Cold Springs (2 page)

She wondered if her dad had been made out of clock parts, like the latch on the cabinet. She wished she could wind him backwards one week, to see if something would break.

She reached into the closet, to the little rusty hook only she knew about, and pulled out a copy of her Toyota key.

Ground me, Daddy. Go ahead.

She turned to Mallory, who was balancing Equestrian Barbie's plastic pony on her knee.

Poor little Mallory—the headmistress's daughter. She would have an even worse school experience than Katherine did. So what if she liked kindergarten? It was only a matter of time before she felt the walls closing in on her, that chasm opening at her feet. It sliced into Katherine's heart whenever she passed the lower school windows, saw Mallory wave a sticky hello to her, fingers covered in primary-colored gloop.

No, Katherine never wanted to see her baby doll grow up.

She smiled to cover the blackness. “Come on, Peewee. Let's go for a ride.”

Laurel Heights School blazed with light. Luminarias lined the sidewalk. Arcs of paper lanterns glowed red and blue over the playground, transforming the basketball court into a dance floor nobody could use, thanks to the weather.

Inside, the two-story building was buttery warm with jazz music and candlelight, waiters bustling about with trays of champagne and canapés, parents laughing too loud, drinking too freely, enjoying their big night away from the children.

For an outside party brought inside at the last minute, Ann had to admit the staff and the caterers had done a great job. Cloths had been draped over the teachers' supply cabinets. Banquet tables had replaced school desks. A hundred tiny articles of lost-and-found clothing had been taken off the coat hooks and stashed in closets, broken crayons and Montessori rods swept off the floor. Fresh-cut flowers decorated the music teacher's piano. The kindergarten teacher's desk had been converted to a cash bar.

The school was too small for so many people, but the cramped quarters just proved Ann's point, the purpose for the auction—the school needed to grow. They weren't the neighborhood school they'd started out as in the 1920s, with fifteen kids from Pacific Heights. They were busting at the seams with 152 students from all over the Bay Area. They needed to buy the mansion next door, do a major renovation, double the size of the campus. What better way to kick off the capital campaign than cram all the parents together, let them see how their children spent each day?

Despite that, despite how well the evening seemed to be going, Ann was a mess. The two glasses of wine she'd had to steady her nerves were bubbling to vinegar in her stomach.

She should have been schmoozing, but instead she was sitting in the corner of the only empty classroom, knees-to-knees with Norma Reyes on tiny first-grade chairs, telling Norma that marriage counseling was a great idea. Really. It was nothing to be ashamed about.

Hypocrite.

She prayed Chadwick would forget about their agreement—just forget it.

At the same time, she hoped like hell he had more guts than she did.

Norma kept crying, calling Chadwick names.

Parents streamed by the open doorway. They would start to greet Ann, then see Norma's tears and turn away like they'd been hit by a wind tunnel fan.

“I want to kill the
pendejo,
” Norma said.

Ann laced her fingers in her friend's. She promised that Chadwick was trying his best, that Katherine would be okay. Her therapist was sharp. There were good programs for drug intervention.

“Bullshit,” Norma said. “You love this. You've been warning me for years.”

Ann said nothing. She'd had lots of practice, diplomatically saying nothing.

For years, she had been the mediator between the family and the faculty, who would ask her—no disrespect to their colleague Chadwick—but why wasn't Katherine on probation? Why wasn't she taking her medication? When do they decide that they just can't serve her at this school? Ann endured the insinuations that if Chadwick hadn't been her friend for so long, if she didn't know the family socially, she would've jumped on Katherine's problems sooner and harder.

On the other hand, there was Norma, who had never seen the problem, not since seventh grade, when Ann had first pushed for psychological testing. Norma only saw the good in her daughter. Laurel Heights was overreacting. She'd never forgiven Chadwick for supporting Ann's recommendations for testing and therapy.

“You know what he's planning, don't you?” Norma asked.

Ann's heart did a half-beat syncopation. “What do you mean?”

“Come on. Me, he keeps in the dark. You, never. Asa Hunter. The school in Texas.”

Ann's shoulders relaxed. “He mentioned it.”

She didn't say that Chadwick had obsessed on it at length, been impervious to her reservations. A boot camp? Wilderness therapy? What was she supposed to say—yes, lock your kid up with drill sergeants for a year? Turn your back on everything Laurel Heights stands for—the child-centered philosophy, the nurturing environment—and give Katherine a buzz cut? The whole idea only underscored how desperate Chadwick was to be out of a failing marriage.

But she'd agreed to let him take time off for his trip to Texas, despite how hard it was to get a substitute around Thanksgiving, despite the fact that the eighth-graders hated it when Chadwick—their favorite teacher—was gone. It was in Ann's interest to let Chadwick get his thoughts in order—about Katherine, about everything.

What bothered her most was that she had been tempted to endorse the idea of sending Katherine away. In a selfish, dishonorable way, wouldn't it make things easier?

“We both know,” she told Norma. “He only wants what's best for Katherine.”

“He wants to use her as a fucking guinea pig.” Norma ripped another tissue out of her purse. “Christ, I must look like shit.”

Oh, please,
Ann thought.

As if Norma ever looked like shit. She had that petite figure Ann had grown up hating. She wished, just once, she could look like Norma. She wished she could cry in public and call her husband a dickhead and not give a second thought how it would affect her public image.

Okay. She was jealous. She hated herself for it, spent hours at night thinking,
That's not the reason. That's not the reason.

John appeared at the door, a margarita in either hand. He surveyed the situation, smiled straight through Norma's tears.

“You'll never guess,” he said. “The mayor thinks Mallory's panel is the best one on the kindergarten quilt. We're going to have lunch next week, go over some ideas for the Presidio.”

Ann fought down a surge of irritation. She hated the way John skated across other people's emotions—so completely incapable of sympathy that he made it his personal mission to pretend bad feelings didn't exist. You could always count on John to be the first to tell a joke at any funeral.

“Lunch with Frank Jordan,” Ann said. “Big prize, John.”

He raised his eyebrows at Norma. “I get a piece of the biggest development deal in the city's history—you'd think that would please my wife. Lots of money. Lots of publicity. But what do I know? Maybe it's nothing special.”

“Hey,” Norma said, dabbing her tissue under her eyes. “Tonight is supposed to be fun. Remember?”

John handed her a margarita. “Your husband got stuck with that pretty blond Mrs. Passmore—had a question about her daughter's history project. Can't take him anywhere, huh?”

Ann wanted to slap him.

“We're about to start, honey,” she said instead. “Why don't you go check with the cashiers?”

“Done, honey. Spreadsheet. Printer. Cash box. Don't worry about it.”

He gave her a smug smile that confirmed what she already knew—letting John chair the capital campaign was the biggest mistake of her life. It was a pro bono thing for him, a good tax write-off, and since the school could hardly afford a full-time development director, Ann truly needed the help. But as she had been slow to figure out, the charity work made John feel superior, affirming his belief that Ann's career was nothing more than a hobby. Raising her $30 million would be his equivalent to helping her power-till a tomato patch or driving her to yoga lessons.
My wife, the headmistress. Isn't she cute?

“I'll take Norma upstairs,” he told her. “You go ahead. The faculty is probably paralyzed up there, waiting for your orders.”

Ann contained her fury. She gave Norma's hand one last squeeze, then went off to join the party.

Upstairs, the removable wall between the two middle school classrooms had been taken down, making space for a main banquet room with an auction stage. Ann made her way toward the head table, past parents and student volunteers, waiters with trays of salads. Chadwick was talking to one of her sophomore workers, David Kraft, who sported a brand-new crop of zits. Poor kid. He'd been one of Katherine's friends until last summer, when Katherine gave up friends.

“Excuse us, David.” Ann smiled. “Duty calls.”

“Sure, Mrs. Z.”

“You going to spot those high bidders for us?”

David held up his red signaling cloth. “Yes, ma'am.”

“That's my boy.”

She maneuvered Chadwick toward the faculty table.

“How's Norma?” he asked.

“She's right, you know. Your idea stinks. Boot camp school? It absolutely stinks.”

“Thanks for the open mind.”

“Things aren't complicated enough right now?”

They locked eyes, and they both knew that Katherine was not the foremost question on either of their minds. God help them, but she wasn't.

Ann wanted to be responsible. She wanted to think about the welfare of Katherine and Mallory. She wanted to think about her school and do the professional thing, the calm and steady thing.

But part of her wanted to rebel against that. Despite her wonderful little girl, her successful husband, her ambitious plans for Laurel Heights, part of her wanted to shake off the accumulated infrastructure of her life, the way she suspected Norma would, if their roles were reversed. Norma, who had become as much her friend as Chadwick was. Norma, the woman Ann probably admired more than anyone else.

Ann was thinking,
Don't say anything tonight, Chadwick. Please.

And at the same time, she couldn't wait for the auction to end, for all four of them to get somewhere they could talk.

Ann felt like two different people, slowly separating, as if the Ann on the surface were a tectonic plate, sliding precariously over something hot and molten.

And right now, the Ann underneath wanted an earthquake.

Even blocks away in the dark, Katherine could see the trees—four huge palms, much too tall for Oakland.

They made her think of Los Angeles—trips to visit the Reyes side of the family every other Christmas, her father always looking for excuses not to go, her mother tossing dishes and slamming pots around the kitchen until he agreed.

Katherine used to think a lot about L.A., about escaping, moving in with her cousins. Her cousins knew how to have fun. They knew the best Spanish cuss words and where to score dope. Their fathers weren't goddamn teachers.

But running away wasn't a fantasy she believed in anymore.

Katherine curbed the Toyota in front of the house. She stared up at the night sky, a few stars peeking through the mist and the palm fronds. The palm trees would die tonight. As huge as they were, they weren't designed to withstand this kind of cold. The freeze would turn their insides to mush. It made Katherine sad to know this with such certainty.

When she was eight, she and her dad had planted morning glories in the backyard, her dad telling her not to get her hopes up, the San Francisco climate was really too cold for them. But over the course of the summer, the vines had overgrown their cheap metal trellis and bloomed with a vengeance—red, purple and blue flowers like a mass of alien eyes. Every day they'd crumple, every night they'd reopen.

“Don't they ever die?” Katherine had asked.

Her dad smiled, cupped his fingers gently around her ear. “I don't know, sweetheart. I thought they were ephemeral. I guess they're not.”

Katherine hadn't known what
ephemeral
meant. Her dad never explained words, never watered down his vocabulary. But she liked the sound of it.

Eventually, the weight of the flowers made the trellis collapse. Her father had moved the beautiful, broken heap of metal and plants to the side of the toolshed, and still the flowers kept blooming for weeks, without their roots, not realizing they were dead.

“Kaferine?”

She'd completely forgotten Mallory. They must have been sitting in front of the house for minutes, Katherine staring up the sidewalk at the dark windows, the open front door. She must be freaking the poor kid out.

“Yeah, Peewee. Sorry.”

“It's scary.”

“What's scary?”

“The animals. The faces.”

“They're just decorations, Peewee. You've seen them before.”

But Katherine looked up at the house and thought
— Mallory's right. The place is kind of creepy at night.

It would've been a normal West Oakland house—a little two-bedroom with yellow siding and a shingled roof—except a former man-of-the-house, an amateur sculptor, had encased the outside in swirls of weird metalwork. Instead of burglar bars, the windows were smothered under fancy iron vines. Cut metal silhouettes covered the walls—wild animals, African-style masks, big-butt women scolding little porkpie hat men. A steel-pipe Santa Claus sleigh with reindeers permanently decorated the roof.

Katherine had loved the metalwork since the first time she'd come here with her boyfriend—God, let's be accurate about that,
ex-
boyfriend. How he'd found the place, Katherine didn't know. It was much too cool for him. The sculptures reminded Katherine of the clock parts in her grandfather's closet, as if the wheels and gears had been taken out and planted and allowed to grow wild.

“Kaferine?” Mallory said. “Let's go home. Okay?”

Katherine was shivering, her teeth going like a telegraph machine.

She fingered her necklace—her old birthday gift from Daddy. She hated that it was such a talisman for her—so important for calming her nerves, but it had been, ever since he gave it to her, as if it held some of his strength—the silent determination of a giant.