“Now,” he added, after I had burbled my gratitude, “what we like to do at Ivy Prep, we like to figure out what each person is extremely good at. Take Claire Pryor, for instance. Now, Claire is a graduate of Georgetown, which is a very good school”—the way he said “very” meant not at all—“and when she came here, I gradually realized, it’s the strangest thing, but she’s exceptionally good at grammar. And so now, she’s the one who trains our Harvard PhD tutors how to teach grammar!” He beamed happily at me.
“Wow, that’s great.” I shook his hand. “That’s such a good way to do it.”
His beam widened. It wobbled. Griffin was not a stupid man: he sensed my disdain. The gracious mask he wore as easily as his silk shirts slipped, revealing a man confused, a face in the act of seeing its mistake. At that moment I almost liked him.
* * *
—
I started to text Lacie the good news but hesitated. Why should she care? We hardly knew each other anymore. But she had said to stay in touch. Following up was only polite.
To my surprise she wrote back right away, with exclamation marks and charmingly inexplicable emojis, including a rather festive dolphin. I considered sending her back a whale or a dragon, but both seemed too literal, somehow. In the end, I didn’t reply, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t pleased. Her response was so much warmer than I had expected.
On the subway a few days later I watched a pair of high-schoolers engage in that particular social ritual known as “I Want to Fuck You but I Can’t So I Will Laugh Hysterically at Everything You Say.” Their bags were scattered everywhere, as if this Q train were their living room, and they sprawled along the benches with their feet up and their heads close. City kids. I envied their ease.
The boy, despite acne, was cute. In three years he’d be a heartbreaker, with his brown curls, puppy-dog eyes, and insouciant red socks. The girl, in a gauzy long skirt and black hoodie, reminded me of Lacie, Lacie with Leo: a little hippie, but nervy, too, under the skin.
Those kids! Leaning into each other and laughing, the girl exclaiming Oh my God, I’m, like, obsessed with it! while the rest of us sat, sullenly polite, knees together, bags on laps. They didn’t know how desire stamped their bodies, how we all saw it. When the boy stretched out his arm, and the girl, giggling, nudged the crook of his elbow, they were totally unself-conscious, as if they had, just this minute, invented the language of longing themselves.
Meanwhile, someone’s little sister sat across the car, nose buried in a book, a pale ghost in a pink T-shirt. Will you think it self-pity if I say she reminded me of myself?
* * *
—
Then a young man was ushering me into an elevator reeking of piss. Apartment viewing number three, and though the crumbling brick studio and the overpriced railroad apartment had not discouraged me, this one-bedroom—which turned out to be filled not only with a partially disemboweled sofa but a silent middle-aged woman in curlers who glowered at the broker’s cheery greeting, slammed her coffee mug down, and lit a cigarette—left me a mite dismayed.
It was a child’s game, this making of a New York life—my friends had mostly done it when they were twenty-two, and either had left the city by now or zipped along to higher incomes, better apartments, decent jobs. They’d outgrown their starter set, and I, embarrassed at how I needed everything—job, apartment, life—had not called them. Instead I was staying with my cousin in Queens, who, though she was deep in her surgical residency and hardly ever slept, had answered her phone right away and invited me to crash with her.
Now, standing in this shoddy apartment, I felt as though I were making my life from the cardboard boxes I had played with as a kid: they were printed to look like solid brick, but light enough for a child to knock over.
Patiently I listened as the broker detailed the “prewar” features and opened closet doors for me. The fake wooden siding on the cabinets was curling off. The countertop was chipped, and the shag carpeting smelled of mildew. “I love the…the…space,” I said, thinking that whatever price he quoted me, however reasonable it might seem, would undoubtedly be hundreds higher than what the people around me were paying. I would become a harbinger of gentrification, treated with derision and distrust, and I would deserve it.
As we walked out, I said I loved the neighborhood, and old buildings, and old charming buildings, and buildings with good bones. I was by then so sure that I would never take the apartment that I became desperate to convince the broker that I might.
This often happens to me. As soon as it becomes clear not merely that things are not working out but that a grotesque misalignment has occurred, that there is no way that I will ever take this apartment, accept this job, date this man, I become obsessed, obsessed, with hiding my hesitation. “I’ll call you,” I said, shaking the broker’s hand. “I’m so excited!”
* * *
—
Walking toward the subway, I felt loose and empty, reluctant to go back to my cousin’s, but unsure what to do with myself. A clutch of teenagers glowered as I walked past. One said something, and they all collapsed into laughter. I felt fourteen again. I didn’t belong here, but I couldn’t stomach the long ride back so soon after leaving.
I got out my phone and hit Maps, though in truth I already knew. When I had called the broker, I had known. Now, looking at the blue dot pulsing near the soft gray letters of DITMAS PARK, I thought: Well, I could just walk over. I could just go see.
* * *
—
Church Avenue was broad but traffic-choked, delivery trucks double-parked, a beat-up Lincoln making a three-point turn while horns roared. Racks of cheap printed dresses fluttered in the breeze of a passing B35 bus. A broken man with red, runny eyes sat cross-legged on the sidewalk, rhythmically rocking. Following my phone, I walked past John’s Liquors and GEMS GEMS GEMS, past the Golden Krust Bakery and the Island Waves Caribbean Market, past a fishmonger hawking pale, icy flesh, and a Chinese restaurant with starry, bullet-burst glass, dodging as I went pooling piss, and a spongy pizza slice, and melted ice cream, its dye curling out from the cream in a long pink trail.
Then I turned off Church to a quiet, leafy street. Everywhere, mansions and lawns. I stopped, amazed. There was a Tudor, an English cottage, a Southern colonial. A Victorian in orange and green, done up like a pagoda. A medieval castle, all turret and balustrade. Over the green swells of land bloomed English tea roses and tall, triumphant lilies, late-season honeysuckle and purple allium balls. Another world.
Down the block a film crew had set up, its silver trailers hugging the curb. Half a dozen klieg lights brilliantly flooded the cherry-red door of a colonial. A No Parking sign taped to a lamppost announced the filming of a popular TV show, one that took place in a studiously “normal” American town, and that was when it hit me: Swarthmore. This neighborhood reminded me of home.