Bonnie suddenly remembered something Mike had said about his first conversation with the Sales. “Your father was in the FBI, wasn’t he?”
Sondra nodded. “He was an agent. He’s retired now. We moved a lot, and we kept changing our names.”
“Because he did undercover work?”
Sondra nodded.
“It sounds very interesting.”
Sondra said nothing.
“Was it?”
“No. It was lonely.”
Bonnie nodded. “Of course. I should have thought of that. I hope you have brothers and sisters, at least, to keep you company?”
“I had a brother, Craig.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Bonnie, sympathetic.
“Why?”
“You said ‘had.’ Did he die?”
“I don’t think so. He was kind of an asshole, and he and my dad fought a lot. So he joined the navy when he was sixteen and we never saw him again.”
Bonnie stared at her, searching for signs of anger or distress. But Sondra was very matter-of-fact. So she had a violent father? So a violent husband seems normal?
“You couldn’t find him if you wanted to?”
“I tried once. After he left we moved a few more times. And changed our names. So he couldn’t ever come home. But when I got to Chicago a man told me how to get the navy to help me find him. And we tried, but he’d been discharged six years. They had an address and I wrote, but it came back.”
“This is a sad story, Sondra. It makes me feel like crying.”
Sondra looked at her, surprised. And then it seemed, grateful.
“Yeah, I was sad.”
After lunch Chandler said to Henry and Emily that he had to be going. Driven mad, no doubt, said Henry, by having to listen to “All My Exes Live in Texas.” Henry and Emily and David painted their fence by themselves. At one point Henry went to get cold beer. When he came back he said, “Do you know that fart Chandler didn’t go home at all—he’s over at Primary helping make a rock garden?”
“That hurts my feelings,” said Emily, opening her beer.
“I thought it would.”
They worked side by side in comfortable silence. Emily liked that. Tom Dahl, her ex-husband-elect, couldn’t stand a conversational vacuum. And Henry was good with tools. Tom couldn’t plug in a lamp without banging his head or hurting himself. Thank god he’d become a dermatologist, not a surgeon, Emily thought.
Henry brought up the subject of career changes, which Emily thought was a nice thing to call having your life blown up in midstream because your husband wants to marry a woman called Bannany. He made her feel it was exciting to be choosing a career when she was old enough to know what she would really enjoy doing.
Emily said she might like to write or take a degree in psychology.
“Why not both?” Henry said.
“Indeed, why not?” Emily said and smiled.
“My own plan,” said Henry, “is to open a bed-and-breakfast in the Seychelles.”
“You want to give up surgery?”
“I want to go where there are no brains at all.”
“Will Rue like it?”
“She is greatly looking forward to it. I will do all the cooking and she will make the beds. Georgia will fly in to visit us in her private jet when she is a star of La Scala. She will bring us our grandchildren to play with us, and as soon as they get sunburned and cranky, we’ll wave our hands and she will take them away.”
They went on painting in the sun. After a while, Emily said, “You know, it really helps me to see a truly happy marriage. It gives me faith.”
“I’m glad,” said Henry.
On the Monday after Work Day, Lyndie Sale was late going down to lunch because the librarian, Mrs. Nafie, had asked her to stay after class and help put some books back on the shelves in alphabetical order.
Lyndie’s friends had trotted off to lunch without her, and the whole time she worked, Mrs. Nafie burbled about how kind and quick and bright Lyndie was. When they were done, Mrs. Nafie thanked her effusively. What a deep, interesting child, Mrs. Nafie thought. She felt that Lyndie would profit from extra attention, from knowing that certain adults thought she was special. She’d taken an extra interest in Lyndie ever since the day Rue had sent her to the library to learn to do research. Mrs. Nafie had helped her look up UFOs and remembered that Lyndie seemed to feel an interest bordering on jealousy in the reports they found of people who claimed to have been kidnapped by aliens.
Lyndie arrived at the kitchen to see that her whole class had already gotten their food and chosen their places at the tables outside under the live oaks. Jennifer and Malone were sitting together, and Nicolette Wren was sitting with two of the boys. When Nicolette laughed, she opened her mouth so you could see the chewed food, Lyndie noticed, staring at her with narrow eyes. There was no one for Lyndie to sit with. She had to get her tray and stand in line with the third graders. There was Malone’s horrible little brother. That fat cow Mrs. Nafie was coming along to get her lunch too. Lyndie wished all her clothes would fall off right now, with everyone watching.
Lyndie didn’t know the name of the mom who was ladling soup. It was one who was all teeth, like a horse.
“What kind is it?” Lyndie asked.
“Chicken noodle,” said the horse.
Lyndie said, “Okay.” She hated the noodles in chicken noodle because they were slimy and dead-feeling, but she could leave them. She put the paper bowl of soup on her tray without another word and moved down the line to choose a muffin out of the bread bowl. She’d get an apple too; she wasn’t going to eat any of that gummy Mexican bean shit that the next hot lunch mom was offering her.
Behind her, some third graders were having a giggling fit. One of those complete, lose-it, giggling fits that you get sometimes when you’re a little twit. They were limp with laughing and tumbling against each other, and one bumped Lyndie from behind so that her soup slopped over the bowl and soaked her tray, ruining her paper napkin. Lyndie turned around, and with one savage sweep of her hand, upended the little girl’s tray so that hot soup splattered over her clothes, and everything else on the tray—milk, silverware, bread and butter—crashed and splattered to the floor. The little girl roared with surprise and burst into tears. The nearest hot lunch mom began yelling at Lyndie.
“She bumped me!” Lyndie roared back, tense with outrage. “She bumped into me first, she spilled my soup!”
Rue did not anticipate with pleasure calling the Sales to tell them Lyndie was being suspended for a day.
It was Homecoming Saturday. Rue was standing outside the gym listening to the roars from the bleachers as Country duked it out against Poly Sci, their perennial football rival. Poly Sci had some huge ringers on their team, and Blair Kunzelman, Country’s coach, insisted on playing every boy who suited up, at least for a few minutes, while the coach at Poly played only his varsity best. But Country had a great quarterback, tiny Larry Gerard, and at half-time today, the score was 13–7. It was an exciting game.
Rue was walking with Serge Korfus, father of a second grader. He had just announced they were thinking of withdrawing. Lily Korfus’s best friend in her class had moved away, leaving her lonely. The tuition was a stretch for a family who had another little one in diapers, and May Korfus had come home from serving hot lunch upset by what she had heard about the new math approach used in third grade.
“My wife and I both went to public school,” Serge Korfus said apologetically. “We’re in a pretty good district. To be frank, it’s hard to justify the tuition here.”
“We’d be very sorry to lose Lily,” said Rue. They were interrupted by a girl of about eighteen calling Rue’s name.
“Nina Bennett! How nice to see you, dear!”
“Almost my whole class came back. We wanted to see the drinking fountain in the gym that we made the tiles for with Mrs. Moredock.”
“You hadn’t seen it installed? Isn’t it great? You’re all memorialized now, for
ever. Nina, this is Mr. Korfus.” Nina was a glowing girl with a happy, open map-of-Ireland face. Mr. Korfus said he was pleased to meet her.
“Is Georgia coming home for Thanksgiving?” Nina asked.
“No, she’s staying in New York. The dorms stay open.”
Nina, who looked as if she herself rarely missed a meal, asked, “Where will she have Thanksgiving dinner?”
“Probably Horn and Hardart. She doesn’t eat meat anymore, so turkey is out anyway. Frankly, at the moment she seems to be eating music. I’m delighted more of your class is here. Who came?”
“Arlene and Christin and Colin and…really almost everyone. Sheila couldn’t come, she’s in Massachusetts.”
“Is she?”
“Yes, she started at High, but she didn’t like it so she transferred to Exeter.”
“Nina, Mr. Korfus just asked me a question, sort of, and maybe you should answer it.” She turned to Mr. Korfus. “Nina graduated three years ago and now she’s at the top high school in Santa Barbara.” And to Nina: “How are you getting along?”
“I love it.”
“You’re not lost in such a big place?”
“I like it that it’s big.”
“Was Country too small for you?”
“Not at all, but my class from here, we’re like brothers and sisters? I feel like I always have them. And I do have Colin, he’s in my calculus class.”
“And how are you finding the work?”
“Easy. Oops—God that sounds so conceited.”
Rue smiled. “After all the complaining you guys did. So you’re well prepared?”
“Definitely. We’ve done much more writing than kids from other schools. We’ve done harder work, and we’ve read more. And people can’t believe when I tell them about the memory maps.”
“Thank you, Nina, I’ll pay you later. Are you all going to play volleyball?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good girl. I’ll come find you.”
Nina waggled her fingers to say “Later,” and started off.
“Nina,” Rue called, “you’re looking terrific.”
“Thank you, Mrs. S. You are too!” Rue laughed.
She and Mr. Korfus walked toward the lunch tables. “Unsolicited, I promise,” she said to him.
“A nice girl.”
“Awfully nice. She had a lot of trouble when she first came to us. She had a chip on her shoulder, and she was round as a butterball.”
“Super bright?”
“I’ll tell you a truth I rarely tell parents. A school like this is most important for the unspecial child. There are very bright children who will get an education anywhere. And there are children with special needs who are much better served in public schools. But for the child who could get lost in the crowd, the one who needs to be strengthened and shaped and hardened off before you plant her outside in the cold ground, we change lives. I truly believe that we do.”
“Do you think Lily is an unspecial child?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“If I did, I wouldn’t know my job very well. But I still think we have something special to offer her. One of our graduates was a Presidential Scholar last year, and there are only a hundred and forty-one in the whole country. But don’t tell anyone I told you that.”
“All right. But why not?”
“I’m supposed to be opposed to awarding prizes. We don’t do it here. But believe me, the world does it soon enough when they leave us, and somehow, we can’t help but notice.”
They had stopped to watch a sack race pitting six seventh-graders against six graduates who ranged in age from nineteen to seventy-two. (They often had students from the Miss Plums’ days back at Homecoming.) The seventy-two-year-old was a former nun, and she appeared to have some special training in sack racing; she was burning up the track. Rue wondered if it was something they practiced at the Order.
Mr. Korfus asked, “What’s a memory map?”
“Come back in June and I’ll show you. By the end of the year, every one of our sixth graders can draw an entire Mercator projection of the world from memory.”
“You’re kidding!”
“I’m not. Lyndie, what is it?”
Lyndie Sale, her face streaked with dirt and tears, was running toward her wailing. Rue excused herself from Mr. Korfus and gathered Lyndie in, leading her to a stone wall where they could settle and talk.
“Jennifer Lowen pushed me! Look, she knocked me down and I scraped my knee and my hand hurts!” She wept, waving her right hand, sticking out of her Velcro cast. Rue clucked and took the hand, gently feeling the little wrist bones. There was some grit in the heel of the hand, but unless Lyndie was in shock, there was no pain in her wrist or hand.
“Mrs. Shaw!” Jennifer Lowen had arrived at a run, with Malone Dahl and Carly Cort behind her. Jennifer was furious.
“Mrs. Shaw! I did not push her! She said she was going to tell you I did and I never touched her!”
“You did!”
“She did not, Lyndie, that’s a lie!” exclaimed Carly and Malone indignantly. Their faces were like thunderclouds.
“Shshshs,” said Rue. “Quiet down. One at a time, please.” She looked quietly at each of them in turn, and her look had the effect of a calming touch. Their faces, suffused with hot emotion, regained a more normal appearance. Rue watched carefully how they held themselves and who looked at whom. There was no guilty exchange among the three leaders. All of them looked hard at Lyndie, with serious, shocked expressions. God, fifth graders are horrors, Rue thought to herself.
“Jennifer, suppose you tell me what happened.”
“She lies!” cried Jennifer. Rue tipped her head slightly, a warning move. “We were talking about riding lessons. We started jumping this week. Carly jumped a two-rail fence! And I jumped once and refused once.”
“This is at Meadow Wood?”
The little girls nodded.
“Do you take too, Malone?” asked Rue.
Malone shook her head. Rue happened to know that since meeting Jennifer, Malone had gone horse-mad. She had borrowed every Black Stallion book in the library, and was now plowing through King of the Wind.
“I’m asking my dad, though, I think he might let me take. I’ll ask him at Christmas.”
Jennifer burst out: “Lyndie said she didn’t have to go to Meadow Wood, because she had a stallion in her backyard. And I was like, ‘No way.’ I was like, ‘Okay, Lyndie, what do you do when the horse trots—what’s it called what you do?’ And she didn’t even know that. You should see her yard, it’s the size of a…it’s the size of a…bathroom!” She started to giggle and so did Malone, and Carly, because Jennifer was so bold and so droll. They got control of themselves, though, since it was clear Rue was not as easily amused.
“So she was like, ‘Yes I do, I have a gray stallion in the back yard, and I ride him bareback,’ and we were like, ‘Come off it, Lyndie, liar liar pants on fire,’ and she started to cry.” Her voice dripped with scorn at such baby behavior. Malone and Carly stood behind her nodding, their faces set in stubborn intensity.
“And then she got up to run away, and she just like stumbled…”
“She didn’t even go all the way down!” Carly added.
“…and she turned around and made this face at me, and she was like, ‘I’m going to tell! I’m going to tell that you pushed me and hurt my broken arm!’”
There was silence for a moment, as Rue considered Jennifer’s face. Slowly she turned to Lyndie.
Lyndie looked at her fiercely and said, “She did! She did push me, and I hurt myself.” Rue gazed at her for a while, waiting for her eyes to waver. They didn’t.
Rue said, “I don’t think anyone in this story has much to be proud of. But, fortunately, you are all going to win because you’re going to learn to do something very important, and knowing how to do this will help you all your lives.”
“What are we going to do?” said Jennifer, hoping it would involve horses.
&nb
sp; “Apologize. You first please, Jennifer.”
“For what?”
“You tell me.”
“She’s the liar!”
“Did you hurt Lyndie’s feelings?”
There was silence.
“Did you hurt her feelings, and did you know that’s what you were doing?”
“At least I didn’t tell stupid lies, like I’m too stupid to tell…”
“SSSt,” Rue cut her off. “Apologizing does not include justifying yourself. Do you know what to do or do I have to show you?”
After a long pause, Jennifer raised her eyes to Lyndie’s face, and said in a low voice, “Lyndie, I’m very sorry that I hurt your feelings.”
“Thank you,” said Rue. “Carly?”
Carly apologized to Lyndie, and then Malone.
Rue turned to Lyndie.
“What?” said Lyndie.
“Your turn.”
“I didn’t do anything!” Rue looked at her for a long time. She saw a thoroughly miserable child, but beyond that, she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. At last she said, “You tried to get your friend in trouble.”
“She pushed me….”
“SSSt,” Rue cut her off. “You tried to get your friend in trouble. Now you can insist on being right, and be lonely, or you can apologize, and maybe get your friend back. Your choice.” She and Lyndie looked at each other for a long moment.
“Jennifer,” said Lyndie, almost inaudibly, “I’m sorry I tried to get you in trouble.”
“Thank you,” said Rue. She looked at the four little girls standing before her. Their faces had changed. It was as if saying the words had changed the furious feelings they had brought into the fray.
“I’m proud of you all, that’s a hard thing to do. Much harder than fighting and holding grudges. Is there something you all like to do that you could do together right now?” Rue knew perfectly well that there was nothing fifth-grade girls liked more than hanging out complaining about bossy, unfair grown-ups, and she was pretty sure they could find some sheltered place to do it.