Momzillas (19 page)

Thirty-eight

Crazed with the newly added burden of our board package, I got Amber to play with Violet while I ran a bunch of errands (pick up tax returns, wait at Kinko's, yawnsville). When I was done I found myself on Ninety-sixth Street and began walking up Fifth Avenue to the north of the park in Harlem. Somehow my feet walked me to the Columbia campus. The buildings were so beautiful, and I thought of Barbara Hershey in
Hannah and Her Sisters
making her way across the quad with a bag full of books. While Tate's classes always excited me, I honestly loathed most of my classes, especially the piles of specific requirements, namely science, which I filled with guts like Rocks for Jocks and Nuts and Sluts. Beyond the classes in my major, which I loved, the rest just made me want to snag the sheepskin and bail, but as I walked around I suddenly found myself missing campus life terribly—not necessarily being a student cramming for a test, just being immersed in that environment. I missed the throngs of young people. I missed community. I missed belonging.

I asked a bearded crunchy dude where the art history building was, and headed where he directed me. It was different from my school—more East Coast, glam and grand, with a museumesque photo study of the images the students had to memorize for identification in exams. I peeked in a few windows—one had a lecturer with a big pointer explaining Etruscan vases, the next room a gray-haired woman discussing a flowery French Rococo painting, the next was a seminar with violent 1980s art on the screen.

And then I saw Tate through his lecture hall window. He was waving his hands while explicating the image in front of the class, a Dutch landscape. I quietly opened the door and darted into a spare seat in the back of the crowded auditorium.

“Here we have the dusty, muted topography of a plain, almost grisaille road with a simple figure walking. But look at the sky. It is alive with vigor and forcefulness; the figure is devoid of emotion, but consider this tree. It's anthropomorphized, twisting as if agonized, screaming out of its anchoring roots.”

Forget crack: nostalgia is a true drug. Over the past months I had been dipping into the vats of memories on purpose, because they were a safe place. It was weird: before I met Josh, when I was between relationships and wallowing in loneliness, I always mentally wandered back to Tate Hayes. I used to imagine what it would be like to fully make out with him. What would have happened if he hadn't put the brakes on our kiss? But all those reveries always took place in the past, like I was mourning something that never happened to my twenty-one-year-old self. It was like a sex dream I had once starring the actor Jim Caviezel from
The Count of Monte Cristo
. In my visions of him ripping my clothes off, it wasn't about my bumping into him buying Tylenol at Duane Reade and bringing him back to my apartment. It was me in the lavish ballgown the actress opposite him wore. The fantasy existed on a plane that could never occur: we were running through the foggy moors, and he laid me down in the grass, unlacing my ribboned bodice. I wasn't cutting and pasting him, my fantasy, into
my reality
, I was cutting and pasting myself into his costumed realm. And that was the scope of my scenarios.

In the single days of my mid-twenties, my thoughts of Professor Hayes involved a schoolgirl version of myself, back in time, if he hadn't stopped kissing me that rainy afternoon. The dream was that we were lovers and traveled together and he would show me the whole world. I would be his coltish, adoring pupil who made him feel young and reborn.

“Next slide, please. Oh. This…this is a favorite.” He looked at the image as if it were an old flame that he'd bumped into in the grocery store. He had that nervous excitement of seeing something so familiar that he knew intimately but had not laid eyes on for a long time. He sounded almost turned on as he spoke. He offered the class the historical background of Vermeer's Delft, what it had been like when the artist raised his brush to make the pearls in the picture.

“In this work by Vermeer we can feel the delicate quiet of this room as the maiden weighs the pearls in the balance. The rigidity of the moral codes reflected the essential anxiety of a culture that cherished virtue and shunned vanities, yet was swimming in spices and silks. Weighing upon every head was this burden of privilege and the quest for equilibrium in the face of a harsh dichotomy of luxuriant pleasures versus a determined lack of absorption in material things.”

I was amused to think that though centuries separated us, the Dutch and I seemed to have a bit in common, as I was also thrust into this world of material things and trying to swim upstream to groundedness. Only the terrain was chockablock with Bugaboos, not overvalued tulips.

As he continued, I became lost in his swirling words, which washed over me in the colored light of the slide. Suddenly the class was done and the bright overheads came on. While Hayes was giving instructions for finals the following week, the students were hurriedly loading their notebooks into bags and darting off in a whirl of zipping knapsacks and shuffling sneakers. I sat quietly and watched him as he gathered his notes and ran his hand through his hair. The projectionist came out from the booth, carrying the carousel of slides.

“Professor Hayes—Tate,” I called, as the last straggling lass slung her Jansport over her shoulder to leave.

“Hannah, what a lovely surprise! What are you doing here?”

“I have a favor to ask.”

“Anything you need. Shall we go sit down and get a coffee?”

Ten minutes later we were seated in an old coffee bar with dark booths and little café tables. He was stirring his espresso as I returned with my giant frothy drink.

“What's that?” he asked, eyeballing the enormous mug that I proceeded to douse with so much sugar it was as if the cup was on fire and the sugar dispenser was a hose. I was a total seven-year-old with my sweet vat next to his tiny cup of bitter, grown-up espresso.

“It's a mochaccino. Grandisssssimo.”

“I suspected you'd get something foamy and fancy,” he said. “I suppose now it's obvious—the chocolate is very you. I seem to recall scores of small foil balls amassed on my desk as you made you way through my Hershey Kiss bowl.”

Fucking great memory.

“Well, I hear there's an enzyme in chocolate that is clinically proven to make you happier,” I said. “Nothing I didn't already know, naturally. From my extensive research.”

“So, my dear, what big wish can I grant?”

“Ugh, this is so crazy, but we're actually buying—well, trying to buy an apartment, and we need these, like, social recommendations—”

“Done. I do this all the time, no problem.”

Yayyyy. I was so thrilled. “Really?”

“Of course, everyone has to deal with that. I know the drill. I can get it to you by next week? Why don't you pop by Friday after my office hours and I'll have it ready for you.”

“Perfect, thanks so much. You are a total godsend.”

Thirty-nine

There I was the following day, happily stirring Violet's Quaker Instant Maple n' Brown Sugar over chants of “Oatmeal! Oatmeal! Oatmeal!” when the phone rang. I was smiling at Violet's breakfast excitement, when I heard the sharp cut of an anger-infused voice through the receiver. Giggles turned to goose bumps.

“Mrs. Allen, please.”

“Oh, hi, um, this is Hannah Allen.”

“Nelly Abercrombie. Registrar for the Fifth Avenue School.”

“Yes, hello!” Heart racing.

“You and your husband failed to show up for your interview this morning.”

Huh? I never had heard from them! I assumed I didn't win the drawing for a coveted application. The Web site said in huge bold letters that we would be notified in writing and
not to call
the school.

“Oh my gosh, Mrs. Abercrombie, we never got anything about it. I am so sorry.”

“Well, we never got anything returned to us at the school, so…”

Beat. Was she accusing me of lying? “I swear, I am the most organized person. We would never, ever miss something like this—”

“Then why didn't you call?”

“Well, both the Web site and the woman on the phone on dialing day said not to. I didn't want to be pushy.”

“Didn't you suspect something was amiss when all your friends had already been notified of tour dates?” she huffed.

I stuttered something humiliating about how we just moved here and I didn't know anyone else applying. She snorted in reply, then added, “I don't know what to tell you.”

Now our school options were officially swirling down the toilet bowl. “So that's it, we've missed the boat?”

She took a pause so pregnant quadruplets could have been born. “Okay then, I'll give you a second chance. We have one last tour tomorrow at nine
A.M.
,” she said, ordering, not asking. “Promptly.”

“Done, we will be there. Thank you, and again, I'm—”
Click
. Beeyotch. My palms were sweating so much the phone almost slid from my hand. I speed-dialed Josh at the office, panting and hysterical.

“He's in a meeting.”

“It's very important—can he talk for one minute?”

“Sorry, he's with clients in the conference room.”

I was in a panic. “Can you just tell him his wife called, please? We have to go to a school tour tomorrow at nine.”

“Tomorrow? Let me check his schedule…”

My forehead was shvitzing and I could feel my pits burning with sweat-on-deck.

“Nope, he has a meeting at nine thirty downtown.”

“Listen. Cancel it. This is very important. It's an emergency. Just tell him to do it, please.” I had never heard myself sound so forceful, but I knew I had to throw down the gauntlet.

I looked at Violet and exhaled, my eyes filling with tears. Did I somehow fuck up and mistakenly toss the letter? No, hell no, that is so not me. Maybe it just was plain old lost. Fuck! Nightmare.

That night, Josh came home at eleven
P.M.
to find me passed out. I tried to revive quickly and give him kisses, but he was exhausted and said the school tour the next day had fully ruined his morning.

“Sweetie, I am so sorry, I know it's such a hassle—”

“It's okay, Han. I know it's not your fault. That woman sounds like a nightmare.”

Little did we know.

We arrived to the Fifth Avenue School's grand entrance, complete with a drive-in court for the chauffeurs and nine security guards because “lots of prominent families send their children here.” Just like Carnegie, there were lavish rooms with moldings, carpeted halls, and a state-of-the-art kitchen. Weirdly, there were not one or two but ten couples on the tour, so everyone was pushing one another to get into the rooms, craning their necks, and fighting to talk with Mrs. Abercrombie to get brownie points for seeming interested. The parents all were older and seemed very controlling and pushy. Once the tour was over, we filed into a marble drawing room with leather chairs lined up for a question-and-answer session, which began with attendance.

“The Horowitzes?” she asked. A meek woman and her bespectacled husband raised their hands.

“The Whitneys?” Two blondies raised their hands.

“The Allens?” We raised our hands.

“Well,” she sniffed, looking us over. “How nice of you to actually show up this time.”

I felt like Thor had just chucked a lightning bolt at me. My whole body felt walloped by her acidic tone as I looked at my lap and then at Josh, who sat poised, giving me a tight smile.
Fuck this fucking school!
I hated her already. And if she's the director—for three decades no less—the environment would be sculpted from the top down, i.e., a bitchfest run by this toad.

“Let us begin,” she said, after finishing the list of halo-covered parents who had actually shown up. She talked about the school's philosophy (I loved how every school thought theirs was so original and unique. I mean, the kids are fucking tots), discussed parent involvement (from chaperoning field trips to chairing the annual black-tie gala fund-raiser), and then opened the floor for questions.

One woman raised her hand.

“Yes, you in the tweed,” Mrs. Abercrombie acknowledged.

“Um, you said all your students leave here for kindergarten fully knowing how to read and write—”

“Correct.” She beamed.

“Well, um, what if there's a child in the class who's…lagging a little. Will the teachers stop to help him or her?”

I kind of thought it a weird question, she might as well have worn a T-shirt that read “Hey, my kid's kinda slow.”

But Mrs. Abercrombie nodded, explaining that this happens all the time. “You see, we know what it is to have lagging students,” she began. “Because we have many, many in vitro families.”

Huh? Josh looked at me. I was in shock. What was she getting at?

“You see, in vitro just isn't Darwinian, people!” she said as I spied at least two women looking at the floor. “The most tenacious sperm isn't the one that's getting there, so as a result we have all these kids who are way behind!”

Ew! I was so offended by her uncouth, un-PC, and probably untruthful “research” that I almost stormed out, but was too surprised to move.

“We have seven sets of techno twins here at the Fifth Avenue School. Seven sets! And in every single one of those pairs, one of the children is behind. That's just the way it goes. As I said, not the fittest sperm gets there, the one chosen by the lab technician does! Not Darwinian, people, not Darwinian.”

“We are withdrawing our application!” I seethed out on the street, walking a mile a minute.

“Calm down, sweets. Don't get so emotional.”

“
Emotional?
That
bitch
is evil, Joshie,
evil
. I hate that school and I hate that place. We are yanking our application.”

“Don't be so upset,” he laughed, more amused than horrified. “She's a freak, so what? The school seemed fine.”

“I don't know what we're going to do, Josh. We only have one school left, Browne-Madison School, and if that blows, poor Violet is going to either be with snobby couture kids or Darwin's finest pressure-cooked offspring under that bitch's tutelage.”

“Deep breaths, my love,” he said, laughing and patting my head.