“So. Sally. And how does Sally know? I highly doubt Mom shared any of this with Sally.”
He said our sister’s name with such profound disapproval. Of the three of them, he was the most intractable. He was unbearable, too.
“Sally has known since she was thirteen. Since all of you were thirteen. She saw them together, Harrison, if you must know. And she didn’t tell anyone else—not Mom and certainly not you. Did you know that our father had a habit of staying out all night and coming home at dawn?”
After a moment, he said: “No. Actually.”
“She could see him from her window. My window.”
Harrison didn’t answer.
“So would you please tell me about the legal troubles, Harrison?”
He sighed. “Stella Western wanted things from us. She wanted things she had no right to ask for, let alone assume she’d receive.”
“What kind of things?”
“Property,” he said shortly. “It was craven and it was disgusting.”
I just gaped at him.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that. Privileged white family oppresses poor artiste. Of color! Call the Walden morality force!” Harrison leaned back and crossed his legs. “It was a negotiation. It’s how grown-ups settle their differences in a civilized world. And we settled them. In any case, I don’t understand why this is something you need to burden yourself with. As you pointed out in your email, you are a high school student. Your concerns are—or should be—Latin and track. And yes, applying to college.”
“Fuck applying to college!” I shouted. “Fuck this ridiculous, pathetic, thoroughly manufactured ‘rite of passage’ that’s supposed to tell you if you’re qualified to make money in America, and reassure your parents they did a good job raising you. It’s the most asinine thing! I don’t care about any of it. I don’t want to rank my extracurriculars or freak out about ten points on the SAT I didn’t get. I don’t want to apply to Cornell because I have a thirty-five percent higher chance of getting in there, just because my father, whom I don’t even remember, went there. And I don’t want to end up crying because some school I can see myself at decides it’s unable to offer me admission at this time. All I want is to go somewhere interesting and read some good books, and learn from people who know more than I do, and maybe talk about the world with people my own age.”
“There’s nothing wrong with making money, Phoebe. And I’m happy to say, in this country at least, you don’t need formal qualifications to do it, just an idea and a work ethic.”
“Says the man with degrees from Harvard and Oxford, and an almost two-hundred-year-old company that was handed to him to run.”
“It was handed to me,” he said, placidly, “first and foremost because I was the only one of us who had the first idea of how to run it, but also because I was the only one of us who seemed to care about acquiring wealth.”
I glared at him. This was not untrue, at least, for Lewyn and Sally. For myself, I wasn’t sure.
“I told the board, and Mom, when I came home from England, that I would take over, and I like running the company, but I also made it clear that I’d be structuring things so I’d have time to do my other work. Because while I am extremely serious about financial security for myself, and for Mom and incidentally for you, Phoebe, I do have additional interests and projects, unrelated to the company.”
“Your additional interests and projects,” I said, “have been noted. And for the record I have no personal objection to making money. I might not go in for the baubles, but I’d probably miss the infrastructure if it suddenly disappeared. I’m especially fond of our house, for example. And I appreciate the education.”
“I’m happy to hear it. I’ve long since given up on my other siblings.”
“But please don’t misunderstand me. Building a border wall. Gutting healthcare. Criminalizing abortion. Keeping down the shithole countries. Very much not okay with me, so if you’re going to do it, do it for yourself. Don’t delude yourself that it’s on my behalf, or anyone’s behalf but your own. You really are a bit of a bastard, Harrison, you know.”
He shrugged. He downed the last of his juice. “There are worse things to be.”
“And possibly a bit of a racist.”
“Now that,” he turned to me, “is completely untrue. I’m race-blind. My best friend—”
“Is African American. I know. Blah, blah.”
“No,” Harrison said shortly. “He is not. Eli is American, full stop. Are we German American?”
I smiled. I was actually sort of enjoying this, I realized.
“The real racism is the assumption that some ethnicities need a leg up.”
“Or a handout.”
“Or a handout. Precisely. It’s what Eli has been saying since he was seventeen.”
“And what Eli says…” I left him hanging. Then I sat back against the couch, arms folded tightly and looking for all the world like the petulant child he apparently thought I was. When I finally looked at him, he was actually smiling at me.
“You’ve got a respectable brain there, Phoebe. What are you planning to do with it?”
“Help people and make the world a better place. It’s what I’m planning to say in my application essay, anyway. What are you planning to do with yours?”
“Show people how not to be such pathetic idiots.”
“Awesome.”
Harrison said nothing for a moment. Then he said, thoughtfully: “How do you feel about chickens?”
“How do I … what?”
“Tell me, what are the college advisors advising you to do?”
“Oh, they keep giving me lists of places to research and telling me to read this book called Colleges That Change Lives.”
Harrison smiled. “And have you?”
“What? No. Of course not.”
“Phoebe. You are an idiot.”
He got up abruptly, leaving me to stare after him as he padded away, across the off-white carpeting, in his socks. A moment later he was back with a blue paperback in his hand. He tossed it into my lap. “My own copy. Take it. It’s yours.”
Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools You Should Know About Even if You’re Not a Straight-A Student. There was a boy on the cover, looking into a reflecting pool. A graduate in cap and gown looked back.
“What makes you think I’m not a straight-A student?” was all I could think of to say.
“No grades at Walden. Doesn’t matter. There happens to be a chapter about Roarke.”
I opened the paperback at random to a description of Grinnell’s educational philosophy. Shura was “completely in love” with Grinnell, I recalled.
“I didn’t even read it back when I was applying to college. I read it when I found out I was going to Roarke and someone told me it had a chapter. Besides, I didn’t think Mom brought this home with me in mind. I think she figured Lewyn and Sally might need some off-brand place to go.”
I nodded. I was still turning the pages. “Pretty ironic,” I said.
“What is?”
“That you ended up at a college in the off-brand book, and they ended up at an Ivy League school.”
When he didn’t respond, I looked up from the book. He seemed to be dealing with a completely new idea, and not at all happy about it.
“Well, in due course I did as well,” he finally said.
I smiled. “Of course you did. Anyway, thanks.” I closed the book and set it down on the couch beside me. “I hope it’s been updated since the year you applied to college.”
“I’m sure it has. Roarke has been updated, too, you know. The board voted last spring to admit women. I disagreed, but it’s been settled. You should think about applying. It changed my life, just like the title says.”
It was the most intimate thing he had ever said to me.
“All right,” I told him. “I will read it.” Then, grudgingly: “Thank you.”
I lifted the mug of chilly tea to my lips. It was as bad cold as it had been warm.
“You’re wrong about Lewyn, you know,” I told him. “At the very least you have to see he’s done an excellent job with the art. He’s published exhibition introductions, and articles in art journals. Not to mention a book about the collection as a whole.”