The Trouble with Lexie (18 page)

“People are losing IQ points, losing social skills, losing the very thing that makes them human because they are focusing their energy onto an apparatus rather than onto another human.” Janet's feet remained even, as if she might never take another step. She was upright as a flagpole.

“Well, I'll put some serious thought into that.” Lexie pulled her cell phone from her purse as she walked away. She could sense Janet watching her but didn't look back to confirm.

Daniel had texted,
Yes, I'm very proud. Will you pick up a bottle of champagne and drop it off at my boy's room?

Lexie glanced back over her shoulder at Janet, who had entrapped three senior girls. They were probably getting the text lecture, too. Lexie typed,
Happy to drop off champagne! Please note that would be my last official act at Ruxton since surely I'll be fired!

Daniel replied,
Who cares! You'll be out of there soon enough when you're my wife. The Boston apartment is too far for the commute.

Lexie sucked in an estatic little breath. She swiped her ID at the door to Rilke. Once she was in the apartment, with the door firmly shut, Lexie unbuttoned her blouse, lowered the camera, and took a picture of her breasts in the black bra she'd put on that morning. She didn't want to reply in words, as words could appear either desperate and excessively anxious, or overly happy and needy. A photo would convey her message more concisely:
Buy the ring. I'm yours!

More,
Daniel texted, and Lexie obliged.

Her slacks were around her ankles and her panties were flossed to one side as Lexie was trying to figure out the best photo angle when there was a knock on the door. Lexie dropped the phone to the floor and very quietly reassembled her clothes. Her thoughts zoomed out to the imagined overhead camera shot of herself, half-dressed, acting porny on one side of the door while some upstanding Ruxton citizen, be it faculty or a student, waited on the other side of the door.

Lexie picked up the phone and opened the door. Cole Hanna stood there, his blue tie knotted like a fist. He held out one of Lexie's notebooks.

“I found this on the walkway,” Cole said. He was so conventionally good-looking, nice, and conscientious that Lexie worried he'd live a life as dull as a wooden spoon.

“Ah! Thanks.” Lexie took the notebook. She must have dropped it while texting Daniel. Good thing Janet Irwin hadn't found it. Another reason not to text! “So, is there a lot of celebrating planned for tonight?”

“Some celebrating and some mourning.” Cole, Lexie knew, would be attending Dartmouth.

“Text me if you think I need to make a surprise visit to keep things under control tonight. I'd hate for anyone to get suspended and have his or her acceptance standing in jeopardy.”

“Do they do that?” Cole asked.

“Yeah, they do. There was a kid headed to Duke a couple years before I arrived who got into big trouble at the end of the year and lost his invitation to attend.”

“That's terrible.”

“It is. So, keep me in the loop and I'll try to derail anyone intent on getting suspended.” Lexie couldn't quite remember the story of the Duke-accepted kid. It was something with drugs and alcohol and defacing school property. Had he gone into the chapel, carved a giant penis into a pew, and vomited on the penis before passing out? Someone had done that, although maybe it was a different boy, a different year.

The kids at San Leandro High had done much worse on many more occasions. But it was public school, no one kept track of what happened off campus, and even if there was a transgression, there were so many on such a regular basis that it was rare for a detention to be handed out.

Since she'd been living at Rilke, Lexie had confiscated alcohol three times—two of the three from the same boy. She assumed it was like mice: If you see one, it means there's a hundred.

AT MIDNIGHT THERE WAS A RHYTHMIC RAPPING ON LEXIE'S DOOR; IT
sounded like the William Tell Overture. She pulled on yoga pants and a T-shirt then went to the door and found a wet-cheeked Ethan Waite.

“You okay?” Lexie tried to step back as Ethan stumbled in past her, his solid body brushing against hers.

“Not really.” Ethan collapsed onto the gray chair that he and Lexie had picked out in September.

“Were you rapping the William Tell Overture on the door?”

“Yeah! No way! You could tell?!” Ethan was obviously drunk. His gestures were big and sweeping, like he was directing a symphony.

“I've got a good ear for that stuff.” Lexie sat on the matching chair beside Ethan. She remembered one night with Peter in which she had lain naked across his lap and he had patted out songs on her butt. She had to guess what song he was patting. They were both amazed that she could get a good number of them, and when she'd correctly guessed Madonna's “Like a Virgin,” they were hysterical with laughter.

At the time, Lexie believed that it was a meeting of the minds between herself and Peter that gave her the songs. Tonight, she credited her skills to a simple gift for rhythm.

“Amazing ear.” Ethan rolled his head back and forth against the chair like he was trying to shake something out.

“So, what's up? Is this urgent?”

“I can't believe I didn't get into UCLA.”

“Well, Harvard's not as dummy-school slummy as its reputation would have you believe.” Lexie wanted to laugh but she didn't.

“We both know I got in because of my dad.”

“Maybe you did, but I'd never say you were a slacker. What's your GPA again?”

“Three point seven nine.”

“See.”

“Everyone else who got in has, like, four point seven.”

“Ethan, you're not some idiot fool eating cut-up steak with a spoon. You'll do fine there.”

“I wanted to be in California.”

“Okay, it's midnight and you're . . . a little out of sorts, so I'm going to lay some truth on you.” If he weren't Daniel's kid, if she weren't certain that this conversation wouldn't get back to the Spoken Word Police Officer, Janet Irwin, Lexie wouldn't say what she was about to say. But through her relationship with Daniel, and the simple intimacy she had with Ethan from living in the same dorm as he, Lexie felt her professional relationship with Ethan had become a flimsy pretense. He was her future stepson. And after seven months of dating Daniel, the transition to family status had already begun, if only in her mind.

Ethan leaned forward and clapped his hands once, like a football coach talking to the team. “Lay it on me!”

“You are a spoiled rotten brat.”

“Are you kidding or serious?” He sat back again.

“Serious.”

“Why would you say that?” Ethan rubbed one eye with the back of his floppy hand.

“Because you're complaining about going to a school that kids all over the world are knocking themselves out to go to. And because you get to go college without even taking out a student loan or going through the seventy-million impossible-to-understand pages of applying for financial aid or scholarships, and because the whole world is available to you, waiting for you to conquer it. And you're sitting here crying because you don't get to go to school in California? Fly to California on spring break! Go there for the summer! Go for a long weekend!”

“I totally get what you're saying.” His head dropped a little, as if he were ashamed. “And I'm not saying I disagree with you. But this doesn't take into account that for me, Harvard is a given, UCLA is what I was reaching for and I didn't get the goal I was reaching for.” Ethan lifted his head and looked at Lexie, as if he were imploring her to agree with him on this one point.

“Yes, that's a bummer.” Lexie softened her voice. She didn't want him to feel bad. “But you need to step back and take a global perspective. You can go to UCLA for grad school, or summer school. We'll take you to San Leandro to visit my mom and we'll drive . . .” Lexie stopped talking as she realized she had veered into a reality of which Ethan was unaware: herself, Daniel, and Ethan as a family.

“We?” Ethan cocked his chin up as a question mark. Lexie was relieved he was drunk. In his current state, she could probably convince him of anything.

“I meant me. I. I could take you to visit my mom.” It would never happen if she weren't with Daniel, Lexie thought. She would never be a single “I” who would engage in such an intimacy as travel with a former student.

“I'd love to go visit your mom, Mrs. James!”

“She's never gone by Missus in her life. Her name's Mitzy.” How odd it would be if Lexie actually showed up at Mitzy's apartment with Daniel and Ethan. Would her mother want to make a group run to 7-Eleven for Sno Balls and Dr Pepper?

“Mitzy? We had a dog named Mitzy once.”

“Most people have had a dog named Mitzy once. You're the second person in the last couple months who's told me that.”

“Who was the other person?”

“I can't remember.” Lexie looked off to the right as she rummaged through her brain to come up with who had been telling her a story about Mitzy the dog. She blushed when she remembered it was Daniel. “I have no idea,” she finally said.

“Well, our Mitzy was a pretty crazy dog. She tried to commit suicide.”

“Gun? Poison? Knife?” Lexie said, and Ethan laughed. He may have been drunker than she had originally thought. She was certainly more half-asleep than she had originally thought.

“Jumping. She jumped off the balcony onto the stone patio.”

“Did she break any bones?” Daniel hadn't mentioned the jump.

“One of her legs. But no death. She was catatonically depressed for a couple weeks. My mother sent her to a therapist and she was fine after that.”

“They have dog therapists in Western Massachusetts? I thought that was only in California.”

“No, my mom took her all the way to Northampton to see the dog therapist. My dad went nuts. He hated that she was giving money to a huckster.”

“Did you agree that the dog therapist was a huckster?” Lexie sure as hell did.

“Yeah, I guess.” Ethan patted out a tune on his thighs. “What song is that?”

“‘No Scrubs'?” Lexie hadn't been listening. It was the first song that popped in her head.

“No! Listen.” Ethan tapped out the rhythm again.

“What time period of music are we in?”

“Seventies funk. I figured you wouldn't know current stuff.”

“Hey, I wasn't alive in the seventies! But I do know the music and I know current stuff, too.” Even as Lexie was saying it she knew it wasn't true. She barely knew current music. She listened to the radio but she had never downloaded or bought music. Lexie's musical inclinations were dictated by whomever she was with most often: Betsy Simms, her mother, her college roommate, her grad school roommate, the two boyfriends she'd had, her former fiancé (Peter!), and lastly, Daniel, who rarely listened to music at all.

“Okay, this is seventies. Listen.” Ethan patted it out again. As he did so, he stared at Lexie straight in the eye, his mouth hanging open in concentration.

“‘Ooh Child'?”

“Huh? I don't know what that is.”

Lexie was worried she was losing her touch. She'd have to try the bare-butt bongo with Daniel later to see if it worked with him. “Do it again. With deliberation, okay? No extra beats.”

Ethan stuck his neck out a little and patted hard and slow. He rocked his head to the beat.

“‘Brick House'?”

“YES!” Ethan threw his fists up and pumped his arms into the air. Lexie laughed.

“Okay, let's quit while we're ahead.” Lexie stood.

“Are you kicking me out?”

“Yes. Go to bed. Forget about UCLA. Be grateful. Don't be a whiney dumb-ass.”

“Don't be a whiney dumb-ass. Good advice.” Ethan stood and slowly walked toward the door.

“It's life advice. Think about it the rest of your life. Or do it the rest of your life. For the rest of your life don't be a whiney dumb-ass.”

“I'm going to miss you when I graduate.”

“Ah, you're sweet. But I bet we'll see each other again after you graduate.” To be safe, Lexie added, “I see a lot students after they graduate.” She held the door open for Ethan.

“Never again in my life will I be a whiney dumb-ass.” Ethan walked slowly out the door.

“Sleep well.”

“Night, Miss James.” Ethan lifted his long arm and waved it behind him as he went down the hall. From the back, silhouetted by the hall light, it could have been Daniel.

L
EXIE'S BAG WAS PACKED. SHE STOOD IN THE DOORWAY OF THE
guest suite of the Waite lake house and watched Daniel pull the linens off the bed and shake them out. “What are you doing?”

“She was nice enough to let us stay here. I don't want to rub it in her face by leaving a pair of my underwear behind.”

“Well, check for my underwear, too.” Lexie wondered what kind of underwear Jen wore. How would it look lined up next to Lexie's collection of lacy, stringy ribbons of fabric? From their one meeting, Lexie imagined Jen as someone with well-made, silky but sensible underwear. No prints. No lace. Nothing that would cut into her flesh, dissecting her body into graspable parts: cheek, cheek, crotch.

Lexie had wanted to explore the house, to poke around Jen's bedroom (and her underwear drawer) the way she'd poked around bedrooms as a babysitter in San Leandro (the way all babysitters since the beginning of babysitting have done). But she refrained in
an effort to give Jen Waite the privacy she deserved after the generous gift of her home.

The week had been unimaginably dreamy, holed up together like they were on a luxurious island. In the mornings Lexie had read on the dock while Daniel worked on the computer or took calls. By late afternoon, Daniel put away his work and they putted around the lake in the boat, pausing to drift, kiss, have sex, eat. Each night before Lexie fell asleep, Daniel kissed her and said, “Good night future Mrs. Daniel Waite.” The old-fashioned use of
Mrs. Daniel Waite
was the kind of thing Lexie and Amy liked to knock and mock. But Daniel had been so earnest and Lexie was so in love that she never clicked on her critical apparatus. She had been drenched in perfect happiness: wanting nothing, needing nothing, only wishing for time to stand still.

“I forgot about your delicate panties.” Daniel dropped to his knees, lifted the bed skirt and peeked under the bed.

“Doesn't a cleaning lady come?”

“Twice a week.” He got up and arranged the bedding into a heap in the center of the mattress.

“Where was she this week?”

“Actually it's two guys, a couple. Jen canceled them because she wasn't sure how she'd explain us.”

“If anyone would understand it would be two gay guys, don't you think?”

“No, why?” Daniel visually checked the room from corner to corner.

“I don't know. They tend to be more open about nontraditional relationships.”

“Other than the fact that they're gay, these guys are pretty straight.” Daniel flung open the closet doors and looked around. “And conservative. They're friends from her church.”

“Gay, Catholic, conservative house cleaners?”

“There's every type of human out here on the lakes.” Daniel pushed the closet doors shut, came to Lexie and pulled her toward himself. He kissed her in a way that felt like flower petals in her face.

“Yeah, you're here,” Lexie said.

DANIEL LOCKED THE FRONT DOOR USING A KEY THAT WAS HIDDEN
under a fake rock in the front garden.

“You don't have your own key?” Lexie asked. They had never left the house as there had been enough food and wine for them to have stayed a month without replenishing the supplies.

“Nah. I gave her my keys when I moved out.” Daniel put Lexie's suitcase in her trunk and clicked it shut.

“Why? Doesn't she trust you?”

“She trusts me. I didn't want them anymore. It's her house.” Daniel opened the door to Lexie's car and stood there like a valet, waiting for her to get in.

He kissed Lexie one last time before she slipped into the car. She was parked at the center of the circular stone drive, directly in front of the house. Daniel's car was parked in front of hers. Lexie started the engine and pulled away, around Daniel's car. Before leaving the property, she looked in the rearview mirror. Daniel hadn't gone to his car. He was standing by the front door, looking down at the rock that hid the key. Lexie waved, but he didn't see.

LEXIE WAS IN A DREAM STATE AS SHE DROVE THE NEARLY EMPTY
highway back to Ruxton. She anticipated a difficult start to the week—her brain felt resistant to work, focus, productivity. Love, Lexie decided, was an ambition eraser. Or maybe contentedness erased ambition. You had to passionately desire more than you already had in order to endure a struggle toward lofty goals.

A Ben Folds song was on the radio. Lexie turned it up and sang along. Betsy Simms had loved Ben Folds in high school. When the song ended, the froggy-voiced woman deejay said, “It's ten minutes before twelve and the sun is shining down on Northampton—” Lexie slapped off the radio. She was supposed to be on campus by noon for the early post–spring break arrivals. Even at seventy miles an hour, she'd be twenty minutes late. Hopefully no one would notice.

At twelve thirty, Lexie dropped off her bag in the apartment and headed over to the dining hall. She scanned the room—it was half-empty as many students weren't returning until later in the day or early evening. There were two tables with faculty. One was full and the other had a single empty seat next to Janet Irwin (the last empty seat was always next to Janet Irwin). Lexie shored up her strength, crossed the room, and sat.

“You're late,” Janet said.

“I was in my office.” Lexie hated that Janet brought out the worst in her. Not only was Lexie lying, but she was snippy, too.

“I walked by your office on the way here and you weren't there.”

“We must have missed each other.”

“We've been discussing the MILF,” Lenny Bilkin said. He was a history teacher, a child-sized man with an old, hangdog face.

“What's the MILF?” Lexie looked at Janet and wondered if she knew what this acronym usually meant.

“Don't engage. They're being rude and unprofessional,” Janet said. Everyone around the table laughed.

Jim Reiger said, “It stands for Most Irritating Little Fucker.”

“Oh!” Lexie laughed. “So most irritating student?”

“Entirely unprofessional.” Janet's fork clanked against her plate as she stabbed up bites of salad. The sound reminded Lexie that she should eat, but she didn't want anything that was being served: meat lasagna, salad, vegetarian-looking pasta. There was a basket of French bread in the center of the table. Lexie grabbed a hunk, ripped off the crust and bit into the soft center.

“We're only having a little fun,” Lois Wallace whispered. Lexie was surprised she was playing this game. She was usually so docile and well behaved.

“So what'd'ya say, Lexie? Who would you name as the Ruxton MILF?” Jim Reiger was smiling widely. Lexie could see food in his mouth. She looked away from him, around the table.

“Who did everyone else say so far?”

Georgio Profant had picked Robbie Colton, who had once lobbed an orange from his lacrosse stick out the half-open window, shattering a pane of glass. Lois Wallace also picked Robbie because when she'd asked him to stop rocking back on his chair, he'd turned his tie and pretended to hang himself. Janet Irwin, predictably, refused to name the MILF, and the remaining four teachers at the table hadn't yet come up with one.

“So I can only name one?” Lexie asked.

“Yes,” Jim said. “Most. It has to be the Most—”

“Irritating Little Fucker,” Lois said, and she laughed. Lexie suspected she was laughing at herself for having been brave enough to say
fucker
aloud.

“Dot would love this game,” Lexie said, and everyone grew silent.

“Oh, I have mine!” Nancy Crantz said, breaking the moment of remembrance. “Kennedy Colson.”

“You people are horrible,” Janet said. “You need to stop this.” Nancy blushed and dropped her head.

“You know, I think Kennedy Colson would be mine, too.” Lexie was happy to save Nancy from her embarrassment. Kennedy was the only girl at Ruxton whom Lexie disliked. She had even tried to force herself into loving Kennedy.
Give love, give love, give love,
Lexie would think while waiting for Kennedy to finish whatever perfectly relevent thoughts she happened to be conveying in class.

“Seriously? Why?”

“You go first.” Lexie wanted to give Nancy permission to rip apart Kennedy Colson.

“No, you go. I want to hear your reason.” Nancy was the worst people-pleasing version of Lexie, a version that she had been trying to train out of herself since graduate school.

“If Dot were here,” Lois said, “she'd say something like
will one of you fuckers just go!”
Lois was on a roll. Lexie wondered if she were popping Klonopin or maybe was on beta blockers. She'd never been so outspoken before.

“I'm not sure why I don't like her.” Lexie was stalling. What she wasn't sure of was whether or not she should confess the reason she didn't like Kennedy. The girl was full of herself. At
seventeen! When there was no completely-formed self to be full of yet.

“She's a gorgeous girl,” Jim Reiger said. Everyone, including dog-faced Lenny Bilkin, shot him a look.

“They're all gorgeous at that age,” Lexie said.

Janet said, “This is disgusting.”

“Wait, why do you hate her?” Nancy asked.

“I don't hate her,” Lexie said. “But I do think she's the Most Irritating Little Fucker. She sits in my class and I have some cellular reaction to her.” That was all she'd say.

“Maybe it's because she's sleeping with Ethan Waite,” Jim Reiger said, “and he's your pet.”

“She's sleeping with Ethan?” Lexie was surprised by her internal revulsion. Why would Ethan sleep with a girl like that? Did he not want someone more human? Someone who had never dated Skyler Bowden (whom Amy had dubbed Patient Zero in the Ruxton Chlamydia Crisis)?

“I guess they're not getting their condoms from you,” Lois said, and everyone laughed.

“No, they're not,” Lexie said, not laughing. “And why do you think Ethan's my pet?”

“I see you joking with him,” Jim said. “You don't treat him like the other kids. You chat with him like he's one of the teachers.”

“He's more mature than the other kids,” Nancy said.

“Yeah, he is.” Lexie's face burned. She worried someone might intuit that the reason Lexie treated Ethan differently was because she was going to marry his father. She needed to push the conversation away from Ethan before someone sensed her discomfort. “Nancy, why do you think Kennedy's the MILF?”

“She acts like she's better than everyone and she kinda is, you know?” Nancy was looking directly at Lexie, who nodded in agreement. She knew exactly what Nancy meant. Kennedy's abundant confidence—which was backed by her abundant intellectual and physical gifts—could be too much for anyone with a self-critical voice in his or her head to bear. Kennedy Colson made Lexie feel irrelevant. For the insecure Nancy, the experience was probably worse.

“Something is terribly amiss with you people,” Janet said.

“How is she better than everyone?” Lois asked.

“She's prettier,” Nancy said. “She's smarter.”

“She's my favorite student,” Ben Whiteford said, shrugging. Ben was a schlubby, cardigan-sweater-wearing man. Lexie figured his favorites were arranged by grades: the better you did in his class, the more he liked you.

“She corrected my pronunciation of vestigial,” Nancy said.

“She's certainly going to be more successful than all of us,” Lexie said.

“As her goals and your goals are different, your successes and failures can't be compared,” Janet said. “And as far as her behavior on campus goes, she should be admired.”

Lexie couldn't help but note that in this particular instance Janet might be right.

The conversation switched to speculation about which kids might be sociopaths. The faculty were giddy with gossip and conjecture. It was a mood that hit every year when the end of the term—freedom—was in sight. As Lois rattled off the characteristics of the typical male sociopath (
they never confess so, like, if you find your sociopath boyfriend in bed with another woman he'll say he's getting a massage
. . . ) Lexie felt an almost-embarrassing flush of gratitude for
the differences between herself and the group: (1) She had never, and would never, be with anyone like the deranged men Lois had dated. (2) She wasn't sentenced to decades of the repetitive academic cycle. Once Daniel's divorce was final, Lexie would have a brand-new life. One that wouldn't end in a dormitory apartment with a 1980s dishwasher and a Crate and Barrel rug owned by the school.

THAT AFTERNOON, LEXIE AND AMY MET UP IN THE INFIRMARY. LEXIE
had wanted to report everything: how beautiful the lake house was; how great the sex at the lake house was; how in love she and Daniel were, at the lake house and now. But before she could get started, Amy launched into her own story. She was in love. And it appeared to be mutual.

“So, did you
not
do the sink-strainer gunk when you had an orgasm?” Lexie opened the top drawer of Amy's desk and looked for the Hershey's Kisses.

“They're here.” Amy opened a side drawer and handed a palmful to Lexie, who dumped them on the sickbed before hopping up to sit beside them.

“How did it all go down?” Lexie sucked a chocolate. Amy chewed one.

“I actually waited to have sex with him.” Amy picked through her hair as if she were fluffing it up.

“No!”

“Yup.”

“How long?”

“Second date.”

“Hey, for you that's an eternity.”

“And he's every bit as into this thing as I am. I think this one's gonna stick.” Amy unwrapped another chocolate and stuck it whole into her mouth.

“Details, y'all! Give me the details!” Lexie unwrapped another chocolate. She swore to herself this would be the last one. Although she did nothing to move away the handful that sat on the bed beside her.