Diving In (3 page)

“You can’t keep doing this, Ansel. Fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money.”

His parents never liked to spend money on themselves, even with millions in the bank. He knew that reasonably pointing out the minuscule percentage of fifty thousand out of the entire bonanza that was the family treasure chest would not impress his father’s sense of financial modesty.

“Jordan’s a great chef,” Ansel said. “This restaurant is going to be awesome.”

“Good for him.”

“He’s keeping it small to start, but I bet you, within ten years, his place is going to be famous.” Ansel looked around the tiny space, not smelling the latex paint but conjuring up the aroma of garlic, Asian spices, searing meat, roasting vegetables, wonderful things. “No—five years.”

“If it is, it’ll be because of the work
he
puts into it, not you. It’ll be because he stuck with something, kept his nose down, saw it through.”

“I agree,” Ansel said, his voice low.

“When are
you
going to show that kind of commitment to something?”

Ansel held his breath. He wished he hadn’t said anything. He wished he hadn’t answered the phone.

“Ansel?” his father prompted.

He swallowed. “I told you, I’m—”

“Or to someone?” His father’s heavy sigh buffeted his ear. “I had two kids by the time I was your age.”

He and Rachel had been born a few weeks before their father’s thirtieth birthday. “Barely,” Ansel said with a forced laugh, “and we were twins. Doesn’t really count.”

“Oh, you count. That’s why I have to do this. I should’ve done it years ago.”

Ansel’s bad feeling got worse. “Dad, I really should be going. I’ve got four walls and three doors to paint before—”

“I’m cutting you off.”

Ansel stopped breathing.

“Did you hear me?” his father asked.

Hot burning shame washed over him. It was a few seconds before he could speak. “I assume you’re talking financially? Or are you chucking me out of the family altogether?”

“Don’t be hurt. I don’t enjoy doing this.”

The tightening in his throat disgusted him. “I’m not hurt,” Ansel said. He shouldn’t have been surprised. The things he could’ve done over the years with that money instead of giving it away, the luxuries and trips he could’ve indulged in, but no—nothing he did was ever good enough for Kevin Jarski. “I’m bummed you don’t seem to care about the same things I care about.” There, that was honest. He wasn’t going to lie, or beg, or get angry.

“Who could keep up with what you care about? I don’t have the slightest idea, between the dog walkers, the restaurants, the hopeless tech startups—and all those messed-up girlfriends of yours, one after the other, none of them sticking around for more than a year.” His father sighed again. “And those were just the women I knew about. I can’t imagine how many there were between the
serious
ones you introduced to us.”

Ansel could hear the air quotes over the phone. “I haven’t found the right person yet. I’m still in my twenties—”

“Barely,” his father said, throwing Ansel’s own word back at him. “In nine months you’ll turn thirty and realize what a waste you’re making of your life. It’s much harder when you’re older to get serious about something important.”

Ansel raised his voice, letting the anger pour out of him. “I’m not wasting my life.” Rachel put down the roller and came over to stand next to him. Always nice to have a twin to ride shotgun in a crisis. “I’m good at starting things,” he continued. “That’s what I do. I help people launch businesses, go after their dreams.”

Rachel squeezed his arm.

“That’s a copout, Ansel,” his father said. “You’re patting yourself on the back, but the truth is you leave all the hard work to other people.”

“I’m not patting myself on the back. I’m explaining how I’m not a total waste of a human being.”

“Of course you’re not. You have loads of potential.” His father cleared his throat. “I know it doesn’t look that way right now, but I’m doing this because I love you. I know you can do better.”

“Thanks, Dad. Nothing is more comforting than hearing you say that,” Ansel said bitterly. “Just tell me, how much money do I have to make before you believe I’m living up to my potential? When I pay back the fifty thousand? Or do I need seven figures to prove myself, like Grandma Jury did?”

“It’s not about money,” his father said, his voice rising, as if Ansel’s reminder about getting
his
money from his mother-in-law had hit home. “It’s about commitment. To a person, a cause, a craft—like Rachel is with art. It’s not about the almighty dollar.”

“Let me talk to him,” Rachel said, reaching for the phone. She hated when they argued.

Heart pounding, Ansel shook his head and moved out of reach. If it wasn’t about the almighty dollar, then why was it such a big deal he’d never made enough of them? “I think it is. I think you’re ashamed of how important money is to you. I think you still feel guilty for ever telling us we were rich.” He ran a hand through his hair, recently buzzed short at Supercuts. The cut had exposed a shocking amount of prematurely—obviously it was premature, he was still twenty-nine, wasn’t he?—gray hair mixed in with the black. “You think it spoiled us.”

“Not your sister,” his father said. “Just you. It spoiled
you
.”

Ansel’s heart seemed to stop beating. He lowered the phone, waiting for normal functioning to return. After a full five seconds, still unsure he was all right, he returned the cell to his ear. “Well. I’m glad to know where I stand.”

His father’s voice softened. “It wouldn’t be fair to spring this on you without a grace period, so you can have a few months to draw from your favorite account, what’s left of it, but absolutely, after your birthday, no more. That’ll be it. The flow of cash is being diverted.”

“I don’t need it. I don’t want it.”

“Don’t be like that,” his father said. “You’ll need something to get started. And if you have long-term plans that lead somewhere, like graduate school, then of course we can talk about the money again.”

“I need to go now.”

“Ansel—”

“Good-bye.”

His father sighed. “Give my love to Rachel. Now
that
girl knows what she’s doing.”

Ansel had to hang up on him. It was that or drop his phone into the paint can.

He thought he
had
known what he was doing.

Hand shaking, he picked up the roller and began to blindly paint the walls.

Maybe the problem was that it wasn’t enough.

And never would be.

Chapter 2

T
HE
FOLLOWING
M
AY
,
EIGHT
MONTHS
after letting her heart get crushed under the boot of Miles and Lucy’s happiness, Nicki was still a work in progress.

The senior stylists at an exclusive salon had cut and colored her hair. The oversized hoodies and faded jeans had gone into a bin at Goodwill. An employee at Nordstrom’s, after measuring her in a cavernous dressing room scented with lavender, had fit her into five new bras that cost a week’s salary but felt like heaven, and now her breasts floated like astronauts.

To top it off, she’d had LASIK eye surgery and no longer wore the glasses she’d had since she was five. Glasses were a lot cooler than they used to be, but she wanted the transformation to be as comprehensive as possible.

Yet, even after all that, as beautiful as she ever was going to get, she was still alone.

Weren’t makeovers supposed to change lives? In movies, the newly beautiful woman had fresh confidence and attracted men like bees on shit. Honey. Either way, it wasn’t happening. The biggest compliment she’d received after her transformation was from Kennedy Madison, the prettiest thirteen-year-old in class, who told her, enthusiastically, that she looked younger than Kennedy’s mom did. Given that Nicki had just turned thirty, and Kennedy’s mom was pushing fifty, this didn’t have the intended impact.

Regardless of her appearance, she was still Ms. Fitch, seventh-grade history teacher and director of today’s mummification.
 

“Ms. Fitch! Noah wants to be the dead guy,” one of her students shouted from the front of her classroom where he sprawled on his back over three desks shoved together. “You said I could be the pharaoh.”

Nicki plugged in the stereo for the eerie music she’d be playing in a minute. “Noah, if Carl wants to have his brains sucked out of his nose, wouldn’t you like to help?” When she turned out the overhead lights, thirty-two thirteen-year-olds burst into giggling and whispers. “Let the mummification begin,” she intoned into the semidarkness.

The kids didn’t care if her breasts floated like helium balloons under her trendy blouse; it was Egypt Day, the biggest day of the year. The tradition she’d created six years earlier was already legendary. When her former students visited her, they often mentioned the mummification demo as the highlight of seventh grade.

Two girls and one boy, white sheets wrapped around their T-shirts and jeans, paraded to the front of the classroom. They gathered around Carl, who laid face-up on a folding table, bug-eyed and open-mouthed. Carl, who had told her he hated school, had spent six hours drawing an extra map of the Nile to earn the role of important dead guy.

Other students flicked on the battery-operated candles and aimed video cameras while parents, those who could get away from work or other children, lined up along the back wall to watch the show.

Furtively, pretending to take a picture with her phone, Nicki checked her email.

She couldn’t help herself. Today she’d find out who won Rachel Jury-Jarski’s Hawaiian condo for the summer. Maui, all summer, for free. A chance to break out of her comfort zone. On an island in the Pacific, she’d have no choice but to grow and change.

“Stop laughing,” the priest told the dead pharaoh, pulling Nicki’s attention back to the classroom. “You’re dead.”

“Ava,” Nicki prompted.

The middle girl, snickering over the body, held up a wire. “First we remove the brain.” She pretended to shove the wire up the dead body’s nose, and ignoring the impossible thrashing of the corpse, hooked a plastic brain under the table, pulled it up, and chucked it across the room. “We throw that in the garbage.”

While the room burst into laughter, Nicki checked Rachel’s Facebook page.

They hadn’t seen each other in a year or two, but back in college they’d been fairly close, and they had connected online. Thank God, because when Rachel announced last week that she was giving away the condo to the friend who posted the best joke on her page, Nicki was
there
.

But still no news. It was already eleven. Rachel had promised to announce the winner today. The wait was killing her.

“The other organs are preserved for the afterlife,” Carl said, holding up a jar. “The heart is the most important. They believed it was responsible for thinking, feeling, the soul, all that crap.”

Lined up along the back wall, the parents laughed.

It
is
crap,
Nicki thought. It had been months since she’d seen Miles with his fiancée, but she felt the pain of that moment in her chest, not her cranium.

She needed to get away. Far away, for more than a weekend, to reinvent herself. Away from her job, her students, her friends, her family—everything that kept her frozen as she was.

“After we stuff the body with spices, we have to wait for everything to dry out,” Carl said. “The whole process takes seventy days. Only rich and important people can afford it.”

Nicki nodded, scrolled over to the camera app on her phone, and snapped a picture. Transformation was expensive. She started to peek at her email again before making herself shove the phone in her pocket.

She had to focus on the show. The kids were pretending to stuff and anoint the body now, and Noah stumbled over his lines about amulets and perfumes while Ava tried to wrap the body in white streamers Nicki had picked up at the party store.

“It’s a wrap!” Nicki declared when they descended into hopeless silliness, clapping to let the parents know the show was over. She nodded to Mackenzie to turn on the lights, and soon the kids were all taking their bows, posing for parents, and throwing the removed organs around the room.

Just as she was shaking hands with the stars and congratulating their parents, her phone vibrated in her pocket.

Her fingers twitched, aching to pull it out, but she really couldn’t. Not yet. A few minutes to get rid of the parents, a few more until the period ended, and then she’d have a break.

“I just wanted you to know how much Noah loves your class,” a dad said to her. He was a handsome guy in a geeky, outdoorsy kind of way, just the sort of man Nicki thought would be perfect for her; but obviously he preferred Noah’s mom, who was pretty with fake eyelashes and teeth as white as the streamers dangling from the mummy’s narrow shoulders.

“Thank you,” Nicki said. “That’s great to hear. He did a great job.”

The phone vibrated again.

“I don’t know how you manage it,” another mom said.

Fisting her hands to resist the temptation in her pocket, Nicki smiled and tried to concentrate on the woman’s face. She bore a strong resemblance to the giggling corpse—sandy hair, little nose, big lips. Holding out her hand, Nicki said, “Carl jumped at the chance to participate. He did a great job.”

“I don’t hear that very often,” the mom said. “You’re the only teacher he likes.”

It was hard to think of a diplomatic reply without insulting the other teachers, many of whom were her friends. “He’s a pleasure to have in class.” Nicki glanced at the clock. “All right, class, hug a random parent and let them get out of here. Time to clean up the body parts and have some lunch.”

The parents meandered out of the room in an agonizingly slow fashion, obviously not like their children who, even allegedly liking her class, bolted out the door every day as if candy bars and dollar bills were falling from the sky.