25. The Tuck #2
East isn’t sure what the appeal of the Tuck is supposed to be.
He has a bad feeling about Charley, he hates that she spent the day with Mav listening to him bloviate about Van Gogh’s ear or whatever.
Thinking about Mav leads East to thinking about college.
East sent in his applications the day before the deadline and paid the fees himself so his father didn’t find out.
After the past four years of East insisting college wasn’t for him, Jesse Eastman would have questions about East’s sudden change of heart.
East checks his phone. Nothing from Charley.
A cheer goes up as Ms. Robinson and Dr. Coopersmith walk in, hand in hand. Despite his foul mood, East smiles. The girls—Davi included—are shrieking their heads off, hugging Ms. Robinson, snapping pictures of Ms. Robinson and Coop cheesing in their red.
The song changes to “This Is What You Came For,” and Ms. Robinson and Coop dance in the middle of the room while everyone cheers.
East puts two fingers in his mouth and rips a whistle—he’s been trying to teach Charles how to do this for months, but she just ends up spitting all over herself, which cracks them both up.
He checks his phone—nothing—then checks Snap Maps and sees that Charley’s avatar has magically reappeared and is heading back toward school.
The song ends, Ms. Robinson and Coop take a bow, then leave to a round of applause, and “Murder on the Dancefloor” kicks in. The adults are gone for the night. As soon as Charley gets back, East thinks, they’re sneaking up to the roof.
Just as East is considering going to the gates to wait for Charles to pull in, he sees Taylor and Hakeem enter. So Charley must be back, then.
He goes over to Taylor, who is wearing a black top and jeans, which is weird because Taylor seems like a person who loves a theme and Hakeem is in a red Michael Jordan Bulls jersey. “Hey,” East says to Taylor. “How was the museum?”
She gives him a blank look. “What museum?”
“Didn’t you…” Okay, East thinks. Don’t fucking panic, don’t make a big deal about it. “You didn’t go with Mav to the Clark Institute or whatever?”
Taylor shakes her head. “I haven’t been to art class since last term. I’ve had… a lot going on.”
Part of East recognizes that Taylor looks pale and very thin, but all he can think is that if Taylor didn’t go to the Clark, then Charley and Mav went alone. Charley must have known all along that they were going alone, but she definitely made it sound like Taylor was going too.
When he turns around—he has to get out of the Tuck immediately—he bumps into Olivia H-T, who is wearing a pale pink minidress and a diamond heart necklace.
“Hey, East.” Olivia looks past him. “Is Charley not back yet? She went to the museum with Mav, right?” She pulls out her phone. “It’s almost nine o’clock, I wonder what they could be doing.”
“Get out of my face, Olivia,” East says.
“Are you jealous because Mav is hotter than you?” Olivia says. “No? Seriously, though, where could they be? They probably went to dinner together, or they might have gone back to Mav’s apartment. He lives in Haydensboro.”
“Fuck off, Olivia.”
Olivia runs the diamond heart along its chain. “Did I hit a nerve?” she asks.
Under other circumstances, Charley thinks, it would be romantic: She and East on the roof of the chapel while six stories below, everyone else is dancing to “Diet Coke.”
But the scene on the roof is far from romantic. East is pacing, sucking on his vape, asking where the hell she’s been and why she lied to him. He knows it was just her and Mav at the Clark.
“I told you,” Charley says. “We got a flat tire. Mav drives an old minivan, and the jack he had wasn’t working, I guess, so we had to wait for Triple A.”
East scoffs. “That douche-canoe doesn’t know how to change a tire?” He hits his vape. “Why didn’t you text me?”
“I was sitting in the middle of exactly nowhere. I didn’t have service.”
“That feels like an easy answer. Facile, as you might say. Because you just this second told me that Mav called Triple A.”
“Mav must have had service,” Charley says. “But my phone was SOS.”
“Why didn’t you text me from Mav’s phone?”
“Is that a serious question?” Charley reaches for the sleeve of East’s Giants jersey. She knows how bad it all sounds.
The day was pretty much a nightmare. When Charley and Mav walked into the Clark, the docent, whose name tag read MILLICENT (white cottony hair, rheumy blue eyes behind her glasses), said to Mav, “Here’s a free map, coat check to your right, and our café is the perfect spot for lunch with your valentine. ”
Charley nearly ran out the door. Millicent thought she and Mav were a couple, and Mav didn’t correct her!
He’d simply shed his down parka and waited while Charley unbuttoned her peacoat.
While Mav walked over to the coat check, Charley turned to Millicent.
“He’s my teacher. I’m taking an art history class. ”
Millicent gave Charley a confused smile. “Enjoy your day.”
Mav did end up buying Charley lunch, carrot-ginger soup and a baked goat cheese salad, which Charley ate as fast as she could because even sitting across from Mav at the table made her uncomfortable.
Twice, in the galleries, Mav tapped Charley’s shoulder to indicate she should take her headphones off so he could whisper in her ear—first about Millet’s The Knitting Lesson, the next time about Sargent’s Fumée d’ambre gris.
Then, on the way home, Mav asked Charley about her relationship with East. What did she see in him, exactly?
“Excuse me?” Charley said.
“He doesn’t seem like a match for you intellectually,” Mav said. “You told me he doesn’t appreciate art. I see you with someone who reads The New Yorker, someone with symphony tickets. Someone who would be able to spend a day with you at a museum.”
“East is brilliant,” Charley snapped.
Mav was quiet a moment, then he said, “My wife, Amanda, estranged wife, whatever she is, has no time for museums, or interest either, so I’m not sure why I’m judging.”
Charley didn’t know how to respond to that—but she didn’t need to, because at that moment the car pulled dramatically to the right and the road rumbled beneath them.
“Shit,” Mav said. “Excuse my language. I think we have a flat.”
Charley’s spirit deflated right along with the tire. Mav eased the car onto the shoulder and said, “You sit tight. I’ll change it.”
Out the window, Charley watched Mav struggle with the jack, then with the tire iron. She tried to text both East and Davi, but she had no bars. They were on a stretch of dark, deserted country road, fifty miles away from school.
When Mav climbed back into the car, he said he was having trouble with one of the lug nuts and it would probably be best if he called Triple A.
Triple A could be there in forty-five minutes to an hour.
Mav started the van; the heater blew its warm, stale air into Charley’s lap. Mav took a breath as if to speak, but Charley turned on the little light above her window and said, “I’m just going to read if that’s okay.”
“Oh. Yes, of course.” Mav sounded hurt, so Charley closed her book and asked Mav how the Colbert School was different from Tiffin.
Well, Mav said, the kids at Tiffin were more sophisticated than the kids at Colbert.
And way better-looking. Did Charley ever notice how attractive the Tiffin students were as a whole? It was bizarre, right?
Charley did what women everywhere had been doing for time immemorial: She made a man think he was fascinating in order to keep the peace. Yes, she said. Everyone at Tiffin is so beautiful and sophisticated!
When the Triple A truck pulled in behind them, Charley was so relieved she could have wept. The mechanic had their tire changed in seven minutes, and they hit the road while Mav apologized, then made excuses about how his hands were stiff from the cold.
Now, East swats Charley’s fingers off his sleeve. “Don’t touch me,” he says. “I need space.”
“You need space?”
“I’m processing that my girlfriend is a fucking liar.”
He has every right to say this, but after the day Charley just had, it hits the wrong way. “I didn’t lie to you. I wasn’t sure if Taylor was going or not.”
“You knew she wasn’t going, Charley. She said she hasn’t been to the art class since last term.”
“I thought maybe—”
“You’re lying!” East says. “You didn’t want me to know you were going alone with Mav.”
“Can you blame me? You think our relationship is something other than what it is.”
“Which is what, exactly?” East asks.
“He’s the college counselor,” Charley says. “And he’s my teacher.”
“Your teacher,” East says. “Yours alone. At this entire school, you are now the only student in that stupid art class.”
“It’s not stupid.”
“Admit it, Charley. You like him. You want him to like you.”
“Of course I want him to like me!” Charley says. “I want all my teachers to like me.”
“You’re attracted to him,” East says.
“I am not.”
“You expect me to believe that the reason you showed up here at nine fucking thirty and didn’t let me know where you were is because you got a flat tire and had no service?
” East takes a hit off his vape and exhales into the sky.
It’s a cold night with stars like broken crystal.
Charley can hear strains of “Messy” floating up from God’s Basement. “Did you go to his apartment?”
“His apartment? Hell, no! Where is all this coming from?”
“Olivia said something to me at the Tuck—”
“Since when do you give a shit what Olivia says?” But then it dawns on Charley. “Oh my god, East. You’re jealous of Mav… because you fucked Bergeron.”
“I never fucked Bergeron—”
“Tell me everything that did happen, then,” Charley says.
“You and I weren’t together,” East says. “So it doesn’t concern you.”
“It concerns me because your guilt is making you suspicious. You’re projecting. Honesty isn’t something you can just demand, East. You were never transparent about your relationship with Bergeron.”
“It wasn’t a relationship.”
“It was something.”