The Trouble with Lexie Read online

  “Miss James,” he said. “Daniel Waite.”

  “Are you Ethan’s dad?” Lexie asked disingenuously. She put out her hand to shake. Mr. Waite held on, forcing Lexie to pull away.

  “Yes, Ethan pointed you out to me in the dining hall. You’re the only person at this school my son finds worthy of a mention.” Daniel Waite winked as if there were some hidden meaning Lexie should understand.

  “Really? Why?” Ethan had loads of great teachers this semester. He was taking English from Dot who, on the first day of every class, promised to tap-dance to any poem written by a student in perfect iambic pentameter.

  “I think he’s honestly grateful for your help with the college application mess. I’m grateful, too.” Daniel Waite put one hand on his heart as if Lexie had done more than simply counsel the boy.

  “It’s my job and he’s a pleasure.” Lexie thought it was mentally ill the way these students and their parents put so much effort and money into chasing college admission. Some of the kids ended up at UNH, UVM, or even Framingham, all fine schools, but they could have made it there without the SAT tutors, honors calculus, and college application coaches costing thousands. And the ones who went to MIT, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Yale, well, you could bet they’d have made it into those schools without the booster system set up by their overanxious parents. In Lexie’s mind, it came down to this: Overachievers overachieved no matter how you backed them up. And no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t create an overachiever out of someone who’d rather snowboard than study for an exam. Even when you sent that child to Ruxton.

  Mitzy, Lexie’s mother, could never remember the name of the school where Lexie got her master’s degree: Tufts. Toots, her mother called it once during Lexie’s weekly phone call. They both laughed at the time and Lexie didn’t bother to set her straight. Mitzy quickly moved on to a story about the other waitresses at Heidi Pies, where Mitzy had worked for as long as Lexie was alive, and the fuss people were making over the new menu.

  “Well, I appreciate it,” Mr. Waite said. “And I have to admit I’m glad he’s anxious enough to get an early start.” He took a step closer to Lexie. His square face was the color of caramel in the dimming light.

  “Yeah, it’s always good to start early.” Was this really what Mr. Waite wanted to talk about? He was staring like he wanted to eat her. And although Lexie felt the thrill of being desired, she couldn’t help but think of Mrs. Waite somewhere on the lawn, probably looking for her husband. While Peter sat at home waiting for Lexie.

  “Do you and Mr. James live on campus?”

  “Mr. James?” Lexie thought of her father, the only Mr. James she’d ever known. Her friends had called him that the rare times he was home and awake when they were over. If anyone called her mother Mrs. James, Mitzy pointed out that she and Lexie’s father had never married and her last name was Smith. The embarrassment of this dimmed each year as Lexie got older and more and more friends came from two-name families.

  “Your husband.”

  “Oh!” Lexie laughed. “Mr. James is my father.”

  Mr. Waite laughed, too. “So you’re not married?” His head dropped slightly, his blue eyes dialed into Lexie’s.

  “Engaged.” Lexie held up her left hand with the antique silver scrollwork ring that had belonged to Peter’s grandmother. It suddenly felt puny and cheap.

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you.” Lexie shifted her weight. “How long have you and Mrs. Waite been married?”

  “Mrs. Waite and I are no longer married.” Daniel Waite’s ringed left hand flickered against his thigh like a cat’s twitching tail.

  “Ethan never mentioned you were divorced,” Lexie said, carefully. The school made it their business to know the standard goings-on in each student’s home. As far as Lexie knew, Ethan Waite’s file contained no news of this sort.

  “Separated. It’s currently a little undercover. We’re waiting until Ethan goes off to college before we let him in on everything.”

  “Oh, I see.” Lexie tried to suppress the smile that instinct insisted was the correct response to someone who was smiling at her the way Mr. Waite was now.

  “I have an apartment in Boston, near my office. And the house on the lake is bigger than is reasonable, so it’s pretty easy for us to stay there together whenever Ethan makes it home.”

  “Well, that sounds like it’s working out well.” What else could she say? Lexie thought. And why was he telling her all this?

  “I trust you won’t bring it up with anyone. Ethan especially.”

  “No. Certainly not.” How tediously overprotective. The Ethan Lexie knew was more mature than most boys his age and could easily handle an amicable separation.

  “I want to tell him but his mother doesn’t want him to know what’s what until he’s safely away at college.” Mr. Waite spoke with what Lexie had grown to think of as a California intimacy—a casualness that made you feel as if you’d known the speaker for years. She often encountered people like this in California.

  “Not a problem, Mr. Waite.”

  “Call me Daniel.”

  “Lexie.”

  “Can I call you, Lexie?”

  “Yes. Everyone calls me Lexie. Except the students, of course.”

  “No. Can I call you. On the phone. Can I see you?”

  Lexie’s heart thrummed with an unidentifiable emotion—she wasn’t sure if she was thrilled or repelled, flattered or insulted. It was like having an itch in the center of your palm—a sensation that can’t be located precisely enough to be dealt with. Lexie’s eyes darted around. She and Daniel Waite were on the lawn; clumps of people stood near them, murmuring like background actors on stage; Janet Irwin was looking past Don McClear’s shoulder, eyeing them as if Lexie were guilty of some sin outlined in the school conduct policy, which Lexie had never read; Ethan and Mrs. Waite were walking toward them from a distance. “I told you already. I’m engaged,” she said shortly. Again, she flapped up her left hand.

  He shrugged. “No, I mean to talk about Ethan.”

  “Oh.” Lexie hoped the dimming light hid her red cheeks. “His time with me is like his time with any therapist.” She tried to sound professional. Accomplished. Not like someone who had confused an interested parent with someone who wanted to get naked with her. “I’m sworn to confidentiality.”

  “I get that.” Daniel Waite touched Lexie’s forearm as if to tell her to relax, chill out, back up a bit. “I just want you to know what’s going on with me and my wife, and how Ethan’s doing at home so that . . . well, because maybe that will help you help him.”

  “Okay.” Lexie wished she could go back and erase the moment when she thought he was asking for a date. Wasn’t she too old to be embarrassed like this? She looked down to avoid Daniel Waite’s face. His white shirt was stiff enough to crack like glass. He wore cuff links. Who wore cuff links these days? People who didn’t launder their own shirts, that’s who. Someone like Daniel Waite wouldn’t be thinking of romance with Lexie. She was the poorly paid school counselor. And he was a friendly guy—easygoing with that California intimacy—who wanted to discuss the fabulous and expansive future of his progeny.

  “How about one day next week?” Mr. Waite asked gently.

  “That sounds perfect.” Lexie faked confidence. “I’m usually free during second and third periods.”

  “Monday? Nine?”

  “First period ends at nine. So nine fifteen?”

  “Great. I’ll meet you at nine fifteen. How about that little café at the Inn on the Lake?”

  “You don’t want to meet in my office? I have a coffee machine.” Lexie was starting to feel more in control.

  “I’m sure it’s a great coffee machine, but I can’t step foot on this campus without that hunting dog Janet Irwin sniffing me out to serve on a board or fund some film the kid from Iceland wants to make about the suicide rate back home.”

  Lexie smiled. Axel Valsson had made a movie last year about sui
cide in Iceland. It was shot in black and white, had a deafening electric guitar sound track, and was melodramatic to the point of comedy. Dot and Lexie had had a few good laughs over it.

  “You were the one who funded that thing?”

  “Yup. And I had a forty-five-thousand-dollar visit to the men’s room today when I bumped into Janet and she talked me into subsidizing the Russian exchange program.” Daniel grinned and Lexie laughed. After three years at Ruxton, she had acclimated to a world where the asking of a check for forty-five thousand dollars involved as little and as much coercion as Lexie and her best friend, Betsy Simms, had used at age ten selling Girl Scout cookies outside the entrance of Ralph’s.

  “Okay, I’ll meet you at the Inn on the Lake.” Lexie had been there only once. The place was so expensive it was as if the owners weren’t aware they were in the middle of the woods where most people ordered their “good” clothes from the L.L. Bean catalogue.

  Daniel Waite turned to watch his wife and son approach. Lexie watched with him. Mrs. Waite’s face was open and warm. She looked like a woman who took care of her skin but wasn’t freezing it, cutting it, or injecting it with liquefied rubber. She had to be around the same age as Lexie’s mother, if not older, but looked many years younger than Mitzy. This wasn’t the face of divorce or separation. It was the face of a comfortable, cozy, loving life. Maybe she was the one who had wanted to end the marriage. Maybe she was done being a wife.

  “Hey, Miss James,” Ethan said, and he dropped his head a little as if to make himself smaller. Ethan was over six feet tall, maybe an inch shorter than his dad.

  “Hey, Ethan.” Lexie directed her smile at Mrs. Waite.

  “Jen Waite,” Mrs. Waite said, and stuck out her hand.

  “Lexie James,” Lexie said, shaking it.

  “Ethan said he loves talking to you during his sessions.” Jen patted Lexie’s hand.

  “Mom.” Ethan rolled his eyes. “I’ll meet you guys in the gym. See you Wednesday, Miss James.” Ethan jogged off. His mother watched him go. Lexie watched, too. She could imagine that if you created a human like that, actually grew it in your body and then pushed it out a ridiculously small hole; if you fed it and shuffled it around like a hockey puck you were keeping from the net for years and years, you’d feel pretty great watching it simply move like that. Precision, strength, fearlessness. Like his dad.

  Lexie looked up. Daniel Waite was staring at her again. He must be a starer. Jen hooked her arm into Daniel’s.

  “It was so nice to meet you both.” Lexie deliberately looked at Mrs. Waite when she spoke. “I have to run to my office and get some paperwork done. If you ever need anything, please call me.”

  They shook hands and Lexie hurried off. It wasn’t until she was in her office, the thick oak door shut firmly, that she realized she was feeling shaky, her stomach like a shifting bubble of mercury. Lexie thought of how Mitzy used to smoke a joint at the kitchen table while staring at a lava lamp. Her mother had found the thing at a garage sale, a relic of the ’70s, and bought it specifically for the purpose of getting high and staring at it.

  “See, try this,” she had told Lexie, as she pushed a bong into her daughter’s hand. “And then you look at this thing and wala, it’s like you’re hypnotized or something.” Lexie was twelve. She had watched the red bubble in the glass beaker but handed the bong back to her mother and held her breath as best she could each time Mitzy lit up.

  Lexie dropped into the Windsor chair at her office desk. Her head felt fuzzy with static. It had been so long since she’d suffered panic attacks, she thought she was done with them. Had left them behind with red-pepper-flake acne and fingernails chewed into ragged little claws. “Accept, acknowledge, face, and float,” she said firmly. Those were the four steps toward controlling anxiety and OCD that she’d learned at Tufts.

  At the time, the attacks took her completely by surprise, like getting hit in the face with a frying pan. She’d managed so much so well on her own: college, summers in Los Angeles when she waitressed to pay the rent, getting herself into grad school fully funded by scholarships, grants, and barely any loan money. And then, six months into her master’s program, Lexie felt like she was dying. Like she had previously been tethered to some mothership that had kept her bobbing in place and then one day, without notice, she’d been cut free. It was a terrifying aloneness. Lexie had suffered quietly, dreading each class, where she sat in fear of vomiting or passing out as she walked to a desk. Eventually she made it to the counseling center where she was prescribed the four steps, 0.5 milligrams of Klonopin, peanut butter, mega B vitamins, complex carbohydrates, yoga, and sleep.

  After twice-a-week sessions and behavioral therapy (she went to every class even if she thought she might throw up in the middle of it), Lexie floated her way through graduate school and eventually eased herself off the Klonopin while keeping up with the other habits. Since then, she’d been carrying a bottle of the pills in her purse for episodes like this—though an episode like this hadn’t popped up in over three years. Surely the prescription had expired, but Lexie didn’t quite believe the pharmaceutical companies with their expiration dates. These were drugs. Chemicals. Didn’t that stuff last forever? Linger in the drinking water? Change the sexual anatomy of sea life?

  Lexie grabbed her sack-like purse and dug around until she found the bottle. The label was merely a gray-white smear. She popped off the top and swallowed one pill, then poured the others out into her hand and counted them. Twenty-five. If this was the start of a season of anxiety, she had twenty-five days to get over it. Assuming she took the recommended dose.

  2

  LEXIE STARED AT THE PAPERWORK ON HER DESK. SHE WAS FLOATY and formless from the Klonopin and couldn’t properly focus; the Waites played on repeat in her brain. Lexie was never jealous of the Ruxton students, but she often reflected on how lucky most of them were. Ethan Waite was a perfect example: A kid whose biggest gripe with his mother might be that she complimented the school counselor in front of him. As for his father, what could Ethan Waite ever say to impugn Daniel Waite?

  Lexie’s father, Bert, had been a bartender at a cinder block pub called Swallow at the Hollow. It was a name that had confused Lexie for years; she had always seen the bird when she said those words, not the bobbing Adam’s apple of a drinker in action. Bert usually didn’t get home from Swallow at the Hollow until three in the morning. He’d walk into the apartment, turn the TV up loud, and lie on the couch and smoke cigarettes until he fell asleep. When she was little, Lexie would come out of her room at the sound of the TV and lie on the couch with her father, falling back to sleep to the smell of menthol Kools and booze, and the blaring, whiney sound of an old movie. As she got older, Lexie stopped going out to join her father, but she would listen to the TV, trying to see in her mind images that went with the sound. When she got up for school, the TV was still on and her father was always asleep, a cigarette butt either hanging from his open mouth like a giant white cold sore or sitting on the edge of the beer can he used for an ashtray. A small pile of ash often sat beside his fallen-cake-looking face, and at least six or seven other empty beers cans would be strewn across the flattened brown carpet (no more plush than a car’s floor mat). Lexie always picked up the beer cans and put them in a paper bag that she left in front of the door of their neighbor, Mr. Gordon. Mr. Gordon cut the cans apart with a pair of thick, beak-tipped scissors. He used the aluminum to make mobiles of flying birds and beady-eyed bats that he sold at the flea market on Sundays. In Lexie’s mind, the idea that the cans were used all over again, in a way that allowed Mr. Gordon to pay his rent, made up for the sheer number of them.

  A few days after Lexie’s fifteenth birthday, Bert went to work and never returned. When Lexie asked her mother where her father was, Mitzy answered, “Hell if I know and hell if I care.” Mitzy had been only seventeen when she’d had Lexie. She and Bert rarely slept in the bedroom together, and although there were times when her parents made it unfortunately c
lear that they were about to have sex, Lexie had no recollection of ever seeing them kiss or hold hands.

  Lexie and Betsy Simms rode their bikes to Swallow at the Hollow a couple nights after Bert’s disappearance. Lexie was told by Randy, the owner, that her dad had quit and said he was leaving town. The rumor was that he had moved to Reno. That night, when Lexie reported this to her mother, Mitzy suggested Lexie take a bus up to Reno to live with Bert.

  “But I don’t even know if he’s there,” Lexie had said.

  “Well, Ronnie’s moving in tomorrow and there isn’t room for the three of us.” Mitzy produced a guilty, pinched smile and crushed out her cigarette on a dinner plate.

  An hour later, when Lexie told this to Betsy, Betsy suggested that she move in with them. The Simmses had a two-story house with four bedrooms and only one kid. Mr. Simms called Lexie The Twin since she and Betsy did everything together and even looked alike with their blue eyes and charcoal eyebrows.

  “You think your parents would mind?” Lexie had asked anxiously. Betsy had yelled in a muffled voice (hand cupped over the mouthpiece, maybe, but Lexie could hear), Mom! Lexie’s mom’s moving a boyfriend into the apartment and her dad disappeared, can she come and live with us? There was silence as Mrs. Simms must have made sure Betsy obscured their conversation. Betsy came back on the phone and said, “Yeah, she’s putting sheets on the guest bed. She said you can stay until you go away to college, and if you go to Ohlone College you can stay until you graduate from there.” Lexie’s throat had throbbed with embarrassment and gratitude.

  When Mitzy claimed she couldn’t come to Lexie’s wedding because she couldn’t afford a plane ticket, the Simmses bought her one as a gift to Lexie. The only reason Lexie accepted this gift was to save herself the embarrassment of having to explain why her mother wasn’t there. An absentee father was nothing to explain—it was something people naturally understood. An absentee mother, however, made as much sense to most people as cannibalism.