The Interestings (33 page)

“What were that couple’s names?” Jules asked Dennis. “The portfolio manager and the literacy volunteer. The ones I interrogated, and who didn’t give a shit about us or even ask us anything at all. The prick and the cunt.”

“The prick and the cunt?” said Dennis, laughing. “Whoa, listen to you. Their names were . . . Duncan and Shyla, I think.”

“Right!” said Jules. “We should let Ash and Ethan go be with Duncan and Shyla, and not make them feel that they have to stick with me, with
us
. The difference between our lives is humiliating, I see that now. Remember the day at the Strand?”

A few weeks earlier, Dennis and Jules had lugged several shopping bags full of books on the subway to the enormous, raw-spaced, famous Strand bookstore, where you could sell your used books. No matter how much you brought in, Dennis said, it always seemed as if they gave you fifty-eight dollars, but even that was enough to make it worthwhile. Fifty-eight dollars in your pocket made you feel a little bigger. As they struggled to drag their bulging, partly ripping shopping bags down the street into the bookstore, they came upon Ash and Ethan, arms linked, headed to the bookstore to browse. “Hey, where are you going?” Ash had said in pleasure when they saw one another. “We’ll help you.”

“Yes, we’ll help you,” Ethan said. “I have an hour max, and then I have to go to work. I’m playing hooky now; they’re waiting for me to show up.”

“They’re waiting for you?” said Jules. “Don’t keep them waiting to help us bring our books to the Strand. I mean, that’s ridiculous.”

“But I want to,” he said. “I’m dreading going in today. There’s a scene that no one knows how to fix. I’d rather be at the Strand with you guys.”

So they’d had to endure Ash and Ethan helping them navigate their bags of books into the store, and then insisting on standing on line with them amid all the other people selling their own books. There was a junkie couple on that line, a bedraggled, practically chimney-sweep-filthy man and woman whose teeth chattered and whose bony, ruined arms shook while they held their clearly stolen coffee-table books with titles like
Mies van der Rohe: An Appreciation
. That day at the bookstore, on line with the junkies, was so quietly humiliating that Jules hadn’t brought it up again to Dennis. But now that she had, he said quietly, “It wasn’t a big deal.”

“Yes, it was,” said Jules. “Thinking back on it now, with this new perspective because of the list in the magazine, it feels to me as if they saw us selling our blood.”

“They would be really shocked to hear this,” Dennis said. “Isn’t Ash your closest friend? Isn’t Ethan your favorite male person—other than me?”

“Yes,” Jules said. “But the more I imagine things changing for them, the more I know they would just keep insisting they haven’t changed in substance. When Ethan tries to pay for meals, I see now that it’s just because he doesn’t want to embarrass us by letting us know the truth.”

“And what is the truth?” asked Dennis. He took his foot back, suddenly done with being touched by her.

“That in a few years he will probably never have to think about his own income again. That he will be able to do exactly what he wants forever. It’s already begun to happen. And Ash will be able to do what she wants too.”

“Yes, probably,” Dennis agreed. “Because of him.”

“Right. Him and his power. Him and his money. I would bet anything that in a few years Ash breaks through in her career too. She won’t have to distract herself with a million weird little theater projects anymore.” Ash’s résumé resembled those of hundreds of young women five years out of Ivy League schools—women who wanted to go into “the arts,” and were waiting for the perfect jump-rope moment when “the arts,” that nebulous place, became accessible to them. Through her connections from childhood and Yale and the city, Ash continued to take low-paying or no-paying jobs in theater whenever she could, directing a series of one-acts at a depressing nursing home, putting together a performance piece with a few college friends called
Commuters
right in the middle of Grand Central Terminal, while actual commuters, annoyed, had to walk around them to get to their trains. But these jobs were only occasional, and all the while Ash was making notes about feminist performances she wanted to direct—a contemporary
Lysistrata
, an evening devoted to the playwright Caryl Churchill—and reading long, demanding books of Russian theater theory, and living extremely well, without discouragement or financial anxiety.

“You have no way of knowing where she’ll be professionally in a few years,” said Dennis.

“I do know.” It was as though Jules possessed a new clarity she’d lacked until now. She understood that it had never just been about
talent
; it had also always been about money. Ethan was brilliant at what he did, and he might well have made it even if Ash’s father hadn’t encouraged and advised him, but it really helped that Ethan had grown up in a sophisticated city, and that he had married into a wealthy family. Ash was talented, but not all
that
talented. This was the thing that no one had said, not once. But of course it was fortunate that Ash didn’t have to worry about money while trying to think about art. Her wealthy childhood had given her a head start, and now Ethan had picked up where her childhood had left off.

“I feel horrible saying this,” Jules said to Dennis. “I love her and she’s my best friend and she’s very dedicated, and she does the reading and puts in the time, and she’s legitimately interested in the feminist aspect. But isn’t it true that there are a lot of other people who are talented at the same exact level, and they’re all slaving away? She’s got some good ideas. But is she great at directing? Is she the theatrical equivalent of Ethan? No! Oh, God will strike me dead right now.”

Dennis looked at her and said, “Your nonexistent God, Ms. Atheist Jew? I doubt it.” He walked into the kitchen, and she followed him. The sink was piled high with plates from last night’s Chinese takeout, and Dennis wordlessly poured yellow liquid soap over the whole mess, and picked up a ragged sponge. He was now apparently going to hand wash all their dishes and stuff them precariously into the drying rack, performing a task that would further illustrate the disparity between them and Ethan and Ash. Jules wondered if Dennis was doing this on purpose.

“Ash doesn’t have greatness, I don’t think,” Jules said over the water. “And she might not even need it. I always thought talent was everything, but maybe it was always money. Or even
class
. Or if not class exactly, then connections.”

“You’re just realizing this now?” Dennis asked. “Haven’t you been seeing examples of it everywhere in the world?”

“I’m a slow learner.”

“No you’re not.”

“I bet she’s even going to have her own theater in a few years, devoted to promoting the work of women,” said Jules. “The Ash Wolf Athenaeum.”

“Her own theater? You’re a demented individual,” said Dennis. “Here, dry some of these. There’s no room to put them all on the rack.” He held a plate out to her and she took it and grabbed a dish towel, which felt slightly grimy, almost oily. If she dried the plate with this, they would find themselves trapped in not quite cleanliness. Suddenly she wanted to cry.

“Dennis,” said Jules. “Let’s leave these dishes and just go out somewhere.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Let’s just go out walking or something. Let’s do one of those New York things that are free and that make you happy when you’re feeling discouraged.”

Dennis studied her, his arms deep in the sink, and then slowly he lifted them out, dripping, and unstopped the drain. Water was pulled out with an obscene slurp, and Dennis wiped his hands on the sides of his pants and came forward to collect Jules against him. He smelled of lemon Dawn, and she probably smelled of whatever chemical was released when you became bitter. “Don’t be discouraged,” he said. “We have a lot of good things. We’re here in our little love nest. Okay, our crappy little love nest. But we’re here.” It touched her that he’d said this. “You are unbelievably nice to me, even when I’m like this. It’s just very hard for me,” she told him, “when I realize we’re at such a different place from them. I knew I wasn’t going to make it in acting, finally. I knew I had to stop trying out for all those plays. It wasn’t just what Yvonne said to me. I wasn’t supposed to be an actor in the first place. Acting, being funny, was my way
into
the world. And then I had to give it up. But it’s different for Ash. I feel that she and Ethan are bulletproof; him because he’s so talented and so huge. And her because she’s with him. And for us to think that somehow what we’re left with is enough—well, as of today, I know it isn’t.”

Dennis’s face shifted as he regarded her; the sympathy he’d shown her was retreating. He was tired of her again; it went in waves. “I thought you were winding down,” he said. “And I thought,
good,
because I’ve kind of had enough of this. But now here you are winding up again.”

“Not on purpose,” she said.

“I just don’t have the energy for this, Jules, I really don’t. You basically expect me to be this unchanging and totally understanding person, while you have your little fits every once in a while, and then I soothe you. Is that the way it’s always going to work between us? Does that sound happy to you? I don’t think I signed up for that.”

“But the situation has changed,” she said. “You ‘signed up’ for something that’s a little different now. That’s what happens. Things shift.”

“No, ‘things’ haven’t shifted; you’ve shifted them,” said Dennis. “You actually want me to comfort you while you’re the one basically coming in here and messing everything up. I cannot comfort you on this. I
like
our life. Is that such a fucking crime? I like our life, regardless of what goes on around us, but you apparently don’t.” His usually low scrape of a voice had been tightened, and had become unpleasant. This was Dennis angry, which she had rarely seen, or at least she’d rarely seen the anger directed toward her for any length of time. Once, after he’d spotted a mouse in their kitchen and had tried to kill it with a spatula, the only implement within reach, he’d been in a fury, which they’d both admitted later had had a comical edge. But this didn’t.

“That is not true!” she said.

“Maybe this whole thing,” he went on, his voice unchanged, “is all a secret way for you to tell me you feel really cheated because I don’t make a fortune too.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“That you wish I was someone else, so
you
could be someone else.”

“No,” she said. “Not at all.”

“Because that’s the way I’m starting to hear it,” said Dennis.

“It isn’t true,” said Jules. “I’m sorry,” she said, with feeling. “I know I should stop talking about this, I know it’s unhealthy.” Please stop being angry at me, she wanted to say. That was what seemed to matter now.

“Yes,” said Dennis. “That’s exactly what it is. It’s very, very unhealthy. You should think about it, Jules. Think about what these unhealthy comments do to us. They create this environment of unhealthiness. Of disease.”

“Don’t exaggerate.”

“I’m not.”

“I’m happy with you,” she said. “I really am. I don’t suddenly think that there’s a one-to-one correspondence between money and happiness. When we fell in love, it had nothing to do with whether I thought we’d have some luxurious life. It never occurred to me to think about that. I’m not shallow, you know.”

The phone rang exactly then and Jules was relieved to answer it. This was how their arguments had ended a few times; someone called on the phone, and by the time the conversation was over, the imperative to argue had virtually disappeared. But it was Ash on the phone now, wanting to know if they could all have dinner that night. A new Asian fusion place had opened, she said, and the spring rolls with glass noodles inside were amazing. Ash sounded the way Ash always sounded—enthusiastic, warm—and Ethan was talking in the background, saying that Ash should tell Jules that she and Dennis had to come; the food would not taste good without them there.

Ash asked her, “Will you come?”

Jules pressed the phone against her chest and looked at Dennis. “They want to know, will we come?”

He shrugged. “It’s up to you.”

So they went. The food was good and their friends were the same as ever. They did not appear different, or richer, or as if they lived in another world. But when the bill came, Ethan reached for it, and Jules and Dennis made an attempt to reach for it too, or at the very least to split it, yet in the end they let him get it. And so, quietly but noticeably, a new part of their lives began. From that night on, Ethan paid for almost all dinners and vacations.

•   •   •

T
he first trip they took together was to Tanzania, to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in July 1987. Jonah and Robert Takahashi, whose relationship was now serious, came too. Ethan, though he’d been on some expensive vacations since becoming successful, did not love travel, and paid very little attention to it. “We didn’t go on a lot of family vacations when I was growing up,” he said. “The swankiest place my parents ever took me was the Pennsylvania Dutch country. We looked at people in old-fashioned clothes on horse and buggy, and my mother took pictures with her Polaroid Swinger, even though she wasn’t supposed to, and an Amish guy yelled at her, and my parents had a huge fight about it—so what else is new? Then we bought a hex sign and some weird kind of fudge called penuche—that name embarrassed me, it was like ‘penis’—and went home.” Now, though, Ethan had asked his assistant if she would mind terribly finding a trip for the three couples during a week later on in the year when
Figland
was on hiatus; he wanted a trip that was “outside my comfort zone,” as he put it. “Even asking my assistant such a question is outside my comfort zone,” Ethan said. “Even having an assistant is outside my comfort zone.” The assistant, having read Hemingway in college, suggested Kilimanjaro. The price of the trip seemed exorbitant, and this made Ethan anxious, but Ash reminded him, “You’re twenty-eight years old and independently wealthy. You have to get used to it and live accordingly. It actually isn’t particularly flattering for you to whine and complain about your good fortune. I don’t know who that helps. You’re not your crazy, screaming, financially erratic parents’ little kid anymore. You can actually go new places and try new things. And you can spend money; it’s okay, it really is.”