Jane Mendelsohn - Burning Down the House

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A few days later Angel drove Neva across the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey. He dropped her off a few blocks from a large midscale hotel and handed her an envelope that contained a small map with directions, the name of a woman she was supposed to ask for at the front desk, and his, Angel’s, cell-phone number. She knew his number by heart from calling him so many times to arrange pickups and drop-offs for the boys, but he had written it down for her just in case. Angel was originally from Ecuador, in his early thirties, and had a wife and a young son. He had worked for Steve for nearly ten years driving and maintaining Steve’s cars. But he liked big machinery, and being outside, and thought that working as a crane operator would be more interesting, exciting even, and possibly enable him to work his way up in construction, maybe to become a site manager. There was nowhere for him to go as a driver. He appreciated the work, was grateful for it, but he was tired of sitting in traffic, and his young body was getting restless. He was also concerned that being a driver would lead to too many gigs like this one, taking the nanny out to who the hell knew where and dropping her off in a sketchy neighborhood to walk alone. No one had told him what any of this was about, but he didn’t like the looks of it. He was supposed to drive several blocks away and wait for an hour until he got a text from Neva to return to the pickup spot. He would listen to the radio. And worry about her. She was always reserved, but she looked especially tense now. Her jaw even more sharply angled than usual, her eyes more narrowed. Her clothes today seemed a little revealing to him, down-market for her, he thought, almost a bit trashy, which was not a word he would have ever used to describe her. He leaned against the car and watched her as she walked away from him past a strip mall toward the hotel. In the extremely high-heeled boots she was wearing, she looked like a colt learning to walk. Cars whizzing past, the faded primary colors of store signs smearing in the background. Her strong body suddenly appearing fragile to him. The sound of the highway was deafening. If he called out to her she wouldn’t hear him. He got back in the car and turned on the radio.

POPPY WAS LYING backward on Felix’s bed, her feet on his pillow. This is kind of like an old-time psychiatrist’s couch, she said, and you’re the doctor.

Felix was spinning in a swivel chair at his desk.

How can I help? he asked, midspin.

I’m beyond help at this point, but you could make me feel better by telling me that I’m not crazy for not wanting to go to college.

You’re not crazy. You’re following your own path.

Right.

I mean it. You want to experience life.

Tell that to Steve. And to everyone at school who’s waiting to hear where they got in. What a bunch of fakes. Half of them had tutors write their essays.

What kind of tutors?

People with PhDs. Geniuses who can’t make enough money to live in this city without writing application essays for teenagers. There’s this one philosophy professor at Columbia who helped a ton of kids, a totally brilliant scholar who charges like a million dollars an hour.

What kind of essay can a philosophy professor help them write?

Felix was tapping away at his computer, looking up Wikipedia entries on philosophers.

Poppy pointed one long leg up toward the ceiling. I don’t know, she said. “Wittgenstein’s Treatise on Community Service in South America.”

Felix giggled.

Who are some other philosophers? she asked, twisting her head around to see him.

Here are some, he said. Kant, Spinoza…

Okay, Poppy said, I got another: “Kant, Spinoza, and How I Made My First Billion by Creating a Website That Teaches Underprivileged Kids to Sell Handcrafted Things on Etsy.”

Poppy, you’re going to make me pee. What’s Etsy?

You don’t need to know. What’s some philosophy vocabulary?

Felix Googled the words: “Glossary of Philosophical Terms.”

Cartesian, dialectic, hermeneutics…

“Towards a Hermeneutics of Field Hockey,” said Poppy.

Felix fell off his chair in a fit of laughing.

I don’t even totally get it, he said, but that’s really funny.

Maybe I should do comedy. Stand-up.

Stand-up? Like Louis C.K.?

How do you know Louis C.K.? That’s terrifying. You’re too young to know Louis C.K.

Felix was back at the computer already, showing her YouTube clips of Louis C.K.

He’s really good, Poppy said, but it’s too depressing to do stand-up. I couldn’t handle it. The humiliation. What if nobody laughs?

Oh, everybody would laugh at you, said Felix.

Thanks, I think.

Felix smiled. I meant with you. Not at you.

No, you didn’t, but I forgive you.

Felix became absorbed in some entry online. Poppy circled her ankles in the air.

This guy seems smart, said Felix.

Who? Plato? We read The Allegory of the Cave in history. That was cool.

No, his name is M-A-I-M-O-N-I-D-E-S.

Never heard of him.

Poppy rolled onto her stomach. Her hair had grown since the summer and swung below her chin, with straight short bangs that she had cut across her forehead. Her wide eyes sparkled when she spoke to Felix, but at any lull in the conversation the sparkles wavered and faded and went dim.

He wrote a book called The Guide for the Perplexed, said Felix.

I could use that.

He says that evil isn’t real. It is a lack. It’s the nonpresence of good.

It doesn’t feel that way, said Poppy.

He’s right though. Listen to this:

“Yet every fool imagines that the world exists only for his sake, as though no other being existed outside of him. But if he meets with the opposite of what he wanted, he decides that all Being is bad. However, if he were to contemplate and understand all Being and recognize the insignificance of his share in it, then the truth would become obvious to him.”

Okaaay…, said Poppy, so you’re saying if I’m upset I’m just being self-absorbed.

Basically. Listen:

“The right way of looking at things consists in seeing the totality of existing mankind…as of no importance to the interdependence of all Being.”

I think what he’s saying is that I’m a spoiled brat.

He’s saying that most of us are.

Gee that makes me feel better.

It should.

Maybe it should but it doesn’t.

Maybe it will. Eventually.

Poppy felt a bright sharp pang behind her eyes and then the tears came falling. Maybe, she said, hiding her face in another pillow. In a muffled voice she said, How did you get to be so smart? And why I am I so stupid? The thing about evil is it doesn’t feel like a lack it feels like pain. Her wet red eyes stared at Felix. It doesn’t feel like something I can just think out of existence.

Felix was kneeling by the bed now, his small hand on her arm.

What is it? he asked. Is this just about college?

No, it’s more than that. It’s something a lot worse and I don’t want to talk about it. She sobbed, gulping, desperate, desolate sobs. He kept his hand on her arm.

Maybe you need a life goal, he said.

Maybe I need a life.

Poppy, it isn’t all that bad.

Well, what’s your life goal?

I have a new one, he said, his compassionate expression suddenly changed to a look of secret excitement.

What is it? Poppy sniffled, drying her eyes with the corner of the pillowcase.

I want to invent a new color.

Poppy’s pretty brow wrinkled into a series of loving apostrophes. Oh Felix, you’re amazing, she said, hugging him. But I’m not like you, she whispered over his shoulder, her lips quivering. I’m just not. I’m not a philosopher or a mystic and it would never occur to me to create a new color. She squeezed her eyes shut. Can you even do that?