Chapter 2: Rob

It’s not easy being the only son of the only son of the oldest luck family in America. I know, whine-whine-whine. But I never get credit for anything. Even things I do that have nothing to do with luck, no one notices. And most people just see a faded image of my dad when they look at me. I’m the Student Body President like him, but I didn’t get elected with as big a margin. My grades aren’t as good as his. And I don’t know what I want to do with my life, though he started his first successful company in high school, a company that sold tips from lucky investors to those who weren’t so lucky. It wasn’t illegal at the time, and my dad has kept up with all the laws to make sure that he is just on this side. Money matters a lot to him. That, and luck.

My mom’s parents had a lot of money and she met him at some mega-rich ball when she was, like, seventeen. He waited for her to turn nineteen, and then they got married. I think she still spends most of her time figuring out how to spend Dad’s money, while he spends all his time figuring out how to make more of it. So it’s a happy marriage that way. The only unhappy part is me. Whenever I am with my parents, I feel like I am disappointing them just by breathing. I don’t dress well enough for my mother. I don’t care about money enough for my father. The one thing they think I have going for me is the family luck.

I get that my dad worked hard for everything he has. I get that he had to find a whole new life for himself after my grandfather was caught in a big scandal that cost him his political ambitions. He went into show business after that, and you can still see some of his films. He was actually a decent actor, though he probably got better roles than he should have, considering his ability alone. Look up Nicholas Chiltern on Wikipedia, and you’ll see what he’s like. Of course, I can’t do that at home. Dad checks all my web browsing and he has certain links to my grandfather’s films and his scandal tagged so I can’t see them. He’s embarrassed and he has never told me a single good think about the man. He died when I was three or four years old, but to my knowledge, we never met. Dad didn’t speak to his father from right after high school until the very end.

Dad’s mom divorced Grandpa when he went into acting. Well, that and the scandal he was involved. She lived with my parents for a while, until she got too old and now she lives upstate in a really nice home with acres and acres of land. I sometimes wish I could go see her more often. It’s like Dad has become embarrassed about her, too, though, and we don’t go as much as we used to. Her mind is going, but she’s so lucky that I think it’s adorable. She sometimes forgets who we all are, but she makes up names for us and tells us the parts we’re supposed to play in the scene in her head. She never curses or shouts like other people who get dementia. She smiles or giggles and ruffles my hair. She tells me I’m handsome, too. She asks me when I’m going to take her out of the place and marry her. She makes me feel like I really matter, which is why I like her. But also possibly why Dad talks about her not being his real mother anymore. I guess his real mother wasn’t nearly so nice.

I should feel sorry for Dad, I guess. His childhood was miserable, by all accounts. Not that his dad expected too much of him, but he expected nothing. And grandma was always unhappy back then, because she suspected stuff or because she knew it. I get it. Money is security to him. It’s his way of proving that he’s not his father, that he made good in the world. I just wish that he didn’t think that I have to follow the same path as him. And I wish sometimes that I could trust him enough to hint at even a little of my problems. Some people say the truth will make you free, but I don’t think any of them ever met my dad.

And then there’s Trudy. I heard about Trudy a week or so before she transferred into St. James. There was a big buzz about her test score. The highest that had been measured that year, and in Tennessee in some town no one had ever heard of where no one had ever had a luck score above average since the test was invented. Some people whispered that she was ugly, that it was only fair that someone who was so lucky be hideous to look at. You might think that people who are lucky would naturally be beautiful, but it’s not always true. Then there were other rumors, that she was stuck up, that she had refused to speak to her unlucky parents ever again, that she had never had any friends in her life because she thought she was above them all.

“She is probably an idiot, bumbling around in that country town. I bet she comes here and gets the worst grades you’ve ever seen, ends up marrying some politician and having a whole slew of babies she hopes will end up just as lucky as she is,” said Laura at lunch one day.

“You hope so because you don’t want her to end up taking challenging you for supremacy here,” said Art.

“Don’t be ridiculous. No one could challenge me for supremacy here,” said Laura, flipping her hair.

I had known for a long time that things weren’t right between me and Laura. It was hard to put my finger on the problem exactly. She was beautiful, smart, and she knew what she wanted in life: me. She didn’t expect much other than me doing what she told me to do, which wasn’t too onerous. I kissed her when she expected it. I asked her to dances when she hinted that she wanted me to. I bought her the birthday gifts that she pointed out to me in the mall the week before the official date. But there was something missing between us. I knew I could never tell her the truth, and that was part of it. But more than that, I had the sense that Laura wanted the same thing from me that my parents did. She wanted me to make money, she didn’t care how as long as it was a lot, and she wanted me to keep up the good family name.

It was when Laura was talking about Trudy before any of us had ever met her that I realized I had to break up with her. I had been going along because it was the easiest thing to do, not to face down Laura. I told myself that it was just high school, that it didn’t matter, that when we went on to college, I could figure out if I wanted her in my life or not. But the nastiness in her voice when she talked about Trudy made me see clearly that she was mean and small. More than that, her meanness had been making my life more difficult. She would echo the things my father would say even when he wasn’t around, about what classes I was taking or what grades I was getting. Nothing I did was good enough for her, either. You can say you think that would just push me on to new heights, but it didn’t. It made me feel more crappy about myself and like there was a shell that I lived inside that I could never get out of.

I still didn’t break up with her, though. Let’s face it, there is a part of me that is a chicken where Laura is concerned.

But when I met Trudy, I didn’t care about how hard it would be with Laura. Because once I broke it off with her, I’d have Trudy to look forward to and anything was worth that.

I won’t say it was love at first sight exactly, but maybe second sight. At first sight, I saw Trudy sitting in the chairs outside the principal’s office. She wasn’t gorgeous, but she was cute. A cute nose, freckles, and hair that had a tendency to do whatever it wanted, even when she tried to pull it back in a tight ponytail. She sat with her legs crossed as if she was wearing a skirt even though she was wearing khakis.

“Who is that?” I mouthed at one of the secretaries.

They told me it was the girl who had gotten the super high luck score from Tennessee.

“Why is she waiting there?”

‘The principal said he wanted to talk to her.”

“How long has she been waiting?” I asked. It was about two hours into school by then.

“Since an hour before the bell rang,” said the secretary.

“Does the principal know?”

The secretary shrugged. “It’s on his calendar. He’s a busy man and besides, she’s fine. She hasn’t complained.”

They were staring at her in that way that women sometimes stare at each other, like a cheetah staring at a group of gazelles to see which one is the weakest and he can bring it down the fastest.

I was supposed to go back to class, but I couldn’t help myself. I kept watching her. Two people went into the principal’s office in the next twenty minutes ahead of her and she didn’t say a word. Laura would have had a tizzy fit. Of course, Laura would never have let this happen to her in the first place. She’d have pushed her way in.

Then one of the janitors came by. He was going to ask her to move so he could vacuum the couch underneath her.

She jumped right up. “Are you Principal Hannig?” she asked.

Where she came from, did principals vacuum their own office areas?

“No, I’m not. I’m John,” said the janitor.

“Oh, John, nice to meet you. I’m Trudy,” she said. “Can I get you something? You look tired. Why don’t you sit down?” she asked.

“I’ve got work to do,” said John.

After three years of being at St. James, I had probably seen John any number of times but had never actually talked to him or thought enough about him to ask what his name was. There were probably twenty people who worked inside or outside the school who were almost invisible to me, people who were hired not because they were lucky but because they weren’t, and having them there made the rest of us feel better because we knew the difference.

Trudy didn’t know the difference. “Here, give me that vacuum. I’m not doing anything useful right now. I’ll help you with the vacuuming and then when I’m done, you’ll be rested and ready to keep going.”

“I don’t know,” said John, looking toward the principal’s office and then to the secretaries. But none of them were paying any attention to him. He caught a glimpse of me, but I tucked myself back against the wall so Trudy wouldn’t see me. I didn’t want her to think of me as a stalker type, but I was intrigued by what she was doing.

“With my luck, I bet I’ll have this couch cleaned in ten seconds flat,” said Trudy cheerfully. And indeed, the couch was cleaned very quickly. “What else should I do?” she asked. “The floor?”

“You don’t need—” said John.

“But I want to. I like to be of use.”

“But you have luck,” said John. “You don’t need to do work when you have luck.”

“Who says that?” said Trudy. “If you don’t do any work, then what’s the point of living? Lucky people have a responsibility to do more work with all that luck, but we all have a responsibility to do what’s right and what is in front of us to do. Don’t we?”

John shrugged.

Right then, the principal came out and ushered Trudy into his office. He looked like he wasn’t happy about John having talked to her. But Trudy mentioned how welcoming he had been, and how happy she was to see how everyone was treated so well at St. James, that it wasn’t nearly as stuck up as she had been afraid it would be.

“After all, I’ve lived my whole life with people who haven’t had any luck. It’s what I’m used to.”

I didn’t hear any more than that, but I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Between class the next hour I made my way back down to the office and found her right outside it, looking at a piece of paper with her locker number on it. I talked to her, flirting a little. I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t want to scare her away, but I think I could have kissed her for the first time right there. She made me see how much I’d been missing with Laura, how trapped I’d been. She opened the door to my cage and coaxed me out.

She didn’t even know who I was then, not the Rob Chiltern of the Chiltern family part of the Student Body President part or the rich part. She laughed and giggled at me like she didn’t care. Like maybe she could see the real me, and that the rest wouldn’t matter.

I’m not saying I spilled the truth to her that first meeting. I’m still human, and I was still afraid of what the consequences would be, especially if my dad found out. Which he would have. I found out pretty quickly that one thing Trudy is not good at is lying. If she thinks something, you can see it right on her face. That’s another big difference between her and Laura, and another reason that when I started falling, I just kept going, faster and faster, the hole of love getting deeper and deeper around me. I didn’t have to guess what Trudy was thinking or tease it out of her like she was a Shakespearean sonnet written in another version of English. She was just who she was, and she could—almost—make me feel comfortable enough to be just who I was, too.

Of course, Dad still wishes that I hadn’t broken up with Laura. He thought she would make the perfect wife for the son he thinks—or maybe just wishes—he had. Trudy laughs too loud and smiles too much and Dad thinks she’s not good enough for me. Oh, he knows she has luck and all that. But he thinks that Laura was the one who had the sort of skills I would need for success in business. Not to mention the contacts and the understanding of how money works.

I remember when I told Dad that first weekend that I had broken up with Laura. I tried to get it over with quick, like yanking off a bandaid. I blurted it out in the kitchen while he was getting a beer and I had intended to flee up to my room afterward. I should have known it would never work that way.

Dad put back the beer, then had me come into his office and sit in the couch across from his big leather chair. He didn’t say anything for a long moment. I wanted to run away, but I made myself stay and stare back at him.

“What happened?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I’m sorry, but it just wasn’t right,” I said. “Sir,” I added because that always made Dad happy to hear. He liked respect, even if it was from his son.

“Why not? Did you do something to hurt her? You can apologize, you know, Rob. You can make things right with her if you try.”

I didn’t want to try. So I said nothing.

“I know her father and her mother. I see them both nearly every weekend. Do you know that? I almost had them ready to invest. Do you know what this will do to the business?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” I said.

“What should I say to them?” he asked.

“It just wasn’t right,” I said again. “It’s not her fault, though. She’s a great girl.” I tried to sound positive. “I’m sure she’ll get over me soon enough.”

“You’re sure about this, Rob? You’re not going to regret it in a few weeks?”

“I’ve never been more sure, sir,” I told Dad then.

“And I’m not going to hear later on that there is some other story behind this, something embarrassing you’re not telling me?”

“No, sir,” I said. I was going to ask Trudy out, but I hadn’t done it while Laura and I were still dating. I’d talked to Trudy, but it hadn’t been anything more than that. I couldn’t help how I felt about her already, but no one could say I was two-timing either of them.

Dad hesitated. “Is it because—you don’t feel like you measure up to Laura?”

“I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

Dad made a motion with his hands. “I just have the feeling that you are—well, drowning. That you’re over your head in water and you don’t know how to swim.”

Was he talking about luck? “I’m fine, sir,” I said.

“She’s not better than you. I hope you know that.”

I stared at him again.

“Your mother says you have an inferiority complex. She thinks that I don’t give you enough positive feedback, that I don’t tell you often enough that you’re a great son, that I’m proud of you and am confident about how your future will play out.”

“My future?” I said.

“Sure, as my son. With the business. You’re going to inherit all of it. You have luck and money and any girl would be glad to have you. You don’t have to go for the easiest choice. That’s all I mean.”

I gritted my teeth. “That is not what this is about. I just don’t think Laura is right for me. She’s—her personality doesn’t fit with mine.” How could he not see that, how she stifled me and I never said a word when she was around unless it was to agree with her?

“You know your grandfather—he doesn’t have to be a millstone around your neck. You don’t have to think that the Chiltern name has anything to do with him. We’ve lived his legacy down and now we have our own.”

“This isn’t about Grandpa,” I said. “This is about me.” But he couldn’t see that. Everything was about Grandpa to him. He was living his life through me, and he couldn’t see that I wasn’t him. He was just like Laura, I thought then. Only I couldn’t dump my dad and get a new one.

Mom tried to patch things up between us a bit. We didn’t talk much, but at least we grunted at each other. He didn’t leave the room every time I walked into it and I didn’t try to do all my homework upstairs so that I didn’t bump into him. But it was strained, and it didn’t get any better when I brought Trudy home for the first time. She looked pretty, I thought, but she was wearing homemade clothes and she didn’t have her nails done just right or her hair cut by the right salon. She looked perfect to me, but Dad isn’t me, as I know darn well.

Dad watched her all the time, and I could see he was waiting for her to use the wrong fork or something. But she didn’t. She was too lucky for that kind of mistake. She talked with all of us about the school and how she liked it here in Vermont, the trees and the cold air at night. Harmless stuff. But if Laura had been there, she’d have talked about politics and the economy, the kinds of things Dad cared about.

Dad was stiff when he walked her to the limo that was waiting to take her back to her dorm room. I kissed her lightly on the cheek and he turned away, like it disgusted him. Finally, we went back inside.

Mom put a hand on his arm and whispered in his ear.

Then Dad got a beer and came up to my room. He stood in the doorway. “I don’t want you to think I don’t like this new girl. She’s pretty and she seems very down to earth. I suspect you feel very comfortable with her.”

Maybe he was right. Maybe I did love her because she made me feel comfortable. But is there anything wrong with that?

I asked her on Monday how she’d survived my dad’s glares. I apologized for him.

She laughed. “Your parents really weren’t that bad,” she assured me. “Just a little different. We’ll get used to each other in time.”

“You aren’t going to run all the way back home to Tennessee?” I asked.

“I’ve never been much good at running,” said Trudy.

“And what about me coming to meet your parents sometime? You know my dad’s offer about the jet wasn’t a joke. He could send us down in it anytime he wanted it. He would probably figure out a way to write it off as a tax expense, even if he’s not on board.”

Trudy’s face darkened for the first time since I had known her. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?” I felt a cold pit in my stomach. Was she going to break up with me? Because of my parents? I didn’t think I could bear that.

“Because I don’t want you to go there. I don’t want you to see them,” she said.

“Are you ashamed of me?” I asked, the cold spreading out from my stomach and down my arms and legs into my fingers and toes. This was it. This was the part where she said that she knew the truth, that she had always known the truth about my luck, and that she had only been pretending to like me. Because she was nice to everyone, and so she’d been nice to me.

“Of course I’m not ashamed of you,” Trudy said, and lifted my hand to her face, holding it there with her own hand. “It’s just that you wouldn’t be comfortable there and neither would they.”

There was that word again: comfortable. It stung. “Maybe they’ll be more comfortable with me than you think. You could let us try.”

“Is it just about the forks? I can live without two forks, you know,” I said, teasing. “I’m not as spoiled as you think.”

Her eyes twinkled and her mouth relaxed into the smile I loved so much. “Oh, Rob,” she said, and kissed me gently on the cheek.

My heart jumped into my throat for just a moment, then fell back down. “I’m serious,” I said and looked deeply into her eyes.

“And if they don’t have any forks at all? If they just use their fingers?” She acted like it was a joke, but the smile on her face was crooked.

“Hey, I’ve heard certain foods taste better when eaten with fingers. My parents go to very fancy restaurants where they charge a thousand dollars to let them eat with their fingers.” I mimed my parents’ dainty way of eating with their fingers.

Trudy laughed, and this time I thought it was for real. “Actually, my parents do have forks. Three of them, one for each of us,” she said, grinning. “Although I think my mom’s is missing two tines.”

“I’ll get a new one. Just for me,” I said. “Not new or anything. I’ll break one of the tines, just to make them feel comfortable. You know.”

I thought I would get a laugh at that, but no. I got a long, thoughtful pause instead.

“Rob, you really can’t understand what it’s like to live without luck,” she said. “It’s more than just not having money. Their whole lives are about working hard and getting very little in return. They’re happy for me that I’m lucky, but they don’t know what to say to me anymore. It’s like we speak completely different languages.”

“That’s the way it is with me and my parents, too.” That was the moment when I might have admitted the truth to her, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. The risk was too high.

I tell myself it was because things between us were still too new. Or because she wasn’t ready yet. Maybe that’s true, but in the year plus since then, I still haven’t gotten up the courage to do it. There have been dozens of moments when I could have done it, but I didn’t.

The way she talked about her parents, it was pretty clear how sorry she felt for them. And how much she wanted to avoid being with them. She wrote them real paper letters in the mail because they didn’t have good internet access and couldn’t have afforded it even if they did. But she didn’t go visit them when she was out of school. She always had excuses about why not.

“You’ll let me meet them someday, won’t you?” I asked softly. “I’ll bring the forks, I swear it.”

“Sure. Someday,” said Trudy, and she put a hand around my arm and tucked her head under my chin.

I didn’t want to say anything to stop that. It felt so right, you know? I felt lucky with her there, like the luckiest guy in the world. Even if it wasn’t true.