How to Teach Filthy Rich Girls (16 page)

―So if you‘re not interested in her art for your dad‘s gallery . . .‖ Come on, Will. Fill in the blank.

―At Northwestern, when I wasn‘t partying‖—he offered me a sidelong glance—―I majored in art history.‖ It didn‘t answer my question, but there was no way he‘d been an art history major at Northwestern without hitting the books, and now, apparently, he went to art shows, too. Interesting.

―So, Hanan, she lives in this sleepy place by choice?‖ I asked.

The bass truck turned off toward the big lake, and we finally cleared the sign beckoning us to return to Clewiston. Will sped up.

―She hates noise—it gets in the way of her work. She was in a bookstore in Chicago and came across a book of photographs of Okeechobee and the towns around it. She fell in love. That was, like, three years ago. Then her visa got approved, and here she is.‖

―Are you two . . . involved?‖
What?
I had to ask. Research. And BTW, I was impressed I‘d held off that long.

―Megan, she‘s gay.‖

Oh.

Just beyond another bait-and-tackle shop, Will turned right on a gravel road canopied by lush foliage. After spooking a great blue heron resting in the overhanging branches, Will stopped the car in front of a ramshackle house badly in need of a fresh coat of paint. ―We‘re here.‖

He honked the horn twice. Almost before the second beep had died away, a beautiful young woman came bounding around the side of the house. Her thick raven hair was tied back in a messy ponytail with what looked like a shoelace. She wore paint-spattered jeans, a white T-shirt smudged with crimson and ocher, and a huge smile.

―Hanan!‖ Will greeted her as we got out of the Beemer.

―Hello, both of you! You‘re just in time to help me,‖ Hanan exclaimed in admirable English. She shook my hand heartily. ―You must be Megan.‖

Evidently, Will had told her he was bringing a friend.

―Nice to meet you.‖ I couldn‘t help smiling at her; she had an infectious energy.

―Welcome to my little corner of the universe.‖ Hanan opened her arms wide. ―Far, far away from that peculiar place called Palm Beach. Come.‖

She ushered us around to the side of the house; I was surprised to see an immense vegetable garden in full bloom, protected by a chicken-wire fence. I recognized cucumbers, three different kinds of peppers, zucchini vines, and six or seven enormous tomato plants ripe with fruit. Wow. Would my parents ever covet this kind of growing season. In New Hampshire, there was usually snow on the ground by mid-November.

But Main Line Megan wouldn‘t know anything about growing seasons. Main Line Megan would not understand Hanan, or this oasis of sanity, at all.

―You really like living here?‖ I asked, throwing in a head toss for Will‘s benefit.

―Where do you
shop
?‖

She shrugged. ―I don‘t need much. I tried New York City, but the whole art scene, all the parties, all the gallery openings . . . so boring.‖ She raised her face to the afternoon sun and closed her eyes. ―All I want to do is paint. Here in Clewiston, I can work without anyone bothering me.‖ She opened her eyes and looked at me. ―If you don‘t love to fish, there‘s really no good reason to be here. The whole town thinks I‘m a hopeless eccentric, but it doesn‘t bother me at all. I probably am. I‘ll tell you more . . .

while we work.‖ She handed a hoe to me and a cultivator to Will. ―I always take advantage of visitors.‖

I got to work as they chatted, hoeing up weeds between two rows of succulent cucumbers hanging from their vines. The smell of the rich earth and the sun on my back reminded me so much of home, the many hours I‘d spent in my parents‘ garden. There was a cycle to things, my mom always said. Planting, watering, weeding, cultivating—

―Megan Smith, don‘t you wield a mean hoe.‖

I looked up. Will was staring at me as if I had just grown horns.

―Your friend Megan has done this before,‖ Hanan observed. ―You see, she holds the hoe like a broom—no backache her way. Megan, you must put Will to work for the first time in his life. I‘ll be right back.‖

As she skipped into the house, I saw the question in Will‘s eyes. ―I . . . took an organic farming biology elective at Yale,‖ I invented lamely. ―Easy A.‖ I held the other hoe out to him. ―Try it.‖

He was aghast. ―Barbados has a twelve-man team of horticulture specialists. You wouldn‘t want me to infringe on their right to work, would you?‖

I grinned. Disaster averted. ―Your secret is safe with me.‖

He pretended to roll up nonexistent sleeves. ―Okay, okay. I give in. What do I do? I put myself in your capable, dirt-encrusted hands.‖

I took one dirty palm and ran it down his cheek, leaving a brown track of smudges.

―This will help you get into the mood, Farmer Will.‖ Then I showed him the finer points of cutting off the roots of weeds.

―Will kill weeds,‖ he joked in a robotic voice as he hoed clumsily. ―Will kill weeds.

Will kill.‖

―Hey, Will? Megan!‖

We turned. There was Hanan with a digital camera. She snapped a couple of photos of sweaty us.

―I‘m sending this to off to Northwestern‘s alumni magazine,‖ she joked. ―Otherwise no one would believe Will Phillips with actual earth on his face. Come on in, you guys.

Will, you‘ll be glad to know I got air-conditioning since the last time you were here.‖

We followed Hanan inside and were hit by a blast of cool air. ―There is a God,‖ Will exclaimed.

In stark contrast to its shabby exterior, the bungalow‘s interior was bright, airy, and immaculate. Whatever interior walls had once existed had been mostly knocked down and replaced by white columns. There were just two rooms. One was a combined living room/kitchen/sleeping space with a kitchen. The other was Hanan‘s studio.

―Come see my work.‖ Hanan beckoned to us. ―Don‘t be too harsh. I tried something new.‖

As we entered her studio, I expected to see paintings, some finished and others in progress, paint cans, and an easel. Instead, the studio was immaculate, too—white walls, white floor. Leaning against the windowless walls were several massive canvases, all of them completed. Each was a scene of romantic lesbian love. The first canvas showed two clothed women in a warm embrace. The next depicted the same scene, but the women were nude. All the others focused on one section of the larger picture, as if magnifying pieces of a puzzle—entwined hands, thighs, breasts meeting breasts.

―It‘s amazing,‖ I breathed.

―It‘s more than that,‖ Will said, then expounded. ―What‘s brilliant is not just Hanan‘s mastery of color and light but the progression. Once you‘ve seen the lovers clothed, and then nude, she forces you to imagine them that way when you look at the isolations. But if you view the isolations before you see the whole series, you‘re creating the subjects in your mind automatically, and your subject might not look the same as hers. Which kind of makes you, the observer, an artist, too. Do you see what I mean, Megan?‖

The most I could manage was a nod. I was dazzled.

―Will is my biggest fan,‖ Hanan admitted.

―I‘m your second biggest,‖ I told her. ―Your work should be in museums.‖

―Thank you.‖ Hanan bobbed her head gracefully. ―You see why I am waiting for Will to open a gallery so he can represent me. So get on with it, Will.‖

My recently waxed eyebrows headed for my flatironed hairline. ―Your own gallery?‖ I asked him.

He didn‘t respond.

―Will commissioned this entire series,‖ Hanan explained.

I felt like hugging him. ―I didn‘t know that.‖

A phone rang in the other room. Hanan excused herself to answer it.

―Don‘t look at me like that,‖ Will protested, noticing my awe. ―I‘m a capitalist scoundrel from the word
go
. I commissioned her so I could put them in my gallery and sell them.‖

―For that to happen, you‘d need a gallery.‖ My eyes held his. He took my hand. ―Come on. There‘s a place I want to show you.‖

―Where?‖

Instead of answering, he ran for the back door. We headed past the garden, through a grove of trees, across a broad meadow, and down a dirt embankment to a beautiful farm pond sparkling in the afternoon sun. Will already had his T-shirt over his head. The perfect golden six-pack was not lost on me.

―What are you doing?‖ I asked. Of course, I knew exactly what he was doing, short of streaking the bullfrogs, but it seemed like the thing to say.

He undid his belt buckle. ―Come swimming with me.‖

The question before me was: Were the jeans and the boxers coming off? And if so, did he expect me to follow suit? As in, the birthday suit he‘d already seen me wear? For the fiftieth time in the last three weeks, I lamented the quality and caloric quantity of Marco‘s efforts in the kitchen.

Just as I was dealing with this quandary, Hanan came whooping through the trees, shedding clothes as she went. Once she got down to a very utilitarian bra and panties, she leaped into the water.

No birthday suit. I breathed a little easier. But still. Off came the jeans and the linen shirt. Then, clad in just the skinny white tank top and panties I‘d bought at the Target in West Palm, I jumped into the water. It was cool against the heat of the day. If skin could sing, mine was humming ―Stairway to Heaven.‖

Will surfaced and pushed on my shoulders. I went down with a sputter and came up with my flat ironed hair ruined, the nonwaterproof mascara I‘d so carefully applied that morning tracking down my face.

Palm Beach me should have screamed and scrambled out of the water. But God, I didn‘t want to do that. For this second, screw the research. I just wanted to be myself.

For the next half hour, we splashed like little kids. We played Marco Polo. We had a water fight. We did cannonballs off the embankment. We stopped only when my cell phone rang. It was the twins, telling me they‘d finished their essays. When was I going to be home? I looked at Will.

―An hour and a half,‖ he said. ―If we leave now.‖

Hanan said she‘d run back to the house to get us towels. Will and I sat on the muddy bank. I was filthy, I was wet, and I was the happiest I‘d been since I arrived for this crazy experiment.

―There‘s something I don‘t get.‖ He dug a pebble out of the dirt and threw it into the lake.

―Which is?‖

He turned to me. ―One minute you‘re this typical, boring rich chick. The next you‘re . . .

not.‖

―Oh, really, Mr. I Majored in Partying?‖

He laughed. ―That wasn‘t a lie, trust me.‖

I pushed my wet hair off my forehead. ―Now I get to ask you one. Why did you invite me here?‖

―When I first met you—that crazy night when the twins were so awful to you—I thought I saw something . . . Then you came to see me at the gallery, and she was gone.‖ He threw another pebble into the water.
Plunk
. ―But then Rose went on and on about how much she‘d learned from you, that you were the first person who ever made her feel like she had a brain. So I invited you today because I was curious to see which girl would show up.‖

―And?‖

―Easy. Both. But not in a bad way.‖ He stared down at me, then lifted his free hand to my cheek and rubbed his thumb gently across it. ―Mud.‖

I shivered a little. Something shifted inside of me. The real me. ―Thanks for bringing me here, Farmer Will,‖ I said.

His eyes were on my lips. Was he about to kiss me?

―You‘re welcome. Can I bring you someplace else?‖

―Sure. Where‘s that?‖

―The Christmas Eve ball at the Norton Museum of Art. I know it isn‘t much notice, but I really would like—‖

―I‘d love to.‖

A cell-phone company charges 3 cents per minute for a long-distance call. What algebraic expression shows how much a 20-minute call from Florida to New York City would cost, if 5 of those minutes are nighttime freebies?

(a) y = 3 + 20 ÷ 5

(b) 5z = 20x

(c) x = 3 (20 – 5)

(d) c = 20 + 5 + 3

(e) x = 3 x 20 x 5

That night I read quickly over the twins‘ essays from the afternoon, ignored the question in Rose‘s eyes about how my time with Will had gone, and then retreated to the privacy of my bathroom for the longest, hottest bath in the history of long, hot baths.

As the water ran, I poured in Heavenly Holly bubble bath, part of Laurel‘s new spa collection. It smelled like the woods in autumn and turned the water into an Emerald City sea under a blanket of white bubbles.

I‘d like to call a time-out here to say one thing: Fantasizing isn‘t cheating. Okay. So long as we‘re in agreement.

I lay there with my eyes closed, the hot water dribbling in, feeling all warm and . . . um .

. . wet, playing the afternoon with Will over in my mind and wondering what it would have been like if Will had done what I thought he was about to do by the side of the pond. That is, kiss me. Just as I began heading for an underwater expedition, I heard my cell phone faintly.

It was him. I knew it was him.

I jumped from the tub and slid across the bathroom floor, leaving wet footprints on the bedroom hardwood, then I dove wet and naked over my bed. I managed to get my purse open and yank out my phone in time to answer on the fourth ring.

―Hello?‖ I asked breathlessly.

―Hey, babe. Wow, you sound . . . winded.‖

Him. The wrong him.

―Oh, hi! James!‖ I wrapped my soaked self in my bedspread, knowing that if I needed another, it would be delivered from the main mansion, no questions asked. ―I was taking a bath. I had to run to the phone. I‘m so glad it‘s you!‖

Okay, so fantasizing is
kind of
cheating. What kind of person is thinking about the
wrong guy
when her
boyfriend
—the boyfriend she barely gets to see, much less get horizontal with—calls? The boyfriend whom she‘d be seeing on Christmas morning?

As in, under thirty-six hours.

―Great news. I just spent twelve hours editing that asshole‘s short story. Songwriters who think they can write fiction—it‘s painful. Then the wanker has the nerve to call and ask for approval on any changes.‖

―That‘s the great news?‖

He laughed. ―No, that‘s the buildup. My boss took pity on me. He‘s letting me split at noon tomorrow. I‘ll be in Gulf Stream in time for dinner. Great, huh?‖