With Friends Like These: A Novel (12 page)

“What kept you?” I whispered when we were seated.

“I’m lucky I got here.” He was slightly out of breath. “I have to leave in exactly an hour.”

That hour fled. Dr. O’Neal introduced department heads and specialists—every witty one of them had spent summers running programs for children in third-world countries. Following the faculty rundown, we were treated to an a cappella choir singing Native American folk songs, a Dixieland band, and an abbreviated performance from
Swan Lake
, accompanied by a four-foot-tall string quartet playing Tchaikovsky. Only after Odette and Odile took their bows and the director introduced the mathletes did Dr. O’Neal lead the parent group—we must have totaled close to one hundred—around the school like a trail of tall, gawking geese.

I counted no more than sixteen children in each class, and faces of every hue, all sunny side up. Not one teacher appeared scary, burned out, or in need of immediate dental attention, and every classroom seemed to pulse with laughter and good health. I couldn’t imagine a child here getting lice or, God forbid, fat.

“At Jackson Collegiate we have a historical emphasis on the arts,” Dr. O’Neal said as we stepped inside a room filled with first graders painting at individual easels, “but we value all the disciplines—science, the humanities, and physical education, too.”

“What sets Jackson apart?” Xander asked as we caught up to her. Talia wasn’t far behind.

“What’s most important here is building character,” Dr. O’Neal said. “We try our best to cultivate authentic respect for one another.”

I’d heard more or less the same speech from every director, but this was the first school where I felt that it might be true. Maybe here “nice” wasn’t a dirty word left in the dust of “hi-ho, Harvard.” This might be a school where Xander, Dash, and I would all fit in and make friends. I stayed close to him as we migrated back to the hall. “What do you think?” I whispered into his ear.

“I like it,” he said. “I think I like it the best yet.”

“Me too,” I answered. As I gave his arm a squeeze I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“Wouldn’t you have killed to have gone to a school like this?” Talia said, grinning. “Poetry on the walls, for God’s sake.”

“What about the science labs?” Xander said. “A sixth grader could cure cancer in there.”

“And the library?” she said. “That’s where I’d like to spend the whole afternoon.”

Tom caught up to us. “Now do you see why Betsy’s my idea of an educator?”

“It would be great if Henry and Dash could be in the same class,” I gushed, and then felt embarrassed. Dr. O’Neal hadn’t mentioned money—nobody did on these tours—but I’d read the fact sheet, and tuition was higher than at any other school we’d seen. What if Tom and Talia couldn’t afford this school, which cost an arm and a leg and maybe a spleen? The four of us took seats, and Dr. O’Neal began to field questions.

“Do you give preference to brothers and sisters of current students?” the woman to the left of me asked.

“We believe in family traditions and give siblings every consideration,” she said. “But unfortunately, we can’t offer guarantees.”

“Last year eighty percent of the class was siblings,” a woman in back of me carped to no one in particular. “In vitro run amok—too many frigging twins.”

“When do you introduce foreign languages?” asked a man in a white turban.

“Second grade,” Dr. O’Neal said. “Spanish, French, Chinese, Japanese, Punjabi, Arabic, Hebrew, and Italian.” Sports facilities, trips to museums, and religious education—there was none, unless you counted the history of Eastern spirituality—had all been covered by the time Tom asked, “What’s your policy on scholarships?”

“We handle them case by case,” Dr. O’Neal said, “but yes, we have resources for especially deserving students.” Tom glanced at Talia. I couldn’t see her face.

Finally the director called on Xander. “How many applications do you expect to receive this year?” he asked.

I couldn’t miss her pride. “If last year is any indication, I’d say at least a thousand.”

“How many spots are there?”

“In preschool, thirty-two.”

These numbers could mean only one thing. If Dashiel McKenzie Keaton was to get into this school, his parents would have to play the game. The question was, how?

  
Talia

Though I’d spent forty minutes wielding a blow dryer and a round brush, I was crowned with a halo of frizz: I looked like the love child of Botticelli’s Venus and Tom Wolfe. The morning was, as my father might say, as hot as a Hasid in Haifa. My white linen suit was losing starch with each limping step.

In June Rittenhouse’s waiting area, every chair was slick and uncomfortable; even the tall French tulips on the desk wore wires up their ass. Almost half an hour ticked away before I was ushered into a conference room fitted with a black marble table and two glass bottles of Evian.
Let the inquisition begin. I’m guilty, Detective. I confess to being here under false pretenses
.

Yet when the headhunter entered the room, she was apologetic for the delay as well as refreshingly wrinkled. With more sense than I had, June Rittenhouse had pulled her hair into a chignon, although I could see the real deal was as kinked as my own. This made me like her. “Happy to meet you, Ms. Fisher-Wells,” she said, shaking my hand. “Have a chair. I’ve looked over your résumé, and you’ve accomplished quite a lot.”

I wondered if at this point I was expected to display humble gratitude for a compliment or was supposed to brag about my incomparable qualifications. I stuck with “Thank you.”

“All right, let’s start. What do you consider your greatest accomplishment?” She stared into my eyes so intently I would have backed away if it wouldn’t have suggested that her breath might be less than minty fresh. Faking sanity at work when Henry hadn’t slept through the previous night? Getting my mother-in-law, Abigail Wells, the great-great-great-granddaughter of austere New England preachers, to tolerate me? Those were accomplishments. But what I said was, “It had to be the time we had only twenty-four hours to pitch Odor-Eaters and my approach nailed a multimillion-dollar account.” I narrated my story with beguiling anecdotes augmented with numerical flourishes, and watched the woman take notes as I silently lamented that my life’s work had been dedicated to training people to be spendthrifts.

“Do you prefer to work alone or as part of a team?”

Tricky. Was the job in question—if there was a real job at stake—for freelance consulting (“I work best independently, preferably on the tundra for months on end”) or a traditional inside position (“I’m a team player and love to brainstorm endlessly with witless morons who grab credit for my ideas”)? “Actually, I’m one of those people who swings both ways,” I said, and gave examples of star performances on both the autonomous and Ms. Congeniality fronts.

She offered a cryptic “Aha,” asked a few more easy questions, and then said, “For the right position, Ms. Fisher-Wells—”

“Talia.”

“Talia, would you relocate?”

“I wish I could tell you the answer is yes,” I admitted, “but my husband’s a teacher and we’re committed to staying here because of his job, although I could imagine a position in, say, New Jersey or Westchester.”

“Where does your husband teach?”

“James Madison in Brooklyn.”

“No!” She beamed. “I can’t believe it. My housekeeper’s son is a student there. What’s your husband’s name?”

“Thomas Wells.”

“You’re Mr.
Wells
’ wife?” she said, as awed as if I’d just revealed that Tom was in line for the English throne.

“That would be me.”

“I can’t begin to tell you what a godsend Mr. Wells is, the way he’s been tutoring José for the SATs and how he started that basketball team. He’s all I heard about last year.”

Me too.

“It would be a crime if your family left Brooklyn,” she said, and once again beamed her freakish astral stare in my direction.
This interview is over
, I thought, but she seemed to be revved up for more. “I wanted to see you about two different positions. Obviously, the Cincinnati job isn’t right for you, but there’s this small agency in Tribeca. My client needs someone with particular flair in fashion and home decorating, and he hopes to branch out into travel and wine and spirits.”

No personal hygiene sprays? No anticoagulants for tragically clogged pipes?

“Does this interest you, given your strong background in packaged goods?”

Well married as I might be, I had no background in any of the glittering specialties she’d mentioned. Chloe did, I couldn’t help thinking, which was why someone had recommended her for the spot. Still, I had the temerity to say, “I’d be very interested. I’ve reached the stage where I need a different challenge and the idea of a new company sounds …” I searched for a fashion-forward adjective. All I could come up with was
dynamic
, a word that was anything but that.

“Fair enough. The next step is for you to prepare a sample account pitch. Everything you need to know is here.” She handed me a computer disc. “Would a week be enough time?”

“I have a big assignment due in three weeks at work,” I lied. “Could we stretch it a bit?”

Her unblinking stare reappeared. “Two weeks from today, then,” she said in the spirit of a woman not used to negotiating, and stood up, ready to shake hands as my cell phone rang.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I forgot to turn this off.”

She chuckled. “You’d better take the call—maybe it’s your husband.”

The saint? “Oh, it’s not important,” I said. I recognized the Norah Jones ring tone and snapped off the phone. It was Chloe.

•   •   •

The next morning, the phone rang about ten o’clock. “Did I vake you, sveetheart?” Since she’d moved to this country at fifteen, Mira Fisher had lived four blocks from the Pacific Ocean, yet her Zsa Zsa accent clung like glaze on Sacher torte.

“No, Mommy. Henry and I have been up for hours,” I said.

“How’s that grandson of mine?”

As I recited Henry’s CV—his exploding vocabulary, the way he fearlessly climbed the Everest of a playground slide, and how he willingly ate jicama—the longing for my mother became so great I felt she was almost in the room, her hazel eyes twinkling unconditional approval. Tom may be the world’s best husband, but no one on earth will ever love me as fiercely as my mother. It’s what females in our family do. Bubbe, who lives with my parents, is no different. Lioness ladies, Tom calls them.

“Has Chloe come back to vork? Have you gotten a break? I vorry about you.”

I cautiously considered my next few words. “Everything’s good, Mommy. I just might have another opportunity—a very good one.”

“Shhahh,” she said, and
puh-puh-puh
’d as if an incantation could blow away the evil eye. For women in our family superstition is the true religion, to which we adhere far more than any everyday practice of Judaism. The way we throw salt over our left shoulder, you’d think the three of us were living on a dirt road near Anatevka, peeing in a pot and plucking chickens. Even Tom, as High Church as they come, has learned to say
kinehora
, a reverse curse I taught him to spit out whenever someone speaks of the auspicious. If you don’t say it, then
ukh un vey
—tough tooties. Your good luck just got deported to Siberia.

“If there’s good news, you’ll be the first to know, believe me,” I said.

The bond between my mother and me is nothing less than symbiotic. We dwell in each other’s heart like pacemakers that activate hope and optimism. I know Quincy grieves for her own mom, who died of Alzheimer’s. Chloe seems terrified by her swizzle stick of a mother up in Connecticut, and Jules bitches about her ma, who, when she’s not plastered, has her hand out for money. Neither of these last two women is a perfect maternal specimen, yet why can’t my friends fix whatever was wrong? These are their
mothers
. I am completely intolerant.

When I graduated from Wesleyan—Xander wasn’t the only scholarship kid—I decided to try New York. I predicted that when I told them, my parents might impale themselves with grief. But Mira and Sam Fisher’s strategy was to give me time to come to my senses, assuming that after a season or two of gray skies and maxed-out subways, I’d miss the beach and, yes, our
ganze mishpacha
, our whole family.