The Smash-Up

by Ali Benjamin

  “And…there it is,” Zo mutters.

  McCuttle turns to Zo. “Is there something you wish to say, Mrs. Frome?”

  “Mr. McCuttle, I have to be honest,” Zo says. “I’m a little confused about why we’re still talking about the sticker incident. It happened weeks ago, and really, it was a sticker. A sticker of a cartoon lemur. Alex placed it on another kid’s shirt, that’s all.”

  Shreya bristles. “Excuse me, but the sticker said kiss me, and when Alex stuck it on Tristan, she said, ‘You want to give this to Imogen.’ And he said no, he didn’t. He didn’t want to give it to Imogen. But Alex kept teasing him, which he did not consent to, and before long he was—”

  “Yes,” Zo interrupts. “He was huddled in the closet crying from the ‘sheer humiliation.’ I have heard this story a couple of times by now. I think we all have.”

  “It took your daughter weeks to apologize,” Shreya snaps.

  “And as I’ve explained, Alex would have apologized that day,” Zo presses, “except that Trevor said he wasn’t ‘ready’ for the apology. And for some reason, everyone decided to indulge his feelings instead of helping the kids to move on.”

  McCuttle leans forward. “Perhaps, Mrs. Frome, you’d like to move your pin into one of the quadrants on the mood meter?”

  Zo stares at Mr. McCuttle. One beat. Two.

  Three.

  “Mr. McCuttle, can I ask you something?” Zo finally asks. “Why did the school even have a Valentine’s Day sticker?”

  “Well…” he begins, confused. “I suspect it was left over from last February…”

  “No, I mean, why would you perpetuate a holiday like Valentine’s Day?”

  Mr. McCuttle’s eyes flick to Ethan’s, then back to Zo. “I’m afraid I don’t understand the question.”

  “At its best,” Zo says, “the holiday is saccharine and benevolently sexist. But it’s also got an atrocious history. A fact of which I’m sure you’re aware. Being an educator and all.”

  A little snort escapes Shreya’s nostrils as Zo explains that Valentine’s Day has its roots in violent pagan ritual. “Men slaughtered animals, then beat women and girls with the hides. And when that was done, the men pulled the names of women—and, yes, girls—from a jar, and then dragged them off to…um…force themselves upon them.”

  Mr. McCuttle stares at his sneakers as if canvas and rubber are suddenly the most interesting things in the world. Shreya tosses her hands up. “Why are we talking about pagan rituals right now?”

  “Oh, gee, I don’t know,” Zo snaps. “I’m just wondering if there’s a connection between that sort of history and the fact that here we are, yet again, elevating a boy’s feelings over the good of everyone else.”

  Mr. McCuttle coughs. “What an interesting point, Mrs. Frome. See, this is the sort of thing that we can put in the parking lot: a valuable discussion to which we can return later. After we’ve resolved the issue at hand.”

  McCuttle stands up, writes HISTORY OF VALENTINE’S DAY on the Parking Lot board. Smiles broadly, like he’s pleased with himself. Like he expects them to be pleased.

  “I happen to like Valentine’s Day,” says Shreya. Eyes on Zo. “If you ask me, the world needs more love, not less.”

  Zo ignores her. “Another question, Mr. McCuttle: what exactly does the Rainbow Seed School do to teach boys about masculinity and vulnerability?” When the man can only blink in response, Zo presses. “I’m asking whether and how you actively teach boys to accept and be accountable for their own feelings without the expectation of comfort from girls?”

  Ethan leans forward, touches Zo on the arm. Isn’t that what the mood board is for? “Hon,” he begins. “That’s—”

  But Zo shakes Ethan off. “Our long cultural inheritance assumes that if a male of any age feels vulnerable, or sad, or afraid, or lonely, that these feelings need to be fixed. And of course it’s always women and girls who are expected to do the fixing. I don’t know a woman on the planet who hasn’t felt that pressure, so, Mr. McCuttle, what I’m wondering is this: does the Rainbow Seed School actively teach healthy forms of masculinity, or do you just allow your students to passively absorb toxic messages from our surrounding culture?”

  “Why, that’s another very good question!” says Mr. McCuttle. He adds MASCULINITY—TOXIC OR HEALTHY to the Parking Lot.

  “You know what?” Shreya speaks directly to Mr. McCuttle. “I really don’t appreciate the way Alex’s mother twists everything around…”

  “I’m right here, Stacy,” says Zo. “I’m a human being who’s sitting two feet from you.”

  “My name is Shreya, and my son’s name is Tristan, and for the record, I’m trying very, very hard to be civil.”

  “Great. And I’m trying to raise a girl who doesn’t believe it’s her responsibility to assuage every bad feeling a boy ever has.”

  “Well.” The corners of Shreya’s mouth turn up like she’s smiling, but her lips are thin and it’s clear from her eyes that this is no smile. “You’ve certainly succeeded in doing that, haven’t you?”

  Ethan wants to press Pause, Rewind, move through this conversation a little more slowly. Give him time to catch up to whatever is happening in this room. The women are no longer talking only about the children, he’s sure of that. He’s not entirely sure what they’re talking about, but it feels like Zo had been talking about him just now. Like maybe she’s implying that somehow this is something he asks of Zo: to coddle him. And even if that’s not what she meant, doesn’t his wife understand that it might look this way to the people in this room?

  “I have tried to show compassion,” Shreya says. “Again and again, I have explained to Tristan that Alex has impulse-control issues, that none of this is personal, that Alex’s behavior is hard on everyone. Tristan—like me, like the teachers, like everyone who knows your daughter—is doing his utmost to be patient.”

  And that’s when Zo tosses her hands in the air, exasperated. “I’m sorry. But my God: why are we even talking about this? Does anyone even care that we are about to confirm a would-be rapist to the Supreme Court? Or that Nazis are marching in the streets?”

  Ethan tries to meet Zo’s eye, send her a Let’s stay on topic signal. That was one of the things he always loved so much about being with Zo—the way they could meet each other’s eye and have an entire conversation without saying a single word. They might be standing at opposite ends of a crowded room, but with one glance they could communicate everything they felt. God, this party’s a drag. Or, Sorry you got stuck talking to the guy who only wants to talk about how much money he’s made flipping houses, we’ll have a good laugh about it later. Or, simply, Let’s get the fuck out of here, now.

  But the conversation-without-words thing only works if Zo looks at Ethan. Which she’s not doing. Not at all.

  Does she ever do it anymore?

  As McCuttle scribbles on the Parking Lot board, Shreya stares at Zo, incredulous. “I beg your pardon?” she asks. “Nazis?”

  “I mean, maybe you haven’t been following the news,” Zo says. “But yes, they’re in the streets: literal Nazis. And by the way, our government has been separating families and locking children in cages and hurtling us into a dystopian future by doing nothing about the climate crisis, which means our kids may actually get to witness the end of life on this planet. But sure. Let’s keep talking about a sticker.”

  Shreya’s eyes harden. She grits her teeth. “So you think that because there are problems out there, we should just—what—ignore the problems that are right here at home?”

  “You’re calling my daughter a problem,” Zo says. “The way, say, Nazis and human-rights abuses and melting ice caps are a problem.”

  Shreya sits up straighter, lifts her chin and looks out to some vague place in the middle distance. “I call ’em like I see ’em.”

  Zo’s
eyes are hard. “Lady, you talk a good game about peace and love, but it’s clear the only thing you actually care about is your Aryan boy-child.”

  “First of all, Tristan is not Aryan.”

  “Sure, Stacy.”

  “Excuse me, but I was an anthropology major at Wellesley,” Shreya insists. “So I happen to know that Aryan refers to people who settled in the region that is today modern-day Iran, and second of all—”

  “You know exactly what I mean when I use the word ‘Aryan.’ ”

  “And second of all, I feel sorry for you. I feel sorry for you, and for your husband, but most of all for your daughter, who is clearly suffering from the lack of a positive female role model in her life.”

  Zo reaches into her bag, pulls out her phone, starts tapping furiously on the screen. “Mr. McCuttle, please tell me: what precisely, is the statute of limitations for the high crime of placing a cartoon sticker on another child? I want to be sure the date is in my calendar.”

  McCuttle makes a sound that resembles a laugh, but is in no way laughter. Shreya’s face is frozen in a smile that is not a smile.

  Zo glances back and forth between them, her finger poised above her phone. “Six weeks? You think we might be done by Thanksgiving? No? Okay, maybe by New Year’s then. Just let me know, please, because when that day finally comes, I’m opening a bottle of Champagne.”

  Shreya stands, wraps her sweater a little tighter over her yoga leggings. “Well. I can see that Alex isn’t going to get the help she so desperately needs. Excuse me for trying to show you the impact she has on the others around her.” She moves toward the door, then turns around. Her voice filled with false cheer, she says, “Oh, and I imagine you’ve forgotten by now, Zo, but tonight is Parents’ Night, and you volunteered to help serve lasagna. Will you be there? Or do you intend to shirk this responsibility too?”

  “Oh, I’ll be there,” says Zo through gritted teeth. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  Mr. McCuttle points lamely to rule number six: Remember, at The Rainbow Seed School, We are all Friends! He opens his mouth, begins to read aloud, but Shreya snaps at him. “Save it. You know where I stand.” Then she’s gone.

  In the long silence that follows, Ethan stares at the Parking Lot board:

  History of Valentine’s Day

  Masculinity—toxic or healthy

  Nazis

  The Supreme Court

  Kids in cages

  Climate change/end of life on Earth

  What is Aryan, really?

  Lasagna!

  * * *

  —

  For his third date with Zo, Ethan had taken the train out to Brooklyn to meet her at a tiny organic restaurant near the entrance to Prospect Park. He hadn’t kissed her yet, hadn’t even reached for her hand. But he wanted to, badly, which is probably why he found himself nervous-babbling through the entire meal. At some point, he found himself inexplicably blabbering about foreign words for which there were no exact English translations. He loved these words, he told Zo, loved that these words proved that experiences can be deeper, more complicated, than the words we have to describe them. He began listing some of these words: trepverder (Yiddish: the witty comeback you think of too late), duende (Spanish: the feeling a person gets when a work of art grabs them by the throat), weltschmerz (German: the melancholy one feels when comparing the way the world is and the way it ought to be).

  Later, Zo would confess to Ethan that this conversation was the moment she knew. She knew not only that she’d be inviting Ethan back to her apartment after dinner but also that by the time they woke up together the next morning, their lives would be forever entwined. It was that last word, “weltschmerz,” that had done it; Ethan had, unknowingly, given her the word to describe how she felt nearly all the time.

  Now, in McCuttle’s office, after Shreya sweeps out of the room, sucking all the energy with her, Ethan wonders if perhaps there’s a word, in some language, for the feeling you get when you realize that a person you once loved—maybe the most grounded, thoughtful, real person you’d ever known—has changed beyond recognition, maybe even gone off the deep end.

  In which case, it’s up to Ethan to get this conference back on track. Time to show McCuttle that this isn’t how we are, we’re quite a likable family, really.

  Curriculum. Financial aid.

  McCuttle returns to his seat, takes a deep breath, and restarts his singsong. “So, I’ve been eager to meet with you both for some time,” he says.

  There’s something off about this guy, Ethan realizes. Phony, maybe. It’s like McCuttle’s whole schtick—the outfit, the singsong, those earnest eyes—is a performance of some sort, like he’s practiced in front of the mirror at home a few too many times.

  “The thing is,” McCuttle continues, “it strikes me that Alex sometimes needs more…uh…support…than perhaps we at the Rainbow Seed School are able to offer.”

  Ethan glances at Zo just in time to see the way she lifts her eyes. Quick. Something in there that he can’t read.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” McCuttle says. “Alex is a wonderful, spirited child. I imagine that as she matures, she’ll get better at harnessing all that…uh…vitality…for good. But I must be honest: we are a small school, and our resources are limited. I sometimes wonder if…well….if the Rainbow Seed School is the right place for her.”

  “Hold on.” Zo leans forward in her seat. “What are you telling us?”

  McCuttle coughs. “I’m suggesting that Alex might be better off in a school with more specialists. The kind of setting where they’re accustomed to meeting a wider variety of needs.”

  There is a long, still moment as his words sink in.

  “Mr. McCuttle,” Zo says, “you told us this was a great school for kids who were square pegs. You said we’d be amazed at Alex’s transformation here.”

  “I did tell you that, it’s true,” says McCuttle. “And I did so based on years of seeing children who hadn’t quite fit into their previous school environments. Most of these children find their places at Rainbow Seed very quickly. But it’s possible Alex needs a little more, uh, one-on-one attention than we’re able to give her.”

  Zo stares at him. “You think, what, the public schools have the resources to give her one-on-one attention? We’ve been there. Done that. It didn’t work. That’s why we’re here.”

  And when Mr. McCuttle responds only by looking yet again at his stupid sneakers, Zo adds, “She’s gotten better. You know she’s gotten better.” She glances at Ethan for support, but he feels topsy-turvy. He’d planned to use this conference to question McCuttle about the school’s dubious curriculum, about whether it’s good enough for their kid. Now here’s McCuttle questioning them about whether their kid is good enough for the school’s dubious curriculum.

  McCuttle speaks quietly. “We never guaranteed that we’d be able to meet her needs. Only that we’d try. Please try to see the situation from our perspective. We don’t have classroom aides, we don’t get state funding, and Alex…does seem to command higher than her share of attention.”

  By now, Ethan can read exactly what’s in his wife’s eyes: some sort of panic. Zo came prepared for Shreya. But she wasn’t prepared for this.

  “Hold on,” Ethan says, then realizes he doesn’t know what to say next. Even if they can convince McCuttle to tough it out with Alex, what chances do they stand at receiving financial aid if the school doesn’t even want their kid?

  Ethan flashes to his first day at Kenyon—the way he’d stood there looking at all those rich kids getting out of their parents’ shiny, foreign cars. He’d looked down at his Sears-purchased chinos, then out toward his parents’ battered twelve-year-old Oldsmobile. He’d understood right away: he didn’t fit, didn’t belong, had no place there.

  He was an outsider. Until Randy decided he wasn�
�t.

  And now here’s McCuttle trying to turn their whole family into outsiders again—unwanted, not enough—and what can he possibly do about that?

  “If I may,” says McCuttle. He clears his throat again. “Perhaps these would be clarifying.” He lifts from his desk a manila file folder, filled with paperwork, holds them out.

  Ethan flips through them. There’s a stack of incident reports:

  Alex wrote “English sux” all over her textbook.

  Removed from class for repeated talking, even after six warnings.

  Refused to stop saying “Uranus” during science class.

  There are also a bunch of homework assignments, marked with red:

  Next time read the instructions.

  You only filled out half of this worksheet.

  Even your name is spelled wrong!

  The math assignments, in particular, demonstrate rising frustration on the teacher’s part:

  If you don’t show the work I cannot help you.

  Is this graph meant to be a joke?

  Nonsense!

  ENTIRELY WRONG.

  You are so far from getting the right answer, I wonder if you have paid any attention.

  Ethan sets down the papers, rubs his temples. To be honest, these comments seem to him at least as much an indictment of the math teacher as they are of Alex. Can McCuttle really not see how unhelpful these comments would be to a child? Maybe McCuttle is a giant phony. Maybe he doesn’t actually know a damn thing about education or kids. He’s like a variation of that old TV commercial: I’m not a real school administrator, I just play one on TV.

  And McCuttle is rejecting them?

  Ethan takes a deep breath. “Okay, let me get this straight. Alex left behind her old elementary school, all her friends. At your recommendation. And now you don’t even want—?”

  Zo interrupts. “She’sonthewaitlistatBostonChildren’s.” And then slower: “We’ve been trying for a while to get an evaluation from the pediatric neurology department at Boston Children’s Hospital. It’s the best in the country, the wait list is years long. What if I can get that appointment?”