The Better Half(11)
“Fact: your bedside manner blows. So glad you didn’t join the medical profession. I gotta go, holla later.” I rush to get off the phone so I can grab ten minutes of quiet before it’s time to turn on the charm. I wonder if there will ever be a day, just one day, when Marisol tells me what I want to hear, not what she wants me to know.
“Jai, sista.”
FOUR
Walking outside, I chuck the empty Red Bull I raided from Roan’s office into a recycling bin and see Winn Hawkins standing directly below the school motto engraved into a Carrara marble slab above the formal entryway.
Where every child lives in the front row.
—Royal-Hawkins School Motto
The school motto is Royal-Hawkins’s version of a welcome mat.
Winn’s wearing his Yale twenty-five-year reunion class tie. Surprisingly, a blue tie with miniature white bulldogs doesn’t look completely hideous with khakis and a pink button-down, at least not on him. He may have graduated bottom of his class at Yale, but watching Winn shake the hand of every trustee that arrives for the first board meeting of the year reminds me that Winn Hawkins has charisma for days. His gravelly voice, graying temples, and subtle swagger of an athlete past his competing days but still in prime shape are definitely worth a second look from any woman, or Roan.
“My soon-to-be sister-in-law’s Pilates instructor said he thinks he saw dear Winston sans wife at the Under Carriage early Sunday morning,” Roan whispers in my ear, not taking his eyes off our distinguished board chair.
“So, what I’m hearing you say is that you think YOU saw him at the Under Carriage in the wee Sunday morning hours. Is that a wise place for a bride-to-be to spend his free time?” I ask, raising an eyebrow to my colleague. “And why were you there so late with work the next day?”
“My visit was work related, my life is Royal-Hawkins,” Roan singsongs back, nodding a second time toward Winn. “That man knows how to wear a pair of classic-cut flat-front khakis.”
The obvious genetic trait that links multiple generations of Royal-Hawkins offspring is flawless, sun-kissed California good looks. The White kind of pretty those bland Beach Boys made a whole career singing about. The grainy black-and-white photo of founder and first Headmaster John Patrick Hawkins, known as J. P., hanging in my office leaves no room for debate. In five generations the flaxen blond hair, striking green eyes, and slender nose of the Hawkins clan have not been watered down by one drop of ugly.
J. P. Hawkins did not rush to California in 1852 for the gold; he came to capitalize on all the chumps who were heading straight to the hills to hunt gold. Whatever a fortune-seeking fool needed to survive in the Wild West, J. P. provided. Pickaxes, drills, rockers, hooch—he was front and center to sell goods to any dreamer with a buck in his pocket and no sense in his head. After establishing an empire in San Francisco, J. P. put his brother in charge of his Northern California operations and headed south to expand the Hawkins business in Los Angeles as rumors of a transcontinental railroad circled.
After the gold had run dry and the railroad was a go, J. P.’s bank account read full. To seal his legacy, he decided to start an academically rigorous boarding school in the bustling tourist town of Pasadena, just east of Los Angeles. His mission: to raise young men to be educated doctors, lawyers, and businessmen, not idiots chasing crazy fantasies in the Wild West. Given J. P.’s tremendous accomplishments, parents across the West willingly scraped together their last pennies to send their chosen sons to the Royal-Hawkins School. Up until the moment he dropped dead in what is now my office, J. P. Hawkins dedicated the last years of his life to raising a select class of well-schooled boys.
His widow, Alice Royal—who, urban folklore has it, was mute at the side of her boisterous and demanding husband—stepped right over J. P.’s cold dead body and into the role of headmistress. Because she was a woman, the community never formally acknowledged her as head of school during her five-year tenure. However, the first thing she did in her demure power grab was admit girls to Royal-Hawkins. In fact, Alice offered to pay the college tuition of any female graduate who chose to attend Radcliffe, Smith, or Wellesley rather than marry immediately following graduation. Alice did not want the girls she educated to see marriage as the only option to improve their lot in life. Perhaps marrying J. P. had been Alice’s default choice.
Second, Alice amended school bylaws to reflect that when a Hawkins descendant wanted to be chair of the board of trustees, they were granted the leadership position. Not one head of school has challenged Alice’s decision. Six feet underground, Alice has remained a quiet force.
The boarding component is long gone, but the tradition of challenging students with a demanding curriculum has stayed intact. The leadership bylaw Alice established legitimizes Winn’s perceived influence over the direction of the school. Back from a double-decade stint living in Australia, he plucked himself a beauty of a wife right off Bondi Beach who fits in perfectly on the Hawkins family Christmas card.
Everyone wants to have a beer with Winn, be invited to his courtside seats at Lakers games, or play eighteen holes with him at the Annandale Golf Club. On the surface, I understand why. But I think if one were to scratch below the beachy smell, there’s something a little off, maybe even a little rank. Or as my father would say, I’m not sure what it is, but something’s not right with that man and Jesus. In Winn’s presence, my guard goes up and I’m extra careful with what I say, though I can’t pinpoint what it is, in particular, about him. Face-to-face, I find myself leaning in to take a deep whiff, wondering if his affable appeal comes with a side of Smirnoff, or if his French double-cheek kiss is a preempt to a double-butt-cheek grab.