My Last Innocent Year(48)

Back on campus, corporate recruiting was in full swing. From my perch at the information desk, I saw my classmates rushing to interviews, carrying briefcases and wearing suits and dress shoes that looked like they came from their parents’ closets. While I was dabbling with the lowest bidder, they were interviewing for jobs in advertising, consulting, investment banking; jobs with benefits, jobs that paid. One sunny Thursday, I sat there buried under my knitting, listening to the printer churn out cover letters and résumés—dear sir to whom it may concern please find enclosed—and thought about money. It had always been there of course, the silent drumbeat to everything, but while we were here we all lived in the same crappy apartments, ate at the same restaurants, and were all in service to the same goal—or so I’d thought. But now I saw that it had always been about money, and those who’d spent their time here with that in mind were the ones with all the answers, while the rest of us were left scrounging.

I was filing the pages that came off the printer when Bo Benson stopped by. I’d been expecting him; his résumé had just come through (government major, poli-sci minor, member of the Tunemen, Wilder’s all-male a cappella singing group). We’d hung out over the weekend at Gamma Nu. I’d sat on a dirty sofa in the basement watching him fling his body around the ping pong table; he was so tall his head practically touched the ceiling. Later, when he was good and drunk, he sat next to me and told me about his mother who loved Jesus and cross-stitch, his father who liked bowling, and their elderly arthritic cat, Morris Grossman, named after their accountant. (Was he the only Jew they knew, I wondered? I didn’t ask.) Bo was funny and easy to talk to. He had a laid-back quality, like a California surfer, even though he was from Ohio. There were no sharp angles to Bo; it felt like anything you threw at him would roll off, like oatmeal down a wall.

“You cut your hair,” I said, handing him his résumé.

“Yeah.” He ran his hand back and forth across his scalp. “I’m doing the whole corporate recruiting thing so I figured clean-cut was the way to go. Is it terrible?”

I pretended to study him. “No, it’s good. You can see your face better.” I paused, letting the compliment sink in. “Who are you interviewing with?”

“Goldman,” he said. “Yeah, I know what you’re thinking.”

“What am I thinking?”

“That I’m a sellout.”

“God, I don’t think that at all. I’m thinking how much I wish I wanted a job like that. The jobs I’m looking at barely pay, if they pay at all.” Behind me, the printer hummed. “I thought jobs had to pay, like that was what made it a job. The quid pro quo of it.”

Bo smiled, revealing his most delightful feature: a slightly crooked front tooth that overlapped the one next to it. “Don’t worry. You’ll find something cool.”

I lifted the warm pages off the printer. “I’m starting to think cool jobs are for rich girls.”

“Hey, are you going to the Pine on Saturday?” Bo asked, slipping his résumé into his backpack. “A bunch of us’ll be there. Rice Krispy Treat is playing.”

“Maybe,” I said, even though I’d already told Kelsey I’d go.

“All right. Later, cool girl.”

“Maybe I should work for Goldman Sachs,” I said to Connelly that afternoon. I was lying across the sofa with my head in his lap. I was wearing my favorite dress, navy with a smattering of flowers, no tights. “How hard could it be?”

“You don’t want a job like that. It’s just pushing money around.”

“Pushing money around sounds nice,” I said. “How does Bo know that’s what he wants to do? I don’t even know what those jobs are.”

“Because it’s what Daddy does. That’s how wealth gets passed down, Isabel, how dynasties get perpetuated. A whole system of entitlement from prep school to the Ivy League to white-shoe law firms and investment banks. But come on, you know this. You’re not stupid. You’re the one writing about Wharton.”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think I’m very stupid.” I picked at a scab on the side of my knee. “Oh, I got some good news. Someone from Get Out! called. They want to set up a phone interview.”

“What’s the job?”

“Writing listings for concerts and movies, stuff going on in the city each week.”

“I thought you were going to stay here this summer and write.”

“I know, but I’m not sure I can swing that right now.” I watched him closely to see how he would react.

He lifted my head off his lap and walked over to his desk. “Do what you want, but you can’t take a job like that.”

“Why not? I’d be writing.”

“Barely. It’s nothing more than a glorified PR job.”

“Well, it’s a job and I need a job.” I pouted, but inside I was thrilled.

The phone rang. I lay with my legs up the wall, listening to Connelly interview someone for an article he was writing about a warehouse fire in Vermont. I hadn’t told him about the money Abe had borrowed. He was always telling me not to worry about money, to concentrate on the work. After college, he’d waited tables, painted houses, sold a little pot. “You do what you have to do.” It made me feel bad, like I wasn’t prepared to give up everything for my art, which felt like the kind of thing a man could do more easily than a woman. Or at least didn’t feel like something I could do. I wanted—no, I needed—the security that came from knowing how I was going to make that month’s rent. I was my mother’s daughter, yes, but Abe Rosen was my dad.