Class(54)
Frosted Hair took the form from Karen, finally (to Karen’s relief) scooped up the documents that Karen had left on the counter, and typed something into her desktop computer. Then she looked up and said, “Why is the name on the bill different from your family’s name?”
Karen had predicted the question—and planned her answer. “I know, it’s ridiculous,” she replied with a conspiratorial roll of her eyes, as if they were all in this absurd charade known as urban life together. But the woman stared blankly back at her. “Our landlord likes to have all the bills in his name,” Karen went on. “And then we pay him what we owe. Don’t ask me why!” She laughed again, this time to hide her terror, while Frosted Hair reexamined her documentation, her head moving from side to side. Karen stood there, waiting. It might only have been for twenty seconds but to Karen, it felt like twenty minutes. Her entire future, as well as that of her daughter, seemed to hang in the balance of this stranger’s mood—and whether she’d awoken that morning to the sound of birds chirping or an obnoxious car alarm.
Finally, without explanation, Frosted Hair ambled over to a copy machine, placed the document that Karen had filled out beneath its cover, and pressed START. Then she handed Karen a short stack of papers to sign, including one verifying that the information she’d provided was true under penalty of law. Refusing to ponder the implications of that threat, Karen signed them all in her best cursive and then pushed them toward the woman with a cheerful “Here you go! Oh, and here’s your pen!” She laid the plumbing-company ballpoint on top of the documents she’d signed.
Frosted Hair slid the pile off the counter without a thank-you. Then she announced, “School starts at eight thirty. Your daughter can come tomorrow. I’ll inform the principal today so she can make a class assignment.”
“Great—thanks very much,” chirped Karen, trying to sound upbeat but not so appreciative that her enthusiasm would seem suspect. After all, wasn’t it her daughter’s right to attend the public school that her family’s home was zoned for?
“You’re welcome,” Frosted Hair muttered ungraciously before she turned her back.
Could that really be it? Karen wondered as she made her way out of the office, then back down the hall. She couldn’t believe how easy it had all been.
She couldn’t believe what she’d just done either. But when she pushed open the double doors to the street and an undulating ribbon of crystalline sunlight appeared over the clouds, it didn’t seem like a coincidence. It seemed as if spring had been merely waiting for Karen to solicit it herself.
Almost giddy with relief and feeling newly energized, she lifted her face to the sun and let the rays warm her cheeks and lids. Then she headed up the block, past the Mather schoolyard, where recess was now in progress. On the other side of the fence, ahead of where she walked, a group of girls about the same age as Ruby were drawing with sticks in the dirt border around the blacktop and whispering conspiratorially. Instead of the jeans, sweatshirts, and sneakers that Karen had grown accustomed to seeing at Betts, they were wearing puffer vests, patterned tights, corduroy minis, suede boots, and sparkly headbands in their shiny blond and light brown bobs. As Karen got closer, she realized that the blonde with the longest stick was Maeve.
A whiff of hurt regarding the apparent ease with which her daughter’s onetime best friend had apparently found a new one (or two, or three) momentarily ate into the relief that Karen had experienced when she left the school building. But she pushed the feeling away, telling herself that, for once, Maeve had done nothing wrong. Besides, in due time, Ruby might be palling around with the same gaggle. As Karen passed her, she lowered her head so Maeve wouldn’t recognize her.
In her peripheral vision, she couldn’t help but note that Maeve’s nose looked just fine.
Karen had a busy day at work with meetings and conference calls. HK was launching a new healthy-eating initiative for young children, called What I Ate, which promised to simultaneously improve early writing skills and get kids to think about what they were eating by having them keep daily food logs. Which was exactly what Karen had done in her late teens, at the height of her neurotic-eating years, registering the calorie count in parentheses next to each food item she’d consumed. To her mind, it was a slippery slope from there to a full-fledged eating disorder. But no matter. What I Ate was the brainchild of HK’s nutritionist, Cary Ann, and everyone else at the organization, including Molly, was excited about it.
At six o’clock, Karen returned to Betts to pick up Ruby from what Karen envisioned would be Ruby’s final after-school session—and found her daughter in an unexpectedly and somewhat confusingly buoyant mood. “Mama Kajama!” cried Ruby, running into her mother’s arms. It was one of their jokey phrases.
“Hi there, sweetie!” said Karen, kissing her head and weighing the possibility that Ruby was simply happy to see her and be heading home. “What do you say we get out of here?” She took Ruby’s hand and led her away from the second-floor classroom in which she was supposedly learning the art of puppetry.
“What’s for dinner?” said Ruby. “I’m starving.”
“I’m not sure yet,” said Karen, who secretly wished her daughter didn’t enjoy eating as much as she seemed to.
In the stairwell that led down to the front entrance, Ruby and Karen encountered a young couple changing a newborn’s diaper on the windowsill of the second-floor landing. The man was holding up the baby’s dimpled legs while the mother wiped its rear. Karen felt vaguely repulsed. Couldn’t they have found a more secluded setting? she thought. Then again, where were these people, who quite possibly lived far from the school, supposed to change their baby? There were no adults allowed in the girls’ and boys’ bathrooms. And in truth Karen had seen a couple doing the same thing in the open back of their Passat station wagon directly in front of the Bistro with No Name the weekend before.