He chuckled. “I’d like to think that being your friend and being your boss, they’re not mutually incompatible. And I like you a lot. That’s why it’s difficult for me to have this conversation. But as your friend, I’d tell you to start looking for a different job.”
“So you’re firing me.”
“No, no, no. At Ivy Prep we don’t fire people. We just, well. It’s an algorithm.”
“An algorithm,” I repeated.
“The tutors at the top of our ranking system, they get the most referrals. Those at the bottom get the least.”
“And I’m at the bottom.”
“Well, actually you’re off our list.”
“But you’re not firing me.”
“I like you a lot,” he repeated helplessly.
I looked in the mirror. I’d slept in my sweats, and my hoodie had left a red crease across my cheek. “I like you too,” I told Griffin Chin, and then I hung up the phone.
* * *
—
They say that people who lose everything—in a fire, or a flood—often feel an odd exultation. I had never understood that until now. Lightness swam up in me. The shoddy apartment, and roaring subway; the endless coaxing of Isabel to more sentences, clearer sentences. Why did I need any of it? Over months I’d erected a life I had imagined was as solid as stone pillars, only to discover I’d built a paper tent. Down it came in a single yank.
If I told my parents I’d lost my job they’d want to have a sober conversation about how, and why, and what I felt, and because my mom knew how to listen, because she was a very, very good shrink, she’d pull the loose threads in my conversation until I was talking about Isabel’s adolescence and my adolescence and then, inevitably, Lacie’s adolescence, and then Lacie today, and my mom would see it all, my cloak would unravel and I would be psychically naked before her, which was how I always ended up in front of my mother: bare. Unable to keep anything from her.
No. Not today. I vowed not to blab my mistakes. I would not—under no circumstances—bring up Isabel. I definitely wouldn’t say the name Lacie. I would keep myself locked away.
* * *
—
Once I had decided to hide my distress from my parents, I joined my mom in the breakfast nook, where we sat drinking coffee with milk fresh from the local dairy. Chunks of fat floated in our cups, slowly dissolving into yellow greasy circles. Steel-cut oats bubbled on the cast-iron stove.
“How’s Lacie?” my mom asked.
“Fine,” I said carefully. “She’s just sort of the same.”
When I’d moved in with her my parents had naturally been surprised, and rehashed many old memories of our sleepovers from years ago. But there was something probing in my mom’s voice now. “Is she still talking in that babyish voice?”
Actually, my dad had been the one who did most of the reminiscing about our old friendship. My mom had never liked Lacie. Or rather, she had liked her when she was a fearless ten-year-old girl, but when she had become giggly and coy, popular with the boys, my mom, unlike the rest of us, was not charmed. My mom was a practical woman.
“Um, not really. She’s not really so girly anymore.” I hesitated, annoyed that my mom was caricaturing Lacie in this way, but also glad. Maybe I could allow myself to say this one thing about Lacie. Just one thing. “It’s more like, she pretends she’s this brilliant absentminded artist, but really she’s totally savvy and careerist and smart about things like that.”
My mom waited. I wanted to tell her more. I wanted to describe the red cocoon. I wanted to explain how I thought it was bad, but that I also secretly loved it, and how much it terrified me to love it, because I thought it must mean Lacie was more talented than me, in addition to more everything else, but I knew my mom, the therapist, would say something vaguely chiding about jealousy and remind me that brilliance was not a zero-sum game; she would straighten me out, and nudge me an inch closer to psychological health. So annoying.
“How are you guys doing?” I said instead, playfully poking her. “Tell me about you.”
Overnight my parents had donned the garb of old people. My dad had new stiffness in his joints, instructions to replace his daily run with a swim, plus pills to take each morning. If my mom sat for too long it took her forever to stand. She’d bend over and massage her knee, muttering, I’m fine, I’m fine. It worried me. Also I wanted to poke at her vulnerability, since she had so quickly sensed mine.
But all she said was, “Oh, honey, we’re good, we’re good. It’s a very sweet time of life, really.”
“Yeah?” I tried to make my face open.
“Yeah, it is. Your father and I are in a really good place, we’re financially secure, there’s not”—she looked at me hesitantly—“you know, when you’re young there’s all this rushing around and scrambling, you’re trying to get ahead in your career, you’re building a family…” She hesitated again, knowing my prickly spots, but unable to resist them, as I could never resist hers, “or you’re trying to meet someone, but when you’re older, that stuff is resolved, you can just enjoy life.” She looked at me squarely, and I was surprised to see tears in her eyes. “There’s so much of life to be enjoyed.”
* * *
—
Up in North Banbury, life did seem to consist of simple pleasures. Every morning the sky was a deep saturated blue, and on my runs the sun warmed me. Writing in the kitchen, I listened to the humming creek, and on breaks watched the quicksilver water. Marlo dug holes. One night I let him up on the bed, where he curled nose to tail like a fox. The warmth of his body soothed me.
Evenings we had long meals. My mom cooked. Gradually I forgave my parents for wearing the masks of old people. I saw that beneath their tentative questions there was a real desire to know me. Somewhere in their cool, polite interest was love. It was just love that stayed in its lane.
And yet, it bothered me: no matter how often I checked my phone, there were no messages from Ian or Lacie. My background photo, of the beach where Ian had watched me swim in the waves, was never overlaid with a message. It got so just the sight of that curling Atlantic made my heart pound.
* * *
—
My plan had been to stay indefinitely, but the following Wednesday my mom announced that the Duffields were coming for the weekend. Not that this meant that I had to vacate the guest bedroom—no, not at all. She was just interested in knowing my plans; she just wanted to get a “sense” of what I was “thinking.”