Master Class

by Christina Dalcher

The testing room begins showing signs of anxiety around eleven. Skirts and trousers rustle as legs are crossed and uncrossed. Leather shoe soles slide and tap underneath desks. Hands run through hair as if to stimulate brain cells or pick answers from the cobwebs of memory.

  We’ve been here for two hours now.

  The proctors have brought in small bottles of spring water, tissues, and energy bars. One by one, we’re escorted out of the room for turns in the lavatory. No one looks up from their blue books; no one exchanges a glance. We simply sit and shift, like bits of stew in a pressure cooker.

  There’s a moment when I want to turn back the pages, fill in proper answers, make an honest stab at passing this exam. This is when I think of Freddie.

  She’s never spent a night alone, not even on a sleepover with friends. I hated to keep her from childhood rituals, but I worried. I worried Freddie would have a meltdown. I worried she would wake up in the dark hours unable to orient herself, wondering why the books on another shelf didn’t match her own. I worried she might cry out, and one of the other girls would taunt her about it in school the next day.

  Would I have chosen differently ten years ago?

  I nearly did. In the end, though, I faked Freddie’s test results, choosing a number high enough to make Malcolm happy and low enough to hedge my bets.

  It may have even been a true number. Freddie’s problems, to the extent she has any, are exactly what Dr. Nguyen diagnosed. Nervousness, stress, anxiety. All manageable. Of course I made the right choice.

  I’m not sure I made the right choices in the years after that, coddling Freddie and keeping her sheltered, prepping her for each test until I was satisfied she wouldn’t end up too far below the false quotient I created before she was born. Now I worry I screwed it all up, laid patchy groundwork for a situation no one could see coming. My protectiveness backfired, leaving my girl unprotected.

  I scribble more nonsense on a blank page of my blue book, put my pen down, and raise my hand.

  I’m done being Malcolm Fairchild’s brilliant wife.

  THIRTY

  THEN:

  I was getting funky with Malcolm after giving Anne her night bottle and tucking her into the bassinet on my side of the room, just in case she got the midnight munchies. The same old song played in my head. If he pushed one way, I’d sing along with his rhythm; if he ran his mouth over my body, I’d match the music to the lapping waves of his tongue. Mostly, I’d stay there with him, but a part of me often slid from underneath his body, stepped onto the carpet next to our bed, and danced a little jig.

  Do you love me? I sang inside myself. You know, now that I can dance, and all that other shit?

  I wasn’t a very good dancer, which didn’t matter at all, because Malcolm was only ever interested in one thing. Not my tits or my ass or how well I went down on him, either.

  I used to try fluffy little baby doll negligees, satin merry widows, even webbed body stockings that gave me that rather interestingly sadistic Spider-Woman look. Malcolm shook his head at all of them.

  “Take that off, El,” he’d said the time I came to bed in a red teddy so sheer you could see my organs through it. “It demeans you.” What he meant when he said this was that he wasn’t interested in my body, and I thought that was hilarious and not hilarious at the same time.

  So there we were, back when sex still happened, pumping and bumping in the night under ten-thousand-count Egyptian cotton sheets he said were the Absolute Best, which was key, because Malcolm was all about the Absolute Best. Well, one of us was there. I was somewhere far, far away. In a nicer place, thinking about a man who once kissed me and said I was beautiful. I was thinking about messy sex, rock-and-roll sex, crazy crazy I can’t get enough of you sex in the back of a Ford Mustang.

  I always stopped at that point because I wanted to hang out there in the car, not in my subway-tiled bathroom in Connecticut, not in the library where I finally wrote Joe my last letter, and definitely not in the sterile clinic where I took care of things so I could have a better life. If I didn’t stop, the nicer place I traveled to turned gloomy.

  Malcolm’s body hovered over mine, shuddered, and went still, the weight of him pressing down on me and trapping me.

  “God, I love you, El,” he said, and I asked him the question, asked him what he loved about me. It came out as a joke, a spur-of-the-moment pop question: “Do you love me for my body or my mind?” I said.

  “What do you think?” Malcolm said, rolling over, tracing my body with one hand, whispering so as not to wake the baby.

  I wasn’t sure how to answer, whether to get the question right and win the big prize of a wide Malcolm smile, or say what I wanted to hear. I wanted him to think I was beautiful. We’re not taught that, we girls and women. We’re taught to look for men who want more than just a pretty face. Make sure he’s interested in what’s upstairs. The body goes; the mind stays. Love is cerebral.

  Yeah.

  We’re supposed to believe all this, to want it, to crave men who love our minds more than our flesh, men who are blind to our outer beauty and see only our inner, cerebral gorgeousness. All the women we’ve ever trusted tell us this is what’s good and right, and I suppose if I had to pick, I’d rather have a lover with eyes that saw deep inside me, past the laugh lines or the sagging bum or the matching set of stretch marks. The thing of it is, why should I have to choose? What’s so fucking wrong about wanting to be wanted? In all the ways.

  Malcolm stirred next to me and threw an arm over my waist, and there was sleep in his voice when he told me how much he adored his brilliant wife. For me, there was no sleep. I was thinking.

  I was thinking he’d rather have sex with my ears. That way he’d be closer to the part of me he really loves.

  THIRTY-ONE

  My boss sits tight-lipped and narrow-eyed behind her desk. Before she speaks, she pushes around bits of paper and office supplies, straightens the name sign that says Dr. Marjorie S. Williams, Principal. Then she does it all over again, pushing, straightening, avoiding looking me in the eye.

  “What the hell is this, Elena?” she says, tapping my blue book where I wrote I DON’T CARE in capital letters, large enough to cover an entire page.

  I have no answer other than the one I wrote.

  “Is there a problem? Is everything okay at home?” Dr. Williams’s voice is softer now, soft being a relative term where silver school principals are concerned.

  “No. And yes,” I say. I don’t mention Freddie’s sudden transfer to State School 46. “We’re fine. I just had a bad day.”

  She takes a brief inventory of my face. “It looks like you had a bad year from where I sit. Not a smart move before testing day, Elena. And now I’m in a shitty position.”

  I like Dr. Williams. But at this moment I want to tell her she needs to rework her definition of shitty. Instead, I sit, still as stone, hands in my lap. A sideways peek at the wall clock tells me it’s time.

  As if on cue, the blond kid from the park comes in, shown the way by my boss’s secretary. He’s sweaty now, despite the cool autumn weather, spandex and Lycra clinging to a body wiry from constant use. He’s so on time, I think FedEx should give up its fleet of planes and just hire bike couriers. He looks past me as if we’ve never met while Dr. Williams signs the tablet.

  And then he’s gone.

  “Hang on a second.” Dr. Williams slides a letter knife under the flap. It’s a small sound, and at the same time, it’s huge. A rip of paper that might as well be the gates of hell opening up.

  I hold my breath, waiting for her to read the directive I wrote only this morning.

  “Oh,” she says. “Oh, dear.”

  As she scans the type a second time, and then a third, I read Malcolm’s letter along with her.

  Effective immediately, a new policy is in force. Any teacher failing his or her monthly exam shall be
transferred immediately to a state school in need of additional staff. You are hereby directed to transfer any failing faculty from the Davenport Silver School to State School #46.

  Signed, Malcolm Fairchild, Ph.D., Deputy Secretary, United States Department of Education, blah blah blah blah.

  I breathe again.

  “I’m so sorry, Elena,” Dr. Williams says, putting Malcolm’s letter to one side and turning to the computer on her desk. She sounds as if she means it. As she types letters and numbers and codes, she talks to me. “There’s been a change. A few minutes ago, I was sorry as hell to have to send you to a green school.”

  I feign complete ignorance.

  She sighs, and her entire body, usually stiff and erect and full of presence, seems to sigh with her. “I can’t do that now.”

  “So I’m staying here?”

  “Um, no.”

  Careful, El. Don’t ham it up too much or she’ll get suspicious. “I don’t get it. Silver school, green school. It’s not like there’s anywhere else to go, right?”

  The printer on my left spits out two copies of a form. Dr. Williams pushes herself up, rubs at eyes that look as if they don’t want to read anything ever again—directives, forms, exam booklets of normally high-functioning faculty—and takes the pages. She keeps one and hands the other to me.

  “Wrong,” she says, picking up Malcolm’s letter. “New policy. You’re being moved to State School”—she glances down at the number on the page—“forty-six. It’s in Kansas. Your new identification and instructions should arrive sometime this evening by courier.”

  In the years I’ve been working under Marjorie Williams, I’ve never seen her waffle. Never heard a tremor in her voice or found her at a loss for words. She’s a hard woman. Fair, but hard. I guess it’s built into the high school principal template. So when she puts a hand on mine and says how sorry she is, I’m not sure how to react.

  “I’ll need your silver card, Elena.”

  So I give it to her before I turn to go.

  I don’t know what will happen over the next forty-eight hours. Not exactly. But I can predict with all the clarity of a genuine medium what will happen tonight when my new yellow identification card is delivered to our house.

  Malcolm will hit the roof.

  And I’m okay with that. I’m so okay with that, I laugh all the way to my car.

  From a distance, it must look as if I’m crying.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Once, a boy named Joe kissed me and said I was beautiful.

  I don’t know. Maybe I was. Am. Was.

  There’s a little swell now where a flat belly used to be, a few more laugh lines or frown lines or stretch marks, some spider’s-web strands of gray curling around my ears. Malcolm has never mentioned any of these.

  Tonight I feel neither beautiful nor brilliant, only tired. For the first evening, we’re a table of three instead of four. Only Anne and I seem to notice the vacant seat to my left. I wonder if my husband will notice when there’s another empty seat tomorrow.

  Malcolm talks about work, addressing the air between us; Anne mouths “Can I be excused?” to me. I nod yes, and she leaves the table for her room.

  “Where are you going, Anne?” Malcolm says. “You’ve hardly touched your food.”

  “Homework, Dad.” It’s the one answer he can’t argue with.

  “Let’s all go play some tennis this weekend,” he says.

  “Sure,” I lie. Might as well keep playing the game until I can’t anymore.

  Our clock chimes out three times. Seven forty-five. Malcolm says something about the vinaigrette I made being my best ever. I’ve been teleported into a weird alternate universe, some twin world full of domestic intimacy and marital bliss and weekend tennis plans, absent the threats of divorce and custody battles. I go to check on Anne, wondering if Malcolm will even realize I’ve left the room.

  “I miss Freddie,” she says.

  Anne has always been casual about the system, and I understand why. She’s like one of those kids today who can’t imagine a world where everybody smoked, where crystal ashtrays and silver table lighters were considered appropriate wedding presents. Her entire school history has been filled with tests and transfers and broken friendships. Caitlin’s in math class on Friday but not on Monday. Barbara won’t be coming over anymore to play video games and eat raw cookie dough out of the container. The girl next door who used to babysit is no longer available.

  Children are resilient, I think. And that’s good in so many ways—they fall down, they dust themselves off, they get back up and do it all over again. But resilience brings a sort of callousness with it, an acceptance and tolerance that piggyback along. In Anne’s eyes, what happens to failures is nothing more than the way things are. A situation to be shouldered and shrugged over. Until now.

  The doorbell rings.

  “Yeah. Me too,” I say, hurrying out of her room. “Be right back.”

  Malcolm is in the kitchen doing his preinspection of dinner plates before they go into the dishwasher. “Can you get that, El?”

  The courier tonight is the same woman who delivered Freddie’s yellow card on Sunday night, and the padded envelope shows the same Fitter Family Campaign logo, the happy little sunshine family in the upper left corner. I’d like to take a Magic Marker to it. Or a flame torch. Since the envelope is addressed to me, I sign the courier’s tablet.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” she says before she turns to walk down the path to her waiting car. As if she knows.

  I prepared for this before Malcolm came home.

  In my right pocket is an old Metro pass, hard plastic like a credit card. There’s probably ten bucks left on it, but I won’t be using the Metro anytime soon, so I turned it into a prop with a bit of silver paint from our Christmas decoration stash. It’s a shitty facsimile, but no one’s going to see it up close.

  “Who was that?” Malcolm asks, drying his hands and folding the dish towel carefully in thirds. It looks nicer that way, sure, but nice doesn’t mean dry. I let it go.

  “School stuff,” I say, waving my fake silver identification at him. I’ve already torn the envelope and pocketed the yellow card that was inside. “They updated some system over the weekend, and we all got new cards. Something about a security breach.”

  To my surprise, all he says is, “Good. Can’t be too careful about security these days. Want to watch a movie, Anne?”

  So it worked.

  The rest of our evening is pleasant and horrible, pleasant because instead of Madeleine Sinclair force-feeding us more of her Intelligence-Perfection-Wisdom crap and talking up the benefits of a twenty-first-century master race of prodigies, Malcolm and Anne are watching an old Jimmy Stewart movie that we all agree is one of his best. The evening’s horrible because I’m in the kitchen imagining Anne returning from school tomorrow afternoon to find my car gone, my closet half-empty, and a note stuck to the fridge she’ll find as soon as she starts rummaging for a snack. Sorry, but I’m abandoning you. It won’t say that in so many words, but it might as well.

  Anne sniffles once from the living room, and Malcolm’s arm reaches around, settling on her shoulder. “We’ll be fine, honey,” he says. “You’ll see.”

  Stewart acts out another comic line, stands tall and lean and a little gawky on the television. He reminds me of Joe: clean, honest face, warm eyes—even in grainy black-and-white—and a touch of self-consciousness that I find endearing. He’s no macho man, no People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive contender or Nobel Prize finalist, but neither was Joe. My old friend-turned-nondate was just a good guy. Well, okay. Joe was strong and sexy. But he was other things, too.

  I only miss him when I think about him. Which is often.

  Lying in bed next to Malcolm, who says he’s dog-tired tonight, I fantasize about Joe. Maybe not even Joe himself, but a good guy, a Jimmy Ste
wart, a man who might run his hands over me tentatively at first, who would kiss me softly before trying anything beyond first base, and then, once things started smoking, would take me to the moon and back. I think about how much I’d like that, and how, at forty-something, those are nothing more than fantasies, experiences I’ll never have again.

  As soon as Malcolm’s breathing slows and deepens in its steady sleep rhythm, I creep downstairs to the kitchen. There’s still a half bottle of cava in the fridge from dinner. I don’t bother with a glass; I take it into the TV room, curling up sideways on the sofa. And I cry.

  For all the reasons.

  THIRTY-THREE

  This Wednesday morning is exactly like last Wednesday morning except for Freddie’s absence. I get up, shower, pull on a plain blue jersey dress and boots. I putz around in the kitchen. Bread goes into the toaster; bread pops out of the toaster, transformed. Yogurt and muesli and juice wait on the counter. We eat, and I smile around a mouthful of toast.

  Just another school day, that smile says. See you all in the afternoon.

  “What’s for supper?” Anne asks, accustomed to me planning out meals in three-day chunks.

  “Pasta,” I tell her. It’s not a lie. I’ll leave the box of rigatoni next to the stove with a can of crushed tomatoes and herbs and garlic next to it. The only detail I omit is that Malcolm will be cooking it, not me.

  He leaves first, raincoat over one arm in case it rains, keys to his car in the other hand. We act out the same scene from all the other mornings of our marriage: a peck on the cheek, a “Have a good day,” and an exchange of smiles.

  Anne runs out the door not long after Malcolm’s car vanishes around the curve. “See you later, Mom.”

  “Later, honey,” I call, resisting the instinctual urge to bolt down the driveway and throw my arms around her.

  Later. I wonder when that will be.

  With the house empty, I accelerate into a sort of turbocharged mode, the kind of organizational frenzy everyone experiences when a mother-in-law calls to say she’ll be popping by in ten minutes. Clothes and shoes and underwear find a new home in a suitcase that smells vaguely stale after not having been opened in five years. I throw my makeup bag and brush and comb on top of the pile, zip it up, and heft it. Not too bad, room for a few books that will keep me company on the bus and maybe find their way into usefulness at State School 46. From the fridge, I grab two bottles of water, two apples, and a sandwich I made at three this morning. Then I think of Freddie, and add a few bags of oatmeal cookies to the snack pile.