by Amanda Brown
“Retention! Great! I believe in a very retentive family environment,” Becca said with a laugh. “I’m highly retentive myself. That’s what my analyst tells me.”
Leonardo’s father chuckled, earning a severe glare from his wife.
Penelope cleared her throat. She stared at Becca without laughing.
“All joking aside, Ms. Reinhart, it is important for us to ensure that some French will be spoken at home. Edward has done wonderfully in conversation with our group,” she fluttered her eyes at Edward, who turned his face down modestly.
“Enchantée,” remarked Becca, offering her hand to the admissions director.
Penelope paused. “Well, I am pleased to meet you too, Ms. Reinhart.”
“Je m’appelle Becca,” she replied.
Penelope smiled. “Lovely. Becca, while you were in the hall, we took a pretend journey. We have arrived in France.” Penelope wiggled her fingers as if dispensing magic dust. She was suddenly inhabited by the persona of a small fairy.
“We visited the market, and we’ve just arrived at the drugstore. Now, I’m behind the counter. Would you like to ask me for anything?”
Becca thought fast. She was last in Paris over a year ago. There was that funny little drugstore. Why had she been there? What had she needed?
Penelope tapped her foot. Edward, behind the waiting figure of Penelope, was mouthing the words “Je voudrais—I’d like.” Becca caught his eye.
“Je voudrais,” she began, hesitantly.
“Oui, madame?” prompted Penelope.
“Je voudrais…” Becca repeated. What had she needed in that drugstore? She remembered!
“Je voudrais un déodorant.” She smiled.
The room erupted in laughter, but Penelope, with a stern expression, stayed on target. She stared into Becca’s eyes.
“Je regrette, il n’y en a plus. Vous desirez un autre chose?”
Becca stared without speaking. Who did this lady think she was, anyway, testing the parents? Ridiculous. Becca could show off her expertise too. Is that what a classroom was for? Ready, set, price this option in front of the class? How would Penelope like that?
Having regained the upper hand, Penelope felt a wave of noblesse oblige. “If you’re a little rusty, Becca, I understand. I said, ‘Sorry. None left. Do you want anything else’?”
“Oui, madame.” Becca paused, thinking back to the consulting days in Paris. The sound of French being spoken had brought a little of it back to her. She remembered something. She had stayed in that hotel for over a month. She had needed…
Becca smiled. “Je voudrais des Tampax,” she pronounced, savoring the silence in the classroom. “What’s Tampax?” shouted Leonardo, prompting a chorus of questions from other curious children.
Becca was laughing out loud. “Puis-je voir le directeur? Can I see the manager? What kind of drugstore is this, anyway?”
“You may take your seat,” Penelope snapped.
Leonardo’s father bellowed with laughter. “You’re terrific!” he joked. Seated next to him his wife’s face had silently colored to a shade somewhere between crimson and violet.
A few other laughs were hastily stifled, and the room grew quiet.
“Ms. Reinhart, I’ll see you after class. The rest of you are dismissed. Au revoir.”
Drawing in her breath, Penelope pulled herself together to face Becca Reinhart. Shame about the kid, she thought, watching Emily skip out with Edward Kirkland. Emily Stearns wouldn’t make the waiting list for any decent school in Manhattan after Penelope got the word out about this guardian of hers. The kid was finished.
CHAPTER 15
What You Don’t Know
“I blew it,” Becca admitted that night. They had ordered Thai takeout, and after Emily was in bed, Edward had opened a bottle of wine. At his suggestion they had gone to sit in the library, which felt, to Becca, a little too dark and quiet, but since she had no real reason to object, she followed him in and sat down in an oversized, comfortable leather reading chair. Dispensing with the ottoman, she kicked off her shoes and curled her feet beneath her in the chair.
“No, Becca,” Edward consoled her with a gentle touch on her arm. “Penelope blew it. She went mano a mano with the wrong woman…” he broke off, unable to finish his thought as he laughed at the memory of Penelope’s shocked face. “What was the deal with the imaginary French drugstore, anyway? And the fairy dust?” He chuckled, moving to an upholstered chair in the corner, where he set his wine glass on the chess table.
“Listen, Becca,” Edward continued in a serious tone, “they blew it. They lost a great kid. Anyway, maybe you’re right. All French at that age might be a little weird.” Edward’s voice trailed off again, and Becca caught his eye on the humidor.
“You want to smoke a cigar?” she asked him.
He sighed. “I took Arthur’s cigars out of there; they’re in a box. I couldn’t really throw them away, but I couldn’t really smoke them either.”
Becca nodded. She understood. She wouldn’t wear Amy’s perfume. There were just some things you had to put a lid on.
“You were at school with Arthur?” she asked him.
Edward nodded. “We roomed together at St. George’s, and then again at Harvard.” He paused, and his eyes dropped low. “I didn’t go to law school, you know,” he said, as if it were a confession. “Arthur went to Yale, but, you know, I wasn’t really interested.”
Becca squinted at him. Who had to explain himself for not being a lawyer?
“Yeah,” she said, taking the wrong inference. “I wanted to get right to work too. I got my M.B.A. in night school. I was just sick of having class, you know, all day. I Wanted to get my feet wet, you know?”
His eyes rested on her affectionately. She was so different. In his mind flashed an image of New York City, a place as much his home, as much his background as it was hers. What a wide city it was. It suited her temperament perfectly: It didn’t yield, but it didn’t bear a grudge, either: it simply rolled forward. But the pleasures of New York, its abundance, its generosity, the charm of its world of interiors, of interior people: that was his.
Edward sipped his wine. They had another interview coming up with Emily, at another preschool. He forgot the name. He was thankful the application had been sent before the trip to Alaska.
He looked at Becca, whose eyes were shining with a memory of her own. Her hair was lit softly by the brass standing lamp; it was lustrous and dark. He wondered what it would be like to kiss her. What would she taste like? The scent she always brought into a room compelled him to wonder about her, and the memory of it always stayed with him when she was gone.
But these were dangerous thoughts—inappropriate for sure.
“What did you like about school?” he asked her suddenly.
“What?” She looked at him with surprise. “What do you mean?”
“What were you interested in, when you were in school?”
She squinted at him, thinking. Then her eyes lit with the answer.
“I was good at math,” she said, stretching her legs to the floor.
He laughed, sipping his wine. The books around them: Arthur’s, mostly, reminded him of the reading room in Eliot House. The small, upstairs room, with a quiet perspective of the Charles River, the arched bridges. The books were leather-bound, with gold writing on their spines, so old you feared to open them, lest the pages flutter out and you find yourself responsible for the death of an original Milton.
He noticed that Becca was smiling, proud of herself for some achievement he had brought to her mind. She hadn’t answered his question.
“But what were you interested in?” he repeated.
Her smile dropped and she scrutinized him. She did not understand.
“I was good at math,” she said, in a louder voice.
His expression softened. Of course. She would do what she did well. She was practical: She valued achievement for its own sake. He wondered if she had any real interests. Hi
s eyes rested on her face, lovely in its confusion.
“I still am,” she said, flushing. “I can do exchange rates in my head.”
“Really?” asked Edward, smiling with pleasure. “Show me.”
She converted the dollar and pound: the easiest, first, and moved on to the mark, the franc, and the yen. She wasn’t sure how the euro would be valued, though that would happen soon. Edward began to test her, making up dollar amounts and watching her think them through to their foreign currency equivalents.
He laughed amiably, standing to refill his wine glass, offering to refill hers first. “You know I can’t tell if you’re right or not.”
She nodded knowingly. “But I am right,” she assured him.
He grinned. “I know.”
He felt disappointed when she declined to have more to drink. She stayed, though, in the library with him, asking about his life, surprising him with the questions she asked. She was curious about his nightlife, the charity galas. Was the food good? What did women wear? And when did he decide if it was time to go to his home in Bermuda or England?
Becca would never have revealed to anyone that this information about the people, whose family had owned for generations the penthouse co-op they now inhabited, was of interest to her. Not even Arlene—actually especially Arlene—would never know that Becca read Entertainment and Details and, occasionally, People when she was traveling.
“Do you ‘see’ anyone?”
“That’s an incredibly personal question, coming from you.” Becca graced him with a teasing smile. He poured the last of the wine before answering.
“I think we’re going to be involved in each other’s lives for a long time. Forever,” she said. “Or until one of us gets married—whichever comes first.” There was more to this statement than what she said. There were her nuances, and the challenge written on her stunning face slightly amused, but also searching.
“And that’s incredibly probing, coming from you,” he said.
“Well, at least it throws you on the defensive.”
“And turns the conversation away from you.”
“Right.”
With this, Becca closed the door to any further personal questions. She was like no other woman he’d ever met before. There was no mess about her, no frightening questions that other women asked. Probing questions designed to discover his availability, was he ready for marriage, did he have access to the family money, and so on.
“Okay I won’t ask anything. When you’re ready, tell me anything about your lifestyle that affects our guardianship.”
She had scared him off, Becca realized. What was she thinking? She wasn’t thinking, she mentally kicked herself. Of course they needed to know each other’s personal details. In fact, she wanted to know particularly about his attitude toward dating as a hobby! She checked her watch. “My lord, it’s one A.M.!” Becca searched for her shoes, which she’d thrown off when she sat down.
“It’s your night, Edward.” She used his formal name and made it sound amusing. “In fact, any minute Miss Emily will be making her first bid for attention.”
“Right. The ‘I’m thirsty, Uncle Edward’ thing.”
She stood, placing her pocketbook across her chest and automatically checking her phone to see how many calls she had. But the thought of going home to respond to calls and queries drained her. She had always felt invigorated by the need to get back to work.
“You look tired,” but still shining, he thought. She was infectious with the feeling that a great adventure was about to happen. “Listen, stay here. Tomorrow is your day anyway.” The idea seemed totally obvious.
They had both stayed in the apartment for the first week or so until Emily seemed stabilized. She still asked where her mommy and daddy were, though the question meant were they in heaven yet? Could they see her? Now the person on watch stayed and the other went home. In Becca’s case, she’d usually go to the couch in her office, which made her feel more at home than her apartment. The weeks of forming an ersatz family and spending time in the Stearns’ apartment were changing her, though she did not want to examine how and why.
“The room is calling you, I can hear it.”
This was the ridiculous sense of humor he had that always made her shake her head and smile at the same time.
“You don’t have to say another word. I’m tipsy and exhausted.” She headed for the master bedroom.
Edward took both glasses to the kitchen and washed them in the sink.
CHAPTER 16
K. K. Will See You Now
Dick had strongly advised Becca to seek the aid of an educational consultant, so Friday, she was waiting to meet Edward in the office of K. K. Meyers, the high priestess of preschool admissions.
“Listen,” Becca heard K. K. Meyers boom into her headset. “This is not amateur hour. I’m all about the big five. If you want to screw around with second-tier preschools then don’t waste my fucking time!”
Her office door was open, and from Becca’s seat in the waiting room she could see K. K. appearing and disappearing as she moved back and forth like a shark. Her bushy dark hair, graying from front to back, protruded above and behind her headset, which ran in a little ridge over her skull from ear to ear. With her hands on her hips, the consultant marched across her office, scowling. She had the demeanor of mixed cement, moving obsessively as if she would freeze and crack by standing still. From her hips, her hands would shoot up on occasion to wave around in the air, and the walls echoed her shouting voice. She jiggled a bit when she flung her arms around, as she was rather fat, which Becca found curious since she doubted K. K. took much time to eat. But K. K. enjoyed tub after tub of caramel popcorn in her office, so often that the stuffy room had the distinctive fragrance of a circus tent, minus the animals.
Becca sat on the waiting room couch, paging through back issues of Parents magazine, but her mind was elsewhere. The candy-smeared couch, upholstered with an April Cornell floral pattern, looked like an Easter dress on a tomboy. Cigarette ash smeared the yellow and rose of the English-garden pattern. K. K. didn’t smoke, but the parents who raced to her in desperation were prone to a variety of nervous habits. Next to the ashtray was a jar of mints, a well-worn book of New York Times crossword puzzles, and a pen and spiral pad for compulsive doodlers.
K. K. handled her clients with the compassion of a college basketball coach facing a loss at the buzzer. But her intensity got results. So Becca waited, watching K. K’s vehement concentration with interest, and not without familiarity. IvyBound Educational Consultants was a one-woman show.
Checking her watch to determine just how late Edward was, Becca stood with a smile when K. K. waved her into her office. Uninhibited by Becca’s presence, she continued her phone call yelling furiously into her headphone while she pounded both fists on her desk.
Edward, who had found his way to the office, entered quietly and overlooked the mess of Post-Its and caramel corn, his mind on the curve of Becca’s neck and shoulders as he watched her lean down to retrieve her phone from her bag. Nobody noticed him, so he walked over to look at K. K.’s ego wall, filled with pictures of K. K. greeting preschool admissions directors. He noticed the location of one of the prestigious graduation ceremonies.
“That’s the lawn at Ocean Edge Resort, on the Cape,” he said, turning toward Becca. “Isn’t it?” He realized what a faux pas that was and luckily Becca was listening to messages on the phone, and held her finger in the air.
“Hang on, Eddie,” she said. She returned her attention to her telephone, leaving Edward to his own thoughts.
He leaned back against the wall, staring out the window. He had just dropped Emily at her MiniMozart listening and puzzle class, in which the children played with blocks and puzzle pieces, developing their spatial reasoning under the influence of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony. He was due to pick her up again in two hours: They listened to all four movements.
Money had never been short for Edward and he had therefor
e not developed much talent for thrift. Becca was different. The millions of dollars she had saved in salary, bonuses, dividends, and stock were attributable to her precise attention to financial detail. She was staggered when she wrote the $1,500 check to IvyBound Educational Consultants; the fee covered two ninety-minute sessions with K. K., an applicant evaluation for Emily, an interview prep session, and advice on completing one preschool application (which, in their case, was unnecessary). That got you in the door. After that it cost three hundred dollars an hour for K. K. to yell at you.
At this time of year, K. K. was dealing with September’s dreaded “transitional calls.” Parents who weren’t happy with the preschool they had selected after their child’s first week of attendance called in droves to line up transfer applications for next year. Manhattan parents en masse subscribed to the “feeder theory” of upward mobility, which convinced them that Ivy League admissions depended on scoring the right preschool. A scramble and panic had raged across the Upper East Side since Labor Day, as parents reevaluated their preschool status. K. K.’s telephone blinked and rang like a pinball arcade, with a sound so constant that it dwindled, eventually, into background noise, like street traffic.
“Listen!” K. K. shouted into the suspended microphone of her headset. “Goddamn it, listen to what I tell you! Stop calling the school!” Her hands waved in the air with her frustration, then shot back to her hips. Becca felt restless, like she should pace too, but the office wasn’t big enough.
“Every time you want to call the school, call me,” she shouted, her hands flying around in vexation. “That’s what you pay me for. If you call the school you’re going to piss them off and you’ll never get in. Listen, pal, write this down and paste it to your fucking forehead, okay? One call says you’re interested. Two calls says you’re anxious. Three calls says you’re a pain in the ass. You’re at two calls. You do it again and you’re finished. I can’t help you after that.”
