The Tutor

by Peter Abrahams

  “You’ve got the best hair in the world,” Mom said.

  “Not as nice as yours.”

  “A thousand times nicer.”

  Mom went into the mudroom. Ruby knew hair couldn’t feel anything, but that kiss lingered in her hair anyway.

  Mom came back, coat off. “Brandon’s not home?”

  She’d have seen that his jacket, the varsity jacket with West Mill Tennis on the back, wasn’t there. “He’s at Dewey’s,” Ruby said. The up-and-down line appeared between Mom’s eyes. “Working on an essay.”

  “At Dewey’s?”

  Ruby nodded.

  “Did he say when he’ll be home?”

  “Not too late.”

  Ruby heard Mom taking a deep breath. Then the garage door was whining open, the Triumph rumbling in, and Dad came in through the side door.

  “Hi, everybody,” he said. He went to the butcher block, grabbed a ball of orange chicken right from the carton. “Where’s Brandon?”

  “At Dewey’s, evidently,” said Mom. “Working on an essay.”

  Dad glanced up, a second orange chicken ball in his hand. “Where’s Dewey going to college?”

  “That’s an interesting question,” Mom said.

  Ruby got ready for an interesting answer, but that wasn’t what came next.

  “How so?” Dad said.

  All of a sudden they were on the edge of fighting about something. Dewey? Were they going to fight about Dewey’s college plans? Ruby liked Dewey. He had the funniest bumper sticker she’d ever seen but you had to get real close to read it: Fuck You You Fuckin Fuck. Driving around with that on the back of his car! She almost started laughing right there at the table.

  “Just that we should have been taking a little more notice of the college plans of Brandon’s peer group,” Mom said.

  Mom and Dad exchanged a look that Ruby didn’t get. “Where’s Bran going to college?” she said, reaching for a fortune cookie.

  “There’s another good question,” Mom said.

  Mom and Dad were still looking at each other, communicating something. Dad broke off whatever it was first, turned to Ruby and said: “How was your day, sweetheart?”

  “Great,” said Ruby, removing the crinkly wrapper from the fortune cookie.

  “Did you see that girl, what’s her name, Mickey Gudukas’s daughter?”

  “Kyla. We played in the round robin.”

  “Whip her butt?”

  “Nope.”

  Dad came over, sat down at the table. “How do you like tennis, anyway?” he said.

  “How do I like it?”

  “Yeah. As a game, if you see what I’m getting at.”

  He had a strange look on his face, like her opinion mattered to him. He was a great dad. She knew exactly what he was getting at and told him the complete truth. “It’s just like math.”

  “What did that mean?” Scott asked after Ruby went upstairs to do her homework.

  “No idea,” said Linda. “But she’s not doing well at math. I don’t think she even knows her times tables.”

  “Oh, boy,” Scott said, a commonplace remark, but it set her thinking, and him too: Linda could see it in his eyes, an inward look combined with a hint of moisture, as though he’d blinked too much. Fifth grade, where Ruby was now, had been Adam’s last year of school. Along with everything else, he’d been captain of the math team.

  “It’s not too early to start worrying about her,” Linda said. “Can you imagine how competitive it’s going to be when she starts applying to college?”

  Scott undid the top button on his pants—did he have to do that every night?—and ate the rest of Ruby’s egg roll. Then he got up, went to the liquor cabinet, poured himself a Scotch.

  “I hope you’re taking this seriously.”

  “Of course I am. Something to drink?”

  “We’re going to have to be united on this.”

  “On what, exactly?”

  “Making Brandon look like the best candidate we can. It’s not just the academics.” Linda started making notes on a Blue Dragon paper napkin. “The academics boil down to three things—GPA, course difficulty, SAT. Then there’s community service, of which he has none, and sports. Is he any good at tennis? We might as well face this right now.”

  “He was better at soccer, if you want my true opinion.”

  “Then why did you let him drop it?”

  “I let him drop it?”

  “You’re the one he talked to.”

  “You mean that scene in the car after the Old Mill game? He was going to do it no matter what I said. The coach is an asshole—he’s right about that.”

  “Everybody has to learn how to get along with assholes.”

  Scott gazed into his glass. Was he thinking about what she’d just said? The glass was empty. He got up to pour another.

  Soccer was in the past. “Let’s get back to tennis,” Linda said. “Is he even good enough to play D three?”

  “Back when I played college? Yeah. Now, I don’t know. It’s tougher.”

  “Who would know?”

  “Erich,” Scott said. “I’ll ask him.” Erich coached the West Mill varsity.

  “Thank you,” Linda said, writing Erich on the napkin, under the dragon’s tail. Beside that she wrote: Special talents? Zip. At least Ruby had her saxophone. She made a mental note to get a progress report from the band teacher. All this would have to go on the computer. Linda started organizing future files in her head.

  Then Scott surprised her. He opened his briefcase, took out two cardboard boxes, the size and shape of library card index drawers. Each was marked SAT Survival Kit. “Picked these up on the way home,” he said, sliding them across the table.

  Linda opened the boxes. They were packed tight with SAT flash cards, one box verbal, one box math. Linda opened the math box, plucked a card at random.

  A line has x-intercept at x + 3 and y-intercept at y = –1⁄4. Find the slope of the line.

  A) –1⁄12

  B) 1⁄12

  C) 12

  D) –12

  E) None of the above

  “Oh, Scott,” she said, “this is going to be all right, isn’t it?”

  She leaned down and kissed him, mostly on the side of the face, a little overlap on the ear. He was going to take this seriously; they were going to pull together, get Brandon into somewhere really good.

  “Sure,” he said. “Stop worrying.”

  They heard the front door open.

  4

  “Hey,” said Brandon, coming into the kitchen.

  “Hello, Brandon,” said Linda.

  “How’s it goin’?” said Scott.

  “Same old same old,” said Brandon, flipping open the carton of duck with oyster sauce, moving on to the orange chicken instead.

  “Feeling all right?” said Linda. “You look a little flushed.”

  “Feel great,” said Brandon, opening the fridge, drinking orange juice from the carton.

  “A glass, please,” said Linda.

  “Oops,” said Brandon, and gulped some more.

  “How’s Dewey these days?” said Scott.

  “Decent,” said Brandon.

  “What are his college plans?” said Linda.

  Brandon shrugged.

  “Did he take the SAT?” said Linda.

  “I guess.”

  “Any idea how he did?”

  “Nope.”

  “You don’t discuss this kind of thing with your friends?”

  “What kind of thing?”

  “The SAT, college,” said Scott.

  “The future,” said Linda.

  “They’re my friends,” Brandon said. “Why would we talk about that?”

  “What do you talk about?” Linda said.

  Brandon knew his mother was a pretty smart woman, but had he ever heard a stupider question than that? “You know,” he said. “Stuff.”

  There was a silence. Brandon dug a fork into the Mongolian beef. It was good. Fu
cking Blue Dragon, coming through again. He was so hungry, could have just sat down and eaten everything on the table. On the other hand, the smart move was maybe to get up to his room, disappear. He was about to take the first step.

  Linda said: “How did the essay go?”

  “Essay?” The room was unsteady for a moment. Brandon caught his reflection in the window behind Ruby’s seat. He looked totally bombed. Why? He’d had only eight or ten beers the whole day. Must have been those porters to start. Had there been another one later on?

  “That you worked on at Dewey’s.”

  “Oh, it’s just a rough draft.”

  “On what subject?” Linda said. Scott had the last chicken ball.

  “Macbeth,” said Brandon. Quick thinking, and the smart thing to do once he was up in his room would be to study for the Macbeth test and arrange for a makeup. He grabbed an egg roll and turned to go.

  “I loved Macbeth,” Linda said.

  “You did?”

  “I had a great teacher. He knew the whole play by heart.”

  Brandon thought of Mr. Monson, putting in time till retirement, the Cliffs Notes for Macbeth half hidden in the drawer of his desk. “Cool,” he said, because it kind of was. But not an impossible feat of memory: in one day, this day, he himself had already learned the lyrics of three or four cuts on the Unka Death CD, without even trying.

  “What’s the theme?” Linda said.

  “Theme?”

  “Of your essay.”

  Mom had been an English major, loved to read books by the pool when they were on vacation, but Christ, why now? “The witches,” he said. He had nowhere else to go.

  “What about them?” She had that look she got when company came over and some interesting intellectual discussion was about to begin.

  “Shouldn’t we be getting down to business here?” Scott said.

  “Can’t you see this is all part of it?” said Linda.

  “What’s going on?” said Brandon.

  “Just tell me what about the witches. I’m interested.”

  Brandon took a guess. “How they stir up trouble,” he said.

  “An undercurrent of fate moving the whole story? That sounds very promising, Brandon.”

  “Thanks.” He took one last forkful of Mongolian beef. “I’ll just be—”

  “Sit down a minute,” Scott said.

  “Huh?”

  “Please,” said Linda. “This is important.”

  They both looked pale. Brandon got scared: that pale look, the empty bedroom. “Is someone sick?”

  “Nothing like that,” said Linda. “Let’s all just sit down.”

  They sat at the table, Scott at one end, Linda at the other, Brandon between them, facing the bow window.

  “We had some alarming—”

  “Disturbing,” Linda said.

  “Disturbing news today,” Scott said.

  How? How the fuck had that happened? Had the school called and all that shit about Dewey and the essay was just to let him dig in deeper? But the school only started calling when you got to level two, and Brandon was barely halfway to one, for Christ’s sake. Unless—was it possible that the parking lot monitor had seen them cruise by and later checked to see if they were in class? That fucking Mr. Kranepool—the biggest asshole in the school. Brandon got ready for a scene.

  “We found out your SAT results,” Linda said.

  “That’s it?”

  “Ten ninety.”

  Thank Christ. Brandon let out a big sigh of relief. His mom must have misinterpreted that, had to since she didn’t know the real story—he was in the clear!—because she said:

  “Now don’t be too upset.”

  “About what?”

  “Your SAT score.”

  “I’m not,” Brandon said. Then he remembered hearing somewhere that the scores weren’t coming till next week, or maybe next month. “It came early or something?” he said, just to make a little conversation.

  “There’s a number you can call.”

  “A number?”

  “One of those credit card things,” Scott said.

  “It cost money?”

  “Only thirteen dollars,” Scott said.

  They glanced at each other, Mom and Dad. They weren’t telling the truth about the thirteen bucks? Must be something else.

  “You couldn’t wait?” Brandon said. They could be pretty weird.

  “It’s kind of important,” Scott said.

  “Ten ninety, putting you in the seventy-fifth percentile,” Linda said.

  Brandon shrugged. “Not bad, huh?” Was that the test where he skipped a whole page of questions by mistake, just a little wrecked from the Friday night keg party in the woods after the Old Mill game, or was he mixing it up with geometry? Months ago, or weeks, anyway, hard to remember.

  “First, Brandon, I want you to understand that your father and I both know you’re very bright.”

  “Big brain in there, kid,” said Scott.

  “The problem is, some very bright kids haven’t yet learned the skills that allow them to show how bright they are on these kinds of tests.”

  Yakety fuckin’ yak. Where the hell was this going? And all of a sudden, with that funny way beer had, he needed to piss.

  “Do you understand the relationship of the SAT to college acceptance?” Linda said.

  “Is that a trick question?” Brandon said.

  “Hey,” said Scott. “This is serious.”

  “Colleges make you take it,” Brandon said.

  “Right,” said Linda. “But I meant the numerical relationship. I did a little research today. Guess what the median SAT score for last year’s freshman class at Yale was.”

  “Three thousand.”

  “It’s out of sixteen hundred, Brandon.”

  “Sixteen oh one.”

  “Knock it off,” said Scott. Those little pink anger patches that hardly ever appeared on his cheeks were just visible now.

  “Fourteen thirty,” said Linda. She was looking at him with big eyes, like she was trying to hypnotize him or something.

  “Who wants to go to Yale?” Brandon said.

  Linda got up, went out to the garage. Brandon heard her car door open and close. Scott sat back in his chair, kind of like he was on a break. Linda returned with a stack of thick books. College, College, College, it said on every one. She leafed through the top book.

  “Twelve thousand and forty-six applicants wanted to go to Yale last year. They accepted eighteen percent.”

  “Good for them,” said Brandon.

  “Or take Brown,” said Linda. “Providence is nice, remember?” She found the page. “Fourteen thousand nine hundred applied, eighteen percent accepted. Average verbal six ninety, average math six ninety.”

  “What’s so nice about Providence?” Brandon said.

  “Federal Hill? The restaurant we went to after that tournament?”

  “The food sucked.”

  “Damn it,” Scott said. He grabbed one of the books, whipped through, stabbing schools with his index finger. “Amherst—six ninety-eight verbal, seven hundred math. Haverford—middle fifty percent range, verbal six forty to seven twenty, math six thirty to seven thirty. Dartmouth—seven eleven, seven oh four. BU, BU for Christ’s sake—six thirty, six thirty-two.” He looked up at Brandon. Mom was watching from the other side. Crosshairs.

  “What does it say for UConn?” he said.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” said Scott.

  “You both went there.”

  “Things were different then,” Linda said.

  “How? You guys went to UConn, you’re successful.”

  “You’re missing the point,” Linda said. “Nowadays it’s vital to get into a top college. Do you know what a difference it makes if you’ve got Princeton or Stanford or somewhere on your resume? I see it all the time. And as you must realize from just this brief survey, even someplace like BU is going to be a stretch for you if things keep up the way they are.�
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  “Okay, okay,” Brandon said, standing up. “I’ll do better next time.”

  “Great, Brandon,” said Linda.

  “What we were hoping you’d say,” said Scott.

  “Hey, no problem,” said Brandon, rolling up a quick moo shu pork to go. Was that all it took? Those were the magic words? I’ll do better? You never knew.

  “We’ll sign you up for an SAT prep course tomorrow,” Linda said. “Kaplan or Princeton Review? Completely your choice.”

  “About what?” Brandon, already out of there in his mind and really needing to piss, missed that one.

  “Which course to take,” Linda said. “I checked the Web sites. They’re both twice a week, one night and Saturday mornings, which shouldn’t affect tennis, and of course we’ll want to fit in community service at some point, sooner the better, but—”

  “I’m not taking any fucking SAT course.”

  The pink patches on Scott’s face went red.

  “Do you know what would have happened if I’d talked to my old man like that?”

  Brandon rolled his eyes; made him a bit dizzy, he wouldn’t do it again. “I’m not taking any SAT course.”

  “But Brandon,” Linda said, “haven’t you been listening?”

  “Forget it.” He started walking away.

  “Do you think Sam would act this way?” Scott said.

  “Sam? What’s that asshole got to do with it?”

  “That asshole,” said Scott, “will probably go to Harvard.”

  “He’ll still be an asshole,” Brandon said, walking out of the kitchen, into the front hall, on the way to a good long piss, his room, an end to all this bullshit. He raised his voice to make sure they’d hear. “And no way on that goddamn course. You can’t make me and that’s that.”

  The front doorbell rang. Brandon happened to be right there. He opened the door. It was true: they couldn’t make him. They could drop him off at Kaplan, Princeton Review, whatever it was, and pick him up, but they couldn’t make him listen to one word, make one mark on a sheet of paper, answer a single question. The course wasn’t going to happen. End of story.