The Gifted School

by Bruce Holsinger

  The two had an unspoken pact and always arrived fifteen minutes before the others. As Rose neared the table Azra looked up through the loose strands of her hair and leaned in for a hug. A climber’s strength in her taut frame, a lilac scent wafting up from the collar of her sweater, a cozy oversize knit. Azra ran a high-end consignment store off the Emerald Mall once owned by her mother and always showed up wearing enviable finds. She was a Crystal native, one of the few Rose had encountered in this valley of new arrivals.

  “I can’t stay long,” Rose complained as she sat. “Date night tonight.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “I mean, once a week? Gareth wants to follow the counselor’s script to the letter. For me it’s just—”

  “Pressure?”

  Rose picked up a fork, fingered the tines. “I understand why it’s important, to show Emma Q we’re making an effort. But lately the one-on-one is excruciating.”

  “Though it’s only been, what, four months since you started therapy? Give it time.”

  “At least he’s trying,” Rose allowed, thinking: But am I? She wondered sometimes, because Gareth had done nothing wrong, really, aside from doing nothing at all.

  “I had the same issues with Beck, believe me,” Azra said. Rose watched her friend’s pretty lips work an olive. Azra had split with Beck after discovering his hook-ups with Sonja, their beloved Austrian au pair. Despite the tempestuous aftermath, the former couple had become oddly close since the divorce, their postmarital intimacy a continuing mystery to most of their friends. Rose almost envied the companionable rapport the two had established in the wake of their split, longed for that easy intimacy with Gareth, though she’d hardly trade her husband’s plodding consistency for Beck’s erratic bluster. Google total schlub jacked up on Viagra and Bernie rage, Azra liked to say, and you’ll see my ex-husband’s head shot.

  “Look, Rose,” she said, spitting out the olive pit. “Don’t be hard on yourself for trying to save your marriage.”

  Another thing Azra liked to say.

  * * *

  —

  Samantha breezed in promptly at five, chin up, scanning the place for her minions; she flitted her eyes between the two women’s faces and down to their half-finished drinks, an eyebrow raised. She circled to give them each a brush of her lips, glossed in a soft pink, then pulled an empty stool from an adjoining table and squeezed it between theirs, forcing them to shift aside.

  “What did I miss?”

  They filled her in. Samantha rolled her eyes upward to the exposed ceiling beams. “I hope the Emmas worked on their History Day project,” she said to Rose. “Kev dropped the ball on Wednesday.”

  “We’ll see,” Rose said. One of Samantha’s tricks was to swerve any mention of Rose’s marital despair into lighthearted criticism of their husbands’ mutual shortcomings. Her own spouse, Kev, came in for occasional barbs, though always couched in terms of his hopelessness in the domestic sphere, which was Sam’s domain anyway as the only stay-at-home mom in their group.

  “What’s the subject?” Azra asked.

  Rose said, “Horses. What else?”

  “You’re so lucky you have boys.” Samantha glanced at Azra with a friendly smirk.

  Azra stared back, inscrutable. “Blessed by a thousand gods,” she said.

  * * *

  —

  Samantha was going on about shopping for a new car when Rose heard a distinctive cough that caused them all to swivel their heads and see Lauren, looking forlornly at two empty stools spaced wide, her friends clustered at the other half of the table. Quickly Azra jumped down to give her a hug and wish her a happy birthday. Samantha slid the extra stool to the next table as Rose shifted left, making them symmetrical.

  Lauren: easy to please, but you had to know how. She was a social worker for Youth and Family Services, possessed of a fierce social conscience that showed itself in ways both inspiring and, at times, prickly and harsh—chiding Azra for driving a minivan, Samantha for wastefully drinking through plastic straws so she wouldn’t smear her lipstick. For her birthday Lauren never wanted a fuss made, nor a large gathering with the families. They’d tried this once, a surprise party two years after Julian died. Total disaster; Lauren had been miserable the whole evening. Since then they’d kept things small. Just the four of them, for cocktails.

  After drink orders and a birthday toast, Samantha brought up Thanksgiving. They’d all been invited to the Zellar house, and Sam wanted to nail down contributions.

  “We’ll have over thirty this year. Kill me now,” Sam said, with an ostentatious sigh. A Thanksgiving busy-brag, quantity of guests as a measure of her family’s worth. They indulged their queen bee with talk of cranberries and yams until Lauren’s phone lit up.

  “It’s Xander,” she said, as if the president were texting in. Rose watched her turn aside on her stool and tap out a message to her son; like a pecking crow, sharp nose to the screen, head reared back to read his replies. Lauren had an interesting, wedge-shaped face that Rose had always thought austerely beautiful, and like most Crystallites she was fit, though she favored outfits that accentuated her straight-hipped frame. Most often khakis, worn with tucked-in button-down shirts and a cell phone pouch strapped to her belt.

  When Lauren looked up, her frown lines softened. “He still doesn’t like being left alone.”

  “That’s sweet,” Azra said.

  “Last week he—”

  “Oh god, Emma Z loves an empty house,” Samantha said loudly, flagging the waitress. “She says it’s the only time she can do her reading without her parents getting in the way.”

  Lauren’s mouth tightened. Rose, sensing the tension, spread her arms over the backs of the adjacent chairs and looked across at Azra.

  “So, this Glen guy,” she said. Azra’s potential new beau, chair of anesthesiology at the Medical Center. Rose knew him slightly, though it was Samantha who’d played yenta last month. Their third date had been Wednesday night. “We want the full debrief.”

  “So did Glen,” Azra replied. “Didn’t happen.”

  A familiar joke but they laughed, relieved, because Azra centered them in a way the others never could, weaving accounts of her world they all thrived on, largely because it wasn’t theirs. Azra had dated half the single men in the Four Counties, it sometimes seemed, her joint custody of the twins leaving her more than enough child-free time for all the films, concerts, art exhibits, and restaurant openings on the Front Range. The stories she chose to tell, though, usually concerned her mishaps, her uncomfortable fix-ups; they were sculpted to make the others laugh—never to wonder what so much freedom might feel like.

  Rose wondered anyway. All the time.

  Lauren, on the other hand, had neither suffered nor enjoyed a date since her husband’s death eight years ago. Her hardened abstinence was almost a moral stance, all her attention on her brainy son. When Azra related her salty stories, Lauren would listen with her head cocked to the side and eyes blinking in wonder, as if enthralled by an acrobat or a virtuoso cellist: dazzled by a talent she would never possess, nor quite understand.

  * * *

  —

  Samantha reached into her fancy handbag and pulled out Lauren’s birthday card. For gifts they always went in for something together, this year a day package from the Aspen Room, a spa three blocks down the Emerald Mall. Salt rub, massage, facial, the whole package probably costing twice their combined contributions. Samantha would have made up the difference.

  Once Lauren had had a chance to gush over the present, Azra leaned forward and asked, “So have you made a decision yet, for next year?”

  Lauren’s face brightened. Another gift: the chance to talk about Xander, her favorite subject.

  “Still waffling. I wish Odyssey went through eighth grade, because it’s been great for him. But Xander really wants to be with the twins at St. Bridget
’s.”

  “They’d be thrilled,” Azra said generously, though Rose suspected that Aidan and Charlie Unsworth-Chaudhury would be ambivalent at best about the prospect of Xander Frye attending their school next fall. Xander currently went to Odyssey, a private elementary for high-IQ kids that ran only through sixth grade. Lauren had been deliberating for months—frequently, loudly—over whether to keep him there one last year, put him in the Crystal publics where Rose and Samantha’s Emmas went, or enroll him at St. Bridget’s, a fancy parochial in Kendall County that Azra and Beck’s twins attended. (Not my idea, Azra would frequently protest, hands in the air, always quick to identify herself as a proud product of the Crystal public schools—but hey, it’s Beck’s money.)

  “The most important thing is that he continue to be challenged,” Lauren went on, and they all listened raptly, for her birthday. “It can be hard for him when he feels condescended to. And he has so many social handicaps.”

  “Not many academic ones, though,” Samantha observed.

  “Well, no. But if he’s going to switch the next year anyway, I’d rather bite the bullet now. I’m starting to resent the drive, the price tag. But I have to say, what you don’t find at Odyssey is the slower learners holding kids like Xander back.”

  Rose wedged her tongue between her teeth.

  “So a lot to think about,” said Azra, nonjudgmental as always. “But I’m sure you’ll do what’s best for him.” She turned to Samantha. “What about Emma Z?”

  “We looked at Odyssey for next year, and it isn’t a good fit. Z’s just so social. We’ve thought about St. Bridget’s too. Same problem. Plus with Kev on City Council it wouldn’t look good, having our daughter in a private.”

  “So she’ll go to Red Rocks,” Rose said, and it wasn’t a question: the Emmas had been inseparable since their earliest months. Samantha had said nothing to her about taking her daughter out of the Crystal publics.

  “Most likely.”

  The snag of doubt in Sam’s words hooked Rose by the ear and spun her head around.

  “Kev’s been looking into other options.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, this and that.” Waving a hand. “There’s this artsy charter school outside Denver. A few closer places. We’ll see.”

  Rose was about to ask more when the server approached.

  Closer places? Denver? She never found a good time to return to the subject before they finished their drinks. When the check arrived, Samantha whipped out a Visa and shoved the card and the bill back at the server. Rose started to object.

  “You got it last time,” Sam said breezily.

  Not true, almost never true, but that was Samantha. Rose watched as her friend tipped and signed and studiously avoided her gaze. There was something brittle in Samantha Zellar lately, a pointed aversion to certain matters. When she had insider knowledge, Sam was usually an impulsive spiller, unable to resist sharing what she possessed that others didn’t—and right then she knew something, Rose suspected. But she was waffling, playing it close.

  Outside, the air had a burning, gassy smell. Two jugglers twirled on the pedestrian mall, their batons wrapped at the ends with flaming rags. An assistant stood by, armed with a can of lighter fluid and an extinguisher. A portable fire pit sparked and flamed between the performers and shrouded their tricks in smoke as the four old friends paused to watch them for a while, to gather the warmth.

  TWO

  ROSE

  She edged to the curb along Opal Lane, the dusk-darkened yard warmed by the glow from their craftsman bungalow. Twelve years ago the house had felt both charming and enormous, with three bedrooms, one and a half baths, a half-finished basement. It was a stretch to afford it on one salary, a harsh sentence for a Stanford-trained neurologist saddled with student loans. But if you wanted to live in town and buy west of Thirty-fifth Street—anywhere close to the mountains—you were looking at Palo Alto prices, the agents always said.

  Rose set her bag down by the door and shrugged off her jacket, smelling garlic and spice, a doughy waft of home-cranked pasta. Whatever his faults (and they were many), Gareth cooked like a reality show chef, favoring the starchy, carb-laden end of the ingredient spectrum over the brain-boosting vegetables and lean proteins Rose would have preferred for herself and their daughter. But when she was as hungry as she was now, it seemed his food must be the only reason she stayed with him. Sure as hell wasn’t the sex.

  “Hey, hon,” Gareth called cheerily from the kitchen. “I opened a nice Shiraz.”

  Rose tilted back her head and stood there in the dark, staring up. A nice Shiraz, she mouthed, and pressed the gapped teeth of her house key into the meaty flesh below her thumb. Hearing her daughter’s barky giggle, she walked down the narrow hall, through the living room, and into the kitchen, where her husband was stationed in front of the stove. A torn gray T-shirt spotted with tomato sauce arced over his softening midsection. Three days of stubble for date night.

  The Emmas sat together in front of a laptop, swinging their legs beneath the counter. Emma Q hunted and pecked at the keys.

  “Hey, sweetie. Hey, Z.” Rose planted a kiss on the crown of her daughter’s head. Girl sweat, flowery shampoo. Emma Zellar, Kev and Samantha’s girl, got a gentle pat on the back. “History Day?”

  Q nodded, intent on her work.

  “We made the banner.” Z pointed at the laptop.

  “To go across the top,” Q explained. “Now we’re doing captions.” Rose squinted at the screen.

  THE HORSE IN THE AMERICAN WEST

  BY EMMA ZELLAR AND EMMA HOLLAND-QUINN

  The two lines were rendered in a rustic font, like a Dodge City saloon sign. The Emmas had been planning the joint project for weeks, the subject perfect for two horse-obsessed fifth-grade girls. Q was swept up in the romance of it, compiling lists of horse-themed novels she’d read, famous Western myths of heroic equestrians. Last weekend, at Rose’s urging, Gareth had taken her to Denver for supplies, and they’d come home with old postcards featuring rodeo riders bucking on broncos, Native chieftains mounted on warhorses. In a burst of inspiration Rose had even helped them figure out a way to get clips from vintage Westerns looping on an old iPod, which she’d rigged to a poster board with plastic zip ties.

  The result was impressive, though from what Rose could see, Q had done most of the grunt work so far while Z ordered her around, taking over whenever her patience with Q’s deliberate pace ebbed—as now, when Z nudged her friend aside and commandeered the keyboard, every inch her mother’s daughter. She was a speedy touch-typist, her father’s hooded eyes intent on the screen as she banged away, laptop glowing on a heart-shaped face nearly identical to Samantha’s, with that same creamy skin and perfect nose.

  Emma Q had a more rounded look, like Gareth. Rose kept waiting for their daughter to shed the last of her baby fat, though she had accepted that Q’s burly build might become a permanent feature. Her skin was almost translucent, veiny and blue in a certain quality of light. Rose had suffered that skin when she was young. Teachers had regarded her as sickly, a child to be treated with softness and care. She had learned early to take advantage of their regard though still worried sometimes that her daughter had internalized this projected frailty, this deference foisted on her by well-meaning elders.

  The Emmas started discussing the captions, every detail a delicate negotiation.

  Rose shook her head.

  “What?” Gareth said.

  “Just those two.” She nodded at the girls.

  “I know.” He sipped his wine. “They’ve been working hard.”

  “So have you.” Rose wanted to claw the words back, though she knew their therapist would endorse them.

  There’s a scaffold of kindness holding up every marriage. You two need to rebuild yours.

  Gareth blinked twice, visibly surprised by Rose’s gentle manner. �
�Okay, girls, pasta’s ready,” he said. “Tessa should be here any minute.”

  He slid two plates across the counter, laden with spaghetti and a Bolognese sauce, fragrant lengths of garlic bread as bookends. Z shut the laptop and pushed it aside, and the Emmas dug in.

  * * *

  —

  The bell rang while Rose was changing in the bedroom. Her husband’s heavy step sounded in the hall, then the front door moaned open.

  “Hi, Gareth.”

  “Hey, Tessa.”

  Rose listened to their small talk, aware of the little shiver of disquiet running down her arms as Lauren’s daughter entered their home for the first time in months. She swiped on a raspberry lip stain and walked out to the kitchen. The Emmas had moved their work to the table and now knelt on chairs, bent over a trifold, cutting and gluing. Tessa sat at the counter with her bared ankles crossed, her sketchbook already open. She flashed Rose a tentative smile.

  “When did you decide to go back to black?” Rose walked over and smoothed a palm over Tessa’s hair, straw-like to the touch.

  “Just yesterday.” Tessa turned her chin, modeling. “You like?”

  “I do, I really do.” A lot better than hot pink, Rose thought, catching a chemical scent.

  Rose sat with her and chatted, and felt something like a shock to realize what a dazzler Lauren’s daughter had become over those first months of her junior year. The newly black hair, cut to bob at the nape of her neck, framed a pale face with an angular chin and smooth cheeks. Tessa was blinking a lot, maybe a contact was loose or dry, though the effect was oddly magical: a pair of butterflies quivering in tandem. Her eyes were a sea blue, perfectly matched by the polka dots covering the silk scarf tied loosely around her neck. Azra had commented just last week on Tessa’s unusual flair, how well she wedded her looks with an eclectic style peculiarly her own.