The Smash-Up Read online

  * * *

  —

  Dinner is served in the Sharing Room, which is what Rainbow Seed calls the cafeteria, although judging by the notes that are sent home on a weekly basis (reminder: due to peanut allergies/dairy allergies/nightshade allergies/wheat allergies/gluten intolerance/lactose intolerance/veganism/soy avoidance/over-processing of our food supply, there is to be no exchange of food items at lunch or snack!) no sharing takes place in this space whatsoever.

  Zo’s at the serving table; someone’s assigned her to the vegan and gluten-free option, which, it turns out, is more of a lasagna soup. By the time Ethan gets in line, Zo’s given up on the spatula altogether and is doling out servings with a spoon.

  Ahead of Zo, Shreya slides a perfect square of turkey lasagna onto a parent’s plate. She smiles broadly. “Free-range!”

  Standing there in the food line, it occurs to Ethan: he should network. These are successful parents, with good incomes. Maybe one of them knows of a job for him—something permanent and well paying. If Ethan can land a real job, something with a decent salary, maybe the Bränd situation won’t seem quite so dire. If Randy were here, he wouldn’t hesitate to glad-hand these people, to make connections. In fact, the guy would probably manage to land a CEO position before dessert was served.

  Ethan sizes up the parents in line ahead of him. At the front of the queue, there’s a dad in biking gear. Made a mint in biotech, this guy—some diabetes therapy, or maybe it was cancer. Anyway, he’s retired now. Behind him stands a gorgeous, leggy mom in black, an early investor in Bluetooth technology, also now enjoying early retirement. Behind her, a lesbian couple (one in Carhartt’s: an organic farmer. The other, in a caftan: last name Marcus, apparently of Neiman fame). There’s a venture capitalist who claims to be “mostly a dabbler these days.” A former punk-rocker with two Grammys to his name. A couple with the last name of Dillard (because there’s money in middle-end department stores, too). A mom with the last name Halliburton (nobody talks about it).

  What could Ethan possibly offer any of them, job-wise? Even if he managed to work into a conversation that he once started a successful media company, he already knows what their next question would be: Oh, when was that?

  Decades ago, that’s when. In a different century. Literally. These days, he’s just some Subaru-driving schmo from the wrong side of the tracks.

  He longs to text Maddy, just to give himself a boost, a break from this place, but he’s struggling to balance his food plate and rolled-up silverware and cup of watery lemonade, and anyway, here’s Shreya now, holding out a spatula with a square of lasagna and wearing the world’s most magnanimous smile. “What the cluck!” Shreya says. When Ethan doesn’t understand, she clarifies, her facial muscles frozen in place. “The turkey is from What the Cluck Organic Farm.”

  Ethan has to admit, it looks delicious.

  Shreya slides it onto his plate, “Enjoy!” she chirps. Ethan feels vaguely guilty, like taking a piece of turkey lasagna is some sort of betrayal—of Zo, at least, if not some more core principle he should be holding.

  In front of him, Zo offers to Punk Rock a spoonful of lasagna puree. “It’s a little runny,” she apologizes.

  The guy leans in. “That’s okay, I enjoy any food that’s served to me by a beautiful woman.”

  Zo takes the kind of long, deep breath she sometimes uses with Alex. “You know, I’d actually appreciate it if I could serve lasagna without being reminded that a man is assessing my looks.”

  Next to her, Shreya makes quick eye contact with the Dillards. Her tidy brows lift, as if to say, See? Whole family’s a problem.

  “Uh…” Punk Dad stares at Zo. “In case you weren’t aware, that was a compliment.”

  Zo dumps a heap of lasagna slop onto the man’s plate. “It really wasn’t.”

  Punk reaches for a slice of garlic bread with a pair of plastic tongs. Under his breath, he mutters, “Fecking cunt.”

  As he turns around to hand off the tongs, he notices Ethan. “Sorry, mate,” he says quickly. Ethan is still piecing the facts together: That guy just called my wife a cunt, I should do something, I think I’m supposed to…kick his ass? as Punk scurries off to a table and takes his seat.

  * * *

  —

  Ethan does his best to play the role of Good Dad. He tries to pay attention as the other Rainbow Seed parents discuss whether there are enough parking spots in the parents’ lot, makes a valiant attempt to nod along thoughtfully as they talk about the new homework policy: no more than ten minutes per grade beginning in second grade, which means that the average sixth grader should get forty minutes, but doesn’t that seem excessive, they’re still just children after all. He even manages a vague smile as a couple tells him about their home renovations: The wallpaper is to die for, but we’re going to have to fly to France to get it.

  But Ethan can’t keep focused on any of it, doesn’t care. He’s a misfit here, he sees this now. Even if he wanted to fit in, he doesn’t have family wealth, or Wall-Street-speculation-boom wealth, or dot-com-bubble wealth. There’s not a job in the Berkshires that would let him come close to earning what these people take for granted. He never did write that novel, or screenplay. Instead, he’s wasted his best years relying on Bränd checks while piecing together part-time jobs like Dr. Ash’s Cornucopia of Snake Oil that would never, on their own, pay the bills.

  The truth hits hard: He needs Bränd, needs his old company to stay afloat, to keep growing, to keep paying him. Whatever it takes.

  At the front of the Sharing Room, McCuttle taps the microphone. Ethan knows the man’s about to make a speech. At the Rainbow Seed School, every child is treated as a gift! We wish every child could have this extraordinary education, too bad it’s available only to families who can afford tens of thousands of dollars in annual tuition, but of course McCuttle will leave off that last bit. Then will come a second speech—from a trustee, probably, someone who will ask for six-figure donations with a straight face. Then they’ll all watch a slide show, three minutes of images captured by the marketing team: children standing in the school garden digging potatoes, tapping maple trees, painting en plein air. All the colors will be a little oversaturated, the whole thing set to a sentimental soundtrack to which they don’t have the rights—Natalie Merchant’s “These Are Days,” maybe, or “In My Life” by the Beatles. If they pick just the right song, the room will fill with sniffles, and when it’s all over, everyone will cheer. Ethan feels like he could make a Bingo card for the night, fill each square with phrases like “joyful learning!” and “power of community!” except he’s probably the only one in the room who’d find it funny.

  Mr. McCuttle introduces the school’s next chair of the Board of Trustees. “This individual, himself a proud graduate of the Rainbow Seed School, is a budding entrepreneur”—for some reason, that gets a big laugh from the crowd—“who also happens to be brilliant, thoughtful, and kind. We’re delighted that he’ll help lead Rainbow Seed for a new generation.”

  And then out walks Arlo Freaking O’Shea, Maddy’s friend who’s about to open the marijuana dispensary.

  Ethan thinks about Maddy’s comment last night. Arlo’s gonna make mad bank. Seems the Rainbow Seed School is hoping to get a little of that ganja cash for themselves.

  That’s it. Ethan can’t take one more second of this. He stands, carrying his plate, just as Arlo “Gonna-Make-Bank” O’Shea begins recalling fondly his own days in the Sharing Room. Ethan finds a quiet hallway just behind the kitchen. He plops down, listens to the clanging of pans, the spray of water. No doubt there’s an army of parent volunteers scrubbing and rinsing, each doing their part to keep the Rainbow Seed School humming. They’re almost certainly knocking back wine too. When Ethan volunteered for kitchen duty two years ago—the only dad who did, by the way—he learned that one of the unofficial perks of the job is sneaking sips of alcohol like
a rebellious teenager. By the time the night ends, the kitchen will be spotless, the parents will be tipsy, and everyone will pat themselves on the back for their generosity, their sense of community, the extraordinary education their gifted kids are getting.

  Ethan drips some lasagna soup onto his jeans. He wishes he’d skipped this whole night, that he’d stayed home. He could have had a quiet night alone, or maybe Maddy would be there, which would be even better, because here’s the truth: The question Jarrett asked him earlier? When was the last time he was like, I love my life, I just freakin’ love it?

  Ethan knows the answer. It’s last night. Walking home with Maddy.

  When he was young, he’d thought that life would unfold the way the books he loved always did: from emotion to emotion, a vast stretch of grand feelings, like an endless strand of pearls laid out before him. He’d imagined moving from one bead to the next, pausing at each to feel its full contours, its weight and heft, before moving to the next pearl, and the one after that. These days, though, Ethan feels like he goes for weeks, months, even—feeling nothing whatsoever. Just an endless line of empty string in his hand, not a pearl in sight.

  But lately he’s remembered what it is to feel, to believe that life might yet offer surprise, that there could be more ahead than a tedious slog, that maybe he does have miles to go before he sleeps.

  Ethan taps out a message to Maddy on his phone: Hey. Your weed-king buddy is giving a speech.

  Maddy: Yeah? What’s he saying?

  Ethan: Dunno. I’m in exile on a hallway floor.

  Maddy: U GOT DETENTION! LOL

  Ethan sends a shrug emoji in return.

  Maddy: Bad boy!

  Maddy. Sounds like U need 2B punished

  Ethan: Oh, is that a service I can buy on Ten-Spot?

  He hesitates before sending that one. And when he does, he follows it up with a wink emoji, making this officially the most flirtatious text exchange of his life.

  Maddy responds almost immediately. A GIF: a scantily clad woman spanking her own rear end in slow-mo. This one’s followed by a quick succession of similar GIFs: a woman in a low-cut dress spanking the air. A gorgeous TV character repeatedly spanking the rear of her male co-star. A cartoon Tom spanking cartoon Jerry.

  Ethan searches for just the right GIF to respond, but his thumbs feel clumsy and slow, and Maddy’s GIF game is too strong for him. She sends another, then another: a late-night talk show host saying, So naughty. Austin Powers mouthing the words Oh, behave. They keep coming, the GIFs, one after another.

  Ethan gives himself permission to sit back and watch them roll in. As he does, he catches snippets of the kitchen conversation:

  …any dry dishtowels?

  …a little more detergent

  …What have you heard

  …Still no room for Andrea’s kid

  …Full class

  …so frustrating

  …great kid, very kind, could really change the dynamics of sixth grade

  …I mean how long will they let one child ruin things for everyone else?

  …What’s it going to take?

  Ethan’s not paying attention until he hears the name Alex. Then he starts listening closer. Yes, he recognizes some of those voices: there are a couple of sixth-grade moms in there.

  …Started to create a paper trail

  …Never belonged here

  …Impulsive

  …Discourteous, actually

  …Shreya told me she’s

  …McCuttle says give it time, there’s a procedure

  …Wish they’d started documenting all of this years ago.

  And then the women start discussing how large the slices of cake they’re serving for dessert should be, and whether they should even serve dessert in the future, or whether that’s poor role modeling given the toxicity of white sugar, there’s a reason people call it poison white/did you know that sugar is the new smoking/I thought sitting was the new smoking, and by then Ethan’s staring down at his disgusting, half-congealed lasagna, a sick feeling in his stomach.

  Zo was right. About Shreya, about the woman’s machinations. The Boston Children’s thing probably doesn’t even matter at this point. The paper trail’s started.

  They’re planning to push Alex out. So they can give her spot to Andrea’s kid, whoever that is.

  From the Sharing Room, music starts up, and then the O’Jays are calling on people all over the world to join hands, join the love train, which means the slide show has begun.

  Ethan stands, moves toward the kitchen. He stands in the doorway watching the women work. When they notice him, they startle, but they recover quickly.

  “Ethan!” one of the women exclaims. Enormous, plastic smile.

  “How’s it going out there?” A little nervous.

  Yes, they’re drinking. He can tell by their pink cheeks, their glossy eyes.

  He scans the room. Sure enough, there are some empties on the floor, and a fresh bottle of red sticking out of a Burberry tote. He grabs it, looks at the label. Mayacamas, Cabernet Sauvignon, 2014. Sure, that’ll do.

  Ethan takes a swig straight from the bottle. He wipes his mouth with the back of the hand, then lifts the bottle as if toasting them.

  “Ladies,” he says.

  Then he exits, taking their wine with him. He walks outside, into the cool night. The trees above him carve black silhouettes from the stars.

  He feels dangerous. Wild. Like he could fly right over the Ledge, lift off, and keep going. Never come down.

  * * *

  —

  A half hour later, he and Zo are at Persimmon’s house, picking up Alex from the pizza party.

  “How was Kids’ Night?” Ethan asks as she plops down in the backseat.

  “Okay,” Alex says. “Except a bunch of the girls dared me to put all the anchovies on my pizza, so I did, and it turns out I don’t like anchovies very much, and also then everyone said I smelled like old fish.”

  “It’s okay, I don’t like anchovies either,” says Zo, more to her phone than to their child.

  “But we played hide-and-seek,” Alex says. “And I won. Persimmon told me that the best place to hide was upstairs, in the stairwell to the attic. It was super creepy up there, and I couldn’t find the light, but I guess she was right, because they never found me.”

  “Good for you,” Ethan says. “How long did they look before giving up?”

  “Mmmm…about an hour, maybe?”

  Alex has always been terrible at judging time. “An hour? That doesn’t sound right, kiddo. Sixty minutes is a pretty long time.”

  “Yeah, I know how long an hour is. But by the time I finally came downstairs, they were already more than forty-one minutes into Legally Blonde, and I figure they must have looked for a little while before putting on the movie, right?”

  “Hold on,” Ethan says. “They started a movie while you were still hiding?”

  Next to Ethan, Zo lifts her head, listening more closely now.

  “Yeah,” Alex says. “I guess they really couldn’t find me. But you know what I can’t figure out? Why didn’t Persimmon come get me? She knew where I was, since she was the one who told me to hide there.”

  Ethan’s heart sinks. He imagines Persimmon steering Alex up the attic steps, into the dark, then running downstairs, going straight to the sofa to start the movie. He thinks about Alex waiting, alone, the minutes ticking by while everyone else giggled and ate popcorn, letting Alex stay there indefinitely.

  And it’s almost like his picturing this is enough to make Alex see it, too, the cruelty of it, because she says, “Oh. Wait.”

  And then, sadder: “Oh.”

  Zo turns around. “Oh, honey,” she says. She reaches for Alex’s hand, but Alex turns away from her, folds h
er arms, stares out the window. Even in the rearview mirror, Ethan can tell she’s trying not to cry.

  They drive home in silence, Ethan’s heart pounding the whole way.

  Little bitches. Mean, rotten, stinking, sniveling little bitches.

  * * *

  —

  Once home, Ethan digs those crumpled papers from the trash, the ones he found last night that have nothing to do with Lionel Trilling:

  The ones who called you a bitch, a cunt. The ones who said these things to your face. The ones who said these things behind your back.

  The ones who talked over you. The ones who talked at you. The ones who told you things you already knew.

  The ones who assumed you didn’t know about oil changes. The ones who assumed you didn’t know about geography. The ones who assumed you didn’t know about Foucault. The ones who assumed you didn’t know about congressional politics, or about wine, or about corner kicks, or about the Protestant Reformation, or about pescatarianism, or about NASA’s Voyager, or about Bartleby the Scrivener, or about barefoot running, or even, in one gobsmacking instance, about the clitoris. The ones who assumed you didn’t know about string theory (which, okay, you don’t, not really, but let’s face it: neither do they), the ones who assumed again and again, that whatever you happen to know, they knew more. The ones who seemed so genuinely happy to teach you things, you didn’t feel right explaining that you already knew.

  The ones who, while they’re talking, look not at your face but at your chest. The ones who let their hand graze your arm, your back, your rear, the side of your breast, maybe it was an accident, it was probably an accident, except maybe it wasn’t. The ones who were your teachers, your coaches, your uncles, your friends.

  The ones who hugged you, which you were okay with, until they held you too long, and then you weren’t. The ones who turned a handshake into a kiss on the back of your hand, or worse: who tickled your palm with a single, flickering finger. The ones who stepped out from behind a tree and rubbed their dick while you jogged. The other ones who also stepped out from behind a tree and rubbed their dick while you jogged (what, did you think it would happen only once?). The ones who sat next to you on a plane leaned in close, and asked if you were a virgin.