Class(53)

“Find me a couple who doesn’t fight,” said Lou. “I’ve never met any. Gunnar and I? We try to stick to physical violence only, especially when it involves dirty dishes left in the sink for ten straight hours while he’s lying on the sofa playing Shadow of Mordor.”

“Okay, that makes me feel better,” said Karen, chuckling through her tears. “By the way, if you need a good laugh yourself, check out”—she leaned into Lou’s ear—“you-know-who’s son’s story. It’s a classic of the genre. Set in a food co-op, of course.”

“Naturally,” said Lou.

“Though if you’re in the mood for heartbreak, that one will slay you.” Karen discreetly pointed at Empriss’s paper.

“Oh, yeah. I read that,” said Lou. “I believe that genre is called So Realistic It’s Actually Memoir.”

“Exactly,” said Karen.

“People screw up their kids so badly.” Lou shook her head.

“I hope I’m not one of them,” said Karen.

“Please,” said Lou, making a wry face. “You mean by providing Ruby with too many after-school enrichment classes in one week?”

“Are you telling me I’m a horrible cliché?”

“The worst,” said Lou, smiling.

Lou’s words were still reverberating in Karen’s head when, five minutes later, she said good-bye to her, then to Ruby, and headed back out of the building. At the corner of Cortland, rather than continue walking to the train station, she turned left—in the direction of Edward G. Mather Elementary.



The building itself was nothing much to look at: a lowlying white-brick structure dating back to the 1960s. But the landscaping was pristine. Clusters of purple and white early-spring crocuses decorated the flowerbeds. And there was nary a Skittles or Snickers wrapper in sight. What’s more, the glass-enclosed bulletin board by the entrance featured an announcement for an upcoming wine tasting for parents. OUR BIGGEST SPRING FUND-RAISER! it read. Beneath the headline was a black-on-white ink drawing of a hand wrapped around an angled goblet, its elongated fingers adorned with cocktail rings. By comparison, the outdoor message board at Betts was caked in grime, splattered with bird shit, and still featured an announcement from the previous fall about registering for pre-K.

Also unlike at Ruby’s current school, the security guard at Mather sat in the lobby directly facing the front doors, a fact that Karen noted with relief and approval as she walked into the building. “Excuse me, I’m here to register,” she told the man.

“You’ll have to speak up, ma’am,” he answered.

Karen suddenly realized that she was whispering. “The main office?” she tried again, a little louder this time.

“It’s down the hall to the left,” he said. “Can I see some ID?”

Karen showed him her driver’s license. Then she entered her name in the arrivals’ log in an only partly decipherable script, reluctant to be recognized. What the two schools did seem to have in common, Karen noted on her way down the hall, was their art curricula. Just as at Betts, student-made tissue-paper collages decorated the walls. But to Karen’s untrained eye, the ones at Mather were a little more sophisticated, the shapes positioned a little less haphazardly. Or was she projecting? Maybe they were exactly the same, the defining difference being the names inscribed on the bottom right-hand corners of the construction paper: Daisy, Lincoln, Sadie, Gemma, Oliver. You could imagine all of them a hundred years ago in their Sunday best, wearing hats and carrying handkerchiefs. There was not a Zaniyah or a Janiyah in sight.

“Can I help you?” asked an older white lady behind the front desk, the soufflé-like appearance of her frosted hair suggesting it had been set in a beauty parlor with an astronaut-helmet-style bubble dryer.

“Oh, hi!” said Karen, smiling and trying to sound casual. “We just moved to the neighborhood. I’m here to sign my daughter up for third grade. I hope I’m in the right place!”

“That’s not for me to say,” snapped the woman, immediately putting Karen on edge.

“Well, I think we’re zoned for the school,” Karen continued with a lighthearted laugh while her heart went pitter-patter. “Here’s our lease, my daughter’s birth certificate, and our gas and electric bill.” She laid the documents on the counter.

“Fill this out first,” said the woman, handing Karen a form that asked for her child’s name, address, birth date, and other basic information and leaving the documents she’d brought lying unattended on the counter. Karen wished she could take them back. What if a parent should walk in and spot them—a parent like Nathaniel Bordwell?

“Of course,” she said, reaching her hand into her bag for a pen, only to come up with nothing. “I’m so sorry,” she went on while trying to quell the panic that was now seizing her throat—panic built partly of the fact that her dream from the previous night appeared to be coming true. How soon before the doors began to vanish, followed by the floor and the ceiling, until Karen was suspended in midair? “But is there any way I could borrow a pen?”

Looking mildly peeved, the Woman with the Frosted Hair handed over a ballpoint featuring the name of a local plumbing company.

“Thank you so much,” said Karen, gripping the pen in her fist so tightly that after she’d finished filling out the required information (she listed her address as 321 Pendleton Street, no. 2), her hand ached.