Nanny Returns (15 page)

I swallow, guessing the fire sale of gold didn’t go far. “Of course.”

“He’s been extremely busy.”

“Yes. Or perhaps that lawyer your friend mentioned could do it for you?”

“No, I’m not calling a lawyer. It’s not just your possessions they itemize, but every decision you’ve made. I’m not handing over the life we built for scrutiny.”

“No, of course,” I say, having no idea what I’m validating. We both pivot to where the doorknob is turning again. “What now?”

It swings open with Grayer attached, head tucked. The sweet aroma hits me before he’s even set foot in the kitchen.

“Oh, Grayer,” his mother mutters with annoyance. He gives a cursory wave, eyes on the floor. “
Why
can’t you use the front door?” Fingers again working a Sidekick, Darwin strolls in behind him. “Darwin!” She perks up, her game face returning. “Hello! How’s your mother?”

“Recovering from the Palm Beach Easter festivities. Such a treat to see you, Mrs. X. You’re looking lovely as always.” He is all charm. Charm and bloodshot eyes.

She blushes and fluffs herself at his attention. “How your mother can leave such a delightful son to live all the way down there I’ll never understand.”

“It’s Dad’s congressional district—gotta press the local flesh, right?” He sounds like a politician himself.

“Of course,” she demurs. “Well, if you ever get lonely rattling around that big old apartment all by yourself, we’re happy to have you anytime, you know that. Come in and say hello to my friends?” she coquettishly entreats over her shoulder as she returns to the living room.

The moment she’s out of sight, Grayer leans back against the refrigerator, dropping his head to his chest. “You’re such a fucking kiss-ass.”

“Fuck you, douche.” Darwin peels back cellophane; he cups one hand to his damp blazer and uses the other to plunder cookies.

Grayer lifts his head, focusing in on me. “You’re here.”

“You’re high.”

He smiles, eyes slit.

“Well, now that we’ve got that sorted.” Darwin heads for the living room and a round of coos go up to greet him.

“You two are still friends?” I ask.

“Looks that way.” Grayer steps forward, gripping the granite to stare down at the platters.

“You know he’s started this shitty site against a really good teacher?”

“Yeah. But how do you?”

“It’s on the web. The world can know about it.”

“If anyone cared.” He picks up a cookie and snaps it in two before returning both halves to the tray. “Can we not talk about this? I’m sure Stilton’s waiting for you.”

“Actually I was hoping to grab you. He seems pretty tuned in that something’s wrong, Grayer. Maybe it would be better for him to just know?”

He looks over at me. “Not until my dad calls and tells me what the plan is. You just work on that poem and make sure Stilton is ready to charm his fucking socks off.” And with that he leaves.

12

The next morning, realizing I’m mumbling the wretched “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” under my breath, I spot Ingrid approaching under cover of her striped umbrella and wave from the dry security of my own. “Hey!”

She straddles a large puddle to join me in the doorway of La Perla. “Hi.”

“Sorry, I could’ve sworn this was a diner last time I was over here, but that was an embarrassingly long time ago and I think, actually, a few blocks south.”

“It’s fine!” Her tone is cheerful, her eyes are not.

“There’s the Little Pie Company a few stores down, but it’s probably early for that.”

“It’s fine,” she repeats as she jumps back across the puddle, and we scurry through the rain and into the bakery, where the warm, sweet air saturates our damp clothes.

She turns to me as we shed our wet coats and hang them on the under-counter hooks. “I’m really mortified by what a mess I was in Gene’s office on Friday. I just wanted to tell you in person I don’t strive for that.”

“Trust me, Ingrid, we’ve all been there.” I take in the black suit she’s chosen in exchange for her usual trapeze sweaters and corduroys. I’m sure, with this choice of armor, she was aiming for professional, but the effect is severe. Given how caustic she appeared, I would have advised going for sweet and disarming—a baby bunny costume, perhaps. “I just want to reiterate I’m really sorry for any role I played in the confusion.”

“Thanks.” She smiles back, again from a distance, as she climbs on her stool and clasps her hands on the Formica. I glance over the menu in the challenged search of an item that won’t leave me in a sugar coma for this afternoon’s rehearsal with Stilton. “How’d it go yesterday?”

“Good. Weird. In U.S. history they’re presenting their midterm research projects, so I can just sit in the back and listen. In homeroom the kids were really quiet …I think. I can’t tell what’s my own paranoia.” She fidgets with the edge of her menu. “I had to have my fiancé disconnect our Internet on Friday night so I couldn’t keep checking which students were joining the club.”

“It’s still up?”
I ask, shocked.

“I talked to a lawyer friend this weekend, showed him the site. He said it’s fully actionable. But Gene’s still fact-finding,” she says acidly. “Testing the waters, taking temperatures. Yesterday he threw around just about every cute metaphor to mask inaction you can think of.”

“Well, I guess it’s complicated.”

“It shouldn’t be,” she levels back.

“Of course, you’re right.” I blush. “Completely right. In my day they’d have been expelled so fast they’d already be enrolled at one of those schools that advertise in the back of
The New Yorker.
”

“It’s
insane.
We’re teaching these kids that the rules don’t apply to them, that exception is their birthright. That’s
exactly
who I want ten years from now running my bank, editing my news, deciding on my health care for real.” She pauses and looks down at her menu, tucking a swoop of bangs over one ear. “Sorry, sorry.”

“Ingrid.” I lower her menu. “You’re in a shitty, shitty situation. I’ve been in shitty, shitty situations. Situations that seemed—that probably were—impossible to navigate without getting scraped up, at
best
. I just …don’t want you to have to do this alone. I know you’re required to train with me now, but let’s try to see this as an opportunity. I have Gene’s ear and I really want this to work out for you. And for the students you teach.”

An electronic rendition of “Ride of the Valkyries” pipes up from her coat.

“Sorry, that’s the school.” She roots around in the folds and withdraws her cell from the coat pocket. “Hello?” She listens for a moment. “It’s Jeff. Four more sites posted last night.” Her eyes go wide. “Targeting four other teachers,” she says to me. “And he’s one of them.”

By the end of the day, the waiting room outside Gene’s office is getting a workout that would do its decorator proud, with students slouched on every tufted surface. Deprived of their phones, they resort to telegraphing with jerks of brows and slants of eyes, a silent symphony of expression as fourteen faces await their turn, all guilty of founding membership to inflamatory, frequently grammatically incorrect, and—as Ingrid wants to force them to confront—litigable pages on social networking sites.

I step between their long legs to Janelle, whose patience is wearing thin, both with me and the crisis that has kept her besieged well after hours. “Hi again! Any chance you can get me a quick five minutes with Gene between trials so I can advise the teachers and they can head home?”

Her face is impassive. “If they stop sending kids in here, we can all go home.”

“I’m sorry, I know you must be so ready to get out of here, too.”

“My sister is watching my daughter. She has to leave for work in an hour. It takes me that long to get back to the Bronx and another twenty minutes to walk to her apartment from the train. So, yes. You could say I was ready.”

“That’s asinine!” Grant booms from behind Tim’s office door, jerking everyone’s attention to where he’s commandeering a meeting of flustered parents and trustees.

“I’m so sorry.” I turn back to Janelle. “Maybe I could have one of the teachers man your desk?”

“Gene won’t go for that.” She picks up her red cell with a faded Chiquita banana sticker on it and checks the time again, sighing. “Look, your best bet is to wait and grab him next time he breaks.”

“Thanks.” I drum my fingers on my hips, gauging how long I can leave the teachers festering in the library before they return to catastrophizing what is, to their credit, a catastrophe.

The door to Gene’s office opens and he emerges, resting his hands on his braided leather belt, having discarded his blazer hours ago. Tim comes out behind him, looking pained. “Okay.” Tim clears his throat. “Here’s what’s happening. Next up the Homos Love Phelps’s Tight Sphincter Club followed by Mrs. Twill Teabags Nazis.”

But as the kids start to stand, Cliff Ashburn returns from the hall, slipping his BlackBerry back in his pocket. He crosses through their mess of long legs to rap on Tim’s office door. Grant opens it, but Cliff is already walking away past the mantel. “Why doesn’t everyone come into Gene’s office,” he says loudly enough to carry, “and they can resume dealing with the kids after we’ve left.” The students stare as their parents shuffle, like livestock in a shoot, from Tim’s office into Gene’s. Last one to slip in, I shut the door.

“We have some questions.” A woman outfitted in an array of patterned Tory Burch, from T-tipped toe to T-topped head, steps forward.

Gene looks to Cliff and Cliff holds out a palm for him to answer. “Absolutely, shoot.” Gene takes his place in front of his desk, rubbing his hands together.

“How will this incident be addressed on our children’s transcripts?” she asks.

“Well, let’s see …cited as a suspension for an ethics violation, I guess.”

“What ethic has been violated?” Another woman steps forward. “My child is
not
applying to colleges next year with a suspension on his applications.”

“That’s not what fifty thousand a year in tuition and donations adds up to, Gene,” a father states, loosening his tie.

“I can’t only take down the web pages,” Gene says plaintively. “They’ll just continue to proliferate and we’ll all be back here in a week—”

“What about the
school’s
ethics violation?” Grant demands.

“What about my child’s privacy?” T-patterned woman continues with growing outrage. “What about
their
right to express themselves? What about the fact that your staff read what’s considered someone’s
diary
?”

“It’s inappropriate. It’s outrageous.” A mother holds her hand to the elaborately beaded glass and wire necklace tied at her throat.

“Well . . .” Gene sucks in his lips. “We did tell them that they were accountable for the students’ virtual lives . . .”

“A metaphor!” Grant scoffs. “We didn’t mean
literally
. We meant they should have a handle on things.”

“I think”—I step forward from where I’ve been leaning against the door—“that intention might have been obscured by Mr. Twomey’s step-by-step technical instruction. The teachers were definitely under the impression that this was their mandate.” I strive for the tone of a well-rested stewardess.

Cliff clears his throat. “Well, the faculty are off the sites as of now. Off-limits. There, done.” He tugs at the points of his French cuffs, posing the question: If a kid pulls down his pants in the virtual woods and no one’s there to see it …can he still get into Harvard?

Sheila crosses her arms. “The larger crisis at hand is what we plan to do about the spin.”

“The spin?” Gene squints as he scratches at the five o’clock shadow peeking out around his chin.

“Yes. These kids have friends, siblings, and half siblings at other schools. You just need one kid to tell their parent and word will spread. As we just decided, we’re not going into the benefit this Saturday with fifteen students suspended. It makes our student body seem—uncouth. We have to be proactive about putting this story into the community or it will bite our reputation in the ass.”

Everyone looks wildly at one another. Not the ass!

Although, as I well know, having attended one of these schools myself—albeit at a time when the tuition was such that my classmates’ parents included a librarian, an artist, two nurses, and one dance teacher—these parents see the aforementioned fifty thousand as an investment in the brand their children will be wearing for life, trotted out at every job interview and cocktail party; it will buy them entrée into colleges, clubs, and gated communities. For the reputation of the school to suffer, it would be as if they walked out of Bergdorf’s with their ten-thousand-dollar bags dangling off their elbows, only to find them being sold on the street for twenty bucks.

“First thing tomorrow morning Gene and I will sit down with the Alumni Relations Department. And to that end I’d like to propose that perhaps we’ve misread the situation altogether.” Sheila sits down on the couch, exchanging a glance with Cliff as she talks, picking off a stray piece of dust from the calf of her black cigarette pants. “I think, as we identified Friday, this is the work of one teacher. One teacher who was teaching too experimentally and the lines of appropriate discussion got blurred. Our children were …confused.”

“Sorry?” I ask. “I think now I’m confused.”

“Yes, Ingrid Wells should explain herself,” Cliff echoes, breezing past my query.

“In the school paper,” Sheila says slowly, decisively. “We’ll do a special edition that comes out tomorrow. Parents will read it. Discuss it with their friends who have children at the other schools. By Saturday night, it will have framed the conversation in the community.”

Gene looks to me and I shake my head no. He fumbles. “I see where you’re coming from, Sheila …Ingrid is …I don’t know that she’ll be amenable to—”

“This is our name. We risk impacting our capital campaign,” Cliff states simply.

“Our
helipad
.” Necklace Mother shakes her head in horror at the prospect.

“Or our headmaster’s apartment,” Grant says, bringing it home. “That would be a shame.”

“I have to
what
?” Ingrid asks me for the third time in as many minutes.

I look out at the drawn faces of the teachers, sitting in the illogically mood-lit periphery of the student library on a smattering of cowhide beanbags. Knees forced to their chins, they stare at me from the shadows, their eyes glowing like mice. I crouch so as not to be towering. “Write a letter for the student newspaper explaining how the lines of appropriate discussion were blurred in your classroom—they’re bringing in the editors as we speak—so they can print a special edition for tomorrow to circulate before the benefit.”

While Ingrid parses this out, an older woman with a steel gray man’s haircut sighs heavily and attempts to cross her loafers, only sinking further in a shoosh of Styrofoam beads.

A man my father’s age thuds his mug down on the floor and lumbers to stand, the bag beneath him concave from his girth. “The board chose to sell the air rights to our beautiful—”

“Historic!” pipes Man Haircut.

“Yes, historic midtown building so we could work here at this—this South Beach spectacle. Fine, that’s their goddamn decision. They were banging day in and day out, gassing us with paint fumes so they can have their precious convocation on the roof with the Shakespeare garden and—”

“Helipad.” Jeff smirks.

“Yes, right. The helicopter pad so our students need not be bothered with debasing themselves in limos out to their country estates. The teachers’ lounge has been requisitioned as a meditation room for the students, spring break is a mandatory College Recommendation Letter Conference, and then the health-care cuts. My wife is on medication and I’m on a teacher’s salary with a mortgage and two kids in college. The board wants to call it corporatizing? Well, we call it unconscionable.” The teacher, who is increasingly bringing to mind Jason Robards, pulls his freckled hands from his tweed blazer’s pockets. “Now to have them indulge this humiliation, to
validate
it, well, I just …we
have
to put our foot down.” Everyone erupts into applause.