My New American Life

by Francine Prose

  In the days that followed, Lula got to know her new computer. She had plenty of time, the weather was cold, she tried not to leave her room. Zeke and Mister Stanley were still on vacation, though Mister Stanley was gone a lot, visiting his wife. A new side of Mister Stanley emerged: the considerate dutiful husband. Once, Lula heard him ask Zeke if he could think of anything his mother might want. Zeke’s silence was like a finger poked into his father’s chest. It was sad they couldn’t help each other through their family hard time.

  Instead, Mister Stanley and Zeke argued about Zeke driving the Olds in bad weather. Mister Stanley said they should order in, The Good Earth would deliver. Zeke let his father win after Mister Stanley described how road salt would eat away at the chassis of a vintage sedan and how he didn’t intend to pay for body work. Zeke said he wasn’t hungry, anyway, and Mister Stanley said everyone had to eat.

  The bitterest fight was about New Year’s Eve. Mister Stanley wouldn’t let Zeke go to a friend’s party with the slightly older boy who would be driving. Mister Stanley said he didn’t know the boy, Zeke never brought his friends home. Zeke said that maybe now he could bring kids home, now that Mom was safely locked up. Lula heard doors slam and howls of murderous rage, sounds that must have reminded Mister Stanley of the place where he’d left his wife.

  New Year’s Eve came and went. All three of them went to bed early. Lula wouldn’t have known it was New Year’s if the newspaper hadn’t featured a photo of confetti. Probably it was bad luck not to get drunk or have sex or eat some special food supposed to bring you money or luck in the coming year. Maybe it was too late for that. What worse luck could befall them? Lula knocked on her desk.

  Lula was under house arrest, room arrest more like it, and she used the wintry hours to write a story about a farm that lay under a curse. Her granny had said there were places like that, dwellings whose tenants all died suddenly, suspiciously, and young. In Lula’s story, a guy appeared in Berat one day, claiming his grandpa had left him the farm. He didn’t care about the curse. Against all advice, he moved there with his beautiful wife and their beautiful kids, and they began to grow apples, tomatoes, and lettuce and to raise ducks and lambs. The place was their private paradise on which no one would set foot for fear the curse was contagious, though this didn’t stop anyone from buying their produce at the market. Not one bad thing happened. And when a series of animal and vegetable plagues devastated the region, their farm alone was spared because they were quarantined by their neighbors’ superstition.

  Lula spent days trying to think of how the curse finally got them. But she’d grown to like this plucky family, and her imagination refused to conjure up the disastrous fire or flood or earthquake. Instead they lived to a healthy old age, their beautiful children had more beautiful children, and each year the farm grew more productive, its lambs fatter and more playful, its apples more delicious.

  Lula spent more time on this story than on anything she had written, and she hated it the most. Because she didn’t believe it. If the farmland was that fertile, the government would have seized it long ago, and the family would still be in court trying to get even one apple tree back. Also she wasn’t buying the lesson it seemed to preach: Ignore the crowd and go your own way and life will turn out all right. In her experience, you could follow the rules or refuse to bend and you were still at the mercy of the same wicked cosmic dice-roll.

  But regardless of what she thought, Mister Stanley and Don would adore it. Virtue, integrity, courage, hard work rewarded—-that was the story they wanted to hear. Lula decided not to show it to them. Their approval would only annoy her. She didn’t feel strong enough for their praise. On the other hand, the story might be just what Zeke could use right now. Do the right thing, follow your heart, keep on keeping on, and you get the happy family, the juiciest lamb chops, and the sweetest apples.

  She printed out the manuscript and knocked on Zeke’s door, then eased it open. Zeke lay on his bed, fully dressed, hooked up to his iPod. Lula had to kick the bed twice before he opened his eyes.

  “Fleas Bite Dogs,” he said. “I love this song. Want to listen?”

  Lula said, “Why are you shouting? You should be listening to Buddhist chants. Helpful for stress.”

  “That was bullshit,” Zeke said. “I knew Dad would fall for it big-time.”

  “He asked me if your giving him that book meant you were getting like your mother.” Lula caught herself, too late. She’d always made a point of not telling father and son what they said about each other. Maybe she’d just wanted an excuse to say mother, in case Zeke wanted to talk about his.

  “Not a chance,” said Zeke.

  Lula said, “Want to read something I wrote?”

  Zeke took the manuscript. A short time later he came to her room.

  “Did this really happen?” he said.

  Lula nodded gravely. “In my granny’s village.”

  “That is awesome,” Zeke said.

  Lula knew not to take credit, but she couldn’t help noting: Just a few days after reading her story, Zeke appeared at Sunday breakfast and announced that he wanted to go to college. He said, “I guess it’s the only way I’m ever going to get out of this dump alive.”

  “Dump” made Mister Stanley flinch, but he rapidly recovered and said that college involved more than escaping the family dump. In any case, he was pleased that Zeke was making the right decision. Then the two of them disappeared into the “library,” where they remained until late afternoon.

  “Progress,” announced Mister Stanley, when at last they reappeared.

  Lula’s job now included helping Zeke fill out his college applications, a tedious and complex task he performed with such rare perseverance that Lula tried not to feel hurt by how badly he wanted to leave. But it wasn’t just that. He wanted to grow up. Everyone did. Or should.

  When Zeke asked Lula’s advice about the application essays, Lula told him to go on the Internet and read the colleges’ home pages and figure out what each one wanted to hear. Then he should write that. She was glad he’d asked her and not his father, who would have given him the wrong advice: write what was in his heart.

  Zeke showed Lula a draft that began, “I want the freedom to express my full individuality while at the same time being an integral part of a larger community.”

  Lula said, “Zeke, put on your thinking cap! What teenager sounds like that? You can’t just copy what they say. I thought you wanted to get in.”

  The second draft began, “Everything I’ve read about your school makes me think it’s a place that would let me be my authentic self and still work hard and learn from my fellow students who are also there to grow and learn.”

  “You nailed it,” Lula said.

  Now, when Zeke came home from school, he asked if there was mail, and now when the letters slipped through the slot, Lula searched for the fat envelope stuffed with good news. The college that accepted him would be setting both of them free.

  The envelope arrived on a Saturday morning. Zeke ripped it open, skimmed the letter, punched the air, and said, “Okay!” Mister Stanley and Zeke high-fived each other.

  “Congratulations,” said Lula.

  The only good-news letter had come from Alice Ames College, across the Hudson and forty-five minutes north. It sounded like a girls’ school, but Mister Stanley said it had been coed for years. It wasn’t too close, but close enough for Mister Stanley and Zeke to attend the accepted-students tea.

  “Will you come with us? It seems only right after all the help you gave Zeke.” Mister Stanley must have thought that attending the tea was some kind of reward. Which it was. Going anywhere was better than going nowhere. He was asking for Lula’s company and support and trying to make it seem as if he was doing her a favor.

  “I’d love to,” Lula said.

  Chapter Twelve

  Lula had studied the brochure, the photos of attractive students of every body type, gender, and race, pausing for amusing, educational con
versations as they strolled through the handsome stone cloisters. The pictures had looked real enough, but still she half expected Alice Ames to be a boarded-up storefront in a mall. She’d seen a TV program about a fake online college that promised to prepare kids for medical school and stole their parents’ life savings. It had tickled her to see Americans taken in by the sort of scam people thought happened only in Eastern Europe. If she had a dollar for every La Changita customer who told her about not being allowed to drive his rental car to Prague because it might get stolen, she wouldn’t have had to work there. But now that she’d come to care about Zeke and Mister Stanley, she’d lost the ironic remove from which she watched Americans get conned, and she hoped that Alice Ames was not a dirty trick cynically named after some grifter’s favorite hooker.

  They were halfway to the college on the day of the tea when Mister Stanley slowed down and said, “Wait. I’m remembering something. The college had some problem. A very public problem . . . not so long ago . . .” Lula and Zeke sat very still, neither liking his tone, the same tone in which he had forbidden Zeke to go out with his friends on New Year’s Eve. But Mister Stanley couldn’t seem to recall what the problem had been, and when they picked up speed again, Lula’s sense of well-being returned, intensified by its close brush with disappointment.

  A perfect meringue of snow glistened on the rolling lawns and filled the crenellations of the castle turrets. The cold seemed cleaner and sharper than the cold in New Jersey, and it made you want to go inside where it would be warm and smell of wet wool, and where young minds would be humming like air conditioners in summer.

  At the edge of a parking lot a sign said, “Welcome Class of 2010.” Lula refused to calculate how old she would be then. Zeke nodded at a purple balloon bobbling against the sign.

  He said, “I hope this isn’t a super-expensive mistake.”

  “It’s a godsend,” said Mister Stanley. “It will be worth every penny.”

  A lot of pennies, said the pillared veranda overlooking a meadow, a lot more pennies, said the stained glass windows along the staircase that led to a wood-paneled hall. Two girl students, bouncers in party clothes, sat at a table and power-smiled guests into writing their names on sticky labels. Mister Stanley and Zeke complied, but when Lula said, “I’m just a friend,” the girls were so flustered that Lula got away with not having to wear a name tag.

  The school should have chosen a more intimate space, where the students, parents, and teachers would have looked less lost as they tried to fill its rejecting vastness. The minority students in the brochure must have decided to skip the party. Two long tables held platters of fruit slices and ziggurats of cheese cubes, already in ruins, plus bottles of water, orange juice, and several industrial-size samovars.

  Tea, Lula thought despairingly.

  Sipping their tea, the parents assumed the hunched, vigilant postures required to balance a fragile cup of hot liquid while chatting with other nervous strangers. Lula noted how often they checked their watches and how hard they tried to conceal it. A few older students scanned the crowd. Would their glances have looked so predatory if not for Zeke’s recent experience with Harmonia Bethany?

  “Stay away from those girls,” Lula whispered.

  “Believe me,” Zeke said. “I’ve learned.”

  A woman with a shiny domelike forehead charged toward them, her proffered handshake so aggressive that Lula’s impulse was to jump out of her way. Unnerved, Lula missed the name of the assistant admissions director, who was thrilled—she checked Zeke’s name tag—that Zeke might be coming to Alice Ames.

  She said, “You’ll probably think I’m prejudiced if I babble on and on about how much I love it here.”

  Lula took this opportunity to slip away and pour herself a cup of tea and find a corner from which to fake interest in the proceedings. But wait. This could be interesting. A man was walking toward her.

  “I’m Carl,” he said. “Carl Levin. I teach in the philosophy department.”

  Even better, a Jewish guy. At home girls said that Jewish guys made outstanding boyfriends. To hell with Alvo and his air-conditioner scam, if that was even what it was. Stay cool, Lula reminded herself. What was her recent past if not a warning against excessive imagination? Besides, this event was not about Lula and her sordid love life, but about the bridge that Zeke was about to cross from his childhood into the world. And it was part of Lula’s job to make sure that bridge was sturdy.

  “Are you one of the incoming students?” the professor asked. Did she really look that young, or did he say that to all the second wives here with the college-age offspring of the rich husbands’ first marriages?

  Lula said, “I already went to university in Albania. My friend . . . I mean, my friend’s son is enrolling here in the fall.”

  “Wait!” he said. “You’re the Albanian friend! How many could there be?”

  Lula said, “What do you mean?” This was how it happened. They knew who you were. They were waiting for you. You thought it was a college tea, but it was an INS sting, the kind where they promised illegals anything from amnesty to a pair of free tickets to a baseball game. And when you showed up, they nabbed you. But Lula had nothing to worry about. Thanks to Don, she was legal.

  The professor’s lips were moving.

  “Excuse me?” Lula said.

  This time he seemed to be saying, “Everyone loved Zeke’s essay.”

  “What essay?”

  “The one about the family that inherits the cursed orchard, but they keep their eyes on the prize and nothing unlucky happens and they raise the best lambs and apples. Zeke had a sentence at the end about how he’d heard the story from an Albanian friend, and how it made him realize how important it was to work hard and keep the faith and do what you think is right, and how glad it made him feel to live in a country where people don’t believe in curses. The sentiment was so positive. And it was so well written.”

  Zeke had copied her story. Sooner rather than later, Lula needed to tell him that plagiarism was wrong.

  “To be perfectly honest,” said the professor, “Zeke’s wasn’t the strongest application in the pool. But this isn’t the sort of place that bases its decisions solely on grades and test scores. That essay got him in.”

  Mister Stanley hadn’t wasted a cent of the salary he’d paid Lula. And was it really so bad if Lula had given Zeke some basic instruction in the relationship, however regrettable, between deception and survival? Once Zeke got where he wanted to be, he could sort out the moral issues. And how did a little all-in-the-family intellectual-property theft stack up against the fact that Lula’s story had gotten Zeke the one thing he seemed to want? By the time Professor Carl finished raving about Zeke’s essay, Lula had almost convinced herself that Zeke’s submitting her work under his name wasn’t plagiarism, but collaboration.

  The professor said, “One of my colleagues read it aloud. It got passed around the committee. It was by far the most interesting essay we got. I work part-time in admissions, even though I was hired to teach the second half of the beginning survey course. From Machiavelli to Marx. When you don’t have tenure, you agree to whatever they ask.”

  Lula said, “That’s the beginning of philosophy right there.”

  “And also, as you doubtless know, these are unusual times.”

  Lula didn’t know. His unspoken question (what had Lula heard?) made her recall Mister Stanley’s reference to some trouble at the college.

  “Unusual how, exactly?”

  “Obviously, the shooting.”

  “What shooting?” Lula said.

  “It’s always the science students. Even here, where we have no science program to speak of. I never taught the kid, but his advisers said he was wound pretty tight. I know that’s what they always say. Obsessed with grades. High-strung. No one knows where he got the rifle. He started blasting away at the gatehouse—”

  “When was this?”

  “Year before last.”

  “Was
anyone killed?” Lula held her breath.

  “No, thank God. The guy couldn’t aim. A couple of minor flesh wounds. The security guard wrestled him down. The shooter weighed about ninety pounds. Very bloody and messy. Traumatic. But fortunately, not lethal.”

  “What happened to the kid?”

  “Deported back to Singapore. Meanwhile, the freshman applicant pool dried up completely. Parents get nervous. No one believes that lightning never strikes the same place twice.”

  Lula made a mental note to tell Mister Stanley the part about lightning in case he remembered what he’d heard about Alice Ames.

  The professor said, “One more year like this one, and our jobs are on the line. I think that’s one reason Zeke’s story was such a hit. It was exactly what everyone needed to hear just around now: If you keep on doing what’s right and doing it well, the bad weather clears, and the curse gets lifted.”

  No wonder this place was so eager for students willing to step over some fading blood stains in return for no one fussing about their test scores. Lula felt vaguely injured on Zeke’s behalf. If Zeke was going to steal her work, it should earn him something better than a college that no one else wanted to attend. But hadn’t she read her own story? The cursed farm grew the tastiest apples. This college was pretty, the students looked happy, the professor was handsome and nice.

  She said, “Why do school shootings happen so often in this country?”

  “They happen everywhere,” Professor Carl said. “And not as often as you’d think. But the media loves them.”

  “Going postal. Ha ha . . .”

  “Your English is flawless.” He smiled. “So what do you do now?”

  “Okay. I’m not the Albanian friend. I work for the family. I take care of Zeke. Until he leaves for college.”

  “And then?”