Excerpt from Ways and Means by Daniel Lefferts, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Sentimental Education

Most days Alistair got up at six and stayed up until midnight. He read textbook chapters his professors assumed no one would read. He did the nonrequired supplemental problem sets they put on CourseWorks. He highlighted and underlined and highlighted and underlined. He emailed his professors with follow-up questions and news links pertaining to class discussions. He was only mildly deterred by the fact that they only emailed him back half the time. When his brain needed a rest he went to the gym, where with archaeological fervor he uncovered the lineaments of his pecs, his biceps, his triceps, his abs. He also kept up with his Economist, his Wall Street Journal, his New York Times Business Day. He followed the first stirrings of the 2014 midterms. He called his mother.

"Weather says a strong change of bloodshed next year," Maura said, referring to the elections. "Red upon red upon red."

Alistair offered a commiserating sigh. His mother had been hammering the progressive creed into his head for so long that he felt neurologically incapable of voting otherwise. In his short time at Stern, though, he'd come to see that thriving in finance as a Democrat would mean rooting for the party's social agenda while quietly working around its economic one. Luckily he'd come of age at a time when Democrats were as much in thrall to free markets as their Republican colleagues. He could honor his mother's liberalism and selfishly pursue riches at the same time without incurring any damage to his integrity. Perhaps, if he'd paid closer attention to the ongoing Tea Party antics, he might have sensed that this era of stability was nearing an end: that the fury of the class he'd escaped, spurred by resentment of the class he was angling to enter, would reach a breaking point. He might have sensed that this fury, for so long powerless against elite consensus, would soon enough, as it were, trump it. But for now all he sensed was that Maura needed confirmation of his sympathies. "You won't find many allies in the Stern building," he said. "I wouldn't be surprised if some of these kids had Reagan tattoos."

"I trust you don't have a Reagan tattoo," Maura said.

"I would never get a tattoo."

He asked her how home was, and immediately regretted asking. The dishwasher, she told him, had broken and cost $300 to be repaired. Her property taxes were increasing, despite the fact that owing to the city's depressed real estate market the value of their house hadn't at all appreciated. The house's foundation was also starting to list, and the plumbing, which was galvanized, was beginning to erode. "Not that any of this is your concern," she said.

With every hardship she enumerated Alistair sank further into his chair. He considered sending her a few hundred dollars out of the living loans he'd taken out. But then he'd have to explain where the money had come from, and he could take a guess as to how she'd receive the news that he was paying for his life with borrowed funds. "Once I start working you'll have less to worry about," he said.

"I wouldn't want you to do that," Maura said.

"It's why I'm here."

"You need to live your own life. There are millions of reasons to go to college. Helping your mother should be the last on that list."

Alistair, staring at the pile of textbooks on his desk, thinking ahead to an all-nighter of problem sets and short essays, was surprised to feel a throb of anger. He felt that if Maura really loved him and wanted to support him the least she could do was accept his generosity. If she refused his generosity his sense of motivation would vanish. Even if he did have other reasons for being in New York they weren't the primary one and they certainly didn't number in the millions. Now Maura was threatening to take away the bright endpoint toward which all his striving was aimed, by which he justified his singlemindedness and urgency. His present existed only in terms of the future he planned to give her. If this future didn't matter to her he was left with only hollowness. "Agree to disagree," he said.

Excerpted from Ways and Means by Daniel Lefferts. Copyright © 2024 by Daniel Lefferts. Excerpted by permission of The Overlook Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.