The One I'm With

by Jamie Bennett

  “The head of the lower school believes these things about you?” he asked. His voice was deep.

  “I don’t know. Shirley said it didn’t matter if it was true or not. Before Wednesday afternoon, she agreed with me about Felix. She and my aide and I had worked out a plan to help him, and Shirley was on my side in our first meeting with the mom. Then on Wednesday, she sat there apologizing for me while the mom said horrible things, that...anyway, horrible things that I don’t want to repeat. And the next day, Shirley said that I had to get through the rest of the year and deal, and that also I was going to be having a lot more observations because the parents had requested more ‘supervision’ for me.” So much for me not wanting to talk about this.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I guess I’ll try to avoid his kicks. No, really, I’ll lie low and avoid attention, just like I did when I was a student there. I’ll let the first grade teacher try to deal with him next year and hope she can do a better job. Maybe Fe—the student will mature over the summer and his behavior will improve.” I sighed. “You know what? Now I’m seriously done talking about this, and I’m done moping about it, too. It just felt like a kick in the gut, even than harder than Felix—I mean, harder than what my student does to my shins. Because despite Jolie’s stories about our boss, I did like her. I respected her and I thought she had the best interests of my student at heart. He’s the one who’s going to be hurt the most by all of this. The meeting was awful, but in the end, it doesn’t matter much what was said about me. I’ve heard all that crap before. But the poor little guy.” I cleared my throat.

  “Your boss isn’t helping a little kid and hung you out to dry,” Brooks said, and he was pissed. “It’s exactly the opposite of what her job should be. She should be fired.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, that’s not going to happen, but my job is definitely in jeopardy now. Brooks, what if they decide that I am a bad teacher? That the mom is right? Shirley won’t back me up, not anymore. There’s a two-year probationary period for new hires at Starhurst, and I’m still in it. I could be the one who gets fired over this.”

  “No. If that happens, we’ll sue.”

  I sighed. “Thanks. I don’t think it will come to that—I mean, I hope not. And thanks for listening, too. I realize, saying all this out loud, that it’s nothing personal. I mean, it’s not about the little boy, and it’s not about me. It’s about Shirley keeping her job and the school keeping their big bucks donation. At the cost of their integrity, but whatever. I bet Shirley and the president of the board sleep well at night, so good for them.”

  Brooks was still silent, but he was walking really, really fast. “Want to run?” he asked after a moment.

  “Sure, but I’m not going to be able to keep up with you.”

  “You can hold on to my shirt, like you used to.”

  When I was six and he was already in the double-digits. Things had changed and I hoped that Brooks could see it.

  We ran but I didn’t have to hold on, because he went slowly for me.

  ∞

  “No, it was a fraud! And she was completely taken in.”

  Conversation swirled again around the table about one of their mutual acquaintances who had gotten tricked into buying a counterfeit etching. No one could believe it. I certainly couldn’t, but in my case, I couldn’t believe that a group of people could spend quite so long rehashing this story, marveling at how anyone in their circle could have been fooled that way by a false Miró.

  I looked at Brooks across my mom’s dinner table and he did a subtle pantomime of slitting his own throat. It made me laugh, which happened to be completely inappropriate because it coincided with the part of the forgery story where the poor woman who had been duped had to take out another mortgage on her apartment on Russian Hill because of the money she’d lost in the scam.

  Eyebrows raised in my direction, including my mom’s, and I tried to turn the laugh into a cough. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “Something had a lot of pepper.” I pointed at my salad.

  Ava, also across the table from me, made a soft sighing noise and did her little lip twist of censure. I imagined throwing my plate across the table, the green leaves of my salad sprinkling her dress. No, I couldn’t. Some of it could hit Brooks.

  When I had descended the stairs at our house, ready to go (wearing a cocktail dress my mom had picked out), I had found him tying his tie in the front hall mirror. “I can’t get it right,” he said over his shoulder to me, messing with the knot. He just looked so cute in a suit. Also, a bathing suit. Also, anything.

  “How long has it been since you wore a tie?” I asked.

  He thought. “A few weeks, but it looks like I made my muscle memory erase. I hate ties.”

  I had stepped around and stood between him and the mirror to loosen the strange knot he’d made. “Where are you going so dressed up?” I asked, and he looked at me with lowered brows.

  “To your mother’s house for this boring dinner. She invited me, too.”

  “You’re going? Oh, thank God.”

  I started on a Windsor knot. He was a big guy and he could carry it off. I had done them for my dad, perched on his dresser and chatting with him before he went to work. I had learned all kinds of interesting tie techniques.

  “You taught me how to tie a tie,” Brooks mentioned.

  I looked up into his eyes, very close to mine. “I did?”

  “When I wore them as a kid, my dad would tie them for me and then put them around my collar. On the day of his funeral, I didn’t know how to do it for myself.”

  My hands had stilled, and rested on his chest. “I remember that.” My mom had been in the kitchen with Pamela and Zara had been loudly sobbing in her room; Scarlett had skipped off to a friend’s house, pretending that nothing was wrong. I remembered standing on a chair, looking into Brooks’ face as I helped him with his tie, wishing I could make him feel better because he was so, so sad. Tears had rolled down his cheeks as I fixed it for him and I had been surprised that a boy so old would cry like that. He had been 14.

  I looked at his tie across the table from me now at my mom’s house and felt emotion well up again. I quickly brushed my fingers under my eyes, annoyed at myself. That had been fifteen years ago, almost. I didn’t know why that would upset me so much here at this terrible dinner. God, it was terrible—why had I come? I reminded myself of my stated reasons to Brooks in the car on the way here: I loved my mom and I missed her.

  And then I thought of my real motivation for attending tonight: when Ava had called to invite me, she had acted oddly. Really oddly. I had asked who would be coming, to see how dreadful it would be if I decided to join them, and she ran down the guest list in her bored voice. The list finished with, “And Nusha, of course.”

  Nusha was the artist who had taken my place in my mom’s guest house. I hoped she was enjoying the woodpecker who had taken up residence outside. I had started feeding it before I left, encouraging it to stay and peck away as early as possible in the morning (because yes, I was down with petty and passive-aggressive moves like that).

  It was the way Ava had said the “Nusha, of course” that made me question her further. Her voice had changed from “placating the idiot,” her usual tone with me, to sharp and angry. “What’s the deal with Nusha?” I had asked casually, fully expecting her to sigh and tell me she had more important things to do in her busy, stylish life other than to waste time with me. But apparently, this was important to her, because she started in on a full-on diatribe about Nusha, to the point that Ava’s accent changed and sounded again like the girl I had gone to college with who had grown up in Staten Island. And her voice got a lot louder, too.

  Nusha was dirty, Ava announced. My mom’s housekeeper complained all the time. She was loud, the neighbors had called the police. Her art was terrible, derivative and juvenile. Her standards of personal care were the lowest of the low. “She smells.” She was inappropriate with the gardener and Ava thought she was trying
to seduce him.

  “What?” I had asked just as loudly, shocked. “She’s trying to seduce Sam?” That had made Ava stop. “If she’s so awful, why does my mom let her stay?” I had asked, and Ava had answered in a very clipped, very-California sounding voice:

  “Kristian likes her.”

  And again, it had been the way she had said it, with a lot of emphasis on the second word. I had come to check this situation out for myself.

  I looked at Kristian now, sitting at the foot of the dinner table, in his blazer with the giant paisley print and his hair with its careful highlighting. Nusha was to his right. He leaned toward her, eyes fixedly down the gap at the top of her shirt as she bent forward to talk softly to him. I looked next at my mom, who was also staring down the table at her age-inappropriate husband. She looked pissed. The salad course left and the entrees arrived but she ignored the lobster set in front of her. The conversation continued about the fake etching, the money wasted, the apartment on the verge of being sold to creditors.

  “Speaking of losing money,” my mom said in a voice that carried, “Kristian got another speeding ticket yesterday.”

  He looked up quickly from Nusha’s breasts. “I swear the police were lying in wait for me!” he told the table with a big, white-toothed smile. My mom had paid to fix it for him. “I think they have it in for me.”

  “Yes, four tickets in as many weeks would make you think that,” my mom continued. “The last one was for how much over the speed limit?”

  “You bought the car, darling,” Kristian said. He was smiling at her but I could see his plate with the lobster on it moving like there was a little earthquake happening. He had started to jiggle his leg and it was shaking the table. “You know the Scemo isn’t meant for going slow!” He winked at her but she didn’t look either charmed or appeased.

  “Maybe the Scemo will go a little slower, now that the last ticket topped the thousand-dollar mark,” she bit back at him, “or maybe it will have to take a time-out in the garage until it can be handled responsibly.” They stared at each other and then Kristian picked up his wine glass and practically guzzled it.

  One of my mom’s artist friends glanced back and forth between my mom and Kristian. She broke the silence with a story about going to her favorite gallery for an opening and finding it overrun by tourists.

  “They’re everywhere,” she lamented. “And then they move here! The coasts are being overrun by hordes from the middle of the country. Why can’t they stay where they are and enjoy the cows or…whatever they have to amuse themselves?”

  Almost everyone around the table laughed heartily and I barely prevented a gag. They were ridiculous snobs, and to top it off, I was pretty sure that Brooks, Kristian, and I were the only people at the table who had actually been born in California. Every single one of the jackasses laughing at that dumb remark had moved to the Golden State from somewhere else. Including my mom, who liked to say she was from New York, the other acceptable place to live (according to her friends). She had lived in New York, sure, but before that, she had grown up in Indiana for the first 18 years of her life, which she didn’t readily admit to. I wanted to ask if she had enjoyed the cows.

  “I know exactly what you mean about the hordes,” Kristian chimed in. “I wish they would leave San Francisco to the native San Franciscans!”

  “Are you from the city, then?” Brooks asked.

  “I’m from nearby,” Kristian told him.

  “Yes, if you consider two hundred miles close,” I agreed, because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer. “Kristian is from Fresno,” I explained.

  Brooks started to laugh. “That stretches the definition of a suburb. Not that there’s anything wrong with the Central Valley, but it’s hard to call that ‘nearby’ San Francisco.”

  Kristian turned to him angrily but then apparently thought better of getting into it with Brooks. He flipped back to me. “At least I was able to leave my home,” Kristian said, scowling in my direction. “I left without being forced out by my mother who was afraid I couldn’t care for myself and—”

  “That’s enough, Kristian. Shut your mouth,” Brooks said, and at the same time, my mom stood up, jerking her chair back.

  “Let’s have dessert in the solarium. Nusha has set up some of her latest pieces for us to view.” She pinned Nusha with a look for a moment and then glared around the table at the rest of us and one by one, everyone got up to follow her, leaving our practically-untouched food behind. I looked back sadly at the lobster on my plate, and I wasn’t the only one. My mom led us out of the dining room.

  Brooks managed to maneuver himself next to me, mostly by pushing everyone else out of his way in a fairly polite manner. He was just big and they didn’t have much choice. He picked up my arm and put it through his. “Does this mean we get to leave now?” he murmured, bending close to my ear.

  I felt his breath on my neck and it made me shiver. “Soon. We can sneak out after admiring a few of the art pieces. Just say things like, ‘It seems so spontaneous…stunning,’ and nod.”

  “Have you seen Nusha’s work before?”

  “No, that’s just what I say about all the art my mom makes me look at. Wait a minute, don’t steal that line. I’ll probably have to use it again.”

  Brooks laughed and a few of the other guests turned around to look curiously at us as we all traipsed through the living room. “Kristian…” he started to say, but we had gone into the solarium, and my mom turned around to give a short commentary on Nusha (in case we had missed the spiel at her pre-holiday party). This one seemed to be going faster and was less gushy than her previous Nusha talk, but I hadn’t paid much attention to it before. Now I let my mind drift again, and started to think about the school assembly in the upcoming week when my class was performing a short skit on crossing the street safely. Caydence dressed as a tiny police officer was a sight not to be missed and I had convinced Samantha, who’d had stage fright at the Holiday Expo, to try to say a line. Maybe. We had some more work to do.

  Nusha and Kristian started to lead a tour around the room to admire the artworks, but I tugged Brooks in the opposite direction, past Ava, who was standing in the corner taking down a glass of white wine like she was very, very thirsty. I stopped in front of an installation in the corner. “Take a look at this piece. What are your thoughts? Be honest,” I urged Brooks.

  “It seems so spontaneous…stunning,” he quoted me in a deep, serious voice, and nodded sagely. “Was that good?” he asked in his normal tone. “Did I sound like I knew what I was talking about? If I don’t use your line, I don’t have anything except, ‘Do people really pay money for this? Real currency?’”

  “Ok, you can say it, but only if we’re not together,” I granted him. “If I’m there, I’m going to need it for myself, otherwise I’ll say something like, ‘Your art looks a lot like something my kindergarteners do, and when they’re not looking, their parents recycle it.’”

  “Then I’ll have to come up with a comment of my own and you can have yours back, because I’m never planning to come to another one of these dinner art shows unless you’re here with me. I need you to make it through.”

  And he was joking, of course, but I got all warm and fuzzy inside.

  We walked and looked around some at the other works, but after a few minutes, we glanced at each other and nodded. Time to make a break for it.

  “Lanie, darling.” Damn it. My mom, with her fully-done face, air-kissed me for the second time that night. “Brooks.” She smiled at him briefly. “What do you think of Nusha’s latest?” She gestured around the room at what had looked to me like piles of trash. But I had never had the eye for art and everyone else there seemed to be admiring it.

  I nudged Brooks hard in the ribs so he wouldn’t say it first. “It seems so spontaneous…stunning,” I commented, and nodded.

  My mom narrowed her eyes. “Lanie March, that’s what you always say!” She laughed a little. “I wish you had learned to a
ppreciate art. I tried and tried to teach you.” She shook her head now, and I saw the disappointment blooming. “There are so many things that I tried to show you that I wish you could have learned.” I knew she wasn’t just talking about the piles of trash/art on the floor.

  “Lanie knows plenty,” Brooks told her. “Maybe she doesn’t appreciate someone’s overturned garbage cans like everyone is admiring here, but I’m not sure that means that she hasn’t learned things. I myself find this pretty ridiculous. All of it.”

  He and my mom were staring at each other. Not happily.

  “Brooks, let’s take another turn around the room and see what we can pick up. We won’t actually pick up the stuff on the floor,” I assured my mom. “I mean, I’m sure that we can see find something about the pieces that we didn’t recognize before.” I tugged on him again. “What was that all about?” I hissed when we were safely away from my mom. “Were you trying to start an argument with her?”

  “No. But I get tired of her little digs at you. She always has something to say, something to correct or criticize. Have you noticed that?”

  I stared at him. How could I have missed it? “Yes, because I do have ears, and unlike what my mom thinks, I appreciate plenty. I really appreciate that you stood up for me, but you shouldn’t. She’s not my mom to you; she’s your investor. Don’t piss off your investor over me. It isn’t worth it.”

  He stopped mid-step as we crossed the room, now angrier than ever. “What the hell would be more worth it? If I’m not going to stand up for you, what’s the point of having a voice?”

  I thought I was going to kiss him. I was going to throw myself on him in the middle of my mom’s solarium. At this moment.

  He touched my cheek and my lips parted. “Burritos,” Brooks said.

  “Huh?”

  “That’s what we need. We need to eat,” he explained.

  “Burritos,” I repeated. “Oh.” I refocused. I needed something to soothe the urges I was having, and maybe a burrito would do it. Probably not, but a rolled-up food item was more accessible to me than Brooks’ nude body was. “Are you hungry?” I asked.