How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater

by Acito, Marc

  “Expected to recover,” Ziba says, shaking her head. “You don't ever recover from something like that.” Her voice is heavy, like it's got the weight of the world in it.

  We all have our personal sadnesses: my mom left, Paula's died, Doug's dad smacked him around, but none of us lost a whole country, a whole way of life. Ziba's family was in the south of France on holiday when the Shah was overthrown, and they suddenly found themselves exiled with whatever belongings they had brought on vacation with them. Their money was in Swiss bank accounts, but they lost everything else, not just a house and cars and furniture, but the things they could never replace, like family photos or, even more important, family itself. I can't help but feel that her sorrow runs deeper than the rest of ours.

  Next to the article is a picture of a little black girl, her hair in two poofy buns on the side of her head like Minnie Mouse. It's one of those Sears shots with a fake autumnal background. Her mouth is wide open like she's laughing and she grips a small pumpkin in her pudgy arms.

  “That's horrible,” I say.

  “Yeah,” Natie adds from behind me, “if it had been a little boy we could have used his name.”

  Ziba and I both turn to scowl at him.

  “Don't look at me that way,” he says. “I didn't shoot her. I'm just saying it's too bad Edward couldn't pretend to be a twenty-year-old black woman, that's all.”

  I suppose he's right in his completely cheesehead way. Except for the occasional unguarded moment when certain Diana Ross mannerisms creep in, I don't think I'd make a very convincing black woman. “So much for LaChance,” I say.

  “It's pronounced LaShaaahnce,” Ziba says, lingering on the vowel in the French manner.

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do,” she says. She turns to look at the screen again. “I feel . . . I don't know . . . an almost mystical connection to this little girl.” She runs her long, tapered fingers across the screen, like she's trying to reach inside. “LaChance,” she repeats to herself. “It's almost like a poem.” She swivels around in her chair to look at me and Natie. “Why is it white people in this country never give their children such lovely names?”

  The setting sun shines across Ziba's high cheekbones and her deep-set eyes, casting nearly half of her taut, cocoa face into shadow. In that light and with her hair up on her head she almost looks like Lena Horne ready to sing some sultry number in an MGM Technicolor musical.

  “Why are you two looking at me like that?” she asks.

  Despite Ziba claiming her “performing days are over,” like she's Garbo in retirement, she agrees to take a chance on LaChance. I don't know how Natie goes about getting LaChance's Social Security number and forging her birth certificate and I don't ask. All I know is that he doesn't show up at school for three whole days. I'm beginning to worry, so I call his house.

  “Helloooooo?” says a voice trilling up an octave. It's Fran. For reasons known only to her, she always tries to sound British when she answers the phone.

  “Hi, Mrs. Nudelman, it's Edward. Is Natie there?”

  Fran puts the phone down, but not far enough. “STAN, DO YOU KNOW WHERE NATHAN IS?” she screams.

  “HE SAID SOMETHING ABOUT NEEDING TO FAKE SOME LEGAL DOCUMENTS.”

  Fran laughs, a rattling noise like a fork stuck in the garbage disposal. “THAT KID,” she says, then suddenly she's Julie Andrews again. “Edwaaaard? Are you still theeeere?”

  “I heard,” I say. “Just tell him I called, all right?”

  Two days later I still haven't heard from him. What's worse, Ziba stops showing up at school, too. I appreciate them working so hard on my case, but since I'm the one who could go to jail for fraud, it'd be nice if I knew what was being done on my behalf. I've just gotten home from school and am compulsively making my way through an entire lasagna when there's a loud knock at the front door. The cats scurry, knocking over a basket that contains, inexplicably, sheet music and mittens. As I lean over to move the basket out of the way a slip of paper comes shooting through the mail slot and lands at my feet.

  It's a bank deposit for $10,500 into the account of LaChance Jones.

  I yank the door open and there's Ziba, her angular body leaning nonchalantly against the door frame as she nibbles on a brownie. She raises it like she's giving a toast.

  “I gave it to myself for Best Performance by an Identity Thief,” she says.

  She's dressed as a nun.

  I'm about to ask her why when Natie pops out from behind her.

  “Congratulations,” he says and hands me some slips of paper.

  “What are these?”

  “Receipts. If you can't reimburse me today, I can wait until tomorrow. Say, you got anything to drink? I've got a bad taste in my mouth.”

  He's also dressed as a nun.

  “I'm all out of communion wine, Sister,” I say. “How about some holy water?”

  “The outfits were my idea,” Ziba says, following Natie into the kitchen, “but we had to have them altered. Whoever made these for The Sound of Music had no sense of style.” She sits down. “You wouldn't have any Perrier, would you?”

  “How about a Mountain Dew?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Me, too,” says Natie.

  “So what's with the costumes?”

  “Well,” he says, “it turns out that you have to show proof of address to open a bank account—a phone bill or an electric bill or something. So we thought to ourselves, ‘Who would have a legitimate reason not to have bills?' and we came up with nuns. Ooh, look, lasagna, cool.” He goes to the silverware drawer to get a fork.

  “So now what?” I ask as I admire the fake driver's license Natie made for Ziba/LaChance. “Can we write a check to Juilliard?”

  “Not yet,” Natie says, shoveling in a forkful of lasagna. “We've still got to find a way of getting the money to them without it being traced.”

  “How about a money order?” I ask.

  “Nope,” Natie says as he chews. “There's a $500 limit. We've got to get a cashier's check.” He coughs and starts to choke on his food.

  Ziba gives him a whack on the back and continues for him. “The problem with a cashier's check is that the bank keeps a record of it.” She looks down at Natie. “Good God, Nathan, are you all right?”

  Natie nods and takes a sip of Mountain Dew.

  “Why don't we just withdraw it as cash?” I ask.

  Natie rolls his watery eyes. “We can't very well pay Juilliard in cash,” he gurgles. “It'll arouse too much suspicion.”

  “Okay,” I say, “why don't we withdraw the funds as cash and then go to another bank and write a cashier's check there?”

  “We could,” Natie says as he takes another bite, “but it's so . . .”

  Simple? Logical? Easy?

  “Uninspired,” Ziba says.

  Natie nods. “Exactly. Let's face it, when Dagmar realizes that ten grand is missing . . .”

  “Ten thousand five hundred,” I say.

  “When she realizes all that dough is missing, she's bound to go sniffing around. You're going to need a sound alibi about where you got that money from.”

  “I could say I earned it.”

  Natie and Ziba cast gimme-a-break looks at me.

  “Okay, I could say it was a scholarship.”

  “That's right,” Ziba says. “We could create a scholarship ourselves and then award it to Edward.”

  Natie smiles his lippy, no-tooth smile. “I like how you think,” he says.

  We open up a jug of wine (Kathleen goes through so many she'll never notice) and set about designing a fake scholarship. Natie has the idea that we actually donate the money to Juilliard with the stipulation that it can only be used for a scholarship so narrow in focus only I could be eligible for it. That way the money goes through Juilliard and will appear to have no connection to me at all. I think it's risky, but we come up with a scholarship from the Catholic Vigilance Society of Hoboken, New Jersey (Father G. Roovy, Exec
utive Director) for “a promising young Italian-American actor from Hoboken.” After a few glasses of wine, it starts to sound pretty good to me.

  “How will they know you're from Hoboken?” Ziba asks.

  “My place of birth is on the application,” I say.

  “But what if another actor was also born there? Then what?”

  I give her a withering Mr. Lucas–like stare. “You've obviously never been to Hoboken,” I say.

  Just in case, Natie says he'll get the list of all the actors who've been accepted at Juilliard and run background checks on them.

  “You can do that?” I ask.

  “What do you think we do in the Computer Club, play Pac-Man?”

  He scares me sometimes.

  Along with fraud, forgery, and embezzlement, creating a 501(c)3 non-profit organization counts as yet another thing I never thought I'd do in my life. Hell, I had a hard enough time just figuring out my W-2 from Chicken Lickin'. Luckily for us, the IRS allows personal gifts of up to $10,000, so we don't have to worry about being audited and thus adding federal crimes to my ever-expanding dossier.

  The first order of business is getting a post office box for the Catholic Vigilance Society (the CV initial was Ziba's characteristically droll contribution), which requires a trip into Hoboken, something I typically avoid. Kelly lets me borrow the Wagon Ho (now that she's officially dating Doug she's been feeling a little more charitable toward me) and Father Groovy makes a painfully easy trip to the post office; after all, who's going to question the motives of a priest? But I have to provide an address to open the box (which is ridiculous because if you had an address, why would you need a post office box), so I use the Convent of the Bleeding Heart. Then I make a side trip to visit the house I was born in.

  I have a hard time finding it, there's so much new development going on. Hoboken is quickly becoming the yuppie commute of choice into the city because the rents are still affordable. As a result, new condos and renovations are happening all over. After stopping to ask directions several times (people are always so nice to priests), I find the little two-story box I lived in until I was six. I guess it shouldn't matter, but it makes me happy to see the house has been well taken care of. It's been painted butter yellow with black shutters and a bright red door. There's a new hedge around the property and the tree in the tiny front yard has gotten so tall it now shades the house. Al once put up a swing in that tree but Karen and I played so hard on it, it fell and she broke her collarbone. My mother got so hysterical that by the time the paramedics arrived she had to be sedated and strapped down in the back of the ambulance while Karen rode to the hospital in front with the driver.

  Good times.

  Once we have a post office box, we need to go to the career center at the high school to learn how to write a proper business letter. Who would've guessed an actor would have to know all these things? I hate to admit it, but I'm glad that Al forced me to take typing. Here's our letter:

  February 3, 1984

  The Catholic Vigilance

  Society of Hoboken

  P.O. Box 216

  Hoboken, NJ 07030

  The Juilliard School

  Office of Financial Aid

  60 Lincoln Center Plaza

  New York, NY 10023

  To Whom It May Concern:

  On behalf of an anonymous donor to the Catholic Vigilance Society of Hoboken, I am pleased to enclose this $10,000 check to the Juilliard School's Drama Division with the express purpose that it pay the first year's tuition of a promising Italian-American actor born in Hoboken, New Jersey.

  Our donor, a native son of Hoboken, understands from firsthand experience the challenges facing performing artists and hopes that this first donation will help in the development of a talented individual from his cherished birthplace.

  Respectfully,

  I am,

  Father G. Roovy

  President

  The Sinatra implication is my idea. It helps lend some credibility (Frank's generosity is legendary), not to mention some swagger and swing.

  My freshman year thus secured, I decide it's okay to be in the spring musical. We're doing Godspell and I'm perfect for the role of Jesus, despite the fact that I'm committing several felonies. So I quit my job at Chicken Lickin'.

  Goodance riddance, I say.

  It's bad enough having to wear a paper hat to work, even though I coped the best I could by tilting mine at a stylish and slightly ironic angle, but then, to my complete mortification, my boss decided my hair was too long and I needed a hairnet, too. (Like Miss Black Roots and Dried-Out Perm is in any position to be giving tonsorial advice.) Between the little military-style hat and the hairnet I looked like one of the Andrews Sisters about to launch into “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” And not the pretty one in the middle either, but the tall, gawky one; you know, Maxene or LaVerne, I can never remember which is which.

  Besides, it was Jesus himself who said, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin,” so I figure why the hell should I? Hard work may pay off in the long run, but the benefits of laziness are immediate.

  The first day of rehearsal is awkward. Mr. Lucas has asked Kelly to choreograph the show (“Whell, you certainly don't expect me to do it,” he says) and, believe it or not, it's going to be harder to avoid each other at play practice than at home.

  I slip in backstage and watch from the wings. Mr. Lucas and Kelly are chatting with Ziba, who is stage-managing, and Doug, who's essentially playing opposite me in the dual roles of John the Baptist and Judas. I stand there frozen, uncertain what to do and feeling like a cheesehead for being uncertain. From behind me I hear a voice say, “This is bullshit.”

  I turn around and see Natie, his face screwed up like kneaded dough. He grabs me by the arm and says, “C'mon, let's get this thing settled once and for all.”

  “Cut it out,” I say, but he pushes me hard enough that I stumble forward and drop my books on the stage. Everyone turns to see what happened and I feel even more stupid. I pick up the books, silently cursing Natie, and shuffle over to Kelly. Everyone else tries to look as if they're not watching me, except Mr. Lucas, who seems to regard this little daytime drama as vastly amusing.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Lucas,” Natie says, “but we need a minute to take care of something.”

  Mr. Lucas regards us over his glasses, and mutters, “Uhbviously.”

  “Okay, listen,” Natie says to me and Kelly, “if you two don't want to talk at home that's fine with the rest of us, but enough already with it here at school, okay? We've got a show to do and you're just gonna suck all the fun right out of it. Kelly . . .”

  Kelly turns, her mismatched eyes moist. She bites her lip.

  “. . . we all know Edward did a shitty thing to you, but he's really, really sorry. He's been under a lot of pressure right now so you need to cut him some slack.”

  She looks like she's about to say something, but Natie turns directly to me. “Edward, you had your chance with Kelly and you blew it, so stop acting like such a freak show around her and Doug.”

  Doug snorts. Natie thrusts a pudgy finger at him.

  “Listen, buddy, for Edward's supposedly best friend you haven't done shit to help him pay for college, so shape up, okay? And Ziba . . .”

  “Yes, Nathan?”

  “Nice outfit.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You're welcome. Oh, and listen, cut the ice-queen routine, okay? Doug's totally over you.” He appraises us like he's a drill sergeant and we're the sorriest bunch of recruits he's ever seen. “I'm working my ass off here trying to raise Edward's tuition and I need everybody to work together. Now on the count of three, we'll have a big group hug and all start acting like friends again, all right? One . . . two . . . three!”

  Natie.

  A week later two priests (Fathers Groovy and Grabowski) and three nuns (Sister Ziba, Sister Kelly, and Sister Nudelman) pile into a station wagon headed for Hoboken. I'm not sur
e the disguises are necessary, but we've come to think of them as the official uniforms of CV Enterprises and a sign of our mutual solidarity. We go together like ramma lamma lamb of God.

  I like dressing as a priest. Not only does it put me in a spiritual frame of mind but lots of people apologize to you for not going to Mass more often and you get to forgive them. It's nice.