Master Class Read online

  Note to self: Change tone. Take it down two octaves and a million decibels.

  “Hurry up, hon! Test today!” I say, this time with more sugar in my voice, wondering if I’m going to make it to my own job on time. I try leveraging the big sister, making her the bad cop. “Anne! Get your sister out here in two minutes. Matching barrettes or not.”

  This seems to work. Anne, when she isn’t nose-to-screen on her iPad, scouring the Q rankings of every boy in town for a homecoming dance date, is the responsible one. Always ready, always on time, always coming home after testing day with that insouciant little smile on her face and beaming when the app on her phone or tablet pings its pass alert later that night. It’s Freddie who stays in the bathroom, worrying over her bangs, washing her hands five more times than necessary. Once, I found her slouched over on the toilet, head between her knees, shaking, refusing to leave.

  “You have to, honey,” I said. “Everyone has to take the tests.”

  “Why?”

  Why? I tried to think of an answer that would calm her. “So they know where to put people.” And then, “You’ve always done fine.”

  What I never said was, “You’ve squeaked by each time. You’ll squeak by again.” That wouldn’t do a bit of good.

  Anne emerges from the hall, still glued to her iPad, swiping and pinching and expanding, reciting numbers. “Nine-point-one. Quel dud,” she says. “Oof. Eight-point-eight. Major dud.” And “Oh, Mom, you should see this one from that school in Arlington. He’s down to eight-point-two-six and doesn’t look like he could pass a blood test. Gag.”

  “Eight-point-three used to count as a B,” I remind her.

  “Not anymore, Mom.”

  She’s just like her father, I think, but I don’t say it out loud. As far as Anne is concerned, the sun rises and sets on—and probably revolves around—Malcolm. There is that, at least.

  “Where’s your sister?” I ask, buttoning my raincoat. Anne tells me she’s on her way.

  Anne’s silver bus, the one that goes to the top-tier school with the rest of the nine-point-somethings, has turned the corner and starts to slow, its stop-sign wings unfolding as it approaches the pickup point. There’s a trail of cars behind it, students clutching shiny identification cards in the backseats, waiting to be let out. A steel gray Lexus SUV, the first in line, pulls to the curb, and the rear door swings open. I’ve seen the girl before, at one of those parent-teacher days they hold at Anne’s school every fall. Today her hair hangs in thick, uncombed ringlets around her face, but enough of her eyes show that I can see the whites of them, the look of a frightened dog, when she catches sight of the yellow bus up the street.

  Anne joins me at the front window, backpack slung over one shoulder, silver passcard clutched in one hand, stretching the lanyard tight around the back of her neck. It looks something like a noose.

  “That girl,” I say, “she looks nervous.”

  “She shouldn’t be,” Anne says. “Sabrina’s Q is fine. Then, in a confidential whisper: “Not like Jules Winston. Jules barely passed last week’s advanced calculus test.” She takes a bite of apple, swipes again at her iPad.

  I turn away from the rain-sheeted window. “I thought results were supposed to be confidential.” But, of course, I know how kids are. I was in high school once.

  Anne shrugs. “They are. But the rankings aren’t. You know that.”

  Yeah. I know.

  “Anyway, Jules now has the lowest Q in the whole junior class, thanks to the calc test,” Anne says. “And she’s had three sick days this term. And she didn’t make the bus last Wednesday. And her mom got laid off, so the family income’s down. It all adds up.” Another bite of apple. Another swipe of her tablet. “If she doesn’t score some serious points, she’ll be on the green bus next week. Maybe that one by December.” Anne knocks her chin toward the yellow bus waiting in the rain. “A couple years in a yellow school and then it’ll be burger-flipping time for Jules.”

  “Anne. Honestly.”

  Another shrug. My older daughter is the queen of all things shrug these days. “Someone has to do it. At least until they finish automating all that shit. Looks like they’re picking up this morning. On our street. Weird.”

  Her tone is bland, journalistic. So much like Malcolm’s when he delivers his daily report on how many new state schools will be opening next month, or on the average Qs by state and city and school district. It’s something he does every night at dinner, as if we’re all interested. Anne usually sits next to him, never taking her eyes off her father, rapt by the numbers.

  Freddie’s a completely different story.

  THREE

  Anne’s out the door, iPad in one hand, silver card dangling from the lanyard around her neck. She’s five feet, five inches of confidence as she strides down the driveway toward the waiting bus. She passes the other girl—what was her name? Sabrina?—without so much as a greeting and joins a pack of neatly turned-out sixteen-year-olds who, like Anne, see failure as contagious.

  Sabrina doesn’t look fine to me, high Q rankings or not. She’s well turned out, hair glistening in the way only teenage hair can, uniform pressed to within an inch of its life. By the look of Sabrina’s ride, the girl’s got everything. But there are all kinds of handicaps, and even a bottomless pit of money doesn’t cure most of them.

  I don’t know what Sabrina’s brand of problem is, but I want to run out in the rain to where she’s standing under her umbrella. Give her a banana, an oatmeal bar, hot chocolate, a hug. I want to tell her failing a test doesn’t make her a failure.

  But it does. In this age, it does.

  One by one, the kids approach the silver bus, hold their cards up to be scanned. There’s a ping, shrill and piercing enough to be audible from across the street and through my living room window, whenever a new card grants access to the bus. Doors swing open, the student climbs aboard, and the doors close, waiting for the next one in line. You wouldn’t think high schoolers would be so organized, but there are rules to be followed. And there are laws to enforce those rules. They’re the real Child Catchers, I think, the men and women who write the laws.

  I should know. My husband is one of them.

  Sabrina is last, and her lips form a weak smile at the ping and the doors and the rain-free sanctuary of the bus. She looks backward once before boarding, takes in the full length of the street, all the way up to the Greens’ house, and the smile fades. Today she’s got a silver card. Next week, who knows?

  I don’t see Anne’s best friend, though, which is strange, since Judith Green is almost always the first to the bus, silver card ready to scan. It’s as if she lives and breathes for school, homework, book reports.

  Davenport Silver School students, this is your final call. Davenport Silver School bus is ready to depart. Final call for Davenport Silver School.

  “Call” isn’t the right word. The monotone, accentless fembot voice booming through the neighborhood should say it like it is. It should say “warning.”

  When the doors slide closed, there’s still no Judith Green.

  As the silver bus pulls away, a green one moves toward the empty space. Another line of cars waits in the rain, and a few of the neighborhood middle-graders tread through puddles. One jumps into a shallow pothole, spraying water everywhere, muddying up three of the kids closest to him. They only laugh—as children do.

  “Freddie!” I call. “Last warning, I swear.” The second I say the word I want to take it back.

  She finally comes into the living room, backpack weighing down her right shoulder, making her look more like the crippled Quasimodo than a healthy nine-year-old. Her face is old-womanly. Tired. She’s not swiping through tweets and snaps, not crunching an apple, not doing anything but staring past me, out the window, out at the waiting green bus.

  “What’s the matter, hon?” I say, pulling her to me, even t
hough I know damned well what the matter is.

  “Can I be sick today?” The words come out in a shudder, staccato, a space of air between each sound. Before I can answer, Freddie’s entire body is shaking in my arms. The backpack slides to the floor with a dull thump.

  “No, baby. Not today,” I tell her. “Tomorrow, maybe.” It’s a lie, of course. Illness requires verification, and even if I did manage to fake and report an elevated temperature by the six o’clock deadline tomorrow morning, a secondary check by Freddie’s school nurse wouldn’t show anything other than normal. And then Freddie would lose even more of the Q points she can’t afford to lose—the usual for the sick day, plus something extra for the failure to verify. Still, the best I can do is lie today and take it all back tomorrow. Anything to make sure she gets on the bus. “Come on, sweetie. Time to go.”

  Freddie turns in the time it takes me to catch my breath. One foot kicks the backpack across the room, and it lands on Malcolm’s peace lily, the one he’s been cultivating since before we were married. She goes from sobbing to hysterical in a split second. Malcolm will not be happy when he gets home.

  “I can’t go!” she says. “I can’t go. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t—”

  Holy shit.

  All of a sudden, we’re both on the floor, Freddie pulling at her hair, me trying to stop her before she does more damage. Wisps of blond are in her fingers, floating onto the carpet. I know it’s bad when she stops as abruptly as she started, when she begins rocking slowly back and forth like one of those animals on a spring they put in playgrounds. Her eyes are just as sightless and unfocused.

  I can’t touch her when she’s like this, no matter how much I want to.

  There should be a word for what Freddie is, I suppose, but I don’t know what that word would look or sound like. In my mind, she’s just Freddie. Frederica Fairchild, nine years old, sweet as sugar, no problems or hang-ups aside from the problems and hang-ups of any girl her age. She spikes a mean volleyball, gives Malcolm a run for his money at chess, loves everything except Brussels sprouts. But here she is, terrified because it’s testing day.

  Again.

  “Freddie,” I say softly, checking the line of students standing by the green bus. Only two of them are left, waiting to scan their cards and board. “Time to go.”

  Sanger Green School students, this is your final call. Sanger Green School bus is ready to depart. Final call for Sanger Green School.

  I could kill the fucking fembot.

  While Freddie collects herself, I gather up the kicked backpack, snatch a handful of Kleenex tissues from the box in the kitchen, and put the green ID card into Freddie’s hand. “You’ll do fine. I know it.”

  All I get is a silent nod. And not much of one. Christ, I hate the first Friday of the month.

  She’s out the door by the time the next-to-last kid boards the bus. Again, I tell her not to worry, but I don’t think she hears me. My coffee’s gone cold, and Malcolm’s stupid peace lily looks like a meteor hit it. I turn the planter so the really ugly part faces the wall and decide what lie I’ll tell my husband tonight. Not that it matters. Most of what I’ve told Malcolm for the past few years has been a lie, starting with the daily “I love yous,” and ending with whispered words on the rare occasions we have sex, always with a condom from the stash he keeps in his bedside table, always with a slathering of spermicidal jelly to ensure we won’t be making any more little ones.

  I haven’t lied to Freddie, though. I know she’ll do fine. After all, it’s supposed to be in her genes. The prenatal Q report I showed Malcolm confirmed that nine years ago.

  But that was another lie.

  I never went in for the test.

  FOUR

  I go into the kitchen to microwave my stale coffee. I can’t think about genetics anymore without remembering a conversation with my grandmother, not long after finding out I was pregnant with Freddie.

  It’s not a happy memory.

  “I don’t like this Q.” Oma poured herself a petite glass of schnapps, examined the level, and poured out another half inch. I unscrewed the cap on a water from the fridge before sitting down in the den with a belly that felt like a small tuna had decided to start growing in it. “I don’t like to say ‘hate,’ because a little bit of hate someday turns into a great amount of hate, but I hate this Q.”

  A month before, even a whiff of alcohol had sent me on a bathroom run. Now, it looked tempting.

  “Sure you don’t want a drop?” she asked. “It won’t kill you. Or the baby.” One hand reached out and gave me three quick taps on my sweater, which had already begun to stretch—a constant reminder that time was running out. “She’ll be fine. Like your father was, and like you were.”

  I hated when she patted my stomach like that. Besides, Oma was drowning out Petra Peller’s voice on the television.

  What’s your Q? Petra asked. She seemed to be looking straight at me.

  The bottle beckoned. Malcolm wouldn’t know—I could always use Oma as the scapegoat when he asked about the level of dark liquid. But someone would know. Someone in a sterile white room stuffed with urine samples from my doctor’s office. Someone with a yellow school education who got paid to sift through the effluvia of pregnant women and tick boxes. Someone who hated her job so much she wanted to take out that hate on another someone, especially the wife of the man who’d invented the tier system and the Q rankings and pushed the importance of both at every opportunity.

  And more important, what’s your baby’s Q? Petra continued.

  “What a lot of silliness,” Oma said. “A baby’s a baby. Who cares about its Q?”

  I wanted to say Malcolm gave a shit. Two or three, maybe.

  “Do we even know what this Q is?”

  I try to answer her as best I can, cobbling together pieces I’ve heard from Malcolm and the news. The algorithms have become so much more complicated than the initial grade-point-average equivalents they used to be. “It’s a quantifier, Oma. A quotient.”

  “Explain to me what is being quantified,” she says.

  “Oh—grades, of course. Attendance records and participation. The same things we’ve always calculated.”

  “And that is all?” There’s doubt in her voice.

  I continue ticking off the components I remember. “Parents’ education and income. Siblings’ performance. All the other Qs in the nuclear family.”

  “You also have this Q?”

  “Everyone of school or working age does. And each month it’s recalculated.” The fact is, I don’t even keep track anymore. My numbers have been in the high nine-point-somethings since the Q rankings rolled out a few years back. This is partly thanks to my own degrees, partly because I keep acing my teacher assessments. But I’m stupid to think the numbers are all my own—Malcolm’s position undoubtedly adds a few tenths of a point, maybe more. As deputy secretary in the Department of Education, he’s only one degree of separation removed from the president, for chrissake.

  Oma fiddled with her earpiece and then turned up Petra’s television pitch. Phrases came out from the screen like sharp little darts, piercing.

  . . . especially for those of us over thirty-five . . .

  . . . earlier is better . . .

  . . . a prenatal quotient gives women the information they need to make that all-important decision . . .

  . . . before it’s too late . . .

  A number flashed in red on the bottom of the screen, along with a website address of the Genics Institute, while Petra advised all mothers-to-be to sign up for a free consultation with one of the institute’s experts.

  “Here is something true,” Oma said, turning away from the television and facing me, “you really can’t tell what they are going to be. So you take a test, and the test tells you your baby will be ‘average.’ What does that mean? There is only one measure?” She
tipped her glass with a gnarled hand and went on. “When I taught art—oh, too many years ago—I had a student who could not make the change from a dollar. But she had different talents. Do you know where that girl is today?”

  I knew where the girl was. Fabiana Roman was in every gallery from coast to coast, or at least her paintings were. Malcolm once looked at the splattered canvases that were half–Jackson Pollock and half–Edvard Munch, with a sprinkling of Kandinsky thrown on top for good measure. He called them “degenerate.”

  “Maybe I should go in and have the test. Just to see,” I said, scribbling the number and URL on one of the parenting magazines from the coffee table.

  Oma reached over and snatched it from me.

  “What?”

  “Elena, tell me you are not seriously considering this,” she said. “The amniocentesis I understand.” She pronounced “amniocentesis” carefully, the unfamiliar concatenation of sounds tripping up her tongue. “But a prenatal intelligence test? Was this maybe Malcolm’s idea?”

  “No,” I lied.

  Of course we’d discussed the testing—several times. Each argument ended with Malcolm telling me it was my decision, whatever I thought best was fine, no pressure. I knew better, though. I knew exactly what Malcolm thought was best. I took a stab at justifying the Q business.

  “You know how it is, Oma,” I said. “Schools aren’t like they used to be.”

  She poured herself another glass of schnapps. “What do you Americans like to say? ‘Say me about it’?”

  I corrected her German-to-English translation. “‘Tell me about it.’ That’s how you say it.”

  “Say. Tell.”

  “I mean, would you want your kid in a third-tier school?” I said.