by Amanda Brown
“The problem is, I can’t tell him that now, Claire, and he’s pressuring me for reassurance from Daddy. Warner’s totally devastated. I’m just going to try to avoid the subject entirely. Nobody likes to be reminded of failure.” Sarah spat the last word with venom, and Elle guessed she didn’t like to be reminded of it either.
“He didn’t even come to class today,” Sarah babbled. “As if it’ll do him any good to skip classes now. He ought to be here. I think he’s acting irresponsibly.”
“Definitely,” Claire agreed. “He shouldn’t be thinking of himself. I mean, your career looks splendid, but he is going to marry you and he ought to be thinking about how to provide for you aside from his trust fund. It’s not just his failure now, it’s both of yours. He should take a lesson from you and get serious about school.”
Sarah scowled, but the mention of her own impressive grades seemed to mollify her. She adjusted her backpack on her shoulders and idled there in the hallway, not walking toward her classroom, but not heading home to console Warner either: just waiting, indecisive.
“I’ve got obligations to Warner too, I guess. Part of me says I should be with him, but I don’t want to give him the idea he can just lean on me when we get married. I’ll be fully supportive of him, but I won’t carry him!”
Sarah whined and threw her hands up in frustration. “I don’t know how to handle this, Claire. I didn’t plan on propping up Warner, but I don’t think he’d think me much of a partner if I sat in class like nothing happened when he’s miserable, sitting at home. I should be with him now. That’s what he would want his wife to do. That Barbie doll is just waiting for her chance,” she added, her eyes narrowing. “I won’t let Warner have the chance to turn to her.”
Elle thought of Sarah’s reference to her, plotting, waiting to move in on Warner, and smiled with the recognition that she still had the ability to threaten their relationship. Sarah didn’t know her, either. She was waiting for her chance, all right, but she knew Warner well enough to let him lick his wounds in solitude.
Elle remembered when USC lost the College World Series, when Warner had been thrown out at the plate. He wanted to be left alone then. If his grades were as bad as they sounded, he’d feel like a loser and would rather be alone.
“Well, don’t miss your classes,” Claire said. “That won’t help him, and it can only hurt you. I say we go to my apartment after school and bake him some chocolate chip cookies! You know the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” Claire said, and then gave Sarah the biggest, most insincere smile Elle thought she’d ever seen.
Elle called home to check her messages, of which there were none. She didn’t notice in the relative safety of the phone booth that Sarah had parted ways with Claire. She stood alone in the hallway, gazing at the wall.
Impulsively, Elle called out Sarah’s name.
The puffy-eyed girl turned with a surprise to face her. Elle noticed Sarah staring at her cheerful holiday outfit, cringing to see Elle’s curves emphasized under the enormous red heart, which decorated her clingy stretch T-shirt. Elle’s red velvet micromini blared the words LOVE, PEACE, and HARMONY, which reminded Elle, when she was dressing, of Warner.
Elle gave a mischievous grin and walked toward Sarah. Her white tights descended to a flash of red patent leather loafers that matched her showy purse.
“Thanks for the Valentine,” Elle said, looking at Sarah’s outfit, red wide-wale cords, white turtleneck with tiny red hearts around the neck, and the ever present wool cardigan, which today was red.
Elle’s intense blue stare pierced Sarah, who bowed her head toward her tasseled loafers, shuffling her feet on the linoleum floor. Her shoulders drooped; she looked beaten. Elle smiled.
“I’m sorry, Elle,” Sarah said peering at her. She spoke in a muffled voice. “I acted like a child. I feel so stupid.”
Elle squinted, skeptical of the convenient apology from her otherwise hateful adversary. Sarah sniffled and turned her eyes back to the floor.
“Don’t worry about it,” Elle said. “Anyway, what makes you think I’m spending my Valentine’s Day alone?” Elle laughed then, her eyes sparkling, her dimples young and soft, looking more the mischievous imp than the notorious femme fatale.
“You know what I meant by that,” Sarah said, with an almost imperceptible smile. She checked the time on her sensible Seiko.
“Elle, we have ten minutes before class, can I talk to you?”
Elle accepted the invitation with a dubious shrug, wondering where Claire was lurking. She followed Sarah to a vacant room.
“We’ll have some privacy here,” Sarah said, holding the door to their Property classroom open for Elle to enter. “Nobody spends a minute more in Property than they have to.”
Elle stared at Sarah’s fingers playing nervously with her headband while she marshaled her thoughts. She braced herself for a mean-spirited speech, imagining Sarah warning her not to interfere if Warner and Sarah left for Rhode Island sooner than expected.
Adjusting her headband for the umpteenth time, Sarah finally cleared her throat to speak. Elle stretched her long legs on an adjoining chair with nonchalance, her gaze passing over Sarah with the impassive air of a shrink who’s heard it all.
“Look”—Sarah choked back a sob—“I know I have no right to ask you this, but I need your help. Elle, I don’t mean this condescendingly, so please, don’t take it wrong.”
Elle arched her eyebrows, but didn’t respond.
“I see you in class…when you go to class, you hardly bother to show up. I see you reading those magazines or filing your nails, and you don’t seem to give it any thought. But your grades,” Sarah said with a tired slouch, “are probably better than Warner’s.”
Elle thought of her unopened report card, but didn’t say a thing.
“Well, it’s not about me anymore, Sarah,” Elle said coolly, her eyes on the Rock that adorned Sarah’s clenched hand.
“No, Elle, you’re right. It’s about me. I haven’t told Warner, but my grades are excellent. I’ll be at the top of our class.”
“You must be very proud.”
“Elle, Warner’s grades will put him at the bottom of the barrel if he’s even allowed to stay here, they’re so bad,” Sarah whined. “I’m afraid it will be hard for him to live with my success. But Warner’s different, isn’t he? He says he admires my serious attitude toward school, my dedication.”
Elle cringed.
“I tell myself he’ll love me even more when he finds out about my grades.” Sarah halted, resting her head in her hands. “I don’t know, Elle,” she spoke toward the floor.
Elle wondered if Sarah was setting up to interrogate her about whether Cosmo might have an answer. But Sarah turned her eyes to Elle imploringly.
“You know Warner, Elle,” she said. “You dated him. You know what he’s like, and he always tells me how you know what he likes.” She halted, blushing that she had admitted that Warner talked about Elle. “Will he be happy for my success, even if he fails at the same thing?”
With a heavy sigh, Elle decided to tell Sarah the truth. “Warner does admire your dedication, Sarah. He values your seriousness, you’re right about that. And more than anything, he admires your background,” she added, flashing Sarah an icy glare. “But Warner loves competition. He’s not ‘different’ like you hope he is. He despises losing. He’d be happy for you if he had done well himself. Then, you’d be a prosperous, shining couple, the envy of your set. That hasn’t happened.”
“So what does that mean?”
“Warner wants accompaniment from a woman,” Elle said, raising her chin with a haughty gesture. “He doesn’t want to be graced by your success.”
Sarah stared at the floor and didn’t respond.
“Warner won’t love you because you did better than he did,” Elle said. “He won’t love you because you’ve succeeded.” She paused, then added quietly, “Sarah, if he does love you, he’ll love you in spite of that.”<
br />
Sarah smiled, but her solace was a momentary light, obscured in the next moment by the reality of the unpleasant task that lay ahead. “What should I say to him then, Elle?” Sarah said. “What would you do?”
Elle sat up in her chair. “You want to know how to make him love you more?”
Sarah nodded sheepishly.
“You can’t.”
Sarah sat motionless, but Elle felt her rival had grown skeptical. Elle knew that what she had said about Warner was true. She sat forward, leaning her elbows on the desk, and explained.
“Sarah, don’t you see that Warner loves himself as much as he has room to love anything? He won’t love you one bit more for your achievement. It didn’t do anything for him.”
Sarah took off her wool cardigan, placing it on the chair back.
“You want Warner’s love? I’ll tell you how to get it. Make him believe you think the sun waits to rise until he gets up,” Elle said matter-of-factly. “Unqualified admiration. That’s what keeps Warner going.”
She turned a steely glance to Sarah, whose eyes avoided her. Sarah adjusted her headband, and neither of them said another word.
The dense quiet was broken by the swing of the door behind them. The Trekkie Tribe of Five charged into the room, armed with PowerBooks. Sarah stared down at the desk and began aligning her Hi-Liters. Elle examined her fingernails for chips. It appeared to nobody that they had been speaking.
Property class flew by as Elle’s mind whirled through the strange events that had just occurred. Sarah, making an overture to her for advice about Warner. She considered what she had told Sarah. In some measure, she regretted giving away any insight that might help Sarah smooth out a tension in their relationship, which, if played wrong, could have given Warner doubts about his bride-to-be. But part of her was laughing, imagining Sarah taking her advice. Sarah, humbly attending to Warner’s almighty ego; Sarah, hiding her own success like a fault. For once, Elle didn’t envy her.
Hightower’s lecture left no more impression on Elle than an evanescent dream forgotten in the foggy morning. Sidney was still packing up his PowerBook when Elle tried to walk past him.
“Elle, did you get my present? It’s reeeeeeely great,” announced Sidney, beaming proudly.
“No, Sidney, but thank you in advance,” Elle answered as she hurried away.
She went all day without checking her grades, fearing the worst. By the time she got home, her condo looked like a florist’s shop. Her landlord, Mr. Hopson, had apparently used his key to let the delivery men inside. Nice of him, she thought warmly. Saved her several trips.
She cleared a place for her bag on the coffee table and fished inside nervously for her report card. “Get up here, Underdog.” She patted the couch. “Let’s see if we have to move again.”
Elle looked at the row of Ps and breathed a tremendous sigh of relief. She jumped to the phone to call Eugenia, who she had already heard had placed first in their class.
“Genie.”
“What’s the word?”
“I passed everything.”
“I knew you would! What were your grades?”
Elle paused. “Well, they were all Ps.”
“Ps?” Eugenia was stunned.
“Yeah,” Elle admitted, laughing. “I took all my classes pass-fail.”
“You took everything pass-fail? Are you serious? I didn’t know you could do that!”
“All you have to do is ask.”
Elle congratulated Eugenia on her grades, which came as no surprise. “You’re a Eugenius, you know.”
After hanging up, Elle glanced at her pet. “I made it, Underdog,” she announced happily. Reaching to the table, she read a card from Serena and Margot. “We still love you, even if you do want to be a lawyer.”
She flipped on the television, and Robert Redford in The Way We Were momentarily captured her attention. “Redford,” she said. “Great blond of the strawberry variety. Well, I guess this is what people do who don’t have a date for Valentine’s Day.” Elle pulled an Afghan blanket around herself, settling in to watch the movie. In two minutes, the opening scene changed her mind.
With every image of Robert Redford, Elle buried her face further in the pillow. Redford in dress whites. Oh, God, that looked like Billy. Redford rowing crew. The image of Charles. Redford in a letter sweater. Oh, Warner, and…how many times had she fallen for the BMOC, how trite. Elle felt as if she were looking into the mirror of her love life, and it was the common fare of a mushy movie. She flipped off the switch and headed to the kitchen.
A dozen shell pink roses sat on the counter. She rushed to open the card, positive that these flowers, finally, came from Warner. The card read, simply, “To remembrance of flings past.” Elle jumped, clapping her hands together with glee. Clearly it wasn’t in the past, or he wouldn’t have sent her the same roses as always.
Elle froze when she glimpsed a huge aesthetic atrocity sitting on her kitchen table. Placed there because it was too enormous to fit anywhere else was a basket stuffed with styrofoam, fanned by twenty wooden sticks. A cookie was attached to the top of each stick; the whole bouquet reached at least three feet into the air. Each cookie was shaped like a fish, with a pink “girl” fish in the center. Elle pulled a note off the “girl” cookie, which was iced with a Stanford banner, yellow hair and blue eyes.
The note was signed by Sidney, and it read, “WAY TO REEL IN FIRST SEMESTER.”
Elle didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She crumbled a fish cookie and fed it to Underdog.
She knew she wouldn’t catch Margot or Serena at home on Valentine’s, so Elle decided to call the next morning to thank them for their flowers. Elle thought Margot would flip when she found out that she was actually working for Brooke Vandermark. She began searching for Margot’s new phone number under a mountain of “Murder in Malibu” articles printed off Lexis at law school expense.
Elle located the envelope with Margot’s new number scribbled next to a note which read “current…Feb. 5th.” Margot changed her phone number capriciously and often, her preferred means of distancing herself from men who grew tiresome. Now that she had Snuff, Elle figured this number would last at least a few more months, so she set the new number on memory to avoid future scavenger hunts, then dialed.
“House of Zen,” Margot sang.
Elle groaned. “Zen again? Hey, it’s the Dolly Parton Lama!”
“Elle, baby.”
Elle cringed to hear that Margot was already picking up Snuff’s record industry jargon. She’d make a good wife, functioning basically as a mirror for Snuff, who, if not looking in one, was looking for one. “Marg, baby,” Elle mimicked. “Thanks for the roses. Even if I am in law school, it’s nice to know you guys still love me.”
Margot laughed. “We think you’re kooky, but we love you just the same.”
Chapter Thirty-five
After hanging up with Margot, Elle decided she’d pen Serena a thank-you note for the flowers rather than listen to more thirdhand scandals associated with Snuff and the record industry. She opened her Wills textbook to the emery board that served as a bookmark, beginning where she had left off last night in her pre-nailfiling ambition to read the book cover to cover.
Studying with the fervor of a practitioner, as an advocate for a real-life blonde, Elle didn’t notice just how interested she had become in at least this area of law. She was also intent on proving herself to Christopher Miles.
She even found herself getting to Wills class early, a move that didn’t result in added class time. Gory Professor Gilbreath had a habit of appalling the student audience with his tactless death humor, then frightening questions out of them so he could end class prematurely, as if weary of his own voice.
The next morning Professor Gilbreath finished his lecture gruffly, snarling the rhetorical “Any questions?” as he stomped to the door.
Expecting two packages from Christopher Miles, Elle rushed from class to her mailbox. Chutney Vandermark had bee
n deposed by Christopher, and Christopher had sent copies of her deposition transcripts as well as the transcripts from Trent’s deposition by messenger to Stanford Law School for his interns to review.
Elle assumed the transcripts would be stuck with flyers in her mailbox. She was puzzled to find a note instead, directing her to the copy center.
Elle figured out soon enough that Chutney’s deposition was far lengthier than Brooke’s and far too thick to fit into her law school mailbox. It ran over three hundred pages, scuttling Elle’s prior plan to skim over the cumbersome deposition while sitting in her Property class. With an empty half hour thanks to Professor Gilbreath’s early break, she headed for the law lounge to read what Chutney had had to say to the lawyers. Within the first few pages of Chutney’s deposition, it was obvious to Elle the girl was ready for a knock-down-drag-out fight for her father’s fortune.
In the short recess between Wills and Property classes, Eugenia entered the law lounge and recognized Elle’s head bent over her reading. “Hey, Elle,” she yelled from the line where she waited for a coffee refill. Elle looked up and smiled.
“Coming to Property class today, Princess?” Eugenia kidded, beckoning with her bag of peanut M&M’s toward the hallway. “Maybe it’s changed rooms since you last showed your face.”
Elle felt a rush of anxiety, having missed days of classes to focus on a self-taught course in will probate practice, preparing for Brooke’s trial. “It’s still in the same place, isn’t it?” she asked, startled.
“Yeah, silly.” Eugenia smiled, shaking her head as if at a child. “I’m just giving you a hard time.”
“Okay, only if you share your candy,” Elle joked, standing to join Eugenia in line. “Hope you brought enough for everybody.”
