Good Riddance(63)

“And didn’t she tell you it was a comedy, hon?” Kathi asked him.

I could utter only a faint “Comedy?”

But the look I was getting from Jeremy was plainly Leave it alone.

“I listened to it for him,” Kathi said.

“Apparently, it takes a special thing on a phone that I don’t have,” my father said. “A map.”

“App,” said Kathi. She shot me the same cautionary and conspiratorial look Jeremy had dispensed, adding, “As you know, you need the right phone, and it’s very hard to install. Then the episodes get erased once you listen. Gone for good.”

“So they are,” said Jeremy.

It was clear: Kathi had screened the episodes and reported back something like That podcast has nothing to do with you. You’d be bored stiff.

Was this morally right? Did someone need to tell him the truth, and would that truth teller have to be me? Or had this been put to rest? Could I report to Holly, Mission accomplished? Dad already knows about the podcast, period, case closed. By the way, never, ever discuss it with him. And if you ever write a memoir, I’ll kill you.

I told Jeremy I had enough chicken if he wanted to stay. But he was checking his phone again, which made me say, “Never mind. Obviously, you can’t.”

“Can I take a rain check?”

“Sure. Whenever.”

He grinned, flashing a newly liberated smile. “Will there be drunken thighs again?”

Why was he acting this way? I said, “I’m not promising anything.”





31


Judge and Jury



Eventually, Geneva returned to discover that The Monadnockian was missing. Prime and only suspect: me. She called, ranted, and threatened. I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The yearbook’s gone! It was in my study! I know you stole it!”

“What would I want with the yearbook at this point? The damage is done. I don’t even know what you’d want with it at this point.”

“I’m not done! I haven’t even scratched the surface of the documentary. You have twenty-four hours to return it.”

“How can I return something I don’t have?”

“I’ll get a search warrant!”

“You do that. I’m sure judges give search warrants to private citizens who think they lost someone else’s high school yearbook.”

“You think you’re so clever? I’m calling the police as soon as I hang up.”

“Good. Call 911. And you know what they’ll say? ‘Ma’am, really? You’re missing a book? Are you sure you didn’t return it to the library?’”

That took the wind out of her hysterical sails. “You still there?” I asked. “Did you take your meds today?”

“I’m fine!” she yelled. “I don’t need meds!”

“Keep looking. It’s probably somewhere logical in the apartment, like the clothes hamper or the refrigerator. You did have a bad knock on the head.”

“I have other ways of making trouble for you,” she warned.



She did, and soon I found out exactly how. As reported by my most loyal doorman, she complained about me—the professionally jealous me; the evil, criminal, and spiteful me—to everyone she encountered. The topic must have done double duty—yearbook talk was podcast talk; one missing item could be interpreted as an assault on all documentarians and artists. She worked it and worked it.

Finally, she must have found an interested party.

When the school director called, asking me to meet with her the following day before the children arrived, I had no reason to connect the summons to Geneva.

“May I ask about what?”

“A rather serious matter,” she’d said.

I spent the rest of the day doing what I hadn’t done since I’d starting teaching: catching up on my chocolate curriculum. I covered “Bean Sources,” “Time and Temperature,” and “Chocolate Culture in New York City.” The kitchen hiatus seemed to have done me some good because the tempering and the molding and even the flavoring was a success. I knew this because, by bedtime, I’d eaten every morsel.



We spoke privately in the director’s office, which was decorated with photos of parents studying Dr. Montessori’s The Discovery of the Child and The Absorbent Mind. Her hands were folded on her blotter, and her expression was bordering on the tragic. She told me that she’d received some distressing news from a parent.

My stomach and heart lurched. “Which child?” I whispered. “What happened?”

“Child? No. It’s not about a child. The parent raised a rather serious concern about you.”

“What concern? What parent?”

That earned a prim, silent rebuke, at war with her happy-lumpy papier-maché necklace.

What she did share with me was that the unnamed parent had reported that a Daphne Maritch had stolen some valuable property from a competitor’s apartment. He and his husband were not comfortable, to put it mildly, with her teaching their child. In other words, either I go or they withdraw their gifted, full-tuition son.

All I could do was sputter an inarticulate string of syllables expressing outrage and denial.