Class(81)

Except when it was.

“If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go get some breakfast,” he announced while wheeling himself out of the room.

“It was great meeting you!” said Karen.

“Well, you probably have things to do,” said Susan, turning to Karen. “So should we get started?”

“Sounds good,” said Karen.

“Oh, and if you’re wondering about my husband—and most people do when they meet him for the first time—he has a spinal cord injury from a boating accident he was in twenty years ago.”

“Oh my gosh,” said Karen. “That must be very—challenging for all of you.”

“We’re both used to it. But, yes, it has its challenging aspects.”

“I’m sure.”

“We’re very lucky that Nathaniel’s parents left us the house. Otherwise we wouldn’t be living like this. And we have tenants downstairs who help cover our expenses.”

The Bordwells already had tenants? “Right,” said Karen, nodding. “And do the tenants have kids too?” The question flew out of her mouth before she had time to realize how odd it would sound.

“The tenants?” said Susan, squinting at her.

“I was just curious,” Karen said quickly.

“Oh! Well—not that I’ve heard about! I mean, not yet. They’re still in their early twenties, I believe.”

“Right.”

“Anyway, back to more urgent matters—were you able to get a permit from the city for the event? I just don’t want there to be any beef with the parks people when we get there.”

“Yes, it’s all done.”

“Fabulous. And what about the balloon sculptor?”

“Already booked.”

“And the bouncy castle?”

“Same. Though the bouncy-house guy insisted on a three-hundred-dollar deposit up-front,” said Karen, “and I couldn’t be bothered to argue. So I wrote him a personal check.”

“Oh! Well, that’s fine,” said Susan. “I’m just sorry for you! I’ll have to order you a PTA charge card one of these days. In the meantime, make sure to reimburse yourself out of the PTA account. And if you could itemize your expenses in the ledger, it would be much appreciated.”

“Of course. I’m happy to,” Karen told her.

“You don’t have to get really specific, like paper towels—ten dollars. But if you could list the category, at least, that would be great. And if it can’t be categorized, just write supplies or miscellaneous.”

“Not a problem.”

“Terrific. Well, I think that’s all my questions. Sounds like we’re good to go!”

“Now we all just have to pray for sun.”

“Very true,” said Susan, with a quick laugh. “What was the name of the Egyptian sun god?”

“Ra, I think,” said Karen.

“Well, then, let’s both pray to Ra on Friday night.”

“It’s a deal.”



On Friday, the day before Fund in the Sun, Karen still hadn’t reimbursed herself for any expenses connected to the picnic. But she’d kept a fairly detailed list of everything she’d purchased out of her own pocket. After dropping Ruby in her classroom, she continued down the hall and let herself into the PTA office with a duplicate key that Susan had given her. She was about to get out the ledger when she decided on a whim to log into the PTA bank account first. Some part of Karen needed to see for herself, one more time, how much money was actually in there. As she waited for the page to load, the nasal honks of a group recorder lesson wafted un-mellifluously from the adjacent music room.

Owing to the lice expert’s workshop and other incidentals, the balance was down to $953,000.41. Even so, it seemed like an unfathomable sum for a midsize public elementary school to have accumulated in private donations. And Karen couldn’t help but fantasize about what Betts would do with even a quarter of it. To start, they could rehire the librarian, she thought. And with the roughly nine hundred thousand dollars left, they could probably also renovate the library itself, and maybe even outfit it with MacBook Airs, like Mather had, as well as beanbag chairs and a new collection of early-grade books—and still have three-quarters of a million dollars left over. (From what Karen could tell from the titles Ruby had brought home during the previous year, Betts’s book collection was at least thirty years old. The covers were sticky and frayed, and no one wanted to open them anyway. Instead of Ivy and Bean, the library had multiple copies of Winnie-the-Pooh.) After taking these steps, Betts would no doubt begin to attract more affluent families from the community, who would lift enrollment, flooding the school with more money from the city and state, potentially pushing out Winners Circle and, in the process, building their own base of private donations.

After signing out of the account, Karen removed the ledger from the file cabinet and recorded her picnic expenses under the rubric Miscellaneous/Supplies, just as Susan had instructed her to do. Then she got out the PTA checkbook and was about to write herself a check for the amount she was owed—$483.00—when, pen poised over the desk, a tantalizing question lodged itself in her brain and refused to vacate it: Would anyone notice if she added another zero to the amount and sent the surplus over to the PTA of Constance C. Betts?