Mike would hesitate, but then he’d leave. Guys like him don’t want any more problems than they’ve bargained for. Lisa and I would be able to leave the place without anyone getting in our way.
“Who the hell do you think you are to tell me what I can do? Get off me! I’ll go wherever I want, and don’t you dare talk to my parents about Mike or anything else.”
“I will talk to them, Lisa, I will, and I’ll convince them to talk to their friends in the police so they’ll pay Mike a visit. You’ll see how happy that makes your dealer, and how he’ll welcome you if you try to go back to him.”
—
Yes, it could have happened like that, although I wonder whether it would have made Lisa renounce Muscle Mike or whether she would have ignored my threats. I had my chance to save her, to stop her from ending up a burnout. I could have talked to her parents and risked having Mike’s friends pay me a visit and beat me to a pulp. But none of that happened, just as I did nothing to stop Lisa from destroying Esther’s end-of-year project.
I’ve never understood why Esther bothered to be my friend, why she forgave me for all the sins I committed against her. That was the day she started down her long path of forgiveness.
Esther would have wanted me to stop Lisa from destroying her work:
Lisa opened Esther’s file and began reading the first pages of her end-of-year project. A veil of anger and malice fell across her face. I knew her well, and so I knew that the worst possible idea was flashing through her mind. I should have thrown myself in front of her and taken those pages from her hands. She would have struggled to get her revenge against Esther, but it wouldn’t have been hard for me to stop her. Lisa barely had the strength to stand; the drugs had worn her out, so just one light touch could have pushed her away. Then I would only have had to put the pages back in the file, close it, and get Lisa away from it, no matter how much she protested.
“You’re an asshole! What’s going on? Are you screwing her? I always knew you’d end up being whipped. She’s a bitch! Don’t you see that? She’s wanted to jump you since day one and now…I’m…I’m away for a little and when I come back you’re screwing her, you bastard!”
Lisa would have insulted me with increasing volume until everyone could hear her. But nobody would have paid her much attention. They hardly felt sorry for her. The people who went to Paul’s academy did so in a desperate bid to escape what destiny offered them. They were hardhearted because life hadn’t treated them kindly, so they cared little about spoiled rich girls like Lisa who showed up at the academy because they had nowhere else to go.
“Don’t be stupid. What does Esther matter to you? Leave her alone. Destroying her work won’t help you in the slightest. She’s worked hard on it, but we all know that Paul will give us all our diplomas anyway, even you. The only thing you’ll do is make a fool of yourself, and make everyone think that you did it out of jealousy, because you can’t bear that Esther is everything that you aren’t. And yes, also because you think I’m sleeping with her,” I would have snapped.
Lisa would have raised her hand and slapped me with her feeble strength. She wouldn’t have been able to handle being forced to look in the mirror and confront reality.
I would have put up with her slap while taking away Esther’s file and forcing Lisa to sit down.
On returning to class, the rest of our classmates would have regarded the embers of our argument with indifference. Paul would have paid us no attention, and while Esther might have looked at us with curiosity, she wouldn’t have come close to guessing the reason behind this animosity between us.
I know that Lisa would have looked at Esther with hatred, and perhaps even have spat out some insult, something that would have stung her, but she couldn’t have done any more than that because my hand would have been on her arm, holding her back.
Yes, it should have happened like that but it didn’t, and as the years passed Esther would continue lamenting the incident, and reproach me from time to time for what I allowed Lisa to do.
—
What did happen that day was that, after Paul’s class ended, Esther came up to me with eyes reddened. I tried to avoid her. I had no wish to talk to her.
“What has the world done to Lisa for her to end up so evil?” she asked me.
“Evil? She isn’t evil. It’s just that she has a strong personality and doesn’t know how to control herself.”
“Right…So destroying my work is a product of her personality. How generous you are when it comes to defending her!”
“It’s just that I don’t judge her—and why should I? People are the way they are, and Lisa is prone to temper tantrums.”
“And what if she had destroyed your work?”
I shrugged my shoulders. I really wouldn’t have cared. The reason I’d spent two years at Paul’s academy was the guarantee that I’d receive his “crappy little diploma,” as he called it, even if I hadn’t bothered to attend at all. The rules were clear from the very start. If I had done any of the work that we were given, it was only because I decided to do it, not from fear that someone might rebuke me.
“You’re already graduating with honors. What more do you want?”
“It was good work, Thomas. I tried so hard to do the best that I could. I spent weeks working on it and now…Yes, Paul is letting me graduate with honors because of what happened, but do I deserve it? I don’t want it if he doesn’t know for certain that I deserve it. I told him to just give me a passing grade.”
“You’re so dumb! Everyone knows you’re the best student, the only one who has actually taken this place seriously enough to get your diploma, and the only one who has done the impossible and absorbed the knowledge of these strange professors, Paul included.”
“I don’t want gifts and I don’t want pity—I only want what I deserve. That’s why I’m going to reject the honors citation.”
“You could redo the project.”
“No, I can’t. I have to help out at the restaurant over the next couple of days. We have a ton of reservations for wedding receptions.”
“Your parents will be pleased,” I said, for the sake of saying something.
“Yes, of course they are. Winter wasn’t good. We’ve barely managed to hang on to our long-standing customers. It’s not that we’ve lost them, it’s just that now they spend less…Everyone wants to save money, and my parents have lowered their prices so much that now we’re barely making a profit.”
“At least you haven’t had to close.”
“Tell me, Thomas, why is Lisa like this? I can’t figure it out. She has everything she needs to be happy, and yet…”
“Don’t judge her. You can’t understand her. Don’t keep going over it. Just forget about her. I doubt you’ll ever see each other again once the semester is over.”
“Yes, it would be hard for us to run into each other. I live in Little Italy and she lives in the heart of Manhattan. I doubt that she can see the street where I live from her parents’ penthouse apartment.”
“Social envy,” I remarked sarcastically.
“I’m just describing reality. Kids like you have no idea how hard it is to get by.”
“We’ve been lucky.”
“Yes, luck has been on your side. Who knows why?”
“You think we don’t deserve it?”
“Who knows?”
To be honest, I didn’t care what Esther thought. We stopped talking because Paul came up to us and I took the opportunity to leave. I didn’t feel like continuing the conversation.
—
I didn’t try to find out what happened to Lisa. I imagined that she’d keep buying coke and other shit from Mike and that he’d keep screwing her to keep her happy. She was a good client, and a guy like him had no problem pulling her panties down against the bathroom wall of the dive bar where he worked.
The day of my graduation, my parents insisted on coming with me. My brother Jaime made sure that nobody would miss it—he took it as gi
ven that the family had to be together for such an occasion.
“It’s an important day for Thomas. He has to know how proud of him we are for getting this degree. The boy has tried so hard…” my father said to my mother.
“Do you think this diploma is worth anything? You know better than I do that it’s a third-rate academy. I doubt any advertising agency is going to hire him when he shows them this sham diploma,” argued my mother.
“Don’t be so negative. You should be satisfied that Thomas has done something,” insisted my father.
“I don’t know why Jaime has to come,” replied my mother.
“Jaime loves his brother. To be with him on such a special day—he wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Don’t be stupid, Juan. This isn’t a special day for Thomas. It’s all the same to him.”
My mother was right, but I didn’t bother to tell her that. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction, so I accepted that they were coming with me.
My father’s chauffeur was waiting for us at the door of the house.
I had to elbow Jaime because his sunny brightness was getting on my nerves. He wouldn’t stop congratulating me, as if I had gotten my advertising diploma from Harvard instead of the Hard School of Advertising. But my brother had always been simple.
“Leave it, Jaime,” my mother said, also irritated.
The chauffeur dropped us off at the door of the academy. My mother took a deep breath, as if she were making an effort to control herself and not run away. Jaime looked around curiously and I noticed him loosen his tie, as if he had suddenly realized that his navy-blue suit and striped tie were out of place here. My father seemed not to notice his surroundings, and smiled at me affectionately, gesturing for me to lead them into the academy. He didn’t seem surprised by its run-down appearance.
Paul came over to greet us. He was wearing a nice suit, though it was old-fashioned—I imagine he’d bought it when things were going well, when he was working at one of the large advertising agencies.
My father shook his hand and told him how pleased the family was that I had successfully completed my studies in advertising. Paul frowned until he realized that my father was being sincere. As for my mother, Paul sized her up in a single glance. He noted her discomfort.
“Mrs. Spencer.” Paul kissed my mother’s hand exaggeratedly. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
At that moment Esther arrived, accompanied by her parents and her brother, and we had no choice but to greet one another. I introduced her to my parents and for a few moments the two families exchanged banalities. My father seemed charmed by Esther’s parents, and I thought about what a hypocrite he was. What did a brilliant, well-off Manhattan lawyer have in common with a family who cooked Italian food for a living? My mother shook their hands and stood rigidly by my father’s side. As for Jaime, he made such a show of friendliness that it annoyed me. He seemed interested in everything Esther’s brother had to say, and smiled like an idiot at her mother, whom he praised for her tasteful hat.
It seemed that Esther was as uncomfortable as I was, and we left our parents behind as we headed to the classroom that had been repurposed for the ceremony.
“I couldn’t stop them from coming,” I said, excusing my parents.
“And why wouldn’t they have come? It makes sense that they want to share this moment with you.”
“God, you’re so dumb! You know that the diploma Paul’s going to give us is a piece of shit, that it’s not worth anything. The only reason we’ve spent two years here is because we couldn’t go anywhere else,” I replied angrily.
She didn’t shrink away, but faced up to my anger.
“I couldn’t go anywhere else, but you could’ve. Of course you could have. Your family had the money for you to be able to go to a good college. If you’re here it’s only because you decided to be. You’re an idiot, Thomas, a total idiot, because you don’t know how to take advantage of all the things life has given you. So don’t belittle this place, because it’s the only school I could go to, and that was due to my parents’ hard work, and my own. Do you think it’s fun, waiting tables and helping to peel potatoes and carrots?”
I had no time to answer because at that moment it seemed that a new arrival was causing something of a disturbance. Then I saw Lisa enter, followed by her parents.
Mrs. Ferguson seemed as uncomfortable as my mother. I’m sure she was asking herself what she was doing in a place like this. If her friends could see her now…As for Mr. Ferguson, he hadn’t managed to become the greatest meat producer in the country without being able to face any situation he came up against. I watched him greet Paul and the other professors as if they were old friends.
Lisa didn’t even bother to look at me. She was a little thinner and had dark circles under her eyes. She didn’t seem to be high, or at least not so high that she wouldn’t be able to handle the ridiculous ceremony where they’d hand us our useless diplomas.
Mr. Ferguson greeted my father, and Mrs. Ferguson did the same with my mother. Paul motioned for us to sit together. It wasn’t a good idea but I could do nothing to stop it, so much to my dismay I ended up sitting next to Lisa.
“You bastard,” she whispered to me, but not quietly enough for the people around us not to hear.
“How kind you are. It’s good to see you, and still standing too.” I wanted to offend her just as badly. Paul glared at us and with his powerful voice called for silence from all present. The ceremony was about to begin, and standing on the dais, flanked by the other professors, he seemed to be taking this dog and pony show seriously.
The first lie he told was that having us as students had been a privilege for his academy, because we were all brilliant young people eager to learn. The second lie was that we had exceeded all expectations and from this day forth could compete with the very best in the world of advertising. “You will go out fully prepared and with a diploma that may be modest, yes, but one that is recognized by those in the business. And so, ladies and gentlemen, your future shall be whatever you wish it to be,” he concluded, as the guests traded looks. Then he read out our names, and we went up one by one to receive our diplomas. We shook hands with Paul and the other professors, and returned to our seats amid applause from family and friends.
An hour later the farce was over. I, like my mother, had wanted to get out of there and not waste any more time, but Paul had pushed together a couple of desks and covered them with a tablecloth, on which were served drinks and some paltry canapés. My father said we should at least stay a few minutes so as not to offend him.
I wouldn’t say I was surprised when I saw Lisa approach Esther. I even leaned back against the wall, ready to enjoy the show I was sure Lisa was about to put on for us.
“So you managed to get your diploma even though you couldn’t present your end-of-year project? Who did you have to sleep with for them to give it to you? With that killjoy Paul? Did you screw him? Well, I guess you poor types will do anything to get ahead.”
A hand closed around Lisa’s arm, and she found herself facing the angry glare of Esther’s brother.
“What did you say?” asked young Roberto.
“You heard me,” she replied, unfazed, even though he was a head taller than her and strong as an ox.
“Apologize to my sister for what you just said,” he demanded.
The Fergusons came over, alarmed. Mr. Ferguson attempted to intervene.
“Young man, let go of my daughter. I don’t believe this is the way to make things right.”
“She has to apologize to my sister, and loud enough for everyone to hear it.”
“Lisa, my girl, apologize, it was a silly thing for you to say. I think it’s just a young girls’ rivalry,” said Mr. Ferguson, turning to everyone there to try to defuse the situation.
“Your daughter is a bad person, Mr. Ferguson, but you already knew that. What I will not allow is for her to insult my sister, to defile her in this way simply because she?
??s jealous. So either she says sorry…”
Roberto’s fingers gripped Lisa’s arm tightly, so tightly she couldn’t help but grimace in pain.
Paul approached, alarmed by what was happening, and regarded Lisa with hostility.
“Miss Ferguson, I’m not asking you to apologize to me—I know you like to make a scene—but you should apologize to Miss Sabatti, who you…Well, you’ve done everything you could to torment her since the day you first met.
“Please apologize and then that’s that. Your classmates deserve to look back on this day happily.”
Esther’s parents seemed distraught. They couldn’t understand what was happening and looked in anguish at their elder son, fearing that the situation would escalate.
Knowing Lisa as I did, I knew that she wasn’t about to rectify the situation, certainly not in public.
My father came up to me followed by my mother, who seemed worried.
“Lisa is behaving appallingly,” my father said to me quietly.
I shrugged. I had no intention of defending Lisa, nor did I want to agree with him.
Esther remained silent, nervously wringing her hands, her face reddened with humiliation.
“Forget it, Roberto. She’s not worth it. That’s just how she is. Everyone knows she is how she is and I am how I am,” Esther managed to say, trying to get her brother to let go of Lisa’s arm.
But her words angered Lisa even further, who reacted like a viper that had just been stepped on.
“The little slut playing the innocent. Who do you think you’re fooling? We all know that Paul drooled over you, and you let him in order to guarantee your frigging diploma. You’ve really fooled your family! Do they know that you wanted to screw Thomas too? You’d do anything to climb the social ladder. The little cook becoming Thomas Spencer’s wife. I heard you say you were going to sleep with him to get pregnant and then either force him to marry you or pay child support. I dare you to deny it!”
Esther didn’t bother to deny it, but instead slapped her so hard that the imprint of her fingers remained seared like scars across Lisa’s face.