Page 40 of The Last Book Party

She looked at Jeremy for what felt like a long time. He raised his eyebrows, like he really wanted to know. She stared back at him, her expression sad in a way I hadn’t seen before, and said, “A little.”

The disappointment of giving up her dream was clear onmy mother’s face. But the story, so familiar to me, now struck me not only as sad, but melodramatic. If she loved piano so much, why had she stopped playing altogether? How could it be enough for her to channel all her creativity into home decorating and all her ambitions into her brilliant son?

39

Drunk and maybe a little embarrassed, after dinner my mother drifted off to her room. Jeremy was far more relaxed than usual, no doubt on account of the Benadryl and the beer. He sat on the kitchen counter, leaning his head on the refrigerator, while I washed the dishes. When I was done, we went outside on the deck, lying side by side on the two chaise longue chairs.

“I like your mother. You’re lucky. There was no conversation in my house growing up. Like, literally, none.”

“What about your sister? Didn’t you guys talk?”

He stretched his arms above his head.

“Debbie? We did as kids. But she got really angsty when she turned twelve. More than angsty. Seriously troubled. She started pulling out her eyelashes and eyebrows, literally yanking them out hair by hair.”

“That’s awful,” I said.

“Yeah, it was disturbing. And no one talked about it. We always had the television on at dinner.CBS Evening Newswith Walter Cronkite. It was either that or listen to my father’s humming and the click of my mother’s jaw when she chewed.”

“Sounds bleak.”

“You have no idea. I begged them to send me to boarding school. I heard about Choate from an English teacher and became fixated on it. When they said I could go, I was elated. I thought it would be paradise.”

“And it wasn’t?” I imagined Choate as a place for golden-haired trust fund kids, not for someone like Jeremy.

“No, it was. I loved it. Going to Choate was like traveling from black-and-white to color. I loved everything—even the din in the dining hall. I could talk there and barely be heard. I learned I could raise my voice, yell even, and it was totally acceptable. Verbal sparring was the norm. And it was OK to be intellectually showy. There was even a lacrosse player—a lanky guy with long blond hair—who would recite French poetry. At my old school, he would have been massacred.”

“Did you meet Franny right away?”

“I saw him during my second week,” Jeremy said. “He was standing on a chair in the dining hall, singing some sea shanty at the top of his lungs. It was tempting to scoff at his pretty-boy looks, but he was so oblivious to his appeal that it was pointless. I started hanging out in his orbit. For some reason, he liked me.”

“What was he like?”

Despite everything, I was still curious about Franny. Maybe I always would be.

“He was unlike anyone I had ever met. He didn’t want to argue with anyone. He just wanted to have fun. I had no idea what he saw in me. We were opposites. He was the golden boy, and I was the moody Jew. Once we started hanging out, I could forget how weird it was for a kid like me to be at Choate, where every other kid summered on Nantucket and had grown up hearing about the glory days of Choate’s crew team from his grandfather.”

I wasn’t surprised that Jeremy and I were both drawn to Franny for the same reason—how he made us feel lighter and freer, not like who we were but who we wanted to be.

“Franny loved that I was a writer, but I think he loved the idea of it more than my writing itself. I’m not sure he read anything I wrote. He doesn’t particularly like books.”

“I know. He told me that. I didn’t believe him.”

“He liked showing me off to Tillie and Henry, though. I think he knew they would be pleased that he had a bookish friend.”

“And were they?”

“They were. And it was mutual. The first time I went home with Franny, for fall break, I sort of fell in love with them.”

“Sounds romantic,” I said.

“It was romantic,” he said. “Not sexually romantic, but, well, you know.…”

“I do. Whatisit about them?”

“They’re a very seductive family,” Jeremy said, rolling onto his side.

“No shit,” I said.

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