This Is Where We Live

by Janelle Brown

  She collected the quizzes as class ended and shuffled through them while her students gathered up their backpacks and snack wrappers.

  They sat poised on the edge of their seats, feet edging forward, ready to spring forth at the first sound of the bell. The oppressive temperature in the room silenced any end-of-class chatter, leaving only a mute détente. Claudia flipped to the last test in the pile and stopped. It was completely blank, except for a doodle in the corner—a series of concentric stars—and the name YOURS TRULY scrawled at the top in Penelope’s unmistakable all-caps handwriting. The girl hadn’t even tried.

  The electronic drone of the first bell burst through the silence and the students leaped as one toward the door. She hesitated and then called after the receding herd, “Penelope, will you come see me up here, please?”

  Penelope turned, separating herself from the pack. She walked slowly toward the stage, her regulation plaid skirt swinging around bare thighs, the laces of her combat boots flopping against the carpeted aisle. The teen twirled a lock of hair with stubby fingers frosted in black lacquer and then tugged it to her mouth to gum its end.

  Claudia held up the blank test and let it dangle in the air between them. “Want to tell me what this is about? Why didn’t you answer any questions?”

  Penelope shrugged. “I didn’t feel like it.”

  Claudia stared at Penelope, astonished by her chutzpah: She herself would never have had the guts to say something like that to a teacher. No, she’d spent her life diligently answering questions, doing all the extra credit she could, sucking up to whomever was in charge. For a moment, she almost admired her student, but she quelled this, and forged ahead. “I know you can answer these questions—even if you haven’t been doing any of the homework I’ve assigned you. You’re a smart girl, and you already know a lot about film. I just don’t understand why you’re doing this. “She flapped the paper in frustration. Why couldn’t she break through to this girl? Claudia was a nice enough person, a pretty decent teacher by all accounts; why did Penelope—and this had become unmistakable—dislike her so much? “You realize I’m going to have to give you an F on this test, don’t you? And, honestly, that’s something you can’t really afford, considering your grades in this class so far. If you keep this up, you’re not going to pass.”

  Penelope released the curl from her mouth. It sprang back to her shoulder, drawing a spidery silver thread of saliva with it. “Yes, I am.”

  Claudia paused, confused. “Yes, I am, as in ‘Yes, I am going to do the work?’”

  “No,” Penelope said. She pulled a pack of gum from her backpack and extricated a neon-green rectangle from its paper nest. She popped it in her mouth and began smacking it between her teeth. “As in, ‘Yes, I am going to pass the class.’”

  The heat was choking; Claudia couldn’t take a satisfying breath at all. “What are you trying to say, Penelope?”

  Penelope looked at the blank test for a long minute and then back at Claudia. “We both know you’re going to have to give me an A. It’s really only fair. If you want to work with my dad, I mean.”

  Claudia’s hand hung in the air, frozen and quivering. Silence fell between them, a static sheet separating teacher and student. Outside, Claudia could hear the thump of the girls’ basketball team, taking up position on the court behind her classroom. She lowered her arm, letting the paper fall to her side. “I’m going to pretend that I didn’t just hear that,” she said, her quavering voice betraying her shock. Then she turned on her heel and fled like a coward, away from Penelope and into the A/V closet.

  She fussed with the DVD players, trying to slow the heartbeat that rattled in her chest like an oncoming train on a wooden trestle bridge. She should go straight to the principal and report this; and yet couldn’t she also be culpable here? Would Nancy Friar, perhaps, be less than pleased that Claudia was attempting to find outside employment with a school board member? (She recalled rule number one on the orientation sheet: Do not fraternize with parents outside of school.) She was stopped cold by yet another epiphany—didn’t this also mean that Samuel Evanovich had read her script, perhaps even discussed his intentions for it with his daughter, because why would Penelope be bothering to try to use this as leverage if Samuel didn’t plan to work with Claudia in the first place? And yet—perhaps Samuel had only pretended to be interested in the script in the first place and was in fact colluding with Penelope, using Claudia’s career desperation as leverage for a better grade for his daughter! Her cranium throbbed as she tried to parse through the possibilities.

  Behind her, she heard Penelope’s footsteps, then the squeak of the girl’s gum. Penelope’s rasped voice drifted from the doorway of the closet. “Honestly, Mrs. Munger, do you really think you have that much to teach me?”

  Shocked, Claudia turned to face her student, trying to frame a measured, teacherly response: something about true knowledge coming from experience, or work being its own reward. But she hesitated for a crucial second too long—combating, in that brief moment, an old familiar self-doubt (a pathetic $39,000 box office in its opening weekend)—and in the void that this pause left, Penelope saw her opportunity. She took a step into the closet, boxing Claudia in next to the whirring DVD players, and gazed up at her teacher with a sympathetic—sympathetic?—expression. “Look, Mrs. Munger, I took your class because I need it to qualify for the summer scholar program at USC film school; but if I already know all the stuff you’re telling us, why should I waste my time with all these stupid assignments? Especially when I know you have to give me the A anyway.”

  The electronics were hot against Claudia’s back. She felt the knob of a DVD player pressing into her spine and wondered how on earth she’d ended up here, in an airless school closet, being bullied by a teenager. She was a Sundance-annointed director, for chrissakes, with more than a decade of industry experience: Of course she had plenty to teach the world. Claudia was the one in charge here, not this self-important brat. It was her classroom, her script, her life.

  She summoned a shred of moral righteousness. “I don’t think I have to do anything. Now, excuse me.” She squeezed past Penelope back into the classroom and then swung the closet door shut, so abruptly that Penelope had to jump sideways to avoid being beaned in the forehead or locked in the closet.

  Penelope was silent. She crumpled the gum wrapper in her hand and shoved it back in her bag. Then she narrowed her eyes and glared hard at Claudia from beneath her mascara-clotted lashes. “Fine. If that’s what you want. But you should know: My dad really, really cares about how I’m doing in this class. And if I’m failing, he’s not going to blame me.”

  Penelope twirled and marched off, her skirt flaring so pertly with her spin that Claudia could see the girl’s purple cotton panties gripping the tops of her thighs. Claudia stood frozen on the stage, the blank test in hand, as her student disappeared out the door. Sweat dripped from her cleavage, where her bra trapped the heat in close to her body, drenching the sides of her blouse and pooling in a puddle at her navel. For a moment, she thought she might faint.

  Claudia had expected that the person who swept Daniel so completely off his feet would be an overgrown nerd, like him, but the young woman who arrived on their doorstep with a bottle of Malbec in hand was charmingly exotic. It’s not that she was pretty, exactly—she had unruly dark hair and was a touch wide across the rear, and her face was dominated by a soft marshmallow nose and bushy Frida Kahlo-esque eyebrows that slashed across her forehead. But she held herself erect with balletic poise in her long peasant skirt and spoke rapid English that was tinted with some sort of Latin accent and smiled, frequently: the toothy, contagious smile of a woman who has yet to find anything to hate about the world.

  Earlier this week, it had looked like tonight’s meet-the-pregnant-fiancée gathering would be canceled. Jeremy hadn’t spoken to Daniel since the band’s breakup, and when Claudia suggested that they go ahead with the long-planned get-together anyway, Jeremy had stuck out his low
er lip like a pouting child. “Whatever,” he said. “I don’t know if I can look him in the face right now.” But he hadn’t said anything specific about canceling either, so at 6 P.M. the house had filled with the sound of onions being chopped, and then the scent of homemade pear-prosciutto pizza wafted into the living room, and at 7 P.M. the doorbell rang on cue.

  Daniel and Jeremy knocked each other stiffly on the shoulders with clenched fists—with aggression, or affection, or both, it wasn’t quite clear—and then disappeared to the kitchen to mix drinks. Claudia led Cristina on a short house tour, as they exchanged pleasantries about the remarkable heat. Claudia wanted to pay attention to the conversation, sensing that there was a crucial first impression to be made, but she was distracted. Every time Cristina paused to smile, Claudia would flash back to the same sickening visual: herself, sitting at her desk in the stuffy A/V closet, carefully inscribing an A into the little square next to Penelope’s name on the grade sheet. At first she’d made it a B, as if this equivocation would somehow mitigate her transgression, before deciding that this was pointless. After all, Penelope was demanding an A; a cowardly B would neither solve Claudia’s problem nor absolve her of guilt. One couldn’t just partially sell out—you either sold, or you didn’t sell, and really, was there any question that at this moment in time it was in her own best interest to put her ethical objections up on the auction block? No. No, there was not. So she changed the grade to an A, although she’d written the letter in pencil, as if giving herself permission to go back and erase her mistake. But she knew she wouldn’t, not after seeing the threat in Penelope’s eyes. Was she stupid to be putting her new career in jeopardy—the stable job, the one keeping them afloat—for some wild fantasy she knew was a long shot anyway? But the undeniable truth was that Claudia did long for that movie career; she still lay in bed at night, imagining her movie title in capital letters on the Arclight Cinema marquee, the credits rolling past as the weeping audiences stayed glued to their seats, immobilized by emotion. Compared to that, her transgression today seemed so minor. It was just one little A. And it was probably true anyway that Penelope knew the answers to the test even if she didn’t bother to write them down. She would have gotten the A, if she’d just tried. Besides, if Claudia really did get her film going with Samuel Evanovich, she’d soon be quitting her teaching job. No one would ever need to know.

  She led her guest toward the living room, as Cristina prattled on about something related to the baby. “You wouldn’t believe how much a crib costs, especially if you want one that’s made with nontoxic materials. Same price as a used car! You’d think with all these recession sales everywhere, things would be cheaper, but not baby gear. But luckily we’re getting hand-me-downs from my sister.” Cristina smiled with the bland complacency of the newly knocked-up, then turned to look out the window, one palm placed absently on her slightly bulbous belly. “You know, your house is lovely. It’s really very cozy up here, isn’t it? Like a little nest.”

  Claudia led Cristina toward the window and they gazed out at the lights of the houses on the ridge across the way, bright beacons in the dark. “It’s our oasis.”

  “I might feel a little isolated, though.”

  “Maybe, a little.”

  “You own?”

  “Technically, the bank owns,” Claudia said, more breezily than she felt. “We’re just doing our best to keep them off our backs.” She thought of Lucy, who had agreed to stay out of the house tonight, and offered a quick prayer of gratitude that she wasn’t around—Cristina didn’t strike her as the type of person who would ever get herself in such a financial mess that she’d need to take on a roommate. Lucy would be too embarrassing to explain.

  Cristina nodded. “We’re thinking of buying soon, maybe after the wedding. Real estate prices are plummeting. Did you read that story today—twenty-seven percent this year so far?”

  “At least the crash is working out for someone.” Claudia couldn’t quite force a convincing smile. “So, tell me about the wedding.”

  “We’re going to hold the ceremony in the courtyard of the museum where I work and then have dinner afterward at a Cuban restaurant. It’ll be casual.” Cristina spun around and studied the rest of the living room, an assessor doing an impromptu survey. Her gaze snagged briefly on the unfortunate floral chaise, before abruptly snapping to focus on Beautiful Boy. “Oh, my God!” she exclaimed. “Is that an Aoki Hamasaku?”

  Claudia gazed up at Jeremy’s painting, surprised by Cristina’s outburst. “Yeah,” she said. “You’ve heard of her?”

  Cristina closed in on the painting, bringing her nose just inches from the divots and claw marks in the thick green paint. “Of course. The museum has three pieces by her in its collection. God, this is gorgeous! Why do you have it?” She turned quickly and looked at Claudia. “Did that sound bad? I didn’t mean it in a bad way. Just … it’s a surprise to see one hanging in … a normal person’s house.”

  Claudia could feel something unpleasant breaking loose inside her. Yes, Aoki was successful, but a museum collection? This was an unfortunate revelation. “She used to go out with Jeremy, years ago.”

  Cristina’s mouth shaped itself into a little O of surprise, revealing the pink flesh inside her lips. “Oh, my God, of course. Jeremy is that Jeremy! The Jeremy Series Jeremy!”

  “Well, yes. She used to paint him a lot,” Claudia said. This particular moniker—The Jeremy Series—was one she hadn’t heard before, and she wished she still hadn’t. It solidified Aoki’s hold on Jeremy’s past, consecrating their connection not just as a failed relationship but as a bona fide movement. Like Picasso’s Blue Period.

  “I know! There must be at least three dozen paintings of him out there! Do you also own the one that was on the cover of ArtForum? That was my favorite. Oh, no, wait, I think I read that Oprah bought that one.” Cristina moved her hand across the surface of the painting, her palm hovering above the whorls and divots.

  “This is the only one we own.” Claudia said, wondering how she could change the subject without being obvious about it. She hated that Cristina knew there was a that Jeremy; hated, even more, the fact that Aoki’s existence was so prominent in her life again. Somehow, despite her best efforts to blot out Aoki’s presence in the world, the woman had managed to slip back into their lives, a development for which Claudia was emotionally unprepared.

  Not that there was a specific reason she should feel so ill-at-ease. When Jeremy came home after his coffee with Aoki earlier that week, Claudia had examined him closely for signs of … exactly what, she wasn’t sure, but something. He was flushed, edgy, but that could be the fallout from Audiophone’s demise the previous evening rather than any residual excitement from seeing his ex-girlfriend. He’d called their reunion weird but uneventful and said Aoki seemed much healthier, but still pretty destabilizing, which Claudia assumed meant unpredictable and just as crazy as I remembered her. As least, she hoped that’s what he meant. He’d mentioned an upcoming opening they were both invited to, an apparent gesture of détente that had assuaged some of that residual paranoia she couldn’t quite rid herself of. There was a tinge of sadness in his voice, a hiccup of loss and remorse than brought to mind all of her own ex-boyfriends—a depressive poet from her post-college years who’d broken up with her in order to “find room for his writing” and then married another woman three months later; the year-long affair with a French carpenter with whom she had little in common but sex; the very sweet but slightly dull software engineer whom she’d heartlessly dumped not long after meeting Jeremy. She’d lost touch with all of them, but if they showed up in her life now, wouldn’t she feel the same sheen of nostalgia, the lure of what-might-have-been? In that context, Jeremy’s coffee with Aoki seemed unworthy of her concern. It was ridiculous of her to be jealous. She’d tried to put it out of her mind: There were just so many other, more important things to worry about right now than a shared cappuccino with an ex-girlfriend.

  Except that here Aoki was
yet again, somehow impossible to shake: It was almost as if the artist herself had materialized in the flesh, making herself at home in their living room. Cristina moved backward to get a better view of the painting, tripping against the edge of the couch. “Wow,” she said. “Have you met her? I’ve heard so many stories ….”

  “No. But Jeremy always said she was kind of nuts,” Claudia said pointedly.

  “That’s her reputation.” Cristina pulled her cellphone out of her pocket and held it up with a stiff arm, framing a picture. She raised an eyebrow at Claudia, as if asking permission, and then snapped a photo before Claudia had a chance to decide how she felt about this. Violated, a little bit, maybe. Overshadowed, yet again. Cristina examined the photo on her phone, and then snapped it closed and tossed it in her purse. “I hope you have it insured.”

  Claudia swung to stare at the ugly painting. “Insured? Really?”

  Cristina had pulled out a notepad and was taking notes. “It’s got to be worth a fortune. The MoMA already owns two of them. One from this series sold at Sotheby’s last May for about four hundred, but it was smaller and not nearly as good.”

  Claudia wobbled slightly, threatening to tip to the right into Lucy’s chaise or to the left and capsize the coffee table. She put a hand up to the wall and stabilized herself, certain that the figure she had just heard was implausible, a faulty synapse sending incorrect auditory signals to her ear. “Four hundred thousand?”

  “I’m not an expert….” Cristina’s voice trailed off. “You should really have an appraiser take a look at it.”

  “Jesus.” The wall had begun to tip alarmingly, and in search of a more stable surface Claudia slipped carefully down into the chaise. Once seated, she still felt in danger of passing out, so she leaned forward and rested her head between her legs. Her voice came out muffled from between her knees. “I didn’t realize. I thought maybe … twenty or thirty thousand.”