receiver (another biohazard, she assumed) and stood there. A terrible, weighty aloneness fell over her like a thick, wool cloak. She remembered her conversation with Ethan about Dot’s death. Lexie had pointed out that a life worth living was one where you gave love and felt loved. If she had been right about this, Lexie thought, her own life was currently of no value.
One by one, Lexie dropped in the quarters. Each falling coin made a beautiful, hollow clinking that Lexie hadn’t heard since she was a kid. She dialed the only number she knew by heart. The one person who likely loved her no matter how badly she’d fucked up.
Mitzy picked up on the first ring.
“Mom,” Lexie croaked.
“Honey, can you call me later? Russ and I are tryin’ to figure out where to put his canoe.”
“Who’s Russ?”
“Russ! Russ!” Mitzy said. Lexie heard a roaring man’s voice in the background shout, Russ is the man! The man of the house! Mitzy laughed. “He cracks me up!”
“Well, thanks for telling me his name, but I still don’t know who he is.” Lexie looked behind her to see if anyone was listening to this conversation. The frizzy-haired girl who had given her the quarters watched. One girl was braiding another’s hair, her fingers working the thick strands like someone playing a stringed instrument. And a giant of a woman with brown hair in a tight bun on top of her head had one bare foot on the bench and was bent over, picking at her toes. The fish-bellied woman across from them remained sleeping.
“My boyfriend!” Mitzy said. “He moved in tonight.”
“But it’s after midnight. How many hours have you been moving him in?” Lexie wasn’t surprised Mitzy didn’t notice that Lexie was calling after three in the morning Lexie’s time. Mitzy never could keep track of the time differences and had more than once called at an odd hour because she thought the East Coast was three hours earlier than the west.
“He didn’t get off work until eleven.”
“How long you have you be
en seeing Russ?” Lexie wasn’t sure why she cared. Men came and went—each one a variation on the same model: an alcoholic (from what Lexie could guess), always with a bursting, pregnant belly, waspy-looking in essence, pale eyes, paler skin, ruddy cheeks, and loose jowls.
“We’ve been together a week. But this is it, honey! This is the real thing. My true love. Russ is the last one!” It sounded like Russ and Mitzy were kissing.
“Mazel tov,” Lexie groaned. One of the best things you could say about Mitzy was that she was an optimist: always believing in her next great love.
“What did ya say?” Mitzy asked.
“I said mazel tov. It was kind of a joke. Jewish people say it when you want to congratulate someone.”
“Don’t tell me that boyfriend of yours is Jewish! You wouldn’t do something stupid like that, would you?” There was a giant bang in the background. The falling canoe? Mitzy didn’t audibly react.
“There are so many levels on which what you just said is wrong, but I don’t want to go into it now.” The smear of half affection toward her mother that had been brought out by Lexie’s desperate aloneness was evaporating. Mitzy was not her people. Her mother’s love, or her love for her mother, did not make Lexie feel like she had a reason to be alive.
“Lexie, you gotta be careful what kinda men you date! Those Jewish men will take all your money! There was a girl at Heidi Pies who—”
“Mom! He’s not Jewish and I don’t have any money for anyone to take. Anyway, I’ve gotta go, I was only calling to say hello.” Lexie glanced behind herself again to see if Frizz-head was listening. She was, it appeared.
“Well, you’ve been warned. Stay away—”
“He’s not Jewish!” Lexie whisper-yelled, trying to keep her mouth far from the receiver (biohazard!).
“No! That corner!” Mitzy was clearly talking to Russ. “Honey, I got too much to deal with here. Call me tomorrow or something.” The phone clanked a couple times as if it had been dropped to the floor and then Mitzy, or maybe it was Russ, picked up the receiver and hung up.
Lexie replaced the receiver and waited for her change. Very little came out; it was like playing penny slots. If Lexie hadn’t borrowed the money from Frizz, she would have left it there so as to avoid sticking her fingers in the slot.
“You dating a Jewish guy?” Frizz asked.
“I’m not dating anyone.” Lexie fingered out the coins before there was time to overthink it. “Thanks again for the money.” She handed the coins off to Frizz, then sat opposite her, at the feet of the woman who was lying on the bench alone.
“Were you dating a Jewish guy?”
Lexie leaned her head back against the wall and shut her eyes. She pretended she had instantly fallen asleep.
“I dated a Jewish guy once,” someone said. Lexie wasn’t sure who, as she didn’t open her eyes. It wasn’t Frizz’s voice. “He had a huge dick.” The other women laughed and then the four voices on the bench across from Lexie discussed the various sizes of penises they’d encountered over the years. One woman, in a series of sentences that jolted Lexie’s stomach, described her uncle’s large penis. She qualified it by saying maybe it only looked large because she was twelve at the time.
“I’m sorry you went through that,” Lexie whispered, a form of a prayer for whomever had been speaking.
LEXIE WASN’T SURE WHAT TIME IT WAS, AND SHE WASN’T EVEN SURE if she’d actually slept, but it appeared to be morning when a cop stood at the cell door, unlocked it, and motioned to Lexie.
“Me?” she asked. He nodded.
Lexie stood and followed him out. She looked back once and waved to the women on the bench. Only Frizz waved back.
In the small room where the cops had taken all her personal belongings, Lexie was handed a plastic basket with her purse, cell phone, watch, and earrings. She was also handed a clipboard with a paper on it that she was asked to sign. Lexie signed without reading it. She turned to the cop who stood with her and said, “Am I free?”
“Charges were dropped.”
“Will you give this to that blond, skinny, frizzy-haired woman in there?” Lexie opened her wallet and pulled out a twenty.
“Tammy,” he said, and he shoved the bill in his pocket.
Lexie followed the officer down a cement-floored corridor. “Please don’t forget to give her that money,” she said. The officer nodded and then opened a door and let Lexie exit into the blinding sunlight.
There were two cars, about ten feet apart, facing the entrance of the elementary school–sized police station. One of the cars was Lexie’s. The sun hammered the windshields making it impossible to see if anyone was inside either vehicle. Don McClear stepped out of Lexie’s car and walked toward her. As he approached, Lexie lifted her hands to her face and started crying. Don put a stiff arm on Lexie’s back and patted her. She thought he was saying there there, although she was crying so hard she couldn’t hear him well, so maybe he was saying, dear dear.
“Let’s sit in my car for a minute,” Don said. Lexie stopped crying and took one long juddering breath.
Don’s car was a four-door, burgundy-colored thing. He opened the back door and Lexie got in. Janet Irwin was in the front passenger seat.
“Oh god,” Lexie gasped.
“How many people know?” Janet asked.
“Know what?” Lexie asked. Don got in the driver’s seat and shut the door. Lexie had never been traditionally parented, but right now, in this position (two adults turned to her from the front seat, a concerned and scolding look on their faces) Lexie understood what it would have been like to have had “normal” parents. That she had disappointed Don and Janet gave her shame a sharper, more pointed form.
“Know about your affair with Daniel Waite and your . . .” Janet shook her head. She wasn’t going to say whatever it was aloud. The break-in? The vibrator? Sex with Ethan?
“The encounter with Ethan Waite,” Don said.
“Amy knows everything. But she won’t tell anyone.” Lexie felt a surge of tears, but forced them to recede. She didn’t need to humiliate herself further.
“I’m furious that he would do this to us again!” Janet said. It was an uncharacteristic outburst and she quickly righted herself—pinning her mouth shut and tugging on the hem of her skirt as if her slip was showing.
“Has Ethan slept with other teachers?” Lexie was stunned.
Janet took a breath, shored herself up, and said nothing.
“Of course not,” Don said, and Lexie instantly understood that it was Daniel she had been speaking of. Daniel who had done this before.
“Wait . . . did Melanie Birkin also have an affair with Daniel?”
Don jerked his chin toward Janet who barely flinched. And there was the answer. Lexie leaned back and thumped her head against the seat. How many had there been? Maybe it was like mice—if you saw one, it meant there were a hundred.
“This Ethan business,” Janet said. “That should never have happened. It’s reprehensible.”
“I’m sorry.” Lexie shut her eyes. “I was on drugs, antianxiety medication and alcohol, and I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“Well, I should hope not. Anyone who would do that in their right mind is very sick indeed.” Lexie felt Janet staring at her waiting for Lexie to open her eyes. She did, and then Janet looked away.
“We have something for you.” Don pointed to the glove compartment. Janet opened it and pulled out a thick manila envelope that she handed to Don. He held his hand over the seat and Lexie took the envelope. “Your summer sabbatical money.”
“But aren’t I fired?” Lexie opened the envelope and looked in. It was more money than she’d ever seen. When Lexie was a kid she always wished she’d find an envelope of cash. She’d take it straight to 7-Eleven and buy whatever she wanted for herself, Betsy, and anyone else who walked in. As she got older, she still wished for envelopes of cash—enough to start a nonprofit, and maybe buy a couple pairs of soft, leather boots, too.
; “Count it later,” Janet said.
“You have been dismissed,” Don said.
“If I’m fired, why are you giving me summer sabbatical money?” Maybe if she had slept more, or if she hadn’t done any drugs the past two days, things would make sense. Everything felt backward.
“Lexie,” Don spoke in his formal meeting voice. “Ruxton has an international reputation that we’d like to uphold. And we believe that if no one catches wind of your indiscretions, things would be better for the school as a whole.”
“So you’re paying me off to keep quiet?”
“As we said,” Janet said firmly, “it’s summer sabbatical money.” She stared at Lexie as if to drill information into her. A bubble of meaning popped into Lexie’s brain. The Waites funded the faculty sabbaticals. This was hush money from Daniel Waite. That’s why the charges had been dropped. Don and Janet were Daniel Waite’s lackeys. Stoolies. Henchmen. Lexie felt worse for them than she did for herself. How terrible to be continually squirming at the well-shod feet of Daniel Waite.
“Are you going to tell the students I was fired?”
“We’ll tell them you fell ill,” Don said.
“Well, feel free to kill off someone in my family if that makes the story any better.” Lexie opened the envelope again and peered in. The bills in front of each bundle were hundreds. She shifted the money around to see if there was a letter, a note, a single word on an index card.
“We’re going to ask Amy to stay in Rilke for the last week,” Janet said. “I’m sure she’ll be happy to send you anything you’ve left behind.”
“Can you give me her number? I don’t have any numbers because Daniel erased my phone and changed the password.” Lexie waved her phone in the air as if to show them.
The Trouble with Lexie Page 25