Roxy’s Story (16 page)

When lunch ended, I realized it was the first time I had sat and taken so long to
eat a lunch, even at home.

“We did a lot more here than is normal,” he explained, “but one thing you never want
to do is eat too fast, rush through a lunch or a dinner like so many Americans do.”

“Yes, that’s been one of my mother’s favorite comparisons between us and the French.”

“Really? Did she happen to include the English with the Americans or the French?”

“The Americans,” I said without hesitation. “Her favorite way to put it is that in
America, we eat; in France, we dine.”

He looked a little annoyed, but then he smiled. “You’ve been lucky. You’re a few kilometers
ahead of most of the girls who come to me. I congratulate you,” he added with a slight
bow of his head. “Now, how would you end this today?” he asked. Randy had returned
to take some of our dishes and the empty bottle of wine. He paused to see what I was
going to say.

Again, I thought about Mama and the times when she and I had gone to lunch with one
of her friends or
one of the wives of the men Papa worked with at the firm.

“
Merci
, Mr. Whitehouse. I enjoyed our lunch very much, and I hope we’ll soon have the opportunity
to do it again.”

He bowed his head in appreciation. “You make me feel like a vestigial organ,” he said.

I raced through my vocabulary and smiled when I remembered what that meant: an organ
that had lost its purpose, its function.

“I’m sure that’s not true, Mr. Whitehouse. I’m confident that there is always something
I can learn from someone like you.”

He beamed with such pleasure that his cheeks took on a rosy tint and his eyes twinkled
like a newborn baby’s. “Beauty, culture, charm, and diplomacy, too. Mrs. Brittany
has indeed struck gold,” he said.

He made me feel the best I had all day. I thanked him again and left.

I had twenty minutes to refresh myself. I could either go up to my suite or take a
very short walk outside. My next assignment was to go to the library. There was a
two-and-a-half-hour block set aside for that, and I was looking forward to it even
less than I had looked forward to swimming. I’d better get some fresh air, I told
myself, so I wouldn’t pass out in a stuffy classroom setting, and I headed out one
of the patio doors to feel the warmth of the sun and smell the newly cut lawns. I
always liked that scent. It made me feel fresh and alive, which was why I went to
Central Park every chance I had.

I walked slowly, with my head down, until I remembered how Mrs. Pratt had chastised
me for doing that and looking so insecure.

It was then that I first saw her—the young girl who would change everything for me
here.

And maybe everything for me for the rest of my life.

She was walking toward the pool. She wore an ankle-length robe, and a maid was following
her, carrying towels, a bucket with a bottle of something in it, and what looked like
a book held tightly inside the crook of her right arm. For a moment, I thought the
young woman was Portia, but then I saw that she was using a cane and limping as if
her left leg was shorter than her right. Her shoulder-length black hair lay softly
over the white robe. I stepped forward to get a better look at her when she reached
the pool and the maid set down her things and helped her take off the robe. She wore
a bikini and looked like she had a beautiful figure. The maid prepared one of the
cushioned lounges for her, laying out the towels. She sat for a moment with her back
to me before lying back and taking what looked like suntan lotion from the maid.

It was still spring in New York, so I didn’t imagine the pool was warm enough, unless,
of course, it was heated. There was, however, a cloudless sky, and the sun was strong.
I guessed that the UV index was high, and I recalled the short lecture Olga had given
me about the skin damage the sun could do. After the girl covered herself in sun protection,
she lay back and opened her book. The maid opened a bottle of what looked like rosé
wine and poured her a glass. She unwrapped some crackers and set them out with some
cheese before leaving to head back to the house.

I decided to walk over and see who she was. How come she hadn’t been introduced to
me? Mrs. Pratt said that Camelia and Portia were the only other girls here. Was she
one of Mrs. Brittany’s girls whom a client had hurt? Had Mrs. Brittany lied about
that? Was that why she was not there to meet me and why her presence was being kept
a big secret?

She turned as I approached and put her book down.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello.”

“The pool can’t be warm enough, can it?” I said.

“Oh, it’s heated, but I don’t swim much, anyway,” she said, nodding toward her left
leg.

I looked. It was clear to see that it was a flesh-colored prosthetic. I smiled, hiding
my surprise and shock, and looked at her book. “Oh, I know that book. My high school
English teacher gave it to me for extra credit. I read it, but I never handed in the
book report,” I said.

She laughed. “You remember that?”

“It was only last month,” I said.

“Only last month? How old are you?”

“Nearly eighteen. Actually, ten days away now.”

Her smile brightened. “Oh, I love birthdays. Eighteen is a very special one, too.”

“Yes, especially for me,” I said dryly.

“You just get here?” she asked.

“Yes. My first day, actually. I’m not halfway through with it yet. I hope I live through
it.”

“Oh, is it that bad?”

“Tough, not bad,” I said, realizing that the place was probably bugged by people who
would bring my comments back to Mrs. Brittany.

“That’s good,” she said. I saw that what she was drinking was not rosé wine but some
sort of carbonated juice. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Roxy, Roxy Wilcox,” I said.

“You sound like you’re from the East Coast.”

“Yes, New York City.”

Before she could tell me her name or answer any questions I might have, I heard Mrs.
Pratt shouting for me. She was beckoning vehemently, too.

“Uh-oh. The drillmaster is calling,” I said.

The girl laughed.

I glanced back at her and smiled. “Maybe I’ll see you later,” I said, and hurried
toward Mrs. Pratt.

“What are you doing out here?” she demanded.

“I thought I had some time to take a breather,” I said. I turned and nodded toward
the pool. “It’s a beautiful day, and I’d just started talking to that girl when you
called. Who is she? What happened to her leg?”

“There will be plenty of beautiful days for you if you do what you are told,” she
replied, ignoring my questions. “You should be going to the library. Professor Marx
is waiting for you, and it’s very impolite to be late for a college professor. In
fact, punctuality is
very important to Mrs. Brittany. Our girls don’t keep their clients waiting a minute
too long.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Just keep your head about you,” she insisted, “and concentrate on why you’re here.”

Why was she suddenly so angry? I was sure everyone was giving me good marks so far.

I glanced toward the pool again and then started back into the mansion.

“Who is that out at the pool? Is she another one of Mrs. Brittany’s girls? What happened
to her leg?” I repeated.

“I don’t see why any of that would matter to you. I warned you before. You don’t have
time to socialize with anyone, and when you do, it will be part of your training,
part of your evaluation.”

“Even that?”

“Yes, even that.” She looked toward the pool. “Now, forget about that girl, and go
on to the library,” she said, then turned and left me looking out at the pool for
a few more moments before I continued into the mansion. The girl was still looking
after me. She waved, but I was afraid to wave back. Maybe there was a camera pointed
at me, and Mrs. Pratt would claim I had defied her orders.

When I arrived at the library, Professor Marx was seated at a table with books opened
before him. He looked up with an expression of disapproval. I was familiar enough
with that look from my teachers.

“You’re nearly ten minutes late,” he said. “I don’t mean to be stern, but we have
a lot to do in a short time.”

“Why a short time?” I asked as I approached.

“We don’t have a college semester is what I mean,” he said, his eyes wide with impatience.
“Okay, please have a seat.” He nodded at the chair across from him. “This is my technique,”
he continued before I settled on the chair. “I’m going to review current events and
ask you questions. From your answers, I’ll know how much you know about the background
of the situations, political, economic, artistic, and historical. On the basis of
that, I’ll assign you things to read, and during the following days, I’ll review those
things with you to see what you’ve absorbed and how well you could discuss any of
the topics. How well we do here together is entirely up to you.”

“That seems to be the mantra of this place,” I muttered. “Everything is up to me.”

He had one of the most animated faces I had ever seen. All of his thoughts found expression
in the movements in his mouth, his eyes, and the shifting muscles in his cheeks and
jaw. It was clear that if something annoyed him, everything moved at once. He reminded
me of a pinball machine, the thoughts rolling around and triggering brightness in
his eyes, a groan in his throat, and a wavy motion in his lips.

“Well, it’s as true here as it is anywhere,” he said. “What kind of a student have
you been in school?”

“The kind that visits most teachers in their nightmares,” I said dryly.

The lines around his jaw deepened. He took a deep breath and blew air through his
closed lips. “You won’t be giving
me
any nightmares,” he warned. “I can assure you of that. Let’s begin.”

He opened the
New York Times
and started with the lead story. I sensed that Professor Marx expected me to be a
complete airhead. However, despite my sullenness at breakfast and at dinner in my
family’s house, I was unable to totally ignore my father’s commentaries on current
events, especially whatever affected the economy. He was always very emotional about
his beliefs. Mama was his perfect audience, of course, showing her own amazement at
the things that amazed him and showing her pleasure at whatever pleased him. Sometimes
she looked toward me, hoping I would join her chorus and please my father. More often
than not, however, just to annoy him, I took the opposing point of view by deliberately
asking the simplest questions about the most obvious things that might challenge his
beliefs. I never showed any real emotion or allegiance to anything that he criticized,
but my merely taking that side of the argument brought the blood to his face.

In short, although I favored reading the rag newspapers and magazines more, the sort
found at supermarket checkout counters, I wasn’t totally oblivious to what was happening
in our country and in the world. As I replied to his questions, Professor Marx’s assumptions
about me began to lose steam. He struck me as someone who didn’t like to be proven
wrong about anything. To get me, he had to go deeper and deeper into an issue.

My father, because of his work, favored a more laissez-faire approach to business.
I understood that, and some of our hottest arguments were sparked by my concern for
the less fortunate—the grunts, as his
own father, the general, might call them, the foot soldiers, the noncommissioned officers,
the enlisted men, who in my opinion did the most work and bore the most pain and responsibility.

“If we lived and thought the way you do,” my father fumed at me, “we’d be out on the
streets, too.”

Well, I certainly could say to him now, “You were right. Where did I end up?”

Once again, I thought it was ironic. My father would never dream that his frequent
political lectures in our dining room would help prepare me to find success in this
new life I was choosing for myself, a life I was certain he would despise.

My biggest weaknesses were with the arts, theater, opera, even stage musicals. Professor
Marx pounced on those areas, piling up the reading material for me. I had taken an
art class in my sophomore year but failed. The teacher, Mrs. Faber, was one of those
teachers who found the most attentive students early on and put all of their effort
into teaching them. The rest of us could stay or leave as far as she was concerned—mentally,
of course. I did my best daydreaming in her class, and now I was about to pay for
it. The introduction to art textbook Professor Marx gave me was the thickest. I thought
it weighed five pounds.

He made it clear that I had to learn and be able to identify famous arias from great
operas and be somewhat familiar with their plots. He wanted me to have a “decent knowledge
of Broadway theater.”

“You’ll come in here and listen to them during your free time.”

“I have free time?” I asked.