19. Oliver

NINETEEN

Oliver

My phone rings while I am finishing the last graph on my presentation for the next principal’s conference. I look down at the caller ID and smile.

“Hi, Ma,” I answer.

“ Hoy ! Anak ! Turn it to FaceTime!” she yells in her accented English, FaceTime sounding more like PaceTime.

I click the button on my phone. My mom’s smiling brown face appears on the screen. Dad stands behind her, blue eyes and white hair cut off at the top of the screen, since Mama stands so much shorter than him.

“Hi Ma. Hi Dad,” I say. “I can’t talk for long; someone’s about to come in for a meeting.”

“Oh woooow, Ollie is much too busy busy to speak to his pamily, hah?” Mama pretends to frown.

“Leave him alone, Gloria,” my dad tells her. Mama snorts. “We just wanted to say hi, Ollie. We haven’t heard from you all week,” Dad says.

“I know,” I sigh. “Things have been crazy around here. I promise a long phone call soon.”

“You work too hard,” my mom says. “How about you come to the house next weekend instead? The whole family is coming. Plus your Tita Jasmine, and your Tita Christine, and Tito Boy, Tito TJ, cousin?—”

“Sure, sounds great,” I cut in, before she really gets into our massive family genealogy. “Are you cooking?”

“Of course I’m cooking. Look at you. You look emaciated. Make sure you bring Tupperware so you can make baon ,” she scolds.

“I’m actually quite happy with my weight right now, Ma?—”

“Psh. You are gaunt in the face?—”

“Gloria—” my dad warns.

The phone screen shakes as she shoves him away and takes the phone. Her voice drops to a stage-whisper, one at the volume of her regular speaking voice. “Tala tells me you have a crush. Will you bring her to the house, too? What does she like to eat? She’s not a vegetarian, is she? Please Lord, tell me she’s not a vegetarian.”

“MA!” I glance around my empty office, confirming that it is indeed empty. I drop my voice to a whisper, too, but it’s coming out just as loud as hers. “Ma, Tala is out of her mind. That woman is a teacher of mine, a subordinate. There is no crush?—”

“OOOOOOO!” she squeals, sounding just like my sister. “How SCANDALOUS! Just be careful, hah , don’t get caught. That’s very inappropriate.” The phone screen is bouncing up and down. “Is she pretty? Is she smart? Is she a doctor? No, wait, she’s a teacher. That’s good. Is she a vegetarian? Does she like lumpia? I can make veggie lumpia.”

“She’s not… I don’t… Ma, your veggie lumpia has shrimp in it. It’s not really veggie?—”

She frowns. “It’s like, 99% vegetables. It’s vegetarian.”

There is a knock on the door of my office. I turn down the volume of my phone.

“I have to go, guys,” I quickly tell my parents, both of whom are now bobbing their heads around, frowns on their faces, mimicking straightening their imaginary ties and adjusting their non-existent blazers, their “I Am Very Important” act. I smother a laugh, remembering Georgia doing something eerily similar a few weeks ago. “I’ll see you next week.”

“Just text us what she likes to eat,” Ma yells.

“No, Ma, no one is coming?—”

The door to my office opens, and I quickly hang up the phone. Lina walks through the door.

“Hey, boss,” she says.

“Hey. Hello. Hi, Lina.”

She eyes me. “The fuck is wrong with you?”

I clear my throat. “Nothing. What’s up?”

Lina eyes me suspiciously. “Okay. Well, I wanted to check in with you about two things,” she tells me. I stare at her with wide eyes. “…the Fall Festival next week,” she lists on one of her fingers, “and the incident with Max’s dad,” listing on a second.

I let out the breath I’d been holding. “Sure, yes. The Fall Festival is all up to speed. I just updated the spreadsheet. Everything on our side is mostly green… or teal. It’s all set. Only one or two ‘yellow’ tasks left, but those remain for the day before the event. How about your side?”

She updates me on their tasks and asks me a few questions about how to move forward with some of the logistical operations.

“Ask the PTO for two parent volunteers to run the ticket booth,” I tell her, after thinking. “And make sure there are at least ten adults there two hours before start time to help organize and set up. You checked our projector to make sure it’s still working?”

“Got it. And not yet. I’ll go dig it out after this. ”

“Excellent. Thank you.”

“And what’s the deal with Max’s dad? Do I need to throw hands?”

I am silent for a second, thinking of the best way to phrase my answer. “There was an incident with Max and another student in his classroom. Georgia confronted dad outside after school. It was not… a diplomatic way to handle it.”

“Well, we both know that he probably deserved it.”

“Yes, but still. It was not… safe. She got in his face, and you know what he’s like.”

She nods unhappily. “But is it handled now?”

“There’s one thing I’m worried about,” I tell her. “Superintendent Daniels came in recently. He told me he didn’t want to hear anything about that classroom. It’s making the district look bad. I have a feeling he’s heard from Max’s dad already, and he just wants the class off the radar. No drama.”

“Or else, what?” Lina asks, quick enough to pick up on the undercurrent of his message.

“Or else I can kiss the spot as his Deputy Superintendent goodbye.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

“Annoyed, obviously, but I need to heed his warning.”

“Have you talked to Georgia about reeling it in?”

I give her an incredulous look. “Have you even met Georgia?”

“Yes, Oliver, you patronizing prick.” She crosses her arms. “But you’re still her boss.” Tell me about it . “If she needs to reel it in, you need to tell her to reel it in.”

“Didn’t you just tell me to lay off her?”

She taps her foot. “Yes, to stop being an asshole to her. But before, the District just wanted you to keep her test scores up, which we both know was a straightforward task. But now, this ‘no drama’ thing? This is an explicit district directive. And now both your jobs are on the line. Neither of you wants to be written up for insubordination. Right? Isn’t this a little different now?”

I think about it. “I suppose. The stakes are higher now, I guess.”

“Yeah. But my point from before still stands, I think. It’s important to let her know. Tell her what’s going on. Communicate honestly with her.”

“I can’t be too honest with her,” I mumble to myself. Because if I am, I’d probably be fired for harassment. Of the sexual kind.

“Huh?”

“Nothing. Okay. I will,” I tell her.

“You’re being weird. Get your act together, boss.”

“Trying, Lina.”

I find myself standing by the tomato stand at 9:55 on Saturday morning. I also make sure that I do all my shopping beforehand. For no particular reason. In fact, I’m a little confused as to why I’m standing here right now.

“Boo,” someone says to me, while I pretend to pick through the green beans.

I look down to see Georgia, alone, wearing huge, reflective sunglasses and a baseball cap that barely contains her mop of wavy hair. Again, she claws a smile from my face, but this time, I’m filled with an indescribable warmth. “Hey,” I say. “Why do you look like a celebrity trying not to get noticed?”

She grins, and it’s a burst of energy and light. “I don’t remember much from the last happy hour, Oliver, but I do remember that we’re in Fort Greene right now and that this,” she says, gesturing between the two of us, “is a Secret with a capital S.”

My heart drops with how quickly I’d forgotten, and how right she is. “This,” I say, deflecting, gesturing between the two of us in the same way she did, “isn’t anything.”

She hums, smiling that infuriating, placating smile at me. “If this isn’t anything,” she says nonchalantly, “then why does it have to be a Secret?”

I keep my mouth shut.

She peeks into the bag on my shoulder. “Did you pick your perfect produce already? Ones that are a five out of five on the Produce Quality Review rubric you’ve probably created?”

My mouth twitches. “It’s actually a ten point scale?—”

“Principal Flores!” a little voice calls out.

I freeze. Georgia turns away and pretends to be extremely interested in the okra. I look around and spot a PS 2 family waving at me. “Hey, guys!” I manage.

Thankfully, they wave and walk away.

Georgia is looking at me when I turn back to her. “Still think this ‘nothing’ isn’t a Secret?”

I take a deep breath.

“Wanna get out of here?”

“Please.”

She leads us west, and we meander through the lawlessness and car exhaust clouds of Downtown Brooklyn.

“I believe we should be more prepared this time,” I tell her, pulling her away from a double-parked car that suddenly starts to move.

“Like I should wave my checkbook around?” she asks.

“What is this, 1999?”

“Tell me more about how we should be more prepared for this farcical situation in which we are a married couple living our best one percent lives and looking to buy a multimillion dollar home,” she demands.

“Could we go back to the checkbook for a second? Were you alive in 1999? How old are you anyway?” I’m dying to know. I’ve refrained from checking her employee records for personal information for weeks. Because I am the Consummate Professional.

What is an age gap I’m comfortable with? Wait, why does it matter?

She reads my mind anyway. “Twenty-eight. Ten years isn’t too bad of an age gap, daddy,” she informs me, with a sparkle in her eye.

I clear my throat, but in my head, I agree. “Regardless, we should have alter-egos. A backstory. Shared goals, and all that.”

“Would you like me to draft our pre-nup as well?”

“It would technically be a post-nup at this point,” I mutter.

We cross through Borough Hall, dodging skateboarders and stopping momentarily to look at the tomatoes at this farmers’ market. “Okay. Our alter-egos,” Georgia begins. “We are the Kensingtons. Cornelius and Beatrice?”

I think for a moment. “Percival and Eleanor.”

“Montgomery and Eugenia.”

“Reginald and Victoria.”

Georgia eyes me. “You and your sisters really committed to castle-related pretend play, huh?”

“It eventually expanded to nobility and the peerage as we got older,” I admit.

She hums. “I like Reginald and Victoria. Okay, Reggie. Here’s our backstory. You ready?”

Skateboarders and delivery mopeds and e-bikes eventually make way for strollers and wagons as we cross into Brooklyn Heights. “Go for it.”

“We come from generations of old money, and our wealth originates from shipping empires and railroad monopolies.”

“We met at a debutante ball in the Hamptons, where I was already known as ‘The Earl of Newport’…” I pause, rusty and out of practice, needing to think. “I was the… disciplined CEO of K ensington Industries, the family’s multibillion-dollar enterprise… spanning shipping, textiles, and banking?—”

“—and I was the family rebel who rejected the suffocating expectations of my pedigree, and I upheld a reputation and reckless lifestyle abroad,” Georgia adds on without hesitation, “gambling away small fortunes in Monte Carlo and frequenting Parisian cabarets.”

I smile. “I was drawn to your spirit. Your family demanded you return home to straighten out and forced you to come work for Kensington Industries. But our romance had to remain hidden. A CEO dating an employee, especially one with your notorious reputation, would have been a scandal that neither the family nor the company could withstand.” I forgot how involved our pretend play got when we were growing up, how my sisters and I would do this for hours.

We wait at a light for a long moment.

“But I hated being a secret,” Georgia says pointedly.

“It was necessary for our happily ever after,” I remind her.

“But it wasn’t fair that it was my life and my reputation that would be tarnished because I’m a woman and you were my boss. And a man,” she says, quite forcefully.

I look at her. “Are we still talking about Reggie and Vic?”

She ignores this, her expression slowly darkening. “Anyway, we eventually said ‘fuck you’ to everyone and got married, anyway. And then you became an influential patron of the arts, and then I took over the family business as CEO and was in control of all our finances.” I can sense how tense she is, how stiff her body has gotten.

I raise an eyebrow. “What just happened? Who hurt you?”

She huffs, then falls silent for a bit. “My ex,” she says after a while, after we walk another block.

“He made you become an influential patron of the arts?”

“He controlled my life and all of my finances and lost a shit ton of my money.”

My heart breaks for this woman. “But Reggie never tried to control you,” I offer. “He loves you and just wants to protect you.”

We walk in silence for another half a block.

“Let’s just stick to the basics,” she says eventually.

“Reginald and Victoria Kensington,” I agree, because it’s safer that way, and I can’t dive into why or how her ex sucked and why or how I would do a better job. Or Reggie, actually. Reggie would do a better job.

She’s quiet.

“I’m sorry about the whole ‘secret’ thing,” I can’t help but say, but I’m not sure what I’m referring to anymore. It could be a number of things. “And I’m sorry about your ex.”

She pulls us to a stop in front of another gorgeous brownstone, this one somehow looking even nicer and more expensive than the one we saw in Fort Greene.

We walk up the steps and assume our roles, Reginald and Victoria Kensington. Automatically, her arm snakes around my waist, and it feels almost natural to wrap my arm around her. I refuse, however, to perseverate on her mouth, and I settle my hand safely onto her shoulder.

“It’s okay,” she says quietly, before we walk through the elaborately carved front door. “This is different. This is better,” she finishes, and I’m not sure what she’s referring to either.