If We Lived Here (2 page)

The kitchen sink swelled with the remains of last night’s stir-fry, and Emma, for the first time feeling sullen over her lack of a dishwasher, set about tackling the dishes. As she soaped and scrubbed, her forehead gleaming with sweat, she dreamed of her new home in Brooklyn, where she and Nick would likely live come October first, just five short weeks away.

Chapter
2

G
enevieve poked her head into Emma’s office. “Hey, Feit, your ten a.m.’s here.” Genevieve straightened out the
1, 2, 3 . . . Ivies!
button that she was required to wear on her lapel, and winked, like this whole receptionist gig was a joke. Emma had helped Gen land the job a few months ago after Gen had once again declared she’d given up on acting. Genevieve claimed she was filling out applications for nursing school, but Emma guessed her friend would return to auditioning within the year, as she always had shortly after previous “I’m through!” declarations.

“Thanks, Gen.”

“If you need anything—faxes, Post-its, sexual favors—you know where to find me.” She batted her eyelashes, and Emma chucked a pencil at her. “Hey, no need to get feisty. I’m leaving.”

Emma flipped through the dossier on her new client—male, Tribeca born and bred, enrolled at Stuyvesant. As always, she hoped that only the student would show, but 90 percent of the time the parents flanked their child like twin parasites, primed to run the show and suck most of the life out of their kid. This appointment proved to be no exception, as Emma rose to greet the boy and saw that both Hellis were accounted for. (“Helli” was Emma’s shorthand for Mom or Dad, a cross between “Helicopter Parent” and “hell-raiser.”) Dad looked business casual in a button-down but no tie, and Mom wore an eighties-style power suit, dragging Son along like a timid puppy. The boy, a head taller than his parents but still prepubescent, was all limbs in an oversized T-shirt he probably wished he could disappear into.

“You must be the Spencers. Please take a seat. I’m Emma Feit, and I’ll be your college advisory counselor, prepared to hold Paul’s hand through every step of the admissions process. Soon you’ll be off to the university of your dreams.” Usually Emma blew off this introductory stump speech, but when her door was open and she sensed her boss nearby, she went for it. “One note before we begin: I seem to be missing Paul’s high school transcripts and PSAT scores.”

“Oh, Paul is just entering his freshman year.” This from Mom, tap-tap-tapping her sling-back heel against a well-muscled calf. “We figured we’d get a bit of a jump on the process.” The boy smiled meekly.

“I see.” Emma had learned that when it came to their kids’ success, nothing was too crazy for Manhattan parents. That very morning she’d received a voicemail asking if she’d be willing to tutor a girl during her track practice, providing she could keep up with an eight-minute mile. So if these Hellis wanted their son to run SAT practice drills for the next three and a half years, who was Emma to deny herself all the billable hours?

“The Yorks gave you glowing reviews. They told us your nickname was Eight, since you got into all the Ivies. Very clever.” Mrs. Spencer said this like it was her own witticism, and Emma resisted an eye-roll. Her boss, Quinn, had pried this info out of Emma during her interview at
1, 2, 3 . . . Ivies!
Even after Emma insisted she’d benefited from some lucky admissions fluke, Quinn had burdened her on the spot with the so-called nickname. “Although I wondered, after reading your bio, why on earth would you choose Brown over Harvard or Yale?” This woman was worse than Emma’s own mother.

“Honey, come on.” Mr. Spencer offered Emma an apologetic look.

“That’s all right,” Emma said. “Brown has an excellent Linguistics department. At the time I hoped to pursue a Ph.D. in World Languages. But here I’ve landed, and now I can help Paul get into any school he wants, then he can disappoint you guys by picking the wrong one, just like I have.” There—the first inkling of a smirk from the boy. Emma was in. She’d explain to them all of their options, from the Basic Package of SAT and Essay Skills, to the Deluxe Deal that included Interview Prep, Extracurricular Bolstering, Personality Development, Social Media Training, and more. The Hellis would spring for the works, of course. And because Emma had shown with her quip that she was on Paul’s and not his parents’ side, he’d leave slightly less terrified than he’d been when he walked in, and he’d reluctantly agree to go Deluxe. Done and done—and all before eleven a.m.

On cue at five before the hour, Genevieve appeared in the door-frame. “Ms. Feit, your next clients have arrived.” Emma was booked back-to-back today. The cusp of the school year was the busy season.

“In hot demand, I see,” Mrs. Spencer said, clutching her purse. “I guess we’ll have to carve out some of your precious time before it’s all snatched up.”

“Wonderful to meet you.” Emma shook all three hands—Mom’s a death grip, Dad’s and Son’s both like putty—and guided them out of her office.

Emma’s next client, Sophia Cole, sat cross-legged on the waiting room floor, drawing. Emma’s view of the sketchpad was blocked, but from the way Sophia kept not-so-slyly glancing up at the set of Hellis and Son seated opposite her, all in crisp Ralph Lauren polos, Emma guessed the trio was involuntarily sitting for a family portrait.

“Sophia, so nice to see you.” Emma greeted every client with some version of this statement, but she actually meant it with Sophia Cole. Sophia had been seeing her for the past six months, ever since she got a 600, the lowest possible score, on the SATs. Her first session, Sophia had slunk into Emma’s office on her own, sans Hellis. Besides telling Emma that her mother had threatened to take away her art supplies if she didn’t show up, she’d refused to speak. But Emma had suspected from the start that she was not dealing with a moron; quite the opposite. After a few futile attempts to engage the girl, Emma had let her be with her pad and pencil. With five minutes left of the session, Emma had tried again: “So, what happened during the test?” Sophia, eyeing her warily, had slid over her notepad: In beautifully rendered detail was an illustration of a middle-aged man in a leather jacket and fedora, a cigarette dangling from his sneer; below that, the same man was pictured, now naked, penetrating a buxom woman from behind; at the bottom of the page, the man was shown curled up on the ground, lying in a pool of blood.

Emma had guessed Sophia expected a disapproving reaction, but she’d said simply, “You’re quite the artist.”

“Dad be a bad cad. Bed a babe. Dad dead.”

“Excuse me?”

The girl repeated herself: “Dad be a bad cad. Bed a babe. Dad dead.”

Emma had glanced back at the drawing, then up at Sophia, whose eyebrows were arched with satisfaction. Then Emma burst into laughter. “So that’s how you answered the multiple choice, D-A-D B-E A B-A-D C-A-D, et cetera, right? Clever. I mean quite dumb, but clever, too. Your mom mentioned something about the proctor confiscating a picture.” In fact, Emma had realized, it took nearly as much skill to get zero answers correct as it took to get them all right.

Sophia’s eyes had glinted, and Emma had known they’d get along thereafter. She’d passed the girl’s test, plus Sophia seemed like the type of teen Emma wished she’d had the guts to be back in high school. Since that first session, Sophia had agreed to complete just one practice exam, and she’d scored perfectly, proving she probably needed a shrink, not Emma. But at Mrs. Cole’s insistence, Emma was charged with convincing Sophia that college was key to life success. Because she liked the girl, Emma had agreed to the mission, playing halfhearted ambassador to the illustrious life of a university coed.

Now Sophia looked up from the waiting room floor and angled her drawing to face Emma. Pictured on the page were three cartoon wasps, all in matching polo shirts and accessorized—a strand of pearls for the female wasp, a Rolex for the male, and a golf club for the child. Despite being insects, the drawings bore strong resemblances to the human trio sitting across the room.

“Get it?” asked Sophia. “White Anglo-Saxon—”

“Yeah.” Emma cut her off, eyeing the family anxiously. “Okay, troublemaker, let’s go. I want to tell you about this really interesting program at RISD.”

“Feit,
psst!
” It was Genevieve, beckoning from the front desk. Emma wondered if her friend had glimpsed Sophia’s caricatures or overheard their exchange.

“Meet you in a minute,” Emma said to Sophia, then approached Gen. “What’s up?”

“So what, do you have a stalker now?”

“Excuse me?”

“I got a call from a, let’s see”—she flipped through her messages dramatically, wrinkling her forehead as if she was about to report on a client’s poor SAT scores—“a Mrs. Caroline. She claimed to be a landlady, but sounded more like a psychopath. So when she asked for your boss I just pretended to be Quinn.” Gen began impersonating the CEO’s raspy voice and overly articulated vowels, which made Emma laugh. “Why does she need to know how tidy you keep your office, your day-to-day mood patterns, and—what was it?—whether I predict you’ll still be working here ten years down the line?”

“Ten years?”
Emma couldn’t help the outburst. The thought of still doing this job a decade from now made her imagine a leap from their twelfth-floor office; come 2022, Manhattan parents would probably start signing up their kindergarteners for
1, 2, 3 . . . Ivies!
Plus, Emma had trouble committing to plans more than a week in advance, never mind a decade; she liked to keep her options open.

“Tell me about it. So who is this Caroline lady?”

“She actually is who she says. And her apartment is beyond incredible.”

“So incredible that you’d put up with her as your landlady?”

“Yep.”

“And what does that dreamy boyfriend of yours think of this Mrs. Caroline?”

“Nick agrees. Trust me, this is the place for us.”

“All right, then. By the way, I told her I’m considering signing you up for
Hoarders
and that you’re
this
close to getting fired.”

“Gee thanks, Gen. You’re a gem.”

“By the way, that family out there is your twelve o’clock. That kid’s some kind of football legend at Horace Mann, but his grades are appalling. The parents want him in tutoring six days a week.”

“Oy, did you tell them we’re closed weekends? And that they don’t need to arrive more than an hour early?”

“Hey, I just answer the phones.” Gen smiled mischievously. Emma appreciated that her friend had the ears of a bat; she was a pro at eavesdropping on the waiting room chatter while pretending to look busy. If she ever returned to the stage, she’d kill it playing some snooty Manhattan mom or spoiled city kid; she’d done extensive field research. “Now up you go, off to work.”

“Sophia’s probably pulling a Michelangelo as we speak, painting a mural on my ceiling.”

“Better go nip that in the bud. I’m not sure the WASPs would appreciate nude art in your office.” So then she had seen Sophia’s drawing—what a sneak.

“On it.” Emma scurried down the hall, pumped for her weekly spar session with the sullen girl genius.

 

Nick examined his scrawling on the chalkboard, lamenting the fact that his handwriting looked about as grown-up as his fifth graders’:

 

 

If only everyone everywhere followed these rules,
Nick thought,
the world would be a much happier place.
Not that his classroom was any kind of utopia—he shuddered to imagine what kind of curveballs would come at him this year. Ten-year-olds who still peed their pants? Boys and girls trying to figure out how sex worked, firsthand in the supply closet? Parents complaining that certain units—dinosaurs, the Civil War, fractions, you name it—were incompatible with their religion or politics? In his twelve years of teaching, Nick had weathered it all. Still, it was gratifying for him to establish a set of rules at the outset and at least aim to build a genuine community.

Nick had asked all the parents of his incoming class to send photos of their kids during a happy moment—photos that he was now tacking up over each name. Last year Nick had participated, too, posting a picture of Emma and him paddle-boarding in Costa Rica. They’d spent most of that vacation laid out on the beach reading aloud to each other, she from
Pride and Prejudice
(decent, if a little dry) and he from
Lord of the Rings
(mind-blowing, even the third time); that was Nick’s happy place. But his students had ribbed him mercilessly about the girl in the blue bikini, chanting during chaotic moments, “Mr. O’Hare and his girlfriend sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G . . .” Then Nick would have to become a taskmaster, a role he hated, and point the kids back to Rule #1. Eventually he’d taken down the photo and was thankful that none of the kids seemed to notice.

“What next, Mensa?” Nick poked a finger into the cage and tapped the gerbil’s furry head. He wondered how the little guy would adjust to the new batch of kids who would come storming in the following week. Mensa began spinning wildly in his wheel.

“I know, it’s a thrill,” said Nick. “Another year, another fresh start.” The wheel’s squeaking didn’t bother Nick, but it drove Emma bonkers. He kept Mensa at home over the summer, and even from the other end of the apartment with a cloth over the cage, Emma complained that the wheel’s turning kept her up at night. Nick was relieved that their cohabitation would coincide with the start of the school year, when students would take turns pet-sitting the gerbil on nights and weekends.

Nick scanned his classroom, and decided to set out the seeds and soil and paper cups that the kids would need for the bean plant experiment. It was amazing, really, how varying the rate of watering or the amount of sunlight made such a difference: a lush, healthy plant beaming in the sun, versus its gangly, shriveled counterpoint languishing in the shade. Science was awesome.