by Lea Geller
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“That’s why you like these boys. You like them because you got the keys to the kingdom and you never had to work.” He paused and then smirked. “I mean, until you did.”
I felt heat rise up through me. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know enough,” he said.
“I’ll tell you why I get these boys,” I said, my voice rising and shaking at the same time. “I get them because everyone else underestimates them. Everyone underestimates them the same way you underestimated me.” By the time I had finished, I was shouting. I had scared Grace, who had taken a break from unshelving all the books and started to whimper. I scooped her up and kissed the top of her head.
“Enough.” Ruth spoke from her seat behind the desk, startling me. I’d forgotten she was in the room. “Gavin, go home, pack up, and be gone by graduation.” Ruth looked at her hands, assessing her long, tapered fingers. “Agnes, you stay. We have a few details to iron out.” She smiled warmly at me.
“Ruth,” I said, not smiling back, “let’s just be clear. Nobody may ever know that you sold out your students to make yourself look good, but I will.”
She didn’t miss a beat. “Then I guess we’ll both know things about each other, won’t we?”
“I have to go,” I said. “I have one more thing left to do.”
Gavin was just the warm-up. Now I had to confront Jack. I pulled out my phone to text him.
Meet me. Now. My house.
Really? Right now?
Yes. Grace is in day care. We have the place to ourselves. Come find me.
I knew this wasn’t exactly fair, but I also knew Jack wouldn’t make a trip this far uptown if he didn’t think sex was involved.
See you in 30. Can’t wait.
Yup, see you in thirty. I now had half an hour not to lose my nerve.
-6-
A few minutes later, while I was shoving socks and books under the brown couch, I heard a knock on the door. I took my hair down, walked into the foyer, and checked my reflection. I opened the door and Jack walked in. His hands were on me before I even closed the door behind him.
“My God, it’s been too long.” It was like he’d forgotten all about our conversation in front of Beeks’s apartment and could only think about how long he’d gone without this, if he was even thinking. His lips were on my ear, neck, my chest. He forced me back into the living room, and I bumped into the back of the couch.
“What’s this?” he murmured, his mouth still on my neck, his eyes behind me.
“This?” I said, looking down. “This is the brown couch.”
“How about we christen it?” he murmured in my ear. He untucked my shirt and ran his hands underneath, his fingers quickly working to unhook my bra.
“Jack . . .”
“Shh. We can talk later,” he said. He ran a hand down my waist. It landed on an especially large pair of underwear that came up well over my belly button.
“Jesus, Aggie, what the hell are these?” he said, pausing momentarily.
“These are the underwear version of the brown couch,” I said proudly. “Ugly but extremely comfortable.”
“I’m sure it’s comfortable wearing something you could camp in,” he said. “But those things are coming off.” He kissed me again, hard, and worked to unbutton my skirt.
What’s the hurry? I thought to myself. This could be the very last time we do this. What’s the harm in waiting? But then he slid a hand down into my underwear and I fully understood the harm in waiting. It took all the strength I had to push him away.
“What?” he asked. “You don’t want this? Tell me you don’t want me.” His hands and mouth were back on me, still working, his breathing hard.
I pushed him away again and said quickly, “Of course I want you. But I can’t help you, Jack. I’m not doing it.” I was breathing so heavily it was hard to get the words out.
He fell back, as if I’d hit him. “You can’t do that.”
“I have to.”
“You can walk away from me, from us? What about Grace? You don’t want her to have her father at home? You don’t want her to have a real family? You want her to grow up like you did?”
“If I help you, if I do this for you, I could also get into real trouble, and then Grace will have neither of us.”
“Nobody will know.” He moved toward me and put his hands back on my waist.
“What about next time?” I asked, steeling myself. “When this happens again, and we both know it will, because that’s how a Ponzi scheme works . . .”
He let go of me and looked shocked, as though he’d never heard those words before.
“What do you know about a Ponzi scheme?”
“I know that you faked it. You faked all of it. If it comes out that I knew and that I helped you raise funds from new investors just to pay off old investors, then I could go to jail, too, and then Grace will really have nothing.”
Jack opened his mouth, but I cut him off. “If you want to earn the money back the right way, I’ll help you,” I said. “We refund your investors and we’re done. We get a fresh start.”
“But then we’d have nothing, Aggie.”
“We’d be a family, Jack.” I took a step toward him.
Jack took a step back. “You say that, but you’re terrified of that life, aren’t you?” he said. “Never having enough, always needing more.”
“I am scared of never having enough. But not scared enough to break the law.”
He smiled a sad smile. “Wow. Some trophy wife you turned out to be.”
“You’re right. I had nothing before you,” I said, my voice breaking, my eyes suddenly stinging with tears. “But you’re also wrong. I wasn’t the trophy, Jack. You were. You were my trophy.”
“What?”
“You were my trophy,” I said, wiping my face with my sleeve. “You were my trophy for all those years I lived without family, for all those years I worked so hard. You were the trophy.” I was suddenly crying so hard I couldn’t breathe. I felt hollowed out. “You were right. I didn’t ask any questions. I didn’t care what was happening to me or who I had to become. I just wanted the prize.”
“Wow,” he said. “I guess I underestimated you.”
“That seems to be a theme,” I said in between sobs.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen this way,” he whispered.
“Tell me about it,” I said, looking into his beautiful eyes. Could I really do this? Would I be OK if I never saw those eyes again?
“Really, Aggie? You’re OK with Grace having a father in jail?”
“I’m not OK with it. But I don’t have a choice. She should at least have one of us, and if I help you, she could have neither.”
I thought he was going to speak, but he grabbed me hard, pushed me down on the couch, and kissed me. He grabbed my hair and pulled at it lightly, gasping when his hand came away with a clump of long blonde strands. “What the hell is this?” he asked, pushing himself off me, holding his hand for me to see. “Why is your hair falling out?”
“It’s not my hair.”
“Then whose hair is it?”
“Someone else’s.”
“Aggie, why are you wearing someone else’s hair?” He stared at me, his mouth wide open. I can’t say I blamed him. I was pretty disgusted with the extensions, too.
“Because I cut my hair, Jack. I cut my own hair when I got here, and I was terrified that you wouldn’t approve. That’s what I did, or at least that’s what the person I was did.”
“What happened to that person? Did you leave her in Santa Monica?”
“No. She left Santa Monica. She even came here to New York. At some point, though, I lost her.”
He threw the extensions to the floor, tucked in his shirt, and buttoned his pants.
“Jack, I’m sorry.” I began tucking my own clothes in.
“Not as sorry as I am. I have to go. I love you, and I love Grace. I
always will. Goodbye, Agnes,” he said, and without waiting for me to respond, Jack was gone.
PART FIVE: EPILOGUE
THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL
I’d like to say that my boys shone at the last-day-of-school ceremony. I’d like to say that each of them won an award—even if it was for hours accumulated in the Bowel or number of late passes stolen from Gavin’s desk. But at the tented ceremony held outside on one of the lawns, my boys were largely invisible. I watched Caleb, Davey, Art, and Guy slink into their alphabetical seats and wriggle and squirm through an interminable ceremony. One by one, awards were handed out to the same small group of boys, who, by the end of it all, seemed almost embarrassed by their riches. Afterward, I hovered near the buffet with Stacey and Adam and watched my boys with their parents. Davey was right—my hair did look like his mom’s. It also looked like Caleb’s mom’s and about two-thirds of the hair on all the mothers there. The boys waved to me. I waved back.
Gavin had left in the middle of an early May night. I’d heard he’d gotten a position in Connecticut. “It helps that nobody wants to teach middle school,” grumbled Mona Creek one morning as she heaped creamer into her coffee.
After the ceremony, I walked home and called Beeks.
“I made it,” I said, stopping to sit on a wooden bench. “I made it to the end of the year.”
“And in two weeks, you’ll make it to the Cape with us,” she said with a laugh. “You’ll love it. Nothing but ice cream and pale New Englanders as far as the eye can see.”
“Sounds delightful,” I said.
“I dunno. I think the adjustment to East Coast beachgoers may be a little rocky. It was for me.”
“I think that’s an adjustment I can handle,” I said. “In the scheme of things.”
“I really can’t talk,” she said. “I have the twins’ end-of-year play. I agreed to be snack mother. Again.”
“Now it’s my turn to yell!” I hollered. “Why do you always have to be snack mother?”
“To save the kids from black-bean brownies and kale chips. Nobody wants to eat that shit.”
I laughed. I didn’t even bother waiting for Beeks to say goodbye.
I’d been calling Don periodically to check on Jack. The pieces were falling around him. Lawsuits had been filed, and whatever he still had was sold to pay back his investors. I thought about calling Don for a new update, but I slid my phone into my pocket, got up, and kept walking.
Grace was in her final hours of day care, and I took advantage of my final hours alone before the summer. I had packing to do. Ruth had offered to let me move into a better-heated, centrally cooled house on the other side of Stacey Figg, and I agreed, on the condition that I could bring the brown couch with me. I also lobbied hard for a new coding program for the boys—to be run by Adam. If anyone could put their hacking skills to good use, it was him.
I walked up the front stairs, put my key in the lock, and pulled open the door, releasing several hundred empty canisters of veggie puffs. They spilled out of the foyer and onto the steps, tumbling all around me. I stumbled back, hopping over the cans, and turned around to see my boys standing in the bushes.
“Surprise!” screamed Davey, throwing up his arms, bringing his snug shirt with him and revealing a stripe of white belly.
“We wanted to do balloons,” said Guy. “But Caleb thought this was funnier.”
I looked at Caleb, who was grinning sheepishly. “Yeah. Don’t ask us how long it took to collect all these,” he said. “We’ve been hitting your recycling bins at night.” He pulled a can from behind his back. “We brought you a full can of your favorite.”
“Plum carrot!” I said, taking the can and making a note of the duct-tape bow.
I laughed and reached out to hug them. “You guys always go one step too far, one step into crazy-land,” I said. “I’m going to miss crazy-land. It’ll be a long summer without you guys.” I inhaled sharply to avoid getting teary.
“We’ll miss you, too,” said Guy, who was never above a few tears.
“Is it true that you’re gonna be the middle school principal?” Art asked.
“No,” I said. “But Ms. Figg and I are going to help hire the new principal. So you’re still going to be dealing with me next year, even though I may not be teaching you.”
“What about after that?” asked Davey. “What about high school?”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve been talking,” said Caleb, looking at the others. “We think that next year you should apply for a job in the high school here. That way, if we go, you’ll go with us.”
I sniffled sharply again, but this time, my tears got the better of me.
“Boys, even when you’re in high school, I’ll still be here for you. Mi foyer es su foyer.”
“Huh?” said Art.
Maybe it wasn’t such a surprise that one of these boys didn’t get the Spanish award.
“Nobody likes middle school,” said Caleb. “That’s what all the teachers say when they think we’re not listening. They say the only people who want to teach middle school are the ones who couldn’t get jobs in high schools.”
“That’s not true. I want to teach middle school.”
“Why?” sniffled Guy.
“I like it here.”
“Really?” he asked.
“Yes, really. I like it that you guys are in between. I like it that you’re still boys in some ways but that I get to see glimpses of the men you’ll be. I like it that you’re middling.” They weren’t the only ones middling, teetering in between the people they were and the people they could be. I knew exactly why I’d found a home in the middle school. “Besides,” I added, “I’ve kind of gotten used to the Wall of Axe.”
“OK,” said Caleb, nodding at the others. “We get it.”
“Can we take a picture?” Art asked. “Before we go?”
“Sure,” I said. We took a selfie in front of the house, veggie puff canisters underfoot. The boys looked at the picture and sent it to each other. Then they gave me one last awkward hug and ambled off, bumping into each other as they walked. I wondered how different the boys would look when I saw them again in the fall. Summer wreaks havoc on the adolescent body. I watched them move across campus until they were out of sight. Then, turning to face the house, I climbed the steps, walked inside, and sat down on the brown couch. I popped open the canister of the plum-carrot puffs and tossed a handful into my mouth.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to Danielle Marshall for taking a big chance on me and this book, and to Alicia Clancy for deftly guiding me through the process. I would never have written Trophy Life had I not walked into the Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute and met Eileen Palma, my teacher and dear friend, whose advice made this book better at every turn. I’m grateful to my other Sarah Lawrence teachers, Annabel Monaghan and Pat Dunn, as well as my classmates, who cheered me on from the very first draft. Everyone should have a first reader (and a friend) like Johanna Shargel, who read every draft I sent her way and often texted me first thing in the morning with new thoughts on the book. Thank you to my other readers—Eleanor Menzin, Adina Shoulson, Sarah Josephson, Dahvi Waller, Lexy DeVane Tomaino, Shami Shenoy, and Emily Holsinger Butler, and to the real Beeks, for lending me her name as well as her ear. I’m eternally grateful to David Naggar, who told me to write a book and then championed me when I did.
To my children, Bennett, Efram, Frances, Fiona, and Sidney, who were calling me a novelist when I only had a rough draft in hand. A special shout-out to my boys, who were both in middle school when I wrote this book and taught me that the antidotes to the middle school years are a sense of humor and a healthy dose of empathy.
Mostly, though, I thank my husband, Michal, who gave me everything I needed to write this book, including every type of space I needed—the actual physical space, and the mental space to hole up inside the story and ignore everything around me. Thank you for not letting me name our children Wolf or Satchel, bu
t especially Agnes.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2017 Jason Roth
Lea Geller is a recovering lawyer who lives in New York with her husband and children. She began her writing career by blogging about her adventures in the trenches of parenting, and got the idea for Trophy Life when her two sons were in middle school.
When Lea’s not eavesdropping on her children, she can be found running, drinking diner coffee, and occasionally teaching middle-school English. She enjoys embarrassing her family by posting pictures of her vegetable garden on Instagram (#IgrewDinner). You can follow her at www.leageller.com.
