“There’s going to be a party here tomorrow. Do you want to come? We might be able to do some work here beforehand.”
“A Fifth Avenue party? Sounds awful. No, thank you. I should work.”
“I’d really like it if I had you here to talk to. I want to see you.”
“I’ll think about it.” Olena hangs up.
Noah spends the afternoon loafing in Dylan’s room. Effectively, he is Dylan: he lazes on the bed, scratches himself, watches television, and surfs the Internet. The three hours of sumptuous solitude are both pleasant and deadening. At first he is preoccupied with Olena, but then he thinks of nothing. He begins to move more and more slowly; the whole room seems as if invaded by some foreign and heavy gas. When the door opens Noah turns his head lethargically to see who’s entering.
“What the fuck?” Dylan says, grinning broadly.
“Hey,” Noah says. He looks at the television and then back at Dylan. “We were supposed to have a session this afternoon. We have a week left.”
“Oh yeah?” Dylan says, putting down his bag. “Move over.” Noah slides a few inches on the bed. Dylan sits next to him, turns the television volume up. He watches in silence for a few seconds, then speaks: “It’s not as though I’m actually going to take the thing, you know? This is all a total joke, just to make my mom feel better.”
“It’s just a 1580, Dylan. If you tried you could do it.”
“No way, I’d fuck it up. You know that.”
“No, I don’t know that. Just stop second-guessing yourself.”
Dylan looks at Noah blankly, then returns to the television. “Yeah, whatever. So what’s for dinner?”
“I don’t know, I’m supposed to make you guys something.”
Dylan laughs. “I’m ordering Chinese.”
Fuen leads Noah to his room before she retires for the evening. It is small, tasteful, and sterile, all scented soaps and L’Occitane toiletries. Noah’s crisply ironed sheets smell of lavender and stale potpourri. He reads a book for a while and then turns the lamp out. Pale filtered light from the Fifth Avenue street lamps illuminates the polished edges of the furniture. Noah doesn’t know how long he lies awake, puzzling through his finances, his job, Mr. Thayer, Dr. Thayer, Tuscany, Dylan, Olena. He sleeps fitfully, but when he awakes, cleansing sun is streaming through the window. He sits up in his bed, disoriented and unable to remember where he is. As the stiff scented sheets fold around his torso it takes him some time to realize that he is in the Thayer apartment and not a hotel.
Tuscany leaves for riding practice well before Dylan returns from school, giving Noah enough time to race home, change clothes, and get back to Fifth Avenue for the evening’s party. He hopes Olena will be home when he arrives, but she isn’t.
Noah rushes into the bedroom and scans about his closet. He will wear the pin-striped pants, his tutoring standbys, and…the pink oxford gleams in the evening light from the corner of his closet. It is the only clean garment he owns. His hand closes around the heavy fabric.
Noah is almost out the door when Hera spies him. “Noah!” she exclaims. “You can’t go to high society like that!” She tugs at his shirt.
Noah removes it and stands shirtless by the counter as Hera hurriedly irons the shirt. “There,” she says, “much better.” Noah buttons the hot fabric over his torso and bolts out the door. He hopes he doesn’t need a tie.
Noah takes a cab down to the Thayer apartment and gets trapped in a mini traffic jam, as three caterers’ trucks are parked in front of the building. He has to be left off on 79th Street and walk over. He would have liked to have opened the cab door in front of the Fifth Avenue apartment, to have slid his legs out of the car and onto the sparkling pavement, strolled out beneath the luxurious awning. Dropped off where he was, for all anyone knows he could have taken the subway, could be going to work. If it weren’t for the pink oxford, he would just be another tutor on the job.
Dr. Thayer is already in her evening dress. She has been massively made up, and her weighty black velvet gown hangs flatly on her narrow form. With her pallid complexion and teased hair, she looks like a doll mail-ordered from the Franklin Mint.
“Noah!” she exclaims. “I’m so glad you came.” She gestures Noah inside, sweeping her arm to indicate the panorama of the apartment, as if he has never been there before. A few guests speak in low murmurs in the next room. Dr. Thayer’s fulsome performance is probably for their benefit: He’s not just a tutor—he’s a friend.
“The apartment looks nice,” Noah says, because he feels Dr. Thayer is expecting him to. The foyer looks no different than normal.
“Thank you!” Dr. Thayer laughs lightly. “I’d offer to take your coat, but you don’t have a coat!”
Noah laughs with her at the world’s unpredictability. He offers a wrapped bottle of wine. It only cost $8, but he thought the label looked expensive. After frowning at the gaucherie of Noah’s having brought wine, Dr. Thayer accepts the offering and, forgetting the stage of the hostess ritual in which she is supposed actually to invite her guest inside, wanders off into the kitchen.
Noah steps to the edge of the dining-room-cum-yacht. Ragtime music has been piped throughout the room. A small group of men and women in business suits cluster around a baby grand and chat about their excuses for having arrived so early. “Really?” Noah hears one of the women say. “I’m here because the London Exchange has already closed!” The rest laugh uproariously. Noah wonders whether to plunge in; he stands at the edge of the room, bobbing in and then bobbing out, like a kite at the end of its string. He doesn’t know a thing about the London Exchange. He didn’t even know there was one. Maybe Tuscany needs help. He starts to the stairwell.
Dr. Thayer swoops in and grabs Noah’s arm. “You’re not leaving already?” she says. “They’re not being entirely too boring? Not intellectual enough? Some of them probably went to Princeton too, you know.”
“No, I just thought I’d check on—”
“Stop worrying about Tuscany! People will suspect you’re perverted. I’m sure my guests will be interested in what you have to say. I’m proud to have you here! I want them to get to know you. Come on, I’ll introduce you.”
Dr. Thayer steers Noah toward the yacht room. He tries to think of things to say to businessmen.
“Noah!” Tuscany’s voice comes from the top of the stairs. Noah turns around gratefully.
She has stepped to the landing and then posed there, like a fairy-tale princess making her grand entrance at the ball and waiting for the guests to remark on her beauty. She is wearing a red silken dress, ribbed in a darker red, that crisscrosses in the front and ties low in the back. Her hair is tied simply behind her head. She no longer looks like a teenage starlet, but is instead a beautiful young woman. Then she claps gleefully, and is a teenager again. “Noah! You wore my shirt!”
Noah glances down at the oxford. “Yes.”
Dr. Thayer entwines her arm around Noah’s elbow. Her limb is impossibly lithe and strong, a vine. “Ibought the shirt,” she says. Then she laughs to lighten the severity of her words. The arm hooked in Noah’s constricts. She clutches him urgently, pulls him to her, as if she were drowning.
“Yes, Mom,” Tuscany says, descending the stairs. “You bought the shirt. Jesus.”
Dr. Thayer leans into Noah’s ear as Tuscany nears. “I need to talk to you later tonight, when she’s not around. Come find me.”
“What are you say- ing?” Tuscany’s voice becomes shrill at the end, almost a shriek.
“Nothing about you,” Dr. Thayer says.
Tuscany pauses in mid-step and glares at her mother, makes an ill-concealed effort to contain herself, then takes the last few steps newly calm and poised. She takes Noah’s other arm. “You look so good,” she says. “Doesn’t he, Mom?”
“Yes,” Dr. Thayer says sulkily. “He looks very respectable.”
Their conversation unnerves Noah. They are not speaking as a mother and daughter—they are rivals. And he rea
lizes that, despite Dr. Thayer’s nominal attempts at parental authority, they have always been rivals. Dr. Thayer’s preoccupation with Dylan and dismissal of Tuscany make sense: Dylan, the son, can succeed in areas that don’t threaten Dr. Thayer. But Tuscany…where she derives the most attention—her looks, youth, spirited nature—are the very areas in which Dr. Thayer is fading to gray. Dr. Thayer can’t stand to see her daughter come to the landing poised and lovely, when she is haggard and lost. She sees in Tuscany the animus that has already faded from her, the very vitality she most wants to recover, her own ghost.
“Who’s here?” Tuscany asks. She pivots to see into the dining room. This turns the whole trio and wedges Dr. Thayer against the banister of the stairwell. She detaches from Noah’s arm.
“I’ll leave you two,” she says.
“When’s Dad going to get here?” Tuscany asks. Her chewing gum pops.
“Who knows? Who knows.” Dr. Thayer unsteadily wanders off.
“Wow,” Tuscany says. “She’s really fucked. I wonder what she took.”
“Do you want to grab some food?” Noah asks brightly. “I think I saw trays in the kitchen.”
Tuscany grips her flat abdomen. “No way, I’m so full. But I’ll go with you.”
They stand in the kitchen while Noah eats a few bruschettas. Tuscany is eventually lured away into the dining room by a chatty uncle, and Noah is left alone with the appetizers. In time Dr. Thayer weaves her way into the kitchen. She opens the fridge door. Then she sees Noah.
“Noah!” she says loudly. “What are you doing in here again?”
Noah’s mouth is full of olive paste. He shrugs and points to the dining room, as if that explains everything.
“I’m glad I caught you,” Dr. Thayer says. She leans in, and Noah smells the foul scent of vermouth on her breath. “Dylan hasn’t been doing well on these practice tests. We’re very worried. Are you sure you’re not willing to step up to the challenge?”
“If,” Noah says, “you’re referring again to taking the test for Dylan, no. I’m not ‘up to the challenge.’ ”
“Can’t blame a girl for trying,” Dr. Thayer laughs. She slams the fridge door closed. She leans backward, crosses her arms, and stares at Noah quizzically, an icy smile on her face. “How about some wine? Would you allow me to have a waiter bring you some wine? We have a nice little Pinot Grigio that might suit your palate.”
“That would be fine, thank you.”
Dr. Thayer snaps her fingers sharply. Her smile turns into a snarl as she does, as if she has just ordered someone beheaded. She lurches out of the kitchen.
Noah sucks olive paste off his finger, stares out the window. Dr. Thayer doesn’t return. No wine arrives.
He spies Tuscany at the head of a driftwood table, engaged in conversation with men in business suits. They form an admiring circle around her. She catches Noah’s eye and waves him over. The businessmen follow her wave and nod respectfully to Noah. He straightens his shirt and dives in.
Each of the men has a name that is instantly forgotten, the kinds of names that appear so often in newspapers or the subtitles of C-Span that Noah just glazes over when he hears them. Solomon X, X Lidden III, Powell X, Peter X Stockton, and a half dozen Andrews. Within a few minutes of speaking to any one of them, the conversation is prodigiously steered to alma maters. Princeton always gets smiles and nods, and warms up the conversationalist immediately—it effects as much intimacy as at least three months of acquaintance. Noah feels he has made a host of best friends within twenty minutes.
The conversation turns to politics: everyone waits patiently for his turn to spout off on the topic at hand, then paints a fascinated face for the next person’s monologue. The stern undertone of each jolly conversation is an old boy’s search for truth, for essential meaning. Jokes are spoken with unchanging and serious faces, philosophers trained to be comics. Everyone has plenty to say, plenty of meaning to impart, except for Tuscany, who has made it her role to be the receptor of everyone’s self-indulgent wisdom. She laughs bonnily, receives as many admiring glances as possible, demurs when asked for her own opinion. Noah wishes she would express herself, not focus on her image instead, but he doesn’t know how to make it happen. Perhaps the seeds have been planted, and in a few years she will have the confidence to hold her own ground and not fall back on her looks. But not yet.
The party is filling. The caterers have arrived in full force, and Noah is thankful for the constant distractions of wine and hors d’oeuvres. Tuscany squeals when Octavia arrives, dashes over to the front door to greet her. Octavia, wearing a very short dress, makes the rounds of the party with lips glossed and erotically parted. She and Tuscany face down unsuspecting thirty-year-old bachelors arm in arm, giggling and laying their hands on the unwary men. Dr. Thayer is nowhere to be seen.
Then Noah does see her, unsteady, at the door of her bedroom at the top of the stairs. She sniffs visibly. Noah thinks she might have been crying, but her eyes are lively. He realizes she might have snorted something instead. She surveys the room, takes a few deep breaths, and then lowers herself down the stairs and disappears into a throng of party guests.
A caterer opens the front door. Mr. Thayer enters with a springy, athletic step. A cheer goes up from those scattered members of the party who were paying attention. He ricochets through the crush, among and between his guests. Noah, standing at the other end of the long foyer and obscured by the geisha statue, plucks another glass of wine from a wandering caterer. And then he sees who has entered behind Mr. Thayer—Olena. He steps out from behind the bronze statue to see her better.
Her hair has been pulled back into a neat French braid. She wears a dove-gray dress that falls in artless lines from her narrow shoulders. In the midst of so much gold and perfume, she looks simple and lovely. She stands politely at the entrance, a bottle of wine in her hand, and scans the crowd about her, looking for a host. Noah starts to make his way toward her, but the crowd is packed in tightly around him. Olena slowly walks into the kitchen, maintaining the same cautious, gracious smile on her face. The bright orange price tag from the Harlem corner store glows at the neck of her wine bottle.
The animated, half-drunk party guests seem to conspire to prevent Noah from reaching the kitchen. An older woman with pronounced clavicles leans against a table, hemming in one route. When Noah adjusts his path a rotund man in an ascot begins to gesticulate, blocking another course. The physically expansive laughter of his audience forms a further roadblock. By the time Noah reaches the kitchen, Olena has disappeared. Noah refreshes his wine and picks up a cracker globbed with crabmeat.
Finally he spies Olena. She is in the midst of animated conversation with a handsome man wearing an expensive peasant-style linen shirt. His hair forms a dramatic black wave on the top of his head, and is flecked gray at the crests. He asks Olena a question, which she shyly answers. Whatever the answer is, he is charmed.
Noah feels a hot splash of jealousy. The man has such a constructed and distinguished appearance that he looks like he just walked off a print ad for Aston Martin. Noah would assume him to be self-absorbed—but he’s posing Olena plenty of questions. Surely he has nothing interesting to say—but Olena seems enraptured. She finishes a sentence for him, raises her glass to toast one of his remarks.
Suddenly Noah is aware of his powerlessness from his perch at the edge of the kitchen. He wants to be active, not observing. Tuscany and Octavia aren’t far away, chatting up a pair of guys. Noah approaches them. Tuscany greets him effusively. Octavia pretends she doesn’t even know him, her heavy arms locked in front of her chest. Noah stands at the edge of their conversation, hearing none of it, his thoughts on Olena. He looks over at where she stood. She’s no longer there, and neither is the guy.
Noah turns, trying to hide his panic, to convince himself that he is being irrational. Where is she, though? Then he feels a light touch on his arm. He turns; it is Olena.
“You came,” Noah says.
“Of
course I came. I thought I would surprise you. This apartment!” She shakes her head.
“I wasn’t sure if you were going to come say hello!” He sounds pathetic, needling. What is with him?
“Did you see who I was talking to? The guy with the crazy laced-up bodice?”
“Yes,” Noah says darkly.
“He’s very interesting—”
“I could see that.”
“Don’t be stupid, Noah. Stop it. He’s a dance teacher. He’s head of the youth division of the Dance Theater of Harlem. I was telling him all about your tutoring. Did you know that ‘No Child Left Behind’ funds tutoring for kids at failing schools, a couple thousand dollars for each kid? I told him how very awesome you are at SATs and he’s really interested. He’s going to get a drink now, but then he’s going to come over. He knows a couple of guys who…Wait, talk about something else.”
The man has arrived. He flashes a broad, tan smile at Noah. “So, you must be the star tutor.”
“I don’t know what Olena told you…” Noah laughs.
“She’s got a high opinion of you. Tell me what you do.”
Noah hears the gravel in the man’s voice, his grit. His snobby affect vanishes: Noah can easily imagine him observing a dance class in a T-shirt and Birkenstocks. He senses that the man’s costly dress shirt is, like Noah’s, a temporary disguise. And so Noah barrels into a description of what he’s been doing. The man is interested: a lot of his kids will end up at conservatories, but those who don’t make the cut will end up at dance programs at larger universities, and haven’t received the right education to succeed on the SAT. If he could secure federal funding, would Noah be interested in conducting a private class?
Olena has been following along excitedly, but suddenly her hand on Noah’s arm tightens. He follows her gaze. Dylan has arrived, and with Roberto. Next to Roberto’s bulk, Dylan looks like a teen pop star with his bodyguard. Roberto roughly pushes his way through the crowd to clear a path to Dylan’s bedroom. The pair disappears upstairs. Olena excuses herself and follows them.
Glamorous Disasters Page 28
