On Turpentine Lane(19)

I read the three names aloud, then asked Nick, “How old can an Ashley, Katelin, and Kristy be?”

“Young. And I thought he was walking across the country, not hitchhiking.”

“Sometimes, if his feet hurt, or it’s bad weather, or the air quality is poor, he sticks out his thumb.” I handed the phone back. “At least I know he’s not dead.”

“And that’s good enough?”

“It wasn’t good enough this weekend,” I confessed.

“So he doesn’t even know about this shit storm at work?”

I shook my head. I could see he was searching for a Stuart rebuke that wouldn’t go too far, that wouldn’t call my judgment into question. Eventually, he asked, “Do you think he reads his comments?”

Unless it’s from me, I thought. “I have no idea,” I said.

When Nick began typing, I asked what he was doing.

He read aloud. “Douche bag, exclamation point. Faith is worried about you. Call her for fuck’s sake.”

I let out a yelp of protest.

He said, “Nah. I wrote, ‘Dude! Faith is worried about you. Call her!’?”

“Do you think he’s a douche bag?”

“Only if you do.”



Writing while nursing two separate abandonment anxieties took all my powers of concentration. I managed another note. Yaddy yaddy yah, counterfeit enthusiasm, manufactured gratitude over measly amounts on my best notecards—the school crest engraved rather than embossed—because they were YAFTD: Young Alum First-time Donor.

My office landline and cell phone were still silent twenty minutes after Nick had asked Stuart to call me.

“I have a meeting at ten,” I heard him say.

I looked up. “One that concerns me?”

He said, “It could. It’s with Dickenson. But it’s been on the calendar for weeks.”

I hadn’t yet found a way to tell Nick about my parents’ mission to Mrs. Hepworth’s house and the alleged fix, but now was the time. I took a sip of my tepid coffee and began with “I may be okay. Workwise, I mean.”

“I did notice you were still slaving away on your prize-winning notes.”

I was mildly distracted from my confession by his use of “prize-winning” and thanked him for the compliment.

“You were saying . . . ?”

“My parents . . . well, my brother, too . . . they took matters into their own hands by visiting and sweet-talking Mrs. Hepworth into making things right.”

Eyes narrowed, thinking if not plotting, Nick asked, “Do you have her phone number?”

“I’m not calling her!”

“Not you. Me.”

“To say what?”

“Wanna listen?”

I did and I didn’t.

Nick said, “I’m a talent. You should listen.”

Next thing I knew, he was hitting buttons rather breezily. And then I heard “Mrs. Hepworth! It’s Nick Franconi, from Everton Country Day, a colleague of Faith Frankel’s.” Then he was nodding rather strenuously, clearly for my benefit, a signal that she was . . . what? Pleased? Not sounding batty?

“Nicholas Franconi,” he repeated. “I’m director of Major Gifts, and I heard you gave us a whopper!”

This was not the tone I was expecting. My arms were now folded on my blotter and my inflamed face was pressed into them.

“I agree! She is a lovely young lady! In every way. And I understand that you met her parents.” When I looked up, he winked at me.

“The reason I’m calling—and I hope I’m not disturbing you—is that Faith is hard at work this morning over in her office”—another wink—“and I’m assuming I have you to thank for her uninterrupted service.”

More listening and nodding. Then he said, “And you had no difficulty reaching our headmaster over the weekend?” He hit speaker, and Mrs. Hepworth’s wrinkly voice filled the room. I heard “He lives in that beautiful house with the portico. All I had to do was call the main number and I was put through. First I talked to his wife, and then he called me back. He was at a game. The school was playing another school, but I didn’t catch its name or the sport.”

Nick said, “I was at that game myself! Football! Everton won!” And with that, he mouthed Did not.

Mrs. Hepworth said, “He called me back after the match, all apologies. And I told him that every penny of Sandy’s donation was meant to go to the school to fix the cracks in the pool and . . . those other things.”

“The locker room. It was a hellhole! We’re so grateful.”

Mrs. Hepworth, age eighty-seven, or -eight or -nine, could be heard tittering at “hellhole” while I was nearly losing consciousness at Nick’s nerve.

“I hope to meet you very soon!” he bellowed. “We’ll most assuredly have a beautiful dedication when the pool is refurbished. I look forward to that, as does Faith. As does every single member of our grateful community.”

“Very well,” she said.

I picked up my pen to write another thank-you note. This one should be going to a Geoffrey J. Kemmerer, class of ’58, for his (adverb, adjective) donation to the (fill-in-the-blank) fund. Instead, I composed sentences for Nick, now absent, gone to meet with my main accuser. I wrote that no matter what the rest of this Monday brought he might be the best, most loyal coworker I could ever ask for.