“You’ve got some nerve to accuse me of—what, exactly?—my son doesn’t concentrate well, so I help him concentrate. He doesn’t sleep, so I help him sleep. I don’t quite understand what you’re getting at.”
“Forget about it,” Noah says. “It’s not my business.”
Dr. Thayer grabs Noah’s wrist. The cold lines of her hand close on his flesh like forceps. “I want to know what the hell you’ve got going on in your head. I’ve sensed this weird condescension from you since you arrived here last year, as though you can’t believe what you see. Tell me. What do you see? What would you do differently?”
Words and feelings rush through Noah’s mind. But he has suppressed his reactions for so long for the sake of his job that he can’t speak into Dr. Thayer’s face. Finally he makes an attempt. “You’ve…destroyed him,” he chokes.
“I’ve destroyed him? Tell me how I’ve destroyed him.” Dr. Thayer is aroused by the swell of feeling within her. She rubs her ribs more energetically.
“He doesn’t have any desires. He’s been helped for so long—by drugs, by tutors—that he can’t do anything on his own. You haven’t allowed him to try anything, to make mistakes and learn. People are only happy when they’re achieving at something, right? And he has nothing to gain. You’ve met all his needs, and whatever he could produce now can’t compare to the output of his tutors. So he’s stuck. He can’t produce anything.” He is, Noah thinks, an idle and nasty prince.
“So what do you expect me to do now, shut it all off?”
“No,” Noah says. “It’s too late.”
Dr. Thayer’s hand is still on his arm. It has slowly worked its way up from the wrist to his shoulder. “Why are you telling me, then? Just out of spite?”
Noah is immobilized before her. He wants to push her away, back onto the bed. “I don’t know,” he says. He doesn’t know. How bad is it, after all? The family has enough money to pay people to help Dylan forever. He can remain an infant for life. He will always be an inferior being surrounded by more able men, like a king and his ministers. Many have lived out their lives that way.
“I could say you’ve been mean this whole time,” Dr. Thayer says, “working on a hopeless situation just to get paid, keeping me content just to make sure you can get as much money as you can from us. You’ve really used this to your advantage, Noah. And now that there’s no more to be gotten, your true nastiness comes out.” She stands back and stares at Noah with wide eyes, in breathless anticipation of the effect of her words. She is looking to catch an emotional charge, anger or lust, wants to get as far as possible from her deadened state. Noah could slap her across the face with all his might and she would turn back toward him, bloodied and smiling.
“You employed me to do a job,” Noah says, “and I did it the best I could. No employer can blame an employee for that.”
“So finish the job!” Dr. Thayer breathes. “You’re getting paid to help my son get ahead. He hasn’t gotten ahead—so you haven’t done your duty. But you can. You’re this kid’s only hope for going to college. How can you just turn it down? You get paid, Dylan gets a college education, gets away from this hellhole, or whatever you think it is. All for doing what you’ve been doing already. What’s the big difference, helping a kid pass a test the week before or during the thing itself?”
“It should be based on merit…” Noah says.
“It is based on merit,” Dr. Thayer says. She cackles. “You live in America, Noah. Money is the only proof of merit we have.”
In the haze of alcohol Dr. Thayer’s words have a certain allure—how different would taking the test for Dylan be from what Noah’s already done for him? One way or another, he’s been selling spots at elite colleges to the upper class for three years now. Outright cheating changes the mode, but the overall effect is the same. It’s because of Noah that the moneyed elite still congregates at Harvard and Yale, that old boys’ clubs persist in Cambridge and New Haven, just as they do in Boston and New York. Because of the work Noah does, dozens of students like him won’t get into Princeton this year.
Dr. Thayer steps into her bedroom, beckons Noah farther in. He doesn’t budge. She leans over her dressing stand and plucks a business-sized check from the glossy surface. She holds it out to Noah.
“What’s that?” Noah asks.
She just stands at the center of her bedroom, holding the check limply. Noah leans forward to take it from her. He looks at the check, then presses it away against his shirt. His credit cards are overdue. He hasn’t been able to eat out. “You can’t be serious,” he says.
“Eighty thousand dollars,” Dr. Thayer says.
Noah holds out the check. “Take it back. Take it back or I’ll rip it up.”
Dr. Thayer shrugs, smiling and running a hand up and down the silk covering her hip. “Rip it up, then.”
Noah holds the heavy paper between his fingers. Then he unfolds the check and looks at it again. It fades from blue to white, is numbered 19563 and emblazoned with Mr. Thayer’s company name. It would be as if Mr. Thayer actually paid him for his consulting after all. He could buy his mother a real house, or put a down payment on an apartment in Union Square. Or—and this is what makes his thumb caress the check—he could pay off his loans once and for all, and use the rest of the money for tuition. At the very least he’d have savings. No one in his family has savings.
“You’re considering it,” Dr. Thayer says. Her voice is much too close. He looks up from the check and she is right in front of him. She smells, like the whole apartment, of old fabric and lavender.
“Of course I’m considering it,” Noah says tearfully. “This is more than three years’ income, when I was growing up.”
“Your mother would be so happy,” Dr. Thayer breathes. “That Olena girl could use the money too…” Her voice trails off. Suddenly her hand is clutching the opening of Noah’s shirt, and then—he suppresses the revulsion that convulses through him—one of his buttons has popped off, and her head is leaning against his bare neck. He looks down in horror at the top of her head, looks at the minute gray discolorations of her skin where the hair parts, the redness where the scalp has burned at the Hamptons. “Just take it, Noah,” Dr. Thayer whispers, “I want you to have it. I don’t want it back.”
Dr. Thayer’s weight pulls at his shoulders and, partially drunk from the wine and champagne, Noah stumbles. Dr. Thayer is dragging him down. They are nowhere near the bed, and Noah nearly loses his balance, lurches over the floor. Noah stares, stunned and beguiled, into the dark plush carpet. Dr. Thayer hangs from his neck, disoriented, her eyes black. He pries at her fingers—he can either throw her to the ground or risk falling on top of her. Her lips part, and she looks about to swoon. She closes her eyes, and seems unable to reopen them. She dangles from his neck, almost weightless, like a sleepy infant. She is going to pass out. Noah staggers over to the bed. He pulls at her fingers, but they have tightened fast around his neck. He frantically digs at them, but they are as chill and impervious as chains. A moan of pleasure escapes Dr. Thayer’s lips as she feels Noah’s nails dig into her flesh. His touch—even though he is only desperately trying to free himself—is arousing her.
“What the fuck?” It sounds like a little girl, but the voice behind him strengthens into a scream, and Noah then recognizes the owner—Tuscany. He hears a rush of fabric and then feels muffled pounding against his vertebrae as Tuscany pummels her mother’s fingers. She emits little animalistic screeches, like a bird flying at the bars of a cage. Then Dr. Thayer is off him and lying supine on the bed. Her inky eyes are open and staring at her daughter. In the semidarkness, Noah sees only a momentary disappearance of their gleam when she blinks. Tuscany is next to him, breathless, her hair in disarray.
“What the fuck, Mom?” she sobs. “What the fuck? Leave him the hell alone.”
“You leave us alone,” Dr. Thayer says. “You shouldn’t be in here.” But her words are small, without force. She curls into a fetal position on the bed
.
“You’re a crazy bitch! Why do you have to be that way? He’s my tutor. ” Tuscany is shaking with rage. Another cry escapes her.
Dr. Thayer is paralyzed before her daughter’s anger. “I’m sorry,” she says dreamily, “I just need to sleep.”
“You’re a crazy bitch!” Tuscany repeats. The intensity of her voice has subsided somewhat. An adult tone—rancor—has crept in. “You only think about yourself.”
Noah doesn’t want to see Tuscany having to come to his defense any more than he wants to see Dr. Thayer stricken and moaning. The whole situation sets him on edge, gives him a distorted sense of his position. He suffers a loss of balance verging on vertigo. He staggers to his feet and spins around to look down the hallway.
“Where did Olena go?” Noah asks Tuscany. She looks at him blearily, glances at Dylan’s door, shrugs.
Noah throws open the door to Dylan’s room. He is lying on the floor, ashen-faced, his head in Olena’s lap. She looks up at Noah worriedly. “He’s not okay,” she says.
Noah kneels next to them. Dylan is breathing, but slowly. His eyes are closed, his lips slack. A wet patch of urine has spread over his crotch. “We have to get him to the hospital,” Noah says.
Olena shifts her weight beneath Dylan in preparation to lift him. Feeling her move, Dylan raises his head. “What?” he asks sleepily. Spit bubbles at the corner of his lips.
“Where do we take him?” Olena asks.
“Lenox Hill. It’s just a few blocks away.”
Dylan has sat up halfway and then fallen back down. “Come on, man,” Noah coaxes, lifting Dylan beneath his shoulders. “Come on up with me.”
Olena and Noah maneuver Dylan to the door of the bedroom, and then out onto the landing. “His parents?” Olena grunts from beneath Dylan’s weighty arm.
“His mom’s out of it,” Noah says. “His dad…I don’t know, let’s see if we can find him.”
They lug Dylan down the stairs to the front door. Noah scans the room—Mr. Thayer is nowhere in sight, but Tuscany bounds out of her mother’s room and hovers over them. “Are you taking him to the hospital?” she calls concernedly. “I wanna come too.”
“I need you to find your father for me,” Noah says.
“Why? You’ll take better care of Dylan than he would.”
“Now. Go find him for me,” Noah says sternly.
Tuscany disappears. Noah and Olena stand silently by the front door, Dylan half conscious and hanging between their arms. The room is crowded enough to render them inconspicuous: the party guests are careful not to notice.
And then Mr. Thayer turns the corner, a tumbler in hand. He has rolled up his shirtsleeves and wears a broad smile. But within the smile his eyes are cold, pure fury.
“What did you do to my son?” he asks, his fingers white around his glass.
“Your son overdosed on your wife’s drugs,” Noah says.
Mr. Thayer looks to the pale face of Dylan and then up at Noah and Olena. “Are you going to take him somewhere?”
“You need to take him to the hospital,” Noah says. Dylan’s leg is wet next to his.
“Ineed to take him?” Mr. Thayer laughs.
Noah leans forward slightly and loosens his grip. Urine-soaked Dylan falls into his father’s arms. Mr. Thayer goes totally rigid, holding his son stiffly, like a poker hand. He has managed to keep his drink intact in one hand.
Noah opens his mouth and then closes it. He is unsure how to voice the anger in him and still make sure that Mr. Thayer will take Dylan to the hospital. Olena lays a hand on Noah’s arm. “Good night, Mr. Thayer,” she says.
Olena opens the front door and leads Noah through it. Noah glances about the apartment wildly one last time, and catches Tuscany’s eye from where she stands at the landing. She nods: she’ll make sure Dylan gets to the hospital.
Noah and Olena walk a few blocks up moonlit Fifth Avenue before they hail a cab. Noah sits back in his seat, strokes Olena’s head, and stares out the window. Dr. Thayer’s check sits crisp and flat in his shirt pocket. The corners press into his chest. It is the only power he has left over them. In his rage he wants Dr. and Mr. Thayer to pay for the negligence of their children, for their wealth, for their sense of superiority, for his own sense of inferiority. He deposits the check at the ATM before he and Olena get home. He will decide what to do with the money later.
Chapter
12
“I can’t do it, man, there’s no way.” Dylan has pressed himself against the door of Roberto’s car.
Noah’s knuckles are white where they bear down on the steering wheel. He turns to Dylan in cordiality but also dread, nervously scans the green campus of Horace Mann High School. Despite his determination that he is doing right, he is equally convinced that he has done something very wrong. “You totally can. You just need to score twenty points higher. That’s two questions more than usual, three at most.”
Dylan stares intently at the glove compartment door, glances at the greenery of Horace Mann, lit by early morning light. “This is so fucked. You’re going to be in such shit for this.”
Dylan went through a brief fit of rage the previous night after Noah picked him up, before the Unisom took effect. But his body reacted well to the familiar narcotic, and this morning he woke up in Noah’s apartment well rested and alert. “This is your last chance to take the test, Dylan. I’m not going to take it for you, and now it’s too late for your mom to pay someone else to. And I’m already ‘in shit,’ so it’s too late for that too. Go take your damn test.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” Dylan asks.
“You’re going to pass this on your own. If you don’t do it yourself, your whole time in college is going to feel like a cheat. Start this out right.”
“Just drive me home. You’ve fucked me over royally. You’ve made your stupid message. But now I’m not going to get into school ’cuz of you. So just take me the fuck home.” Dylan fiddles with the glove compartment latch.
“Look, just concentrate. You’ve had a good night’s sleep, we’ve gone over this—”
“What? I’m totally unprepared! I’ve got like no chance.”
“We don’t have to shoot the moon here. You just have to get a 1580. And here’s how you’re going to do it. Each math section is about twenty problems. Skip the hardest five. Just do the easy fifteen, and do them well. On verbal, only do half of the sentence completions. You’ll need the extra time on reading comp. Just try. You’re going to do fine. Really.”
Dylan plucks at his seat belt. “You’re an asshole.”
“You can do this. And more important, you have to. You’re here now, and I’ve already registered you. This is it. And this time you’re going to do it.”
Dylan pounds the car door. “You’re an asshole,” he sobs.
“Stop it. Just go there and do it. You’re taking the SAT. Big deal. So are two million other kids.”
“This is like extortion or something.”
“Extorting you into taking your own SAT? Okay, then. Extortion.”
Dylan opens the car door, puts a foot on the pavement. Noah starts the ignition. Dylan turns to him. The door swings and rests against his splinted ankle. “Wait. For real. Please, won’t you just take it? We already got you the fake.”
“No way. Get in there.”
Dylan punches his uninjured leg, then looks toward the school. A girl passing by recognizes him. Dylan impassively returns her wave. He looks back at Noah. “At least wait here for me? So I know you’re around?”
Noah turns off the ignition, slowly removes the key. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “I’ll stick around, if you want.”
“Cool.” Now that he has given up on wheedling Noah, Dylan seems to have found some reserve of strength. He takes a deep breath, extracts himself from the car. Since his ankle is still in a splint, it takes some maneuvering to get to the curb with calculators and pencils intact in his grip. Noah hands Dylan his crutches from the backseat. Dylan flashes a
gray and perfunctory smile. Noah gives a wave in return, but Dylan has already turned toward the school. Clutching his registration ticket over the handle of the crutch, Dylan hobbles toward the building. The girl who waved earlier has been waiting for just such an opportunity, and comes over to help Dylan inside. Together they disappear into the building.
Noah unclasps his seat belt, leans back heavily into his seat. He gave up smoking years before, but wishes he had a cigarette on hand. The older guy sitting in a beat-up car in a high school parking lot—the cigarette would complete the image, make him a perfect vision of seediness.
He watches the Horace Mann overachievers file into the school. They scan through flash cards as they walk; a pair compares definitions for somnolence. Everyone is wearing casual gear, sweatpants and T-shirts, but everything is too fitted, the hair too constructedly sloppy. Everyone tries hard, no one wants to seem to try hard. They each go to great lengths to look as slovenly as possible.
After the students finish filing past, Noah eases open the car door and walks through the pastoral private school campus. He takes his time, listens intently to the crunch of gravel beneath his feet, the distant sound of a lawn mower. He has three and a half hours with nothing to do but wander the campus and think.
He didn’t sleep well the night before, and drank too much. Roberto had been a hard sell on being an accomplice, and required half a dozen beers before he assented. But Noah knew his help would be essential—the doormen knew Roberto as Dylan’s friend, would let him up at ten P.M . without calling to check with the Thayer parents. And Dylan would take whatever drugs Roberto passed him, even if the drugs turned out to be sleeping meds and beta-blockers so he would be alert for his SAT. Noah had Dylan get a good night’s rest in Harlem, and then drove him to take his test. There had been no other option. Dr. Thayer had no faith in her son. She wouldn’t have let him take the test on his own; she would have just found someone else to pay. So agreeing to her plan and then working on his own seemed the only way to set things right. But it was still subterfuge, and Noah shivers each time the magnitude of his actions rolls over him.
Glamorous Disasters Page 30
