Master Class

by Christina Dalcher

  Joe laughed. “It’s not the only reason, El. And I don’t mean you’re only beautiful on the outside.”

  A runner rushed up the path toward us, and we did that thing people do when they’re caught, instinctively separating ourselves, adopting some ridiculously unnatural pose that told the whole story. The woman, who I’d seen before in the woods, ran on, but not before shooting a smile my way.

  And, like magnets, Joe and I closed in on each other.

  “Do you like it up there?” he said. “At Yale?”

  My parents and grandmother had asked the same question only a few hours before. The answer I gave Joe now was the same. “It’s okay.”

  “Then why stay?”

  We were side by side, shoulders and thighs touching as we leaned against a fence rail, watching Winston burrow his way into the dirt. Joe’s pinky finger wrapped itself around mine and squeezed. I wanted to tell him about the pressure, about the nights I spent alone in the library, wishing I had someone to take me to the movies. But I didn’t have to.

  “Don’t go back, El,” he said quietly. Whether he meant to Yale or to Malcolm, I wasn’t sure.

  Joe might not have made the grades in high school, and he had as much use for standardized college entrance tests as a cat does for a set of roller skates, but he wasn’t stupid. “This whole country’s getting crazy,” he said. “And it’ll get worse before anyone figures it out. Come down to the islands with me. We’ll get a boat. Maybe two. Maybe a couple of kids to go along with the boat.”

  I didn’t make any decisions about quitting school and escaping to St. Thomas, but I did quit Malcolm for a time. The next time I saw Joe’s Mustang, curvy and red and smooth from the kind of waxing only young men have time for, I was in its backseat. And kissing wasn’t the only thing we did. It was a heavy car, but not as heavy as Joe’s body on top of mine, not as heavy as the even breaths I drew in and pushed out, not as heavy as the rain that pounded the soft top or the thunder that clapped along to our rhythm. We went slow and fast, and then faster and slower. After two times, we rolled, and I lay with my head on Joe’s bare chest, listening to his heart like it was the only sound in a still and quiet universe.

  And then we did it all over again because when you’re young and crazy in love, the body has a way of resetting itself as many times as it wants to or needs.

  In September, I went back north, driving my little VW Rabbit, missing the hardness of the Mustang and the hardness of Joe’s body. And now I was here, in a subway-tiled bathroom holding a pee stick with its accusing blue cross. If I turned it, the cross became an X, and I imagined it was my entire life that was being crossed out.

  I threw the testing stick into the trash bin, pulled up my pajamas, and climbed back into bed, thinking I’d call my mother. As I reached for the phone, it rang. The caller ID announced Malcolm. I let it go to voice mail and fell asleep.

  Three hours later, I played the message.

  He was driving up for the weekend.

  He was taking me to the Cape.

  He wanted to ask me a question.

  On the first Saturday of October, I’d taken care of things. It was easier than I thought, allowing myself to stretch out on that gurney in the student clinic, watching the anesthesiologist as she gazed into my eyes and said something that sounded vaguely like She’s nearly under. Not worrying anymore about what kind of child a mechanic and a college dropout could possibly raise.

  Joe never knew about any of it. He knew only what I wrote him in my letter, the one he never answered.

  I’ve decided to marry Malcolm. I’m so sorry. I love you, Joe. I love you crazy. But I don’t think we have a future.

  I tore the sheet up and rewrote it, leaving out everything after “sorry.”

  TWELVE

  “Freddie kicked me out,” Anne says when I meet her in the hallway, halfway between her room and her sister’s. “What’s up with that?”

  I want to tell her what’s up with that is her father’s empathy deficit, but instead I tell her to help Malcolm with the dishes and go down the hall myself. The sight in my daughter’s bedroom stops me short.

  Freddie is packing a suitcase.

  It’s the old green one, the hard-shell Samsonite that O.J. used to kick around on television, the one Malcolm and I took on our honeymoon to Bermuda. I don’t know where Freddie even found it.

  Her room, usually arranged with the help of a T square, has morphed into a disaster zone. Think New Orleans after Katrina. A few patches of shag carpet peek out through gaps in underwear, jeans, hair scrunchies, winter socks, and almost everything else that used to live in a drawer or a closet or a hamper. I’m ready to call in FEMA.

  “Freddie?” I say, careful to keep my voice steady. “What are you doing?”

  As if I need to ask.

  She sits on the floor and starts a process of unfolding and refolding, getting the creases in pants’ legs exactly right, measuring the distance between T-shirt sleeves until she’s satisfied they’re symmetrical. All the while, she’s rocking to some inaudible rhythm. It isn’t really inaudible; there’s music going on inside Freddie’s head, in a dark space I can’t quite reach. The best thing when she’s like this is to sit down across from her.

  So I do that. And I start rocking, matching her time, being a mirror image metronome of Freddie. After a few minutes, she’s back with me, back in the now.

  “I bombed,” she says in a flat monotone.

  “You can’t know that, honey.”

  Someone knows it, though. While we gorged on Chinese food in our dining room, a machine, or a bank of machines, in the Department of Education tallied thousands of scores. Qs are being adjusted at this very moment, matched with student ID numbers. Soon, phones and tablets will start pinging. Some families will celebrate. Others will be shopping for new uniforms over the weekend. Still others will make last-minute plans to visit relatives, pack favorite items of clothing in old suitcases, spend their last Sunday together in tears.

  This is all supposed to be good for the children. Good for the families. Good for society.

  I lean over and wrap her in my arms. She’s wooden. I feel like I’m holding a doll.

  “Come on,” I say. “Let’s go have some ice cream.”

  This elicits a crack of a smile, and Freddie’s eyes shine. Good. Somewhere underneath that stiff exterior, there’s still my little girl.

  “Chocolate?” she says.

  “Sure. And vanilla and strawberry and cookie dough. Anything you want, honey.”

  The thing I love best in the world happens next: Freddie’s crack of a smile turns into a grin.

  Then all the phones start pinging.

  THIRTEEN

  I’m okay.

  I’m okay I’m okay I’m okay I’m okay.

  If I say it enough, it’ll be true, right?

  Malcolm and Anne are in the den, eating ice cream. Well, Malcolm is eating nonfat organic frozen yogurt sweetened with Splenda while Anne devours celebratory spoonful after spoonful of rocky road mixed with strawberry. Neither of them knows what I know.

  The problem, I think, is that I’ve got a husband who’s so intensely wrapped in his überintelligence bubble that imagining any world outside that cocoon is impossible. The idea of failure in our family doesn’t enter into Malcolm’s equations of reality, and Anne lives in the kind of blissful oblivion that only teenagers can live in.

  This is about to change.

  “Malcolm,” I say quietly.

  He looks up, and I don’t need to say another word.

  I want to, though. I want to say a million words, all beginning with F and ending with UCK.

  “Impossible,” says Malcolm.

  Possibilities are only measurable before an outcome, I think, but I don’t say anything, only hand him my phone with the message from the Department of Educatio
n and wait while he reads. It doesn’t take long—the department is ruthlessly parsimonious in its alerts. Child’s name, child’s ID number, child’s current tier, and a single, life-altering number: 7.9.

  “It’s a mistake,” he says, getting up from the sofa. “I’ll sort it out.”

  “You do that,” I say.

  He’s on the phone in five seconds, talks for another half minute. Toward the end, the only words he says are monosyllables like “Oh,” “Right,” “Okay.”

  My glance shifts from him, to the hallway leading toward Freddie’s room, and back to Malcolm. He’s the same as when I met him over twenty-five years ago. Same angular, often emotionless face; same square-set shoulders, as if he’s preparing for a wrecking ball to hit him and plans to hit back just as hard; same dark blond waves of hair framing his face, although there’s gray curling around his temples and at the nape of his neck. The glasses he wears have gone through a few more thicknesses over this past quarter century, but otherwise, Malcolm’s the same.

  It must be me who’s changed, because when I see him now, I don’t see anything to love.

  “We need to fix this,” I say. “Now.”

  His call has ended, and I corner him in the kitchen. He’s turned his back to me and pretends to be fiddling with a grease spot on the counter. “Malcolm? Did you hear me? We need to fix this.”

  I grew up in a family of quiet men and women, people who didn’t shout over one another at Sunday dinners, didn’t try to shut one another up to get their point heard. Mostly, tense situations called for calm voices and steady nerves.

  Malcolm’s absolute silence, on the other hand, isn’t a calming force. It’s jarring and violent, this stone wall. There’s too much room for wonder and speculation.

  When he finally answers me, he’s almost inaudible.

  “We’re not fixing anything, Elena.”

  My full first name is supposed to be a signal that the conversation is over. I don’t agree.

  “What if it were the president’s kid? Or a senator’s? Are you telling me they’d sit back and watch their child board a yellow bus on two days’ notice?”

  This gets to him, and his eyes narrow. “Sometimes the rules are bent.”

  “Broken, you mean.”

  “Bent, Elena. Everyone’s treated equally.”

  I pour a glass of wine, all the way up to the rim, and drink it down an inch. Maybe I’m building up some Dutch courage. Maybe I want to piss off Malcolm. “Bullshit. Don’t give me that ‘everyone is equal’ crap.”

  Anne comes into the kitchen with a bowl of ice cream that’s melted into soup. “What’s going on?” she says. “You guys having another husband and wife fight?”

  She gets a sour smile from her father and an exasperated sigh from me.

  “We’re leaving,” I tell her, changing the subject. Let Malcolm deal with that hardball. Let him figure out who the “we” is.

  “What?” Anne spits the word. “Leaving for where?” She doesn’t wait for me to answer. “But I’ve got homecoming in a couple of weeks. And the math club. And the forensics team finals. And—”

  I cut her off. “And your sister isn’t going to a federal boarding school. Period. The end.”

  Her mouth opens, the jaw working up and down, up and down, while not a sound comes out of it.

  “Go to your room, Anne,” Malcolm says, then he turns to face me, placing a hand on my arm. It’s not a gentle touch but a restraining weight. “Do you have any idea how much jeopardy my job would be in if we took off? I’m supposed to set an example, not be a poster boy for rule dodging. I work in the goddamned Department of Education.”

  “I meant the girls and me.”

  What emerges from his throat is a bark of a laugh, an explosive negation of my statement.

  And then, less explosive and more sinister: “You’re not taking my daughter from me.”

  Daughter. Singular.

  “You don’t want Freddie here anymore, do you?” I say. “You don’t want her here at all.”

  Malcolm says nothing, which really means he says it all.

  I pull my hand away and drain my glass of wine. Malcolm gives me the eye, and I pour more until the bottle is nearly empty and the glass is brimming again. “Do you know how much jeopardy our family will be in if you don’t work this out, Malcolm?”

  But my words have no force in them, and Malcolm only smiles.

  FOURTEEN

  I leave Malcolm stewing in the kitchen and go to Freddie’s room with my wineglass and a mountain of chocolate-vanilla-strawberry. If only it were that easy, leaving. Walk out the door with a few suitcases and a credit card and the keys to the Acura. And Freddie and Anne, too.

  Nothing is easy these days. The Fitter Family Campaign created obstacles I never saw coming, which is a testament to my own optimism. Or stupidity. Who knows? Maybe optimism and stupidity are siblings.

  Headlines from the past decade flash in front of me in the dark of the hallway.

  STUDENT PERFORMANCE UP SINCE INTRODUCTION OF TIER SYSTEM

  DIVORCE RATES PLUMMET—INCREASED WAITING TIMES TO THANK—KIDS SPEAK OUT!

  EDUCATORS ENJOY INCREASED JOB SATISFACTION, SAYS NEW STUDY

  COUNTRY ON FAST TRACK TO HIGHEST HAPPINESS QUOTIENT IN OVER A CENTURY

  PRENATAL Q + REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM =

  INFORMED CHOICES FOR WOMEN!

  STAND BACK, CHINA—AMERICA SOARS LIKE AN EAGLE

  And so on, and so on, and so on.

  No one remembers anymore how bad things had gotten, how we’d nose-dived into a second-rate economy, how college degrees had become as worthless as the fake sheepskin they were printed on, how the elementary schools had stagnated through years of anorexic budgets and overcrowding and teachers’ union strikes. They need reminders.

  That’s where Madeleine Sinclair’s monthly State of Education addresses come in handy. Where Petra Peller’s ever-evolving genetic testing propaganda helps to squelch any fears before they boil up to the surface. Where the Fitter Family Campaign’s endless rallies and public service announcements—Do you want to go back? Do you want single parents and latchkey kids again? Do you want to worry about your children’s future while paying for other people’s children?—serve as frequent pokes to anyone who might require a refresher course in how far behind we fell in the game and how far we’ve come.

  If all this isn’t enough, we’ve got other incentives for playing along. No one knows this better than Moira Campbell two houses down.

  I catch a glimpse of Moira’s place from Freddie’s bedroom window. The porch light burned out months ago; the blue glow from the television went dark a day after the bus came to take Moira’s two sons away. Once a week, Moira comes out to check her mail, and on Saturdays her car rolls out of the garage, disappears down the street, and comes back an hour later. I’m guessing Saturday morning is Moira’s grocery shopping time, but I can’t be sure. I never see her with groceries.

  And there is no Mr. Campbell. Not since he moved out last year.

  They were always arguing, the Campbells. Always skipping out on neighborhood parties at the last minute. Moira had a headache; Moira was getting home late from work; Moira left town for a family emergency. The excuses were different, but the reason was always the same—Moira and Sean Campbell, like most couples with a rocky marriage, didn’t socialize. They put on a show for a while; Sean hung around the house pretending to be a husband, and the word on the street was that they were sticking it out for the kids’ sake. When Sean finally left, Moira would hang out his laundry on the line in her side yard. A few pairs of boxers, some T-shirts, whatever. Just enough to keep the illusion going.

  The illusion didn’t last long, and the Fitter Family’s child welfare representatives—gray-faced women in gray uniforms, clipboards in hand—started coming around, trolling the neighborhood, asking questions
. A month later, a gray van arrived, and Moira’s boys clambered in, suitcases in one hand, while Moira cursed and threatened from her front porch.

  “We’re doing fine!” she screamed at the gray women. “One parent is as good as two!”

  The Fitter Family Campaign disagreed.

  Moira went to court, not once but three times. She ended up representing herself because no lawyer would take her case, not as a single mother. She lost before the hearing even started.

  “They told me you have to get the fitter parent to testify,” she said after the third day in court. “Can you believe that? The fitter parent—meaning the one who earns more, the one who takes less annual leave, the one with the higher Q rating. I can’t even find my ex-husband, let alone get him to show up before a judge. Fucking laws.”

  I felt for Moira then. I feel for her more now as I realize that Malcolm, with double the income I bring in and half the late days, will always be the fitter parent. Most men are—even the ones who aren’t.

  So now, sitting in Freddie’s room with wine I don’t want and ice cream she won’t eat, the idea of leaving enters my mind, snakes around for a few delicious seconds, and then departs, replaced by a hopeless question. How long could I keep up the subterfuge? A month? A year? More likely, I’d be discovered by the end of the week. My Q rating would drop, and I’d lose my job.

  And that would hurt Anne. The thing about Qs is this: They seem to be inheritable.

  Malcolm, though. Malcolm could work it out. He’s got access to the databases, and he could fudge Freddie’s numbers. By the time the yellow bus arrives to pick up Freddie on Monday morning, we could have a fresh set of Qs, back in the eight-point-something range.

  That fantasy lasts all of a minute.

  “Okay, little miss,” I say to Freddie. “Bedtime.”

  “Stay with me for a while, Mom?”

  I answer her with a hug, and she brightens, but it’s a temporary light that shines in her eyes. “And then tomorrow we’ll go see Oma and Opa, okay?” My parents are going to flip a wig when I tell them. They’ve always hated Malcolm, and by tomorrow afternoon, they’ll hate him even more. Not as much as I do, but enough.