Rumaan Alam - Rich and Pretty

Lately she feels so stupid.It’s the pregnancy, Sarah tells herself, then remembers she’s pregnant, and gets angry. For days, she vacillates between those two states: idiocy and rage. Joy — about the pregnancy, the wedding — it’s out there somewhere, she tells herself.

At the moment, nothing holds her interest. The fat paperback she’s been picking at is lying splayed open on the coffee table. It’s good, but the television seems more appealing at the moment. Jeopardy! is on, and she’s playing along, talking out loud, unembarrassed. Dan doesn’t care. He sits at the little desk by the window, tapping away, oblivious.

“Who is Vanessa Bell? What is Eminent Victorians?” Dan chimes in with the answer that eludes her: the Abyssinian hoax.

She’s not prone to exaggeration so Sarah wouldn’t say she’s exhausted, but she’s tired. She’s not used to working so many hours in the store: labor that involves much standing, much cheerful chatter. She’s good at Jeopardy! but she’s not smart. They’re two different things. Younger, she’d have called herself smart, because she was raised to believe she was. She was raised to believe she was perfect. The shock of college wasn’t the usual — discovering radical politics, lesbianism, Kathy Acker. It was discovering her mediocrity. She’d always been adept, before, at seeming smart: asking the right questions, asking questions at all, maintaining an air of propriety, of friendliness, of openness. The ingredients, she thought, of intelligence. Teachers loved her, and so did the students. She was active, which she took for a type of intelligence. Her college professors, though, were not swayed by this activity, this performance of intelligence. They had no context for knowing her. She was one of a few hundred.

As a girl, she’d been loved, indulged, and aware enough to understand that this meant she was, in a word, spoiled. She took pains to remember that. It was unbecoming, she learned quickly, to whine, to brag, to push. The thing to do was wield her power subtly. Never a tantrum, whether over a doll or, later, a saddle, later still a CD changer for the car, a credit card, tickets to Florida, because she understood that these would come, by virtue of the fact that she wanted them to. So, too, at school, deemed academically one of the best in the country — the country, understand — she’d managed A’s almost across the board simply by expecting them for herself. And if, on occasion, she forgot to read the book, she would expect, and receive, a reprieve.

The October of her freshman year of college, Doctor Diana Baker had startled her, during office hours, by saying a firm no to Sarah, supplicant, come to inquire about an extension on a paper. She had her argument ready, should it come up — something to do with Huck, but not a name-drop.

“We’re all adults here. You don’t want to or can’t get to the work, that’s your concern. I’m not in the business of keeping tabs on my students.”

Sarah must have sputtered or begun to speak, apologetic, embarrassed, her cheeks growing hot.

Then this. “I can’t help you. No one can, no one but you. Thanks for dropping by.”

The good game show has ended and is followed, as it always is, by the stupid one, which she loves anyway. It’s got a comforting cadence to it, spin the wheel, mention a letter, take a stab, win some prizes. The winning contestant today, the one who’s advanced to the final round, is a portly guy in a purple button-down shirt with a raspy voice who can barely contain his excitement. The camera pans to the crowd as he introduces the two people in the audience rooting for him. His friends, a woman with very alert eyes, wearing a dress more suited to a cocktail party than being in a studio audience, and another friend, goateed, gray haired, heavyset, probably a coworker. Poor thing, to have no spouse, no family there to cheer him on in his moment in the spotlight. The clue, the answer, is a phrase: Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all . He gets it right, wins forty thousand dollars. Good for him, she thinks.

Sarah had always confused a proximity to excellence for excellence. She had confused the expectation that she’d be exceptional with the reality that she was not exceptional. She got the paper in on time, after all, got a C, finished the class without ever speaking to Doctor Diana Baker again. This wasn’t a turning point, the kick in the pants Doctor Baker might have thought she was giving; Sarah looked deep down into herself and saw there was nothing else there. She did fine in college, got the degree, naturally, on time. She met Dan, which affirmed that her suspicion that she was not, herself, smart, was well founded. Dan was smart. Maybe it was enough that she was nearby. That was how she’d felt about Lauren, first meeting her; she was so pretty, maybe it was enough to be within that. That had never faded, that love of Lauren’s prettiness, the love of sitting firmly within the confines of its spotlight, its halo, its shadow. Now, she’s blaming the stupidity — and let’s be honest, it’s more absentmindedness — on the pregnancy. She’ll need an extension on everything. She’ll get it done in eight months. It’ll be fine.

This resignation manifests itself as a sigh, one louder than she’d intended, but isn’t that always how they come out?

“What is it?” Dan turns his gaze from the computer to her, even though he’s fully capable of maintaining a split focus, indeed seems to focus better when he’s doing two things at once. Some of their best conversations have taken place while he’s driving, or typing, or cooking.

“I forgot to do something,” she says.

“Wedding thing or life thing?”

“Work thing,” she says. “I need to e-mail Carol about this grant, and the fall, and I don’t feel prepared to answer any questions.”

“Because you can’t, because you feel like it’s dishonest to discuss this with her without disclosing that you’re pregnant,” Dan says.

“Bingo.” She impatiently picks up a fat bridal magazine, which has slipped from its perch atop a pile of four others on the shelf under the coffee table. “This place is a mess.”

“We should get Aga in,” Dan says. “A deep clean.”

“She was here a week ago,” she says.

“Maybe she should come weekly instead of bi-,” Dan says.

“That seems excessive. How much mess could we make in a week?”

“This much,” Dan says, gesturing around the apartment. “Aga is happy for the work, I think. I mean, we pay her well, we treat her nicely, I hope. I would like to think we’re model employers. Besides, if she comes weekly, the house won’t be as dirty each time she comes, so her job will actually get easier, even as she makes more money.”

“Fine, we’ll have her come weekly, then.” Sarah is displeased by the fact that he’s solved this problem so quickly.

“You don’t need to be angry. You have better things to be doing with your time, I think. Your work. The wedding. The pregnancy. I have less time to spare, to clean, with my work, and honestly, when I’m home like this, I would rather hang out with you than clean the bathroom. It’s not an ethical dilemma. It’s not even a financial imposition.”

“Fine, I don’t know why we’re talking about it.” She shrugs.

“We’re talking about it because when you, or anyone for that matter, says ‘fine’ they usually mean something else entirely, and we’re talking about it because you were just complaining that the apartment is messy and I was trying to offer a solution.”

“Okay.” She’s angry now for no particular reason. She counts to three, as she was advised to by her mother, once, and it works: The anger dissolves like a tablet in water. She sighs again, and it’s noisy again.