You Are Free: Stories Read online

  The last stop on the tour was the preschool area. Their guide explained that the window in the door was actually a two-way mirror, the kind used in police lineups. It allowed parents to come and watch their children as they worked and played. The parents in their group took turns stepping up to the window and peering through it at the class of toddlers.

  “They’re having snack time,” the tour guide explained.

  Cassie looked and saw a cluster of children sitting at a table eating what looked like edamame.

  “I’m not impressed,” Duncan said when they were safely outside the gates, heading toward their car. “The digs are fancy, sure, but there isn’t anything special about the teaching. Sure ain’t worth the insane tuition. Did you see the figures?”

  “Esther said they have a generous financial aid program,” Cassie said.

  “Whatever. That’s for poor people, their ‘socioeconomic tokens’—not for our upper-middle-class Negroid asses. Or did you forget, we made it, sweetheart. We on da East Side now.” He pulled a muffin from his pocket, loosely wrapped in a napkin. He ate as he talked. “I’d rather send Cody to the school across the street. Did you get a peek at that? I wonder how Esther explains that little eyesore to all the Institute kids.”

  Cassie was silent as she pulled out of the parking space. She felt a burning of longing in her chest she couldn’t admit to Duncan just now. She’d been impressed by the Institute—by the aggressively multicultural creed Esther professed, but also by the cheerful yet cloistered feeling of the hallways and classrooms. It seemed so civilized compared to the rough-and-tumble public schools she had attended growing up in Philadelphia. She wanted her child to grow up around these people, not those people, but she couldn’t admit that to Duncan.

  “So did you get all the details you need for your parody?” he asked.

  She cleared her throat the way she always did when she was about to lie. “Yes,” she said. “I think so.”

  And now here she was, holding this letter that invited them to go one step further. The Institute wanted to meet them. They were good enough to meet.

  She didn’t mention it again until later that night, after they’d had rugged sex. He was lying beside her in a postcoital coma when she said, “Duncan, baby, I’d like to do that interview at the Institute.”

  “I thought you finished your research.”

  “Not quite. I need the interview. It’s the best part.”

  He sighed. “Okay. I guess we can go.”

  Brittany was the only white nanny in the neighborhood. Duncan, who was originally from the South, had insisted on racial subversion—and he’d ended up with a “real live cracker,” as he put it, an Alabama native who had been in Los Angeles ten years, fruitlessly pursuing a singing career while she cared for other people’s children. Brittany was in her thirties and vaguely pretty, though Duncan said, “The dew is off the rose.” He liked the irony of the situation: a black couple with a Southern white mammy caring for their brown child. Of course, they truly liked Brittany as well. More important, Cody adored her. He was even picking up her twangy accent.

  “So, Brit,” Cassie said, “we should be back from the interview in an hour. Can you give Cody lunch?”

  Brittany sat still while Cody drove his Hot Wheels up her blue-jeaned leg, making a vrooming sound.

  “Sure thing, darlin’. Take your time. And break a leg!”

  Brittany didn’t know it was just research.

  The reception area was empty and Duncan sat playing a video game on his cell phone while they waited to be called inside.

  “Can you put that away?”

  “No, I’m winning.”

  She squirmed beside him, irritated. Moments later, a couple—a black couple, slightly ragged-looking, definitely “socioeconomic tokens,” as Duncan would say—came out wearing bashful smiles. They nodded at Cassie and Duncan but their smiles were tight and their eyes frightened.

  A moment later, a middle-aged white woman came out to greet them, smiling with big teeth, her hand extended. “Hello, I’m Penny Washburn, director of admissions. Come on in.”

  She was rather sexless in the way of New England WASPs, with a long, thin face, graying blond hair, and bright blue eyes. She wore belted khakis, comfortable shoes, a pink oxford shirt tucked in.

  They followed her down a plush-carpeted hallway to her office.

  Inside, Cassie and Duncan took their seats. Cassie looked around. On Penny’s desk sat a photo of two children—preteens with braces—who might be hers. Beside it was a framed picture of a smiling Barack Obama, which, silly as it was, made her feel more comfortable.

  The interview lasted about twenty minutes. Cassie wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but Penny’s questions surprised her in their blunt specificity: When had Cody crawled? When had he walked? How long had he been breast-fed? How many words—approximately—did he have in his vocabulary? How did they choose to discipline him, if at all? What was his typical diet?

  Cody was advanced in all areas, so Cassie felt a surge of pride as she answered. Six months, ten months, thirteen months, and at least one hundred. They disciplined him with time-outs and he ate a healthy diet, though a little heavier on cheese than Cassie would have liked.

  “He’s very precocious,” Cassie said. “He already knows all his numbers and letters. Duncan thinks he might even be sight-reading.”

  “He’s two, though,” Duncan countered. “And an only child. Spoiled. Which means there are plenty of days when we’d like to send him back to the factory.”

  Cassie shot Duncan a dirty look. He didn’t notice.

  Penny, giving nothing away, nodded and scribbled in her notebook.

  Then she wanted to know about their backgrounds, their work. Duncan told her about his paintings, the collage technique he used. Cassie was vague about her plays. Penny made interested sounds in her throat and nodded and scribbled more notes.

  Then the interview was over and Penny was leading them to the door, wearing a placid, completely unreadable smile on her face.

  Cassie breathed a sigh of relief when they were on the sidewalk. Though they’d only gone in the spirit of research, she had felt nervous, as if she were really trying to get her kid into the school.

  “Penny seemed nice enough,” she said when she’d started the engine.

  “Whatever.”

  “It was cool she had a picture of Obama on her desk.”

  “Yeah, so what. He’s the new Mickey Mouse.” Duncan buckled his seat belt. “Anyway, are you finished?”

  “Finished what?”

  “With your fieldwork.”

  “I guess so,” she said, and stared out the windshield at two women, one white and blond, the other Asian, mothers presumably, who were chatting on the sidewalk outside the school. The Asian one was familiar, from some television show maybe, though Cassie couldn’t place her. They were both glamorous in high heels, with identical sheathlike hairstyles that fell across their faces. They made her think of Malibu Barbie and the ethnic Barbie, “Kira.” She’d owned both in her youth. The women’s matching silver SUVs were parked in the loading zone beside them. Two girls, their children, came striding out the gate of the school in matching Ugg boots, and waved good-bye to each other as their mothers led them to their respective vehicles.

  Cody was napping when they got home and Brittany was wearing her iPod and singing along to country music in a husky voice as she folded their laundry. Cassie told Duncan she was going out for a walk to think about her play. But once outside, she didn’t think about it at all. Instead she went over and over every detail of the interview, trying to imagine what Penny had thought of them, how they’d come across. That slight and inscrutable smile—was it just what Penny’s face did, or did it mean something?

  She thought about the school—the vast splendor of it—and the schools she’d attended at that age, the children she’d known. Each child was tagged in her memory with a tragedy or a defect. Tasha in third grade—one of a h
andful of foster kids in the class—had worn a wig that all the kids teased her about. When Cassie’s mother learned about the teasing, she scolded Cassie harshly, explaining that the girl’s hair had been burned off by her very own mother. A tall white boy named Dougie had a big head and lived with his aunt and uncle in a trailer because his family had burned to death in a fire. Why had there been so many fire-related tragedies? Some of the kids she’d known had been mean and some had been nice, some had been funny and some had been cruel. Some had been quick as whips and others had been slow. They’d been good little fighters, all of them, when the situation called for it. The school had been diverse in a way—there had been white kids, black kids, Puerto Rican kids, a few Vietnamese kids—but they were all so dingy in her memory, a gang right out of Oliver Twist. Had they really been that dingy? And what had happened to them all?

  She found herself on the street of the other school. Wee Things Nursery. She headed up the block toward it. Apparently it was one of the oldest nursery schools in Los Angeles, and it was beloved. When they’d toured it months ago, Cassie had been charmed by it. She and Duncan had watched a group of toddlers sitting at their child-size table eating their bag lunches and drinking their juice, and Cassie had felt an unbearable tenderness and sadness at the thought of Cody joining them, joining the world beyond their home. They had been delighted when the director called to say there was a spot for Cody. It meant they could walk him to school every morning, and he would be only blocks away, in case he needed or wanted to come home early.

  Now she stood in the shadows of a sycamore tree watching as parents picked up their children. They were not so different-looking from the parents at the other school—your basic upper-middle-class industry types. Their cars were mostly high-end luxury models. But now that she had a chance, a sliver of a possibility, of getting into the Institute, Wee Things had lost its luster. It looked run-down, slightly too hippie to be hygienic.

  At home, Brittany had gone and Duncan was seated on the nursery floor with Cody on his lap. Cody stared up at him with huge black eyes as Duncan read from Dr. Seuss. It was Cody’s favorite, The Sneetches. Cassie stood listening to the doggerel about the two factions, the Star-Belly Sneetches and the Plain-Belly Sneetches, the creatures identical to each other in every way except for this belly marking.

  Neither father nor son saw her where she stood in the shadows.

  Then the preschool interview, along with her own work, faded into white noise in the back of her mind, because Brittany’s mother went into a diabetic coma. Brittany had to go home to Alabama for a few weeks to tend to her, and Cassie learned what it was to be a full-time mother. From morning to night, she was manically caring for Cody—feeding him breakfast, brushing his tiny teeth, changing his diaper, wiping his butt, rushing him to the toilet to see if he’d poop there, and driving all over Los Angeles. Duncan helped when he could, but he was teaching two classes that semester. So Cassie hauled Cody from one mommy-and-me class to another, because sitting with a group of other mothers and children beat the tedium of sitting alone with him on the floor at home.

  She found herself immersed in a world of mothers—women who’d had careers once, as actresses and scriptwriters, lawyers and businesswomen, women who’d gone to grad school, but were taking time off to be mothers. They were an unusual lot in that they could afford nannies but weren’t relying on them full-time. Cassie, hanging on until Brittany came back, felt like a fraud in their midst.

  Among the mothers, the question of schools almost always came up. It was an anxiety that every woman seemed to feel: Where would her child land? Inevitably, the Institute came up too. Every one of the mothers wanted their child to go there. When Cassie pressed them as to why, they said vaguely, “It’s just the best,” or, “It’s supposed to be amazing.” They said it was a “feeder school” for the best grammar schools, which were feeder schools for the best high schools, which were feeder schools for the Ivy League. In other words, the Institute was a “feeder” for a life of success.

  Mostly, though, they talked about how hard it was to get in, and every one of them had an anecdote they’d heard about somebody famous or powerful who had not gotten their child in, even when they’d offered the school some vast sum of money. The Institute, they said, never changed its mind. “If they don’t want you, they don’t want you.” Then they would all sigh and move on to less depressing topics, like C-section scars or vaginal reconstruction.

  One afternoon she slogged home through traffic with Cody after a tumbling class in Beverly Hills. He was tired and hungry and shrieking about some toy tractor he’d dropped in the parking lot, which Cassie had been unable to find. She was relieved to see Duncan’s car in the driveway. She found him sprawled on the sofa watching television. She dropped Cody’s hand, said, “He’s all yours,” and kept walking toward the kitchen.

  She had the beginnings of a migraine. She gulped a long glass of water. She put it down and picked up the stack of mail on the counter. She flipped through some bills and then she saw it: a large white envelope from the Institute.

  Her skin prickled. She picked up the envelope and tore it open. Her eyes flashed over the words:Congratulations. Your son Cody has been accepted into our Toddler Program.

  From the other room, she heard Duncan making monster noises, Cody squealing.

  She went and stood in the doorway, watching them, the envelope in hand.

  Duncan held Cody upside down. Cody was laughing hysterically. Duncan glanced over and caught her eye.

  “You didn’t tell me,” she said.

  “Tell you what?” he said, out of breath, letting Cody down onto the floor.

  “We heard from the Institute.” She didn’t know what to do with her face, what expression to wear. She tried to smirk, but her mouth was not moving right. “We’ve been accepted.”

  “Oh yeah, I saw that. Well, la-di-da-da, ain’t we special,” Duncan said.

  There were cartoons on the television; Cody went and stood directly in front of them, so that he became just a black silhouette against the manic flashing colors of the screen.

  “I knew we’d get in,” Duncan said, leaning down to pick the throw pillows off the floor and set them back on the couch. “That school is rich on money and poor on class. See, baby, we’s culcha’d. We is some certified, authentified intellectuals, baby. We stood out in a sea of celebrities and millionaires. You gotta love it.”

  She swallowed. “I wasn’t sure we would. I mean, do you know the odds? Six hundred parents applied for twelve spots. At least admit to feeling a little, I don’t know, surprised.”

  “I’m shocked, shocked,” he said, deadpan, then brushed past her on his way to the kitchen. He picked up a bottle of wine and set to opening it. “It’s gotta be five-thirty somewhere in the world.” He said this same line every day at four-thirty. He poured himself a glass, leaned against the counter, and took a sip, watching her. “What’s wrong with your face?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your mouth is all twisted funny. And your left eye is twitching.”

  She felt the pulsing now that he said it. She touched it gingerly. She tried to sound casual, nonchalant. “Listen, I know this isn’t what we’d planned, but do you think we should consider accepting? I mean, it’s supposed to be an amazing school.” She realized as she spoke that she had been rehearsing this speech for the past two weeks. Somewhere in the back of her mind she’d been preparing these words. “I mean, once you’re in, you’re in through grade school. We wouldn’t have to worry about schools again in two years the way we will at Wee Things.”

  He sighed. “Cass, we already have a school for Cody. A perfectly good preschool for a fraction of the cost. A sandbox is a sandbox. I refuse to pay out the ass for preschool. And did you read the fine print on the brochure we got on that tour? I did. Each year the price goes up. And we have to buy insurance on our tuition because if something happens, if we decide to pull Cody out, they will not return our money. Yeah, beca
use you have to pay the whole fucking year’s tuition in one lump sum—because it’s a school for people who have fifteen, twenty grand lying around in their checking account. Honey, they will sap us of every penny we have. No more trips to France in the summer. Shit, no more lattes with a side of biscotti. We will have to scale back—seriously—just so the kid can get to sit in a classroom with future Rich Fucks of America.” He took another gulp of wine, a big one. He’d been preparing his speech too, she realized. Secretly, he’d been storing this up, preparing for this day, because secretly, they’d both known that they were going to get accepted.

  “I know,” she said. “I know all that. It’s just—well, we got in. It’s kind of a big deal.”

  “No it’s not,” he said. “We only went on the tour as a joke—remember? You were gonna write this acerbic parody about the stupidity and vapidity of American culture in the age of late capitalism. I line-edited your fucking NEA grant.”

  “But the thing is, I don’t want Cody to rot away in a public school. I mean, we send him to public school and maybe he’ll survive, maybe he won’t. It’s a wild card what will happen to him, what he’ll become.”

  “It’s a wild card everywhere, my dear. I’m sorry to inform you.”

  “No, not in the same way. This is where the world begins to divide. This is where the tone is set for the rest of his life.”

  “You sound like a New Yorker cartoon,” he said with a chortle.

  She felt the blood slamming against the inside of her head. She wanted to say, Don’t you dare take this from me, I’m almost there, I’ve almost made it to the other side, don’t fuck this up for me. But instead she said, “Not everything has to be a political statement, Duncan.”