Meanwhile, drinking on the Exeter campus was no joke. The school had a zero-strike policy, so Jonathan had virtually no experience with alcohol, especially the hard stuff. He didn’t have much of an appetite for it anyway—even in the summertime he stuck to beers he rarely finished. He liked to feel in control at all times. To know what was coming next was the ultimate feeling of peace to him. Later in life, he’d wonder why he chose a career with wildly unpredictable ups and downs given his predilection for stability. Or why he’d fallen for a woman who kept him perpetually guessing.
The night of the hazing, the seniors met in the dorm room of Todd Porter, the team’s captain. Todd mixed extra-potent Long Island iced teas, which everyone choked down. The assignments were doled out. Jonathan stared at the piece of paper in his palm: Daniel Rubia-Mendez, with his dorm room number scrawled next to it.
His plan had been to do the old eyebrow shave. It was harmless enough, quick, and if he felt especially bold, he’d use the lipstick he took from Brett’s backpack and fill in Daniel’s lips while he was at it. Jonathan had little opinion on the hazing tradition. When he had been a freshman, the senior assigned to him hung his boxers in the girls’ locker room with a note that said, “Dear Mom, I don’t know how to do my laundry so I’ve been wearing dirty underwear. Please help. Love, Jon Coyne.” As though Betsy had any idea how to do laundry either.
That whole episode was pretty stupid in his estimation. He had no urge, though, to improve upon what was done to him. The eyebrow-shaving seemed the simplest and easiest choice at first. But the mix of tequila, vodka, rum and gin, which had been passed around at least twice, made him a little nervous to put a razor to the kid’s face. What if his hand slipped? Better to do his legs, where there was less room for a dangerous error.
Breaking into Daniel’s room was easy enough and he found the kid and his roommate, a boy named Chase Wilde, both sleeping soundly in the tiny space. Chase’s older brother had graduated from Exeter the spring before and was now a freshman at Harvard—Jonathan hadn’t been close to the guy, but they’d known each other well enough to trade friendly nods in the dining hall. Like the Coynes, the Wildes were an old Exeter family, which meant Chase wouldn’t be a problem if he woke up while Jonathan was mid-shave. A relief.
Photos of Daniel’s family were tacked up on the wall—Daniel with an older boy and two younger girls sitting on a stoop with melting ice pops; Daniel as a little boy next to his father in uniform; Daniel’s mother, so young-looking, wearing a big cross around her neck. A certificate of completion from the Bronx Borough Diversity Talent Initiative was table-tented on his desk. You got the feeling his mother made him bring it: Show those privileged kids what you’re made of, mijo.
Gently, he lifted the blanket, a Star Wars design similar to what he’d used back home (but only through elementary school), and lowered the razor to Daniel’s calf. Around campus, similar things were taking place: bad haircuts, water-filled condoms strung up like Christmas lights, roommates chained together with furry handcuffs. As Jonathan leaned over to make his first scrape, he felt a hand land on his shoulder.
“What are you doing, man?” Daniel said.
Jonathan scrambled upright, landed his fist square in Daniel’s jaw. Daniel dropped backward, into his Luke Skywalker pillow. The freshman reached forward with both hands, moving to shove Jonathan off of him. Jonathan ducked to the side, then landed another blow, this time to Daniel’s right eye.
“Please stop!” Daniel begged. “Why are you doing this?”
“Quit being a pussy,” Jonathan said. A few more hits. Maybe six in total. Daniel hit back a few times, he had to have. “I bet none of the other rookies are being bitches.” Daniel’s eye swelled up immediately, the dramatic change in proportion noticeable even in the dark. It made Jonathan feel eerily powerful to be able to change someone’s body in that way. He’d felt so powerless lately—his father was making calls to ensure his college acceptance; his mother was lining up a dreadfully boring summer job for him in Boston; even his friends were the ones always calling the shots. Finally, he was in control. But the stupid freshman wasn’t playing along. He knew he should stop. He had no particular ax to grind against this kid, no desire to actually hurt him. But he went on, the pulse of frightening emotions gushing through his fists like a big, awful catharsis.
Suddenly, the lights flicked on.
Daniel’s roommate, sitting upright in bed, watching.
Lawyers, different accounts of what happened, scandal. An administration stressed, very stressed. Everything kept out of the papers, of course.
All the parents involved. An expulsion seeming likely. Very likely. And then, a new building on campus bearing his family’s name making everything okay. A cultural center.
It was the insider abusing the outsider. A story with an obvious villain. Except it wasn’t like that.
A cloud on senior year, then well beyond that. Jonathan lived every day that followed with a lingering confusion about what lay within him. A constant hum in his subconscious, the always-present question of “why” making infinity loops in his brain. And then fear of a reprisal; fear of a recurrence. Finally, the crucial reminder, to himself, that he was drunk. That night, a fuzzy layer had existed between the real him and the outside world. He wasn’t some psychopath with a demon lurking within. No, he was a nice guy who had had too much of a drink that he later found out had also been laced with absinthe.
Brett, angel-like in her compassion, one of the only people at school to really know him on a deeper level, stood by Jonathan in all the ways that counted: sitting next to him in the dining hall, cheering wildly during his races, accepting when he asked her to prom. All those kind acts piling up while alternate versions of the truth were whispered from covered mouths to perked-up ears whenever he walked into a room.
He turned Harvard down in April, but not because he was seeking to be an iconoclast in his crimson-blood family. He chose Brown over Harvard because Brandon Wilde, the older brother of Daniel’s freshman roommate, was at Harvard. Chase, likely terrified of Jonathan’s clout among the upperclassmen, told the administration and his friends that he had slept through most of what occurred. But the boy had probably shared the truth with someone, and his brother was a likely confessor. The thought of that shadow following Jonathan to college was unbearable, or so it seemed when he was seventeen years old and still a spineless reed, his peer group all just wet pieces of clay upon which everything made an impression. Brown had an amazing crew team and no core curriculum—he used that as his ready excuse for why he went rogue.
Terrible guilt weighed on him when he broke up with Brett his sophomore year of college, but really, it wasn’t fair to string her along anymore. Not when he had a campus full of women to explore and couldn’t be tied down. She’d been stalwart in her loyalty, caring to a fault, but he’d still dumped her over Christmas break.
Strange the events that determine our futures. Brown led him to Cass. Good rising from bad, the familiar story of the silver lining. He never said a word to Cass about what happened at Exeter and prayed to God she would never find out. His wife was sensitive as shit about class issues and would read in all the wrong inferences. Cass had a chip on her shoulder, even if she would deny it to the death if he ever said that to her. But he knew the situation would have been so much different if he’d kicked the shit out of a white kid with a trust fund—especially in the way Cass would process it. But the team captain gave him Daniel, and his entire future nearly went up in smoke. And that first night, when he’d met Cass in college, he’d made up some bullshit about why he was at Brown. Now so many years had passed and he felt like an idiot explaining everything now. They were supposed to share everything with each other, but they really hadn’t come close to it. It took what had seemed like Cass’s outlandish suggestion that they might not really know each other to make him face just how much he’d been withholding.
* * *
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♦ ♦ ♦
PLANS WITH BRETT were made. Jonathan didn’t remember dating ever being this easy, assuming this was going to be a date. She was coming to New York City by chance to visit her aunt, who was having heart surgery. They would meet up for dinner on the day of her arrival, near her hotel. Simple as that.
Finally he did what he should have done months earlier. He slid the gold ring off his finger and put it in the safe on top of Cass’s bands. A soft ping sounded as the metal and stone collided.
19. CASS
SHE LOVED THE job at Spiegel Productions and it took a lot of restraint not to call Jonathan to rave about it. Only he knew how much she’d worried she’d never find joy in her career again. But she regretted her tone at their last encounter. She should have come across as more somber, but it was hard not to grow animated filling her husband in on the life she was carving out for herself, by herself. It had been a while since she’d felt so independent, and instead of echoing the pain of childhood, it was liberating.
Marty Spiegel had taken her call, much to her surprise. For one thing, he hadn’t given her a card at the restaurant. So when Monday morning rolled around, she had to google the main number for the studio and tell the operator she met Mr. Spiegel the other night and he’d asked her to be in touch. Four holds and three transfers later, he was on the line and an appointment was made. The Spiegel reception area was minimal, California cool. Orchids whose perfect blooms looked spun of silk were the only adornment on the tabletops. Everything was on a swivel so that when you entered, it felt like you were instantly put into orbit, an alternate universe created in the movies. Cass’s interview was with the head of publicity, Aidan Geller. He was a youngish guy, maybe a few years her junior, slickly dressed in skinny trousers and a finely checked button-down and some kind of cool laceless work shoes in gray felt that looked Dutch. His hair was spiky, either highlighted or the most perfectly sun-kissed shade of toffee she’d ever seen, and it framed his chiseled face perfectly. She had assumed he was gay from his coiffed and tidy appearance, but he referenced a girlfriend pretty early on. It was going to be tough to tell in California, that much was already obvious. Not that it mattered much to her. Not after her disastrous evening with Gavin and the headaches she got just scrolling through Tinder. She was looking to clear her head, not find a boyfriend. To see how much she missed Jonathan and to see what a Jonathan-less version of Cass would feel like. In a way she was trying her hand at acting all over again, slipping into a role she hadn’t played in six years. A single girl, one with no one to rely on but herself. In other words, her future if she didn’t return to her marriage.
Marty didn’t meet with her at all. She kept sneaking glances into different offices, but neither he nor Eli was anywhere to be found. There was a tiny part of her that thought maybe he was attracted to her at the restaurant and that’s why he was inviting her in for an interview. But their phone call had been strictly business and then he wasn’t there to greet her when she came in. The fantasy that in the company of three actresses, she was the one who stood out was quashed. At the very least, she had been hoping for a new mentor. Her job at PZA wasn’t just about loving theater and the cockeyed optimism required to mount a show on the Broadway stage. It was about Percy. The first older figure in her life she could truly count on.
Aidan gave her a tour of the studio, showing her the design rooms where the storyboards were created and the drool-worthy screening room, and then introduced her to a handful of people who worked in marketing and publicity. Maybe Marty wasn’t going to be the next Percy, but she’d still find satisfaction in her job amidst creative types again. She had reached a certain place in the Broadway world where her job felt a little bit rinse-and-repeat: brochures at the bus terminals; phone booth signage; direct mail to the senior centers in the surrounding suburbs. And still the shows would usually fail, because only about one in ten made their money back. Broadway shows have a far worse success rate than marriages, Percy had once quipped. Movies would present new challenges, and Spiegel was certainly at the center of it. Alexi had primed her on the last two years of movies the studio had put out, but the schooling had proved unnecessary. She couldn’t help but sense that her interview was a mere formality.
“You’ll be wanting benefits, I assume?” Aidan asked when they returned to his desk, confirming her assumption. The salary was presented to her, and before she even reviewed it or made a counteroffer, Cass was transcribing her Social Security number and filling in her bank account information for direct deposit. Twenty digits later, she was even further from Jonathan.
“Regarding the benefits, I get them from my husband’s job. So I’m all right.” She thought about having to give up those benefits one day. Winstar let its employees and their spouses use a concierge medical service and paid for three dental checkups a year, up to twenty therapy sessions, even a biennial visit to the Mayo Clinic. The Coynes rarely took advantage, but it was nice to know it was there. The health insurance offered at PZA was pitiful. Before getting married, health care consisted of visits to those doc-in-the-boxes with their glowing red signs advertising “Urgent Care” on dingy side streets.
“I didn’t realize you were married,” Aidan said.
This wasn’t the first time she’d had a bare ring finger since marrying Jonathan. She’d remove her ring before applying self-tanner or getting a massage, and then sometimes, just for kicks, she’d leave it off for a few hours, almost like she’d just forgotten to put it back on. The idea was to see if anyone would hit on her, to explore the way men would treat her if they thought she was available. Wearing a wedding ring was like having a “Do Not Enter” sign on your chest, and wouldn’t it be nice, she thought, to shake someone’s hand, or buy a cup of coffee, and not say to them Don’t bother without even speaking? But whenever she did it, she had to face the reality that nothing much happened. The skim latte was handed over without fanfare; the client shook her hand and moved on to the next. Because being married wasn’t something you wore on your finger; it was something you wore on your face. And now she knew she had crossed some invisible threshold. Her aura was single.
“I am,” Cass responded. “But I’m separated.”
“Oh,” Aidan said, not quite sure what to do with that information. He looked back down at his form, tapped the paper with the back of his pen. “So you won’t be needing the benefits then?”
“Correct. Well, I may end up needing those benefits. But I may not.” She found herself rambling on as Aidan looked at her like she was a two-headed alien. One thing she’d noted about being separated: it was a black-and-white world, and nobody seemed to know what to do with gray.
The first movie she was assigned to work on was The Titans, an action film based on a comic book series. She was part of a five-person team designing the movie posters; the idea was to roll posters out in succession, each one featuring one of the four stars of the series. These would plaster buses, subways and billboards across the country. She gleaned that while Marty and Eli churned out the big-budget action films to score easy profits, their passion, particularly Marty’s, was to make the smaller films that wouldn’t be given a chance at the bigger studios—the Disneys, the Foxes. You knew Marty, who was clearly the powerhouse between the two owners, trusted you when you were assigned to work on one of those under-the-radar gems, like the recent subtitled film about orphans in Indonesia or the upcoming one about a musical prodigy and his deaf mother. She was slotted to work on another big-budget project after she finished The Titans, but it didn’t bother her. She hadn’t become Percy’s right-hand woman overnight either. Goal-oriented, that was her thing. The budgets at Spiegel were so much vaster than her Broadway projects and the advertising reach just that much wider; she felt like everything around her was supersized. For the cost of The Titans’s media budget, entire Broadway shows were put on. It was dizzying, giving her a taste of Jonathan’s world, where the numbers were also staggering. At a
time when her personal life was shrinking, it was gratifying to feel her professional life expanding, as though one balloon was being let out to inflate another.
Marty still wasn’t around much. He traveled often to the sets and went on the road for publicity (she could sense even in his absence he was a control freak), and it was becoming clear that her grand plan to install him as the mentor figure in her life, to fill the immense void created by Percy’s death, was unrealistic. Hopefulness, she reminded herself again, was a wellspring of foolery. Like when she started Brown and assumed her life would be a smooth trajectory from that point on. Or when she married Jonathan and was positive she’d avoided her parents’ fate by shoring up a stable relationship that would go the distance. We plan, God laughs. It was a saying she’d never really believed in until recently.
At least friends at the office were easy to come by. She’d become particularly fond of this one coworker named Josephine, a California native who eagerly took Cass under her wing. In one aspect, Los Angeles reminded her of Michigan. The people were friendly and went out of their way to hold the door open, give you their parking spot, say good morning. She’d lived in New York for so long it had become routine to pray the elevator door would close before the next person could get on or to pretend not to notice the pregnant lady waiting for the taxi. If karma was a real thing, she was in trouble. The people she met at Spiegel and in Alexi’s apartment complex were genuinely interested in making small talk. Maybe it wasn’t even small to them, because they seemed to take it seriously, the how are yous being more than rhetorical.
The Intermission Page 20