Accelerated (11 page)

Maureen looked confused, then caught on. “Oh, well, I’m sure Kat’s school is just fine.”

Kat smiled, unfamiliar with the concept of the backhanded compliment.

“Really?
Fine?”

“We think Kat is a lovely girl,” Maureen said. “Public school is just so … fraught.”

“Public school is the only option some of us have. Most people in the country go to public school. It’s a great, democratic education.”

“Of course it is,” Dick chimed in. “Some wonderful minds have made it through the public system.”

“Oh come on, you know I wasn’t saying that Kat isn’t smart,” Maureen said. “It’s just, well, I read the stories in the paper every day. I was just reading about the rubber room. Have you heard about that?” She turned to Sean. “The school isn’t allowed to fire the teachers because they’re unionized, but they don’t want them near the kids, so they keep them locked in the rubber room all day.” She snorted. “Bureaucracy. That’s what you get when New York City runs anything.”

“Public schools have a lot going for them. I would have sent Toby to—”

“And the money. New York City schools are always cutting programs. Art, music, gym … the city has decided they’re luxuries. It’s madness.”

“You’re talking about Kat’s education,” Nicole reminded her.

Maureen turned to Kat, who sat primly at her seat. “Sweetheart, how many teachers do you have in your classroom?”

If she was doing what Sean thought she was doing, it was ill-advised.

“We have Ms. Herbst.”

“So just one.” Maureen nodded. “And how many children in a class?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Wow,” Maureen said with a
see-I-told-you-so
tilt of her head. “That’s a lot of kids for one teacher to handle.”

“At least they’re not snotty Bradley kids who go around bragging that they’re perfectly educated.” The drinks were fueling the true Nicole, who didn’t put up with anyone’s bullshit. She might have gotten away with it on those grounds, but she’d called Bradley kids snotty. Which was going to be a problem.

“Why the name calling?” Dick said, disapprovingly.

“She’s talking about Kat like she’s one of the unwashed.”

“Kat is an extremely bright child,” Maureen said.

“Yeah,” Nicole said. “
I
know that.”

“She’s going to be able to rise above the twenty-eight to one student-teacher ratio,” Maureen said. “And the funding problems.”

Nicole put down the plaid napkin that, he now saw, matched Maureen’s dress. “Maybe we should go.”

A pang of jealousy hit Sean. It wasn’t fair. He wanted to go, too.

“But Mommy, I want to have stuffing.” Kat pouted and tears welled in her big brown eyes. Nicole sat back down with a sigh.

But Maureen wouldn’t stop. She couldn’t. It was a pathology. “The thing that makes Bradley exceptional is its
screening
process.”

“Ha!” Nicole exclaimed, and rolled her eyes. “The idea of basing admission on an interview with a four-year-old is pure insanity.”

“Oh, I disagree,” Maureen continued, in an upbeat tone as if she were discussing the benefit of insulated drapes or cooking with canola oil. “It weeds out the hyperactive children and the slow children.”

It hit him then. Ellie had grown up with Maureen for a mother, a role model. It put everything into perspective. Ellie had done well—fantastically well—given the circumstances of her childhood. He really should cut her some slack.

Instead of thrashing back, Nicole channeled her frustration into a long exhale. Unfortunately, her lips were pressed into a snarl and they slapped against one another, hurtling specks of saliva onto the tablecloth.

“Jake jumps on the table during reading and imitates the teacher,” Kat said to no one in particular. “Ms. Herbst calls him ‘Wild Child.’ He poked Chloe with a sharp pencil and her hand was bleeding.”

Nicole frowned at her daughter, who was not helping her case.

Sean’s mind raced. He needed a topic that would get Maureen and Nicole to disengage. He tried to channel Ellie. He reached for his wine glass and the idea hit him. He remembered drinking himself into oblivion one year when Maureen went on endlessly about her volunteer work. Since then, there had been an implicit pact among the family to avoid the subject at all cost. He realized now it was the only way. “Maureen,” he ventured, throwing caution to the wind. “What’s happening with the volunteering?”

She looked surprised and, he thought, suspicious. But she took the bait. “Lots of exciting things.”

He polished off his wine and signaled for a refill. “Start at the beginning. Tell us everything.”

Dick glared at him from the head of the table.

“I’m focusing most of my time these days on Bright Future,” she said. “They’re doing such important work.” Maureen leaned forward, eagerly. “I just helped coordinate a huge mailing about peanut allergy awareness. We’ll save dozens of lives this year.”

“My friend Calvin might die from a peanut allergy,” Toby said. “He’s my best friend.” The entire table went quiet. Toby looked around trying to figure out what to do next.

“Oh no,” Maureen said, looking genuinely upset. She grabbed Toby’s hand and held it. “I’m so sorry, Toby. How awful.” She shook her head and clucked her tongue. “These allergies are getting worse all the time. Terrifying.”

Toby broke the substantial silence that followed with another bomb. “Mom called last night,” he said.

The news was enough to jolt Nicole out of her funk. She tried to catch Sean’s eye across the marzipan Pilgrims and Indians.

“She called you?” Maureen looked almost hurt. She leaned toward Toby. “What did she say?”

“She’s in Momtalk now. She says Happy Thanksgiving to everybody.”

“Did she say what she’s doing? When she’s—”

“She sounded good,” Sean said. “Much, much better.”

“She wants me to visit her for Christmas break.”

Maureen’s eyebrows shot up defensively, then her mouth spread into a grandmotherly smile. “Of course she does. She loves you. We all do.”

“Dad won’t let me.” He avoided eye contact with Sean.

Maureen’s face softened when she looked at Toby. “Well, your dad knows best. And I think he’s right, it’s probably not a great idea.” Ordinarily, having Maureen take his side was helpful. Why did it make him squirm today?

“It
is
a good idea,” Toby whined.

“I know you miss her,” Maureen said. “But Mommy’s still tired. She needs to rest.”

Toby protruded his lower lip into an impressive pout.

“And besides, what would we do on Christmas without you?”

“It won’t be Christmas without Mommy. I always see her on Christmas.”

“Well if she wants to see you, she can just come here.” Maureen didn’t try to hide the edge in her voice, then set her mouth in the same way Ellie did.

Toby looked at Sean, confused. He sensed something was going on, but had no idea what it was. “I want to visit Mommy.”

Maureen shook her head. “Not after … not after the way she left you all.” Under her breath, she added, “That is not what a good mother does.”

Toby’s face fell and he looked like he might cry. Sean opened his mouth to tell Maureen to stop, but Nicole gave her one cutting look, which did the trick.

“She was a good mother,” Sean said, wondering where this deep-seated reflex to defend his wife came from.
“Is
a good mother.” The words caught in his throat as he said them. The last thing Toby needed to hear on Thanksgiving, from his grandmother, was that his mother was a fuckup. His rescue of Ellie’s reputation, he realized, had much less to do with Ellie than it did with Toby. “In fact,” he went on, taking a deep breath before jumping into the abyss, “I’ve decided to let Toby go to Montauk.” His heart pounded as he said it.

Toby stared at him, his mouth gaping slightly. “Really?”

Now it was Maureen’s turn to be indignant. “You can’t do that!”

“I can,” he said, as Maureen’s face flushed with agitation. “If Ellie continues to sound as good as she did last night, I’m going to let him go for the whole two weeks.”

“Yes!” Toby jumped out of his seat and threw his arms around Sean. “Thank you Dad! Thank you!”

He hugged Toby hard. Allowing him to visit his mother was more difficult than anyone at the table could have known, but it was the right thing for so many reasons. He was sure of it.

T
OBY WAS HAPPY AND CAREFREE THE REST OF THE WEEKEND
,
AND
Monday morning he literally skipped to school. But by the time he got home that afternoon, he was anxious and grumpy. “I can’t do it,” he whined over his math homework.

Sean didn’t look up from the bills that covered the kitchen table. “Yes you can.” He added up the rent and the tutoring bills but didn’t have enough to cover both. Noah would probably be fine with half of what he was owed as long as he got the other half in a couple of weeks. The cable bill was also going to have to wait. He looked up when he heard Toby whimpering. “What’s the matter?”

“I’m stupid,” he said, pulling his hair. “I can’t do word problems.”

“Come on Toby, calm down and read it again.” He was going to need some extra cash this month for Christmas presents. And framing supplies for the Burdot pieces. He could pay the minimum on the credit card for a few months. But there was no way he could put Toby in the after school art class he wanted to take next semester.

Toby rolled his forehead back and forth on the coffee table, a death groan emanating from deep inside him.

“Cut it out and do your work.” He hadn’t meant to yell at Toby, but the drama was over the top.

“I told you I’m stupid,” he yelled back. “I can’t do it!” Toby hurled himself face down on the couch.

Sean pushed away the bills, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Yelling was only making it worse. It always did. “Come on, Tobe. I’m sure we can figure it out.” Actually, he wasn’t sure about that at all. Helping with math always ended badly.

“Sit up,” he said, as he lowered himself to the ground next to Toby. Toby grudgingly sat up, his face red and streaky. Sean held up the worksheet. “Jane has pennies, nickels, and dimes in her purse.” He started to glaze over. He hated word problems. Maybe reading it with more expression would make it less deadly. “She has eight coins altogether,” he said, stressing the eight. “Including more dimes than nickels, more nickels than pennies, and fewer pennies than nickels. What are the two different amounts of money she could have?” Sean’s stomach contracted with that sick feeling he used to get in math class when he didn’t know or care.

“Um, huh. Okay.” He had no idea where to start. This had to be high school math. Or at least middle school.

“So how do you do it?” There was a challenge in Toby’s voice.

Sean stalled, hoping something would come to him. “I have no idea,” he said, finally. While there were many wrong answers he could have given, this was probably the most wrong. He tried to rally. “Let’s try to work it out.”

He picked up Toby’s pencil. “Uh, okay, Jane has how many coins? Eight? Okay. So … if she has the most dimes, which it says, then, um, huh. Should we just start trying out combinations and see what happens?”

Toby’s forehead was back on the table. “I hate math.” He raised his head. His eyes were full of anger. “I hate myself.”

“Come on.” He tried to sound encouraging. “At least we can try.”

Maybe Toby’s bullshit meter was more developed than Sean had given him credit for. “No!” Toby shouted. He picked up the math packet and tore it in half. Sean ducked as Toby hurled the pieces in his direction.

“What the hell are you doing?” Sean yelled before he could stop himself. He’d let Toby get a rise out of him, which was bad. And he’d said hell, which was also bad. Once you said hell in front of a kid this age, you couldn’t take it back, and it would, without fail, be trotted out later, usually in front of company.

But Toby wasn’t even focusing on the slip. “I’m the dumbest kid in my class,” he screamed. “I can’t do it.” He ran into his room and slammed the door hard behind him.

His inclination was to run after Toby. But Toby needed time to cool down, and Sean needed time to form a plan.

He wondered how Ellie would handle the early-onset teenage outburst, but this was virgin territory. He dialed Noah, who picked up on the first ring.

“Hey man, how’s Toby?” Noah asked. “Everything all right?”

Sean described the math problem and the response it had elicited.

“Yeah, it’s too hard for most kids this age,” Noah said, which was a huge relief. “And no, I’m not surprised they assigned it.”

“But I don’t get it. Why would they—”

“Do you want to know how to do it?”

Noah walked Sean through the problem and explained how to help Toby figure it out on his own. As he hung up the phone, he knew West Side Tae Kwon Do would have to wait another month. He would pay Noah’s tutoring bill in full.

Sean took his time pouring orange juice into a SpongeBob cup then knocked on Toby’s door. No answer. He opened it a crack. Toby’s head was buried under the pillow. “Can I come in?”

Sean put the cup on the night table and sat on the edge of the bed. “Hey,” he said. “You all right?”

Toby took the pillow off his head. “Everyone can do word problems except me.”

“I bet that’s not true, Tobe. That was a hard problem,” he said. “I talked to Noah and I think we can handle it now.”

Toby looked skeptical.

“And I can talk to Jess about it. Ask why she’s assigning such hard math. Okay?”

Toby nodded and eyed the SpongeBob cup suspiciously. “Pulp?”

Sean shook his head. Thank God he’d bought the right juice this time.

By the time Toby had downed the juice, the storm was a mere memory. They worked through the problem, which took about thirty seconds, Sean read him a chapter from
Prince Caspian
and tucked him in before eight o’clock. Then he emailed Jess. Now that there was a head teacher, he figured he might as well use her.

He set up a meeting for two-thirty the next day while Toby would be in science.

Being back at Bradley the next afternoon gave him a bad case of déjà vu. As he climbed the stairs, he remembered the soft thud of his foot making contact with Calvin’s torso. The memory set off a wave of nausea that forced him to sit for a minute. He thought about the tubes running into Calvin’s arm and nose and about the machines that beeped when his heart beat. Was Calvin better? Was he worse? Shineman had told parents not to call, to give the Drakes some space, some privacy. But she’d also said she’d send an email with an update, which she hadn’t. The silence was ominous and ate at him the longer it went on.