Four of a Kind

by Valerie Frankel

  Still feeling upbeat from meeting Renee and Shauna, Carla floated into her office to grab her coat and bag and tell the boys it was time to leave. She opened the door, and found Zeke and Manny in front of her computer, their faces glowing by its light. They were riveted, and Carla instantly assumed they were watching off-limit videos on YouTube.

  “What are you doing?” boomed Carla at her sons.

  “Nothing!” said Manny while fumbling on the keyboard to quit the application.

  “Freeze!” she yelled. “Hands up. Back away from the computer.”

  The boys froze, and Carla then spun the laptop around so she could see what they’d been doing.

  On-screen: the green background and 3-D graphics of World Class Poker, a six-player game in progress. The Black Queen was currently table leader with $100,000-plus in chips. She clicked to check the tournament history, and discovered that her boys had been playing Texas Hold ’Em for an hour, surviving four levels, and winning twenty-two percent of the hands they played.

  Impressive, she thought. “You’re not allowed to play poker! You know I disapprove of gambling!” she bellowed.

  “But you play it all the time!” protested Manny.

  Tina burst into the room. “What’s all the yelling about in here?” she asked.

  “The boys were playing poker,” said Carla.

  “So?” asked Tina. “You play poker every chance you get.”

  “It’s true,” said Zeke. “You’re amazing, Ma. You’ve won fourteen tournaments. Your bankroll is ten million dollars!”

  It was a vast sum, thought Carla smugly. “I’m an adult,” she said. “I can do what I want. You are children, and you shouldn’t be playing poker.”

  “Why?” asked Manny, folding his skinny arms across his chest, looking too much like his father.

  “Yeah,” said Zeke, imitating his older brother in a way that Carla would have thought precious if it didn’t make her mad.

  “No big deal, Mommy,” said Tina. “It’s fun. I’ve played a few hands myself sometimes.”

  “You’re using my computer?” asked Carla of her nurse.

  “Once or twice,” said Tina. “It’s not real gambling with real money. Better that the boys play cards on the computer than smoking crack in the playground.”

  “Shut up, Tina,” said Carla of her ridiculous overstatement. Then again, where Tina lived, smoking crack in the playground was a reality for some kids. Carla objected to the boys playing poker on-screen because they might want to start a game with their friends. And then start to gamble on a soft scale, for candy or whatever. Computer poker was gateway gambling, like smoking a joint was a few steps away from injecting heroin (although Carla always thought that was bogus, not that she’d say so).

  “Okay, I’ll forgive you—including you, Tina—for violating my privacy and using my computer without permission. But from now on, you are forbidden from playing poker. Is that understood?”

  Zeke and Manny nodded, but Carla caught them sneaking a glance at each other. Tina shrugged and said, “Whatever, Mommy.”

  Carla would have to talk to Tina next week about being disrespectful to her in front of her kids. Being disrespectful at all.

  She packed everyone up and ushered them out the door, undecided if she’d tell Claude what she’d caught them doing.

  Carla and Claude sat at their dining room table, a pile of bills and contracts spread out on the black lacquer surface. How menacing those white sheets looked on the dark surface, thought Carla. The most frightful piece of mail was on top of the pile. Two pieces, actually. The contracts for next year’s enrollment at Brownstone. They usually arrived in January, but this year, the agreements were delayed. The board of directors had been engaged in a heated debate about tuition rate increases in a recession.

  The Brownstone endowment was small in comparison to other private schools in New York City. The stock market nosedive cut the endowment in half. Without the investment-generated income, the school was near bankrupt. When she first opened the contracts—which she was to sign and return with a deposit to guarantee a spot for next year—she thought the fifteen percent tuition increase (from $28,000 to $32,000 per student) had to be a mistake. Usually, the increases were three to five percent, just keeping up with inflation. In a recession, when people were making less money and couldn’t possibly manage to pay more, the powers that be at Brownstone decided to triple the increase. In the enclosed letter, the school president explained that they were raising tuition for those who could afford it, as well as increasing their scholarship and financial aid programs for those who were struggling in this economy. When she first read the letter, Carla nearly swallowed her tongue.

  Claude was seeing it for the first time. Aloud, he read the line, “ ‘Some families should consider applying for financial aid.’ ” He lowered the letter. “Some families. What do you think they mean by that?”

  “If only the Brownstone Institute got some of the bailout money.”

  “Who can afford to pay this?” Claude asked. “You know it’s just another way to weed us out. Commitment to diversity. Bullshit.”

  Carla frowned. He hardly ever cursed in the house, especially when the boys were still up. “We should apply for aid,” she said softly. They were just getting by at the moment. Not saving anything. They definitely couldn’t swing another eight thousand in tuition next year, after taxes. Maybe if Carla went into private practice like Dr. Stevens. But that would take huge start-up expenses. It would take years to establish herself before she’d see a profit.

  The clinic at LICH, a public hospital, could afford to pay her only what she was already earning—far less than Dr. Stevens brought in. Cutbacks were always possible. Rumors got louder every day about the city closing hospitals in each borough. LICH was almost always on the Brooklyn short list. Smart people said these dire reports were all about managing expectations. The threat of closing the entire hospital would make the shutting down of certain departments feel like a relief instead of a tragedy. The first department to go? Maternity. Delivering babies and caring for mothers was not profitable for any hospital, public or private. It was a liability, actually. The threat of lawsuits was sky-high. If the economy didn’t recover, it was conceivable that uninsured women would have to give birth in their own beds, without a doctor or an anesthesiologist.

  Carla drew in a deep breath. This was pessimism at its worst. Or perhaps it was simply the new reality.

  Claude said, “We don’t qualify for financial aid. I’ve looked at their program. We make too much money, if you can believe that.”

  “Even this year?” asked Carla.

  This year, Claude would be lucky to bring in a quarter of his usual income. It was an extremely sensitive subject for him. Mentioning it at all was like worrying a bad tooth. Of course, the shortfall wasn’t Claude’s fault. He worked harder and made less money.

  He rubbed his forehead. Carla thought the gesture was to shield his eyes. Claude would not be able to provide this year. The frustration was bitter. And it would make his resentment about Carla’s income worse. Even though it made no sense (if she made money, wasn’t it good for the whole family?), she understood why Claude struggled with being outearned by his wife. He was a proud man, from the generation of black men who’d made a moral commitment to family life, to be the opposite of their fathers. President Obama was the embodiment of what Claude had set out to be. Carla believed that, as much as Claude idolized Barack, he resented him, too, for making it look easy.

  “I know it’s hard,” said Carla, reaching across the table to touch her husband’s arm.

  He put his hand over hers, and held it there. “We can’t afford this school,” said Claude. “I know we agreed to make the boys’ education our number one priority. But let’s be realistic here. Imagine what our lives would be like if we didn’t have these bills to pay? We’d have sixty-four thousand dollars we don’t have now.”

  Carla felt her skin ice over. This was not the answe
r. “Where would they go?”

  “Public school,” he replied quickly. “Like we did. And we managed okay.”

  “I want our sons to do better than okay,” said Carla. “You know what the local elementary school is like. Metal detectors for third-graders?”

  “It’d be just one more year of elementary in a public school for Zeke,” said Claude. “Manny can apply to any middle school in the city. There are charter schools, schools for gifted kids.”

  “But Manny’s not gifted!” said Carla. “He’d never get in. He’d wind up going to some huge school, and then fall off a cliff. He needs the intensity and structure of Brownstone, especially now.”

  He nodded, agreeing. Not a good sign. Carla knew what Claude would say next. Her worst fear was about to be put on the table. “You’re right about that. We could keep Manny at Brownstone,” suggested Claude. “We can swing one tuition.”

  Her turn to nod. He was a hundred percent right. But how on earth could Carla agree to such an experiment? Send one son to private school, and the other to public? She couldn’t help wonder if Claude had had this in mind all along. Maybe for years. He was a loving father to both boys, but Carla knew he favored Manny, the first-born son who looked like him and played football. And maybe she’d admit to being a bit extra protective of Zeke, her baby, built small and sensitive.

  Zeke needed her to stand up for him now. Carla couldn’t deprive him of an equal shot at success in life, and she believed a top-shelf education would give both her boys a tremendous leg up. Unlike most of their classmates at Brownstone—Bess’s brood came immediately to mind—Manny and Zeke needed any advantage they could get.

  “This is wrong,” she said to Claude.

  “Zeke can always go back to Brownstone in a few years,” he said gently. “The economy will recover. We’ll have more money.”

  “We can take out a second mortgage,” she said.

  That did it. The man of the house had reached his limit. “No! We’re not risking the roof over our heads so Zeke can hang around with a bunch of spoiled white kids. He needs to toughen up. Going to a bigger school will be good for him. I’m done talking about it. Someone has to make the hard decisions around here.”

  Claude put his hands on the table, and pressed himself into standing. For a passive-aggressive guy, he could show a steely backbone. Claude went into the kitchen and started slamming around in there. He’d surely break something, and then promise to fix it for months before doing anything. If ever.

  Desperate times called for desperate measures, so Carla decided to take matters into her own large, dexterous hands. Or, more precisely, Carla would use her commanding voice, a mezzo of authority. She knew her tone made people pay attention, or simply do what she said. Often she unleashed her tone to intimidate children, ordering them to sit still for their vaccinations. It’d also worked on select adults.

  It occurred to her that she never used “the voice” on her husband. A subconscious decision to keep the peace, or … what? Maybe she liked it that he defied her will. A mental movie of Alicia and Tim appeared in her head, of Alicia playfully instructing Tim to do the dishes and then go to bed. He gamely agreed, warning first that he might go write about her in his secret diary. It was funny, made them all laugh. Tim kissed Alicia on the top of her head, not touching his lips to her skin, and left the women alone. Tim was a man who wasn’t allowed to be a man. No wonder he’d switched off sexually. Claude, all man, was sexually determined. But he did switch off emotionally, especially when he felt the world pressing against him, despite his best efforts to make a good life for his family. Carla loved her husband, for all he did, and all he wished he could do for her and their children.

  “Mrs. Morgan? Come right this way,” said Victoria Addams, the chief financial officer at Brownstone.

  Carla had been waiting to speak with her for ten minutes, seated comfortably on a couch in Vicki’s outer office in the basement level of the school. All of the administration offices were down here, as well as the Parents Association office, the faculty gym, and the band/orchestra/drama rehearsal spaces.

  Carla had called in sick. Tina was immediately suspicious. “We have thirty appointments today,” said Tina. “It’s cold and flu season.”

  “And I’ve got a cold,” replied Carla. “Reschedule the appointments or get a resident to cover for me.”

  “Whatever you say,” said Tina. “Just so you know, I plan on having a cold next Friday.”

  Carla stood up, flung her black cashmere shawl over her shoulder, and followed Vicki into her small windowless office. The décor was early WASP, green carpet with a fleur-de-lis pattern, striped wallpaper, large oak desk, too large for the small quarters. Vicki squeezed behind it, and Carla took a seat in one of the chairs opposite.

  “How can I help you?” asked Vicki.

  Carla smiled at the neat, elderly woman in her gray wool suit and headband. “Preppy” was a word Carla had never spoken aloud. No occasion to. Maybe she’d described Bess as “preppy” to Claude when she’d come home that first poker night. But, in terms of old money 1950s-style, Vicki could be the poster woman. She might’ve come over on the Mayflower herself.

  Using “the voice,” Carla got right to it. “When we first joined the Brownstone community five years ago, we spoke about the school’s commitment to diversity. You had a policy in place to honor that commitment.”

  “I remember our talk,” said Vicki, frowning.

  What Vicki had said to Carla and Claude in that meeting, in delicate and careful terms, was that Brownstone was prepared to give them a large break in tuition as a lure. The board of directors had issued a mandate for diversity. They’d actually set percentage goals for nonwhite students. The school needed more black kids, ideally with professional parents who had ties to the community and were out of the running for the few full scholarship slots given to low-income, academic achievers (like Joe Fandine). Competition to get into Brownstone was fierce—something like one acceptance for every hundred applicants. Her sons were no better than many who’d been rejected. Carla was glad that, for once, being black had opened doors. As for a break in tuition, Claude got his pride up, and told Vicki that they didn’t need help. Five years ago, he had been right.

  That was then.

  “Is Brownstone still honoring that commitment?” asked Carla. She gave Vicki a few beats to offer up some “help.” She didn’t.

  “We are still very much committed to diversity,” said Vicki, delicate and careful. “And we are prepared for a higher number of families seeking aid this year.”

  Carla’s turn to frown, and to be just as delicate and careful. She would not beg. “I have to assume that many Brownstone families fall somewhere between not being able to afford tuition and not qualifying for aid.”

  “We’re aware of that,” said Vicki. “We’ve changed our aid policy to reflect it.”

  “So what’s the number?” asked Carla. Vicki appeared not to understand. “What’s the income threshold to qualify?”

  Vicki seemed taken aback by the bluntness. So much for delicacy. “All circumstances are weighed differently,” she said, “based on income, net worth, number of children, other factors.”

  Carla held up her hand. “Vicki? You know my circumstances.”

  The older woman sighed. Carla felt bad for a second. She didn’t want to bully her. Vicki had probably been besieged by strapped parents all week. Carla said, “I’m sorry, Vicki. I’m being rude. My husband and I have been having serious kitchen-table conversations, if you know what I mean.”

  “Of course I do,” said Vicki. Her eyes told Carla she did understand, and she was sympathetic.

  “I can’t leave any stone unturned,” said Carla, picturing Zeke placing his backpack on a conveyor belt to be x-rayed, and then walking through the metal detector on his first day of fifth grade at public school. The image made her throat itch. He wasn’t prepared for such a major change. It was criminal to ask that of a little kid.

&nb
sp; Vicki said, “Are you all right?”

  Carla blinked, got her grip. “I’m fine. I’m afraid for the choices we might have to make. I need to know if we have options.”

  “Let me check,” said Vicki. She started typing something into the desktop computer. Carla was relieved that Vicki seemed to care. Claude was wrong. Brownstone wasn’t trying to force out anyone. Times were tough. For people, and institutions, even 150-year-old schools in Brooklyn Heights. Vicki was probably sweating her own job.

  The older woman said, “Okay. Again, circumstances are weighed individually, but I can tell you that, for a dual-income family with two students enrolled, partial aid becomes available, on a limited basis, if the gross annual income is one hundred thousand dollars or less.”

  “For two incomes?” asked Carla. It was ridiculously low. Her salary alone was more than that.

  “I know it seems low,” said Vicki. “A lot of our families, as of this year, have no income at all.”

  Brooklyn Heights was a bedroom community, historically and practically, for Wall Street investment bankers. A lot of bankers’ kids attended Brownstone.

  “So the message is, be grateful I still have a job?” snapped Carla. “This is unfair, Vicki. I realize people have been laid off, but they have savings, don’t they? Are they living paycheck to paycheck?”

  “I can’t discuss—”

  “I’m not asking about specific cases,” said Carla.

  “Aid takes net worth into account,” said Vicki. “We ask for a full financial profile, including investments. Some of our new aid candidates have lost everything.”

  Carla had heard rumors—from Robin, of course—about several Brownstone parents, former Lehman Brothers bankers whose entire savings had been in company stock, now worthless. Famously, there were two Brownstone families who’d given their trust and nest eggs to Bernard Madoff. Those families had been destroyed and Carla felt for them. But—they’d lived the high life for years. Carla and Claude had always been frugal and modest. They hadn’t lost everything and Carla was grateful for it, but they wouldn’t get aid, either.