Love and Other Impossible Pursuits (16 page)

“Yes?”

“I think today should be another secret. Because of the no helmet. And because I got my jeans all wet. My mother hates when I get my clothes wet.”

“I got my jeans wet, too.”

He nods. “So do we have a deal? Skating is our secret?”

I feel a sudden welling of gratitude and affection and I wonder if he realizes that I am the person this silence will protect, not him.

“Deal,” I say.

Chapter 17
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

L
ast
night at parent-teacher conferences, William's teacher exploded all of my contemptuously low expectations. Now I have nothing but nice things to say about Sharlene. I am in love with Sharlene, the South African preschool teacher with the guts to stand up to Dr. Carolyn Soule.

Jack and Carolyn had rescheduled this conference twice, once because of a preterm delivery of twins and once because Jack was stuck in traffic in the Lincoln Tunnel coming home from a deposition. Calendaring this parent-teacher conference was more difficult than scheduling a capital murder trial, and involved a far greater number of tense and angry telephone calls. I suggested to Jack that he meet with the teacher on his own, but the school has a policy of joint conferences, except where the parental relationship is so degraded that it would be too uncomfortable for the teacher. Jack and Carolyn's bitter civility does not, apparently, qualify.

According to Jack, Carolyn and he were sitting on small chairs on either side of an octagonal table, listening to Sharlene discuss William's sophisticated manipulation of multicolored number pegs, when Carolyn glanced over the teacher's head and saw one of William's drawings hanging from a clothesline.

“What's that?” she said, pointing. I can see her finger stretched out, long and trembling. I imagine that Carolyn's nails are perfectly formed, oblong, and pale, clean from all the pre- and post-surgical scrubbing. I'm sure she does not wear polish.

“Aren't they lovely?” Sharlene said. “We've been doing a unit on family structures. The children all drew pictures of their families. Let me show you William's. It's really quite remarkable.”

She unpinned the picture from the line and brought it over. William had drawn himself in the middle of the page, wearing a red cap. Next to William, on one side, stood Carolyn. He had drawn her the same size as himself. He had colored in her straight brown hair and given her a very long carrot-shaped nose. Jack stood on the other side, also the same size as William. He wore a red cap, just like William's. On the other side of Jack was a smaller figure, round, with red hair. William had drawn me. Hovering in the air above me was a figure rendered in the pale orangey-pink color they used to call “flesh.” The figure was drawn so lightly that it was almost invisible. It was a baby, with wings.

“He drew his little sister as an angel,” Sharlene said. “It nearly broke my heart when I saw that.”

Carolyn took the drawing from Sharlene's hands and stared at it. Her able hands, sure and still when slicing through skin, fat, abdominal wall and uterus, shook so violently that the piece of construction paper flapped back and forth above her clenched fingers. The paper began to crinkle and crease under her grip and Sharlene reached out tentatively.

“Dr. Soule? Carolyn?” the teacher said.

Carolyn inhaled and then, with a sudden, smooth confidence, as if her hands had abruptly returned to their customary competence, she tore the drawing down the middle.

Sharlene gasped and snatched the paper back. It was torn nearly all the way through, held together by a sad, frayed inch at the bottom.

“How dare you!” Sharlene said, her voice shaking.

Carolyn looked away.

“How dare you!” Sharlene repeated. “This is William's drawing. It belongs to him, not to you. And this is my classroom. I will not allow you to destroy things in my classroom!” The force of the young woman's words, the strength of her defense of the integrity of her student and of her domain, were marred by the tears that gathered in her eyes.

“May I?” Jack said gently. He held out his hand.

Sharlene looked uncertain.

“Please,” he said.

Sharlene passed him the torn drawing. He held it in his hand for a moment and then took it over to the supply table in the back of the room. He laid it flat on the table and taped it carefully on both sides, smoothing the edges of the tape so that they were as invisible as possible. Then he hung the drawing back up on the line with the others.

“So William likes the number pegs, does he?” Jack said, as he sat back down in the miniature chair.

         

C
arolyn did not speak for the rest of the conference. She sat hunched over, the smooth waterfall of her hair concealing her eyes. When they were outside the classroom, putting on their coats, Jack said to her, “I'd like to pick William up early this weekend, if you don't mind. Right after school instead of at your place at five.”

“Why?”

“Someone gave me a pair of tickets to
The Lion King
for Friday night and I thought I'd make a day of it with him.”

“He's already seen
The Lion King
,” Carolyn said.

“He won't mind seeing it again.”

Carolyn seemed about to protest but swallowed and shrugged her shoulders.

“So I'll pick him up here tomorrow,” Jack said.

“We hear from schools tomorrow.”

“Great. Call me and let me know where he's going. I'll tell him.”

Carolyn smoothed the beaver collar of her wool coat. “I'd like to tell him myself. William and I went through the whole process together. I was with him at the ERB. I was with him at all his interviews. I think I should be the one who tells him.”

“Fine. You tell him.”

“Because William and I chose Collegiate together. We made that decision together, and when he gets in, we're going to celebrate together. It really should be me who tells him.”

“I said that's fine.”

“Well, it's just that he knows the letters are coming tomorrow. He'll be waiting to find out.”

“Carolyn, I'm picking up William from preschool tomorrow. I'm taking him to
The Lion King
tomorrow night. Then he's spending the rest of the weekend with me. If you want him to know what kindergarten he's going to tomorrow, then I will tell him. Otherwise, you can wait and tell him on Monday.” Jack did not inform his ex-wife that as she had behaved like a spoiled child, as she had tried to destroy the drawing her son had painstakingly made of his fractured family, she had, at least temporarily, lost her right to make any kind of demand. But that is what the steel undertone to his voice meant and, to her credit, Carolyn understood.

“Fine,” she said.

         

O
f course, I have no idea if that's how any of it happened. Jack's recounting was informative but included none of the emotional detail. All that is my own, and I wonder if Jack really did stand so gently unyielding in the face of Carolyn's rage.

Today I am meeting Jack and William at the Y so that I can see the picture William drew of Isabel. The three of us will spend the afternoon together before they go off to enjoy their hackneyed Broadway extravaganza. I have no interest in seeing
The Lion King
.

I am a little late, and Jack already has William bundled into his coat.

“Just give me a sec,” I say. “I want to run into the Red Room and see the picture.”

“Jack!” The voice is shrill and raised to a shout so loud that for a moment it silences the after-school hubbub in the hallway. Carolyn is pushing her way through the crowd. I have not seen her in almost three years, since long before Jack and I were together. The only time I ever saw Carolyn, in fact, was at her and Jack's apartment, when they hosted a Christmas dinner for the litigation department. She looks older now; her face is drawn and lined. Yet I am surprised at how beautiful she is. I had forgotten that Carolyn is so much prettier than I am.

“Jack,” she says again. She grabs the sleeve of his coat. “We have to talk, right now. Right now!”

Jack eases his arm out from her white-fingered grasp. “Calm down,” he says.

“Now, Jack. Now!”

“Okay,” he says, a note of appeasement in his voice. “Emilia, will you take William into his classroom for a minute? Carolyn, I don't know if you've ever met Emilia.”

“We met at your Christmas party,” I say. “Three years ago.”

“Not here.” Carolyn is looking wildly around the hallway. Some of the other mothers are staring at her. One or two even look as if they want to come over, to ask her what's wrong, if they can help, but there is something about her frenzy that is sending a very clear message to everyone to stay away.

“Fine, let's go,” Jack says.

I want to see the drawing of Isabel, that is what I came here for, but I follow them to the elevator. I will be back on Wednesday. I can see it then.

We are silent all the way down to the street. Carolyn sets off at a brisk walk and we have no choice but to follow her. When we have left the Y and the other preschool mothers far behind, Carolyn stops. Jack is holding William's hand, the strap of the boy's lunch box looped over his shoulder, the booster seat tucked under his arm.

“He didn't get in,” Carolyn says, looking over her shoulder as if to make sure no one is listening.

“What?” Jack says.

“Collegiate!” she says through gritted teeth. “He didn't get into Collegiate.”

“Oh,” Jack says.

“Oh? Oh? Is that all you can say? He didn't get into Collegiate! He didn't get into Collegiate, or Dalton, or Trinity. He didn't even get into the UN International School! He got wait-listed at Riverdale Country, a school I only applied to because you insisted, because you spent your childhood in Yonkers staring at Riverdale kids on the train and wishing you were one of them. Well he got wait-listed; he didn't get in. The only school he got into was Ethical Culture!”

“Ethical Culture is a terrific school,” Jack says.

“It is
not
a terrific school,” Carolyn spits. “It is a mediocre school. It is second-rate. I cannot believe we didn't get into a first-tier school. This is a disaster, Jack. This is a disaster, and the fact that you don't recognize what a disaster this is makes you even more of an idiot than I thought.”

“Carolyn, it's not second-rate.”

“Hey Jack,” I say. “I'm going to take William and meet you at home.”

Jack nods. Carolyn is too busy excoriating her ex-husband to notice when I grab her son's hand and flag down a cab. She is so wrapped in her vitriol that she does not see that her boy's face is ashen and he is wheezing. She does not even notice that I have left the booster seat behind.

“Are you okay?” I ask when we are in the taxi.

“No,” William says.

“Can you please drop us off as close as possible to Belvedere Castle?” I say to the cabbie.

William is wheezing so hard when we climb up the steep spiral staircase in Belvedere Castle that by the time we reach the top terrace I am convinced that he has developed asthma. I hand him one of the green discovery kit backpacks I picked up at the park ranger's desk on the bottom floor.

“What's yours got in it?” I say.

He shrugs.

I unzip my backpack and find a beat-up
Peterson Field Guide
with the cover torn off, a handful of random markers and colored pencils, and a clipboard with a few pieces of scrap paper.

“Look. Some kid left his picture.” I show William the drawing of the bright red bird clipped to the clipboard. The bird's feet are so out of proportion to the rest of its body that it looks like it is wearing mukluks.

“No wonder the kid left it,” I say. “This drawing sucks. What it is supposed to be? A cardinal wearing ski boots? You should draw something, William. You're a million times better at drawing than this kid is.”

A smile twitches at the corner of his mouth, but he tamps it down.

I pull a small pair of surprisingly good quality binoculars out of the backpack. “Get your binoculars and let's look for hawks,” I say. “Hawks are raptors, just like those velociraptors you like so much. Central Park is full of them. Hawks, not velociraptors. Do you know anything about hawks?”

“No,” he says.

I open his backpack and hand him his binoculars. He takes them but does not lift them to his eyes. I look through my binoculars, focusing first on Turtle Pond directly below the castle and then on the tops of trees and on the gray sky. I scan the sky for raptors, but I can't find any. I wonder if I'm just not looking in the right places. When I am tired of looking for hawks I focus on the people in the strip of grass next to Turtle Pond. I see a fat man in a brown down jacket sitting on the grass. He has taped up a tear on his sleeve with silver duct tape and he is picking his nose. I turn to point out the nose-picker to William. William is standing next to me, his binoculars dangling from their cord.

“Come on, this is fun,” I say.