Are We There Yet?

by Kathleen West

  “Yikes,” Nadia whispered as Assistant Principal Whittaker greeted everyone. While he spoke, Meredith put her phone facedown on the table and mentally reviewed her ideas for the ethical parenting seminars. Her lips moved as she ticked through her talking points. Her first topic, she thought, would be “Is ethical parenting possible?” It seemed the primary question at the intersection of ethics and family life was whether parents were truly capable of prioritizing the common good over individual achievement. Many of the psychologists quoted in the articles Meredith had read seemed to think that living an ethical life in the privileged suburbs was an impossibility, but Meredith thought she could do the right thing. Even Sadie’s choice of sport, synchronized skating, proved her daughter’s commitment to the common good. A different kid, one more concerned with her individual success, would have chosen to compete in singles, rather than trying to blend in with eleven other girls, none more sparkly than the others.

  “Let’s start with reports,” Whittaker said. “How about the learning differences support subcommittee?” He smiled at Nadia, and Meredith wondered why she got to go first.

  Nadia beamed. “I just want to say that I’m so pleased that the PA has made space for the learning differences group. It means so much to be included.” Meredith felt a twinge of guilt for forgetting she’d even be there. She eyed the plate of store-bought chocolate chip cookies in the center of the table and stood to grab one. Her arm obscured Nadia’s face from half of those seated. “Sorry,” she said.

  Nadia ignored her. “In our group, we invite a guest speaker to the first half of each meeting, and then we proceed in conversation.”

  “How are numbers?” asked Julie, the eighth-grade PA president.

  “Well, given that a full quarter of the student body has either a 504 plan or an IEP, our numbers are relatively low.” Nadia frowned. “We get ten to fifteen parents at each meeting. But they’re engaged parents.”

  “Any ideas to beef up attendance?” Whittaker asked. “I’d love for parents experiencing challenges to feel less alone. I see a lot of kids in my office who aren’t actually discipline problems, but rather struggling with learning.”

  Nadia nodded emphatically. Meredith knew Donovan himself had been one of those kids in the assistant principal’s office. “I think adding an evening or weekend meeting would really help,” Nadia said. “Lots of people work.”

  Work was always Alice’s excuse, anyway, thought Meredith. Among Meredith’s own talking points was a proposed lunch-hour gathering. She hoped the timing would accommodate enough working parents. Even Alice could technically make lunch, but she had never been the PA type. She always had other priorities. That magazine photo shoot had been the latest distraction. And of course Teddy’s suspension, and now NextDoor. Meredith wondered why Alice couldn’t see that things like the PA should actually be her priority, given her problems at home.

  Meredith started to jiggle her leg under the table, anxious for her turn to talk. While Nadia’s group was important, only a quarter of the families in the school—by her own admission—could possibly benefit from her efforts, while ethics impacted everyone.

  “Great,” Whittaker said as Nadia finally finished. “Next?” Meredith swallowed the last bite of cookie and reached for the tiny cup of coffee she’d poured at the reception desk.

  She swallowed the dregs, then began. “I’m thrilled to bring the concept of ethical parenting to Elm Creek Junior High for the winter session.” She smiled and scanned the group of eight. “Ethical parenting is the idea that parents consider the common good—the community and the world at large—when they make decisions about their children, rather than only thinking about individual success.”

  “How fascinating!” Nadia interrupted. “That really dovetails nicely with—”

  Meredith put a hand on Nadia’s biceps. “Could I just explain my vision for the four-part series?” She tried to keep her voice light, but she’d rehearsed this. And frankly, not everything had to overlap with the agenda for the learning differences support group.

  Nadia raised her eyebrows, and Meredith detected a touch of mocking in her smile. “Of course,” she said.

  “Thanks.” Meredith looked at Julie. “I was thinking four lunch-hour meetings, each time reacting to a stimulus, like an article or a video about how we can be more community-minded in our parenting decisions.” She pulled a printed list from her handbag. “I previewed a bunch of resources if anyone’s interested.” She laid the paper in front of her. “And then, at our last meeting, the group could produce a document with strategies, like ten tips for making ethical decisions.” Meredith thought about delivering the decision-making document to Alice. She’d seemed so confused about how to get Teddy to understand the severity of his actions.

  “Great,” Julie said. Meredith relaxed as she glanced around the table. They were loving it—even Whittaker, who smiled broadly. “Now that I have a kid in high school,” Julie said, “and the college pressure is ramping up, it’s really easy to lose perspective on what’s actually important.”

  Nadia straightened up again and glanced at Meredith as if for permission. “I think kindness and empathy are a huge part of it, which is what I was going to say before. If we focus on empathy, behaviors across the board will improve. We’ve all seen that pink graffiti, right? That’s just a symptom of the same problem.”

  Whittaker’s eyes widened. “Does anyone have a tip on that?” he blurted. “I’ve been worried that the culprit is an Elm Creek Junior High kid.”

  Meredith flashed to the wine bar gathering two nights before. She remembered Alice’s description of Teddy’s horrifying stunt at assembly. Wouldn’t a kid who’d pantsed someone in public think rather lightly of a little spray paint? And Alice had seemed less remorseful than mortified. It was all about how people would see her, and not about how Teddy’s behaviors impacted others. The ethical parenting group would be tailor-made for parents like Alice, who seemed not to understand the interconnectedness of it all. The women around the table shook their heads and murmmered. No one had a lead on the graffiti.

  “Well anyway,” Whittaker said, “I agree one hundred percent, Nadia.” He knocked the table for emphasis, as if Nadia had invented the whole concept of empathy. “I think this is a great idea.”

  “Would you like to see the list of resources?” Meredith picked up her handout and held it across to Whittaker.

  “Thanks, Marilyn.” He didn’t even look at her as he took it.

  “Meredith.” She enunciated the final syllable.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  “How will we advertise this?” Nadia asked. “How can we get the right parents in the room?”

  Meredith felt her irritation rising. Nadia had barged in on her presentation, and Whittaker hadn’t even learned her name. Of course, he knew Nadia because of Donovan’s issues. It wasn’t fair that he ignored her just because Sadie had never landed in his office for discipline. “Well, it’s for everyone,” Meredith said crisply.

  She thought of Alice again then, who excused her own deficits by asserting that other people had it easier. Alice never made time for the PA, but apparently had time to scroll NextDoor in the middle of the workday and ask for bailouts. Meredith raised her voice. “But it’s especially for parents of kids who are acting out. Mr. Whittaker, perhaps you could issue personalized invitations to kids who are at code red in the portal? Or kids who’ve been suspended.” Meredith looked at Nadia, whose eyes had gotten rounder as Meredith continued.

  “We wouldn’t want to single anyone out . . .” Nadia gave her a look.

  “Or we would,” Meredith said. “We want to make sure the families who are making things difficult for the community—and let’s be honest, obviously I’m talking about recent events that have veritably flooded my daughter’s Instagram account. Nudity in the seventh-grade assembly? That kind of public humiliation? Certainly the Sulliva
ns would be good candidates for a little training in ethical parenting.” Meredith felt a swift kick to her shin under the table.

  “That’s right! I heard all about that nightmare.” Julie turned to Whittaker. “You must have had some serious consequences for that one.” Her forehead wrinkled, although it scrunched less than Meredith remembered it doing at back-to-school night. Maybe she’d touched up her Botox.

  Whittaker put his own forehead in his hand. “I’d rather not get into it, Maril—Meredith.”

  Meredith rolled her eyes. “Well, it’s a little late for that, right? Five hundred seventh graders already saw the whole banana?”

  Nadia kicked her again.

  Nadia Reddy

  I can’t save Alice from herself.” Meredith looked at her phone as she and Nadia walked to the parking lot after the Parent Association meeting.

  “Yeah, but you don’t have to tell the entire PA leadership about her problems,” Nadia said.

  Meredith picked up her pace, and Nadia lagged a step or two behind. “I’m talking about the NextDoor thing.” Meredith summarized the post she’d shown Nadia inside. Nadia tried to take it all seriously, but really, the dog poop incident was totally peripheral to the actual problem with Teddy and Alice. Teddy wasn’t even the one who owned the dog. The real issue was Alice’s obsession with how Teddy’s mistakes would make her look. In fact, all of the parents at the PA meeting had the same issue: They all tried to excel vicariously, and Nadia was sick of it.

  It wasn’t like she didn’t understand the impulse to own the kids’ behaviors, to answer and apologize for them, but she’d been forced eons ago to release it. Donovan insisted on being his own person. She hoped to tell Alice about this revelation, to speed her along to acceptance after Teddy’s suspension.

  “People really should be picking up after their pets,” Meredith said.

  “Really?” Nadia caught up to her as she stopped next to her Jeep. She swatted Meredith lightly on the arm, much more gently than she had kicked her in the meeting. “She’s your friend! And should Shirley MacIntosh really be shaming minors on social media? What are you so mad about?”

  Meredith shrugged. “I have to get back to work. Call you later?” She opened her door, and Nadia sighed. She crossed the parking lot to her Leaf (she’d downsized and gone electric after Donovan had gotten so involved in nature therapy) and reset her own forgotten NextDoor password.

  “I’m on it.” She texted Alice along with a screenshot of her response to Shirley MacIntosh. “We’ve all been caught without supplies,” she’d written. “Playing gotcha with the kids in the neighborhood and identifying their names and addresses in a public forum is hardly the purpose of this app. It’s mean and also dangerous. Let’s remember to act like adults!”

  “You’re the best,” Alice typed back. “I was trying not to bother you when I sent it to Meredith, but I’m super grateful you responded.” She added the kiss emoji.

  Nadia drove the two miles home and stood for a moment in front of the landscaping. She and Donovan had added a blue aster to their pollinator garden last year, and the cheery daisylike flowers, fresh even into October, contrasted with her apprehensive mood. Clearly neither of her friends had seen the Instagram Live video, the one during which Tane had revealed Teddy’s secret. Nadia remembered Alice fretting about sending Teddy to sleepovers and overnight soccer camp with Pull-Ups. She’d worried about what would happen if kids found out he wet the bed. Nothing Alice tried—not the fancy alarm or strategically timed wake-ups—had solved Teddy’s bedwetting. In the end, it had just been time.

  “Hey,” Nadia typed to Alice. “Now that we’ve taken care of NextDoor . . . How’s Teddy taking the Instagram fallout? I suppose you’ve confiscated his phone? Maybe you haven’t seen it?”

  Alice wrote back, “I’m keeping his phone for-fucking-ever.”

  “But have you looked at his Instagram? Donovan showed me a video from Tuesday night that might involve him.”

  Alice’s reply ellipsis popped up and then disappeared again. Nadia sighed and stared at the aster. She knew Alice and Meredith didn’t understand what it was like to have a kid constantly in trouble. Though she didn’t want Alice to feel her pain, exactly, she was sort of relieved to have some company in Jason Whittaker’s office.

  Nadia’s phone pinged. “I know you’re trying to help,” the text read, “but Teddy’s blip—it’s not the same thing as what’s going on with Donovan.”

  A shot of anger seized Nadia’s arm, and she almost dropped her phone, wanting to erase Alice’s message. She tried to help, and her best friends pushed her aside. If she were less of a person, she’d log back in to NextDoor and delete her supportive comment. Of course Teddy didn’t pick up dog shit. Teddy, with his blond curls and boundless entitlement, didn’t do anything for anyone. Sure, Donovan was a total handful and yes, at times he drove Nadia and Ajay bonkers, but at least she wasn’t lying to herself about who he actually was.

  Meredith Yoshida

  Meredith wrapped the bricks of tofu in paper towels and squeezed them between two plates. If she fried the tofu, maybe Sadie would eat it. Her daughter needed a good healthy dinner. The ride home from synchro that night had been oddly silent. Meredith knew something was wrong, but Sadie wasn’t talking. The moment they’d gotten inside, Sadie had torn up the stairs and closed her door. This was happening more often now that she was in junior high. It was normal, Meredith knew. The social and academic pressures ramped up in seventh grade, even if Meredith didn’t factor in distractions like Teddy’s behavior in assembly. Teddy, come to think of it, had been at the center of a couple of Sadie’s recent upsets.

  There had been the evening that Sadie had come home crying from the Elm Creek homecoming football game. She’d seemed totally fine when Meredith had picked the kids up at school, and then the second they’d dropped Teddy at his house, Sadie had lost it, sobbing in the car. She’d never provided the details but implored Meredith not to say anything to Alice.

  Meredith frowned as she leveraged all her weight against the top plate, soaking her tofu paper towels. Maybe the union she and Alice had formed when the kids were at kindergarten round-up all those years ago was set to dissolve. Maybe their friendship had run its course. Teddy had proven himself a bad influence. She’d had the thought on the way home as she passed the McDonald’s with the obscene graffiti on the drive-thru console.

  She hadn’t discussed her hypothesis with Alice, but the timing of the tagging was highly suspect. It had appeared the same week as Teddy’s stunt at assembly, and both things involved male anatomy. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Meredith thought Alice should search her house for pink spray paint. If Teddy was the culprit, she’d find some evidence.

  Meredith heard the garage door open. Bill was home. Maybe Sadie would talk to him. It was rare that he was the one in whom their daughter confided, but everything seemed different now that Sadie would be thirteen in a week.

  “Smells great!” Bill kissed Meredith’s cheek as the back door slammed shut behind him.

  “I’ve barely started.” Meredith pointed at the onions and peppers in the pan and then cut her newly pressed tofu into bite-sized chunks.

  “How are things?” Bill walked back to the doormat and slid off his shoes, replacing them with slippers that looked a little worn. She would put a new pair in his stocking at Christmas.

  “Meh,” Meredith said. Before Bill could follow up, she asked, “Actually, could you fry this?” She handed her spatula to him and dumped in the tofu with a squirt of prepared ginger and a couple of cloves of minced garlic. “I want to check on Sadie.”

  “She okay?”

  “I think so. Just press the tofu hard with the back of the spatula for a couple of minutes and then flip it.” Meredith clicked cancel on the beeping rice cooker and jogged up the stairs. She tapped on her daughter’s door and waited a second before cracking it open. Sadie’s
bedside lamp cast a golden glow over the pink-and-yellow quilt, the same one Meredith had purchased when Sadie first graduated to a big-girl twin bed at age three. Sadie lay on top of it, facing away, but Meredith could feel her energy. She wasn’t asleep.

  “Sadie?” Meredith said lightly. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

  Sadie sniffled, and Meredith rode a wave of panic. “Honey?” She walked around to the far side and sat on the bed.

  “It’s nothing,” Sadie said, her voice choked. She lifted a hand to cover her blotchy face. Meredith thought back to a Thinking Mother article that had described helping a teen regain calm.

  “Breathe,” she said. She put her hand on Sadie’s back, where she could feel her rapid inhalations. “Slower,” she commanded, exaggerating the sound of her own respiration as a model.

  “Mom,” said Sadie after a few slow cycles. “Really, it’s fine. Didn’t you read something about how crying is normal for tween girls? I remember we talked about it.” She sniffed again. Meredith stood to grab a tissue from the box on Sadie’s bookshelf. She passed it to her and sat back down. Meredith stroked Sadie’s back, her daughter’s Elkettes sweatshirt soft beneath her hand.

  “Sure,” Meredith said, “crying is great, but it’s also good to talk about it. What happened?”

  Sadie rolled her face into the quilt. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She paused. “Really.”

  “Can I guess what’s bothering you? And then you can tell me if I’m close?” The Thinking Mother article had suggested this tactic.

  Sadie lifted her head, but trained her gaze on the pink rag rug, another holdover from toddlerhood, that matched her quilt. Meredith had thought about asking Alice to redesign Sadie’s room as a gift for her thirteenth birthday. “But even if you guess,” Sadie said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Humor me,” Meredith charged on. “Let me see.” She took a breath and squinted, making a show of thinking. “The Spanish test was really hard. Am I close?”