“Yeah.” She shook her head, still marveling. “I guess I really like him.”
You like that, Ian said. You stupid slut, you like that. You look so good with a cock in your mouth. That’s what my best friend’s boyfriend was saying to me. So I bought a bottle of water, and hummus in a tiny tub. I ordered takeout, with plastic silverware, then got some murdered mammal at Applewood. Meanwhile, kids all over this city were taught to the test. Meanwhile, kids all over this city got private tutoring. You like to be bossed, don’t you? You like to be told what to do. At parties plastic cups with crenulated edges were thrown away, bleached napkins smeared with inky wine were thrown away, books were purchased to be thrown away. Meanwhile, Ervin West was writing generous checks to politicians who would further wreck the earth and his daughter’s body, and the feeling he had in the midst of all this wreckage—I would bet money on it—was I wish I had more control.
Sometimes, while walking, Ian would slip his hand around the nape of my neck, and squeeze and grip my head there, and I would feel myself completely under his control, as simply as a dog belongs to its master. A great billowing weakness would blow up from my stomach, a wave of sexual feeling so strong I would often stumble and he would catch me by the grip of his five fingers. I was enthralled then, a cat humming, its spine arched against a human hand; I desired him, because I could feel how much he desired me; I was thrown deliciously, girlishly back against myself.
* * *
—
I began to feel—I suppose the word is paranoia, but it felt more like an acceleration of reality, as if my life were a toy top, spinning so fast that even knocking the floor or bumping a wall did not slow it down.
Subtle mistakes proliferated, though it was impossible to say whether they were actually proliferating or whether I was simply paying more attention. For instance, usually when I arrived in the snowy vestibule of the West manse, no one was there to greet me. I would step tentatively into the front hall, calling out “Hello?,” my thin voice sounding especially weak and watery in the artificial hush of the house: the silence of the Wests’ condo, of every new-construction condo, was the space-signal purr of the computerized home. There might be no one home or a dozen family members secreted away in their own wings or the whole clan lying bloodily murdered behind the kitchen door. In that indifferent hum, who could tell?
But today, when the elevators disgorged me into the lap of that white credenza, Isabel was waiting for me, arms crossed. “It’s good you’re here,” she announced ominously, and turned on her heel.
Rather than athletic apparel, she wore a blue Oxford shirt and dark stonewashed jeans. Her hair was pulled up in a messy bun, and a tiny gold necklace winked from her narrow neck. As she padded along the shadowy hall, past the recessed spotlights that lit up formal portraits of the family—I caught a glimpse of Rachel West’s lunar baby bump, cupped by her ringed hand—I decided tonight Isabel looked like an academic or an architect, the lead in a romantic comedy before she lets down her ponytail.
The housekeeper—I still hadn’t learned her name, because Isabel called her something like Ooma, which I was 97 percent sure was a pet name, and yet no one had thought to tell me her real name—brought me a dinner plate of three ravioli with a side of grilled asparagus. This had never happened before: the second mistake. When I stammered out a polite protest, Isabel said, “You’re always eyeing my food, and it makes me feel weird.”
Oh. Isabel was more observant than I thought. Or maybe she was simply being pragmatic. She wanted me fueled up: we were obviously in for a long one. The word from the top—Ervin—was that the current draft had to go. Complete gutting. Apparently Isabel had shown him the same draft she had sent me, and he had announced that he didn’t like any of it—not Du Bois, not the line of swimwear, and especially not the “personal stuff.”
“He told me family stuff is private,” Isabel said dolefully, and I flashed on the time I had seen Rachel West, she of the high grades in business school, trailing sadly down the long hall, looking pensively at her portraits.
“And what do you think about that? Do you agree?”
“It’ll just be easier to start over.” With her fork Isabel sliced a ravioli open and smashed out a puree of pumpkin. “But the thing is, we don’t have much time. So I thought you could type”—she nudged her laptop toward me—“and I’ll talk.”
During training someone had asked “where the line was” between helping and cheating, editing and writing, and rather than address the rich literary tradition of this question, Griffin had nodded sagely. “Personally, I never type anything for them. My hands never touch their keyboard. But you’ll have to find what’s right for you.”
I had vowed, then and there, that I, too, would never type a single word for my students, but when I broke this news to Isabel she argued, “No, I’d still be the one writing it, you’re just typing,” and when I said, “I’m not going to be your scribe,” she said, “But we have so much to do!” and so I said, “You have so much to do. Not me, you. I already wrote my college essay, a long time ago,” and then she banged her fist so ferociously that I immediately relented, saying, as if I had simply misunderstood her before, “Oh! You want me to type for you? Sure, I’d be happy to type.”
It did feel wrong, I’ll grant Griffin that. “Umm.” Isabel peered expectantly at me, perhaps a mite disappointed that my fingers were not already flying over the keys. “So what do you think I should write about?”
“Do you still want to write about feminism?”
A shy, baffled nod. “It’s just like, I know what I want to say, but I just can’t, like, say it.”
“What do you want to say?”
“Just like…” She looked at me blankly. “I don’t know! Just like, how I’m a feminist, why I’m a feminist. That kind of stuff.”
“So why are you a feminist?”
“Because it’s not fair!” She screwed up her face in exasperation. “It’s not fair! Girls are equal to boys!” Then she gave a wolfish grin. “We’re actually so much better.”
I felt bad for her, I really did. Who could say you were having an experience, a life experience, if all that came out of your mouth were the same things showing up on the internet?
“Right, but that’s not an essay topic. You need to think about what you want to say about yourself.”
“I don’t have anything to say about myself,” she admitted in a small voice.
We looked at each other then in a kind of mute panic, the same look I caught in my own eyes when, having done absolutely nothing at the desk for an hour, I got up to brush my teeth a third or tenth time.