Good Riddance(65)

32


No Turning Back



While shredding and stressing, I’d forgotten that I’d left a note for Jeremy announcing the end of my Montessori journey. He called, and we went over the conversation I’d had with my director, culminating in her big lie that the job had never been anything but temporary.

“Is it true?” he asked.

“No! She’d said Danielle might be coming back, but it was with a verbal wink, as in ‘Her maternity leave is open-ended.’ The truth is that I was fired for being a burglar.”

That required me to backtrack to Geneva’s bigmouthing my alleged crime all over the Upper West Side until her slander reached the unforgiving ears of two Belvedere parents.

“Can you pretty much reconstruct the conversation?” Jeremy asked.

“I just did.”

“No. I mean in writing.”

I told him I had a whole document on my laptop titled “Yearbook Stuff.” But if he was thinking it could be ammo in a lawsuit, forget it. I had no case since I happened to be guilty of that which I’d been accused.

“Are you going to be all right?” he asked.

That was delivered in a sympathetic voice that made me think he meant “all right emotionally” until he added, “Because I’m pretty sure you can collect unemployment from the state when you’re fired.”

“That won’t be necessary. I get alimony and”—what to call my Peter Armstrong allowance?—“money from a kind of trust. I’ll be fine.”

I took a stab at sounding as if I could live outside my own head. “What about you? Work good? Timmy happy?”

“Very. He’s writing for the Blue and Gold. And he kissed a girl.”

I chose not to pursue that. I asked, “What about the other work, the secret screenwriting I knew nothing about until you told Kathi. Anything to report there?”

“Actually, yes, but it’s still in the note-taking stage.”

“Can you talk about it?”

“I’m afraid to.”

I assumed that meant he was keeping the idea close to the vest, guarding his premise against copycats. I said, “I get that.”

“When I have more on paper, I’d like to run it by you.”

That was flattering, especially since I had no experience with scripts except for the times I’d rehearsed lines with him. I’d always been happy to be asked, especially when I got to read for Timmy’s drunk mother. I asked which medium he was writing for, TV or movies?

“Neither.”

“Please tell me it’s not a podcast.”

“It’s not.”

I asked what was left.

“The stage.”

I’d been in New York long enough to recognize a pipedream when I heard one. “Wow. Good luck.”

“Really? ‘Good luck’? That sounds like ‘Nice knowing you.’”

Did he need reminding about the obstacle in our path? Apparently, yes. I asked, “How is the adjunct professor? Are you having sex yet, or is that another thing you’d rather not discuss?”

“Correct.”

I wanted to ask, Is she as much fun/readily available/raring to go as I am? Or Are you falling for her? Instead, I announced, “I shredded the yearbook.”

He yelped. “No, you did not!”

“I did.”

“Literally shredded?”

“Every page. And I kept the shreds as evidence that the yearbook’s not hidden in a vault somewhere.”

“What made you do it? I mean, if you had to describe your motivation . . .”

Motivation? Despite his day job, Jeremy rarely used director-speak. I said, “I couldn’t stand to look at it. I didn’t want it lying around. I could’ve hidden it—”

“Or kept it at my place. It was very happy here.”

“Except it was radioactive back in my apartment.”

“But you can live with the shreds?”

“It’s like saving someone’s ashes. Maybe I’ll scatter them from the top of Mount Monadnock.”

“Do that. I’ll drive you up there,” he said.

Why did he keep saying things like that, implying that he welcomed my company? I said, “We’ll bring Geneva, too. She can make it the grand finale: I scatter the ashes and then get pushed off the mountain and die. Cue ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’”

The old Jeremy had been a much better audience. “Does she even know the yearbook’s been destroyed?” was his unsatisfying response.

“I bagged the shreds and texted her a picture of them.”

“When?”

“Yesterday.”

“Did you hear back?”

“No, and I don’t want to.”

“She must’ve gone ballistic. I’d lie low for a while if I were you. And maybe not answer the door.”

Doubts were creeping in. Book shredding, discussed aloud, was sounding less and less like the act of a stable person. “Be honest. Did I do a really stupid, impulsive thing? Maybe I should’ve copied the pages first, then shredded the fakes. I did think of that, but the originals are on that nice glossy stock.”

“No turning back. You have to own it. And I must say, it’ll play beautifully.”