If Havendale Hills is a tad crass, slightly tacky, and nouveau riche, the village of Green Meadow is refined, tasteful, and old money. Big old money. The kind so enormous it not only doesn’t brag about it, but doesn’t want word to get around. Touching up the sideburns with my trusty electric razor, I cruise in the Beast past the quaint little shops and boutiques, sprinkled here and there with super high-end jewelry stores. There’s even a furrier, as in a place that sells furs. You know, like mink coats and dried-up chinchilla carcasses. I’ve always wondered who the hell actually wears those things.
I’d heard about Westchester County, of course, but even though it’s less than an hour away from Pritchard, I’ve never before had reason to visit. I admire the glittering wares pyramided high like treasure behind shop windows and envy the charmed inhabitants of an almost fairy-tale land, free of drudgery and unfamiliar with want. This is a place of abundance, without thought of cost. When you don’t have much of it, everything’s about money. But not here in Green Meadow. Because here in Green Meadow, everyone already has everything.
I pass block after manicured block of stately houses on spacious wooded lots, monuments to the rewards of plunder, whether self-acquired or inherited. Glimmering fortresses, inaccessible behind wrought-iron gates, imposing and elegant, seemingly without end.
My iPhone directs me up a long, shaded driveway leading to what some would call a large architectural mélange, but I would call a large architectural mess. You know, all glass and corrugated steel and junk parts and weird angles, but jumbled together. I get out, check myself one last time in the side view mirror, and stroll up the walk to the front door. As I reach for the bell, I hear all this screaming and yelling from inside. I can’t make out the words or what it’s about, but it sounds bad, real bad, like a season finale of Breaking Bad bad.
Despite the potential loss of income and considerable distance already traversed, I’m instantly having serious second thoughts. If you could you hear what I’m hearing, you would too. Guttural animal noises, stuff breaking, footsteps stomping around all over the place. So, having no desire to be the star of my personal slasher flick, I do the logical thing and turn to bolt. Unfortunately, my survival instincts are a fraction too slow.
The door opens and a claw-like appendage shoots out and latches onto the tail of my suit jacket, which I still owe seven payments on. I’m running in place. If I move away, the semi-fine wool blend will rip. So I stop mid-stride. Trapped.
“Thank God!” says Dr. Harvey Lieberman, staring at me through thick Coke-bottle glasses that magnify his microdot eyes. Harvey looks just the way I pictured he would on the phone. All jittery and twitchy, like a rabbit terrified that any second something bigger’s going to squash him, which, in this psycho ward, could be a very real possibility. “We thought you’d never get here.”
Harvey smiles weakly. I do too. Even though I go slack and become dead weight, he’s able to kind of tilt me over inside. He closes and bolts the door behind us.
“Celia’s very excited.”
“Yes,” I say. Somebody sure as shit is.
The house is just as whacky inside as it is out. Geometric furniture you can’t sit on. Grotesque tribal masks, fertility statues, and generally disturbing primitive art. Offbeat—but not in a good way. But the joint is huge, I’ll give it that. The Rattigan hovel, by comparison, could easily fit within any number of its high-ceilinged rooms. But that isn’t surprising, considering what I’m dealing with. According to my customary exhaustive online research, Harvey Lieberman’s a world-renowned neurosurgeon in Midtown Manhattan. You know, the kind that operates on aging actors and deposed dictators, sometimes both at once. Beaucoup bucks.
“I simply don’t understand it,” says a woman with frizzed-out hair, also wearing big thick glasses, who clunks down the stairs on weird wooden shoes in some flowy caftan thing. “I would have died to have gone to my Winter Formal.”
Gayle Dross-Lieberman’s a Professor of Child Psychology at the New School for Social Research. And from what I quickly gathered, considered a bit of a quack—even for there. Her big breakthrough? After the weaning process, breast milk can be used for cold cereal and hot cocoa. For real.
The two Liebermans squint cheerfully at me, like the insanity I’ve just heard is perfectly normal. I regard them quizzically. Without question, they are two of the biggest geeks, if not the biggest, I’ve ever met in my life. No, the word “geek” doesn’t do them justice. They are dweebs.
“Celia,” Gayle trills. “Your gallant knight awaits!”
No answer from above. I shrug philosophically. Easy come, easy go. As I inch for the front door, Gayle darts between me and it.
“Harvey, do something!” she demands of her husband.
“Do I have to?” he squeaks.
She gives him a look that gives me the shivers. Harvey shudders.
“Celia, this is your father speaking,” he calls up the stairs authoritatively. “Come down right now! I mean it!”
“EAT SHIT!!”
Gayle turns to me apologetically. “She’s just a little nervous.”
I feel embarrassed for Gayle. At this point I feel embarrassed for all of humanity. I just want to get out of Dodge while the getting’s good. Exit stage right. And I will—as soon as Gayle gives me the slightest glimpse of daylight to run.
“Harvey, sweetheart, the unevolved teenage mind requires insight and empathy,” she says and, by way of demonstrating, calls up cloyingly. “Honey, Daddy and I only want what’s best for you.”
No eruption. Both Harvey and me are way impressed. Gayle continues, triumphant, on a roll.
“To build the memories we never got to have. We both missed out going to Winter Formal when we were seniors.”
“I couldn’t get anyone to say yes,” says Harvey, misting up in painful memory.
“I couldn’t get anyone to ask me,” says Gayle sorrowfully, obviously still traumatized by it.
Looking at them, I can understand why.
“We’ve regretted not going our whole lives,” Gayle says sweetly. “I swore then my daughter would go. I swore if someday I had a daughter, she’d get to dress up in frilly, pretty things and experience all the fun stuff I never got to experience.” Suddenly, the mask of motherly solicitude shatters. “I’m not going to let you deprive me of that, damn it!”
“IT’S JUST A STUPID HIGH SCHOOL DANCE! I LOOK RETARDED! I’M NOT GOING! YOU CAN’T MAKE ME!”
Although I am brand-new to the Lieberman family dysfunction, if I was choosing sides, which I’m not, I’d side with Celia. I don’t have to see her to know that it’s got to be rough being a living do-over for two dweebs who never got to do anything fun in high school. And with good reason.
“DEVELOPMENTALLY CHALLENGED! YOU LOOK DEVELOPMENTALLY CHALLENGED!” Gayle blasts back, insight and empathy out the window. “AND IF YOU DON’T GET YOUR ASS DOWN HERE THIS INSTANT, YOUR CREDIT CARDS ARE CANCELLED AND YOU ARE GROUNDED FOR LIFE!!”
A long, ominous silence. Then, upstairs, a door opens. Gayle beams at me.
“You two kids are going to have such a way cool time, I just know it!”
So this is how Celia Lieberman makes her grand entrance down the stairs and into my life. At first glance, she’s pretty much what you’d expect. Frizzed-out hair like Gayle, awkward like Harvey, but not without physical merits. I mean, she wears dippy glasses, but she’s got good contours and is just fine—or would be if her makeup wasn’t runny and smeared and she wasn’t encased in what can only be described as a long pink poofy sack, which Gayle had to have picked out. I mean, there’s curlicues and ribbons and crap sticking out all over the place. It belongs in an episode of one of those British shows on PBS, the ones chicks love to watch even though they’re set back when women were treated as chattel—noun, property. And even then the thing would still suck.
“Oh, don’t you look stunning!” Gayle exclaims, clasping her hands. “Doesn’t she look stunning, Harvey?”
“She looks radiant,” Harvey says, actually meaning it.
“I want you to know that you are psychologically scarring me for eternity,” Celia says, then grimly vows, “Someday when you’re both old, sick, and feeble I will get you back for this humiliation. You will both pay for this. I will never forgive either of you.”
“Yes, you will.” Gayle glows. “Someday you’ll even thank us.”
It’s like I’m watching my very own rendition of Long Day’s Journey Into Night performed for me. I’ve never seen or read Long Day’s Journey Into Night, but if I had or I did, this is what I picture it would be like. Aghast, I cough politely.
“Hey, how about a few snapshots for the Lieberman family album?”
---
A Prius. In fact, they have two of them. It so figures that all they drive is hybrids. As we putter off in the seriously underpowered vehicle, Gayle and Harvey wave after us from the front door.
“Go wild, kids! Knock yourselves out!”
She ignores me. We drive in stony silence. Although I am at the wheel, I have no clue where I’m going. We reach the corner.
“Left or right on Maple?” I inquire.
“Left,” Celia Lieberman says in a choked voice. She huddles miserably against her door, fighting tears, sniffling, wiping her nose on a ludicrous puffy sleeve. Poor kid, she can’t help who she was born to any more than me. I’m actually feeling sorry for her. Shows what a sap I am.
“Hey, how about a little music to brighten the mood?” I suggest.
“Hey, how about you shut the hell up?”
What the fuck? Not sure if I’ve heard her correctly or am simply hallucinating from my ordeal, I switch on the radio. Celia Lieberman immediately snaps it back off.
“What’s your problem?”
“You,” she snarls like a caged beast. “You’re the goddamn problem!”
“I’m the goddamn problem?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing. If anyone’s the injured party in a twisted plot I didn’t ask to step into, it’s me.
“If you didn’t exist, I wouldn’t have to be going through this farce!”
“Hey, whose parents called who?” Again, I’m simply astounded by her attitude, not to mention the general tenor of the conversation. I’m just an innocent bystander to her admittedly shitty plight and, considering the bizarro circumstances and tribal art I’ve been subjected to, she should be thanking her lucky stars I hung around.
“My parents don’t know any better. But you! You’re pathetic!”
Struggling to maintain my professional composure, I brake the Prius at a stop sign. “Left or right?” I ask.
“Right,” she answers.
I turn right, chuckling loudly to myself. “I’m the pathetic one? Oh, that’s a laugh!”
“What kind of a loser are you, anyway?” she actually has the nerve to say.
“Me? I’m the loser here?” I’m beyond indignant.
“I mean, Jesus Christ, there’s gotta be better ways to turn a buck.”
“I happen to perform a public service,” I inform her.
“Oh, I’m sure you do!” she laughs knowingly.
“All of my clients have been extremely satisfied!” I shout, losing it.
“Clients? You mean victims, don’t you?” she screams back.
Nose to nose, each of us shaking with rage, we reach a fork in the road.
“LEFT OR RIGHT??!!!”
“RIGHT!!!!”
---
By the time we make it to Chez Pierre, this big-deal French steakhouse, Celia Lieberman and I are no longer on speaking terms. I pretty much hate her guts, and the feeling’s definitely mutual. But a man’s word is his bond, and I resolve to try to make the best of it.
“Look,” I say. “I don’t like being with you any more than you like being with me. In fact, I don’t like even being in the same state with you. But can’t we try to get along before we never ever have to see each other again?”
I think it’s an exceedingly reasonable offer, but apparently not because when the valet opens Celia Lieberman’s door, she leaps out screaming: “STAY AWAY FROM ME, SCUMBAG!”
She storms to the entrance, which two doormen dressed like coachmen impassively swing open for her. Meanwhile, the parking valet’s glaring down at me. He’s big and giving me the stink eye like he’s ready to call the cops on me.
“We’re crazy about each other,” I reassure him, holding out the fob to the Prius.
He looks less than convinced but takes it. I scurry away before he changes his mind. The doormen do their thing. Inside, the Chez is way fancy: chandeliers, polished wood, and red velvet. When I catch up with Celia Lieberman in the reception area, I’m seething.
“You know, I don’t need this crap! I happen to be a very busy guy!”
She stomps on my toe with a spiked heel. As a dignified-looking maître d’ in a long coat glides up to greet us, I’m hopping about on one foot in agony.
“I already had a booking for tonight when your dad called,” I hiss at her. “The only reason I said yes was because he sounded so desperate. Now I realize why!”
“You’re so full of it!” she says, raising her voice.
“I was doing a good deed for humanity!”
“No, I call this torture!”
The maître d’s gone all pale, listening. I smile at him.
“Lieberman, reservation for two.”
“Right this way, sir.” Keeping a safe distance, he warily leads us across the main dining room. Following, Celia Lieberman won’t let it go but has to get the last word.
“You made my dad pay an extra twenty-five dollars to lure you out of New Jersey! I heard you guys on the phone!”
“Yes, there was the money too,” I’m forced to concede. “But that was a secondary consideration . . .”
“But nothing!” she shouts. “YOU SUCK SHIT!!”
Knives and forks cease their clatter. Staff stops. Seated coifed heads swivel in unison across the length and breadth of the elegant chamber. The majority of them are teenage heads. Girls, all prettified up, and guys, all slicked down, in small clusters at candlelit tables dining before Winter Formal. By the beads of sweat that have suddenly sprouted on Celia Lieberman’s forehead, I can tell she knows them all.
“Holy fuck, half my class is here!” she whispers, stricken.
Under the collective scrutiny, her face freezes in a forced, hideous approximation of a smile.
“Quick!” she says out of the corner of her badly painted mouth. “Pretend you like me!”
“I can’t!” I spout. “It’s beyond my range!”
Celia Lieberman clutches my arm. I can feel she’s trembling. The girl’s genuinely terrified.
“Please, if anybody finds out the truth about us, I’ll be the official joke of senior year!” she pleads, actually going all weak-kneed and unsteady against me. I have to prop her up.
Now I’ve always considered myself a reasonable person—imperfect, yes, yet all in all, a compassionate sort, fundamentally generous in nature, quick to forgive—but after the abuse I’ve been taking, I’m sorely tempted to let Celia Lieberman take the fall and roast in the raging fires of high school hell. But I’ve got a business to run and a so-far unsullied rep to maintain. Besides, I’m afraid she really might faint.
“Promise to mellow out?” I bargain.
Celia Lieberman vigorously nods. I pin on a fiendish grin.
“Smile, darling, it’s showtime.”
She smiles sickly. I take her clammy little hand in mine and tug her out of the spotlight. We’re directed, rightfully so, to the worst table in the entire establishment, exiled in the way, way back, well apart from the others. You know the one, by the hall to the johns. Normally, as part of the package, I’d pull out her chair for her to sit down. But tonight, no way. Celia Lieberman can pull out her own damn chair. Settling in, I scan the menu for the most outrageously expensive combination of items. However much the Liebermans are paying me, it’s not nearly enough.
As I decide on the lobster, I catch her sneaking a quick sip from a plastic water bottle filled to the brim with gross orange-colored liquid. By the way she’s gagging as she guzzles it down, it can only be one thing.
“Hey, easy there!” I snatch the bottle from her and grimace when I sniff its contents. The fumes alone could make a small- to average-sized person pass out. “What’s in here?”
“Carrot juice and vodka.”
The concept alone makes me nauseous.
“I like carrot juice,” she says.
“Yes,” I reply witheringly. “You would.”
She snatches back the bottle. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do at these things? Get really drunk and stupid?”
“No, actually, you’re supposed to have a good time,” I snap. “Now put it away.”
“I’m ruined.” She takes another slug. “I’m never going to live this down.”
I realize she’s in a tight spot, but her self-absorption’s beyond measure. It bugs me.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I huff. “You’re not that important. Nobody cares. Nobody notices that you’re even here.”
Then, right on cue, from around the corner, emerging en masse from the ladies’ room, we hear a cadre of gorgeous girls laughing.
“Oh my God, did you see what Celia Lieberman’s wearing?” the first one snickers.
I wince. And, if Celia Lieberman weren’t so downright unpleasant, I’d attempt a few diverting words, but none come to me.
“I can’t believe she’s actually with someone,” a second beauty cackles.
“I can’t believe she’s with someone somewhat normal,” a third one yucks.
The girls, their backs to us, in short, sleek dresses, sashay to their unpaid dates.
Somewhat normal? What’s that supposed to mean? Is it the suit? I knew I should have sprung for the better blend.
“I’m living my worst nightmare,” whimpers Celia Lieberman.
---
“Green Meadow Country Day Preparatory School, Pre-K through 12,” the sign says. Green Meadow Country Prep has the appearance, air, and physical plant of a minor major university, not to mention the tuition of one. Rolling manicured grounds, expansive and park-like. Ivy-draped buildings. Quadrangles. Its own fucking art museum. I note the school logo in smaller gold-plated letters: Where College Begins At Three.
I’ve heard about places like this before, but the reality is sobering—and way off-putting. This is the kind of place where presidents have gone—of IBM, B of A, USA—with every leg up, head start, and unfair advantage money can buy. The finest teachers, the best coaches, the newest and most cutting-edge facilities, no expense spared. A venerable factory, finely tooled and geared to a single objective: getting its graduates into the very best colleges and up those first crucial rungs of the ladder to success. I bet even the food’s good. No tuna surprise at Green Meadow Country Prep, more like tuna tartare. Here, I reflect, is my true competition. The kids with the inflated scores and eye-popping experiences. The ones with tutors for everything and college boot camps and guidance counselors who actually care. The ones with the means and connections. Who have it all. The very, very, very fortunate few.
I park the glorified golf cart at the far end of the lot, which looks like a luxury dealership. Rows of Audis, Beamers, Benzes. Not a Buick in sight. Celia Lieberman, who hasn’t uttered a sound since I ordered appetizers, just sits there.
“We don’t have to go in,” I say, not unkindly and more than a little intimidated.
Just to spite me, she gets out. I’m tempted to just drive away, but I don’t. Feeling responsible for her, although I don’t know why, I get out and follow at a distance.
You know those kids who have it all? Well, they got one more thing I feel compelled to mention. Great genes. Snub noses, straight teeth, zit-free faces. We’re in a teeming sea of seriously good-looking people. The guys in tailored suits they aren’t paying for in installments, and the girls in shimmery dresses. Hand in hand, carefree and well adjusted, they stream past us toward the dance inside. I despise them on principle, the principle being they have everything I want and don’t have. Celia Lieberman, however, does know them and they know her. And Celia Lieberman, if I must say so, looks ridiculous.
“What do you say we just say we went and go hit a movie?” she says, suddenly like we’re friends, which we’re most definitely not.
“I don’t care what we do as long as I get paid in full at the end of it,” I declare, even though part of me’s longing to venture where I’ve never been.
“Great. We can sit in different rows . . . ,” she says and about-faces to the car.
“We can even see different movies,” I heartily agree, right behind.
Then, from the darkness, a voice rings out.
“Celia Lieberman, is that really you?”
Celia Lieberman freezes like a prison escapee caught in the crosshairs. Unlike her, I retain the ability to move. I turn. The voice belongs to a willowy, super put-together girl, smoking a cigarette and sipping champagne in a long-stemmed plastic glass. That’s right, champagne, just like we do in Pritchard. Not. The girl teeters toward us on stiletto heels, obviously tipsy.
“Celia Lieberman, why, it is you!”
She cracks up as if it’s some big joke. Three other figures emerge like visions behind her. I immediately get the distinct feeling they comprise the epicenter of the epicenter, the innermostest crowd. A tall, square-jawed guy who must be her boyfriend. Another guy, even taller and buffer. Definitely jocks, but in a different, more subtle way than I’m used to. Probably some gentleman’s sport like squash or lacrosse, I surmise. They’re smoking and drinking too. And finally, a second girl. As amazing as the first girl is, she’s nothing compared to the second.
Because the second girl’s the most beautiful female creature I’ve ever seen in person. Yeah, I know it’s a cliché, but, no lie, she is. Legs that start at the shoulders, with the subtle curves and polished bearing of a top model. Silky, tawny skin, abundantly but unself-consciously displayed in a short spaghetti-strap dress. I can rhapsodize on and on—and will. The lips of Jolie, the sensuality of Alba, the sass of Johansson. But there’s something else about her that I find even more alluring. An invisible sheen of confidence, of expecting and being accustomed to only the best life has to offer. Whoever she is, she is class with a capital C, the ultimate product of private everything. I’m spellbound.
“I almost didn’t recognize you in that incredible dress!” says the first girl to Celia Lieberman.
I can’t stop looking at the second girl. I search but can detect no flaws, no defects. She regards me with direct, emerald green eyes, which I get lost in.
“Cassie, leave her alone,” she says. “You’re not funny.”
“Where’d you get it, Celia?” this Cassie chortles. “At a garage sale?”
As for Celia Lieberman, who, in the brief time I’ve had the misfortune of being acquainted with her, has never been at a loss for words—she hasn’t uttered so much as a syllable. Celia Lieberman’s a human statue. No, she’s a turtle withdrawing into its shell to outlast the storm. A bomb could go off and Celia Lieberman wouldn’t react. It’s spooky. This is the reality of being Celia Lieberman. No wonder she didn’t want to go to the dance.
Suddenly, the taller guy lets out a hairy—and I mean hairy—fart.
“Oh man, do I have to take a wicked dump!” he informs one and all.
“Tommy, you’re terrible!” giggles Cassie. “Isn’t he terrible, Brent? I don’t know how you stand it, Shelby.”
“I don’t either,” says Shelby, looking away from me.
“Yeah, yeah, you love it!” Tommy playfully traps her in his arms and grinds his hips against hers. I regard his mere touch as a desecration of her sanctity. It bothers me that he’s with her because he’s such a dick, but mostly because I wish I was.
“Bottoms up!” Brent drains his glass then tosses it on the pavement for somebody else to pick up, somebody like me. So do the others.
“C’mon, Celia, let’s get this party started!” Cassie links Celia Lieberman’s arm and whisks her inside. I tag after them like a mutt, which, let’s face it, is what I am.