Mack sat straight up, the blade of grass falling out of his mouth. Jeez, what was the matter with him? Here he was, at a school that specialized in the hard-to-teach, on a day when you could just walk into their classes and see how they did it. Maybe they could show him something that would help him reach the really hard cases, the ones like Zoë who were too freaked out to even want to learn to drive.
Mack stood up and started walking toward the WELCOME PARENTS banner, where a woman with enormous calves appeared to be directing people to one building or another. Of course, he wasn’t a parent. But unless school had changed completely from the days he’d attended, nobody ever noticed you in the back of a classroom.
Nineteen
M ommy,” Maya whispered in Zoë’s ear, “what’s Mack doing here?”
Zoë turned and spotted him, slouched in the back row, the only man not wearing a polo shirt or a tie. “I have no idea,” she whispered back. He met her gaze and gave a little half shrug. Probably got bored trying to read the New Yorker, she thought. Don’t let him distract you.
Zoë turned her attention to the large, brightly lit classroom, which still bore some of the hallmarks of the gracious family dining room it had once been. There were a number of different projects on display, canoes and wigwams and terrariums, an assortment of essential oils with note cards that said things like “Tearful” and “Heady” as well as a multitude of cave dioramas. On closer inspection, these seemed to all have little figures making their way up out of the darkness—a reference to Orpheus and Eurydice? There were certainly some creepy figures at the bottom of Maya’s sculpture.
Strangely enough, there was no sign of a book in the room.
“Welcome, everybody,” said the teacher, a blocky, stern-faced woman with a determinedly frilly dress and haircut. Somebody, somewhere must have told Ms. Weyr that she had a hard look and should soften the effect with ruffles and curls, but the effect was simply disconcerting, like finding lace doilies on a tank. “I’m Ms. Weyr, and this is fourth-grade English. If you look around the room, you might be able to guess that we’ve been talking about lots of different myths and legends, and how you can find elements of these old stories in so many of the books we read, from Charlotte’s Web to Harry Potter.”
Zoë’s mind drifted a little as Ms. Weyr went on talking about stories. As always, the distinctive chalkboard and wood-polish smell of a classroom made her feel as if she’d been transported back in time and was once again Zoë-Knowy, the best and least popular student in her grade. And had she changed much since the days when her teacher had to ask her to limit herself to two questions an hour? Perhaps the Jesuits were right in focusing on the very early years. How much did anyone really change after the age of seven?
Zoë watched her daughter’s face for a moment, noticing Maya’s rapt expression as she absentmindedly twisted a strand of her blond hair around her pencil. She was so pretty, Zoë thought, so contained. Nobody would ever complain that Maya was being a show-off, or snap their hands like little yapping mouths behind her back. If we were both the same age, she wondered, would my daughter even want to be my friend? Yes, Zoë decided, she would, but only because she was kind. Maybe she would even give me a few pointers on how to make friends. Maya might not be able to read at grade level, but she could see social signals that Zoë had been blind to until college.
Looking around the room, Zoë noticed that her daughter was smiling at another girl, who was dressed in a similar combination of bright blue shirt and embroidered jeans. This must be her friend Allegra, who had the same shining, dark hair as her mother, but had clearly inherited all her other features from the squat, beetle-browed man sitting beside her. Allegra’s mother, Renata, did not acknowledge knowing Zoë from the cocktail party, but sat with perfect posture in her chic navy suit, while her husband kept making silly faces at Allegra when the teacher’s back was turned.
Zoë surreptitiously observed the other, equally fascinating combinations of parents and children in the room. To her left was a tall, horse-faced woman with a genial smile sitting next to a boy who looked like her twin. To her right was a thin, nervous, balding man in a rumpled suit and tie and his lumpish, bespectacled daughter, unfortunately dressed in formfitting lavender. One couple, who looked old enough to be grandparents, wore velour tracksuits and so much heavy gold jewelry that they actually rattled when they moved. Their son, a small, handsome, sullen child in a leather bomber jacket, glanced back at them reprovingly.
“Now,” said Ms. Weyr, “I’d like to go around the room for a moment and have each of the parents introduce themselves. If you can, sum up in a few sentences what kind of English students you were.”
The man in the velour tracksuit raised one hand, rattling the bracelet of his gold Rolex. “Do we have to?”
Ms. Weyr leaned back against her desk and gave a smile that transformed her face. “Will it help if I admit that I hated the books I had to read for class, but loved the paperback mysteries my mother brought home?”
There was a little ripple of appreciative laughter, and then the parents began. The horsey woman agreed that she hadn’t much liked English, but had enjoyed reading Nancy Drew books at home. The man who looked like an accountant said that he had only liked reading science fiction. As the parents spoke, Zoë tried to imagine them as children: the horsey woman as an earnest, plain girl with careful handwriting and neat lists of “things to do”; the nervous, balding man as a shy, nerdy boy, turning out messy, brilliant science papers; the elderly couple in their matching velour tracksuits as friendly, popular kids, not leaders but joiners who were quick to volunteer for clubs.
Some of the other parents took longer to figure out. The Indian woman, for example, was so neatly groomed and polite that it took Zoë a while to see the mischievous girl underneath the silk dress.
One parent, however, was impossible to imagine as a child. After five minutes of listening to Renata going on and on about Pinocchio, specifying that she meant the original classic tale by Collodi and not the cheap Disney version, Zoë decided that the woman was a replicant and had, in fact, been designed in some upscale Italian factory.
When the teacher turned to her, Zoë didn’t want to sound as arrogant as Renata, so she admitted that she’d loved English and done well in it, but didn’t relate the fact that by the middle of third grade she’d already raced through the book the class was supposed to read, along with the complete works of Roald Dahl, Alice in Wonderland, Anne Frank’s diary, and T. H. White’s The Once and Future King. She didn’t mention that at the end of the year she’d received a special English prize, a big, hardcover edition of Dickens’s Oliver Twist, which her parents made her return because he’d been the author of A Christmas Carol and they thought he was too Christian a writer.
“I’ve always loved books,” Zoë said instead, “and I’ve been trying to find a way to help Maya love them, too. Hopefully this class will do the trick.”
Ms. Weyr paused for a moment, looking as though she were about to say something, but then just nodded her head and turned to the back corner where Zoë knew Mack was sitting. “And what about you?” When he spoke, Zoë turned around to look at him, along with everyone else in the room.
“I’m not really a parent,” Mack said, sitting up straighter in his chair and drawing in his long, jean-clad legs as if he’d been caught out doing something improper. “I’m sort of here as a guest.” He was the only man in the room wearing heavy-soled work boots, and while the fathers sat in various attitudes of mature stiffness, Mack slouched with the easy, slender muscularity of youth.
“That’s all right,” said Ms. Weyr. “You can still answer the question, even if you’re not a parent.”
Mack ran his fingers through his shaggy, sun-streaked hair, revealing his sharp, surprisingly delicate features. “Well, back in school, I pretty much ignored the reading assignments. Or else I picked up the Classic Comic and read that instead.” He smiled boyishly, and it was all too easy to imagine him as a kid.
He was a type, Zoë thought; the bad boy who distrusted all forms of authority until the moment he joined the army. “I guess I read a couple of Stephen King books for fun, but most of the time, I can’t really say I read much of anything.”
Ms. Weyr looked pleased as she turned back to the other parents. “You know, this gentleman…what’s your name?”
“Mack. John Mackenna.” Zoë thought he looked a little flustered.
“Mr. Mackenna here makes a good point. Not all of us love books.” Ms. Weyr smiled at Zoë and the Indian woman. “I know that this may be a shocking thing to hear from an English teacher, but just as not all kids love sports, not all kids are going to love books. It’s hard to love something that doesn’t come easy.”
Zoë was dumbfounded. She felt her heart beating faster with agitation. Wasn’t this why she’d moved to the goddamn country in the first place? What had all that sacrifice been for, if not so that the world of books would finally open for her child?
She raised her hand, ignoring the fact that her daughter now wore a strangely pinched, anguished expression, as though she were trying not to complain while being devoured by army ants. “Excuse me,” Zoë said, her voice suddenly sounding overly loud in the quiet room, “but isn’t that why we’ve sent our children to this school? To help them read better so that they can experience the thrill and joy of books?”
Ms. Weyr smiled again with infuriating calm and walked around the classroom, her old-fashioned leather boots squeaking with each step. “Your children are here to learn,” she said simply. “They are here to learn to read more efficiently, yes, but they are also here to learn in other, equally important ways. Some of us learn best by hearing things spoken out loud. Some of us learn best by working something out with our hands. Some of us learn best by a combination of hearing and doing. But for those of us who have to work hard at the mechanics of reading, it can be very hard to concentrate on the content of books while we’re decoding words.”
“Like a new driver trying to figure out directions at the same time as he’s trying to remember all the rules of the road,” said Mack, sounding excited.
“Exactly like that.” Ms. Weyr beamed at him, despite the fact that he’d called out. “I don’t know how many of you know this, but at our school, we don’t ask our students to do any reading from books in the classroom. I mean, there is reading, but I do it out loud.”
“They’re not going to read any books in English class?” Jeez, thought Zoë, why am I the only one speaking up? Maya looked as though she wanted to ask the same question, though Zoë thought her daughter would probably have used a different inflection.
“Because,” said the teacher, “we’ve learned that when you feel vulnerable about doing something, you’re better off tackling it one on one, in a private tutorial. We also put a great deal of value on restoring our students’ confidence and sense of mastery, which is why we’re so proud to show you what your children have learned at our horseback riding show later this afternoon. I always say, ‘If you can tackle your fear of an animal that weighs over a thousand pounds, well, heck, you can tackle an irregular verb.’ ”
Dear God, thought Zoë, that joke I made about caring more about horseback riding than academics is coming back to haunt me. “But the end goal is for these kids to be able to read their own books in school, right? For them to become good readers and go back to join mainstream schools.” Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Renata looking at her approvingly.
“That’s what I’ve assumed,” she said, and Zoë wasn’t sure whether or not it was a good thing to have Renata on her side.
“Yes, that is our goal, but speaking honestly, not all of us are going to grow up to be avid readers. May I ask what you do for a living?”
“I’m a journalist.”
“So for you, for your work, reading is very important, but so is questioning things deeply. Which you do very well,” she added, and the class laughed. “Now, let’s take a look at someone else. Mr. Mackenna, what do you do?”
Everyone turned in their seats to look at Mack. “Um, teach driving,” he said. “Work on cars. I mean, I used to work in a garage, and I’ve been doing that again for the past two weeks. And I’m a volunteer EMT.”
“So am I right in thinking that in your work, you don’t need to do much reading? In the garage, you probably spend more time looking to see how things work, yes, or running trial-and-error experiments to see what’s wrong?”
“Well, yeah,” said Mack.
“And when you teach, and when you work as a medic, you need people skills—much like Maya’s mother here.”
Zoë narrowed her eyes, thinking that this was getting a little irritating. She didn’t mean to be elitist, but she wasn’t taking a year out of her life so that Maya could grow up to be a car mechanic or a driving instructor or even an emergency medical technician. Since that was not an acceptable thing to admit out loud, she decided to equivocate a little. “I’m sorry if I seem argumentative here, but I’m sure that I’m not the only parent who wants her child to succeed to the fullest extent of her potential. And to me, it’s great if Maya can use her hands and has great people skills, but I also want her to be exposed to all the great things that books can offer.”
“Of course you do,” said Ms. Weyr, and there was a firmness in her voice now that suggested that she really did understand, perhaps more than Zoë herself did. “And as an English teacher, I share your love of books, and I try to show my students what excites me about books. But I also need to accept that we are all built along different lines. I’m sure your parents wanted some things for you that you didn’t want for yourself.” She walked back to her desk. “My point is, we are exposing your children not only to books here but to the building blocks of older forms of storytelling. Because telling stories is a much older tradition than reading and writing,” she went on, “and even if all of us aren’t going to become big readers, we all do respond to stories.”
There was more, but Zoë wasn’t paying attention. Instead, she was thinking of her parents, and how she had never been able to please them, because in their world, she was a failure. She was remembering how she had brought home her senior high school thesis, which had received the highest marks in her class, only to find her father enraged that a boy with the non-Jewish last name of Smith had called for her.
But Zoë had long ago resigned herself to being the black sheep of her family. She had resigned herself to being single, to the moderate level of her career success, even to being unhappy for the next eight months. Was it really too much to expect her own child, her only child, to be in her idiom?
Maya’s hand stole out from underneath her desk, finding her mother’s fingers and squeezing them. She looked anxious, and Zoë smiled, hoping to reassure her. At least she’s not mad at me for speaking out to her teacher, she thought.
But out of the corner of her eye, she could see Mack, and he was not smiling.
The last event of parents’ visiting day was the horse show. The wind had not died down and as the crowd of parents approached the bleachers, more than a few people commented on the storm clouds darkening the sky. Zoë would have been just as happy to lose Mack in the crowd, but Maya grabbed him by the hand and pushed them both onto a bench together. “I have to go change,” she said, grabbing the schedule of events that had nearly blown out of her hand. “Mack, can you make sure my mother doesn’t do anything embarrassing, like yell out my name or ask my riding instructor something in the middle of the show?”
“Maya,” Zoë said, wanting to explain, but Mack took her arm and yanked her down beside him on the bench.
“I’ll watch her,” he said. His voice and expression were warm, until Maya was out of sight, whereupon he opened up the New Yorker and read it as if he were about to be tested on its contents. I should just ignore him, Zoë thought, so she sat there, a hum of people around her, as a bad feeling congealed in her stomach. The bad feeling was a combination of too much black coffee, no toast,
and the sense that she might have behaved badly in front of her daughter’s teacher. Adding to her indigestion was the growing realization that she had not, after all, really understood the implications of Maya’s being diagnosed with dyslexia. Up until now, she’d figured that a learning disability was something you dove into, researched, dealt with, and ultimately overcame, like being pigeon-toed or frightened of the dark. But now it struck her that this might be the kind of thing you learned to live with, like a clubfoot. Or a phobia about driving.
Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Mack’s impassive profile as he flipped the page. He was looking at an article about literary responses to war.
“Oh,” she said, recognizing a name. “You’d probably enjoy Tim O’Brien. He wrote about Vietnam,” she added.
“Here,” he said. “You can have it back.” He thrust the magazine into her hand.
She sat there for a moment, feeling completely bewildered. Mack was mad at her? When did this happen? As of this morning, he’d been completely friendly, even apologetic. Zoë tried to read the magazine, but the mystery of Mack’s sudden displeasure with her, along with her residual feeling of having behaved badly in Ms. Weyr’s class, made it impossible for her to concentrate.
“All right,” she said, “spit it out. What’s your problem? You’re doing that loudly quiet disgruntled-guy thing.”
He raised one eyebrow, something she used to try doing in the mirror. “Guy thing? Seems to me that you were the one giving me the silent treatment this morning.”
“Ah, so this is tit for tat.”
“No, I figured you had a right to be ticked off at me.” His tone had a slight but unmistakable hint of a sneer. “I figured I’d hurt your feelings or your pride or both. But now I understand that isn’t possible.”
“And why is that?”
“Because you’re a snob.”
“Mack, look,” Zoë began, but he turned and interrupted her.