Good Riddance(50)

“Whose house?”

The actor read aloud what must have been a bracketed stage direction. “Long pause.” Then reluctantly, “Miss Winter’s. Her apartment.”

Apartment! What apartment? More evidence of this as a put-up job.

Next, Geneva asked if anything physical had taken place between student and teacher on that visit.

“That visit? No.”

“But that wasn’t the last time you and Miss Winter met privately at her apartment, was it?”

“Inaudible,” read the actor.

“Mr. Doe? It wasn’t the last time was it?” Geneva the prosecutor repeated.

The actor emitted a guilty no.

“How old was Miss Winter at this time?”

“Young.”

“Were you in love with her?”

“I was. I still am.”

Okay. This was now officially and blatantly false. Still in love with her?

“You didn’t even go to her funeral,” I yelled at my phone, then reminded myself that this was not—nor had it ever been—the actual Peter Armstrong.

“How long did the physical relationship last?”

“Just till graduation. I went off to college and she got married.”

“Today, you realize, even in New Hampshire . . . this would not only have gotten Miss Winter fired but also prosecuted and no doubt jailed?”

Insult to injury: even in New Hampshire? That backwater where we chew tobacco and intermarry?

“I was eighteen,” he said. “Maybe she’d be fired, but she wouldn’t have gone to jail.”

Okay, this was complete garbage. But what nerve! What unmitigated gall to make up a story about a real, named person even if not named. Peter Armstrong would never have admitted to an affair, nor would he have agreed to talk to the obnoxious woman he was barely civil to at the reunion.

I texted Jeremy. I’M GOING TO KILL HER.

My phone rang. “No, you’re not. You’re going to let nature take its course.”

“What does that mean?”

“Someone such as myself will give her a no-star rating and write under comments, ‘This is total bullshit.’”

“I’m trying to think of the best way to tell John Doe Armstrong that Geneva the sociopath has made up a story about him and my mother having sex in the yearbook office.”

“Made up? Isn’t it the truth that he and your mother—”

“Later! He was already a lawyer, remember? It was thirty-one years and nine months ago! The school crush never got acted on. I mean, in its own way, it’s almost honorable. Well, no, it’s horrible because my mother was married to my father when it happened.”

He asked if I wanted to come over. Though I had never turned down that invitation, I did tonight. I said I’d be railing nonstop. “I mean, who was next? My father?”

Jeremy didn’t answer, which was entirely uncharacteristic. I found out soon enough that it was delicacy that made him go silent because when I hit play, the fakester after John Doe was indeed Tom Maritch, cuckolded husband, referred to on this sickening project not by name but by “Husband.”

I called Jeremy back. “My father! You should’ve warned me! How can I sleep now? I want her to end up in jail for . . . human trafficking! Wouldn’t that fit in some bizarre way?”

“You need to be a little zen about this,” he said.

How? And, for God’s sake, why? Even my scalp and hair follicles felt overheated. Could blood actually boil? Is wanting to bankrupt, sue, and murder Geneva zenlike enough?





24


It’s Nothing



I was never someone to let things go, and I wasn’t going to start now. Besides being furious and impatient, I was worried that word would have gotten around Pickering. What if some bigmouth wrote to my father with misguided congratulations about how his late wife’s yearbook had made the big time?

I gnashed my teeth for a few days as I watched the little ones at their tasks—polishing silver, pouring water from vessel to vessel, folding mats, raking sand, cutting, serving. Which path to take? Didn’t I value what I tried to teach daily, to have my students think critically, work collaboratively, and act boldly?

I emailed Cousin Julian after he hadn’t taken an earlier phone call. Could he send a letter asking Geneva Wisenkorn, producer and director of a podcast lame-named The Yearbook, which was filled with falsehoods, to cease, desist, and retract?

Attorney Cousin Julian wrote back somewhat formally, reminding me that he was a tax lawyer and didn’t practice the various kinds of law that my branch of the family often needed. It wasn’t very cousinly; between the lines, I thought I was reading Note that the pro bono work I do is for the indigent and underserved who need help with tax preparation.

Had Geneva picked up some vitriolic vibe emanating through my front door, inspiring her to knock one evening? No, it was not sensitivity or emotional intelligence that made her come calling. Her visit was inspired by a casual, fair answer by Jeremy when she’d asked him in the elevator one morning if he’d seen me lately—off-base again as to what Jeremy and I constituted—and if I still lived in the building.

“I said of course you were still living here and that you’d gotten that teaching job.”

“Did she ask anything about how I liked the podcast—as in ‘Is Daphne consulting a lawyer?’”