Noah finishes his bread with a final dollop of fig jam, picks up the crumbs with his finger, and sucks them into his mouth. He showers and tries to force his thoughts away from Olena, back to the students who will pay for his loan payments. He emerges from the steaming tub, slicks his hair and puts on a dress shirt and his one pair of expensive slacks, and heads for the Upper East Side. But his thoughts remain in Harlem.
The doormen of 949 Fifth Avenue seem agitated today. Normally they slouch when Noah enters, accord him no more reverence than they would one of their own. Noah is usually happy for their friendly informality, but today they are alert and direct Noah upstairs formally, as if they had never met him before. Noah thanks them, confused and a little hurt by their primness. He soon realizes the reason for their reserve after he rides up the elevator and knocks on the broad Thayer door. For who should appear on the other side but, presumably, Mr. Thayer himself.
“Hello,” he says, guarding the doorway. “Can I help you with something?”
He is tall and dense, athletic, a mass of entwined wire wearing a dress shirt and pin-striped trousers. He stares along his sharp nose at Noah.
“You must be Mr. Thayer,” Noah says, holding out his hand.
Mr. Thayer ignores his hand, instead continues his attempt to insert a silver link through his French cuff. “Yes, I am. But you still haven’t told me who you are.”
Noah lets his hand drop. “Oh, sorry. I’m Noah. I tutor your children.”
“Really? What in?” Mr. Thayer leans his head back and looks at Noah curiously, a small smile on his face, as if he has just read something intriguing in the Times.
“I tutored Dylan for his writing section. Tuscany for the ISEE, and now for academics.”
“Oh right! Noah.” Mr. Thayer squints at the cuff, slides the silver bar through, and then holds out his hand. A guardedness remains in his eyes—Noah is fairly sure that he still doesn’t know who Noah is. Noah places his hand in Mr. Thayer’s and lets it be shaken. Mr. Thayer’s palm is rough and dry; Noah can feel its ridges.
“I’m sorry I can’t stay and talk to you about Tuscany and Dylan, but I’ve got a flight in a couple of hours. How are they doing, though?”
“Well, I don’t—”
“Do you want some orange juice or a Danish or anything? Fuen is in the kitchen, I think.”
“Oh no, that’s okay. I was just going to say I actually don’t tutor Dylan anymore. But Tuscany’s doing well.”
“She did great on that test to get into school. Good job. Dylan, though, I really want him to break 2200. If it doesn’t happen, well, I won’t be too happy. But if so, good job, good job!” He puts his fist and thumb together when he says “Good job,” as if he were a politician at a rally.
Either Mr. Thayer is totally out of touch or Dylan is still being tutored for the SAT, just not by Noah. He remembers Cameron’s saying that Dylan was still being tutored. Noah files the information away, plans to see if there is a way to get specifics out of Tuscany. But he cannot afford to think about it in front of Mr. Thayer.
“Tuscany’s going on a little field trip next week,” Noah says.
“That’s great,” Mr. Thayer says. He picks up his briefcase, slings his suit coat over his arm. “I’m off to London. A company I started is being publicly offered.”
“Congratulations,” Noah says, sidestepping Mr. Thayer’s rapidly departing form.
“It’s nothing,” Mr. Thayer says. “It starts to get boring after a while. We’ll talk when I get back, okay?” Mr. Thayer speaks as if to a peer, in a tone that he might have used if Noah were a CEO, not a tutor: “We’ll talk” must be Mr. Thayer’s reflexive way of saying goodbye. Noah nods, pleased to be respected. The door closes.
“So, Tuscany, I met your father,” Noah announces halfway through the session. Tuscany has pulled her chair away from the dining room table and has begun picking at her nails and feeling her thighs, a sure sign that she is ready for distraction.
Tuscany screws up her face. “My dad? Dale was here ?”
“I assume so. I just had a conversation with him by the front door.”
“Oh,” she says, returning to the nails. “Weird.”
“He was flying off to London for an offering of a company.”
“Sounds pretty normal.”
“What does he do?”
Tuscany starts packing her Parliaments, striking the base of the box with her palm. “I dunno. He started like a dozen magazines and after that all sorts of other companies that don’t really do anything. He’s always buying and selling stuff, but it’s like none of it really exists, you know? Stuff like bonds and commodities and trading shit. I don’t get it.”
Bored again, Tuscany pulls out a shopping bag she carted from upstairs. “Look what I got for our trip!”
She pulls out a jacket that looks like the result of a collaboration between North Face and Victoria’s Secret, with fleece bands that crisscross over the bosom. Noah presumes it was at least designed to be used for hiking. He gives a thumbs-up.
“And this!”
Tuscany presents a pair of polyester pants, loose, designed to wick away moisture, convertible into shorts—a great idea for a week outdoors. But the zippers where it converts into shorts go diagonally across the crotch—it converts into a bikini bottom. “Cool, huh?”
“Wow,” Noah says.
“I am so ready.” She puts the contraption down on the table. “What’s up? You seem all preoccupied.”
Noah can’t find a way to artfully phrase the question he wants to ask. “Hey, Tuscany,” he says, “is Dylan still getting tutored for the SAT?”
“I don’t know. How the hell am I supposed to know? No one tells me. ”
So much for that.
That evening when Noah returns home he is greeted by the heavy smell of burnt olive oil hanging in the air. The heavy splashes and splatters of her deep-frying render Hera deaf; she doesn’t turn around when Noah enters and drops his bag. Olena, however, looks up from her spot on the couch. She closes her book and smiles at him.
“How did the shopping go?”
Olena glances at the kitchen, and then holds Noah’s gaze. She lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Horrible. It lasted six hours, Noah. Six hours of clothing shopping. It went so terrible. Or do I say terribly ? No, terrible.”
Noah smiles. “Terribly. You’re describing a verb, ‘to go.’ ”
Olena nods. “Thank you. Let me tell you, I would have preferred to even stay here and study my grammar or work at the cleaner’s rather than go there, all those girls flooding with laughter in the dressing rooms. Two were in the cabin next to me, and one said to the other, ‘I can’t even get them over my thighs!’ and the other said, ‘So what? Buy them anyway, at least you can say you have Diesel jeans!’ It was foul.”
Noah laughs. “So what are you doing tonight?”
“What am I to do? I have no friends here. I will wait for my mother to finish cremating dinner, and then I will read my book. There are not too many options.”
“I’m going to dinner with some friends later. You’re welcome to join us.”
Olena puts her book down and raises her eyebrows in mock surprise. “Roberto just got finished complaining to me this morning that you do not ever invite him to go out with you and your Princeton friends. What makes me special, hmm?”
“I just think you’d like them.”
“Oh. Perhaps I would.” She shoots a dismayed look toward her room. “But I am to stay here and study for my SAT, I’m afraid. It is in only a pair of months.”
“A couple of months, you mean.”
“Why not ‘a pair’? That means two, no? Ech, I hate English! Why couldn’t the French have dominated the world commerce, instead of the Americans with their irrational language?”
Noah laughs. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to come out with us? My friends would love you.”
“No,” Olena says firmly. “Thank you, but no. I will need to be a ner
d for two months. And I have no money.”
Noah is about to protest when Hera emerges from the kitchen. “Noah! You are home! You would like to join us for dinner?” Hera holds up a frying pan layered with blackened oily creatures that shine in the early evening light.
“I’m afraid I already have plans. But I’ll sit with you, if you like.”
Hera turns toward Olena and puts on an aristocratic air. “Have you heard the way he speaks? ‘I’m afraid I already have plans’—it is like one of the books we used to read with our English tutor in the good days. Lovely. Noah does not speak like those dark boys in the street, all ‘Nigger, it’s on, take it and shit!’ ”
Hera lays the frying pan on the table, opens the freezer and pulls out a tray of ice cubes, then extracts the ceramic bottle of Albanian alcohol from under the sink. “Come, Noah,” she says, gesturing to the head of the table. “Come sit with us, keep us company, tell us of your life there at the top of the world.”
And so Noah takes a seat at the table and, over the acrid licorice fumes rising from his tumbler of grain alcohol, relates his hope to show Tuscany that there is a world beyond the one in which she is already living.
“Surely, Noah,” Olena says, “she already knows there exists another world. It is a little condescending, no, to think that you are the one who can tell her how to live?”
“I am her teacher,” Noah says. “That’s what we do. ”
“I always thought of my teachers as not being the best guides for advice—they do, after all, complain about their hard work and little pay. But in your case you have little work and high pay, so I will cede. Your philosophy must be correct.” Olena takes a sip from her tumbler. She rushes to the sink and spits out the sip of alcohol. “Ech! Ma, even Albanians do not drink this anymore.”
“Titania, please!” Hera says. “That is not very decorous.”
Olena rolls her eyes when Hera says decorous. “Who are you?”
“What?” Hera says. She turns to Noah and says jovially, “Titania is jealous of my mastered English.”
“Ha,” Olena says, sitting back down. She spears a charred piece of food. “Something like that.”
“Anyway,” Hera says, “I think you do the good thing. Perhaps you could introduce Tuscany to Titania, make the same relation that you made between Dy-lan and Roberto.”
“Oh yeah,” Olena says dryly, “I’m sure we would be the best of friends. Oh, Noah, please do!”
“I think Tuscany could learn a lot from you,” Hera huffs.
“Yes,” Olena says. “Such as her multiplication tables.” Her eyes glint with wicked merriment as she takes a bite of food. Noah watches her lips, imagines brushing his own against them, and ponders how to convince her to go out with him that night.
“And more importantly,” Hera continues unabated, “you could learn a lot from her, Titania. She is in a good position here.”
“There is a term in French for this behavior, is there not, Noah?” Olena says. “Être arriviste. The problem is, Mother, that such social climbing is outdated in America. Here one succeeds on one’s own.”
Both Hera and Noah look doubtful.
“Noah,” Olena implores, “what I say is true, no?” She is earnest, has dropped her usual ironic distance—her belief on this point must be critical to her. And, Noah realizes as he thinks about the amount of time she puts in waiting tables and working at the dry cleaner, that makes sense. Her curtness and angry distance come from a consuming fear of being trapped in her current class. They are alike that way, she and Noah, both trying to surmount the social barriers placed in front of their abilities.
“It is true,” Noah says slowly, laying his hand on Olena’s—he wants to fall into the softness of her, to comfort her—“that it is easier now to work hard and advance than it was before.”
“Very carefully stated,” Olena says, removing her hand from beneath Noah’s, picking up her tumbler, glumly staring into the clear liquid, and putting it back down. “Very, very careful.”
“Olena will go to a school, and that school will be great,” Hera says, entwining her daughter’s slender arm in her own heavy one.
“And it is also true,” Noah continues, “that for better or worse, your SAT score is going to be critical. I have to tell you, honestly, I knew a handful of former Eastern Bloc students at Princeton, and all of them went to boarding schools somewhere else. I’m not saying that American schools are going to put you at a disadvantage when you apply, but it does probably mean that they’re going to disregard your transcripts. They have no experience with Albanian schools. They won’t trust your grades.”
“My marks are perfect. I worked hard for them,” Olena protests.
“It’s my professional opinion,” Noah continues, “that your SAT score is going to be the single most important part of your applications.”
“I have already taken the Test of English as a Foreign Language, and did well.”
“That’s great, but of course you did; you’re fluent. The SAT is totally different.”
Olena hangs her head between her hands. “This is ridiculous. Why should one test count more than four years of work? I have two months to prepare. Two months.”
“Actually, Noah,” Hera says, “this is something I want to talk to you about—”
“I think I know what you’re going to ask,” Noah interrupts. “And I’d be happy to help.”
“Well…” Hera casts a sidelong look at Olena. “The thing is, we don’t have the kind of money it would take…”
Olena stares at Noah frankly. “It would be a big drain on you, and we couldn’t offer you anything.”
Noah looks at Hera, tender and impassioned about the prospect of her daughter having the best chance possible. Then he looks at Olena, who appears coolly uninterested, almost barbed, protecting herself.
“I have Tuscany at nine in the mornings—”
“Olena could work with you on the weekend!” Hera says.
Noah shakes his head. “That wouldn’t work. She’s going to need something a lot more intensive than that. If I’m going to take this on, we’ll need sustained effort. Every day.”
Olena nods guardedly.
“I was going to say that I have Tuscany at nine in the morning. After Tuscany I have other students, and won’t return until ten at night most nights. That’s too late to concentrate.”
“I could do it,” Olena protests.
“No, it’s going to have to be the mornings. I leave the apartment at eight, which means that we’ll have our sessions from six-thirty to eight A.M .”
“I will make strong coffee,” Hera offers. “And I will also halve your rent.”
Olena fixes Noah in her stare, turning her napkin in her lap. “Why are you doing this for me?” she asks softly.
“Can you put in the time?” Noah asks. He hopes Hera won’t bring up the rent again—of course he won’t let her halve it, but he doesn’t want to embarrass her.
“Of course I can put in the time,” Olena says. “I would get up at three A.M ., if I needed to.”
“You might need to. You’re going to have to take a three-and-a-half-hour practice test each day until the May test.”
Olena nods.
Noah reaches into his tutoring bag and pulls out two slim booklets, blue ink on newsprint. “These are real SATs, obtained by my agency through special arrangement. I need you to do both tonight. That’s seven hours. Time yourself. Mark any vocabulary words you don’t know. Skip the hardest three sentence completions. You’ll need to buy yourself time for the reading comp.”
Noah stands. “I’ve got a date with my friends,” he says, then taps the booklets in front of Olena. “And you have work to do.”
Chapter
8
It is six forty-five A.M . and Olena, somehow, is fresh and energetic. Noah is not faring as well. His eyes prick, and his hair shoots from his scalp in tufts. He takes a large mouthful of coffee, slowly releases it into his throat. He breaks Olen
a’s practice test results to her. She takes the news stoically.
“So, 1620 out of 2400. This does not sound good.”
“It’s above average. The math score is quite good.”
“To be honest, Noah, I am considered to be very smart. I want to go to the best.”
“Then yes, we’re going to have to work on this.” He is careful to keep his voice neutral. The key to keeping her motivated is managing her expectations.
“What would I need if I wanted to go to Princeton? Or even Harvard?”
Noah bites the toast and speaks around the mass of crumbs. “Those are pretty hard schools. Harvard rejects something like two hundred students a year who had perfect scores.”
“I would need more than 1700, then. More than 1800 or 1900, I would imagine. What is the average score there?”
“I’m not sure,” Noah lies.
“What did you get on the SAT, then?”
This question comes up with most of Noah’s students. It used to be that he refused to tell them, because he didn’t want his students to start comparing themselves to him. But when he didn’t tell them they either saw it as a sign of Noah’s not trusting them, or that his score wasn’t so high after all. Noah has taken to telling his students his score quickly and simply. If anything, it bolsters their confidence that he knows the SAT well. “I got 1580 on the old test. Would be something like 2370 on the new one.”
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