by Amanda Brown
“Never boring!” Eva exclaimed.
“Never boring,” Wyatt said, winking at Eva. “Here, Elle, my favorite is the American Gothic. I think it suits you.”
Grant Wood’s famous pitchfork-wielding couple had been transformed, with Elle’s face atop the matronly dress of the midwesterness, and a simple question mark on the blank face of the man standing beside her.
“You answer the question mark any way you want.”
“Daddy, you know whose face I’d like to see there!” Elle hugged her father gleefully.
She retired to her room, leaving word with her parents that she wasn’t taking calls, not even from Serena or Margot. “They’ll just report the party schedule. I don’t even want to be tempted. Tell them I’m sick or something, okay?”
Eva sighed and glanced worriedly at Wyatt.
“Please, Mom. I don’t want to fail my exams.”
“All right, honey,” Eva said. “I’ll call you for dinner.”
Stress meters were running high the week of final exams, the library packed to capacity with students trying to make sense of a four-month blur of rules and procedures in a not-English not-Latin vocabulary called legalese. The Secret Angel had kept Elle, and through her Eugenia, supplied with accurate outlines, but the wear of living in a pressure cooker made exams almost welcome.
Reading furiously through byzantine Civil Procedure cases, Elle actually happened upon a useful bit of information. When creditors sue a debtor, they cannot take things that are “essential to everyday life.” So Elle was consoled that if she ever hit rock bottom, she would be spared her wardrobe, make-up, telephone, and standing manicure appointment.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Eugenia pressed her face against the screen of the window next to Elle’s door and rang the bell a third time. She detected the muffled sound of a hair dryer blowing in the bathroom.
“Well, at least she’s up,” she said. Eugenia shifted the package that was making her arm tired. The blow-dryer stopped for a minute, and Eugenia gave the doorbell a long ring. “Elle!”
Elle peeked around the corner in her pink-and-white-striped terry-cloth robe. “Genie?”
“Hey, Elle, I came to make sure you got to your first exam on time. I’ll drive you over if you want.”
“Oh, great,” Elle said, opening the front door. “Coffee’s on in the kitchen. French roast.”
“Thanks,” said Eugenia. “Can’t get enough of the stuff.”
Elle hurried back to the bathroom. “Come talk to me while I get ready. I’m totally nervous.”
Eugenia sank down Indian-style on the floor in the hallway and set her coffee cup down. “The doorman asked me to bring this in to you.” She indicated the package. “Here.” Eugenia carried the box to the kitchen with Elle trailing behind her. “You might want to open it. It’s from Warner.”
“That’s so sweet!” Elle exclaimed. “It’s probably a good-luck present. I should have sent him something, too. I was thinking about it.” She cut through the masking tape eagerly with a steak knife.
A note was taped to a second box inside. Elle read it aloud as Eugenia sipped her coffee.
“Dear Elle,
I guess I should have sent these to you a while ago. Sarah finally insisted that I get rid of them. She doesn’t like to be reminded of you, and I guess it’s not right for me to have them anymore. How many married men do you know who keep pictures of their ex-girlfriends? I can remember you without pictures anyway. Whenever I go to the beach I think of you doing the ad for Perfect Tan. (Even sometimes when I see you at school!) Good luck on your exams.
Love, Warner.”
Eugenia put her cup down slowly. “Pictures?”
Elle opened the box, stunned, and spilled a pile of photographs across the kitchen counter. She picked them up one by one, growing increasingly shaky. Eugenia walked over and didn’t speak.
“Delta Gamma Crush party, 1999. Homecoming, 1999. Sigma Chi Bahamas party, 2000.” She paused. “God, we kept Chuck Lane photography in business. Derby Days. I don’t believe it, here’s us in Aspen. On Valentine’s Day.” She smiled sadly, tears welling up in her eyes. “Some good-luck present.”
“What a cretin.” Eugenia cursed harsher words in a low voice. “Elle, come here.” She put her arms around Elle, who sank her head on Eugenia’s shoulder.
Elle shook weakly, leaning on the counter. “Why did he have to send them back? I’ve got copies of all these.” She stared at the images of her face and Warner’s, fanned across the white countertop like so many playing cards. “Why now? How could Warner do this to me? Oh, God, Eugenia, I can’t go to the exam today. I just can’t do it.”
Eugenia shook her head angrily. “Warner? He’s as sensitive as a block of wood. It’s Sarah who sent these.”
“What do you mean, Sarah?” Elle gulped, her eyes dull, morose and unfocused. She hadn’t even thought to blame Sarah for Warner’s ill-timed delivery. What good was all this studying? Night after night spent poring over Emanuel outlines was supposed to have taught her how to spot a hidden legal issue when it snuck up on the exam. Had she destroyed her own mind in the process? Chasing after elusive subtleties, missing the obvious culprit? “Of course, it must be Sarah,” Elle realized with a sigh of misery. Sarah was behind everything Warner did wrong. But still, “Warner wrote the letter, didn’t he? Those were his words.”
“Elle, don’t you get it?” Eugenia persisted. “It’s no coincidence that you got these pictures now. Sarah ‘insisted,’ did she? I’ll bet she insisted. Damn it, she’s got him jumping through hoops.”
“Eugenia,” Elle began, but Eugenia waved her off.
“I’ll say this for Sarah, she plays hardball. Elle, she doesn’t want you to make it. You’ve been working your heart out for these exams, and you’re ready. I know you are. She’s just trying to shake you up. She wants to get you out of law school. Don’t let her win.”
Shivering, Elle pulled her robe tight around her.
“Elle, I mean it.” Eugenia grabbed Elle’s shoulders, straightening her with a vigorous shake. “You go get dressed and put this out of your head. Don’t let Sarah or Warner…don’t let either of them ruin what you’ve worked all semester for.”
Elle dropped her head and stared at the floor. “I don’t care if Sarah made him do it or not. I came here for Warner, Eugenia. He’s who I’ve worked all semester for! Nobody else. I only wanted to show him that I could finish…” Elle’s quivering voice broke into a sob.
Eugenia released Elle’s arms and collected the pictures on the counter. She shoved them back into the package and glared at Elle without speaking. Elle hid her face, unable to stand the black reflection of her own weakness in Eugenia’s withering stare. Eugenia sighed, seeming to soften, but when she spoke again she spoke gravely.
“Warner and Sarah won’t be thinking about you today, Elle. They’ll be thinking about Contracts. Before your memory is five minutes old, they’ll be framing their law degrees. Do whatever you want, leave if you feel like it, but don’t forget: at least one of them will be thrilled to see you fail.”
Elle bristled. “Try to see what I see, Eugenia. I made an incredible mistake coming here.” She reached for the letter, an anxious flush coloring her pale face, spotting her neck with crimson patches. “Look, for every single case I read, for every class outline I fell asleep with my face on top of, what does Warner think when he sees me at school? Does he care that I’ve got a brain, that I can do anything his fiancée can do? That I’m as serious as any preppie from Groton? No, he thinks Perfect Tan! My bikini shot!” Elle restrained her voice with an effort, wiping a tear angrily from her burning scarlet cheek. “What difference will passing an exam make? Warner doesn’t care and he never will. It won’t change the fact that I’m not from Greenwich. I’ll never be a Knottingham. I’ll never be what he wants. And it’s just become clear to me that I’ll never be a Huntington! What’s the point of keeping this up anymore?”
“Finish because yo
u can, Elle,” Eugenia answered in a firm tone. “Leave on your terms, not theirs. Not hers.”
Elle peered sheepishly at Eugenia, then shook her head in the negative. “Who are you kidding, Eugenia? I can’t even remember what a contract is anymore.”
“Offer and acceptance,” fired Eugenia.
“Don’t forget consideration.” Elle smiled meekly, and Eugenia laughed out loud.
“See? You know this stuff better than I do. Come on, Elle, don’t flake out now.”
Elle gave an uncertain glance at the clock over the stove. “There’s still time.”
Eugenia smiled. “I’ll drive. You can read the outline in the car, if it won’t make you sick. Elle, it will kill Sarah if this little stunt doesn’t faze you.”
“Warner, too, huh?” Elle looked mischievous.
“Definitely.” Eugenia opened the cupboard. “Want a Pop-Tart?”
“Gross!” Elle giggled. “Those are left over from the ones you bought before. I don’t know how you can eat that stuff.”
“Fine, have a rice cake. But get ready. This is your day.”
The first exam, Contracts, began at 9:00 A.M. Elle finished the four-hour test a full hour early because, in her panic, she misread the clock.
Having raced under the pressure of her own deadline, Elle realized that with a full hour to go she had nothing to add to the thoughts scribbled in her test book. In fact, a weird postexam amnesia erased whatever random ideas she had just assembled into arguments.
One down, Elle thought with relief, floating happily down the aisle to drop her exam with a smack on the front desk. As she turned to leave, Elle caught a glimpse of dozens of hapless, furtive eyes shooting to the wall clock in fear that they were behind schedule. Watching her classmates’ nervous heads and shaky hands jerk to work faster was so delightful that Elle decided she would try to finish all her exams first.
Civil Procedure was the only exam that Elle didn’t finish an hour early. One question involving jurisdiction reminded Elle of the Secret Angel’s outline, which was sixty pages in rhyming verse on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The verse, called “Jurisdiction Diction,” was a takeoff on “Schoolhouse Rock”’s “Conjunction Junction,” a mnemonic approach to memorizing that turned out to hurt more than it helped.
While trying to remember the difference between in rem and in personam jurisdiction, Elle visualized the “Conjunction Junction” episode instead. “Hmm hmm hmm hmm, phrases and clauses,” she sang to herself, annoyed that she couldn’t remember the first line. She mixed the episode up with “Lolly lolly lolly get your adverbs here,” and in the next minute remembered her favorite, “Interplanet Janet.” As precious minutes ticked by, Elle, worlds away, was humming “She went to the sun, it’s a lot of fun—it’s a hot spot, it’s a gas. Hydrogen and helium, in a big bright glowing mass.”
She had to fight to get the tune to “I’m Just a Bill” cleared from her head as she stared dismally at the blank page in her test book. Indecisively, Elle settled on an argument that the plaintiff had quasi-in-rem jurisdiction, which she thought was iffy enough for half credit.
What was worse, Elle noticed as she glanced back over her essay that she had written “queasy” instead of “quasi” every time she used the key phrase. “Freudian slip,” she muttered, scratching out each offending word. Serena was in Aspen and Margot was comparing wedding dresses in the Valentino boutique; Elle was rushing to eke out a miserable essay on jurisdiction amid a sweaty throng of grade-mongers. She felt queasy, all right. Elle paused and left the word “queasy” uncorrected once, on principle.
The week after finals might have been some measure of vacation, since classes didn’t begin for another ten days, at any place other than Stanford Law. But here “vacation” defined time to study or write papers. The law school scheduled interviews for spring internships and summer jobs during that hiatus, just to ensure that its captives lived and breathed law school stress constantly.
Eugenia had made plans to spend half of the time at home and then meet her college boyfriend, Kenneth, and some other friends from Yale in Vermont to go skiing. “These early interviews are a waste of time,” Eugenia explained. “Grades aren’t even out. The first round is just where they weed out severe social misfits.”
Elle laughed. “Who’s left?”
Eugenia was admirably unconcerned with the pressures of job hunting. Her thesis adviser wanted her to do research for him in New Haven over the summer, still trying to encourage her to pursue a Ph.D. in literature. She had a safety net, so she walked on the employment tightrope with casual grace.
Elle noticed with interest that Christopher Miles, a well-known defense attorney in San Francisco, was interviewing first-year students for spring semester internships. The January issue of Architectural Digest had named his firm, Miles & Slocum, among the top ten law firms in the country for its office design. It was the only California firm to have made the list.
Naturally, Elle’s first instinct had been to drop by the offices with business cards from her mother’s art gallery. But when Eugenia told her that Christopher Miles was interviewing for research assistants on the Vandermark case, Elle developed a keen interest in getting the job; and when she saw Warner’s name among the forty-odd students on the interview list, she made the internship her first priority.
Elle was eager to talk to Eugenia about the interview. So far, the only interview advice she had came from a Cosmopolitan quiz, “Are You a Savvy Job Interviewee?” She thought advice from someone who had actually held a few jobs might prove more helpful. Eugenia’s tips proved her right.
Seeing Elle’s name on the interview sheet for the coveted internship, Sidney added his name in bold print and then hunted Elle down. When he spotted her coming out of the law lounge with Eugenia, he was characteristically armed and ready with an insult.
“Elle, why don’t you just get married and go play tennis at the club like you are supposed to?” His snide comment drew thundering laughter from the other Trekkies standing with him.
Sidney broke into a new set of hysterics, appreciating his own witticism. Even Sidney knew of Elle’s desperation to break up Sarah and Warner, a topic that had apparently become common knowledge at the law school.
Less bothered than she would have expected to be by Sidney’s comment, she walked right past him.
“What luck,” she said to her mother on the phone that evening. The “Murder in Malibu!” Margot would flip if she heard Elle might be working on the hottest case in L.A. She might even forgive her for going to law school, Elle ventured optimistically. But when Serena called, Elle realized that even a stylish lawyerly debut would play to no applause from the roving bons vivants she called her friends. Law school was still an unacceptable alternative lifestyle.
Serena had invited Elle to join her in Aspen during the week of Elle’s interview, and couldn’t believe it when Elle turned her down. “Come on, Elle, has that sickhouse poisoned you? Do you hear what I’m saying? Absolutely everybody is here this week. I mean, it’s a practical reunion. Davis asked about you, and Vince is here. And Charles…Charles still adores you. He’s always asking about you.”
“Serena, it’s not just any interview,” Elle protested, playing the card she thought would win Serena over. “Listen, you heard about the Vandermark murder. I mean, it made Vogue. It was all Margot could talk about when she came up here to visit.”
“Yeah, of course.” Serena recognized the hot topic. “Everybody’s talking about Brooke ‘the Blonde Butcher’ Vandermark. Her picture’s been on the front of every tabloid. You know she was a Theta? Typical.”
Serena was beginning to sound more and more like Margot.
“Right,” Elle said. “Well, this big-deal defense lawyer took Brooke’s case, and he’s here, see? I have a chance at an internship on the ‘Murder in Malibu.’ Isn’t that exciting? He’s interviewing here to get some law students to help him do research or something. Or get him coffee. I don’t care, I think Brook
e Vandermark is getting a bad rap. I want to help her.”
“A Theta?” Serena sneered. “What are you all concerned about a Theta for? Don’t you remember when they beat us in the swimsuit competition at Derby Days? Jesus, Elle, I mean, it would be one thing if she were one of our sorority sisters. Then maybe I’d get it. But a Theta?”
“Who cares, Serena. It’s a great opportunity.”
“Elle, what’s up? Are you totally gone?” She tried to reason with her friend. “I’m in a hot tub right now, chiquita.” Elle visualized Serena’s parents’ eighteen-thousand-square-foot “log cabin” and sighed. “You could be here too, babe. What’s with you?”
“Okay, okay, Serena, don’t make this harder than it is. Would the interview make more sense if I told you it had to do with Warner?” Elle heard Serena burst into laughter.
“Oh God, Elle, I almost dropped the phone,” Serena giggled. “I could get electrocuted!” Elle heard a man’s voice explaining how cordless phones work. “What? No, Nathan, it has electricity. Shut up.” Elle heard splashing. “It doesn’t run on air. Hee-hee-hee. Cut it out! You’ll zap us!”
“Serena. Serena,” Elle said. “Warner’s interviewing too. I hardly ever see him. We don’t have classes together. We could work together on this, you know. If I get the job. Then I could talk to him, talk some sense into him.”
Serena quieted. “Oh, you poor thing. Elle, there are so many other fish…on the slopes.”
“Fish on the slopes?” Serena sounded drunk.
“Hee-hee. On the slopes. Elle, what about Charles? He’s just dying to see you again.” One man was as good as another to Serena.
