Stash (13 page)

“Gwen was not at fault in the accident,” Walt said. “The police have already determined that.”

“What are you—defending her?” Sheila spat back.

“Please calm down.”

“A drug addict and a heathen. If the police don’t get you, God
will.” She turned to her husband. “Peter, can’t I bring a lawsuit? I can, can’t I?” Now looking at Gwen again.

“You can try,” her husband said miserably. “Come on, now, let’s go. It’s time to go home.”

Peter led his wife away, toward the limousine behind the hearse.

Gwen let Walt walk her back to her car.

“I’m sorry, that was embarrassing,” Walt said.

Now she was sorry she had come and wished she had listened to Brian, although he’d been such a jerk about it that she couldn’t have followed his advice even if she wanted to.

“For me, my father hasn’t been my father for years now—he’s just a shell, his mind gone—but for Sheila, he was still everything.”

“It must be really hard for her,” Gwen said. They had reached her car.

“You know what I said about it being like having a two-year-old? Sure there’s confusion and tantrums and repetitive boredom, but calm and loving moments, too, when your baby’s resting on your shoulder and the love and dependency is so deep and mutual.”

Yes, Gwen remembered that feeling; she missed it often.

“It was like that with my father and Sheila. Imagine losing your two-year-old.”

Gwen shook her head. “No, I can’t.”

He opened the car door for her. “Thank you for coming, Gwen. I appreciate it.”

She got in her car and cried most of the way home, not that it provided any closure.

Allison Witherspoon, former bank vice president now constructing a second career as mom and PTA president, chaired the Morrissey East PTA meeting like a corporate CEO dazzling the shareholders. It was about strategy and results, about serving your shareholders: the students.

In her opening remarks, she made use of a laptop and a projector to show slides about last year’s successful programs—book exchange, Helping Hands, new school sign, bus trip to the New York State Museum, after-school enrichment, teacher appreciation program, visiting author series, and a half-dozen others. She outlined ambitious goals for the coming school year, including three new programs.

All achievable, Allison remarked. If everyone works hard and makes their projects a priority.

She introduced the other PTA officers for the upcoming year: secretary, treasurer, vice presidents.

Allison singled out Gwen for her efforts over the summer on the new school sign, which now hung near the street for every passerby to see. Gwen had made the sign herself, chiseling the words
Morrissey East Elementary—A Place to Learn and Grow
into a desk-sized hardwood plaque that had been planed and joined by another parent volunteer. She painted the letters using three different colors and recruited a local contractor to hang the sign on a
post set in a solid concrete footing. On top of this, Gwen raised the funds to pay for it.

This was Gwen’s second year on the PTA, and her first as a vice president. She missed Nora’s first-grade year because she’d been president of the Parents’ Club at Nate’s kindergarten and that had been obligation enough. She preferred the undercommit/overdeliver model of promises to its frenzied and disappointing opposite. To her credit, she did overdeliver on her selected commitments. Last year, as school banking volunteer, she’d increased the number of student bankers more than 50 percent, by instituting a parent matching program in which parents signed a contract to match each dollar that kids banked of their own money. As a library aide, she developed recommended reading lists by compiling students’ favorite books and soliciting student reviews, which she published in a binder kept in the library.

In her one year on the PTA, she had gained a reputation as a reliable parent with creative ideas, which is why Allison had approached her about becoming an officer candidate, and Gwen had accepted.

When Allison closed her remarks, applause just short of a standing ovation filled the room. What an enthusiastic bunch, Gwen thought—or at least a bunch that rallied around Allison Witherspoon’s rhetoric. She must have been a consensus builder at the bank, the kind of leader who inspired others to join the cause of any project she embraced.

“You’d think she just announced world peace,” Marlene leaned over and said to Gwen.

Gwen had sat in front because Allison had asked the officers to sit in the first few rows. Now Gwen turned around and scanned the room of faces. Many she knew. Almost all were women. A couple of men, one a repeat from last year, another one new. Some people in the back she couldn’t see.

After Allison stepped away, the meeting broke into a refreshment reception. In front of the cookies and brownies and beverages were sign-up sheets for this year’s programs.

Gwen was still in her chair when Sandy Makowski found her and took the seat that Marlene had just vacated.

“Jimmy got Mrs. Mardeki, I can’t believe it,” Sandy said. “I … What happened to your eye?”

“I was in a car accident,” Gwen said.

“That looks like it hurts.”

“No, it’s fine now,” Gwen said. The swelling had reduced and the bruising faded to a dull green that showed up only in certain light, but the stitch line stood out like railroad tracks where her eyebrow had been shaved. The stitches would come out tomorrow.

“But Mrs. Mardeki,” Sandy continued. “I specifically requested a calm and structured environment for Jimmy and who does he get but Mrs. Hustle & Bustle. I was really hoping for Mrs. Quinn. Nora got Mrs. Quinn, didn’t she? I’m really not happy about this at all and …”

Gwen interrupted her. “Marlene’s son, Josh, had Mrs. Mardeki a few years ago and she said it was a great experience.”

“Jimmy’s not like Josh—he’s very introspective and quiet.”

“You should talk to Marlene,” Gwen said. “She knows Mrs. Mardeki well.”

Gwen could blame herself for this onslaught, and similar ones from other Morrissey moms. As a library aide, she got to know most of the teachers when they brought their classes in for library period. During the time the kids browsed the shelves, Gwen chatted with the teachers, getting to know their personalities and asking about their teaching styles and what was going on in their classrooms. She had no intention of gathering intelligence, yet other moms interrogated Gwen for everything she discovered, as if she were harboring classified information.

Sandy was still hounding her. “Do you think there’s anything I can do about it? Should I ask for a change?”

For all Gwen knew, Mrs. Mardeki might be the best third-grade teacher in the world. What a mistake to have nicknamed her Mrs. Hustle & Bustle, all because she ordered her class into straight lines coming and going from the library and kept a close watch on time. Gwen should have kept that name to herself.

“Sandy, I think Mrs. Mardeki is a great teacher,” Gwen said. “That hustle and bustle business is way off target. I don’t know how it got started.”

She had to tolerate Sandy Makowski because her husband, Richard, was the editor of the
Morrissey Bee
. Gwen had visited him at his office and explained in minimal detail about her accident and arrest and asked if he could keep her name off the police blotter. Richard, long and stooped with black-framed glasses, told Gwen he wasn’t in the habit of suppressing news.

“I wouldn’t want you to do that,” Gwen said. “But it’s not really news at all. Mostly a misunderstanding.”

“You said you were arrested for possession of marijuana?”

Gwen nodded. That was one of the charges. “Sandy and I are on the PTA together. I’ve been a subscriber to the
Bee
ever since we moved to Morrissey.”

Richard thought for a moment. He took his glasses off and bit the end of the frame. “As long as it doesn’t go to trial, or become part of a larger story. If that happens, I would have to cover it. We’ve paid close attention to the drug issue this past year.”

“I’m glad you have,” Gwen said. “I think it’s important.”

Gwen excused herself and went over to check out the sign-up sheet for the program she was chairing this year, Helping Hands.
The sheet was fronted by the plate of brownies she had baked and a folded paper card with her name on it. Why did they have to identify the source of baked goods? The brownies had hardly been touched. The edges were ragged and the tops sunken and cracked. She’d baked them in a hurry with the help of Nate and might have forgotten or mismeasured an ingredient because she’d spent most of the time keeping Nate from spilling the bowl.

There were no signatures yet on the Helping Hands sheet—maybe that’s why her brownies had been ignored. With Helping Hands, you could end up doing very little or doing a lot, depending on the fate of families in the school district. In the event someone got sick or hurt or divorced, or if someone died or a family was struck by any other plight, Helping Hands provided services for the family such as running errands, driving kids, and cooking meals.

Gwen had a disconcerting thought: What if her misdemeanor with the bag of pot had been something much worse and she faced prison time? If the guilt she felt was guilt by law? Would Helping Hands come to the aid of her family? Stricken by cancer, yes, we’ll help you. Sent to prison: not sure.

As this thought crossed her mind, someone came up from behind and a hairy-knuckled hand reached in for a brownie.

“Are you sure you want one of those?” Gwen said, speaking as she turned.

“Don’t tell me you baked
those
kind of brownies?”

Gwen’s face drained. She stood eye to eye with the square-faced Detective William Keller of the Morrissey Police Department. Did he have some telekinetic power that sensed her thoughts of prison? What an eerie coincidence.

If she’d been bold and clever she would have said she’d left those other brownies at home, that she was a responsible parent and vice president of the PTA and would never make a mix-up
like that. Instead, she moved her mouth without forming any intelligible words.

“I’m sorry, that was a bad joke,” Detective Keller said. He took a bite of the brownie and a crumb clung to his mustache. “They taste much better than they look,” he added. “Your eye looks a lot better too.”

Gwen recovered her composure. “Are you joining the PTA?”

“My son, Andy, started first grade this year. I thought I should get involved. My wife can’t because she’s an ICU nurse and her shift hours change a lot.”

Mustering her courage, Gwen said, “Then I hope you’re signing up for Helping Hands.”

“I’m going to be starting a new program,” he said. “Well, not new—we’re moving DARE down to the elementary grades. Send a few of the handsome young uniforms in for a poster talk about drugs and alcohol. Seems like it’s already too late for some of the kids by the time they reach middle school.”

“DARE?”

“Drug Abuse Resistance Education,” Keller said.

“Yes, I know. That’s a good idea,” Gwen said, stomach tightening like a wrung rag.

“You wouldn’t think so in a nice suburban community like this, but there are a lot of drugs.”

“Really?”

“Maybe we should establish a program for the parents, too. A kind of refresher course.”

Gwen considered excusing herself. She willed someone to interrupt them, but others in the room seemed far away and small, their conversations distant chatter carried on the wind.

“In fact, that reminds me—maybe we can step out in the hallway for a moment, Mrs. Raine. I’d like to ask you about something in private.”

“What? Of course.” The hallway. The execution chamber.

Detective Keller motioned for her to go first. Gwen took a last look around for someone to save her, then composed a nonchalant face and walked from the classroom into the hallway.

The noise of the classroom faded. Cork bulletin boards lined both walls, soon to be filled with student artwork and photos and school mantras. One of the boards held a collage of photographs from last year’s special events—kids upon kids playing music, making art, listening to authors, eating pizza. There was a photo near one edge, partially buried by others, of Nora and two classmates holding a Morrissey East Pride poster.

“You have one or two children here?” the detective asked.

“My daughter, Nora, is in third grade and my son, Nate, is starting first grade this year.”

“Whose class?”

“Mrs. Viander.”

“I hear she’s very good. Andy is in Miss Amico’s class.”

Gwen bit her lip, shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Waited.

“That remark about the brownies really was uncalled for,” Detective Keller said. “I apologize for that. My wife is always warning me about my sense of humor, or lack of.”

“And the refresher course for parents?”

“That’s actually under consideration, or maybe a seminar for parents and their children to attend together,” Keller said.

Gwen said nothing.

Keller went on. “It’s pretty clear standing here talking to you that circumstances put you in the wrong place at the wrong time. What I’m saying, Mrs. Raine, is that we don’t think you’re a drug dealer we need to take off the streets. We don’t think you’re a danger to the community.”

“No, I’m not.” She began to relax.

“Not that anyone is condoning operating a motor vehicle while under the influence.”

“That was a mistake,” Gwen conceded. More than a mistake. There were a handful of fateful decisions in her life Gwen wished she could take back, and this was one of them.

“And I do understand that adults make choices within the privacy of their lives. I don’t have to agree with those choices, but who would benefit from this situation getting messy? Not you or your family, certainly, or the school. It would be better for everyone if this situation just went away.”

The detective smiled. He motioned with his hand as if to touch Gwen’s arm, then pulled back.

“Then why did my court date get pushed out again?”

It had been moved twice, with her appearance scheduled now for next week.