by Ali Benjamin
Mr. McCuttle looks down at the floor.
“I’ll convince them to let us come in,” Zo presses. “They’ll do a whole workup, evaluate Alex on everything—medication, doses, behavior-management plans…”
Ethan had forgotten about that appointment. They’ve waited at least a year and a half by now.
Zo continues: “Until now, Alex’s medications have been managed only by her local pediatrician, not by a specialist. Her doctor’s wonderful, but she’s a generalist. For all we know she’s gotten the dosage wrong—maybe Alex isn’t even on the correct medicine. The experts at Boston Children’s will know, they’ll be able to tell us. If we can just get that appointment, maybe we can—”
She breaks off, takes a deep breath, and stares at Mr. McCuttle.
“Please,” she finally says. “At least let us try. At least let us hear from the experts before you make any final decisions.”
Neither Zo nor Ethan speaks as they walk to the car. They’re silent as they buckle in, as Zo drives down the Rainbow Seed drive. Ethan watches the painted murals get smaller and smaller in the side-view mirror.
It’s only when the Rainbow Seed School disappears entirely from view that Zo says flatly, “That was an ambush. A total fucking ambush.”
“It was definitely not what I expected.”
“Didn’t I tell you Shreya had it in for Alex? Didn’t I tell you that, Ethan?”
“You did.”
“I just didn’t think it would happen this quickly, that’s all. I didn’t think the school would be so quick to jump on board. Like it’s already a fait accompli.” Zo presses on the accelerator, takes a curve a little too fast.
Ethan starts to say maybe it’s for the best, that it’s not clear that Alex is learning anything, and they are spending an awful lot on tuition these days. But he’s struck by a memory, something from back in kindergarten, during Alex’s Star Wars phase: He’d picked her up from school, and the teacher had pulled him aside. “Mr. Frome, you really shouldn’t let your daughter watch Star Wars anymore,” she said. She looked around, then added in a stern whisper, “Alex is playing shooting games.”
Ethan had felt like the world’s worst parent for about two weeks, until he’d observed something curious: every little boy on the school playground played shooting games, and nobody seemed to say a thing.
Now, to his wife, he says, “Sometimes I wonder if people would respond differently to Alex’s behavior if she were a boy.”
“Oh, you think?” A bit too much sarcasm in Zo’s tone, in his opinion. Zo rounds another curve without slowing, then says, “Yes, of course they’d respond differently. Obviously. They’d say, ‘boys will be boys,’ they’d declare that our kid has a future in comedy, they’d ask everyone to be patient, boys don’t mature as quickly as girls. That’s how they’d respond.”
“But…they can’t do that,” Ethan presses. “That’s sexist.”
“Misogynist,” Zo corrects. “And welcome to my world, Ethan.”
Ethan hates how helpless he feels, hates that McCuttle, that singsonging nitwit, that poseur, doesn’t see his own double standard. And the man can get away with it, too, simply because he’s the one with the power.
By now, Zo is careening along Corbury Road at what seems to Ethan a harrowing speed. She begins to imitate Shreya: “I assume you don’t remember this, but tonight is Parents’ Night. Did you hear her, Ethan? I mean, did you even hear her?”
“I did,” Ethan answers, as if his wife is actually asking him whether he heard, as if maybe he hadn’t been sitting right there in the room, right next to her. “Maybe slow down a little?” he suggests. But the closer they get to home, the more furious Zo grows…and the more frantically she drives. By the time they cross the border into Starkfield, Zo’s going all Indy 500 along the narrow two-lane road.
“It took your daughter weeks to apologize.” Zo takes a left curve so fast, Ethan’s right shoulder slams against the passenger door.
“Seriously, Zo. Slow down.”
“I think the world needs more love, not less.” Zo yanks the wheel to one side, then another. Ethan’s body follows, like one of those crash-test dummies in a driver-safety video.
“I was an anthropology major at Wellesley.” Slam, his shoulder’s pressed against the door.
“Zo. This is way too fast.”
“I’m trying very hard to be civil here.”
Ethan places his hands against the dash, presses his foot into an imaginary brake. By now, they’re nearing the Corbury Road construction zone. An orange sign—slow: construction 1500 feet—comes into view. Zo whooshes right past it. Then another sign: caution: roadwork ahead.
Zo doesn’t so much as tap the brakes.
Must be lunchtime, because none of the neon-clad construction workers are out there, thank God. No forklift drivers, no loaders or diggers or dump trucks, no police officers in their neon vests, earning their time and a half as days turn into years. There’s just a long stretch of orange cones lined up like toy soldiers.
Work zone: speed fines doubled. Zo grits her teeth, sneers, “I call ’em like I see ’em.”
It’s only when she’s bearing down on the cones that she finally hits the brakes. Tires screech on asphalt. Ethan feels his seatbelt cinch as the Subaru comes to a sudden stop. Thud.
Ethan watches a single orange cone sail into the air. It rises, arcs, descends, a perfect parabola. The air smells like brake fluid, like burning rubber.
The cone bounces on the ground a few times then comes to rest on its side. He and Zo turn to stare at each other, stunned.
One side of Zo’s mouth curls slowly into a smile. She throws the car into reverse.
The car hurtles backward, ten yards, twenty. Zo presses her lips together, then shifts into drive and guns the accelerator. The car blasts forward like they’re in the chase scene of a movie, except that doesn’t make sense because this is Zo, and she doesn’t even like movies with car chase scenes.
Bam. Bam. Bam. Zo hits one orange cone, then another, then the next. She slams every cone in their path, a dozen of them maybe, all the way down the line. She’s like Thelma without a Louise, or maybe one of those new girl Ghostbusters, cackling with laughter while blowing the ordinary world to smithereens.
Ethan meets his own eye in the passenger-side mirror, as if his image were a friend with whom he could commiserate with a single glance, the way he once did with Zo. What the hell is happening here? he asks his reflection.
The reflection responds with wide eyes. No idea.
He asks: What am I supposed to do?
Tell her to pull over. Tell her you’ll drive. Tell her this isn’t okay.
And then it says, Whoops, too late. Because apparently, the cops in orange vests have been there the whole time, sitting in their car on their lunch break, just slightly out of view.
Even before Zo’s reached the final cone, the sirens have already started to wail.
* * *
—
There are two officers. From the passenger’s seat, Ethan watches them emerge, notices the cautious way they step out of the cruiser, all stormtrooper boots and mirrored sunglasses. They approach the Subaru with hands on their holsters. When they see Zo behind the wheel, their shoulders visibly relax.
The bigger one does the talking. He’s all paunch and beef, this guy. His badge catches the sun as he flashes it. “License and registration?”
This cop is older than Ethan, or at least less in shape, maybe had a few too many beers with the guys over a few too many years. Behind him stands a younger kid, baby-faced. A constellation of pimples still dots his chin.
“Are you aware that you hit a few cones, ma’am?” asks Beefy.
Hit a few cones. All of the cones are strewn across the road haphazardly. The place looks like it was hit by a hurricane, a tornado. Maybe a war.
“I am aware. Yes.” Zo opens the glove compartment, then her wallet, handing the man the paperwork.
Beefy glances down at her registration. “And do you know that in Massachusetts, fines in work zones are doubled?”
“I believe I read that on a sign.”
Ethan stares out at the cones. Yes, he thinks: more like a war. All those orange corpses. Lying where they fell.
The cop looks over her license. “Zenobia Frome.” He sounds it out. “Ze-NO-bee-ah. Interesting name. Well, Mizz Zenobia Frome, are you also aware that your license has expired?”
Ethan’s heart sinks. What’s this going to cost?
Beefy passes the paperwork to the younger kid, who walks it back to the cruiser without a word. Beefy removes his glasses, peers a little closer at Zo. “Ma’am, have you had any alcohol in the last few hours?”
“Not a drop.”
“Any marijuana in your system?” He pronounces it with five syllables: Mary-Joo-Wah-Nah.
“No.”
“Any other substances?”
“Just cortisol and bile,” Zo answers. “My drugs of choice these days.”
The cop’s eyes are sharp and quick.
“No,” she says, quieter this time.
From the cruiser, Ethan can hear muffled voices over the radio. Static, then more voices, too garbled to make sense of. Beefy stands there like he’s making a decision. In the distance, a cloud of swallows lifts off from a tree, twists and swirls in formation before swooping down again.
“Mrs. Frome,” Beefy says. “Please step out of the car.”
Ethan watches through the windshield as the cop commands Zo to recite the alphabet. “Start at V and go backward.” She does it surprisingly well, eyes straight ahead. Then the cop holds a single index finger in the air, tells her to follow its movement. She does: left, then right, up, then down. When that’s done, Zo walks a straight line, heel-to-toe-to-heel. Zo’s still in her gym clothes, fleecy running tights, a thick ribbed cardigan, hits at mid-thigh, covering her faded Sarah Lawrence tee.
Finally, the cop pulls out a tube: a breathalyzer. It’s like the guy can’t quite believe that anyone would drive like Zo while stone-cold sober. After she passes, he frowns. He commands Zo to place her hands where he can see them, and wait where she is. He returns to the car, peers in at Ethan. “Your wife always drive like that, Mister?”
For some reason—maybe it’s the look on Zo’s face, that cool stare, or her absolute stillness—Ethan feels a little desperate, like there’s something he needs to ward off, some kind of foreboding he can’t quite name. Ethan leans toward the steering wheel, smiles at the cop apologetically. He wants to connect, show this guy that the two of them are on the same team, just as he was attempting to do with McCuttle a short while ago. “This might be my fault, sir,” Ethan says.
“Your fault.” A statement. Skeptical.
There’s no ring on the guy’s finger, but years ago, at a bar in New York, Ethan had struck up a conversation with an off-duty officer. The man said that guys on the force rarely wear wedding rings—ostensibly to protect their families from the criminal element, though (he’d elbowed Ethan at this point) appearing unmarried had other advantages too. Ethan sizes up Beefy now; he’s definitely old enough to have had a wife, at least one, even if he doesn’t anymore.
“I was kind of…you know…giving the wife a hard time. Making fun of her driving.” Ethan makes a point of wincing, like he’s cringing at his own boorishness. “Teasing her about women drivers and such. Made her angry, I guess. Lesson learned. I’ll pick up the cones if you’d like.”
Zo’s face is impassive. He can just make out the slow rise and fall of her breath. Ethan can’t tell if she’s heard his falsehood or not.
Babyface returns to the car, hands his partner the registration and license. “She’s clean,” the kid says. “Other than that expired license.”
Beefy taps the license against the registration a few times. Then he turns to Zo. “Okay, Zenobia Frome. I’ll let you off with a warning this time.”
Ethan exhales inside the car. “Thank you,” he whispers—as much to the universe as to the cop himself.
“Your husband’s going to need to take the wheel,” Beefy tells Zo. “I advise you to renew that license today. And in the future, remember, will you? When you see orange cones, you’re supposed to avoid them, not aim for them. This isn’t target practice.” He chuckles at his own joke.
Maybe Ethan and Zo, too, will have a good laugh about the whole thing on the way home. Every single cone! Ethan will say. Ten points! Twenty! Nailed every one! This can become one of those stories they tell and retell, to themselves and to others, their voices rising and falling together in a practiced duet, until the whole thing becomes cemented into legend.
Before any of that can happen, though, Zo needs to get in the car. Which, for some reason she’s not doing.
Ethan’s vague foreboding gives way to something stronger. Some sort of dread. Get in the car, Zo.
Please just get in the car, Zo.
On the other side of the windshield, Zo says something to the cop, Ethan can’t hear what. Ethan doesn’t like the way the man’s head tilts, slightly and suddenly like he’s newly alert to some lurking danger.
Get in the fucking car, Zo.
Beefy asks, “Excuse me?”
Zo speaks again, louder this time: “I’m supposed to be grateful now?” A pause. “I should thank you for merely having condescended to me, instead of, say, harassing me, or arresting me, or worse?”
The cop is motionless. His eyes flick to his partner’s, then back to Zo. “Ma’am. I’m not sure what you’re suggesting.”
“I’m just wondering,” Zo’s voice is level, “whether you’re this quick to let everyone off with a warning, or if my good fortune today is a result of being, I dunno, who I am, rather than whatever I did or didn’t do.”
Christ on a cracker, as Randy would say
“Lady.” The cop’s voice is guarded. He’s warning her. “In case you don’t realize it, I’m letting you off easy here. This could be a lot more painful.”
“Oh, I absolutely realize that,” Zo says. “You’re giving me the criminal justice equivalent of a nice little pat on the head. I’m just wondering why, that’s all. Could it be because you and my husband shared a nice little bonding moment? Or because my lady parts have aged out of any possible interest…”
Beefy’s already taking a step backward, hands up, like he’s the one at risk of arrest. “Hey, hey, no one said anything about your lady parts.”
“Or perhaps there’s something…else…that makes me seem harmless, docile, less of a threat than another person might in the exact same circumstances.”
The guy blinks, trying to catch up. “You’re saying I should consider you a…threat?”
“No. I’m saying that in America, white drivers like me are significantly more likely to get off with just a warning than, say, Black or Latino drivers.”
Ethan does his best to communicate to his wife telepathically. Shut. The fuck. Up. But even as he thinks this, he has a sinking feeling. Why would she listen to his telepathy, when she no longer listens to the things he says out loud?
Zo continues, as if delivering the world’s most ill-timed book report: “We’re also half as likely to have our cars searched during traffic stops.” A pause. “For whatever that’s worth.”
“Do you want…”—the cop scratches the back of his neck, squints at her—“to be searched?”
“What I want,” Zo replies, “is equal justice, equitably applied in America.”
Ethan closes his eyes, imagines All Them Witches chanting to their usual crowd of no one on the Starkfield village green: What do we want? Equal justice equitably applied! When do we want it? Well, it would have been nice to have it several centuries ago, if we
’re being completely honest!
Something in the cop snaps. He leans down and talks to Ethan through the car window. “Okay, Mr. Frome. We’ll be taking your charming wife down to the station now. You can pick her up there after she’s been booked.”
And then Beefy’s reading Zo her Miranda rights, she has the right to remain silent, she has the right to an attorney, as Babyface slaps cuffs on her wrists. As the kid steers Zo toward the cruiser, Ethan realizes he has no clue what he’s supposed to do. He opens his car door, pokes his head over the top, and yells, “Should I follow you?”
It’s Zo who answers. “No,” she shouts over her shoulder. “I need you to call for that appointment.”
“Appointment?” This is all happening so fast, Ethan’s lost track of everything.
“For Alex,” Zo says. “The one at Boston Children’s!”
“But what about…you?”
“Call Jackie. She’s an attorney, she’ll know what to do. You just get that appointment for Alex, okay?” Zo’s got one leg in the back of the cruiser, but the cops aren’t pushing her in. They’re letting her have this conversation, this husband-and-wife back-and-forth, logistics and to-do lists and division of labor, unremarkable under any other circumstance.
“Who’s Jackie?” Ethan shouts.
Zo looks exasperated—with him! She looks exasperated with him! “Thin, blond, runs a lot. Jesus, Ethan, it’s been almost two years, how do you not know any of their names yet?”
Oh. Okay. She means Runner Mom. Jackie is Runner Mom.
Zo turns to the cops. “Seriously? You’re allowing me to have a conversation with my husband? This is a privilege you extend to everyone that you arrest, I assume?”
The cops look at each other in disbelief.
“Wait!” Ethan shouts. “What’s Jackie’s last name?”
“Watters! She’s in my contacts!” Then to the cops: “So you’re really just letting me do this, huh?”