Good Riddance(49)

“She sounds . . . modulated.”

“I noticed that, too. But toward the end, you’ll hear her say that she taught public speaking and drama.”

With that, he went from looking merely thoughtful to forensic.

“What?” I prompted.

“I’m remembering something she asked me.”

“Geneva?”

“It’s probably nothing . . .”

“Out with it,” I said.

“Okay. We passed in the hall . . . maybe a month ago? Then she called, ‘You’re an actor, right?’”

I waited.

“Her follow-up question was did I have any actor friends who might want a gig—not for scale. Off the books. I said no—”

“Did you ask for what?”

“I must’ve, because she said it was for those wedding videos she makes, her sideline—sometimes she needs voice-overs.”

“And that sounded right?”

“I was in a hurry. I just said no, sorry. Everyone I know is either Screen Actors Guild or Equity. In other words, ‘I’m not going to help you stiff my friends.’”

“A voice-over in a wedding video? Whoever heard of that?” I reached for my phone. “I’m calling her!”

“Hold on. You think she’ll tell you the truth? Or even answer her phone?”

“So I do nothing and let her get away with it?”

“She won’t. Besides, is anyone even listening?”

“I’ll tell you who’s listening! Every single person in Pickering, New Hampshire, who knows what a podcast is! This is a really juicy scandal by their standards. New Hampshire isn’t big on adultery. They went blue last election because they didn’t like Donald Trump grabbing anyone’s pussy! Are you too young to remember Peyton Place? Because that was set in New Hampshire!”

“Really? That’s where this took you? To Donald Trump?”

“And Peyton Place, which is not irrelevant! Some idiot is going to call my father, and say, ‘Wow, Tom. I guess Pickering High School is the new Peyton Place.”

“I think you have to chill over this. It’s one person, an actress saying, ‘All the boys had crushes on June Maritch.’ Hardly what you’d call a scandal.”

“One person? This could be the rest of the podcast—all fiction, all actors playing BFFs.”

“Wait. Just because she asked if I knew any cheap actors doesn’t mean it was for the podcast.”

“Yes, it does! Boom! It explains why I didn’t know this dame and why Geneva wouldn’t give me her name or her email.”

“How many episodes have you listened to?”

“All three.”

Jeremy touched the screen of his iPad, which took him to The Yearbook feed. “No, there’s a new one. It was posted yesterday.”

“Play it,” I said.

He tilted the screen away from me, gave something a quick read, then said, “I’d skip this one.”

“Is the imposter back? Or worse?”

“What would be worse?”

I hadn’t actually given this any thought, but it was easy enough to answer. “Some actress pretending to be my sister. Or—wait, no—Armstrong!”

Was Jeremy looking even unhappier? “Why did I tell you?” he groaned.

It was easy enough, with a quick grab, to see what he was looking at. Episode four was titled “The Men in Her Life.” I said, “Tell me it’s not my father.”

He said, “It’s not your father.”



I waited until I was in my own bed, which Jeremy recommended so he wouldn’t have to witness my meltdown. After having taken a homeopathic tranquilizer, I opened my podcast app. First there was music, the same song that opened every episode so far, Elvis crooning, “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”—surely its rights not paid for. Next there was Geneva saying that The Yearbook was brought to you by Gal Friday Films, memorializing “your weddings and commitment ceremonies so sensitively that you’ll cry every time you watch them.”

Then a male voice, seemingly borrowed from the introduction of every audiobook I’d ever listened to, intoned, “Actor Robert Jaffe will be speaking the lines of the graduate we’re calling John Doe.”

I waited before panicking, since half the graduating class were males. It could be the funeral director or class president Duddy McKean or the guy at our table who served on the food committee.

But then there was the introduction. Geneva claimed that the following conversation was a reenactment of an interview with a prominent member of Pickering High School’s Class of 1968. The actor was reading from a transcript, we were told. Geneva would play herself, asking the questions.

Could I bear it? I decided to listen first, get worked up second if warranted.

“Yes, I graduated in 1968 from Pickering High School. Yes, I knew Mrs. Maritch, who was Miss Winter when she was our yearbook advisor.” Geneva interjects, speaking to an alleged audience, “You’ll note I started with baseline yes-or-no questions, like the warm-ups in a lie detector test.”

But then this one: “Several sources have confirmed that you and Miss Winter had a personal relationship. Could you comment on that?”

Well, of course, the publicly respectable member of the New Hampshire bar I knew would never answer that question, would never have agreed to sit down with Geneva. But this faker said, “When you work on a yearbook, especially as the deadline approaches, you’re there all hours. And sometimes, when the custodial staff knocks on the door, and says, ‘You have to wrap it up. I’m locking up the school,’ then you move to someone’s house.”