Today Will Be Different(9)
“What school do you go to?”
“Galer Street.”
“Do you like it?”
“I guess.”
“Do you have friends?”
“I guess.”
“Do you like your teachers?”
“I guess.”
“Timby.” Dr. Saba wheeled up on a stool. “A lot of times when people get tummy aches, it’s not because they have a bug, but because they have emotions that make them feel yucky.”
Timby’s eyes remained down.
“I’m wondering if there’s anything going on at school or at home that’s making you feel yucky.”
Good luck with that, I thought. Timby, the king of the nonanswer.
“It’s Piper Veal.”
(!!!)
“Who’s Piper Veal?” the doctor said.
“A new girl in my class.”
Piper’s family was fresh from a yearlong trip around the world. Is this not a rarefied but most annoying trend? Families traveling around the world to unplug and immerse themselves in foreign cultures, then parents frantically e-mailing you to please post comments on their kids’ blogs so they won’t think nobody gives a hoot? (Come on, New York Times, do I have to come up with all your most-e-mailed articles?) “What’s Piper doing?” asked Dr. Saba.
“She’s bullying me,” Timby said, his voice cracking.
My life zoomed into awful focus.
Here, now, Timby.
The gentleness, the celebrity gossip, the overidentification with Gaston from Beauty and the Beast. Was Timby gay? It had certainly occurred to me. But there were also the Snap Circuits, MythBusters, the obsession with escalators. Of course, the smoking gun would be the flirtation with makeup, but that was his Pavlovian response to being loved up by a harem of Nordstrom hotties. If anything, it proved Timby was all man. A mother knows. Or, in my case, a mother will love him regardless and let it play out the way it’s going to play out.
Which is more than I can say for Galer Street.
Our first interview, we’d come straight from Nordstrom, where the girls had adorned Timby with a beauty mark and very subtle mascara… darling! As soon as we walked in the conference room, I could practically hear the admissions director shouting, “Eureka! We’ve got a transgender!” Joe and I joked about it later that night. After we’d been accepted, and without telling us, the school had taken it upon themselves to switch all the boys’ and girls’ bathrooms to gender-neutral. “I hope you didn’t do this for Timby,” I said to the head of school, Gwen. “Oh no,” she said. “We did it for all our little genderqueers.”
To that, there could be only one response: to laugh my ass off. But I had the good sense to wait until I got outside.
Was I in denial? Had I become lulled into complacency as a reaction against Galer Street’s fervent embrace of everything? And just because the administrators were so tolerant of the occasional pink thumbnail, the same might not be said for the kids on the playground…
“Have you told your mom about Piper?” asked Dr. Saba.
“No,” Timby said.
Dr. Saba didn’t have to shoot me a disappointed look. I could feel it beaming through the back of her skull.
“Have you told your teachers?”
“No.”
“What kind of things is Piper doing to you?”
“I don’t know,” Timby said.
“Is she hurting your body?” Dr. Saba asked.
“No,” Timby said, his mouth full of saliva.
“What did Piper do?”
I twisted in my chair and held my breath.
“She told me I bought my shirt at H&M.”
Oh.
“You bought your shirt at H&M?” repeated the doctor.
“When Piper was in Bangladesh she went on a tour of a factory with child slaves and they were making clothes for H&M.”
“I see,” said Dr. Saba. “Timby, third grade is when things start to get complicated with your friends. Sometimes your feelings can get so big they cause a tummy ache.”
Timby finally looked up and into Dr. Saba’s eyes.
“Do you know the best medicine for that?” she asked.
“What?”
“Talk to your grown-up,” Dr. Saba said. “Your mom. But if it’s not your mom—”
“It is his mom,” I said.
“—talk to your dad, your grandma, your favorite teacher. Tell them how you’re feeling. They might not be able to fix it, but sometimes just talking is enough.”
Timby smiled.
“You look like you’re feeling better already.”
“I am.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” she said, standing.
“Good,” I said. “We can go back to school.”
Timby hopped off the table and pulled open the door.
“Hey, where’s he going?” I asked.
The door shut. It was just me, Dr. Saba, and the mural of zombie-eyed lemurs.
“Do you have to go right back to work?” Dr. Saba asked. “Because what Timby really needs is mommy time.”
“I’ll move some stuff around.”
Dr. Saba stood there, calling my bluff. I dialed Sydney Madsen and got voice mail. “Sydney. I have to reschedule. Something came up with Timby.”