Laura & Emma

by Kate Greathead

  The hunched spine that afflicts so many women as they age had not touched Miss Gardner, who stood more erect than ever as she emerged from her office to greet the parents on the tour. Though Miss Gardner’s stiff decorum now registered as more quaint than imperial, Laura still found herself intimidated by her former headmistress, who recognized her instantly.

  “So wonderful to see you,” Miss Gardner said, giving Laura’s hand an extra-long shake.

  In the middle of the tour, one of the couples began quietly bickering. They also had a child at Park Avenue Protestant, though she was in a different class from Emma. Things gradually escalated, and as they filed into the auditorium, Laura heard the husband say: “How dare you talk about my kid like that!” Everyone heard the wife respond, “First of all, she’s our kid, secondly, what’s wrong with being average!”

  Realizing all eyes were on her, the wife burst into tears and dashed into the hall. The husband dutifully lumbered after her. There was an awkward silence before Mrs. Olsen, director of admissions, smiled and continued the tour without them.

  A few days later, Laura ran into the wife on the steps of Park Avenue Protestant. They’d both arrived early for pickup, and after exchanging hellos, the poor woman felt obligated to address what had transpired on the tour. Their daughter had scored in the thirty-ninth percentile on the preschool admissions test, and they had been told Winthrop was a long shot and not to even bother. “But you know fathers,” the wife said, rolling her eyes. “If it’s their kid, she’s got to be a genius.”

  Laura nodded sympathetically and, wanting to make the woman feel better, told her that her own daughter had scored in the thirty-seventh percentile, though this was a wild guess—she hadn’t bothered to find out Emma’s results.

  Hearing this number, a look of irritation flashed across the wife’s face, followed by a hostile smirk. “And of course you have nothing to worry about,” she said. “You’re an alumni, your daughter’s a shoo-in.”

  School let out, for which Laura was grateful, as she felt herself flushing. She’d tried to be nice to this woman, and she’d responded by shaming her for her background, making it sound like anything Emma achieved or would achieve—and by extension, anything Laura had achieved or would achieve—was only the product of their privileged family, that on their own they would amount to nothing.

  Alumna, Laura thought as she watched the woman greet her daughter. She had taken three years of Latin.

  * * *

  JANET, WHO’D ATTENDED WINTHROP WITH Laura and whose two boys were enrolled at St. Christopher’s, thought Laura was making a mistake in deciding to send Emma to the Day School, the progressive alternative to Winthrop. She didn’t come right out and say it, but conveyed her opinion in her typical Janet way, which was to start to say something she knew Laura didn’t want to hear, and then stop short of saying all of it, eliciting Laura’s curiosity and forcing her to tease the rest out.

  “I’m not sure about the Day School,” Janet was saying. “The atmosphere is a little I don’t know.”

  “A little what?” Laura asked.

  “A little hippie-dippy.

  “As for the quality of the education,” Janet continued, “I can’t speak to that, but I have heard things about their approach that would give me pause.”

  “Such as?”

  “That it’s a bit loosey-goosey.”

  “Can you give me an example of what you mean by that?”

  “Apparently they let students learn to read at their own pace. In the meantime, there’s an entire unit devoted to teaching students how to make their own shoes,” Janet said. “It’s a bit artsy-fartsy, if you catch my drift.”

  “I see your point,” Laura said. “But these are all the reasons why I think it would be a good fit for Emma. She’s a spirited little girl. Let’s face it, Winthrop’s a little hoity-toity.”

  “If you really want my honest opinion, Laura dear, and I say this as one of your oldest friends, it’s you I don’t see fitting in at the Day School.”

  “Well, I won’t be the one going,” Laura pointed out.

  “Yes, but you’d be surprised how much parents are expected to be involved these days.”

  According to Janet, there was a middle school puberty unit at the Day School where parents were expected to come into the classroom, sit in a circle, and say the names they called their private parts.

  Laura laughed. “They would never do that—it’s the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever heard!”

  “It’s absolutely true. It’s supposed to make kids feel more comfortable about their bodies.”

  “More comfortable?” Laura laughed even harder. She didn’t believe it, but this didn’t stop her from conjuring the scenario, and the dizzying, dry-mouthed, anticipatory panic of her rapidly advancing turn.

  * * *

  DAISY CANCELED AN HOUR BEFORE Laura had to be at the Library to receive a late shipment of flowers for a wedding taking place the next day. Although Laura didn’t normally trust her mother to babysit Emma, she had no other option.

  The delivery kept getting delayed. Finally, at six o’clock Laura headed to 136 to pick up Emma.

  The house was quiet. “Hello?” she called, letting herself in. “Hello?” she tried again. She walked through the dining room and into the living room, which was also dark and empty. “Hello? Anyone home?”

  She thought she smelled something cooking and poked her head into the kitchen. A pot boiled on the stove and Sandra sat at the kitchen table, flipping through a tabloid.

  “Oh, hi!” Laura smiled warmly. “Wasn’t sure if anyone was home! Have you seen Emma and my mother?”

  “I just get here,” Sandra said, licking an index finger to turn the page.

  “I see. Thank you, Sandra.”

  “Thank your father, he pay me.”

  Laura nodded and forced another smile. She wished Sandra wouldn’t say that. She could never be sure if it was a cultural thing or if there was some hostility.

  “Hello?” Laura called, walking upstairs. “Emma? Bibs?”

  The second-floor hall was dark, but she noticed light from beneath the door to her parents’ bedroom. She knocked lightly. When there was no response she knocked louder, and then she opened the door.

  “Shhh,” Bibs hissed from across the room.

  There they were in bed, Emma sprawled like a frog across her grandmother, body rising and falling to the rhythm of Bibs’s breaths. A half-eaten carton of melting rainbow sherbet rested on the bedside table beside two cans of ginger ale and a plate with the remains of toast with smoked salmon. Bibs ran her fingers through Emma’s unbraided hair, which cascaded across her shoulders.

  “How long has she been out?” Laura asked.

  Bibs shot her a fierce look. “You’ll wake her!” she whispered sternly.

  “Yes, that’s my intention,” Laura said. “Naps aren’t good. It means she’ll never fall asleep at her bedtime.”

  She put her hand on Emma’s back and gently shook. “Emma. Time to go home.”

  “Don’t want to,” Emma said drowsily.

  “Let her stay!” Bibs said, wrapping her arms around her defensively.

  “You two.” Laura stood back and folded her arms and chuckled. “I wish I had my camera right now.”

  Her amusement was short-lived, however; it was getting late and she was tired. After a few futile minutes of trying to rally Emma, she’d had enough.

  “Fine,” she said. “It’s not a weeknight. You two want to have a sleepover, go ahead.”

  Laura paused by the door and blew Emma a kiss. “Call me if you need anything!”

  When Emma didn’t object to her exiting the room, she continued downstairs, considering the possibility of carrying through with the threat. It felt irresponsible to just walk out the door, but why? Sandra was here, her father would be getting home soon—what was the danger? It wasn’t often that Laura had a night to herself: she could see a movie, sit at the bar of a restaurant with a book, order mus
sels and a glass of red wine. She could go back to the apartment, get takeout, and watch PBS. She had many options and they were all things she enjoyed and wished she were able to do more often, so it didn’t make sense to her that now that the opportunity had presented itself, she didn’t want to do any of them.

  * * *

  LAURA WAS HURT WHEN IN March of that year a letter arrived from the Day School rejecting Emma from their incoming kindergarten class. Wasn’t a progressive school supposed to be non-exclusionary—weren’t they supposed to take everyone?

  Laura called her mother, who shared her outrage.

  “They’re idiots,” Bibs said. “Absolute idiots.”

  Emma, on the other hand, couldn’t have been more excited to learn she’d be attending Winthrop.

  “I get a uniform! I get a uniform! I get a uniform!” she sang.

  * * *

  LAURA’S EIGHT-WEEK PAID SUMMER VACATION, a component of her part-time work schedule, meant that the Library could no longer offer weddings during the months of July and August. Summer weddings had been a significant source of revenue and Laura felt guilty about this, but she felt even guiltier imagining Emma’s spending the summer in sweltering, stuffy Manhattan—and so at the end of every June they packed up the car and headed up I-95.

  Ashaunt was a finger of land that jutted out into Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts. Laura’s paternal great-grandparents had bought the land at the turn of the century, building a summer cottage at the tip of the peninsula. In the ensuing decades, more houses had been constructed to accommodate their descendants. None of the houses were winterized, and for nine months they sat empty. In June, station wagons began to arrive, and by July the place was teeming with relatives—Laura’s first and second cousins, their parents and spouses and children. Ashaunt was too rustic for Bibs’s taste, and Nicholas was allergic, so the house that Douglas had inherited was occupied solely by Laura and Emma.

  “You know, we’re very lucky to have Ashaunt,” Laura told Emma as they pulled up to the entrance. Ashaunt Point, Private Property, No Trespassing, Bicyclists and Walkers Please Turn Around, read the sign. Laura rolled down the window and reached out to punch the security code into the keypad.

  “Most people don’t have something like this,” she reiterated as they waited for the metal gate to retract. “They don’t get to spend the whole summer at a nice house by the ocean with their cousins. They have to stay in the city and work.”

  Emma sucked the last drops of liquid in her juice box with such force that the walls of the container caved in. “Ahhh,” she hissed.

  The road was paved, but narrow and potholed—for two cars driving the opposite direction to pass each other, one had to veer into the grassy embankment while the other inched by. After the gate it snaked through a wooded enclave before the houses began. Proximity to the water compromised arboreal fertility. As the road crept along, hearty hemlocks and matronly firs gave way to adolescent cedars, clematis, and bayberry bushes. It was too early for crickets, but the country quiet was embroidered with the quivering thrum of cicadas, punctuated by the occasional peeper, newly born and safely sequestered within lush thickets of tall grass, their starchy stalks adorned with feathered plumes, which swayed in deferential submission to the encroaching ocean and quicksilver sky.

  Though the first whiff of salty sea air still evoked feelings of joy for Laura, upon stepping into the house a sense of dread set in as she braced herself for the physical discomforts of the weeks to come. To Laura’s disgust but also fascination, there was a distinctly soggy spot on the old straw rug in the front hall—the result of a glass of lemonade being spilled in the early 1960s. She had been there and witnessed the accident. The scientific explanation was that, once wet, nothing ever completely dried in Ashaunt. Bedding, rugs, towels, dogs, your hair (no matter how long you spent blow-drying it): there was nothing the ocean air couldn’t penetrate. Even the wood the houses were made of was soft and mossy to the touch, and if you pressed your fingernail into one of the clapboard panels it would leave an indentation.

  As Laura brought their bags in, she noticed the house was disconcertingly still—then she remembered she hadn’t flicked the switch in the basement that turned on the electricity. As soon as she did, the floors hummed to life with the comfortingly familiar vibrations of the ancient, avocado-green refrigerator, which, for reasons Laura always meant to ask the caretaker to investigate, in addition to a steady rumbling occasionally squawked like a bird.

  After unloading the groceries, Laura rinsed the fruit and placed it in a bowl in the middle of the kitchen table. A pair of fruit flies immediately descended upon it. She fished through the pantry in search of the protective mesh dome, but by the time she located it, they’d seemingly procreated into a village. A fly swatter hung from a rusty nail by the light switch, but Laura couldn’t be bothered. Like mold-speckled pillowcases and clammy sheets, fruit flies were a fact of life in Ashaunt; there was no point in trying to fight them.

  Emma excavated her bike from the garage and took off to go find her cousins.

  After Dustbusting the mouse turds out of their dresser drawers, Laura unpacked their clothes and stored their suitcases in the hall closet. She had returned to the kitchen to get dinner started when Emma flew in and breathlessly announced she would be eating at Holly’s house that night. Before Laura had a chance to respond, she’d scampered off, the screen door bouncing behind her.

  Laura picked up the phone to call Holly’s mother, who confirmed the invitation. “We’re having tomato salad, truffle risotto, and swordfish,” Ginny said apologetically. “Is that okay? Will Emma eat that? Tell me the truth, because I’m more than happy to make mac and cheese.”

  “Emma will eat anything,” Laura told her. “Thank you for having her. We’ll have Holly tomorrow.”

  Laura made a fried egg and sat down with a New Yorker article titled “The End of Nature.” It was about the greenhouse effect, and the news was grim. She tried to commit certain facts to memory to use in future debates, though it seemed pointless. The skeptics weren’t so much unconvinced as ideologically opposed to the notion that anything that made life convenient for them could be bad for the planet—they subscribed to a view of things that didn’t tolerate such discord. They were almost always men. Laura knew, and was related to, many of them.

  The house had a chill, and after dinner she collected some logs and laid a fire, but hesitated to light it when she heard some activity in the chimney. She made a note to call the caretaker in the morning, and in case she forgot the reason, wrote raccoon back.

  It was almost nine and Emma still hadn’t returned. Laura had slept poorly the night before and was exhausted from the drive. She wanted to go to bed. Finally the phone rang and it was Emma, calling to say the grown-ups wanted Laura to come over and play a game with them.

  “A game?” Laura yawned. “What kind of game?” Dial tone. Laura put on a sweater, slipped on her flip-flops, and shuffled out into the night.

  Ginny shared a house with her sister, Dinah, and between the two of them they had three dogs, four cars, and seven kids, Holly being the youngest and the only girl. Built in the seventies, theirs was one of the newer, bigger, more controversial houses on Ashaunt. It had a television, a room in the basement with electronic exercise machines, and there were rumors they were planning to install a swimming pool. A swimming pool on Ashaunt, surrounded by ocean! No one could imagine it. Laura hoped it wasn’t true but, given their husbands, she wouldn’t be surprised.

  Ginny and Dinah had married Timmy and Rick, who’d been best friends growing up in Boston. Timmy and Rick liked sports, grilling meat, and arguing about what was the best kind of car. Laura had once heard something strange about Rick, which was that he got regular manicures for some medical reason having to do with his cuticles. Other than that, both brothers-in-law were straight out of a commercial. Unabashedly American, they were.

  “Oh, great, she’s here!” someone said as Laura let herself in. “We can pl
ay!”

  In addition to Dinah, Ginny, and Tweedledum and Tweedledum-dum (as Bibs referred to Timmy and Rick) were two additional couples at the table. After introducing Laura and the houseguests, Dinah explained the game, which was called Fantasy. Everyone was to think of a secret fantasy, write it down on a slip of paper, fold it up, and put it in a bowl. The bowl would be passed around as people took turns drawing a slip, reading what it said, and guessing whose fantasy it was.

  “Remember to disguise your handwriting,” Ginny said, distributing paper and pens. After a few turns, Laura quickly regretted what she’d written, which did not fit with the tone of the game. Most of the wishes concerned benign vices (Beer turns out to prevent cancer) and playful criticisms of one’s spouse (My husband learns how to do laundry!). Laura wasn’t sure why My wife is insatiable was so funny, but she pretended to find it as amusing as the others.

  Laughter came easily to this group, and that their sense of humor wasn’t particularly sophisticated did little to mitigate Laura’s feeling of inferiority in the personality department. Stripped of the routine responsibilities of day-to-day life, a person’s value in Ashaunt was his or her company—and Laura was aware hers wasn’t the most fun. People liked her, of course, but no one went out of their way to spend time with her. She wouldn’t have even been invited to this game night if not for Emma.

  Laura’s slip of paper was drawn by a houseguest husband. In addition to being much too earnest, the fantasy was politically awkward. She could tell by the look of this man (pink shorts, yellow polo, sailboat-embroidered belt) that he was a card-carrying Republican, and what she’d written concerned global warming, the government’s restriction of CO2 emissions, and harsher legal repercussions for companies who flouted the law, including jail sentences for high-level executives. It was a long-winded wish and took a while for the man to read.

  When he was done there was a silence, broken only by Rick saying, “That one was mine,” to which everyone boisterously laughed.

  “I’ve never played this game before,” Laura apologized when they’d settled down. “I’ll do better next time.”