The Gifted School

by Bruce Holsinger

  “Oh, Z,” she said, wanting to pull the girl in, to comfort her somehow.

  But then her own daughter stepped up, with an angry, ashamed look on her round face. “Yeah, Mommy. Please please please stop talking.”

  “But I—I can’t—”

  Then:

  “That’s quite enough.”

  A woman’s voice, loud and authoritative, sounded from the doorway. Bitsy Leighton marched into the classroom. Rose followed the woman’s administrative gaze as it took in the scatter of glass shards across the table, the shredded hunks of cardboard on the floor. For the first time Rose noticed the disturbing number of phones held up and pointed in her direction.

  Bitsy clapped her hands. “I’d like everyone to clear the room, please,” she said. “Now.”

  After a brief reluctant pause the rubbernecking crowd shuffled forward around the tables and chairs, making for the door. The parents wouldn’t meet Rose’s eyes, but their children gaped at her, still thrilled by the fading spectacle.

  Lauren, pushing Tessa and Xander out the door, glanced back at her with teary eyes. Azra was right behind them, lips pursed and brow furrowed in a sympathy that Rose found deflating rather than comforting.

  Then she felt clammy hands on the bared skin of her upper forearms. She turned her head and saw Gareth’s watery eyes and the grotesque shape of his face, smelled the stale, hideous breath of him.

  “Let’s go now, Rose,” he said calmly, as if she were a mental patient, or a child. “Let’s get our daughter out of here.”

  Our daughter.

  Over his shoulder Rose saw Samantha and Emma Z slinking an arced path around the tables to avoid further contact. Samantha’s face was slick with tears, and there was an unfamiliar stoop to her frame. She was texting madly, probably trying to reach Kev.

  “We can talk about all this when we get you home,” Gareth said.

  Home. A word suddenly and irrevocably ruined.

  Rose bent her neck sideways so her lips were nearly touching his ungroomed ear.

  “Get your hands off me,” she whispered to her husband, “you miserable worm.”

  SEVENTY-TWO

  BECK

  When Beck pulled up to the house, he told the twins to run in ahead of him. “But don’t get too comfortable,” he warned them. They looked at him strangely as they climbed out of the Audi, maybe with a little fear. Good. Once they were inside he pulled out his phone and saw a text from Sonja.

  In Denver w Roy. Beck, I need to think.

  He started to thumb out a panicked reply but stopped himself. He held in a breath.

  His wife needed to think. Of course she did. Who wouldn’t, in her situation, living with fucking Beck Unsworth every day? So let her think.

  Next, email.

  He scanned through urgent messages from various creditors. His unpaid accountant, three credit card companies, the head of school at St. Bridget’s warning of the immediate expulsion of his sons, Leila threatening a lawsuit over missing paychecks.

  Debt, hills and hills of it. But at the moment he didn’t give a rat’s ass.

  * * *

  —

  His phone and keys landed on the table by the door, raising a puff of dust. The table was littered with junk mail old and new, a dirty mug and a crusted plate latticed by two pairs of soccer socks like the shell of a mince pie.

  He stomped up to his room and ripped off his clothes and threw on a T-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts, then returned to the kitchen, passing on his way through a gauntlet of disorder. His hands twitched for a rag, his nostrils flared for the astringent tang of bleach.

  Charlie was sprawled on the couch playing a game on his phone. Beck clapped his hands three times. “That’s enough lying around, kiddo. Right now we’re going to work.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Is that a serious question?”

  “Um, yes?”

  “Where’s your brother?”

  “In the den.”

  “Call him in.”

  When Aidan walked into the living room, Beck looked his sons over, like a drill sergeant inspecting a platoon. “You guys need a snack before we get started? Granola bar maybe?”

  The boys just stared at him.

  Aidan said, “I’ll have a fresh mouse. There’s two of them in the mudroom.”

  * * *

  —

  For the next three hours, while his wife and youngest son were gone, they cleaned. Beck tackled the dishes first. Then pots and pans, countertops, tiles, rugs, wood floors, toilets, furniture, the fridge. He did three loads of laundry, he wiped baseboards, he dusted bookshelves and dressers, he threw away old food and recycled mounds of containers. He made the boys take turns with the vacuum, covering every room of the house.

  There was an organic chicken in the freezer. He YouTubed a recipe to roast it with some potatoes that looked okay once they were peeled. After thawing the chicken in hot water, then the microwave for a few minutes, he got it all in the oven after the kitchen was done.

  Meanwhile the twins cleaned their rooms and their shared bathroom, top to bottom. There was a fair bit of grumbling, but they got into it. Tub, toilet, under the sink, everything. They straightened the den and put away all their crap piled on the ping-pong table. By the time Beck was mopping up the mudroom floor they were outside cleaning the car with music on and having an actual blast.

  With the chicken cooling on the stovetop, he went into the clean master bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. Let’s do this. He grabbed scissors from the medicine cabinet and hacked off most of his beard and shaved the rest, down to his smooth skin. He had butt-ugly tan lines, but other than that he looked pretty decent. Younger, the shape of the old Beck somewhere in there. After a quick but thorough shower he got dressed in newly clean clothes and started scrubbing again, this time under the kitchen sink, where he discovered that the garbage disposal had been unplugged from the safety outlet this whole time—not broken after all. He turned it on and ran water while it hummed itself clean. He even organized the goddamn silverware drawer and was just closing it when Sonja got home.

  “What is going on, Beck?”

  He turned from the counter to see his wife at the front door, their son bouncing on her hip.

  “I’m home,” he said stupidly. “I’m home.”

  She scanned his smooth face, then he followed her gaze around the kitchen and dining room. Garbage emptied, counters wiped, dishwasher humming and sloshing in mid-cycle, ceramic tiles gleaming underfoot. On the cleared-off front table the mail sat stacked and sorted, and on the pegboard by the garage door the boys’ school backpacks hung neatly side by side.

  Who knew where it had come from, this deep and vital urge to clean, to scrub, to purge, to feather the nest. All Beck knew was that this whirling dervish of three hours and change had nourished him like nothing had in years.

  He went up to Sonja and pulled her in with Roy. “You do too much.” He kissed her forehead, smoothed his hand over Roy’s bald pate.

  She looked at him suspiciously. “You are on drugs.”

  “I’m not on drugs.”

  “Drunk, then.”

  “No.” He sniffed. “Does he need a change?”

  Sonja, staring, handed him their son. Beck went back to the nursery, took care of Roy’s diaper, and let him crawl around behind the safety gate while he emptied the diaper pail, his first time doing this task since the kid was maybe three weeks old. When he came back in from the garage, Sonja was collapsed on the sofa, feet on a freshly defilthed hassock, still eyeing him suspiciously as he washed his hands. He checked on Roy, messing with little plastic things in the playroom, then went back to the kitchen and poured a glass of chardonnay for his wife, a glass of water for himself.

  * * *

  —

  The money, the cards, he sh
owed her all of it: bank statements, fund statements, credit statements, threatening letters from creditors. With everything spread out on the kitchen table Sonja whipped out her phone and coldly totaled it all up on the calculator app. Beck felt like a whipped puppy when she showed him the final figure; but within half an hour she’d come up with a plan. Consolidate the debt onto two cards, burn the others, put both kids in the publics next year, sell the Breckenridge condo, stop leasing a new luxury SUV and buy a used station wagon, get flip phones, refinance the mortgage again, use the overage to pay off what he’d loaned himself from the company—and pay his employees right away, beginning with Leila. Beck texted her right there from the table, truthfully this time, to let her know the deposit was already in her account. He’d have to work out a separate plan to keep the firm afloat, but given the way Sonja had with numbers, he thought maybe she could help out there too.

  They’d also have to make some lifestyle changes at home. No more takeout every other night, no more twice-daily lattes, a lot more mac and cheese. After a calm chicken dinner Beck filled the boys in on the situation, the belt-tightening to come. They were sitting on the sofa in the living room, Sonja starting dishes in the kitchen. She was only allowed to scrape and rinse, though, Beck had warned her. The rest of the mess belonged to him.

  “You guys like mac and cheese, right?” he said.

  Sliding off the sofa, Charlie said, “Long as you put some hot dogs in.” He pushed off and ran up to his room. Beck watched him go, wistful, reluctant to initiate the talk they needed to have.

  That’s when his second son surprised him. Aidan stayed behind, sitting still. The look on his face reminded Beck of that morning in Colorado Springs all those months ago. The first day Charlie didn’t start.

  “What’s up, Aid?” he said. “Is it about Xander, breaking his glasses today? Because we need to talk about that.”

  Without warning Aidan started to cry. Not a little hiccupy kind of cry but a full-bore snotfest, full-chested and prolonged. Beck pulled him to his side. They waited it out together, the boy’s skinny body warming him.

  “Whenever you’re ready, okay?”

  Aidan nodded. Beck waited some more.

  “Charlie,” Aidan finally said, voice hitching on his brother’s name, “Charlie didn’t try to wipe me out at Breckenridge. I made that up.”

  Beck stared at his son. “Why would you do that, Aidan?”

  “I was mad at him, for making us go again.”

  “So what, you wiped out on purpose?”

  He shook his head. “I thought I could stay up, make it look like he tried to hurt me.”

  “God, Aidan.” Beck smoothed a hand along his back, and as his boy calmed down Beck asked him other questions and soon learned of additional transgressions for which Aidan had been letting his brother take the blame—including the broken drywall, which Aidan, not Charlie, had smashed in with a bat. Even telling Azra about Tessa and Beck, spinning his brother’s quick glimpse of a topless babysitter into something more sinister.

  “But why has Charlie been admitting to stuff he didn’t do?” Beck pressed him.

  Aidan shrugged. “He says if you believe he’d ever try to hurt me when we’re skiing, then you might as well blame him for everything.”

  Beck closed his eyes. Charlie’s bleak assessment of his father was a shiv between the ribs, as was Aidan’s considerable skill in the lying department. “And that was okay with you?” Beck asked. “To let him take the hits for all that stuff?”

  “He’s my brother,” Aidan said, and the sweet repentance started shading into his new tweeny cool. Beck sat back and considered what he’d heard over the last few minutes, all he hadn’t bothered to learn about his sons while swimming in his own narcissistic pond.

  God he loved these boys. But what kinds of things had he let slip by over the last year or two? What else had he missed, and what might it be too late to fix?

  But the twins weren’t even twelve yet. There was still time. There had to be.

  Aidan pulled away. “So what are my consequences, Dad?”

  Beck didn’t answer for a while, letting the question linger. What was heartbreaking was that Aidan clearly wanted some consequences, wanted to be reined in. The kid needed some control in his life, beginning with his own recent behavior.

  “I’m going to work that out with your mom and Sonja,” said Beck, liking how it sounded. Command and control.

  “I don’t want to go to that gifted school, Dad,” Aidan blurted out.

  Beck hesitated. “You’re sure about that?”

  “I hate it.”

  “Oh-kay,” Beck said slowly. “I’ll need to discuss things with your mom, but I can understand that, and obviously we won’t force you to go if you get in. And anyway you’ll be busy with all those ROMO practices, am I right?”

  Aidan shook his head. “I don’t want to do that either.”

  Beck stared at him. “You’re kidding.”

  “I hate all that riding in the car, plus none of my friends are there. Maybe in high school, but for now I want to stay at CSOC, with Charlie. And isn’t it a lot cheaper?”

  “I mean, sure,” Beck said. In the sense that any youth sport costing almost three grand for a seven-month season could be considered a lot cheaper. “But you’ve had your heart set on this for so long. Think about the competition, the travel, those wicked uniforms. Also the college opps—”

  Sonja’s face appeared, Germanic and stern. His wife was leaning in from the kitchen and wagging a finger. Aidan didn’t see her, but Beck had a clear and beautiful view.

  “You know what?” he said. “CSOC is awesome. I’m proud of you for staying with your team. That’s loyalty, son.” This last said gruffly, a little like Wade Meltzer might say it.

  “So you’re okay with that?” Aidan asked his dad, incredulous.

  Beck stretched an arm over his son’s skinny shoulders, alive to the impossible yawning privilege of it all. “Honestly what I am right now is just—relieved.”

  SEVENTY-THREE

  ROSE

  Rose braked to a stop on the driveway and turned off the ignition. The porch light was off, but the door stood open, letting a pale wash of interior light spill out to gild the dogwood buds, the effect like tinsel on a curbed Christmas tree. The keys dangled over her knee, and the cooling of the engine made a steady tick-tick that took its time to fade.

  She stayed in the car, finding her breath. There was a flash of movement to her left. Emma Q dashed out of the house and across the yard. Rose heard a car door open and close, but two lilac bushes blocked her view of the street.

  The doorway darkened and Gareth came outside—no, not her husband. It was Azra, her long black hair glowing as the porch light flicked on. She propped one foot up in the doorway and the other on the porch, a muscled arm holding herself against the jamb as she spoke. Gareth stood lit from behind, his face darkened in shadow. They hadn’t noticed Rose yet, nor marked the arrival of her car.

  She looked out the front windshield at the dim white door of the garage, six windows lined up like voids. Her fingers, slick and weak, pulled at the handle, and with her elbow she pushed open the car door. Azra looked over first, then Gareth. Something flat and distant in his pocketed eyes; only warmth in hers.

  Azra walked over and pulled Rose into a hug. “Q can sleep over at my place if you need that, and so can you,” she whispered. “Or I can bring her back when you guys are done. Just let me know.”

  Rose nodded against her hair. She stayed where she was until Azra drove off with Q. Fatigue settled on her shoulders like a shawl, though the feeling of warmth was a false thing. She shivered. The chinooks were blowing up, air crisped with pine, cut grass, a hint of smoke.

  Her eyes watered. She watched Gareth, his face a smear in the night. He turned away and she followed him inside.

  * * *

&nb
sp; —

  Rose found the worn spot along the Formica where she had leaned so many times as they fought through their fading marriage. Atik’s portfolio was still propped sadly against the wall adjoining the counter, and Gareth sat slumped in the chair opposite, looking small.

  “Rose,” he began, “you have to understand.”

  “I think I do understand, actually,” she interrupted him. “I understand everything.” And had rehearsed her opening response to it. “I understand the smug, superior way you’ve always regarded my parenting in relation to yours. I understand how you disapprove of my ‘workaholism,’ my ‘ambition,’ the value I place on hard work and earned success. I understand why you’ve enjoyed scolding me for being so obsessed with Crystal Academy, the way my overinvestment in the whole thing might be—how did you put it?—oh, right, ‘ruining our daughter.’ I understand all of that, Gareth. And yet here we are. You’ve spent years living in this self-righteous bubble of yours, convinced you’re the greatest father and most long-suffering husband in the world, and now . . .”

  She shrugged, let her voice trail off.

  “Are you done?” he said, and she sneered at him.

  What he said next was so out of context, it bewildered her. “I never wanted to move here, you know. You had five offers, we could have gone anywhere, a city where my writing could really thrive.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Just reminding you what it was like for me. You were a rock star in your field, Rose. You turned down jobs at Harvard, Duke, UCLA, Chicago. All to come to Darlton so you could be the big fish in this perfect little pond.”

  “You know that’s not true,” she protested. “This was the most attractive offer, the most beautiful place—”

  “And that was a bad time for me. My novel flopped, I couldn’t get another contract, my agent stopped returning my calls. We were going in opposite directions, and I felt like such a dismal failure.”