“Oh no, you did not just compare yourself to President Obama, Nina. He was president of the United States, you’re not even president of your HOA. You go saying something like that in front of your father and let’s see what happens.” Marisol laughs out loud at the thought. “Fitzroy will have zero patience for you comparing yourself to Black royalty knowing you used to wrap a yellow bath towel around your head as a child. I never get tired of hearing him tease you about trying to have long blonde hair like Christie Brinkley.” Marisol’s howling. In Fitzroy Morgan’s world hierarchy there’s Jesus, there’s Martin Luther King Jr., and right in between, there’s Barack Obama.
“Gotta go search Roan’s office for Red Bull and a pack of Pop Rocks to wake myself up.” Bless him, I was warned when Allister and I hired Roan as our director of admissions that he had some “unconventional” practices and whispered a little too loudly at school events. But his boss—Josie Bordelon, the head of school at Fairchild Country Day in San Francisco—assured me that Roan was relocating to Pasadena for love and to settle down and that taking a chance on his audacity was worth it for his hard work and daily entertainment. It’s a rare occurrence that I meet another woman in my same occupation, let alone a sister, so I knew Josie was serving me the truth. I was the final decision maker as Roan would work only one year under Allister, then his second year as director of admissions would be my first as head of school. Given Josie’s recommendation and confession that she was devastated to see him go, I hired Roan without a second thought and prayed he would be more class than ass. Best executive decision ever.
“The board meeting starts soon, and I look tore up from the floor up. Thanks for absolutely nothing, Marisol. I’ll remember this conversation next time you want to trade tea about Jaime, your stanky sons, or one of your waxing girls.” Marisol’s the founder and self-titled chief extraordinary officer of the Clean Slate, a one-stop-shop for waxing, buffing, sugaring, painting, spraying, and scrubbing any body part a person might request. BEST part, every studio has a fully stocked bar for hours of grooming with a side of day drinking. I was client zero in the basement of Marisol’s house twelve years ago when she was perfecting her signature waxing technique up to my knobby knees. Now with twenty-two locations throughout Los Angeles County and clients who schedule out weeks in advance, the Clean Slate is harder to get into than most restaurants. Aside from being the only person I trust to wax my legs, Marisol’s also the only one I immediately forgive for calling truth on me. We’ve been working out our dreams together since childhood.
“That’s wax women to you. Even Obama knows girls is insulting. I’m just saying. Fact: you ARE the head of school. Fact: you are nursing a wounded ego.”
“Heart,” I correct her.
“There, case in point. Maybe you’re a little touchy today. And fact: you ARE Black. Like real Black, not the diluted kind like Obama. Courtney was just honest enough to point out what everyone’s talking about behind your back. You know there are parents who want to send their babies to Royal-Hawkins for 50K so they can appear woke to their neighbors and tennis partners.”
“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.