“So how do you feel in all of this?”
Dr. Thayer opens her mouth and then closes it. She smiles, then drops the smile, then takes it up again. The question behind Noah’s— Who is looking out for you?—has stunned her. He wonders if he should apologize, although the actual question he posed was fairly innocuous.
There is only a foot of open floor between them. He makes to get up and join her on the couch but then changes his mind. He is collected and smiling and then suddenly he has spilled wine on the new rug.
He darts to his feet. “I’m so sorry. Let me get a towel,” he exclaims.
Dr. Thayer looks at him coldly. All the light has gone out of the room. Noah should not have sprung up. “It’s all right, Noah,” she says, exasperated. “I’ll call Fuen in to take care of it.”
Noah can’t stop his leg from shaking. His eyes dart over the reclining form of Dr. Thayer, who is both languid and hostile. “I can really get it,” Noah says. “Don’t bother Fuen.”
“Jesus. Fuen will get it. Stop worrying.”
“Sorry.”
Dr. Thayer tries to smile for a moment, but then the contrived expression breaks and she throws her hands on her knees and grimaces. She gets up. “I won’t keep you any longer.”
Noah is happy to get his coat. “You won’t be billed for this session,” he says, trying to sound lighthearted.
“Noah. You came, you bill for a session. What are you saying about yourself otherwise?”
“Okay, well, thanks for the tip, then.”
“Good night. See you on Wednesday.”
Since their double date, Noah has taken to avoiding Roberto. He walks back from the subway along Riverside Drive, which is scenic and not at all “happening”; he is unlikely to encounter Roberto there. He thinks of Roberto’s crassness, and of his own failure to make an impression on his date. The experience that night, coupled with his recent brush with Dr. Thayer, leaves Noah defensive, with the sour impression that most people on earth are sexual predators in one guise or another. He yearns for simplicity, serenity.
Unfortunately, avoiding Roberto also means avoiding the gym. Although Noah gained pounds of muscle in the weeks after beginning working out, he is afraid that in recent days those pounds have softened into something dismayingly less firm. As he lies on the couch he pats his belly experimentally, passes his hand over it like a paddle over an air hockey table. Flab is new to him. It is kind of fun, he decides. He rolls over on the couch, sighs dramatically into the fabric.
From the bathroom comes the sound of a rock hitting porcelain—the exposed pipe has begun to corrode, and rust chips and bits of hardened insulation have begun to cascade into the bathtub. The latest chunk is quite large, and Noah has to hold it in two hands as he walks it down the stairs and out to the trash.
He pauses and savors the air. Or rather intends to savor the air, until he takes in the stench of the greasy streaks left on the road after the trash pickup that morning. He scans the block. Same monoliths of brick and concrete.
The mail-delivery woman is slamming letters into the mailboxes when he returns. Noah retreats inside with his mail: two offers for credit cards (Noah throws them away immediately; the temptation is too great; the glossy brochures slink in his hands like seductresses) and a letter from the Princeton loan office. The gray linen notice cheerfully informs him that, the postgraduation grace period being over, his loans administered through Princeton will now enter into repayment. They are not colossal but this will throw Noah’s budget, just recently tweaked to give him a $30-a-month surplus, back deep into negatives. Noah frowns, standing in the middle of his bare room. He sighs once, and then again, louder. After a few moments his frown begins to tremble.
He hates crying, can’t tolerate the selfish weakness of it. He will instead concentrate on ways out of his current situation. He powers up his laptop, opens his application essay, stares at the blinking cursor:
My life has always been one of contrasts. Much like a deconstructed text, my meanings do not give easily of themselves.
Crap. Total crap. He was proud of his opening yesterday, but today it feels awful. It has been faked; there is no passion in it.
He powers down the laptop and glances at his watch. It is six P.M ., and since Friday is his day off he has no tutoring to do. He calls his friend Tim and makes plans, but their movie doesn’t begin until ten. He knows he only calls his family when his life is slow, when he is not at his best, but he knows he should reach out to them, and he wants to speak to somebody, and they’re sure to be there. The message clicks on, his mother’s voice, her accent that guttural southern speech that fills him with reluctant shame, the inflection that speaks of boiled peanuts and bonfires and Jerry Springer, of everything Manhattan derides.
“Hey, guys, it’s Noah. Just calling to check in. Everything’s good here. Give me a call!” He closes his cell phone and stares at it. He’s always careful not to give specifics in his phone messages, not mention the particular Princeton friends or Broadway plays that he’s seeing, so they don’t feel he’s moved on from them, that he feels above them. Though, he acknowledges, he’s proud to have moved beyond the sinking force of his hometown. And doesn’t that mean that he thinks he’s done better than them? The phone in his hand vibrates. “Hello?”
“Hey, it’s Kent.”
“What’s up? I just called.”
“I know. I was out mowin’.”
“How’s the lawn going?”
“Are you serious?”
“Just trying to make conversation.”
Silence fills the line. “How’s school going?” Noah tries.
“School?”
“Yeah.”
“I figured Mom told you. I dropped out.”
“What the hell?”
“I’ve got a job. It pays pretty good. I’m helping pay the rent here.”
“You don’t need to pay the rent. You need to pass high school.”
“No, I don’t, and I didn’t. It’s over, man. I’m out.”
Noah knows he shouldn’t push his brother any further, that Kent’s guard is already up. “How do you feel about it?” he asks.
“Good, I really do.”
Noah pauses on the line. His brother does sound good. Or, at the least, relieved. More comfortable in his skin. But Noah can’t stop himself. “That was a fucking stupid thing to do,” Noah says. Even as he says it he wonders: if it was indeed stupid, why does he feel a flood of relief?
“No,” Kent says flatly. “It wasn’t.”
Noah throws his phone down on the bed. His brother has hung up on him. He’s furious, but more at himself than at Kent, he suspects. If he’s going to be some great teacher, how couldn’t he even help his own brother succeed? Maybe being a good instructor means letting some kids go, but he’s mad at the stupid reality of it, that he can control everything in himself but nothing of his brother. He can’t stand the reckless self-promotion of banking or consulting, but he fears he doesn’t have sufficient selflessness to be a good teacher.
Noah trudges into the kitchen. He remembers Hera’s being aghast to discover that Noah didn’t have a mother at home to cook him dinner; she seemed amazed that Noah managed to feed himself at all. There is no food in Noah’s fridge, and he is hungry. He is tired of soup and Taco Bell—it may be time to renew his friendship with Roberto and Hera.
Noah rummages through his cupboard for something to offer. The only unopened food item he owns is a jar of Swedish spaghetti sauce he bought on a whim as he paid for his furniture at Ikea. He throws it into a plastic grocery bag and heads out the door.
At the sound of the buzzer Hera thumps downstairs. She seems overjoyed to see Noah, and he is thrilled to see someone so undisguisedly pleased to see him. Her smile is the earnest opposite of the hostess smile of Dr. Thayer, whose hospitality is convincing only to those eager to be convinced. She beckons him upstairs and he follows in the airless zone behind her bulk. She disappears into her bedroom for a few moments and th
en reappears in a slightly more elegant muumuu, this one with a silver lamé hem.
“How ahr you, No-ah?” She seems to be experimenting with accents—today her a ’s are as long as the royal family’s.
“I’m doing very well, thanks,” Noah says.
“You have eaten?” Hera asks, moving toward the kitchen.
“I brought this,” Noah says, pulling the jar of spaghetti sauce out of the crinkling plastic. Noah bites his lip; now it seems rude to have brought something, since Hera will be the one to toil over it. But Hera sees the offering and claps her hands, beaming in wonder and joy, as if Noah has just produced the baby Moses.
“Oh, No-ah ! Thank you.” She carries the jar reverently into the kitchen.
“You’re welcome,” Noah says, toying with the frayed threads of the couch.
“Mmm-hmm,” Hera calls, her voice distracted. Her head and large bosom pop around the wall. “How much does your agency charge for you, No-ah?” Her head and bosom pop back into the kitchen.
“Oh, they charge plenty. It would pay better if they gave me more students.”
“My lovely daughter Titania”—Hera’s head reappears long enough to emphasize the word lovely —“she has always been so studious. She turns twenty this year. It is a hope of mine that she can to study, to go to college. Do you think she would be able to study well?”
“Yes, I’m sure she—”
“Because she is intelligent, not like Roberto, who is such a sweet boy but, you know, not rapid. I think she would do very good.”
There is a beseeching quality to Hera’s tone, as if Noah were sitting on an admissions council. “Your daughter sounds remarkable,” he says.
“A jewel. Noah,” she says, “you will love Titania.” She punches the word will as though it were a command. Perhaps it’s just because of her imperfect grasp of English. Noah involves himself in the tumbler of wine Hera has given him. “Titania!” Hera calls. “Come! Dinner will be soon!”
Noah coughs and stands. A girl enters from the hallway, drying her hands on an old towel. “Oh, hi,” she says, wiping her hand one last time on the towel, then on her pants, and then finally extending it to Noah. “My name is Olena. My mother will tell you it’s Titania, but it’s Olena.”
She is tall and slender, with a lovely scrubbed-pink face and a gleaming line of white teeth. Noah takes her hand. It is moist and cool.
“Noah is a tutor,” Hera says. She overenunciates the words, a parody of a hostess.
“I know,” Olena says. “I’ve been hearing all about it nonstop.” She is tall enough that she must bend slightly to meet Noah’s eyes. Her accent is faintly British.
“Your English is very good,” Noah says.
Olena nods swiftly. Like many foreigners who speak English well, she takes being complimented as an oblique insult, an affirmation that she is not a native speaker. “Your English is good too,” she says with a heavy wink.
Noah smiles. “Point taken.”
“Very good.” Olena yawns. Her fine hair has been pulled back in a careless ponytail. Her features are large and striking; the broad planes of her cheekbones, which mark her so strongly as Roberto’s sister, reflect the light of the exposed lightbulb above their heads.
Hera slaps another smudgy tumbler of wine on the table and then returns to the kitchen, not before flashing Noah a knowing smile.
Olena excuses herself, opens the fridge, and extracts a bottle of beer. She pops the lid off by sharply slamming the top against the counter. “You would like one, Noah?” she calls from the kitchen.
“Shut the fuck up!” comes Roberto’s groggy voice from the other bedroom. Olena retorts with a yell in piercing Albanian.
She returns to the table, pushes the wine her mother has poured to one side, and clanks her bottle against Noah’s wineglass. “Cheers. You,” Olena says quietly to Noah, “have become friends with Roberto, no?”
“We’ve spent some time together, yeah,” Noah says.
“I do not understand how we are even related. He is like a strange offshoot, proof of how diverse our genes must be, do you know what I mean? That we were both produced by, you know, the same gametes—it is amazing.” Her lips curl sardonically as she speaks, as though she is perpetually disappointed by the limits of language. Noah stares at her mouth.
They take a gulp of their respective drinks. “Have you noticed,” Olena asks, “that there are no books here? It is as if my family came to America and became simple. Perhaps”—she smiles thinly—“this is what your country does to people.”
“Albania, I suppose, is full of intellectuals?” Noah smiles knowingly, as though he has any idea whether Albania is indeed full of intellectuals.
“There are plenty, yes,” Olena says. “Although there is one less, now that I have come here.”
“Well, we’re glad to have you.”
Olena nods. Noah becomes aware of the hardness of her shoulders beneath her T-shirt, the fatless rockiness of her body.
“My mother talks about you all the time,” Olena continues. “Having you here is like having a crown prince for a nephew. I’m sorry, does that phrase make sense in English?”
“Yeah, it makes sense,” Noah says. Why is he finding it so hard to formulate responses?
Olena smiles, and Noah is again charmed by its smallness, the gray sarcasm of her expression. She pulls her long legs beneath her so that she is sitting on top of them.
“So what are your plans now?” Noah asks.
“Well, I’m here to go to school.” For a moment her tough tone falls, and she wipes her brow tiredly. “I’m trying to work and save money, but it’s hard. Minimum wage is pretty minimum in Manhattan.”
She looks up, and her steely resolve is back. “Albania has many wonderful things, but for universities, well, I have to hand it to you, there is no place better than the United States. I understand that you went to Princeton. You must be proud of this.”
“I am, yeah, sure.”
“That does, after all, make you intelligent.” She stares at him teasingly. Noah swigs his wine.
“I am a little old to begin school,” Olena says, “but so be it. I was not able to come earlier. I had some money in Albania, yes, but here”—she snaps her fingers—“I have almost nothing. A few dollars. But starting at the bottom is what your country is renowned for, no? The national cliché.” She laughs.
Noah wonders where Olena plans to apply, but the prospect of asking causes some conversational mechanism to tiredly whir—this is a route he constantly travels, and he is weary of talking about tests and schools. “When I’m feeling smug,” Noah says, “I think that I started at the bottom too.”
“But you were born in America?” she asks. She laughs once, dryly. All her spoken language is ironic, yet she leans forward earnestly, is so obviously vulnerable to the possibility that she will always be trapped in a class to which she feels she doesn’t belong. “This makes you not at the bottom. This is a definitional thing. You do not have constant diarrhea. Your hands are not bent by farming without tools.”
Noah laughs. “I guess not, no, not at the bottom, then, but when you’re here it seems that anything below millions of dollars is the bottom.”
“We just have to redefine our bottoms, then,” Olena says. She pauses, then winks. “Perhaps I will need to join a gym.”
Hera sets a steaming pan on the worn table. Within are several meat pies, smothered in Swedish spaghetti sauce and freshly microwaved.
“What are you serving to us, Mother?” Olena asks. “What have you done to your pies?”
“This looks lovely,” Noah says.
“These pastries are our favorites,” Hera says. “I am certain they will only be better with this lovely sauce.”
Hera serves them, and Noah takes a bite. It is impossible to tell if indeed the meat pie has been improved, for it is undetectable beneath the sugary tomato purée. This meal, at least, does not come from a can. Noah takes another bite.
“Your apar
tment must be very nice, if you earn so much money,” Hera says.
“Mother is a little hyper-money-aware,” Olena explains as she dissects a pastry.
“Actually, my apartment’s sort of falling apart,” Noah says.
“Oh,” Olena says proudly. “Rustic is the word you are looking for. A lovely, falling-down type of building.”
“Not really,” Noah says around a wet slug of peeled tomato. “Last week I opened the front door to some guy shooting up in the stairwell.”
Olena shouts a laugh. Hera nods benignly. Noah is fairly certain that she hasn’t understood.
“I overheard two women in my building talking,” Noah starts. He is surprised to hear a catch in his throat. The world seems impossibly lonely tonight. He is suddenly, viscerally glad for Olena and Hera’s company. “They said that last winter the pipes froze and when they called the landlord he said, ‘In two months it will be spring. When spring comes, ice melts. Then you get your water.’ ”
Olena laughs merrily, looks twinklingly at Noah.
Hera asks, “You are sad, no?”
“Ech, Ma!” Olena says.
Noah stares at her, alarmed. “Sad?” He hadn’t thought himself sad, but being asked seems to make him so.
“In home,” Hera says, her voice dropping to a momentary whisper, “in Albania, it would seem very strange for someone to live on his own. But here all of you do it. Why? Look at the past—never before did people do such a thing so often, live for themselves. Where is, for example, your father?”
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