Just Like a Man (5 page)

Immediately, an image of Hannah Frost materialized in Michael's brain, and, just as quickly, he did his best to vanquish it. He should just leave thoughts of her here in the parking lot, because the last thing he needed was to get involved with someone at Alex's school. Hell, the last thing he needed was to get involved with
anyone
on a more than superficial level. Superficial had worked really well for him since his divorce from Tatiana five years ago. If he had kept things superficial with Tatiana, too, that whole sordid chap-ter of his life might never have happened. Of course, then he wouldn't have Alex, but that was one of those cosmic
thangs
best not thought too much about.

"Look, just watch what you say at school, all right?" he told his son as he unlocked the back door of the Volvo and opened it. "The last thing we need to do is to bring attention to ourselves."

"I didn't lie," Alex said as he tucked himself into the car and slung the seat belt over himself. "Everything I said was true."

Michael nodded morosely as he closed the door behind his son and circled the car to the driver's side. Yeah, he knew his son had been telling the truth about everything.

That, of course, was the problem.

Although Hannah had never had what one might call a normal upbringing—hoo-boy, was that an understatement—she had watched enough television as a girl to know that even the most upper-crustiest private schools had secret societies and ancient taboo traditions that harked back to a time when politically incorrect thinking had led to despicable behaviors. They were cruel, shadowy customs that put mascot-stealing to shame, practices that no right-thinking person would, in this day and age, tolerate or condone, yet somehow they had survived and even flourished. The Emerson Academy was no exception. It, too, had a dirty little secret tradition that Hannah had learned about immediately after beginning her stint as director, an archaic, loathsome annual ritual she detested and in no way endorsed. But it was a custom, a school
tradition,
one staunchly defended by both the students and parents of Emerson. Generations of school directors before her had been forced to tolerate it, and as much as she would have loved to squash the heinous practice, the very mention of abolishing it had been met with boos and hisses and how-dare-you's. A good number of the Emerson parents—and even grandparents—were Emerson alumni, after all. And tradition was everything at Emerson.

So as heinous, archaic, and loathsome as Hannah found the custom, she had no choice but to tolerate the ugliness again this year. Worse than tolerate it. She would have to, as she had before,
participate
in the hideous affair. All the Emerson directors had been forced to participate. So she had no choice but to suffer through yet another…

Potluck dinner.

Oh, just the thought of the abuse that lay ahead made her flesh crawl.

And it wasn't just one potluck dinner, as if that would have been odious enough. No, there were
thirteen
of them she was required to attend, for kindergarten through twelfth grade, two to four per month throughout the first half of the school year. Thankfully, she wouldn't be expected to take part in the most abominable rite of the custom—bringing a covered dish—but just having to be present was repugnant enough. One could only make so much chitchat, after all. And one could only handle so many minutes—nay, so many
seconds
—in the presence of several of the Emerson parents.

It was something of a paradox—among other things, but those things were identified with words best not used by someone who worked with children, so
paradox
was what Hannah decided to go with. Although she would have loved to see more parent participation at the school, there were a number of Emerson parents—quite a large number, in fact—with whom she would rather not participate personally. And several of them would be attending the evening's horror—ah, dinner—though not so much because they were school-minded, but rather because there would be a decent wine selection. Nevertheless, Hannah would be expected to chitchat with
all
of the parents who attended tonight's function. And she would have to
like
it.

Nothing like coming home from work after staying late on a Friday,
she thought as she entered her house after coming home from work late on a Friday,
and having to go back to work.

Because even though tonight's potluck—for the fourth-grade parents, if she remembered correctly—would be held at the radiant and rambling estate of Bitsy and Cornelius Wainwright, Hannah would still be going to
work.
Being anywhere in Bitsy Wainwright's sphere of existence was work. She just didn't get paid any overtime for it. Or worker's comp. Or hazardous duty pay, for that matter.

She did go home to her tidy brick bungalow in Broad Ripple long enough to sort through her mail, of which there were only bills and credit card offers, and check her phone messages, of which there was only one: Bitsy Wainwright reminding her of the cruel, shadowy, secret, heinous, archaic, loathsome potluck. And also long enough to shed her beige suit for a more evening-friendly black suit. As she fastened a strand of pearls around her neck, she pretended, as she always did when she donned them, that they had been a gift from her doting Great-Aunt Esmeralda on the evening of her high school graduation ceremony.

Even though Hannah had actually purchased them for herself earlier this year from a mall jeweler's on a twelvemonths/no interest plan. And even though she didn't have a Great-Aunt Esmeralda, doting or otherwise. And even though she hadn't made it to her high school graduation ceremony because she and her father had been too busy that night slinking out of a crummy tenement because they'd stiffed their landlord for three months' rent.

In spite of being a reasonably sane grown woman of almost thirty-six, Hannah still found herself pretending things from time to time, because she hadn't quite been able to abandon the rich fantasy life in which she had often lost herself as a child. A rich fantasy life, after all, was what had permitted her to
become
a reasonably sane grown woman of almost thirty-six.

Her mother had abandoned her and her father when Hannah was barely walking, and although her father had done his best to eke out a living to support them both, the living he had eked out had been, alas, conning people out of their hard-earned money. Which, in addition to being morally reprehensible, not to mention illegal, meant that he and Hannah had been forced to move around a lot in the hope that the police
du jour
—and landlord
dujour
—wouldn't catch up with them.

Regardless of where they had lived, however, there had always been one constant in Hannah's life—television reruns. Particularly reruns of shows like
Leave It to Beaver, Make Room for Daddy,
and
The Donna Reed Show,
where family life had been depicted in a way that had made Hannah yearn to live family life herself—normally. Or, at least, a young girl's idea of normal. Hey, even on
My Three Sons,
which had featured a motherless family, the Douglases still managed to have a nice, stable, secure life, well rooted in the heartland of America.

Nobody wandered from town to town under cover of darkness in an old Dodge Dart station wagon. Nobody lived in dingy hotels and stinking apartments—and, sometimes, an old Dodge Dart station wagon. Nobody ate the majority of their meals at places that served more insects than humans—or in the back of an old Dodge Dart station wagon.

Hannah had known, even as a little girl, that there were people out there who lived life the way it was supposed to be lived. Normally. Uneventfully. Securely. And she had spent most of her days pretending that she was one of them. She had spent the rest of her days planning how, someday, some way, she was
really
going to be one of them.

Her tidy brick bungalow in Broad Ripple was exactly the kind of home she'd yearned for as a child, right down to the white wicker swing swaying at one end of the broad porch, and the terra-cotta pots of chrysanthemums—geraniums in the summer—that lined the front walk.

She had stopped short of furnishing the house in the tradition of the Eisenhower and Kennedy eras—like her favorite TV families—and had instead opted for more of a thatched Irish cottage look, complete with lace curtains and hooked rugs and hardwood floors, flowered chintz chairs in the living room, a claw-foot tub in the bathroom, a white iron bed in the bedroom, and Blue Willow china in the kitchen. Finally, Hannah had indeed achieved the lifestyle she'd always wanted, one that was the very picture of normalcy, uneventfulness, and security.

Oh, all right, so her job as the overworked, overextended, overdressed, but egregiously underpaid—not that she was bitter or anything, and not that she'd planned
that
part-director of a tony private school in Indianapolis wasn't entirely uneventful. It
was
secure and it was fairly normal. The events that did take place were episodes that didn't directly affect
her
life and its normalcy, uneventfulness, and security. So that was a big plus.

Unfortunately, she did have to attend potluck dinners, but no job was perfect. At least she wouldn't be sitting in the back of an old Dodge Dart station wagon eating cold Beef-a-roni from a can, wondering if the police car behind them was about to pull them over.

The radiant and rambling estate of Bitsy and Cornelius Wainwright was made even more radiant by the stretches of gilded light that spilled over it from a sun dipping low in the sky. As she pulled her Honda sedan to a halt in the wide circular driveway among an eclectic mix of Jaguars, Mercedes, and BMWs, it occurred to Hannah that the exuberant Tudor mansion seemed almost to glow, as if it were an enchanted fairy-tale castle. The image was only reinforced when Bitsy Wainwright, a fey, tiny creature with golden hair and emerald eyes, opened the front door to greet her, the decor of the house behind her resplendent in its richness and excess.

"Oh, Hannah,
so
glad you could come," Bitsy gushed as she ushered Hannah inside.
"So
looking forward to having you." It was then that Hannah recalled how Bitsy Wainwright seemed to have never quite mastered pronouns. Nor had she seemed to ever quite master moving her jaw when she spoke, because all her words seemed to come through her gritted—though perfectly straight and blindingly white—teeth. "Oh, don't step off the carpet," she hastily added when Hannah's foot skirted the fringe of the narrow Aubusson. Hannah's expression must have registered her confusion, because Bitsy quickly clarified, "Sicilian marble. Doesn't take scuff marks well. Bonita would have a fit."

"Bonita?" Hannah asked, recalling that the Wainwright children were named Devon, Somerset, and Durham. She had often wondered why the Wainwrights had named their children after counties in England. Maybe because, had they opted for counties in Wales, their children would be named Dyfed, Powys, and Clwyd, all of which would look a bit clunky on corporate letterhead someday.