This Is Where We Live

by Janelle Brown

  Brenda jabbed her finger at the pages. “It’s a good group you’ve got here,” she said, as Claudia peered over her shoulder at the list of tiny type. “Jordan Bigglesby, she’s the undisputed social princess of the school, would be our prom queen if the school went for that kind of stuff, which of course we don’t. Mom’s an actress, you’d recognize her if you watch that sitcom with the monkey. OK, you’ve also got Theodore Kaplan, who will undoubtedly fail your class because he misses too many tests for rugby practice. He thinks he’s going to get into Harvard as a legacy—Dad’s an entertainment lawyer over at Mannatt—but he’s got another think coming. Lisa Yang is a smooth talker, don’t believe a word she says. Her mother’s a publicist, reps all the big stars, so she’s learned a few tricks. Mary Hernandez—a scholarship kid, extraordinarily bright, always very serious. Doesn’t quite fit in here but will probably show up everyone in the end.” Her finger traveled farther down the list and then stopped. “Oh. Penelope Evanovich is in your senior seminar.” Brenda looked up at Claudia, meaningfully.

  Claudia stared back at her, as the name plucked at her memory. “Evanovich, as in Samuel Evanovich?”

  Brenda nodded soberly. “Oh, yes. He’s on the board here.”

  Claudia took this in, excitement pistoning in her chest. Samuel Evanovich was one of her film idols, a legendary movie producer with a long list of Oscar-nominated dramas; in the golden days of American cinema, back in the sixties and seventies, he’d put his thumbprint on almost every significant Hollywood movie and at least a dozen Oscar winners. He was the Hyperion Collection. Claudia attended his lecture at Sundance last winter, a shambling ursine figure who drank scotch on stage, and yet somehow his expansive memories of wilder times in the industry seemed not drunken or solipsistic but searingly insightful. She seemed to recall that he was currently married to a former soap-opera actress who once held the title of Miss Arizona.

  “So? What’s Penelope like?” To her own ear, she sounded overeager.

  “Too spoiled for her own good,” barked Evelyn, from her couch, not bothering to look up from her catalog.

  Brenda sighed. “That kid. She is—how shall we say this?—not cute, which has made things rather hard for her here. She’s smart, but not always very diligent about doing the work assigned to her. An attitude problem, you could say. Though”—she peered over the top of the red frames—“word is that she wants to be a filmmaker just like her daddy. So that could be interesting for you.”

  “Interesting how?”

  Brenda shrugged and picked up a second croissant. “The kids here are amazing. Really. You’re going to have fun. Just don’t let them intimidate you. When they smell blood, that’s when things get out of hand. Remember—you’re the boss.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem.” Claudia proffered a smile that belied the butterflies flapping about in her stomach. “I figure if I can coerce a Vicodin-addled actress out of her trailer or discipline a bunch of middle-aged teamsters, I can probably handle this.”

  Brenda patted Claudia on the back as she hoisted her tote bag back on her shoulder. “That’s the right attitude,” she said. “Go knock ’em dead.”

  As she left the teachers’ lounge and began the hunt for her homeroom, Claudia felt her pace quicken. Suddenly she had a clearer picture of the year that lay before her. Stepping around a massive steel curlicue sculpture (either a real Richard Serra or a very good knockoff), she found herself fantasizing that Penelope Evanovich might become her star pupil. There would be a cozy mentorship, after-school hours spent discussing the techniques of French New Wave cinema, perhaps even the occasional invitation for a home-cooked dinner chez Evanovich, where (after watching a classic film in the family’s home theater) Claudia could be coaxed to show an appreciative Evanovich père her last script—which of course just needed the guidance of an understanding producer to get off the ground ….

  She stumbled, realizing that she’d somehow tripped over the front steps of her own classroom. The room she was to teach in was a brand-new screening room that seated fifty, with stadium seats canting down to a small stage. It had a high-definition projection system, a DVD library with four hundred titles, Wi-Fi, and an equipment room outfitted with several professional-quality video cameras. Unfortunately, the architect who designed the screening room had neglected to consider the fact that this was also to be a teacher’s office, and built a desk in only as an afterthought. This was shoved in back of the stuffy audiovisual closet behind a humming rack of DVD players.

  She flipped on the overhead spotlights, illuminating the vintage movie posters she’d hung in previous visits: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Jules et Jim, and a somewhat shopworn Polish print for 2001: A Space Odyssey. She threw the windows open to let some warm September air into the dark room. She wrote her name in big letters on the whiteboard, still stained with the blue-inked ghosts of lessons past, and straightened a stack of handouts entitled AMERICAN CINEMA SINCE 1960. And then she sat in a wooden chair on the dais and waited for her students to arrive.

  The bullying echoes of the first bell rang through the concrete corridors, where whirlpools of teenagers now swirled and eddied and drifted, carried along by a hormonal tide. Her students began to spill into the room, raucous and giddy from their summer vacations. As the second bell rang, the students shook out their plumage and distributed their backpacks and settled down into studied poses of adolescent ennui. A bespectacled boy with a miniature purple mohawk ran in from the hallway and flung himself into the closest available seat and then smirked, daring her to say something. Twenty-eight eyes stared expectantly at her. She cleared her throat, and her career as a teacher officially began.

  Later she would look back at the events of her first day at Ennis Gates and recall very few details. She took attendance, over and over, carefully matching faces to names, attempting mental mnemonics until she finally gave up and just figured she’d remember them all in time. She laid out a three-month curriculum for each of three different classes, and distributed a small forest’s worth of handouts. She played the opening sequence from Dr. Strangelove, led a slightly halting class discussion on political films, and played the climactic sewer hunt scene of The Third Man and lectured on noir lighting techniques. She had each student write a brief in-class essay on the subject “The Best Movie I Saw This Summer” and was surprised, when she flipped through them afterward, how bright these kids really were. Sure, a few offered insights like “Yeah, the action sequences in Batman rocked” or “I really liked the lesbian pool scene,” but others cited films like 9½ Weeks and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and His Girl Friday, and if they did pick a blockbuster Hollywood flick, they cited it for “cutting-edge animation technique” or “an interesting twist on the genre of comic book adaptation.” Perhaps they were just trying to impress her, but as she read the essays, she could see the semester unfolding in a much more promising way than she’d ever imagined. The students were attentive, eager, and intellectually curious, and only tiny details revealed the fact that many of their parents resided in an entirely different tax bracket than Claudia: a $2,000 Chloe purse here, rare Japanese skate shoes there, the widespread use of MacBooks rather than spiral-bound notebooks.

  But of all the students she met that day, only one really stuck in her head when she got home that night: Penelope Evanovich.

  The girl was in her afternoon senior seminar, and she recognized her right away: In the game of genetic roulette, Penelope had lost her spin, inheriting none of her mother’s symmetrical beauty-pageant features. Instead, she had acquired her father’s hyperthyroidism—her eyes protruded in a permanently goggle-eyed expression of vague panic—and his hirsutism—wiry black curls erupted from her head. She had even inherited her father’s paunch, which probably wasn’t helped by the bag of Cheetos she was eating.

  If Penelope hated seeing her furry pop-eyed form reflected in the gazes of her Master-Cleanse-slimmed, vacation-tanned, and professionally highlighted Beverly Hills peers, sh
e hid it well. Instead, she appeared to embrace her own nonconformity. Her legs were housed in defiantly shredded purple tights, her backpack was regulation army surplus, and a faded black T-shirt that read (from what Claudia could see) RST CLASS BITC peeped out from under a button-front shirt. A streak of inartfully applied green hair dye looped through her ponytail before fading out in a bleached end. From her left lobe hung an earring that appeared to be a diamond-studded skull. Claudia could only imagine how the former Miss Arizona felt about all that. She smiled at Penelope as the girl plopped herself into a front-row seat. An encouraging sign.

  Claudia began that class with a group viewing of The Graduate. Standing on the stage, she guided the students through the magnificent seduction scene between Mrs. Robinson and Benjamin Braddock, thinking to herself as she did that her new job was almost too fun to be real. Just as she was pointing out how the director had used a black-and-white color palette to delineate the character’s moral dilemma, Penelope’s hand popped up. Cheered—not even ten minutes in and she’s already excited about the class!—Claudia barely had a chance to acknowledge the hand before the girl abruptly began talking.

  “Um, my dad executive-produced The Graduate?”

  The students in the room sat up to ogle Penelope, who was surrounded by a moat of empty seats. Penelope twisted the green curl of hair around a thumb and tugged it straight.

  “Oh, really?” Claudia wasn’t quite sure of the proper response to this statement. Of course he had, she thought. She should have realized that sooner. “That’s wonderful.”

  “Yeah, and he told me the only reason they used that color palette was because the production budget was cut in half, they had to use the costume designer’s house as a set, and that was just the way it looked. So it wasn’t actually intentional.”

  For a moment, Claudia was completely flummoxed. She could feel the eyes of the other students sliding from Penelope to Claudia and back again, eagerly anticipating conflict. “Well,” she said, finally, “in this class one of the skills we’ll be learning is critical interpretation, which is subjective, depending on the perception of the viewer.”

  Penelope’s eyes grew even rounder—whether from surprise, or skepticism, or stimulus, Claudia wasn’t quite sure. “Personally, I think it’s pointless to make stuff up that isn’t really there,” the girl announced.

  Claudia shuffled her notes, unmoored. Was this a challenge or an invitation for intellectual debate? “That’s something we can discuss in a different class. But today, let’s move ahead to this hotel room scene, which we’ll see is shot entirely in the dark.” She hit PLAY on the remote, cutting off any further conversation.

  When the bell rang a half hour later, Penelope didn’t head toward the door with the rest of her classmates but worked her way toward the stage. She stood waiting at the bottom of the stairs, scratching one calf with the toe of her sneaker while Claudia chatted with Mary Hernandez.

  Mary had brought Claudia some sort of home-baked pastry, a flattened disk filled with quince paste. She offered it shyly to Claudia in a fragrant, butter-stained bag that read Chicken Kitchen. “It’s not really from the Chicken Kitchen,” she apologized. “I just work there.”

  “It smells delicious,” Claudia said.

  “I’m really excited about this class, Mrs. Munger,” Mary continued, and tugged at the thick braid that she had pulled over her shoulder. She had a gap between her front teeth that hadn’t been fixed by orthodontia and a broad forehead freckled with adolescent acne. “I watched the Film Noir series at the Egyptian this summer to prepare. Though I work most evenings so I missed a few. Murder, My Sweet and The Glass Key. I read that they aren’t considered particularly seminal, though.”

  Behind Mary, Penelope snorted quietly; perhaps the girl was just clearing her throat.

  “We’re not really going to be covering classic noir in this class,” Claudia said, distracted. She watched Penelope out of the corner of her eye, worried that she would grow tired of waiting and flee. “We’re looking at American cinema after the nineteen sixties.”

  “Oh.” Mary looked distressed, as if mentally counting the paychecks she’d wasted on movie tickets. “I’m sorry.”

  “No need to apologize. It’s never a waste of time to learn more about film,” Claudia said.

  “I’m applying to UCLA next year,” Mary continued. “I was hoping I could talk to you about your experience there? I read your bio on IMDB, and I know you attended. It would be so great if you could write me a recommendation, Mrs. Munger. We could schedule something now, if you have a minute.”

  Penelope checked her watch and edged back toward the door, losing her patience. Claudia felt opportunity slipping away—this could be her one and only chance to foster a connection with Penelope. “Recommendations already?” Claudia demurred. “Let’s wait until we’re a little further into the semester, so we can get to know each other. We have plenty of time.”

  “Actually—”

  But Claudia had already beckoned Penelope up the stairs with the one hand, jiggling the paper bag gratefully with the other. “We’ll talk soon, Mary. And thanks for the pastry.”

  Penelope climbed up the stairs toward Claudia, maneuvering around Mary Hernandez as if she were a roadblock planted in her path. She came to a stop directly in front of Claudia, blocking Mary. Mary stared at the back of Penelope’s head for a long moment and then quietly melted away. Claudia barely noticed her leave until she heard the classroom door click behind her.

  “Mrs. Munger,” Penelope began.

  “Claudia is fine,” Claudia said, eager to slide past their earlier, unsettling encounter. “No need to stand on ceremony. I’m not a formalist.”

  Penelope scrutinized Claudia. Her fiddling hands had woven her curly hair into a knotty-looking beehive, and it flapped over the girl’s eyes. “What was the name of the last film you made?” she asked, pushing the hair aside.

  Claudia smiled. This was more like it. “Spare Parts.”

  “Oh.” Penelope snapped a piece of fluorescent pink gum between her teeth. “I never heard of it?”

  Claudia tried to prevent a grimace from rippling across her face. “It’s a love triangle, between two girls and a guy. It takes place in the organ transplant ward of a hospital. It’s an homage to Howard Hawks, and the snappy dialogue that was popular in prewar cinema.”

  “Did it go, like, straight to video or something?”

  “No. It was in movie theaters.”

  “Oh? When did it come out?” Penelope tilted her head to assess her teacher. Claudia could sense the girl sizing her up but couldn’t quite interpret the conclusion Penelope had come to.

  Claudia smiled warmly, determined to be the one person at Ennis Gates that could break through Penelope’s armor. “The end of July.”

  Penelope looked surprised. “And it’s already not in theaters anymore?”

  Claudia picked up the whiteboard eraser, feeling defensive. “No, but I could bring you a screener, if you’d like to watch it.”

  “Yeah, great, thanks,” said Penelope. She slung her backpack over one shoulder and began to make her way toward the door.

  “By the way,” Claudia called after her, “I love the hair. I used to dye mine too. Black.”

  Penelope turned back, blatantly assessing her. After a moment, she offered a fleeting, heartbreaking smile that belied the RST CLASS BITC slogan on her shirt. “Thanks,” she said.

  Claudia watched Penelope leave, sensing that they’d made some sort of breakthrough. She imagined Penelope and Samuel watching the screener together, perhaps discussing its artistic merits, and felt her body tingle, bristling with life for the first time in weeks. She stood there at the front of the empty classroom and found herself smiling as she listened to the last reverberations of the students vanishing from the corridors. I can do this, she thought. I might even like this. She packed essays into her Amoeba tote, flipped off the lights and locked the door, and ventured back out into the purple maze to try to
locate her car.

  Lucy Fitzer was what Claudia’s mother would have called a “fireplug.” She was certainly as compact and squat as a hydrant, with the only protuberance being a pair of enormous breasts that strained at her tank top and tipped her slightly forward when she walked. She marched through their house, flipping open closet doors, peering behind curtains, and firing questions like buckshot, while Jeremy and Claudia—slightly stunned—followed a few steps behind. It was almost as if Lucy were giving the house tour instead of them.

  “Oh my God, what a gorgeous view,” Lucy marveled. “Can you see it from the bed—look at that, you can! How wonderful. It’s quite a good-sized room, isn’t it. Oh, it’s where you sleep? I see. Love your quilt—did one of your grandparents make that? A thrift store! Don’t you worry about germs? No? I guess I’m just germphobic, comes with my job. Oh, a claw-foot bathtub! Heaven. I adore bubble baths. OK, so this would be my room. Well, it’s certainly cozy. Does it have a walk-in closet? Oh. I guess none of these old houses do. And here we have the kitchen …. Does that old stove actually work? Really? Wow. Well, I have a brand-new toaster oven I can contribute. My mom gave it to me for my birthday last month; she said it was a hint that it was about time for me to get the heck out of her house and find a place of my own. God, mothers. This looks like a comfortable living room, does the fireplace work? I do love a nice cozy fire in the winter! And that’s …. quite a painting. Very modern. I prefer landscapes myself—in fact, I sometimes even dabble with watercolors. Not that I have any talent for art … not like you guys, I’m sure.”