“George doesn’t want to talk to you,” I said.
“I beg your pardon!” he said. “I’d be happy to talk to Heather.”
“Thank you,” she said to him. “I’d be happy to talk to you, too.”
“You have to take this test so George can help you raise your scores.” I turned to him. “I’ve got it all planned out: Heather and I are both going to get in early to Elton College. We’ll be done with all the college stuff before the holidays, and then we’ll be together for the next four years.”
“We hope we’ll get in,” Heather said. “I mean, I’m sure you will, but I’m not so sure about me. Elton College is hard to get into and I haven’t been the best student.”
“That’s why we’re going to apply early. They like people who apply early, especially people who are quirky and interesting, and who’s more quirky and interesting than us?”
The dimple on Heather’s right cheek appeared. “No one.”
“Plus George is going to make sure we do well on the SATs. Now get into the dining room and take that test.” I took her by the shoulders and steered her across the kitchen and through the archway that separated it from the dining room.
“Why do I have to be in here?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Because I need to be in the kitchen. My tea’s in there.” I came back in and sat down, folded my hands, and looked up at George like an obedient pupil. “We’re ready to take your test, Mr. Nussbaum, sir.”
He handed me the packet and told me to get to work.
On Friday, I was coming down the stairs in the morning and spotted George heading out the front door
“What are you doing?” I called out.
He turned around and greeted me in his usual measured way—he never seemed particularly excited to see me, but he was always pleasant enough. “Your mom asked me to get her laptop fixed.” He showed me the computer sleeve in his hand. “I’m running to the Genius Bar. Hey, can I talk to you for a second?”
“What about?”
“Heather’s not here, right?”
I looked to my left and to my right, then patted the pockets of my jean shorts. “Doesn’t seem to be. Why?”
“I just wanted to say that maybe you shouldn’t be pushing her to apply early to Elton.”
I leaned against the banister. “Why not?”
“After scoring that test you guys took, I’m worried she doesn’t have much of a shot there.”
I shrugged. “Neither of us was taking it very seriously.”
“You still managed to do incredibly well.” He shifted the computer from one hand to the other. “Elton would be a big reach for her, I think.”
“You’re not a college counselor,” I said. “You don’t really know.”
“Right,” he said. “And you’re not one either. So tell her to talk to hers. And be aware that she’ll do whatever you say, even if you’re totally wrong.”
I scowled at him. “First of all, I’ve researched Elton a lot, and they like people who are creative, which Heather totally is.” She wrote a lot of fan fiction, mostly about characters from her favorite TV shows. That was creative, right? “They’re going to want her. And secondly, you’re wrong—she doesn’t do whatever I say. That’s ridiculous.”
“I’ve seen you order her around. She worships you.” He raised his eyebrows. “Which seems to be what you like best about the relationship.”
“That’s so not true! Not to mention rude.”
“Uh-huh.” He was really starting to annoy me, standing there with his stupid pants and long-sleeved shirt on the hottest day of the year, large almost colorless eyes blinking at me as he accused me of being a bad friend.
I gestured toward the door. “Aren’t you going to be late for your genius?”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding tired. “I am. Good-bye. We can talk more about this on Sunday.”
“I’m canceling Sunday,” I said even though I hadn’t thought about it before now. “I have other plans.”
“Your mother said I should come.”
“Well, she’s wrong.” I turned my back on him and went into the kitchen. Why should I let him tutor me when he had just proven that he didn’t know anything about anything?
I was kind of lying when I said I had plans, except that it turned out I really did have plans, I just hadn’t known about them. That night, Luke informed the rest of the family that he’d invited the Marquands over for a barbecue on Sunday, which was the day before Labor Day and two days before the start of school. Aaron was flying in on Saturday, so he’d be coming with them.
I spent a long time getting ready for that barbecue. I washed my hair that morning and scrunched it under a diffuser so it was just about as curly as it could get—which was pretty ridiculously curly—and used some gel that made the copper highlights catch the light. Since it was still super hot and we were planning on swimming, I put on my favorite dark-red bikini and covered that with a floaty, transparent printed dress.
As I was leaving my room, I heard Jacob calling out from his and checked on him. He was just waking from a nap. Mom had recently moved him from his crib to a small bed that looked like a race car, but he never got out of it by himself, just sat up and cried until someone rescued him, like he’d always done in the crib.
“Hey, baby dude,” I said, and picked him up. His diaper felt heavy through his shorts. He wasn’t anywhere close to being toilet trained yet—since he didn’t talk or seem to understand all that much, it was hard to explain the whole potty concept to him. “Have a nice nap?”
He rubbed his forehead against my bare shoulder and I nuzzled his sweat-damp hair. I liked him best like this, right after a nap, when he was all drowsy and cuddly.
“We’re going to have a barbecue,” I told him. “Hot dogs. I know you like hot dogs. And Daddy will be home all day. Fun, right?”
He didn’t react, just rested against me, breathing lightly.
“We have guests coming over. You remember Michael? And Crystal? And little baby Mia?” I was never sure what he understood and what he didn’t. Sometimes it seemed like your words meant nothing to him and then all of a sudden he’d go and grab something you were just talking about and bring it to you. “Let’s find you something special to wear.” I pulled a shirt out of his drawer.
Instantly he started arching back in my arms—so violently that I almost dropped him—and shaking his head and making a low moaning sound that I knew would turn to screaming in a second if I wasn’t careful.
“Sorry,” I said, dumping him back on the bed. I quickly crammed the shirt into the dresser. “It had buttons. I know. Forget that. See? All gone now.”
Jacob had a button phobia. And of course he couldn’t tell us why.
I changed his diaper and helped him into blue board shorts and a soft white T-shirt—clothing he approved of—and carried him downstairs.
Mom was in the kitchen, getting instructions from Carlos, our part-time chef, who had come in early to make a bunch of salads and marinate the meat. “If you dress the lettuce salad too soon, it will get soggy,” he was telling her when we walked in. “But you want the dressing to tenderize the kale salad for at least half an hour. In fact, I think I’ll put it on right now—it won’t hurt and you might forget.”
“Yes, do that,” Mom said cheerfully. “I’ll definitely forget.” She was wearing a navy blue maxi sundress and a pair of amazing sparkling sandals. I eyed those sandals covetously and decided I would borrow them soon.
I put Jacob down and he ran over to Mom and hugged her legs.
“Hey, baby,” she said, absently patting his head while she glanced around the kitchen. “Where are the hot dog buns?”
“In the bag on the table. Whole wheat.” Carlos was bald, but shaved bald, and his eyes were younger than his mouth and chin. He was somewhere between forty and sixty, but I had no idea where. He came twice a week and cooked lots of dishes, which he left in the refrigerator so we could heat them up whenever we wanted a mea
l; he also prepared food for special events like this. “I wanted to get sea bass for the fish but I didn’t like the way theirs looked, so I got cod instead. I made a romesco to go with it. All Luke has to do is grill it and then put the sauce on. But tell him not to overdo it. Fish should always be slightly undercooked. Now, let’s talk about the corn.”
“As fascinating as this is . . .” I said, and left them to it.
nine
I deliberately didn’t run downstairs when I heard the guests arrive. I took my time, not wanting to seem too eager to see Aaron—I knew that Luke and Michael were into the idea of matching us up and didn’t want to encourage them. It was one thing for me to joke about how he was my future husband and another thing for them to try to make it true.
I waited about ten minutes, and by the time I came down, they’d all already traipsed through the house and gone out back.
In addition to an enormous lawn, the swing set Jacob loved so much, an Olympic-sized pool, a hot tub that could fit fifteen people, a guesthouse, and a still-under-construction combination exercise and screening room, we had an entire outdoor kitchen and living room in the backyard. I think Luke enjoyed the idea of himself grilling slabs of meat like any American dad, but I kind of doubted that most American fathers had the setup he did: a built-in propane-fed grill, a wood-fired pizza oven, a full-sized outdoor refrigerator, an ice cream freezer/fountain—complete with spouts for hot fudge and caramel—and a farmhouse sink with hot and cold running water.
“Is this a thing?” I said to Mom when the real estate agent first walked us through the house and grounds almost four years ago. “Do people have stuff like this?”
“Not many,” she said.
“Come the revolution, we are so guillotined.”
“I’ll show them photos from the studio you and I shared back in Philadelphia,” she said. “They’ll let us go.”
Luke was busily firing up the grill when I joined everyone outside. Jacob was relaxing in Mom’s arms, gently wiggling his fingers in front of his eyes. (He liked to do that. Lorena called it “making pictures in the air.”) Michael and Crystal were talking to Mom, and Aaron was watching Megan the nanny give baby Mia a bottle. Apparently the Marquands didn’t go anywhere without her.
I said Aaron’s name and he looked up and instantly came running toward me. There was no hesitation or awkwardness: he just threw his arms around me and gave me a big hug.
“Can you believe I’m here for the whole year?” he said happily. “How lucky is LA to get me?”
I laughed. “I don’t know about LA, but I feel lucky. And your father’s incredibly excited to have you here—he hasn’t stopped talking about it.”
“You can’t blame me,” Michael called from a few feet away. “Here I was, thinking about how my son would be heading off to college soon and probably be too busy to ever visit me again, and suddenly I have him living with me for the next nine months. It’s the best gift I’ve ever gotten.”
“He seems to like you,” I said to Aaron.
“That’s because I haven’t been around lately,” he said. “I’m most likable when I’m not here.”
He was just as good-looking in person as in his Instagram selfies. Better, because his smile was warm and directed right at me. He was wearing blue board shorts (basically the adult version of what Jacob had on) and a dark gray tee with an unbuttoned oxford shirt over it and flip-flops. Simple black Ray-Ban sunglasses blocked what rays were left from the almost-setting sun. Most guys my age didn’t know how to dress—they tried too hard or not hard enough. Aaron seemed to have effortlessly found the simple but classy sweet spot.
I wanted to talk to him more—preferably alone—but that wasn’t going to happen. Jacob had left Mom’s lap and made his way over and now he was reaching his hands up for me to take him. I held him while Michael interrogated me about what kind of cars my friends were driving; he said he needed to buy Aaron one. Then Mom said she thought we should go swimming before we ate because it wasn’t a good idea to go swimming after.
I wasn’t too concerned about that from a safety standpoint, but it did occur to me that a big salty hot dog would probably make my stomach puff out, and I wanted to look good in my bikini, so I seconded the “let’s swim now” idea.
Crystal turned down the invitation to join us, which didn’t surprise me, since she was wearing a ton of makeup and her long, thick hair had been blown silky smooth. Mom also passed: she would have killed for a pool to paddle around in during the hot Philadelphia summers, but now that she actually had one in her own backyard, she’d taught herself to loathe it by doing too many laps for exercise.
Megan was taking care of the baby, and Luke was busy grilling, so that left me, Michael, and Aaron up for a swim.
The pool and hot tub were on the other side of the backyard, on a lower level overlooking the canyon and separated from the rest of the house by a rose garden and an iron fence. We walked back there together, then separated at the pool house, which was divided into four small chambers: three changing rooms, each lined with a mirror and a chest of drawers, and a bathroom with a shower. The changing rooms were stocked with towels, sunscreen, pool toys . . . even swimsuits, in case a guest had forgotten to bring one. Lorena checked once in a while to see if anything needed to be replaced.
It took me about three seconds to pull off my cover-up, toss it on top of the chest of drawers, put my hair in a bun, and grab a towel. Back outside, I dropped my towel onto a chaise longue and then sat down at the edge of the pool and waited for Michael and Aaron to emerge.
We kept the pool at eighty-five degrees, which today felt almost too warm. I dangled my feet in it and leaned back on the palms of my hands, keeping an arch in my back and neck—it was the most flattering way to sit wearing a bikini, and I wanted to look good when Aaron appeared. Which he soon did, since all he had to do was take off his shirt and flip-flops.
He dropped down into a sitting position next to me. “How’s the water?”
“Nice.”
He put his feet in. “Ahh. It’s been way too long.”
“When was the last time you swam in a pool?”
“About an hour ago. Right before we left to come here.”
His father emerged, looking lean and toned in his bathing suit, and dove right in the deep end, then emerged in a crawl, which he continued down the length of the pool.
Aaron stood up. “Are you a jump-right-in kind of person or a slowly-get-acclimated kind of person?”
I clambered up. “Slowly get acclimated. Or not get acclimated at all and stay dry in the sun.”
“In that case, let me help you.” He caught me around my waist and spun me out toward the pool. “Ready?”
I nodded, so he gave me a gentle shove and I let myself tumble in. He jumped in right after and I scolded him for splashing me inadvertently, and then when he apologized, I splashed him right in the face.
He mock snarled and whipped his head back to get the wet hair out of his eyes and dove under the water. I turned, trying to see where he was going, and felt him touch the back of my leg. I turned again, in that direction, just as he surfaced on the other side and flicked a palmful of water right at me.
We fooled around like that for a while, splashing and laughing and sinking down and springing up until we were out of breath. Then we swam over to the edge of the pool, where we clung on, slowly cycling our legs in the water, while we talked about stuff like movies and restaurants, and Michael steadily did laps behind us—another adult who saw the pool as exercise, not fun.
After about ten more minutes, he swam to the steps, got out, shook himself off, and said, “That’s it for me.” He disappeared into the changing room and came back out a few minutes later, dressed and dry, and headed back to the group.
The gates clanged again, interrupting my list of the best coffee shops on the west side of LA. I looked over and was surprised to see George Nussbaum walking in, awkwardly carrying Jacob low in his arms. As soon as he saw me, Jac
ob struggled to get down. George set him squarely on his feet and Jacob ran over to the edge of the pool and held his arms out to me.
“You want to swim?” I said, and he took a step toward the pool like he was going to walk right into it. “Whoa! Stop!” I reached up to hold on to his leg so he couldn’t jump in. “Not yet. You need a swim diaper.” I looked up at George, who had come closer. “Can you go get him one? They’re in the top drawer in the middle changing room.”
“Yeah, okay.” He was wearing jeans and his usual long-sleeved oxford—although today the sleeves were rolled to just below his elbow. “Hi,” he said, his eyes settling on Aaron. “I’m George.”
“Aaron.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Tutoring. I thought.”
“Tutoring?” Aaron repeated. “School hasn’t even started yet.”
“SATs,” I explained. “Mom found out that George went to Harvard and practically wet herself. She thinks the Ivy League is contagious, so he comes over once in a while and says stuff like, ‘What does epitome mean?’”
“And do you know?” Aaron asked.
“Of course I do.”
“Brilliant and modest,” he said admiringly. “The perfect woman.”
I fluttered my eyelashes at him before looking back up at George. “I thought I told you last week that I had plans today.”
“You always say you have plans. And your mom confirmed the appointment when I texted her a couple of days ago.”
Jacob knelt down next to the pool and dipped his fingers in the water, then raised his hand so he could watch the drips fall.
“She invited me to join you for dinner,” George said as we all watched Jacob watching the drips. “I feel funny about it, but she knows I’m free for the next two hours, so I don’t have much of an excuse to leave.”
“You should stay.” I decided to be generous and forgive him for being mean about Heather. “There’s a ton of food. If you want to come swim with us, there are men’s suits in the same changing room that has Jacob’s swim diapers. Speaking of which—”