This Beautiful Life (14 page)

“You're going to play that son-of-a-postal-worker tune all the way to Carnegie Hall?” Paul liked to taunt, stroking an imaginary violin on his shoulder.

Paul's a smart, arrogant fuck, and Richard hates having to ask him for anything. With the race factor, Richard supposes Paul has traveled further in life against greater odds than he has thus far, and in terms of status, Paul is certainly beating him hands down in the moment.

“Buddy,” says Paul to Richard, from the doorway. He signals to the barkeep as he makes his way across the room. “A sparkling water, please, Joe. Lime.”

“I'm grateful, Paul,” says Richard, standing up, in lieu of a greeting, as Paul approaches.

“Pshaw, man,” says Paul, motioning him to sit down again. Paul pulls up a chair. “What I want to know is, is she pretty?”

He'd hit him if he could, but he can't. Richard is asking for a favor. He pops another peanut.

“She's a kid, Paul. He's a kid. They're just kids, the two of them. Remember when we were kids?”

“I remember when
you
were a kid. Is your boy a regular stickman like his father?”

Richard sips his scotch. Don't dance, he thinks. He wants you to dance.

Richard looks up at Paul. Surprisingly, he feels his eyes get moist. He is a father with a kid in trouble.

“Okay, I get it,” says Paul. “What's the lede?”

“She sent it to him, Paul. He was completely unaware, totally blindsided. He didn't ask for it. He didn't want it. He forwarded it to his best friend and the rest is history.”

“The lede?” says Paul, as Joe the barkeep comes over with his drink. “Thanks, Joe,” Paul says.

“The head of school viewed it in front of Lizzie and the kid. Lizzie says it looked like he was getting off on it. She said his leg was jiggling like he was jerking off.”

Here Paul grimaces. “Yeoww. A pretty picture.”

“Her old man is worth about a fifty mil; she's rich, spoiled,
deprived
.” Lizzie's word pops conveniently into his mind. “They leave her unsupervised for a weekend. She has the entire school over for a party. Kids having sex upstairs, smoking pot, maybe even doing blow. I'm not sure about that, but it wouldn't be hard to find out… The parents: word is they launder money in Cyprus. What else? The school won't let him back in, so he's getting a zero on every missed exam. It'll wreck him for college, Paul. And the other students at the school are on his side. They're protesting outside the gates with placards. Is that enough?”

“It's enough,” Paul says. “Maybe
we
should think about doing a story.”

“Paul,” says Richard.

Paul leans back in his chair. “Okay, okay, there's a kid we had interning over the summer who's started stringing for the
Observer
, I'll give her your cell.”

“It looked like junior league
Debbie Does Dallas
. I don't know where the girl learned this stuff,” says Richard.

“More than enough,” Paul says.

T
hat evening Richard goes to the movies. He could have gone home, but he doesn't. He could have helped out at home with the children, but he didn't want to. He wanted to see
Matrix Reloaded
. He loved
The Matrix
. It was a great action picture and he'd loved the homages to Hong Kong action movies and spaghetti westerns. Japanese animation. Western religion and Eastern philosophy. He'd loved how the hero, Neo, broke out of the straitjacket of his life and then discovered the true nature of the world and mastered it. But after handing over his ten dollars and twenty-five cents and going AWOL on his wife (“When did it go up a quarter?” Richard asked the box office manager; “January first,” she replied. “Don't you ever go to the movies?”), Richard hated
Matrix Reloaded
. He hated it because it sucked. It took itself way too seriously. It made what was great about the first movie ponderous and boring.

Now, when he enters the apartment, Lizzie is sitting on the couch in one of his old business school T-shirts. He knows from experience that it has been washed and worn so many times the armholes are ripped and the shirt, while shapeless, offers a great glimpse of her breasts. But not tonight. Not post-Paul. Not post-shitty-fucking-movie. She is sitting up on the couch in the dark with her laptop glowing on the coffee table. Her face is lit by the blue-white glow, kind of like she is looking into a fortune-teller's magic ball. She gazes up at him, her still-pretty face a hopeful question mark.

He used to be a slave to that face.

He nods yes.

Lizzie smiles at him. She is grateful to him. This is clear from her smile. She is a mother who is terribly worried about her son. She needs Richard to be who he has become.

He pats her on her shoulder.

Then Richard loosens his tie and walks into the bedroom, alone. He hangs up his jacket in the closet. He sits on the end of the bed. Soon he'll untie his shoes, insert the wooden shoe trees, and put them away in his closet. Soon he'll take off his socks.

5

I
t was boring staying at home. Exquisitely, torturously boring. Like peeling a scab. Painful and oddly absorbing. Jake indulged in his boredom. He examined all the facets of the crystal of his boredom. When he was done with that, he inhaled and memorized its scent. He thought, I never want to forget this specific sensation, and then he wondered why, since he was so miserable. He said to himself, I am a freak! I am a mental patient! And then, after a ridiculous amount of deliberation, he thought, I want to memorize this horribleness so that I never, ever allow myself to feel this way again.

He felt tense all the time, tense and nervous. Scared and embarrassed. Angry and bored. He felt a million ands: and, and, and! Whatever… and so bored. So bored out of his skull, so mind-numbingly bored that he couldn't concentrate on anything, could not divert himself out of his boredom—not with music, not with books, not with magazines. His mom wanted him to “read ahead, keep up with his studies,” but who was she kidding? Jake couldn't think. He couldn't concentrate. And he certainly couldn't keep up with something if he didn't know what it was he was keeping up with, now, could he? It's not like his teachers were sending him his assignments. It's not like anyone was helping him out. He wasn't allowed on the computer, his dad said. In fact, Dad pretty much
decreed
this—which was fine, it was fucking fine with Jake, although it seemed like his mom lived on hers, while his dad, who'd never once seemed like a hypocrite before, was glued to his CrackBerry. Jake was afraid now to touch the damn thing anyway. The email alone. The hate mail and the “you go, dude” stuff—which was just another form of hate mail, Jake thought; it was hateful and caused him to hate himself—it was all enough to trigger a total meltdown.

The thought of the computer made Jake perspire. It made his underarms and neck and even his ass crack feel uncomfortably moist. The apartment itself felt kind of rank and sweaty—with the three of them locked in there together that way, imprisoned, ensnared, entrapped. Coco kept asking him why he didn't have to go to school—“It's not fair,” she said. Nothing is fair, Jake wanted to scream at her. Instead, he just glared when his mom said, “Sometimes schools think it's better for a student to work from home for a while.” I'll show you unfair, Jake wanted to shout.

He felt like he was living in a little snow globe, the kind his grandma had always sent him as a kid for Christmas, with some snowscape or Frosty or blah-blah-blah, and when you shook it up shiny flakes of snow would whirl about but nothing could get out.

It was a little like a snow globe at home but a hot one, a humid one, like a Bikram yoga studio snow globe. Jake and his dad had picked his mom up from a Bikram yoga studio a couple of times when they lived in Ithaca (his dad would make Jake go in and fetch her; his dad would get to stay in the car “because I am the dad,” he'd say, ironically and not, which was Dad's way), and the skin on his mom's neck and shoulders would be sickeningly glistening and the yoga studio itself felt and smelled like the inside of a sneaker, which was how their apartment felt now, the three of them there cooking in their own anger and worry and mutual disappointment. His mom and dad were home all day, fretting, fighting, blaming him—silently, for the most part, although once in a while one of them would let a little verbal steam sneak out through clenched teeth, adding to that horrifically clammy quality. It really blew there in the apartment with him and both of his parents stuck together now at home.

Hell
is
other people. Whoever said that was right on the money. If Jake were allowed on the computer he could Google and find out who it was who'd said it, but he wasn't allowed on the computer. He wanted to ask Henry who came up with it, but he wasn't allowed to call him. The lawyer had said, “Cease and desist with all forms of communication, for the time being. No texting, no emailing, no IM-ing—do any of you kids talk on the phone these days, Jacob?” The lawyer had said all this with his mouth grinning, but his eyes lost in space, focusing on nothing, which was his way. “No phone calls, big guy,” said the lawyer, “You too, Mom,” and Jake watched his mom shiver, probably because the dude wasn't looking at her, either: his eyes might as well have been made of marble, because they didn't seem to see. But also because what did Mom
have
if she couldn't run off at the mouth to someone?

Eyes also tend to beam something out. They emanate light as much as they absorb it. They exude some luminous existent, some weird radiant energy; they take in and they shine out. But not this guy's.

Sometimes Jake thought about Audrey. Sometimes it was kind of nice thinking about Audrey, but usually it hurt. He felt small and like an asshole—he pictured himself like a little yappy, annoying dog, the kind you want to kick—and that's when he'd get really embarrassed and tense and dig his fists into his gut. What must she think of him? Sometimes he made noises, like he cried out a little, or he'd say, “Oh God,” or “No, no, no,” sort of involuntarily, and his mom would call from the other room, “Baby, are you all right?” which made him feel a thousand times worse and more mortified and ashamed than he'd thought possible. Sometimes thinking about Audrey would lead Jake to thinking about Daisy, and there was nothing worse; there was nothing worse on planet Earth than thinking about Daisy. He pretty much hated her. He pretty much blamed her. He'd been fine before he met her. Why did he go to that party? Why didn't he play video games that night at home like the rest of the world? A lot of times he just plain old felt sorry for her and then he totally hated himself. This is where all this boredom led him: to nasty, painful thoughts.

His dad would at least go for a run. He would take Coco to school in his running shorts and then run home across the park. Some days he'd also run back across the park to fetch her. It was like he was in training for a marathon or something, and Coco was his excuse for working out. Some days Dad didn't even shower in between runs, which had to be adding to the apartment's stink. Every day his dad came home later and later in the morning after dumping the kid at school, so he was either getting slower in his laps around the reservoir—which Jake doubted; his father never got worse at anything, he only improved himself, he only enhanced his time and stuff—or he was running farther. It didn't matter. Who fucking cares? thought Jake; it was just better when his dad was out of the house. Take your time, Dad! he wanted to shout, whenever he went out. When he was home, when Dad was on his BlackBerry or on the phone—he kept calling his old Princeton pal; “Thanks, man,” his dad said—or reading the newspaper, or lying on the couch with his eyes closed listening to music on his CD player through his headphones, looking like a bug, when he was actively a passive presence in the house and so forthrightly and obnoxiously not at work, things sucked the most. When it was just Jake and his mom, his mom who kept beaming love and support his way, railing against “that girl,” ridiculously on his side, almost unrecognizable, really, in her wicked zest to present him as the injured party and Daisy as the devil, it was almost all right. Jake felt nauseatingly grateful to her for her mom myopia, for her single-note support of him; he also wanted to throttle her, and stick a fork in his own neck whenever she shot him a supportive and loving glance, but that vomit of sick and weak emotion was nothing compared to how bad it felt with Dad: jobless and at home, jobless and at home, jobless and at home, because of him.

It had been a week. Only a week. Only a week to turn his life into something alien, and already, this weird new normal—a normal both so random and predictable that he was already boringly, totally used to it. That's all it was: a week. A little more. Ten days. Because the
New York Observer
came out on Wednesdays. And he'd been sent home from school on a Monday, so it had been on Day Ten of Jake's exile that the shit hit the fan. Sure, there had been some early tabloid action, and his mom, glued as she was to UrbanBaby.com, couldn't stop reading the postings. “Don't these people have a life?” she'd mumble. “Don't any of them have anything better to do than to make dumb, cruel posts about something they know nothing about? Richard, these mothers are the Witches of Eastwick. They are venal and jealous and horrible,” and she'd stay stuck to her laptop like all this online gossip was a brain adhesive and she couldn't tear her forehead away. “This is what happens when women don't work,” she said. “Please, God, this should never happen to me.” But it was on Day Ten with the
Observer
piece (“Prep School Pornathon”; “How cheesy can you get?” his mom said) that the shit hit the snowblower, big time. It was so detailed! The
Observer
reporter knew about Jake and his mom in the headmaster's office, about the three of them watching the thing together. The Gawker post that followed called this “a Bermuda Triangle of pedophiliac connoisseurship,” and crowed that “Threadgill isn't the first private school headmaster in NYC exposed as a lover of ‘hard candy'—because last fall, at Uptown Prep, the principal was caught inviting fourteen- and fifteen-year-old girls to have sex via online chat rooms.” Jake's mom had blanched at that, reading over his father's shoulder. “This is so awful, Richard. Threadgill's a creep, sure, but there is no comparison to that guy hunting down children for sex.” His dad had looked then like he might throw up. He put the paper down and went out to the park to run again. By the next morning Jake's story was back on Page Six of the
New York Post
, but it was no longer a blind item. The Wildwood kids had made T-shirts: “Free Jake Bergamot.” A whole mess of them had staged a sit-in in front of the school during third period. The
Observer
had started a rallying cry—even though the “Pornathon” piece was obnoxious. It was snarky and obnoxious and made all of them sound like rich, spoiled brats. Which they were; a lot of the kids were rich and spoiled—“spoiled and deprived,” his mom said to his godmother, Stacey, on a rare instance when she talked on the phone. But not all of the kids were rich and spoiled. Not Henry and James. Not Jake. He didn't think Audrey was. He'd heard her parents were, like, old hippie social workers who had lived in Northampton or something, until they took her home from China, and then they came to the city, where it was okay to be adopted and Chinese and Jewish, too, and she could go to Chinese school and stuff. She could learn calligraphy and fan dance. Like Coco. Jake had seen Coco fan-dance more times than he cared to remember, he'd seen her make monkey faces when she was supposed to be “composed” before an audience—“Compose yourself, Coco,” her dance teacher, Ms. Leung, would calmly call out—he'd seen her take that dumb little fan and, instead of being a butterfly or whatever, poke the other dancers in the butt. Why oh why couldn't he be Coco? She got away with everything.

Jake had heard Audrey lived in an apartment in Riverdale, not a house. Audrey was probably at Wildwood on account of diversity. Hippie diversity. Middle-class diversity. Who was a social worker these days? Someone said her parents were old. With gray hair. That they looked like they were her grandparents. Blue jean skirts and bulky sweaters. Birkenstocks with socks. Jake was used to this look, from Ithaca. But this was only what someone said. He didn't know.

The
Observer
and the
Post
and Gawker and the mothers on UrbanBaby.com made it sound like the whole thing with Daisy had happened because Wildwood's tuition was so high, but anyone anywhere could have made that video, even his dad said this, and anyone anywhere could have hit Forward and Send, and anyone anywhere could have been a total fucking retard like Jake was. It didn't require twenty-five grand a year to get that stupid. All they needed was email, which was pretty much close to free, and a computer, which wasn't but wasn't that hard to get to, was it? Maybe it was? There were computers everywhere Jake went: Internet cafés, libraries, three or four to an apartment… Maybe poor kids didn't have access to computers and therefore couldn't fuck up their lives as exquisitely as “Mr. Advantages” Jake could. Maybe when his dad started his public school for poor kids up in Harlem he should make it a computer-free zone. Maybe Jake himself should just join the Peace Corps when he got out of college, as penance. Or Teach for America. Or maybe he shouldn't go to college but should volunteer for the army to show that he wasn't such a spoiled brat, such a “child of privilege.” His mom said it was a privilege not to have to join the army as your only hope, and the country was at war, right? Two wars. Except the war in Iraq was almost over. “Mission Accomplished,” the headlines read just days before his half birthday. Just a week and a half, really, before Daisy's party. Now it was Jake's name in the paper and it was a little thrilling to see it in the
Post
, in the grainy newsprinty picture stretched across some fat kid's chest. The kid had man-boobs, but the photo had cut off his head. It must have been Zach Bledsoe. It was a little thrilling to see Jake's own name in the tabloids that way, but also kind of excruciating. Dad got off the couch both days to go outside and get the papers, still in his running clothes. So they actually had an artifact to paw.

“They're turning the kid into a folk hero,” Dad said to no one when he reentered the apartment, paper in hand. He'd sort of stopped talking to both of them. That is, he still talked indirectly, like a narrator in a play, like Jake and his mom were some unseen audience. But there was no longer a direct address, no light punch to the shoulder, no knuckley noogie on the top of Jake's head, no hug.

You could just read it online, you fucking fossil, Jake wanted to scream at him, as Dad spread the newspapers out on the coffee table, but he didn't.