JESSICA
We decided to meet up with the group again at Vassar, but when we got there, Emily lost confidence, and I was still pretty wobbly on my pins. We found a coffee shop and called Helen.
She sailed through the doors thirty minutes later and greeted half the place by name. If you can’t slink about unnoticed, I imagine it’s better to willingly embrace your local fame.
“Why aren’t you two touring my college and being entranced by its beauty?” she said, sitting down. “I’m so disappointed in you both.”
I looked a question at Emily, who nodded. I leaned forward. “Can you keep a secret?”
Helen nodded. “I’m a philosopher. I know everything and nothing. What is truth, anyway? What is knowledge?”
I waited until the waiter brought her coffee, which she hadn’t even ordered, and lowered my voice. “Emily worked with the FBI to bring an international cheating ring to ground, and she did it all without any help from me.”
Emily protested. “That is totally not true.” She explained to Helen. “I snitched on some friends who were planning to cheat, because I didn’t want them to do something really stupid, and as a totally unintended consequence I assisted the FBI.” She was exasperated. “Nobody said anything about international, by the way, that is a complete fiction. Mom loves to summarize and editorialize, it’s part of her training.”
“It’s inexcusable,” said Helen.
“Seriously,” replied Emily. “I thought being a lawyer was about the sanctity of the truth?”
“No,” I said, “it’s about the framing and presentation of the truth. Have I taught you nothing?”
“You’ve taught me everything,” she replied. “Including calling BS when I hear it.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “But anyway, the point is the FBI showed up at breakfast this morning and dropped this bomb on us, and we’re still feeling a little delicate.” I shrugged at Emily. “At least, they dropped the bomb on me. She knew all about it, obviously.”
Helen looked excited. “Are you going to blow off the rest of the tour?”
I shook my head. “No, I think we’ll take the train to NYC and join them there.”
Helen clapped her hands together. “Don’t take the train, I’ll drive you, it’ll be a blast.” She waved at the waiter for the bill and checked her watch. “Road trip!”
Say what you like about my mom; once she’s made up her mind, she commits. We were packed up, checked out, and clambering into Helen’s car within the hour. In this way Mom’s more like my grandma, although most of the time she’s much more like Grandpa. Grandma was a rare bird, I’ve said it before, and she didn’t feather her nest with regret, that’s for sure. I remember standing in the country house garden, watching the smoke from her cigarette curl up in tandem with the smoke from some structure we’d accidentally set fire to and then put in the stream.
“Well,” said Grandma. “It wasn’t what I would call a successful experiment, but it’s sure as shit interesting.”
I’d nodded.
“At what point, do you think, will the whole thing fall into the stream and go out?”
I’d shrugged, whereupon it happened.
“Oh well,” she said, wading into the stream to fish out the debris (she despised littering), “nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
She was full of phrases like that, my favorite being and the devil take the hindmost, often said when throwing random ingredients into things, or loading up the grocery cart with marshmallows, or standing next to something flammable with a match. I don’t want you to get the impression she was an arsonist, she wasn’t, but she wasn’t one for hypothesizing. “I don’t know,” she would say, “let’s try it and see.” Mom is much more conservative, but every so often, like now, she leaps, and when she does I can see the glimmer of Grandma in her eyes.
Helen’s car was as much of a trip as she was. It was one of those old station wagons with the wood on it; I have no idea what they’re called.
When Helen pulled up in front of the hotel, my mother burst out laughing.
“You are kidding me. You still have Jezebel?”
Helen leaned her arm on the window and grinned. “Why would I change? She’s still running like a champ. I like cars, I take good care of her, and besides, I think my mother would be insulted if I traded in the car she gave me for something new.”
Mom laughed. “Even though she gave you Jezebel and went straight out and bought a used, pristine, silver Datsun 280ZX?”
Helen waved a hand. “She felt she’d done her time in the wagon. I was the last to go to college . . . I get it.” She jerked her head. “Are you getting in?”
I went to open the back door, but Helen stopped me. “No, I want you to ride shotgun so I can dig into the darkest recesses of your mind and see how you think.”
I looked at Mom, but she shrugged and climbed into the back seat. “Don’t try to resist, Emily, there’s no point.”
I wasn’t completely convinced this was a good idea. I mean, do these vintage cars even have airbags? Asking seemed rude, so I walked around the car and climbed in.
“Seat belt.” Helen was firm. “And then you’re in charge of the music.” She handed me a shoebox filled with those weird cassette tapes with actual physical brown whatever that is. Tape, I guess. “Play whatever you like.”
I rustled through the tapes, and eventually spotted a familiar face.
I will admit that when the opening bars of “Private Eyes” filtered through the surprisingly good sound system, and both women cheered, I felt pretty good about myself.
Talk about a blast from the past. Sitting in Helen’s car, listening to Hall and Oates, the breeze from the open window blowing my hair around . . . it was great. Helen and Emily were chatting away in the front, but I couldn’t hear them very well, on account of the breeze, and the murmur of their voices was soothing. I hadn’t ridden in the back of a car in so long, that feeling of being transported, both literally and figuratively. I’d spent a lot of my childhood in the back of a car much like this one, arguing with my sister over what music to play, getting overruled by my mom.
The back seat of Helen’s car was filled with books and papers and smelled like cedar. I looked for a tree-shaped air freshener but instead there was a high-tech diffuser plugged into the cigarette lighter. Do new cars even have cigarette lighters? My mom smoked like a fiend my whole childhood, and I remember her using the cigarette lighter to, you know, light cigarettes. My sister and I would watch from the back, the open windows (I’m lighting up, ladies, crack a window) blowing our hair in our faces as it is now, fascinated as Mom waited for the thunk of the lighter, the unlit cigarette pursed tightly, the exciting possibility that as she never paid attention to what she was doing (Don’t take your eyes off the road, those bastards will drive right at you), she might drop it and set us all on fire. Then she’d suck, her cigarette making the crisp sound of crinkling paper, and shake the lighter as if it were a match. Then, one eye squinting, she’d blindly put it back, occasionally melting the radio buttons instead, then snatch the cigarette from her mouth and exhale a dragon’s breath through the window at the drivers who were all getting in her way.
I’d watched my mom a lot; it was a different time, and she didn’t share herself the way I try to share myself with Emily. Not that Emily seems interested in what I’ve got to offer. My mom had lots of habits I enjoyed: a way of wiping the edge of her coffee cup with her thumb before taking every sip; the lining up of socks, top to toe, before rolling them into balls; always saying the dinner needed salt and then getting up to find the saltshaker. There’s a famous book by this social scientist called Winnicott, about “good enough” parenting, an idea I really thought I was going to apply to my own life but that I failed to do, not being able to summon the delicious combination of caring and ignoring it required. Mom paid attention to us, but no more than we needed. She fed us, but she sure as hell didn’t take dinner orders the way I do. And she’d had no more intention of spending her limited free time playing with her own kids than she would have with anyone else’s. On weekends and summers, she’d turned us out of the house in the morning and told us to come back when the streetlights came on. If the weather was bad she’d suggest the movies and maybe drop us off, but she wasn’t sitting there watching The Land Before Time, I assure you.
I would lose my mind if I caught Emily and her friends doing any of the things my sister and I got up to. Exploring abandoned buildings. Finding stashes of porn magazines and giggling over them, feeling weird but not requiring any kind of therapy over it. The one that really makes my blood run cold is the memory of putting pennies on the train tracks near our house, one summer’s favorite activity. A neighbor boy, strange and appealing in equal measure, showed us a gap in the fence and the flattened pennies that were the product of this very limited cottage industry. You could always feel the train before you saw it; a fizzing in the metal that broke into a high-pitched humming, and the train would suddenly thump into passing, close enough to whip our hair back, furiously loud, making us jump and clutch each other and scream.
I turned my head to the side and got comfortable. I was just going to close my eyes for a minute.
Mom had fallen asleep in the back. Helen was singing along, enthusiastically warning the world about the man-eater. Watch out, boy, she’ll chew you up is pretty much the only lyric I know, but I joined in on that one.
Helen looked over at me. “Is your mom asleep?”
I nodded.
“She fell asleep pretty much every time she rode in the back, it was a known thing. She was one of those kids who liked to work late at night, despite the fact that class was early.” She smiled at me. “Are you like that?”
I shook my head. “No, I’m a ‘get the homework done as soon as possible and early morning’ kind of person.”
Helen grunted. “How unusual.”
“Yeah, well, not all teenagers are the same.” I gazed out the window at the other cars on the freeway, wondering what everyone else was talking about. “What was she like, at college?”
Helen flicked on her turn signal, which made an incredibly loud clicking sound, and changed lanes. “She was fun. She was challenging. Argumentative.”
I nodded. “She’s still like that.”
“Is she happy, do you think?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea. She doesn’t seem very happy with me.”
Helen looked over and frowned. “How do you mean? She’s very proud of you, and she loves you to pieces.”
I shrugged again and said nothing. Then, “She wants me to go to college and be a career woman like her, and I don’t want to.”
“Has she said that?”
“She doesn’t need to.”
“Have you told her you don’t want to?”
“No, because the thing I want to do she probably wouldn’t like. I’m not even sure about it myself.” I sighed. “Can we talk about something else?”
There was a silence, and then Helen said, “What’s your position on gene editing and the relationship between for-profit medicine and pure research?”
I coughed. “Uh . . . I’m not sure I have one.”
She grinned. “Perfect, let’s work it out. Think out loud.” She paused. “And turn down the music a bit, I want to hear you wonder.”
When we walked into the Manhattan hotel lobby later, many of the kids were sitting there, waiting for me.
Alice was among them, and she saw me first.
“She’s free on bail,” she called, causing a lot of head turning. “I guess her mom sold a kidney after all.” She turned to Casper. “You owe me twenty dollars.”
“You’re lying,” he replied.
Mom squeezed my arm. “I’ll go check in,” she said. “See you up in the room.”
Will stood up and walked over to me, pulling me into a hug. Casper and Sam were right behind him.
“Are you okay? What happened?”
I nodded. “I’m totally fine, it was all a mistake.”
That was the story Mom, Helen, and I had decided on, at least publicly.
“Are you going to sue?” Alice hadn’t gotten to her feet, but as we drew closer, she did reach up for a hug. I was surprised enough to give it to her.
“No,” I replied. “It was a genuine mistake. They apologized.” I looked at them. “So, what did I miss?”
Casper answered. “Well, Bard was gorgeous, Vassar was pretty, and the trip to NYC was enlivened by a massive argument between this one”—he jerked his thumb at Alice—“and her mother.”
I made a face at Alice. “Sorry to hear that,” I said. “About what?”
“You, actually,” said Alice. “But now you’re here and everything’s okay, so I’m going up to my room.”
“I’ll walk you up,” said Casper.
I watched, doing my best to keep my mouth closed, as she smiled up at him and took the hand he offered. They walked off to the elevator bank, and I turned back to Sam and Will.
“I’m off, too,” said Sam, looking at his phone. “My mom and I are going to the opera.”
“Of course you are,” said Will.
Then it was just the two of us.
We sat there and looked at each other for a minute.
“What really happened?” he asked. “If it was a mistake, why did it take all day?”
“It didn’t,” I replied. “The FBI part was the beginning, then Mom and I played hooky from the tour and got our nails done.” I waved my nails at him.
“Why do girls paint their nails? I totally don’t get it.”
“You’re not supposed to, it’s not for you.”
He frowned at me. “And you’re sticking with your FBI story?”
I shook my head. “No, I can tell you the truth, but you have to swear you won’t tell anyone, or text it, or put it out on social media in any form.”
“Agreed.” His eyes were steady. “Unless this is one of those stories that is going to result in my getting chased across four continents by international law enforcement.” He tried an uncertain smile. “I’ve seen Enemy of the State, knowledge can be dangerous.”
“No promises.”
He sighed. “I’ll take the risk.”
I checked there were no other kids in the lobby, and lowered my voice. “I found out about the girls at school, right, the ones who were going to cheat?”
He nodded.
“I knew it was stupid, and I knew they were risking everything, so I told the school.” I shrugged. “That’s really all there is to it.”
He frowned at me. “Liar. Why did the FBI get involved?”
“I’m not lying. It turns out there’s a whole cheating thing, a whole organized conspiracy, and our little part was somehow connected. They wanted to know if I knew anything else.” I suddenly found my lap very interesting. “I didn’t.” I decided not to mention the idea that there was someone on this tour who was involved; we didn’t know if it was true, and talking about it was out of the question, even with Will. There was a long silence. I looked up at him. “You hate snitches.”
He nodded. “Sure, we all do, right?”
“Yes. But this was different. This wasn’t vaping in the bathroom.”
“I see that. But . . . it’s still snitching. You still went to the teachers and got your friends in trouble.”
“Only to save them from getting in even bigger trouble.”
“Why didn’t you tell them not to do it?”
I felt hurt suddenly. “I tried that, for crying out loud. What, you think I overheard them and scuttled off to the principal’s office? They told me about it, asked me what I thought, I told them what I thought, they decided to do it anyway.” I clenched my fists in my lap. “I’m not Alice. I’m not a big shiny star at school. I’m just another kid, and they didn’t listen to me.”
He stood up. “Well, I’m glad everything is okay now.”
Then he walked away.