The Red Book (32 page)

“Concentration?” says Jonathan.

“Harvard’s fancy word for major,” says Addison, who still finds herself having to take short mental beats to translate “sixth form” into “twelfth grade” whenever she tells stories about her senior year in high school, or “I concentrated in Visual and Environmental Studies” into “I majored in art.”

“Can we please stay on topic?” says Jane, who wastes precious hours every week trying to figure out which word or phrase to use in which Babel-towered context.
College
, in French, means “middle school.” For years, until a confused colleague corrected her, she’d been telling people she went to middle school at Harvard. She turns to face Mia. “Please, Mia, you’ve got to stop bringing up an offhand comment Addison made over twenty years ago. I mean, really. Let it go. Have some compassion. Show some forgiveness.”

Jonathan shoots Jane a raised eyebrow, a gesture she reads more clearly than any lecture he could have delivered on the topic of clemency. Yes, she shrugs. I know. Practice what you preach. I’ll try to forgive Bruno, I will.

Max, a bubbling geyser, finally erupts. “For fuck’s sake, Mom!” he says, angrier than either of his parents have ever seen him. “My entire life, I’ve done exactly what you told me to do. I brought home all As. Never a B on any report card. Never! I do all these stupid extracurricular activities, stuff I don’t even enjoy doing, just so it will look good on my college application. Truth be told, I don’t even know if I want to go to Harvard, but I’m applying because of you and Dad. In fact, I have no idea who I am or what I want, outside of what you want for me. It’s like my whole life’s been programmed toward a single outcome, and veering off that path is a failure. Which it’s
not
! As for what happened tonight, don’t think I didn’t see that smug little look you gave me, when you asked about that stupid thing Evangeline wrote on my Facebook wall, and I said it was about her decision to save herself for marriage. You were
relieved
! As if what Trilby and I did tonight was wrong, while the weird shit my supposed girlfriend makes me do for the sake of her ‘purity’ is just, well, forget it. I don’t even want to go there. You want to know something ironic? Up until five minutes ago, this was the best night of my life.”

“Mine, too,” says Trilby, emboldened by Max’s passion.

“In fact, when I get back to LA, I’m going to break up with Evangeline,” says Max, throwing it out there. He doesn’t dare look Trilby in the eye, for fear of blushing. “I’ve had it up to here with her hypocrisy.”

“Really?” says Trilby, squeezing Max’s hand even tighter.

He finally looks her in the eye. Who cares if he blushes? He’s in love! “Yes. Really.”

“Max, all I was trying to say is you have to think of your future,” says Mia.

“I’m always thinking about my future, Mom!” says Max. “I think about my future so often, I feel like I’ve missed out on
years
of the present!”

He has a point, thinks Jane. Regardless of the actual value of a Harvard diploma, this whole obsession with getting your kids into a good college, slave driving them through high school until they can’t see straight, only to toss them out at the end of four ivy-covered years so they can work eighty hours a week for some U.S. corporate megaentity seems just plain (a smile creeps across her face as she recalls her outburst in front of the mirror of Lodge Waldman’s office)
stupid
.

Addison feels the sinew in her neck tightening, her hands clenching.
You have to think of your future?
How does Mia get off, insinuating that my daughter would in any way be a blemish on Max’s future? Trilby may have inherited a bit of her mother’s rebellious streak, but she’s also the most genuinely cool and interesting person Addison knows. In fact, if she had to choose to spend a day alone with anyone on earth, it would be with Trilby. No question. And if Mia spent even an hour with her, without judging her for the way she looks or the clothes she wears or the bands she likes, she would realize that.

Jonathan notices today’s date on Trilby’s concert T-shirt and chooses not to bring it up. He’ll scold Max privately about ditching his babysitting responsibilities to sneak off to a rock concert, but for now he’s actually secretly relieved by his son’s rebellion. Good for Max, he thinks. He had to gnaw his way through those apron strings at some point, but man oh man, how is it that Max is leaving for college in a year? A year! A year at Jonathan’s age passes by in an instant. He pictures Max’s spot at the dining room table, empty. The absence of Max. The image slices into him, oozing blood. “I think we should call it a night,” he says. “I’m exhausted.”

“Good idea,” says Jane, who’s magically stripped the Aerobed and remade it with clean, hospital-cornered sheets without anyone being the wiser. In such moments, she feels the essence of both of her mothers coursing deep within her.

“ ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad . . .’ ” Max starts to whisper into Trilby’s ear.

She finishes the stanza out loud: “ ‘They may not mean to, but they do.’ I love that poem,” says Trilby. “I wrote my English term paper on Larkin.”

“You did?” says Max. He didn’t think it was even possible for his love to expand any further. Larkin is his favorite poet. (For now. Later he’ll discover Wislawa Szymborska, whose poems he will read and reread into old age.)

“You did?” says Addison. “You never showed me that paper.”

“Not true. I asked you to sign it when I got my grade back. You told me to just forge your signature. Besides, there’s a lot of stuff I don’t show you. Or tell you about.” Trilby turns to Mia. “Actually, Mrs. Zane?” (Addison is a lenient mother with one exception: She insists that her children address all adults, no matter how well known, with a proper prefix and last name, a habit that was so firmly ingrained in her as a child, she never even thought to challenge or amend it when she had kids of her own.) “Some of tonight . . .
is
my fault. I mean, Max and Eli wouldn’t have left Josh in charge if I hadn’t, you know, made them come to the Roxy with me.”

“What?” says Mia. “You went to a—”

Jonathan quiets his wife with his signature raised eyebrow. It’s enough for the girl to publicly admit her wrong. There’s no need for Mia to rub it in.

“Oh, Trilby,” says Addison, “is that where that awful T-shirt comes from?”

“Yeah. We went to hear them. Finn Angstrom drove us.”

“Finn? From sailing camp?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, baby.” Addison hugs her daughter. “Don’t worry. I understand. It’s okay. I used to sneak out and go to Dead shows when I was your—”

Trilby pulls away. “No, Mom, it’s not okay. Like, it’s
really
not okay. You should totally ground me for sneaking out. Like other moms. That’s what I wrote my term paper about.”

And like that, Mia’s distaste for her roommate’s child disintegrates. In fact, she might really be starting to like Trilby.

“Wait a minute,” says Addison. “You . . .
want
to be grounded?”

“If I do something wrong, yes. So go ahead. Ground me.”

“Okay,” says Addison. “You’re grounded.” The words feel like tiny aliens in her mouth.

“Cool,” says Trilby. “For how long?”

“Well, how long were you thinking?”

“I don’t know. I guess a week for sneaking out and leaving the medium kids in charge of the little ones and another week for hacking Mr. Zane’s Facebook.” She turns to Jonathan. “Sorry, Mr. Zane. You left your profile open. I couldn’t help myself.” When she’d admitted what she’d written to Max earlier in the evening, he’d spit out his beer laughing, assuring Trilby that his dad, who was used to the sometimes elaborate pranks pulled by film crews on set, might be slightly annoyed but he would not be angry.

Jonathan, tipping his neck to the side, seems more bemused by the revelation than annoyed, as if he might want to use it as a plot point in his next script. Trilby knows that twinkle-eyed head tilt well. It’s the same one that overcomes her father before he pulls out his Moleskine to steal pieces of her life. “I was wondering how that happened,” says Jonathan. “So if I don’t log out, you can just type stuff into my status update?”

“Yes.”

“Who knew? What about—”

Trilby cuts him off. “I also took two hundred and twenty dollars from your wallet to pay for the tickets, but I’ll pay you back with my babysitting money. I promise. Wait, here . . .” She digs into her purse until she finds and hands over the $120 she didn’t spend. “So now I just owe you a hundred.” The relief she feels at her unburdening, from the partial repayment of ill-gained spoils, is palpable. Her shoulders feel lighter, her neck less cricked. Who knew the truth could be so liberating? Certainly not her mother, whose lies, both to herself and otherwise, are so ingrained into her being, they’ve become their own form of truth, like a banker’s.

She wishes she better understood what people like her mom’s friend Clover does, but even her parents haven’t been able to properly explain how one day everyone was living in big houses and buying lots of stuff, and the next day they weren’t. Something about a collective delusion. Whatever that means.

“Okay, two weeks,” says Addison. “That sounds totally fair. Trilby Griswold, I hereby pronounce you grounded for the next two weekends.” Ironic parenting, Addison realizes, will be a difficult habit to break.

“Awesome. Can I still talk on the phone and go online?”

Addison has no idea how to answer. “I don’t know. Can you?”

“Sure,” says Trilby. “I think that would be okay, considering the crime. I mean, if I’d, you know, bullied someone online—which I haven’t done, don’t worry—then you’d have to think about taking away online privileges from me, but in this case I think just the physical grounding should be fine.”

“Okay, then. You are grounded with benefits.”

“Mom. Ugh. It’s ‘friends with benefits.’ And it has nothing to do with—”

The doorbell rings. Jane looks at her watch. “It’s after midnight,” she says. “Who on earth . . .” Oh my God, she thinks, understanding exactly who it is. He came anyway, even though she told him not to. She pulls her cell phone out of her pocket and sees eleven missed calls, all of them from Bruno. Of course. She turned off her cell phone when she went to meet with Lodge Waldman. Then the rest of the day got away from her.

“Bruno?” says Jonathan, looking over Jane’s shoulder at the face of her cell phone.

“I’m assuming,” says Jane.

“Jane,” says Jonathan, “I’m sorry, lady, but if you do not marry him after a move like that, then someone made a big mistake letting you into Harvard.” He bounds up the basement stairs two by two.

The rest of the gang are halfway to the front door when they hear Jonathan’s elated voice. “Bruno!
Mon dieu!
What the fuck man! I can’t believe you’re here. You don’t know how bad I’ve needed you. I’m outnumbered four to one.”

“I have been trying to reach Jane all day. She is here?”

Jane feels her heart pounding at the sound of Bruno’s deep-timbered, soothing voice. A radio voice, everyone tells him, but he has no interest in doing anything but editing. “I like being the support,” he always answers. “The buttress, not the wall.”

“
Oui
,” calls Jane, rounding the corner. “
Je suis là.
” When she sees Bruno standing in the doorway clutching his suitcase, his clothes rumpled from the flight, she runs to greet him, and—Jane being all of five feet, Bruno scraping the ceiling at a solid six-foot-three—is lifted up off the floor and into his arms. Bruno buries his head in her neck. “
Mais t’es folle
,” Jane says, holding his head in her hands and kissing him somewhat chastely. “
Je t’ai dit de ne pas venir.
” You are nuts. I told you not to come.

Jonathan, the only one in the house fluent in both French and the latest on Jane and Bruno’s relationship, shoos everyone else into the kitchen.

Bruno places Jane gently back on the ground and switches to English, the native tongue for neither of them, but one he’s determined to use more often for the sake of parity: “I know you did tell me not to come, but I also know you enough to comprehend when you say one thing but mean a different. Thing. And so I think it to myself, even if you decide you do not want that I am here, I will still help to clean the closet of Claire, like I promise you when she die, and then I go.”

“Like I said.
T’es folle
.”

“I’m the crazy one? Who is the crazy one still awake, huh? I decide to drive by, when I can’t reach you on the phone, just to, you know, how do you say ‘
jeter un coup d’oeil
,’ ‘throw an eye blow’?”

“Check things out.” Jane has always adored the way Bruno mangles the English language, translating French idioms word by word. She once heard him yelling into the phone, to an Iraqi fixer who’d failed, once again, to meet his reporter at the appointed time and place, “I’ve had it up to the level of my head!” Jane had to gently explain to him that “
J’en ai ras-le-bol
” would be better expressed as “I’ve had it up to here.”

“
Ah, oui
, check things out,” says Bruno. “So, yes, I see the many cars in the alley—”

“Driveway.”

“Yes, driveway. But I do not expect to see the lights illuminated. Why you did not answer your
portable
? Are you still angry to me about—”

“No, no. Sorry. There was no malice in my not answering the phone at all. At
all
! I turned off the ringer when I went to meet . . . oh, God, I have so much to tell you, Bruno. You’ll never believe it. My mother. She had . . . a lover. For thirty
years
. I haven’t even been able to wrap my head around it yet.” She shuts the front door, grabs Bruno’s bag, and rolls it into the entryway, where they sit down on a hard-backed bench.

“I know this,” says Bruno. “She confess it to me last Noël. Before she die. You were out doing something with Sophie, I don’t remember, maybe, how you say
faire le patinage
?”

“Ice-skating.”

“Yes. Ice-skating. But Claire made me promise not to tell you until after she die. She had fear you would judge her, because her lover is married.”