Chapter 7
7
Liv missed her Mom’s South Indian cooking, but what she missed most about New York was pizza. My last tutoring student was done by two on Sundays, in Pimlico, so I got the Victoria line straight up to Oxford Street station and met Liv there. Together we walked to Goodge Street, to ICCO—not the best pizza spot, but the pizza spot where you could get a whole pie for ￡5.
“You have to go,” Liv said as soon as we’d cleared the Oxford Street crowds. Though she’d already said it on the phone, several times. “You’d be crazy not to.”
“You know what I keep thinking about?” I said. “For four weeks, I wouldn’t have to check my bank balance. I’d have enough. Buying groceries, train tickets, topping up my Oyster card—all the things I worry about, they’d just be taken care of. Like I’m a kid again.” Of course, the kid I’d been was well aware of the poverty line tightrope walk, but at least someone else had been in charge of the balancing act. In France, I’d have nothing to stress over but my student’s test scores.
“Yes,” Liv said dryly as we turned onto Goodge Street, “I’m sure the lack of Oyster cards will be the highlight of the French Riviera.” But she smiled sympathetically. “I want that for you. Honestly, I may kill you if you don’t go.”
“And Kramer will kill me if I do go.” There was a strict noncompete clause in our Kramer contracts, reinforced with heavy threats in teacher training. “What if they find out? Stealing a student? I’d be fired instantly.” Panic squeezed long fingers around my throat. “I’d never make rent just bartending.”
“It’s not like they have spies in Saint-Tropez.”
“It would be a lot of money,” I conceded. “It would probably cover all my bills for three or four months.”
Kramer’s business model was built on undercutting teachers; they needed us hungry and desperate and willing to run all over London. They charged parents ￡120 an hour for tutoring and paid me ￡18. Barely enough for a bag of Tesco groceries. If I could pull this off, the money I came home with would keep that panic at bay for months.
“Why are you so worried, Anna? You deserve this. And Pippa deserves her teacher.” Liv finished with a laugh: “And Kramer deserves to get fucked.”
She’d already volunteered to take over any of my tutoring students who wanted lessons over December break, along with the last Roedean class, if I decided to go. Had I decided to go?
“Have you read House of Mirth ?” I asked Liv. One of my favorite books. “Edith Wharton?”
Liv shook her head. “Poli sci major, remember?”
I could see the green awning of ICCO just ahead of us. I put my hand on Liv’s arm, slowing her. “The main character, Lily Bart, she’s running out of money and gets invited to accompany this wealthy couple to Europe on their yacht. So, she gets to live the good life with them, but it’s not really hers.”
Liv frowned, seeing where I was going with this. “Let me guess, it all goes terribly wrong?”
“Well, yes,” I said. “It’s sort of like mixing business and pleasure, isn’t it? Can everyone really just get along when there’s income on the line?”
Liv shook her head again. “The Wilders sound like nice people. I’m sure they’ll look after you.”
But Liv hadn’t lived the weird double life I’d had at Smith, constantly trying to fit in socially and stay afloat financially. My first year there, while I was reading House of Mirth for the first time , I was also working two on-campus jobs: washing dishes at dinner and, on weekends, cleaning the dorm across the street from mine.
Every Sunday morning when I got the cleaning supplies from the housekeeper’s closet, shame slipped on with my yellow rubber gloves. Everyone looked at me funny. It was odd to see someone you recognized from class pulling fistfuls of hair from the drains. And of course scrubbing period blood off the toilet stalls was not what I’d imagined for my new college life. What, you think you’re too good for this? Dad would have said.
Dishwashing, at least, I came to enjoy. I had more in common with the kitchen staff than my classmates. Middle-aged locals, most knew my father and aunt from high school. I watched how they interacted with students—girls collecting meals, asking about ingredients—gently and carefully, as if they were handling a small explosive in their bare hands. I learned that if a student complained about staff, it was not a small problem. It would trickle down; jobs might be lost. If I told my kitchen coworkers I was nervous to go and live within this privileged family, they would know why.
“Margherita? Is that all you wanted?” Liv asked. “Do you want a Coke?”
We were at ICCO. She went to the counter to order, and I grabbed us a small table in the back, brushed off the crumbs with a napkin.
When Liv sat down, she saw me still lost in thought. She reached across the table, took my elbow, and shook it. “Hey. You work so hard. Go have a little fun.”
“You’re so sure it will be fun?” I wanted her to convince me. I wanted to go.
Liv rolled her eyes. “Yes, you nutter, I am. The South of France! Saint-Tropez! You can walk on the beach and meet a nice French lad and eat snails.” She gave my arm a final squeeze. “Don’t miss your chance, Anna.”
You’ll get your chance, Anna. What my mom had said to me when my plans to study abroad in London fell apart before junior year. Tear-soaked tissues and brochures around me on the bed.
It was because of her that I’d begun to dream myself into the glossy pages of a life somewhere else. Mom had always been able to imagine a future version of herself with more to explore and less to worry about. More time. And then, suddenly, there was no more time: no retirement, no travel except the drive to Boston, to the Joslin Diabetes Center, where frowning endocrinologists and nephrologists and nurses rotated in and out of the room. They had never spoken the words— too late —but they had said it all the same.
A speaker called out our ticket number, and Liv jumped up to get the pizza. Alone at the table, I brushed my hair back from my face, shook my head to clear it. But I was still picturing the old chair in the library, Mom’s fingers skating over the National Geographic pages. Sea, sky, sun, someday. So certain that there would be time to go. That her chance would come.