Charming as a verb, p.18
Charming as a Verb, page 18
“How do I look? Halloween costume or badass firefighter?”
She’s still staring at herself, smiling as she holds on to the straps of the reflective trimmed overalls, in an undershirt.
“Unquestionably badass firefighter.”
“My wedding dress was borrowed,” she continues, folding the uniform with reverence. “This . . . I earned it, you know?” She catches my gaze in the mirror. “Ah! Pa gade mwin, Henri! Don’t look at me. It’s silly.”
“No, Ma,” I say. “Not silly at all.”
My skin feels like it’s crawling again.
“Anyway, reverie over,” she says, getting to work removing her boots. “I don’t need an offense on my files before even starting the job. Want to get started on dinner while I drop this back off at the station? How do mashed potatoes sound?”
“Um, good,” I say. “Hey, Ma? I left something at the Troys’ upstairs. I’ll be right back, okay?”
“Your girlfriend is traveling until Friday, right?”
I stop with my hand on the knob and whip my head back at her. “How?”
She rolls her shoulders. “I know I’ve been busy, but I’m not your father, fool,” she says, having more difficulty removing the second boot. “I know when my son gets his first girlfriend. You miss her?”
“I haven’t been keeping her, Corinne, a secret,” I say more defensively than intended. “It just didn’t . . . y’know . . . come up, I guess.”
“It’s okay.” She smiles. “My son is a private person. My husband too. No one at the station ever shuts up, ever, so it actually balances out pretty well for me.”
Her eyes narrow in on me with that motherly concern I can’t quite handle right now. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll . . . I’ll be right back, okay? Potatoes sound great. I’m proud of you, Ma!” I say, and slam the door before she has a chance to reply.
I take the stairs up to the top floor two by two, trying to beat some clock in my mind. I think back to those elementary school presentations when you talk about yourself in broad terms that don’t account for an inner life just yet. What’s your favorite color? Red. What is your favorite food? Fries. What do your parents do? My dad is the superintendent of our building, and my mom is a goddamn firefighter. This is now a fact of life.
Dad let his dream of jazz clubs and fame die somewhere along the way, but Ma made hers happen. It doesn’t matter what certificate she still needs to complete or the sick days she fudged at her last job to make time for the early days of the training program: that’s who she is now. At some point, she saw an opportunity, an opening, and jumped headfirst into it. She made her reality.
And that’s what I’m going to do.
I walk into the Troy apartment and pet Palm Tree, who seems confused to see me back so soon. Sorry, buddy; not right now. I quickly make my way to the desk, settle in, and open the laptop again with the reverence of a treasure box.
Pleasedon’tbepasswordprotectedPleasedon’tbepasswordprotectedPleasedon’tbepasswordprotected.
Ding.
Thank God. The computer comes out of sleep, and there are maybe half a dozen new email notices in Chantale Troy’s in-box since the last time I touched this device.
I technically have all the time in the world but do not wish to linger. More than anything, I want to be downstairs again, washing and peeling potatoes in our kitchen sink.
I first read a few professional emails that Chantale Troy has sent out over the past few weeks, quickly getting a sense of her writing style. She does not use contractions. There are no semicolons. Her sentences are short and to the point. She starts every new piece of correspondence with an I hope all is well, no matter how prosaic or dry the rest of the email reads.
I focus on the craft and the details and try not to think about the violation. Thankfully, there seems to be nothing personal in her email account. Only departmental exchanges, friendly correspondence with some students, and perfunctory ones with others.
After soaking up enough of it, I open a new email draft, locate the name of the person best suited for this request—Michael Connelly, Dean of Admissions—and quickly begin typing as Palm Tree stares me down from his doggy bed in the living room.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I say guiltily, earning me no reaction from the dog.
The email is easy enough to draft. It’s everything I had hoped Donielle Kempf would have said on my behalf.
I hope all is well! I wanted to bring your attention to a prospective student I recently met! Talented high schooler, inspiring to see, hard worker . . .
I avoid mentioning anything too specific, like FATE academics, or veering too far away from Chantale’s academic tone. This is an informal nudge with all the institutional power that the right elbow can convey. I sign it all off: With Regards, capitalized R.
When I’m done, I sit back and stare at the screen, my finger hovering over the Send button. This is wrong. I know that. Jumping over turnstiles to get into the subway. Opening people’s kitchen cabinets when returning their dogs in their absence. Falsifying a letter of recommendation to an Ivy League college from your girlfriend’s mom.
Wrong and illegal. Wrong and invasive. Wrong and illegal, invasive and gross.
But this whole world is wrong and unfair, isn’t it?
Sometimes, the only way to climb out is to realize that there are people you can use as steps. That’s what Lion had said, right?
Everybody else uses what they’ve been given. Some people have money; others have connections, influence, or ridiculous supercomputer brains that can get a perfect score on their SATs in the middle of a yawn. Worse still, they have second chances: another train of opportunity they can catch, just minutes behind the one they just missed. They’ll reapply after a gap year; they’ll go to Dartmouth and transfer in a year. They’ll afford grad school in four years.
I have only these, right now. This computer and this email. That’s all. And paper-thin walls through which I can hear Dad and Ma talk at night about my bright Columbia future. I’m not gambling the rest of my life on a single email I did not send.
SEND.
After a breath, I ignore the bile in my stomach and focus on steadying my hand from shaking, removing it from the mouse, one finger at a time. It’s done.
My mind reboots itself now on autopilot. I get to work clearing my digital fingerprints, deleting the email from the Sent folder. I then refresh, hoping for a quick reply from Michael Connelly so I can also delete that before Chantale sees it. The variation of a Thank you, I’ll keep an eye out on his file. A simple receipt of politeness that hopefully doesn’t allow for any back and forth.
I don’t think of Chantale Troy, the woman whose status and reputation I’ve wrongfully used for my benefit.
I don’t think about the invasion of this home that suddenly feels completely foreign to me again. I don’t think about Palm Tree now napping with his tongue out. I don’t think about Dad, Ma, or even Lion. I don’t think of the row of flash cards neatly assembled on a dresser a few dozen feet away, or of their owner.
I refresh over and over again, for what could be an hour or ten minutes, ready to sleep here if I have to until . . .
Hi, Chantale,
Henri sounds great! We’re down to the finish line in the upcoming class selection, but I will absolutely keep an extra eye out for the name. All the best, MC
Sent from my iPhone
Oh, my God. It worked. It’s not an in, but it’s close. Closer than I’ve ever been.
I delete the email before it can linger for a solitary second at the top of the in-box and again delete it from the Trash folder.
Later, I preheat the oven in our empty apartment, waiting for Ma and Dad to come home. I wash the potatoes, carefully peel them, and all the while think about Michael’s email.
This is what I’ve always wanted. I should be happy, right?
So then why do I feel nothing?
Twenty-Three
The little angel and devil on my shoulders—so loud and strident while I was typing that email yesterday—have now gone eerily quiet. They’ve relocated and are currently hanging upside down from my bedroom ceiling like bats, watching me without engaging. The two share a conspiratorial look whenever I’m about to fall asleep, jolting me back into full awareness, afraid of what they might be planning.
Upon closer inspection, the angel looks like . . . Greg? Or maybe Mr. Vu? A combination of the two. He’s dressed in coordinated suspenders, hat, and a loosened bow tie dangling from his neck.
The devil is completely nude and has features somewhere between those of Lion and Donielle Kempf. He occasionally throws me a wink. It’s an unsettling creature. But then again, I guess that’s the point.
I punch my pillow back into shape and wait for my eyelids to get heavier and heavier. Eventually, I snap awake when my morning alarm begins to wail and am simply left to stare at the blank bedroom ceiling again.
I don’t know if that qualifies as a nightmare, but yeesh, let’s not do that again.
I slip into my dog walking sneakers, put on the cleanest Uptown Updogs hoodie I can find, throw on a coat, and head out to collect Pogo from Mrs. Ponech’s first. Today, I leave my phone behind. I haven’t checked the Columbia portal once since yesterday.
After Pogo, I pick up Shadow, and we end up jogging for two full laps around our usual path, at full speed. Today, I manage to keep up with him and even feel like I could run another five miles after dropping him off. Running shuts off the brain, and my synapses are in dire need of shutting down. I swing by a pet store and spend twenty bucks on puppy toys for Palm Tree before heading to the Troys’. If it’s emotional bribery, the giddy border collie doesn’t read it as much. He’s thrilled at the sight of me. After a quick morning pee at the curb downstairs, he enthusiastically inhales his breakfast and loses his mind at the veritable zoo of “two for five dollars” polyester-stuffed animals I unleash at his feet.
I end up taking him out twice in as many hours, and we spend the rest of the morning going through clicker training exercises. We then play up a storm, running around the apartment chasing thrown toys like Daisy Buchanan thirsting for designer dress shirts.
“I’m the one who just got off an eight-hour flight,” comes a voice at the door. “Why are you the one who looks jet-lagged?”
Neither Palm Tree nor I are entirely sure what to say to the sight of Corinne—key in hand, jacket rumpled and hair inflated by the fact that it was probably last combed a continent away—but it takes less than two seconds for Palm Tree to dash forward, yapping, tripping into his own legs to go lean into her as if he hasn’t seen her in years and thought he never would again.
“I missed you so much, you absolute little monster,” she squeals, picking him up and cradling him like a baby. “All other dogs in the world are so basic, I can’t stand it!”
Usually the sight of Corinne would feel like home to me. But now it’s as if some frame that’s been off-kilter for the past five days has suddenly fallen and crashed to the floor in a million tiny pieces.
I watch her gnaw at Palm Tree’s neck, and his tail wags so hard that it knocks her scarf off. It takes another beat of pure puppy-owner delight before she extends me another look.
“Hi,” I say, stunned and not entirely sure that this isn’t the dastardly mind game the little devil and angel were silently concocting all night. “This, um, isn’t Switzerland.”
“There’s that expensive FATE education at work,” she says, putting Palm Tree down. “Have you not been sleeping? You really do look like hell.”
Never mind. No guilt fantasy at play here: this is the real Corinne.
“Why are you back so early? Is everything okay?” I say, wondering if she can see the guilt all over my face.
“Ta-da!” she proclaims, vexedly petting her hair down. She kicks off her shoes. “Mom’s panels were over after two days, and we had dinner together twice—twice!—with Marcel Carnis, this author she knew way back when and who was trying to get into her pants.”
“Corinne! Ew!”
“Well, he was! Kept saying how ‘dee-lightful’ I am. They were palpably horny for each other. By the end, I was pretending to be sick and spending the day on my own.”
“Okay . . . ,” I trail off, still unsure of so many things right now—not the least of which being Chantale and some international lover popping champagne in a hotel suite. “And?”
“And fine, whatever, I missed my boyfriend, all right!” she says. She has her chin up and defiant, her hands on her hips, daring me to say something. “And . . . and . . . I don’t know! I was just bored in a hotel. Museums are weird alone! People just keep trying to talk to you. Like having a vagina puts you in permanent need of a tour guide.”
“Please don’t say vagina.”
“Why? Vagina.”
She puts her boots together by the door as she talks and then bends down again and moves them two inches to the left and then back again. Why is she so nervous?
“We’re seniors,” she continues, and I can see the bullet points of some definite list being checked off in her mind as she goes through them. “And whatever happens, we—meaning you and I—don’t necessarily have that much time left in this current iteration of, well, life. And . . .”
“I missed you too.” I smile.
The thing about Corinne is . . . Well. It’s hard to pinpoint, exactly. She’s been so many things in such a short time. The intense girl sitting in the front row of classes, the neighbor who lived right upstairs, the blackmailer, the Uptown Updogs client, the social understudy, the friend, the college road trip planner, the Girlfriend.
I expect Corinne to be blunt and, at times, abrasive, to have a set of flash cards for absolutely everything, and to one day walk into Congress with a flawless suit and a pink beanie. She’s also passionate, awkward, and unpredictable, and it all amounts to something wonderful.
So it’s not surprising that when she steps forward and kisses me, everything else blurs into the background. I’m not sure which one of us nudges Palm Tree into his crate as she leads us both toward her empty bedroom. There’s no one in this entire apartment to stop us.
That’s the thing about Corinne. She could convince you she’s made entirely out of academic prowess and conviction. So much so that you’ll swear to the stars that there’s not even a speck of anything messy about her, and then she’ll be on top of you on a fluffy purple comforter, her curls loose around her flushed cheeks, leaving you absolutely reeling.
I did something, I say in our oxygen-deprived pauses, still standing close and breathing hard. I did something, and I’m so sorry. Or maybe I just think it really hard, hoping she’ll just guess and stop it all.
“I . . . ,” I say, pulling our faces apart. “Corinne, wait—”
“I have condoms!” she says abruptly, reaching for a drawer by the side of the bed. “I’ve had them for a while.”
“What?!”
She laughs and shakes her head. “You’re going to make a puritan-ass father one day . . . but that day is definitely not nine months from now and definitely not through my cervix. So that condom is nonnegotiable, pal. I also have lube, three kinds, actually.”
“Cor . . .”
“There’s no shame in needing lube, Haltiwanger. It’s not just for the guy.”
Everything about this feels off. Or actually it feels exactly like a conversation about sex with Corinne might go, but God, why today of all days?
“Why do you think I came home?” she says, suddenly right up against me, slipping her arms around my waist. “Empty apartment, parent an ocean away . . . You can’t tell me this isn’t a golden opportunity. Get creative, Haltiwanger!”
Her voice is giddy and teasing. I know that tone. Anyone who’s ever watched a television show with two chiseled twenty-four-year-olds pretending to be teenagers in a room alone knows that tone. If this had happened before Switzerland, I would have been the happiest guy in the world. But Chantale’s computer being so close feels like some sick Tell-Tale Heart mocking me from the other room.
“Corinne, I don’t know. . . .”
“Y-you don’t want to?”
“No!”
In half a second her face crumbles, actually crumbles, before instantly rebuilding itself more closed off than before, and I hate to have caused that.
“I mean, no, I don’t not want to,” I sputter. “Because I would! And I do. It’s just . . .”
Fuck, she actually looks embarrassed right now. I can’t let her think that I wouldn’t do . . . that with her. Because, Jesus, I would. At the drop of a hat. On a subway. Like, physically on top of a moving subway. Why is this happening today?
“I just . . . I don’t think it’s the right time.”
“Oh. I just thought . . . Okay.”
“I mean, you just got back! You’re probably tired, and . . . I want it to be perfect. When it happens.”
She nods. “No, no. I get it.”
We sit in silence for a while. Her hands are on her knees and her shoulders tighten as if she’s in some horrible waiting room she wants to escape.
“Corinne, I really don’t want you to think that it’s in any way you.”
“I don’t. You know, I should probably unpack some stuff. . . .” She turns away, clearly trying to break the uncomfortable energy in the room.
“Oh, right. Okay,” I say, pulling myself off the bed, trying not to be too relieved at the dismissal. “Text me later? Please.”
“Yeah,” she says.
She walks me to the front door and stares at me for a moment. Her face isn’t betraying any emotion, which for someone as expressive as Corinne feels like the biggest tell possible that this is all profoundly fucked.
I eventually give her a peck on the cheek.
“I’m glad you’re back,” I reiterate. “You have no idea.”
She smiles, sheepish and uncertain, but at least it’s a smile. I head back to my place, somehow feeling even worse today than I did yesterday.
