Q Page 18

  And I need to see my daughter. I need to tell her everything is going to be okay.

  The problem is, I’m not sure I believe it.

  Forty-Six

  An alarm sounds in a room I don’t recognize, and I bump my head on the ceiling. Again. Not an auspicious start to the day.

  Lissa is already up and dressed; Ruby Jo is in the kitchen rinsing out the glass of moonshine while I shake off a bad night’s sleep and pull on my gray uniform.

  On our way to the dining hall, we speculate about the meaning of the colored bands.

  “What color did your girl have on?” Lissa asks me.

  “Purple. And Freddie hates purple.”

  The dining hall last night was full of purple bands, some new like Freddie’s, others faded and frayed at the edges. I make a mental note to look more closely during breakfast.

  What a strange thing, that purple used to be the color of royalty. Now, if I’m right, it’s the color of failure. Bomb your test, win a purple band.

  “Only one boy had a dark blue one,” I say, redrawing the postdinner exodus scene in my head. “The boy in the wheelchair.”

  “So maybe that means handicapped,” Ruby Jo says. “And the pregnant girl wore red.”

  Get knocked up, win a red band, I think, the twentieth-century scarlet A.

  “What about orange? A few of the others are wearing orange,” I say, remembering a couple of girls whose backs were to me.

  Lissa checks her notepad. “Haven’t figured that one out yet.”

  We walk the rest of the way in silence, our foreheads creased in thought. Really, there’s not all that much thinking to do. The colors have meanings. Terrible meanings, like the mark of Cain. Or the scarlet letter.

  My grandmother detested things like this, any sort of badge or button that defines a person. As a girl, I only thought she was being mean when she tore off the green shamrock I came home with on St. Patrick’s Day, when she tossed the little Mexican flag our Spanish teacher gave us on Cinco de Mayo into the kitchen trash bin.

  “Don’t wear those, Leni,” she said. “Don’t ever wear them.”

  We never had symbols in our house. No crosses or crucifixes, no flags, nothing like that. A few of the girls at school wore pendants—a silver cross, a gold star, a shiny crescent. They seemed cool, but when I pointed to one in a shop window, Oma whisked me away.

  “Not for you, Elena. Never for you.”

  At eight, I didn’t understand. Green shamrocks and Mexican flags were what you pinned on for holidays. Sparkling jewelry, what you got to celebrate a first communion or a bat mitzvah or the end of something called Ramadan. For the next three years, I wore what I wanted during school, making sure to hide the forbidden things in my book bag before the bus dropped me off in front of our house.

  The fourth year, I stopped wearing them. It was the year Oma sat me down and told me about the colored patches.

  Yellow patches. Star-shaped patches. Pink and purple and brown and black patches in the shape of inverted triangles. Bars for repeated offenders.

  Lissa snaps me back to the present, to the dining hall now filled with children. “Remind you of anything?” she asks.

  Oma’s words ring in my ears. Where do you think my great-uncle Eugen got the idea?

  It doesn’t matter anymore whether Oma’s stories are her own or someone else’s. What matters most are the ideas that take hold, that move through cultures and time, repeating themselves with the help of people like Madeleine Sinclair. And Malcolm. And Sarah Green and everyone else, including me. I feel a sense of disgust when I think about humans turning against humans, one cold shoulder and one “my kid is better than your kid” at a time.

  Breakfast displaces my disgust, or at least transfers it. I wait in line for runny eggs (they must be powdered), orange drink from a mix (also powdered), and toast so dry it turns into powder when I try to butter it. The meal is a far cry from the offerings back at my silver school, where faculty and students happily dined on organic greens and free-range chicken.

  We take our seats at a free table, and no one joins us. I work on ignoring cold stares from the other teachers and audible whispers designed to reach my ears. That’s her, sure enough. That’s the one married to Mr. Education Reform. Serves her right to get demoted to this place. All the while I’m searching for Freddie at the long table of girls. She’s there, and I smile at her because it’s all a mother can do. Like the last time, Freddie brightens for a quick moment, and the light disappears from her face as she faces forward, head down, eyes on her plate.

  I don’t want to see her like this. I can’t.

  I want to see her in the high chair I took out of the attic. I want to see her smiling through a mask of puréed peaches, reaching out with a tiny hand for the Peter Rabbit spoon I bought before she was born. I want to see her happy and innocent, a baby who hasn’t yet been crushed with the weight of our world.

  “It’s a money thing,” Lissa says, bringing me out of the memory. “It has to be.” She takes a pen from her breast pocket, clicks it twice, speaks a few words into it. “Accounting. And document colors.”

  “What?” I say.

  “Never mind.” Lissa puts the pen away and pushes some rehydrated egg around her plate, the way Freddie sometimes does until bits of meat and vegetables morph into shapes and symbols.

  When Anne was younger, she taught Freddie the alphabet during dinner. Julienned carrots became As and Ls; strands of spaghetti curled into Cs and Qs and Ss. Malcolm, of course, hated the girls playing with their food.

  “They all learn differently,” I said while Freddie practiced.

  “She can learn with a pencil and paper.” Malcolm took away the plate and replaced it with a notepad. Freddie asked to be excused.

  It’s these small things that make me wonder what I ever saw in him, and why I let him tear me away from Joe, who would have let Freddie practice her letters on a rare Hepplewhite credenza if that’s what floated her boat.

  “Can I borrow your pen?” I ask Lissa.

  She does a funny thing. Instead of giving me the pen she’s holding, Lissa fishes out a spare from her purse and hands it to me.

  Ruby Jo watches while I scribble two simple sentences on a paper napkin. “Whatcha doing?”

  “Writing a note to Freddie.”

  I’ve barely spoken the words when Lissa’s hand clamps around my wrist, blurring the ink on my note. Her grip is strong, and it hurts where the band of my watch digs into flesh. She eases up when I wince, but doesn’t let go.

  “Don’t,” she says.

  “Why the hell not?”

  Lissa checks left and right and, apparently satisfied that Mrs. Underwood is preoccupied with watching over her flock, whispers, “Because I think our headmistress has a sadistic side.”

  “I can deal with it,” I say.

  Lissa shakes her head. “No, you don’t understand. She might not take it out on you, but you ain’t the only one here. Look.”

  I follow her gaze to a line of girls carrying their breakfast trays from the serving counter toward a table close to where we’re sitting. Ruby Jo does the same.

  “Do you see? Freddie’s right wrist?” Lissa says as the girls walk away from us.

  I see. But I don’t see my daughter’s delicate wrist. I see the ugly purple bruise circling it.

  My stomach cartwheels.

  For a long moment, all I see is red. The furious, blistering red of an anger I’ve never experienced and don’t know how to handle. A gash of anger; an open wound of absolute rage. Freddie’s my daughter. My daughter. Mine. There’s no method I have to process the idea of anyone laying hands on her perfect little body for any reason.

  “She’s so pink,” Anne said in the hospital room, moments after a nurse brought baby Freddie back in to me. They do that—take your babies away and, I don’t know, clean them or measure them or inject them with genius serum. I missed her in those few moments, and when the nurse laid her against my skin, I felt normal
again.

  Anne traced a finger down her sister’s arm. “So pink and tiny and perfect. It’s crazy when you think about it.”

  “She’ll get her scars, like everyone else. A half hour on her first bike and goodbye pink and perfect,” I said, still dopey from the drugs. “You can’t protect everyone. Not forever.”

  Anne had grown into big-sister role overnight. “I’ll protect her, Mom.”

  I smiled. Wouldn’t that be nice? I’m not even able to protect her myself.

  Before I know it, I’m running out of the dining hall, up one flight of stairs, and fifty yards down a hallway to the closest bathroom. Its white tile pattern spins in circles around me, and I fall to my knees. I’m not seeing the perfect pink skin of my baby anymore, only the marks of someone else’s angry hand on my daughter’s wrist.

  My daughter. Mine.

  Forty-Seven

  All I can think while I take my morning class through two of the three Rs is what I’m going to say to Malcolm when I call him this afternoon. And I will call him, even if it means sucking up to Alex Cartmill to get access to a phone.

  I saw my daughter’s arm. I saw the bruises. Malcolm might be in the running for Shittiest Father of the Year, but he’s still Freddie’s father. He’ll have something to say about the manhandling.

  It’s a temporary distraction listening to these kids take turns dissecting the short story we’ve just read through, a reminder of what I love about teaching. Or what I would love about teaching if I spent more time in front of a classroom actually doing that instead of preparing for monthly tests. My group this morning is a dozen sixth-graders, only a few years older than Freddie, and they’ve got questions.

  “It’s like the dog was smarter than the guy,” one boy says. “I mean, at least he knew enough to move on to another place and look for something better. And what kind of idiot goes walking alone in fifty degrees below zero anyway? Jeez.”

  The conversation about Jack London’s man and wild dog reminds me of the silverfish in the common room yesterday evening. Humans make choices; animals act on instinct. I wonder which species will survive.

  Mostly, I wonder what these kids are doing here. They’re too smart, too insightful, to have chances taken away from them. An image of the girl from the Starbucks flashes in my mind.

  “Miss?” the boy says. “What do you think?”

  I think you shouldn’t be here. “Well, I think it’s complicated, but you might be onto something.” What I want to say is, What kind of an idiot walks out on one daughter to go find another? Jeez.

  There is no knock on the classroom door, no warning, only the squeak of hinges, and Mrs. Underwood’s voice dismissing my students and telling me to come with her.

  Immediately.

  On goes my coat.

  I follow as many paces behind as I dare to as she leads the way back through the grounds, away from the education building and into the admin building. She’s muttering about work never being done and if it’s not one damn thing, it’s another. When we reach her office, two men are waiting in the hall. Underwood nods to them, offering the slightest of frowns.

  “I’ll be with you in a minute, Doctors,” she says. Then her door swings open and she inserts her mountain of a frame into the chair behind the desk. She tells me to take a seat, and I do.

  “Are we going to have a problem?” she says, sighing. “I told you I can’t make exceptions.”

  Probably. Most likely. Definitely. I don’t say any of this. After Lissa’s warning to stay on Underwood’s good side—or at least on her less bad side—I only smile and shake my head.

  School principals—which is all Martha Underwood is, whether she prefers Headmistress or Queen Bee or She Who Must Be Obeyed—fit neatly in the hard-ass, take-no-prisoners category. I’ve seen it. No kid wants to be hauled into the dreaded principal’s office, and most parents groan at requests to “come in to chat about your child.” Age of the audience aside, the school principal is usually not a pal, as the old spelling mnemonic went.

  But I do know this: You don’t take a head-of-school job because you hate children. Not usually.

  While Underwood goes on about rules and enforcement in her little corner of the world, I register her office. It’s a cold place, all polished wood and steel file cabinets, twin hard-backed chairs facing the broad desk that separates her from visitors. I stretch up in my chair and have a discreet peek at the area behind that desk, to check if there’s a platform or other method of raising her up. The two pieces of art on the walls are not the ubiquitous school-office motivation posters, Hang in there! or If you can dream it, you can do it!, but dark oil paintings of a fox hunt in progress. In one, the hapless fox is already cornered, baying hounds radiating from him like spectators at a gladiator match.

  Comforting.

  The only personal touch in this room is a small framed photograph of a younger Martha Underwood sitting on a beach towel with a boy of about ten. She’s nearly unrecognizable—thinner, smiling, tan. Nothing like the sour-faced matron sitting across from me.

  “Is that you?” I say, nodding toward the photograph.

  “Yes.” Underwood folds her hands on her desk.

  “Your son?”

  She nods, and squeezes her hands until the knuckles turn pale.

  “Where is he?”

  “Somewhere else.”

  Part of the anger I’ve felt toward her melts into sympathy; part of it stays intact. I don’t press on with questions, but I make up my own story, which may or may not be true. Unfit single mother, kid taken away, downward spiral to demotion and bitterness. It makes more sense to believe this.

  I don’t know whether she senses my questions, but she answers. “It’s a job, Dr. Fairchild. I get paid to do what I’m told. Exactly like your husband gets paid to do his work. There are rules, and I follow them.”

  Rules. Orders. What’s the difference? I think.

  She unfolds her hands and wills herself back into administrator mode. Cold, matter-of-fact. “Anyway, I received a call from your husband this morning. He took the early flight from Reagan National.” She checks her watch. “He’ll be here in an hour, so you might want to get ready.”

  I expected Malcolm would come to make me return home. I just didn’t expect it would be today. Now. In an hour, which is, more or less, my immediate future.

  “Thanks,” I say, and I stand up.

  Before I leave her office, she says, “We all do what we have to, Dr. Fairchild. Best advice I have is to try and get along.”

  I want to tell her that if getting along means going back to Maryland to live with Malcolm, I’d rather not, but I only nod before shutting the door and running back to the faculty residences, weaving my way between brick buildings and dodging the tree roots that have turned the paths into obstacle courses. The only humans in sight are small, distant figures out in the cornfields. Farm help, I guess.

  I need to talk this out before Malcolm arrives so I know how to play it.

  Ruby Jo and Lissa aren’t in the apartment when I arrive. The note stuck to the fridge says Gone for a walk before they lock us up again with a smiley face drawn instead of a signature.

  In a normal world, I’d call my mother. A neighbor. Dr. Chen, the chemistry teacher in my old silver school. Anyone with an ear and a mouth. In a normal world, I’d have a phone and a laptop and Wi-Fi at the nearest Starbucks. I’d tweet and Instagram and FaceTime until someone, somewhere, answered. What the hell, I’d grab the closest bike courier on the street and force-feed him my story.

  The problem with my current port of call is that I’ve seen exactly one telephone since I arrived, and it’s snugged up between a pencil sharpener and a stapler on Martha Underwood’s desk.

  Also, I do not look my finest.

  The gray shirt-and-skirt combo has more wrinkles in it than a shar-pei, and there’s a yellowish blotch of I don’t know what on my collar. My breakfast, most likely. After changing back into my blue dress and throwing the rest of
my clothes into my suitcase, I twist my hair into a horse’s tail, splash my face with icy water from the kitchen tap, and leave the apartment with my bags, taking the outside path around the admin building to give my heart a chance to downgrade to something like a regular beat.

  As soon as I see the taxi idling near the front entrance, I paint a smile on, straighten myself out, and rehearse the now, now, Elena, what in the world am I going to do with you? scene. I’ve already decided to make the best of it, to play along, as Mrs. Underwood said, until I can convince my husband to bring Freddie home.

  Malcolm is still in the backseat of the car, making no sign of either getting out or opening it for me, so I walk through weeds and puddles to the taxi, reaching out with my free hand to open the rear door. It cracks a few inches, and then Malcolm pulls it closed again.

  My smile twitches, straightens, and reverses itself into a confused frown as he shakes his head. Right, left, right, middle.

  Then he pulls a legal-sized envelope from his briefcase and passes it to me through the window.

  “You’re not getting out?” I say, even though I already know the answer.

  “My flight leaves Kansas City in three hours.” My flight. Not our flight. “I came to give you that,” he says, nodding at the envelope.

  “Long way to come to deliver a letter,” I say. The rain has started again. Fat drops fall on the label, smearing my name, blurring me. I tuck the envelope inside my coat before the name on it has a chance to disappear completely.

  “It’s quicker this way, Elena.”

  “How’s Anne?”

  “I need to go.”

  I say it again. “How’s my daughter?”

  Smug is the best word I can think of to describe him right now. Smug and superior and severe and every other goddamned S word. When Malcolm shakes his head this time, there’s no smile, no parental mock-impatience, nothing.

  “Elena,” he says, “you’re not fit to be Anne’s mother. You’re not fit to be anyone’s mother.”

  The taxi drives away, throwing back gravel and flecks of mud onto my shoes. I don’t see it make the turn toward the main gate, and I can’t tell whether the rain has blinded me or whether I’m unable to see through my tears.