“Yep,” Noah says, wondering how difficult it would be to snatch the magazine from Roberto’s grip.
“So costly, no? To put out a magazine,” Olena says.
“Well, it’s not exactly hard-hitting journalism,” Noah says.
“But this is very high quality paper. Gosh. Think what that money could have gone to instead.”
“This bitch is hot, ” Roberto adds. “Seriously, Noah, you have to let me meet her.”
“No,” Noah says, his eyes flashing. “Absolutely not.”
“You’ve got to be shittin’ me. Why not, cabrón ?”
“She’s a kid. Stop it.”
Roberto flips through the magazine and makes grunts similar to those he affected while working out. “Wow,” he says again, then, “Jesus,” and then various phrases in what Noah has come to recognize as Albanian. Noah glowers across the table. Seeing Noah’s annoyance, Olena plucks the magazine from Roberto and hands it back to Noah.
Roberto grins wickedly, crosses his bare arms over his chest and mouths the words, Hot bitch.
That night, in bed early, Noah’s first thoughts are on Tuscany. Roberto’s irresponsible desire infuriates him. Such attentions from men are what make Tuscany obsess about her body instead of her future. He punches a pillow. His fury is more complex than he realizes, he is sure, but he is unable to sort his feelings about her. He is alarmed by his flicker of attraction to her. After Monroe he promised himself never to be drawn to another student. He stuffs It’s All You under his mattress.
He thought he had banished Monroe from his mind, thought he had healed, but suddenly he feels the shame and guilt afresh. The depth of his feelings for her was inappropriate, he knows. His intense affection led him to consider doing things he should never have done, for which he can’t forgive himself. He distrusts his own feelings toward Tuscany, second-guesses himself: surely he isn’t repeating history, allowing attraction to distort his sense of duty?
Monroe’s score didn’t go up all week. Friday afternoon, Noah got a call from Mrs. Eichler. She was at a loss. Monroe wouldn’t get into Amherst if she performed the next day as she had performed all week. Would it turn out, Mrs. Eichler lamented a touch dramatically, that everything Monroe had striven for would be ripped away because of the timing of her father’s death?
Noah proposed a solution which Mrs. Eichler accepted immediately, as if Noah were stating a foregone conclusion. He went to St. Marks Place and purchased a fake ID with his picture and the name of Monroe Eichler. Thanks to the faddish tendency of Fifth Avenue to give its children the last names of nineteenth century presidents (it is a two-mile gallery of tiny Grants, Harrisons, Jeffersons, Madisons, Monroes, Pierces, Taylors, and Tylers), he could take the test for a girl, for Monroe. He imagined plunging into Monroe’s test on Saturday morning in an altered state, so wracked by guilt that taking the standardized test would become a visceral, animalistic experience. He knew there was no rationalizing what he was about to do, philosophically, but taking the test had an emotional necessity—he couldn’t bear to see his Monroe miss her chance to go to Amherst. He would take care to miss the verbal questions Monroe would have missed (the hard sentence completions), and to miss no math. The scoring machine would know no difference between his bubbles and those of Monroe, and her score, when it came, should turn out to be what it would have been had her father not died.
But Mrs. Eichler called on Friday night. Monroe had a fit of compunction and demanded to take the test herself. Noah wondered if he could speak to her. Monroe was unavailable. Mrs. Eichler hung up. She and Noah would never talk again.
Three days later, an envelope arrived in the mail, inside it a check from Deutsche Bank with no sender’s name and no memo, no little “thanks” or smiley face scrawled in the corner. The check was for $5,000.
Was it payment for his trouble, regardless of his not having taken the test, or a clerical accident? It was a cashier’s check—Mrs. Eichler would never know if he deposited it or not. There was no moral high road here, no making a statement. He deposited the check. He had maxed out a credit card, and his brother’s counselor’s fees were due.
The next afternoon Noah travels from Harlem back down to the Upper East Side on a train full of blacks and Hispanics commuting with glassy, gloomy gazes; then the composition of the train gradually shifts, until he gets off at Fifth Avenue amid glassy, gloomy gazes of white women in pricey suits. Noah dashes into the Thayers’ building just as sheets of rain begin to fall from the sky.
When Noah exits the elevator he exchanges places with the hulking form of Dr. Thayer’s personal trainer. Dr. Thayer is propped against the foyer wall, carefully and meticulously breathless, dressed in workout clothes that are sleek, stylish, and not in the least sweaty.
“So, how were the scores?” Noah asks. The question bubbles out without preamble; he is excited to discover the answer.
“The scores?” Dr. Thayer pants. She tilts her head disdainfully, as if Noah has just asked her the latest football standings.
“Tuscany and Dylan. How did they do?”
“Oh, their scores! They did pretty well. Well, Dylan did awfully, actually, but we got this at the same time.” Dr. Thayer hands Noah a letter addressed to Dylan from the George Washington athletics director. He scans it:
We were delighted to review your athletic performances over the last few weeks, and while the sports program has no direct say in admissions decisions, we do highly suggest that you apply to George Washington, and have the strongest hopes that you will join us in the fall for a challenging and successful season.
“So he’s basically in,” Noah says. He is conflicted: heartened to see Dylan succeed and his own pressures released, disheartened that it should happen this way.
“It looks like it!” Dr. Thayer beams and places a hand on Noah’s shoulder. Her hard fingers are cool through his shirt. “And I’m sure, Noah, that he couldn’t have done it without you.”
Noah is quite certain Dylan could have done it without him. In fact, Dylan’s score didn’t rise at all.
“Thank you, Dr. Thayer.”
“Didn’t I tell you to call me Susan? I think I told you to call me Susan.” She laughs and makes as if to playfully swat at her words as they hang in the air.
“And how did Tuscany do?” Noah asks.
“Oh, very well, I’m sure. She’s never been the trouble case Dylan was.” She positions a hand against the entranceway curio cabinet, bearing a look of exhaustion on her carefully made-up face.
“Do you have the score report?”
“Yes, somewhere here…” Dr. Thayer sorts through a pile of papers on the mahogany hallway table. “Oh, here it is.”
She hands Noah an envelope. It is unopened.
“You haven’t looked at it.” Noah’s words come out half beseeching, half accusatory— You don’t care how she did.
“Well, not yet. Go ahead, you do it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, of course, go!”
Noah slides a finger under the seal of the envelope. The paper rips in jagged triangles. He pulls out the red and white letter.
He has never seen an ISEE score report—he always hears about scores secondhand, from the parents—and it is a mess of numbers and statistics. He stares dumbly for a few moments, trying to find patterns in the chaos. Then the results start to sort themselves into order. They’re good.
“She did really well, Dr. Thayer,” Noah says excitedly. “A really big improvement from her diagnostic test!”
“Really?” Dr. Thayer says, holding back a foot and stretching, her hipbone clearly outlined in the black spandex.
“Her percentiles are all in the upper 80s, and her math is a 92.”
“And that’s good?” Dr. Thayer sounds dubious.
“Good enough to get her wherever she needs to go. Don’t forget that the percentiles are comparing her against other applicants to private high schools, not the whole nation. So it’s a pretty elite category, and sh
e’s doing better than most of them.”
“Well, good for her.” Dr. Thayer’s tone is ambiguous; Noah can read either smoldering elation or outright contempt into it.
“So she doesn’t know yet?” Noah asks. Dr. Thayer shakes her head. “I’m sure you want to tell her,” he says. “I’ll just wait down here.”
Dr. Thayer waves him on and winks. “No, no, just go ahead. I’m bound to run into her later today.”
“So my scores are good ?” Tuscany is sprawled on her bed, in a pair of sweatpants with “Moore-Pike” emblazoned across the ass.
“Yeah, really good. You’re up a whole fifteen percentile points. Especially math. Ninety-second, really good.”
“Awesome.” Her voice rises to a screech as she scans the paper. “Awesome!”
“So where are you going to go? You could widen your net now—look at Andover or Exeter, even.”
“No! No way.”
“Well, Hampshire Academy certainly looks possible. Or you could go take a look at Choate, that’s another good one. I think you might like it there.”
Tuscany clacks a glitter pen against her teeth. “God, I really haven’t thought about it.”
“Where does your mom want you to go?”
“She doesn’t really say much. That’s so that she can complain about wherever I choose. If she doesn’t like say anything now, it’s easier for her to bitch later, you know?” Tuscany runs the pen back and forth across her teeth. Then: “I have to call a friend.”
She picks up her phone, gives it a hard look, and throws it on the bed. “No, they prob’ly don’t give a crap.” She looks at Noah. “You asked me something, right?”
Noah nods. “Why do you want to go away?”
“People here suck. I just need to get out.”
Tuscany has created a magazine that nobody seems to want (four cartons of it sit beside her desk), and she seems to detest her friends—Noah is desperate to see her leave New York before her determination to find something better atrophies.
“Well, this is your ticket away,” Noah says. “I think you’ll do well at boarding school.”
“What do you mean?” Tuscany asks, suspicious.
“Just that some students aren’t really suited to boarding school. But you’re independent enough to make it.”
“Yah, thanks. This is so cool.” She lights a cigarette.
“You know, a lot of schools have rolling admissions—you can apply now and get in for the spring semester. You’d be at school within a couple of months.” What impresses Noah about Tuscany is her drive for self-preservation. She has found her own ways to shine beneath the rotting stardom of her older brother. She has created a magazine because she wants to, not out of a desire to please her mother. She has enough self-possession to realize that she both dislikes and is disliked at Moore-Pike, and she has taken it upon herself to change schools.
“Yah, I thought about spring semester. So I should apply like now?”
“Yes, now.”
Since Tuscany has already taken her test, there is no need for a session. Noah discusses her percentiles with her, then leaves her bedroom. Dr. Thayer stands at the bottom of the stairs and peers up, trapping him. She has taken on a catlike pose, but in her tight charcoal spandex she seems to Noah like a length of knotted chain.
“How is she feeling?” Dr. Thayer asks mournfully, as if Tuscany has scarlet fever.
“She’s thrilled. She’s thinking of applying to schools for spring admission.”
Dr. Thayer’s eyes narrow. “You suggested that?”
“Well, yes, if she’s unhappy where she is, I figured it was best that she move on. Plenty of students start boarding school in the spring.”
Dr. Thayer laughs lightly and profusely. “Well, she’s your daughter!”
“I’m sorry?”
“I wouldn’t dream of inserting myself into this…process. What do I know about applying to schools? I’m just a mom.” She pronounces “I’m just a mom” with leagues of saccharine self-effacement, as would any dissatisfied suburban mother. She is so unpredictable, adopting various halfhearted and intimidating personae.
“I’m sure Tuscany would appreciate your guidance,” Noah says.
Dr. Thayer looks up at Noah bleakly. “Right.”
“I’ve left my e-mail address with Tuscany, in case she wants to bounce any school options or application essay ideas off me.”
Dr. Thayer raises a thin eyebrow. “That’s very kind of you.”
She lets go of the banister and stands to one side, indicating that Noah should now pass. He starts down the stairs. The stairs end right before the front door, but Dr. Thayer has not yet opened it, so they stand a foot apart from each other. For someone who has just heavily worked out, Dr. Thayer doesn’t give off even a whiff of body odor. She seems to be wearing any number of fragrances. Again, Noah notices that she is significantly shorter than he. He looks at the part of her wiry blond hair during their awkward silence, observes the hints of steel-gray roots. Dr. Thayer tilts her head back. She slackens her mouth; the heavy lines around her lips broaden. After a moment of concentration she makes her smile lively and lovely.
“I guess this is it,” she says. “I’d hug you, but I’m horribly sweaty.” She laughs as if at the preposterousness of her statement, a goddess feigning mortality.
“It’s been a pleasure,” Noah says.
“They couldn’t have done it without you.” It is Dr. Thayer’s stock phrase; she says it so often that Noah is quite certain it isn’t ever meant to be taken seriously. He wonders what she is waiting for; he gets the odd sense that she wants him to fold her in his arms.
Noah glances up toward Dylan’s suite. “I should probably say goodbye to Dylan.”
Dr. Thayer turns the silver doorknob of the front door. “Oh, I’ll say goodbye for you. Don’t worry about that.”
Noah nods reluctantly. He is saddened that she won’t let him say goodbye, but he can’t understand why he feels that way—Dylan won’t care, and he won’t miss Dylan. Will he? “Okay, then,” he says softly.
“He’s probably busy watching a game or sleeping. And you know how he gets when he’s disturbed unnecessarily,” Dr. Thayer says breezily.
“Right.”
Dr. Thayer glides the door open. “Goodbye, Noah.” Her tone is tentative, both condescending and apologetic, as if she has just dumped an inferior lover. As he passes through the doorway she leans forward and, with a whiff of rose essence, kisses Noah on the space below his ear. The door clicks smoothly shut.
It is near impossible to divine the weather from within the Thayer apartment—most rooms are curtained so tightly that it might as well not have windows at all. When Noah exits the elevator he sees that the doormen are holding slick black umbrellas. The sky is a luminous gray, and Fifth Avenue is glossy black.
“Wow, it rained pretty hard, huh?” Noah asks the doormen as he leaves.
“Yeah,” one answers. “You should have seen it.”
“This is the last time I’m coming here, guys. It’s all done.”
The doormen shrug and hold the door open.
Noah has an appointment with Cameron in twenty minutes. The sky holds back long enough for him to walk briskly across Central Park to the Leinzler residence. A great gray building overlooking the Museum of Natural History, it stands starkly outlined before the stormy sky. Cameron has piled her masses of black hair on top of her head and covered them with a gum-pink Yankees cap. She sports a hooded sweatshirt that declares, “Drama Geeks Rule.”
“Hey, Noah, what’s up?” she asks as she guides him to her father’s desk, their usual tutoring spot. Imported from North Africa, its plane is covered in black leather, and extends farther than most dining room tables.
“Not much,” Noah says, sitting at a Moroccan chair and pulling out Cameron’s assignments folder.
“You seem totally gloomy today!”
Noah forces a carefree smile. “Really?”
Cameron scrutin
izes Noah, then tosses her head. “Or maybe not.”
“How’d the vocab go this week?”
“Okay, I guess. List Eight was totally hard.”
Cameron begins her quiz. Her mother is French, her father fluent in German, and she grew up with a Spanish-speaking nanny. It is a felicitous combination, and for a B student, she has a great vocabulary. Noah watches her fill in the worksheet.
“Gourmand,” she says, reflexively putting a hand to her abdomen. “That’s a fat person, right?”
“Close. Put ‘one with an unhealthy obsession with food.’ ”
“Okay.”
“I had my last session with Dylan Thayer’s sister today.” He can’t get the Thayers out of his head.
“Oh yeah? Tuscany? Is she mean, or what?”
“No, she’s totally nice. Why?”
“I don’t know, she just always seems so”—she points to a word on the list—“lofty. Tuscany Thayer is lofty. And she—” Cameron cuts off her words dramatically and stares at Noah with falsely wide eyes, as though they were at the climax of a melodrama.
“And she what?” Noah prompts.
“Oh no, I totally can’t say anything.”
“Oh, I’m sure whatever you have to—”
“Okay, you know her friend Monica? Really tall, really skinny?”
Noah nods. That must be the girl he saw with Tuscany outside Victoria’s Secret, the one whose posture simultaneously screamed best friend and mortal enemy.
“Well, they’re totally not friends anymore.” Cameron pauses, as if to finish the story there, but of course barrels on: “Monica has this totally hot doorman. Like, a little like Colin Farrell. And this one night Tuscany goes to Monica’s but, well, the doormen call up from the desk to say that she arrived, but she never makes it to Monica’s apartment—”
“All right, that’s enough.”
“You asked.”
“To my chagrin.”
“Whatever. I’m not going to say what I think, I’m sure she’s totally nice, but my friends say she’s a slut.”
“They shouldn’t.”
Glamorous Disasters Page 12