You only want what you can’t have.
From: [email protected]
Debatable. But in any case, I need your help with my latest project. I need your Aegean blue—I mean, honest and insightful—eyes to critique it before I post. Will you do that for me, no strings attached?
From: [email protected]
What if I hate it?
From: [email protected]
You won’t. It’s awesome, like I am in all things.
From: [email protected]
Hubris: look it up. You are not supposed to declare greatness at anything, lest the gods smite you with their wrath.
From: [email protected]
I thought if I came on strong with machismo, you’d fall at my feet. No?
Next time, I will go for sensitive, poet-type come-on.
Video’s going to be ready for viewing in two hours. You up for that? What’s your ETS?
From: [email protected]
Not up for it. Estimated time to sleep is in about 10 minutes, max. Too bad we’re not in the same place. Then I could roll over and go to sleep and you could nudge me awake when you’re ready for an audience.
From: [email protected]
Don’t even put that image in my mind. How am I going to work now?
From: [email protected]
Alone, I guess.
I erase and destroy all the e-mails from tonight, then log off, slightly embarrassed that I could be so forward. My online persona just kind of took over there. I’m like some kind of modern-day Cyrano, whispering all the great lines from behind my computer screen. If faced with flirting with Lenny face-to-face, I’d turn about a thousand shades of purple and choke on my own tongue.
Still another hour before Doug gets home.
Just before quitting out of the computer, I decide to go back on Facebook to update my status.
I click into the empty box, and the question “What’s on your mind?” stares back at me, waiting for an answer.
Everything? Nothing? I don’t know what. Fill in the blank, I guess, like on one of my very own horrendous, multiple-choice grammar quizzes. I imagine scanning the page for the right answer, increasingly nervous as the minutes tick by and the correct choice eludes me.
I leave the space blank and log off the computer.
Then I scribble a friendly little Post-it note to Doug, like he’s my college roommate, and stick it on the fridge. After dumping the empty chardonnay bottle in the recycling bin and hiding it under some soda cans, I turn off the lights and make my way to bed.
Only, I can’t sleep.
Thirty minutes later, the mechanical buzz of the garage door triggers in me a mild but certain dread. Doug parks the car and enters the house. He moves around the kitchen a bit, and I follow the trail of sounds as he turns on the faucet for a drink of water, riffles through some papers, and searches for something to snack on in the cabinets.
Then I hear him set the alarm and climb the stairs.
In the darkness, I picture Lenny. And Dr. Grossman. And Sweetheart and Brandon.
I picture Doug’s tennis league and wonder if he ever lies about where he’s going and who he’s with.
“You awake?” he whispers.
I feel him studying me as his vision adjusts to the darkness.
Playing possum, I keep my eyelids gently shut. I try to think of dreamlike scenarios the way a method actor would to convincingly portray deep sleep—I’m on the beach; I’ve won the lottery; someone’s chasing me, only I can’t run—No, no, no, not that kind of dream, Lauren, I scold myself—stay calm! Shallow intakes of breath, keep the rhythm steady.
“Lauren?”
When I don’t respond, he pads across the carpeting and into the bathroom, shutting the door gently behind him.
Doug showers and changes into pajamas—boxers and a white Hanes T-shirt, I know even with my eyes closed—slides into bed next to me and promptly falls asleep.
Now the only sound in the house is the slight pounding of my guilt-ridden forehead.
Chapter 10
Wednesday
As I am waiting for the Amtrak to arrive, a garbled voice comes over the speaker, announcing a thirty-minute delay northbound. I take a seat on a concrete bench and wait it out, hoping this delay isn’t some sign from God that I shouldn’t be making the trip.
Forehead feels the same, though there is some slight bruising that I covered with makeup. Don’t know what I expected, but a little something-something would have been encouraging.
So far, no regrets about yesterday.
Except for the slight pang of remorse I felt this morning upon waking, recalling last night’s drink-and-flirt session with Lenny. Did I go too far? I can’t really remember what I said, which might just be for the best.
Instead of dwelling on anything potentially negative, like my marital malaise or my tendency to want to stray both physically and emotionally from all responsibilities—Ha ha! What a mess!—I continue reading that delicious novel about absolutely nothing. The train eventually comes, and I move, book open and eyes reading, into a seat, enjoying the cheesy pleasure of escapism for the better part of the morning.
Getting up to stretch around New Haven is a ritual with me. I used to ride this train all the time to visit my aunt, who lived outside Boston. It was an adventure as a teenager to take such a long train ride alone. I still love the feeling of watching the countryside roll by, glimpsing the New England towns and clapboard homes along the way. I would put something by Phil Collins on my Walkman, tilt my head against the glass windowpane, and let my mind be still. That train ride always felt like a mini vacation, and on this bright, April morning, it doesn’t disappoint.
I take a walk to the dining car and scroll through a list of incoming e-mails while waiting in line for a cup of coffee. There are about ten different messages from Facebook friends commenting on Lenny’s latest video. Jamie in California has stopped writing about herself and her children for once, deciding instead to drool over Lenny. I feel a high school–like emotion rising in me as I read her gushing reports about how Lenny was “always so creative, bright and clever—not to mention cute!” when we were teenagers.
How dare she act like she really knows Lenny? When was the last time she even spoke to him? I wonder. She didn’t even make it to our twentieth reunion, thank you very much. There’s a territorial, nauseating, cheerleaderish feeling mounting in me. I try to push it away, but it just won’t budge.
I’m jealous.
Ohmigod, I’m such a loser. Who gets jealous about a woman’s comments about a man who doesn’t belong to either of them? Why does being around high school friends immediately put me back into high school mode? It’s like I’ve made absolutely no progress. I might as well be back in pre-calculus faking stomach cramps to go hang out behind the dumpster and smoke cigarettes with my best guy friend, Tom. Inhaling deeply, we would dish about everyone and scheme ways to get alcohol out of his parents’ locked cabinet in the basement. Then we would go off campus and sit by the duck pond, tossing stale bread into the water and dreaming about getting out of this little town.
Needless to say, I got a D in precalculus.
And after college, I moved right back to this same little town, to teach kids who would then cut my class by lying about having stomach cramps.
Oh, the irony.
So, naturally, I do what any mature woman about to turn forty and married with two children would do. As the train pulls out of New Haven and makes its way farther north, I text Lenny.
Looks like the new video is a hit!
It’s just a friendly little hello, like passing notes during science class, but it makes me feel instantly calmer. I’ve staked my claim on Lenny, even if Jamie in California doesn’t know.
As I’m deleting spam, Lenny writes back.
Good morning, beautiful. You look lovely today. Got your beauty rest, I see.
Playful and just slightly too fam
iliar. Either his job is really dull or I’m the most exciting person in his gravitational pull.
I go with the latter.
Me: So true. I was mistaken for Gwyneth twice already this morning. Speaking of fabulous, how’d the video turn out?
Lenny: Ah. Wouldn’t you like to know?
The compulsively charming bastard. Teasing and tempting me. My pointer fingers fly from key to key as I try to keep up the volley on my phone’s small screen.
Me: Breathless with anticipation. I checked my inbox when I woke up, but you weren’t there.
Lenny: I like being in your inbox.
Me: I was going to respond with “and I like having you there,” but that just sounds wrong.
Lenny: But, oh, it sounds so right.
Me: Yeegads! Sometimes I can’t tell if your tone is tongue in cheek or molesterish.
Lenny: Yeegads? With tongue, definitely.
I am about to write back when Lenny interrupts me with another text.
Hey—just got an update from YouTube. 200,000 hits on my health care reform video since it premiered yesterday. I think this thing is gonna go viral!
Going viral? Who talks like that except for Internet hipsters and their hacker counterpoints? Not being fluent in tech-savvy lingo makes me feel old. I instinctively touch my forehead for confirmation of my age and find that the ridge between my brows seems less pronounced.
Me: Congrats on maybe going viral!
Lenny: It’s only happened one other time in my life. Remember when I made out with Karen Zinns after Homecoming and I gave her mononucleosis and then she kissed some alumni linebacker the next day at the game and gave him mono, and then he passed it on to Coach Bill?
Me: Now, that’s a fun way to get sick.
Doug Worthing: Huh? Is that your response to my text?
Did I just write that…to Doug? Where did he come from? My heart drops in free-fall and I frantically scroll back to see what I’ve just done. Then time sort of slows down as I prepare for the impact of this mistake. It’s the real-life version of the moment in the movie when a kid on a bicycle is about to get hit by a car and an onlooker runs into the street and screams “Noooooo…!”
How much has Doug seen? When did he replace Lenny?
I scroll up my phone to check the damage.
Meanwhile, Lenny continues our texting dialogue in ignorant bliss.
And to think, it could have been you I diseased.
I know this is impossible, but I feel like Doug is suddenly in the room with me, reading over my shoulder. My cheeks are flushed like they were last night from the embarrassment of illegal flirtationshiping.
I once read that deep blushing was a sign of sexual arousal, and as that thought enters my brain right now, I blush even more.
To cool down, I peel off my sweater and consider the next move.
The best thing to do is to ignore Lenny’s comment entirely while trying to get back on track with Doug.
I find Doug’s text, which asks whether I’ve seen his glasses and if I think the eggs are too old to eat.
No and Yes! I write back. I try to be friendly but firmly dismissive. Need to get into court ASAP—will be unreachable all day. Have a great one!
I drop the phone on the empty seat next to mine and take a deep, cleansing yoga breath, stretching my head back to rest against the seat. I close my eyes and count to ten. Then I ask myself one question: What are you doing here, Lauren?
Talking to an old high school friend? Yes.
Escaping a little bit from real life? Indeed.
But is there more to it?
Or is this behavior innocuous? Just a married woman’s reinterpretation of feeling like the childhood daredevil by going to an amusement park and screaming with terror and glee on the newest, craziest roller coaster?
And when the ride ends, you walk off the dizzy feeling, eat a Sno-Cone, win a stuffed bear, and head back home, tired but content.
Sounds plausible. Right?
I pick up where I left off and write back to Lenny.
Me: Viral? Define please.
Lenny: When a video or website gets over one million hits, it has gone viral. That’s my goal—to knock one of these videos out of the park, and launch into a career that requires more singing/dancing/writing/rapping/ass-shaking than accounting does.
At age forty? I want to ask. Isn’t that a bit, well, over the hill in the entertainment world? Not to be a killjoy or anything. But maybe it’s different for guys, who can start families in their forties and become leaders of nations in their fifties and win golf championships in their sixties. For women, power comes from being young and glamorous, and so, as you age, you lose more and more strength every year. Unless you’re Hillary or Oprah, in which case, even as you change policy and make the world a better place, people still remark on how fat and old you look.
Anyway.
I decide not to bother Lenny with my delusions of his delusions. He didn’t sign on to this virtual courtship to be bogged down by a brooding midlifer with no sense of humor, and I didn’t sign on to be the voice of reason. I read back our exchange from the morning and try to get back into funny mode before I hit Beantown.
Me: It’s a shame that there’s so little ass-shaking in finance these days.
Lenny: A lot of ass-kissing, though. And plenty of people still getting fucked by their banks.
Me: My train’s pulling into the station. Literally. Gotta go. Good luck spreading disease across the Internet.
Lenny: You in NYC? Can I do you for lunch?
Me: In Boston. Got plans with Georgie.
Lenny: Who is Georgie? Am green-eyed.
Me: Friend from grad school.
I disembark and put my phone in my bag. Best to keep him guessing.
Chapter 11
Georgie is actually Dr. Georgina Parks, Professor Emeritus at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She was the head of the Language and Literacy program when I was a student there, and from the first moment I heard her speak, I was inspired. Actually, I was inspired even before I met her, having already read her two seminal books on education, not to mention all of her related articles.
Georgie is one of the country’s leading educational figureheads, a political mover and shaker. She’s an inspiration to American educators everywhere, having influenced national policy and changed the way we think about teaching children to read. She’s been on Oprah, discussing inequities in urban and rural areas of America. She’s been on 60 Minutes, promoting Literacy Speaks, her nonprofit program whose mission is to eradicate illiteracy in this country. She’s larger than life, and she’s my professional guru. Every speech she delivers carries with it the authority of the ages, as if she’s speaking not from personal opinion bolstered by factual data, but from holy, ancient sources of wisdom.
You just don’t mess with Georgie’s ten educational commandments.
I haven’t seen her in several years, since before I got pregnant with Becca.
There was this popular education tome from the 1990s, called Other People’s Children, that I read in grad school and that prompted Georgie’s first commandment, “Loyalty to other people’s children first,” so I’m a little bit nervous to tell her that I now have two of my own.
Another commandment is “Lying only hurts you in the end,” though, so that one makes me feel more at ease. I mean, I can’t lie to her and say I don’t have another child when I do, right? Based on Georgie’s philosophy, that will only come back to bite me in the ass.
Not sure what she’d say about my whole lying-about-jury-duty thing, though. Best to come up with an excuse right now about the reason for my trip.
By the time the train pulls into Boston’s Back Bay, I have read half a novel, maintained the highly inappropriate level of my online flirtationship, and kept my husband from getting salmonella poisoning, while sidestepping a close call. All in all, I’m feeling pretty good.
I push open the heavy wooden doors to the lecture hall and quietly
find a seat in the back of the room. Because of the train delay, I have missed most of this morning’s lecture. The auditorium is filled with eager, fresh-faced twentysomethings, laptops glowing, fingers tapping to take down every word being said. Georgie is up at the podium. Her black hair is straight like Michelle Obama’s, her body solid like Jennifer Hudson’s during the Dreamgirls phase.
Working without notes, she discusses a recent intervention made by her team at Literacy Speaks, in which a whole school in New Orleans was saved.
Georgie’s voice is filled with a deep, southern timbre that carries up the aisles like an evangelical preacher’s. “These children were at risk of drowning twice. Twice. Once from Hurricane Katrina. And, then, after being saved from that deluge, they were almost flooded again by inequities in our educational system. These children were left to drown in their own ignorance. Right here in America, people.
“This is not okay,” she says. “It. Is. Not.”
She bows her head and the lights go down. An image of a black child reading a book is projected behind her, the last slide in her PowerPoint presentation. People close their laptops and stand to applaud her, and I join in.
In grad school, I was lucky enough to have been one of ten students in the program selected for Georgie’s spring seminar, Reading and Writing as Empowerment. I took that opportunity to become Georgie’s star pupil. I made sure that my research mirrored hers, that I quoted the right sociopolitical educational theorists at least three times in every essay, and that I read and reread the assigned texts so that I could recite important passages during class.
When Georgie said that children were stifled by tests corrected in red pen, I threw out my red pens. When she said that tests themselves were counterproductive to the real work of teaching literacy, I stopped giving children tests. When she said, a year later, that tests were the only logical measurement for reading comprehension, I brought back the tests.
I even started to sound like her during writing conferences, telling my students that their ideas were “so big,” and that their writing “could change the world.”
Lauren Takes Leave Page 11
