Work for Hire (12 page)

“Yes, well, hmm.” I stammered for something appropriate to say to Xander. Mr. Lamont might have been a complete asshole, but that wasn’t Xander’s fault. “But don’t you also want to do well on your in-class essays?” I asked, grasping at straws.

“Sure.” Xander smiled and paced another circle around the room. “But like you saw, I suck. Don’t feel bad. It’s not your fault. As long as the essay we submit on Wednesday is good, we should be fine. So do you think you’ll have something in by tomorrow?”

Now my mouth did drop. I was supposed to work on this overnight? On my own time?
Alone
?

“I really don’t want to be dealing with this over the weekend,” Xander continued, oblivious to my predicament. “
Maman
is coming and she’ll probably drag us out somewhere, so the sooner you’re done the better. Anyway, I read a story on BBC News about Darfur. What do you think about that situation?”

Darfur? My mind reeled. He wanted to talk world events
now
?

“Wait,” I declared, popping out of my seat. Enough was enough. First Gemma and now Xander. I didn’t sign up for this.

I glared at Xander’s constantly moving body. “Stop.” He paused, visibly surprised by my tone. “Just because you wrote a crappy first draft doesn’t mean you can’t write a better second one. And, no, I am not going to have something in for you by
tomorrow
because
we
are going to sit down and
you
are going to start writing.
I’ll
help. So sit.” I pointed to his vacant seat.

Xander arched a brow and continued standing. “I told you, I don’t know how to write. You saw what I can do. I’ll get an F, and then what will you tell my dad?”

“You won’t get an F.” I sighed and sat back on the stool. “I promise. Come on, Xander, trust me.
Sit
,” I instructed. “If you know how to speak English, you know how to write it. It just takes more practice.”

He hesitated, but eventually stepped back to his chair, sulking.

“Great,” I chirped, to get our spirits up. “So your essay topic is to answer whether you believe anything created in art and literature today can be truly original. Right?”

“Right.”

“And what do you believe?”

When Xander pointed to the crumpled paper, I shook my head. “
Forget
that version. Just look at me and
tell
me what you think.”

He rolled his eyes, but answered, apparently willing to play along.

“I believe that nothing we write or create today is really original.”

“Great,” I smiled and patted his shoulder. “So why don’t you write that?”

“What?”

“Take that paper there,” I flipped his old essay over and handed him a pen. “And write exactly what you just said: ‘I believe nothing we write or create today is really original.’”

He reached for the pen and wrote it.

“See,” I beamed. “You have a perfectly grammatical sentence that’s much better than before. Now, why do you believe nothing we write or create today is really original?”

Xander shrugged. “Because everything ‘new’ seems to just be a copy of something someone else did before. That’s what I meant when I wrote about my mother. Everyone says her pictures are original, but to me they look like all the other pictures in the fashion magazines.”

“Excellent,” I nodded. “You’ll get to your mother later. First write your reason down.”

Xander stared.

“Write, ‘Everything that is written or created today seems to copy something someone else did before,’” I reminded. “Go ahead. Write it down.”

Xander scribbled.

“Good, Xander. You’re well on your way.”

He put the pen down and furrowed his brow. “But this sounds
stupid.
Like someone in first grade did it.”

First grade! He thought
this
sounded like first grade? Had he not read the essay he had written in class today?

“I thought writing was supposed to be fancier than speaking,” he whined on.

“It can be,” I agreed. “But sometimes you have to
simplify
before you can
complicate.
Look, finish your essay this way, and I’ll help you make it sound fancier after. I’ll edit it for you.”
Yeah, edit. That’s it.

“Finish on my own?!” Xander burst out. “But that will take forever. The essay’s five hundred words!”

“Lucky you got until Wednesday then.”

I smiled and got up.
Today’s session was over. I’d had enough for one day.

I headed for the door. “Remember, say it out loud before you write it, so it makes sense.” I paused here. “Actually, try asking your sister for help. Say your essay out loud to her, so you’re not tempted to start writing something from your head; write your spoken words instead. I’ll check what you come up with tomorrow. Okay? Oh, and whenever you’re tempted to write a comma, just make it a period. We’ll see where that gets you tomorrow.”

“But … ” Xander sprang out of his chair and ran after me. “Tekla, wait … ”

I kept on marching. Tough love was sometimes the best medicine. I jogged down the stairs, towards the front door and freedom. Midway down, the doorbell rang.

Xander leaned over the stairs’ balustrade and, his face sour, snickered. “Ding dong, the bitch is here.”

“Who?” I turned to look at him.

“Lisa. My dad made her give back the key since
Maman
is coming back.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but shut it again. I wanted to ask but didn’t. The Lamonts’ private lives were none of my business. Still, one issue needed addressing.

“Ah, Xander,” I advised, “don’t tell Lisa about your essay. She may not understand our approach. And Xander, one more thing: watch your language.”

“Sure.”

He stepped away from the balustrade and started walking back to his room.

I guess it was up to me to let Lisa in.

“This is going to be some weekend,” I heard him say as he drifted off, although I could barely make out his voice. “
Maman.
Lisa. And me talking to myself. Just a bunch of loonies.”

CHAPTER 7

“
I
DON’T KNOW
why we pay so much for law school if you’re just going to be a nanny.”

My mother placed a bowl of potatoes in the middle of her dining room table. Steam rose from the bowl and danced up towards the room’s ceiling.

“You can do that without college,” she continued as she eyed the bowl and moved it until it was perfectly parallel with a platter of breaded chicken cutlets. “Like all the other Polish girls who come to this country and are foolish enough to work as maids instead of going to school and getting proper jobs.”

Apparently satisfied with the bowl’s new placement, my mother pulled out a chair and sat on the other side of the table, across from me.

It was Sunday and I was at my parents’ house in Brooklyn. I rarely made the trip, but today I craved familial company, to my fast-growing regret.

“That’s how we get our reputation in this country. We’re either maids or construction workers. Dumb Polaks,” scoffed my mother.

She leaned over the table and reached for the empty dinner plate directly in front of me. Clearly, she meant to hand-feed me.

I scowled.
No, you don’t pay for law school,
I wanted to say.
I have the student loans to prove it. And for God’s sake, I can get my own food.

The words hovered on the tip of my tongue, but I remained silent. Sunday dinner was usually a one-woman show: my mother’s. There was no room for a second act. And I had arrived, unannounced and unexpected, looking for comfort and a break from school, Gemma, Xander and the essay. So I tucked my hands under my legs and listened.

“Forget that I went to college hardly knowing any English and graduated
summa cum laud
while raising two children,” my mother reminded me.

Boy, did she ever love reminiscing about the good old days.

My mother spooned a glob of potatoes, dumped it on my plate and sprinkled the white heap with dill. I winced—both at the size of the serving and the litany that was surely to follow. My mother especially relished analyzing my father’s unwise criticism of the Socialist regime and how it precipitated our move to the States twenty years before. She savored going into minute detail about our descent from comfortable intelligentsia to impoverished working class, and having to start over from scratch.

“Forget that your father was
the
most prominent law professor in all of Poland before our unfortunate move to America.”

My mother forked a massive cutlet onto my plate, next to the potatoes. I cringed.

“Or that he managed to open and run a successful restaurant while supporting a wife in school and two small children.”

Steam from the potatoes mixed with the aroma of fried chicken. I sniffed and glanced down at the food. The cutlet was just golden enough. The potatoes looked lighter than air. I sniffed again. My stomach grumbled. I missed hearty Polish home cooking. It was better than any sushi, soufflé or foie gras I could buy in the city. The food almost made the visit to Brooklyn bearable.

Almost.

“Or that those same children are now enrolled in some of the best schools in the country.”

I tore my stare away from the food and returned it to my mother, to her perfectly coiffed hair and flawless make-up. She looked stylish, as always, a modern-day Sophia Loren, down to her amber eyes and olive skin. My mother never missed her weekend beauty appointments. She considered those the ritual of a proper lady.

“No. We’re servants.” She jabbed her manicured finger at the tabletop and nodded her chin in the direction of my plate. “Eat. You’re as skinny as those poor starving children in Africa. I don’t know what they feed you at that school of yours.”

I glanced down my body. It was no skinnier than it had been when I first moved out of the house my freshman year of college. Still, I picked up the cutlery and dug in.

“Why,” my mother said, waiting to continue her litany until I swallowed, “just the other day a woman from Manhattan came into your father’s restaurant. She said she just adored
authentic
Polish food and made it a point to eat some at least once a year. She ordered the stuffed cabbage. She talked to your father, and after he told her he had a son and daughter, she asked if your brother would be interested in a janitorial position in her building. They had an opening for a young, strong man. And when your father told her thanks, but no thanks—because his son was too busy getting an M.B.A. at Wharton—she was floored. She couldn’t believe he meant
the
Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania, the same Wharton her son attends. Turns out they’re classmates.

“And how do I know this? The woman had the audacity to actually
check
that your father was telling the truth. She made her son talk to your brother to confirm the fact, and then came all the way back to the restaurant to tell your father all about it! Then she wanted to know how
he
managed to get his son into such a fine school. The nerve. How the hell did
she
manage to get her own son in?”

My mother paused, watched me fork two more bites and then went for the kill.

“Of course, if she had been looking for a nanny, we could’ve sent you.”

“Mom,” I moaned, and dropped my fork. My shoulders drooped. Clearly, I was an embarrassment to my family and country of origin. “I am not a nanny. I’m a
tutor
. There
is
a difference.” And there was. There
was.

“Tutor, nanny, same thing.”

My mother shrugged and finally filled her own plate. She did, however, make her portion smaller—because she watched her weight. Religiously. She was determined to stay a size eight until her dying day.

And my mother was well on her way. At nearly fifty, her body looked as shapely as it had when she was twenty years younger. “Genetics,” she called it. Too bad I hadn’t inherited from the same gene pool, because while her carefully maintained curves screamed “WOMAN!” mine spelled “s-t-r-i-n-g-b-e-a-n.” Any excess fat she gained went to all the right places, whereas mine slid right off me.

“It’s the same thing,” my mother concluded as she cut into her chicken. “You’re babysitting other people’s children, and that’s not what you went to law school for.”

She nibbled on the piece of chicken, and when the meat was finally gone, pointed her empty fork straight at me. “I just knew you should’ve gone to medical school. They would’ve kept you busy enough and away from such nonsense. And we finally would’ve had a doctor in the family.”

My being a doctor had been my mother’s fondest wish. She herself had started medical school in Poland, but our forced move ended those aspirations. She got an accounting degree from a local community college in Brooklyn instead. It had been more practical. She could start earning money and helping the struggling family much faster. She figured her daughter would naturally continue the dream, even if said daughter turned green at the very sight of blood.

“But no.” My mother stabbed at another piece of meat. “You had to be your father’s child in everything. The legal superstar. But if your father hadn’t been such a big star, he wouldn’t have thought to take on the whole Communist government, by himself, and we still could’ve been living in Poland. Instead, he’s slaving away at the restaurant and you’re wiping spoiled kids’ noses.”

“I’m not babysitting or wiping noses,” I bristled. It wasn’t my father’s fault life had sometimes been difficult for us. He had stood up for his principles. That was worth something. And, anyway, I liked living in America. Actually, I could hardly remember our life in Poland. “I’m helping two high-school-age kids with schoolwork. And I get paid well for doing so. And look,” I said, showing off my new bag, “I even got this, as a bonus.”

“Pff … ” My mother rested her cutlery against the plate, reached for a napkin and dabbed at her lips. “Expensive bribery from absent parents,” she derided, even though she adored designer brands. “When you were little and needed help with homework, I always stayed up with you, even when I didn’t know English well. I would study the dictionary, sometimes all night, just so I could answer your questions. I did the same with your brother. That’s called ‘parenting,’ and you should never outsource that responsibility, even if you can afford to. You think you’re helping those kids, but you’re not, really. They need their mother, not a nanny.”