I Was Told It Would Get Easier(27)
I thought about the texts Emily and I sent each other. Even if we’d bickered all evening, we would declare a truce over text. I would sit in my bed and she would sit in hers, at the other end of the hall, and we would send each other funny pictures, say sweet things, discuss plans . . . It was lower stress, being able to talk without having to deal with body language, having time to think about how you wanted to say things. People lament the amount of time teenagers spend online, but there’s a lot to be said for old-fashioned, written communication.
After ordering, the parents’ end of the table began engaging in gentle but insistent competition over social status, as expressed through the medium of children. Of course, Dani was leading the charge, which started out disguised as general conversation.
“So, where is everyone at school?” She might as well have said, So, let’s rank each other by socioeconomic status and potential social power, shall we? but listing schools was much quicker and equally effective. Once you’ve entered a city’s educational system, it doesn’t take long to work out the pecking order. I imagine going to jail is a similar process. A week or two of getting the shit beaten out of you followed by a rapid self-placement in whatever subgroup offers the most protection.
Dani smiled. “Jessica and I are both parents at Westminster, but I don’t think anyone else is, right?” Westminster is the best all-girls school in Los Angeles, and one of the best in the country. It is cripplingly expensive, very hard to get into, and fiercely competitive once you had dragged your poor child over the barbed wire to get in. Don’t get me wrong, there are great kids there, some of the brightest and best of the city, but there are also enormously entitled, wealthy kids who make life difficult for the nice ones. But if you have a very intelligent kid, or one with medium intelligence but lofty ambitions, Westminster is a good choice.
Dani scanned the table. “Phillip-Daniels?” She was going down the standard list; PD was the best co-ed school in Los Angeles, extremely academic and competitive. Four other parents raised their hands.
“Northridge? Plummer? St. Jude’s? Hedgewood? Camberly?” She was only naming private schools, a safe assumption based on the expense of the tour, but I thought she was revealing more about herself than she probably wanted to. The rest of the table slowly segregated themselves, with only Chris unaccounted for. Dani turned to him. “And you’re in public school?” Ouch.
Chris smiled at her. “No, we’re at Clarence Darrow.” Clarence Darrow was a small private school for academically gifted children, set midway between Los Angeles and Pasadena.
Dani paused. “Really?”
Chris laughed. “That’s hard to believe?”
“No . . . I’m just surprised. Darrow is very . . .” Dani trailed off, apparently experiencing a moment of self-awareness that took her by surprise. Maybe she realized she sounded like a snob and a total bitch, but for whatever reason, she closed her mouth, confused. I tried not to enjoy her discomfort, because that would make me a bad person.
Chris had clearly had conversations like this before. “Expensive? Exclusive? Yes, it’s both of those things, but Will is very smart and apparently the principal at his elementary school, which was public, knew the principal at Darrow and reached out. They have an incredible program and Will really likes it.”
Before things got out of hand, Cassidy intervened. “So, did everyone enjoy the colleges today?”
“Yes,” said one of the parents, “I thought Georgetown was charming.”
“I preferred George Washington,” said another parent, “particularly the dorms, which I thought were very nice.”
“Oh yes,” said Cassidy, congratulating herself on regaining control of the group. “Are most of you assuming your children will live on campus for the first year or so?”
The conversation bubbled on, and I saw Chris taking a deep breath to calm himself. He looked over at me, and I smiled, trying to convey supportive non-judgyness. The whole stupid conversation reminded me of elementary school, where I’d had a totally miserable time and always felt like a big fat loser. I was born with a club foot; it’s pretty common, especially if your mother smokes like a fiend while she’s pregnant (not that my club foot stopped her; my sister had beautiful feet, she said, and she’d smoked during that pregnancy, too, ipso facto, not her fault), and although they’d fixed it, I still had trouble running or playing sports very well. It wasn’t even PE that bothered me, it was recess, when everyone was friendly enough but had me mind the jackets while they all ran around playing whatever ball-based fad was sweeping the playgrounds of the East Coast that month. I’d sit there, surrounded by foothills of coats, reading and trying not to listen to everyone else having fun. Eventually my dad took me to archery class because it was something I could do as well as anyone else, and it clicked for me. But I’ve never forgotten third grade.
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It’s entirely possible that somewhere there is a group of people in their forties who can drink a lot of wine, then do tequila shots, then dance like Beyoncé, but we were not those people. The teenagers of the E3 tour group sat at their end of the table in frozen horror as several of the parents, egged on by Dani, who actually could dance annoyingly well and therefore never missed an opportunity to do so, took to the dance floor. There was a live band that was playing a medley of pop classics flavored with a Cuban beat, and until you’ve seen a middle-aged woman get down to a reinterpretation of “Independent Women” on trombone and cowbells, you haven’t lived. I imagine several of the teens will never be able to hear the song again without experiencing PTSD flashbacks.