They took it easy for days after Emily’s trouble in Mozart class. It felt like they were playing hooky. The night of the Mozart disaster Becca was in bed, lights out, but not able to sleep. The door opened a crack.
“I have to sleep here,” Emily said. “If Mommy comes to visit, I think she’ll come here.”
Becca had more or less moved into the master bedroom. “I think your mommy will come wherever you are,” Becca had turned and was leaning on her left side, her face propped up on her chin. This made Emily pause. Becca could see the tiny wheels of her brain working. “But what if she doesn’t—what if she can only make one stop, like the express bus.”
“Well, if we are both in the same room, then she will definitely arrive there.”
With this, Becca opened her sheet to welcome Emily next to her. Becca could not remember the last time she shared a bed with anyone. Actually, she’d rather not think about that too long. Anyway, it was the first time she’d felt a warm little body in her pink flannel nightie curl against her. Becca pulled the little girl close, wrapped her arms around her. Nothing was going to hurt this child—nothing or no one, as long as Becca was alive. Becca finally understood what compelled a man or woman to go into harm’s way to defend something precious to them. She was trying to finish this thought, but had automatically followed Emily’s breathing and soon she was calm, and then she slept.
Without discussing it, Becca and Edward were both staying at the apartment—living there really. Emily needed balance. For a week she slept with Becca. In the morning there was no pouncing, singing, demands. In the night she did not ask silly questions. Emily was becalmed. Slowly the two of them brought her around. One morning Becca felt her slip out of bed with the birds. This marked the beginning of Emily’s next step in her healing. She brought the scrapbook she and Becca had started into Becca’s room.
“Let’s put more stuff in.”
“Okay, do you have any more photos?”
“Mommy kept everything. My daddy used to say she was a garbage can.” This made Emily giggle, though Becca wasn’t so sure that remark was funny.
“Well, where did she put that stuff?”
Emily started walking away, her legs threatening to break out into a run. “Come on, Aunt Becca! Don’t be so pokey.”
“Who’s pokey?” Edward met them in the hallway. He caught up to Becca and placed a warning hand on he shoulder “She shouldn’t go in there.” Becca stopped. Emily was at the entrance to a small study tucked into an alcove, the furthest from the stairs.
“Why not?”
“The room is nothing but boxes.”
“What’s in them?”
“Stuff—memorabilia, maps, photos, pressed leaves and what looks like herbs—you know—stuff.”
“Then it’s not packed,” Becca said.
“What are you talking about?” Sometimes Becca seemed to know an entirely different language—one had to do with inner guidance.
“Arlene—”
By now Emily had used the doorway to twirl into the study. Edward screwed up his eyes and mouth, like he was waiting for a scream.
“Relax, buddy.” Becca walked in to join Emily, who by now was digging into open boxes, all marked and organized. The little girl was pulling out anything that could possibly fit into a scrapbook—and other things besides.
“Aunt Becca—look at all there is!” She dragged out a set of castanets—black, hand-painted. When Becca got closer she could see the painting was a scene—a town with women, probably African, carrying things on their heads. Emily recalled that Amy and Arthur had traveled through East Africa not too long ago.
“It was probably a present Mommy forgot to give me.” Emily already had tiny fingers caught in the silk ribbons that kept the wood pieces together.
“Probably,” Becca said, sitting on the floor beside her. “We can hang them in your bedroom.”
“No—kitchen—so I can see them every day and so can you.” She spotted Edward leaning against the door, “and you!” She pointed, giggled, put her hands to her head.
Edward met Becca’s eyes. “What did you mean? How could you possibly ascertain…”
“‘Possibly ascertain?’” Becca teased him. “I can possibly always for certain know that my mother has a sixth, seventh, and eighth sense about, well, mothering. She would know Emily would be ready soon to go through it.” Becca paused. “Actually, now that I think of it, I would also know.” She looked at Edward and said, “And so would you.”
All day the three went through boxes that allowed Emily to teach them how to give her what Amy and Arthur did to parent her. There was one whole box filled with bird feathers, odd stones, things that looked like acorns, but were not—animal photos, a bag of reddish dirt. Emily told them that her mommy loved to be outside, walking and hiking and finding animal homes in the trees, where they imagined they could see whole fairylands and friendly chipmunks escaping from nasty old badgers. They hiked all around, sometimes with a place to go and sometimes just for the thing called “exercise” that her mom had to get every day. Her mom had funny names for plants and trees that were really long and fancy-sounding. She also grew little plants called herbs; they used to be lined up on the balcony, and when she needed them for cooking she let Emily cut them into little pieces with her safety scissors.
Her mommy had gone on airplanes too and spoke in lots of languages. She spoke to the nanny in French but it was too fast for Emily to hear it right. She liked faraway places, same as Becca, Emily pointed out, except that Becca went to inside places and her mommy went to outside places. Becca blushed, but remained silent, astonished by this new Emily, until now a lovely but closed little bud. She was opening, and the combination of her vulnerability and her candor was striking to see.
Emily’s mommy loved the art that she made, and she took her to art shows so Emily knew already that she was just as good as the famous people. Amy set up her play table in the kitchen sometimes with the watercolor easel. Amy played music all the time in the apartment, music like they played in her music classes—with big sounds and no words—and when the nanny finished taking her to lessons, and Emily could speak English again, she liked to play “kitchen” while Amy did some baking. She was not allowed to wear her dress-ups out of the house, she mentioned, looking at the floor.
Emily’s heart seemed to pause until Becca reminded her that her fairy godparents loved her dress-ups, since she was really a princess to them. Emily’s courage returned with a flush of her cheeks, and she took a happy little step toward Becca. She had naps she was supposed to take a long time ago when she was really little but mostly she painted her fingernails under the covers. When she got in trouble it was no sweets and sometimes it was no dresses but that was just for really bad things like when she bit the nanny on her hand.
Becca and Edward both cringed at that image. Emily’s independence had been shocked into remission when she lost her parents. She had clung to them from the beginning, with an open heart, as if some defensive sense told her she would be badly served to struggle against her protection in this dangerous world.
But she was walking steady steps on her own now. This child was so much more than a little princess in pretty clothes, or a gem waiting for the light to come alive.
Emily was dividing all the objects that had filled four large boxes into piles only she could understand. But each pile was designated to a particular room. And there was no question that these objects would find their way to Emily’s dictates.
By noon, Becca was exhausted. Since it was technically “her day,” though the schedule was no longer adhered to, she stayed on the floor and Edward went off. Emily didn’t even glance up when Edward patted her good-bye on the hand.
Watching her triggered something for Becca. It was painful, whatever it was. Emily would stop every so often to show something to Becca, or to fasten a feather to her clothes, or stand to show off a cloth—one scarf Becca recognized as a particular blue that was the Montengards’ mark. Amy and Arthur must have traveled in the north country of Vietnam. How they wandered! Becca got snagged on a memory: a man who had to be her father—a piece of cloth—she went to the room’s telephone and dialed.
“Hello,” her mother had a way of pronouncing the “o” that made it sound like she was pretending to be a proper lady. It always got a smile out of Becca.
“Mother—what’s new with you?”
“What is new is that I can nag you now that I never get to see my granddaughter.”
They both laughed with great affection. The preliminaries over, Becca explained what they were doing and then said, “Did my father give me a scarf? Or a piece of cloth that I might remember?”
Her mother got real quiet—not like the quiet when she was listening, but a quiet that was more profound.
Emily had worked her way over to where Becca stood and was tugging on the hem of her pants.
“Aunt Becca!”
Becca was listening into her mother’s silence. “Mom?”
“Aunt Becca,” the little girl repeated.
“Mom, what?”
Emily screamed one long sound and Becca understood the phrase “screamed bloody murder.”
“What’s going on, Becca? What’s happened?”
“I’ll call you back.”
“You’ll put the phone down and keep me on hold.”
Without replying, Becca stooped to Emily’s level and saw that she was running little streams of tears—more like creeks.
“What happened, sweetie?”
Emily threw herself into Becca’s arms.
“Mommy—I want my mommy. You have her.” The sobs came from Emily’s soul. She was fractured by her loss and at this moment Becca was powerless. She could only hold Emily and hope the moment passed.
She picked up the phone. Maybe Mom had some advice. Then it hit her that Emily must have heard her address her own mother and stumbled emotionally.
“Did you hear everything?”
“I did.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Probably—does it have to do with you talking to me?”
“Exactly. Now what?”
“Let her cry. Crying is good. When she’s done, take her anywhere in the house she wants, give her a treat. Not sweets.” Becca laughed—the honey-cake queen was warning against sweets. “Milk—then stay with her—she’ll fall asleep—but stay with her.”
“Roger.”
“Becca, it’s important that you stay there.”
“Got it, Arlene. Love you.”
It wasn’t until she hung up that Becca remembered the memory of the cloth.
As the days went on, there was more talk about Emily’s parents. They asked about Arthur, but Emily revealed very little in her recollection of her father. Her daddy, she said, loved to lift her up and kiss her on the tummy at the end of the day, and sometimes watch the puppet shows she did in the playroom, but mostly he was at the club until late. She thought that he didn’t hear so well, since he missed a lot of what she said to him. Lots of the time he looked somewhere else and said “What?” In that way he reminded her of the nanny who wouldn’t listen at all to her questions in English.
It was a sketch, only a hint of her childhood, but Emily had stepped towards them in trust. Edward and Becca’s shared gratitude and warmth were mingled.
Becca’s gratitude faded, however—and Edward’s broadened—when Emily suggested that she and Becca should bake a cake.
Becca cringed at the thought of baking, but was put on the spot, and declared without hesitation that she would love to bake a cake. Emily said that the kind she baked with her mommy was called a box cake and you only poured water into the mix. She knew just where it was in the grocery shelf because it was on the same place as all the sweets and icings.
Both Edward and Becca saw the enthusiasm that rose to Emily’s eyes when her mind turned to baking. There was no getting out of it, Becca thought, but a cake in a box couldn’t be too much trouble. While Emily flounced importantly down the hall to get her beaded city, purse, Becca asked Edward for the location of the closest grocery store.
He laughed, since necessity had driven him to take over ordering their sustenance for delivery from the grocery, the greengrocer, and occasionally, when the maid agreed to cook, from the butcher. Becca admired this survival skill. Like morning glories leaning toward twin suns, they had been drawn in the direction of their differing talents. Becca had expanded Emily’s world, taking her to the floor of the stock exchange the way some people take children to the zoo; in fact it was not unlike the zoo, and Emily had squealed with excitement at the frenzied scene. Edward had no innate talent or interest in cooking, but he had a great deal more need for eating, and so by default had been the one to pick up this essential chore.
Emily accepted with a pout that they had to wait until later to bake the cake, since she had another preschool interview in the afternoon, but Edward made her laugh with a ridiculous story of a daddy who ate cake before the interview and then burped at all the teachers. Becca regarded him with admiration as Emily giggled, forgetting what she might have insisted upon, her stubborness washed away in peals of laughter. With Eddie around, Becca thought, things were smooth as silk.
Edward’s manner was so naturally pleasant, so smooth and straightforward, he was the indoor equivalent of a lovely, calm day. He relaxed everyone in the room. So little invested was he in some prearranged course of his own conduct that he simply adapted to Emily’s preferences; but when he had a goal in mind, he saw quickly to the child’s avenues of persuasion, and moved her gently on what seemed to Emily to be the force of her own decisions. If she had wanted to pick a fight with Edward, the child wouldn’t have had a chance.
They arrived, that afternoon, at a familiar scene brewing on the sidewalk in front of Ethical Kiddies, a coveted preschool whose aspirational name did not change the essential reason for its large applicant pool. It was a surefire feeder into Chapin and Spence, two of the best elementary schools in the city. The toddler popularity contest came into view as they rounded the corner.
They counted their steps out loud, swinging Emily’s feet off the ground on “five.” Emily squealed with delight as they gave her a last energetic swing, with Edward pulling her higher and higher to hear the sound of her giggle, and Becca tugging with all her strength to be sure she pulled her own weight. They took their places in line, toward the back this time, as they had not arrived early.
Upper East Side parents congregated nervously before the cheerful red barn-shaped building that housed Ethical Kiddies. Spouses bickered, neighbors compared remodeling contractors, and everyone danced the tricky middle ground between commiserating with each other and exposing any weakness in their child’s preschool portfolio.
“Here goes,” said Edward, shifting Emily in his arms. She lay her flushed cheek on his shoulder, smiling as Becca obligingly handed Emily her mobile phone. She had decided on this short-term surrender, lest she make the same mistake that got her in hot water at the French toddler lot.
Edward glanced past the crowd at the school’s Alice-in-Wonderland-style door, which adults had to duck to enter. Neon orange placards, imitating road signs, surrounded the front entrance with cheery, esteem-enhancing slogans.
PRE-LEADERS AT WORK, read one beside the door, CAUTION: CONFIDENCE BUILDING, read another. Edward shook his head, smiling at the aggressive, opinion-forward cuteness of this preschool stage. He couldn’t remember preschool, of course, but something told him that this crash of lingo, psychology, and affirmation was a new way of reaching four-year-olds.
Becca glanced at Emily. She was reassured, at the sight of her pure little face, that Emily was oblivious of the pressure building around her among the jockeying parents. She was secure, Becca could see; she knew she was loved. It didn’t matter what happened at this school, she thought: They were doing all right with Emily. She felt a surprising sense of accomplishment, though they were only at the gates. Watching Emily point her tiny arms at shapes she imagined in the clouds, rejoicing at the sight of her plump, excited face as she described to Edward the dragons, castles, and monsters in the sky, Becca breathed deeply. She felt a tension had been released from her muscles, from her mind. She was grateful. They had gotten through a little bump in the road with Emily, and she was growing to trust them.
“I like this place,” Emily declared suddenly, having noticed the tiny barn door surrounded by pretty orange signs. “Will I go to school here?”
“If it’s good enough,” answered Becca. “We’ll see today if it’s a good place for princesses.”
Emily’s eyes widened. “I hope so,” she said. It was a cool fall day, but a brilliantly sunny one, and Becca could almost feel Emily’s heart bursting with anticipation.
Edward, who had a sixth sense for impropriety, poked Becca to draw her attention to some people standing near them in line. She stifled a laugh when she caught view of the situation: a man and woman who were so far gone in their battle of wits that they stood on the verge of pawing the dirt and snorting each other.
“How could you wear that tie, Nelson?” the woman hissed. “I specifically laid an African Kente cloth out on your dressing table before I left for tennis.”
“I told you,” he snapped back, “I thought the decorator left it there. It looked like a pillow for the game room.”
“In our prep session, Hayley told us to go with an indigenous style,” the woman snapped at him. She planted her hands on her hips. “Do you consider that to be indigenous?” Her face was twisted with contempt.
“It’s indigenous to Wall Street,” he replied stubbornly. “So get off my ass!”
At the notice of eyes upon them, Nelson made a hasty surrender of the offending neckwear. His wife, Cassie, threw it behind a bush, concerned that a school official might see it poking out of her open safari bag. She glared at her husband’s clothes and felt herself overcome by panic. Their son, Bowen, had blown three interviews straight. If he didn’t get into Ethical, they’d be finished. Finished!
Any tense line that may have broken through the botox disappeared from Cassie’s face at the instant the little barn door swung open in welcome. White teeth appeared everywhere, glittering on every parent in the line.
A large woman, wearing an orange housedress that was silk-screened with totem-pole faces, beamed on the assembled crowd.
“Aloha, everybody!” she called out, her arms jiggling as she waved. “I’m Marsha Holt, the team leader of Ethical Kiddies. We’re ready to share our inclusive day with all of you, persons of the world!”
Edward’s eyes met Becca’s, and hiding their laughter, both of them tried to nod and smile with wide-open earnestness.
“First,” Marsha chirped, “we’ll get our person identifier tags. People are people, of course, but we rejoice in our diversity! After we project our identities, I’ll invite you all in for a simultaneous embrace! Get ready to love!”
Becca glanced at Edward. He looked like he might jump out of his skin.
Marsha turned to a smiling team supporter who stood by her side and took from her a tray of nametags. Each sticker, shaped like a shining sun, read HELLO, MY PERSON IDENTIFIER IS, and the child’s and each parent’s name was printed in.
“We like to start each day at Ethical Kiddies with a big hug,” Marsha announced, as the parents fastened identifiers to their person-children. “We have a hug-invigorator on staff, if anyone feels a little down and droopy this morning!”
Marsha was practically singing her joy as the nametags disappeared from her tray. Though Becca felt the onset of a posthippie hangover, she glanced at Emily and noticed the child’s beautiful smile was shining upon Marsha’s face. Emily was beaming: She was enthusiastic and excited. She caught Becca’s eye with a giggle.
Edward also noticed Emily’s enthusiasm, but he was slower to find his sea legs.
“Stand next to me for the group hug, will you?” he asked Becca, pulling Emily close to him as additional family armor.
“Well, heck,” sang Marsha, overcome with self-satisfaction, “forget the identifiers! Let’s celebrate what unites us: the need to be loved! Everyone line up.”
Suddenly the song “Lean on Me” was playing from a Fisher-Price tape player and Becca watched Marsha’s toes swaying to the beat in her Birkenstocks. Her thick yellow toenails curved fully over the front of each of her toes, adding probably a full shoe size to her feet. Everyone swayed; everyone toe-tapped, everyone joined the circle and hugged on cue.
“Now, doesn’t that feel great!” Cassie exclaimed, hoping Marsha would hear her.
“Lovely,” replied Erin Starker. A Park Avenue princess, Erin was dressed down with a vengeance this morning. She had never been so affable, as she swung her daughter’s hands to and fro.
“We do the circle-hug every morning at home,” she declared in a loud voice. “And we always hug bye-bye.”
“So do we,” several of the other mothers echoed.
“As if they take their children to school themselves,” Cassie snipped into Nelson’s ear. “The sluts pretend they don’t speak nanny.”
He shushed her like a child. “Didn’t you take your Prozac?”
“Shut up!” She pinched him.
Hastily, they flashed Norman Rockwell smiles at the approaching school director.
Holding hands in a line led by Marsha, the parents were shepherded into a round yoga room for the first activity.
“Everybody grab a mat and make yourselves comfortable,” said Marsha, taking two for herself.
A mass experiment with contorting inflexible joints began, and in the midst of the agony, the Rolffs made their mark. A perceptive couple who had engaged the consulting services of Upper East Side yogi Hans Johan, Barbie and Hamish Rolff had precisely this moment in mind when they paid eight hundred dollars for two hourly sessions. They made a splendid display of outstretched limbs in reenactment of the earth, air, fire, and water poses, their hearts beating eagerly as they previewed the joy they would have in describing to Marsha their family yoga hour.
Their admissions consultant had cautioned them, though, to tread carefully when discussing how yoga had improved little Chad’s agility. They had to be careful to emphasize that sports, in the winning and losing sense, were not at all important to them. Barbie was no soccer mom. She’d be thrilled to see Chad take up an interest in orienteering, for example, or whittling. The family was simply interested in deep breathing, relaxation, and flexibility for its own sake, and for the unique joy of experiencing oneness in their togetherness.
“Do you do yoga?” Barbie asked Becca, but the disturbance in Barbie’s aura that occurred simply by watching Becca tap and fidget on her mat made her doubt it.
“I relax when I sleep,” Becca shot back, keeping one cagey eye on Marsha.
The parents’ jaws snapped shut as Marsha began to chirp about the school.
As if she has to sell it to this crowd! thought Becca. She was growing restless.
“Ethical’s a top-five preschool,” Marsha crowed, “but you know that.” The parents’ heads bobbed furiously to show their agreement.
“So what makes us different? Hmmmm?” She looked around the circular room, savoring the quiet, the hopeful, upturned faces, the power she had over these rich people.
“Open choice,” Marsha concluded, to a chorus of approval.
“That tells me very little,” Edward whispered to Becca.
“Shhh!” she said, laughing. “K. K. said we have to score this place!”
Emily had managed to stretch one leg completely behind her head, but lost her balance and rolled into Edward’s lap. He held her, brushing her curls, paying attention to anything he could, to keep a straight face as Jabba the Hut in a housedress numbed his brain with her jargon.
“Open choice is our term for free but ideologically directed play. We love big ideas! Can anybody guess what our biggest idea is here at Ethical Kiddies? Hmmmm?”
Nobody ventured.
“Fun! Fun is our biggest idea!” She raised her hands in a hurrah.
A little cheer went up. Edward poked Becca in the back.
“Cut it out!” She meant to scold him with her tone, but in the quick turn of Becca’s head, Edward saw that her eyes were bright with humor. He felt a playful impulse to cause some trouble, and restrained it, staying behind Emily and keeping his laughs shielded.
“Open choice means that your child will make decisions for herself. Does she want to play in our organic vegetable garden, or learn about another culture through dramatic play with one of her very diverse classmates? Perhaps he’ll build an indigenous necklace with our natural fibers, or break the gender barriers in our dress-up corner?”
Edward shrugged. “I’d go for the Play-Doh,” he whispered to Emily, who nodded.
Marsha had grown silent. “We’ve just been connectors,” she said suddenly. “Now let’s all be reflectors.” She folded her hands as if in prayer, and for thirty seconds all was silent, including the admirably well-coached three- and four-year-olds.
“We’re reflecting,” she announced, “on what we have just beheld. Let’s use all our senses, now, quiet…that’s right. That’s it. When we are reflectors, we learn to cope with what is new to us.”
Becca thought the world could hear her heart beating as she made an enormous effort not to laugh. Edward restrained his desire to poke Becca again. They were supposed to be reflectors. What could he do? He was a born connector.
Edward looked around the room, trying to be a reflector, and started with what was in front of him. His eyes scanned its plaster walls, its skylit circularity, and he was suddenly reminded of the Guggenheim, which always made him sick. Bunny had sailed around and through the museum as if she had been born there, he thought, growing dizzy with the memory of that absurd crown-and-glory event. He was glad to be connected with little Emily Stearns, who dressed herself up in the magical grace of her childish, flowery innocence. Little Emily was a tribute to what beauty should be. With Bunny, every jewel was a sharp-edged implement.
Weirdly, as if she had never turned into that meditative person of two minutes ago, Marsha jumped up and hurried to direct the tidying of yoga mats.
“Okay! Next we have a class meeting. We will split up into teams, and discuss our feelings about what we just did. Come on, persons of the world! Let’s head for the meeting room. Chop chop! And don’t forget our top priority. Let’s hear it on three. One, two, three!”
“Fun!” remembered a sharp-eyed parent. Marsha’s eyes shone with approval.
Edward and Becca shuffled with their fellow participants to the Ethical meeting room, where they followed instructions through the coping session and a musical Ritual of Forgetting. The children had been shown to another room, where, in a switch they enjoyed immensely, they were permitted to spy on their parents, while learning facilitators in a curtained area behind the plant life spied on them. A National Geographic video of tribal dancing drew the attention of some. Like the other scheduled activities, the television program was a hidden test. If the children swayed with the rhythm, they gained points, but if they watched passively, they drew strikes as TV types.
By the time Becca and Edward approached their personal parent interview, they had been completely rattled by the animal imitation session, in which each parent, in front of the group, imitated a wild beast to the rhythm of the partner-parent’s maracas. As they waited for the interviewer in their rough seats of unfinished wood, Becca had a second to prep with Edward.
“It’s the three Us, remember? We’re Unmarried, Uncommitted, and Unorthodox.”
“How about Unprepared?”
“I think we’re doing all right,” she said, tapping him affectionately on his strong, square shoulder. His muscles were tense.
“You’re nervous, Eddie,” she said. “Relax.”
“Did you read our copy of the application?”
“Yes.”
“It was like a cross between the census and an FBI background check.”
She smiled. “Don’t worry, Ed. They’ll love you. Everybody loves you.”
Becca’s complexion looked particularly radiant, Edward thought, as his eyes lingered on the shadow created by her sculpted cheekbones. He was encouraged by her confidence, and her humor calmed him. He reclined, to the extent he could, in his chair full of natural knotholes, folding his hands behind his head. With his thumbs he massaged the muscles of his neck, drawing a deep breath into his chest. He smiled as the door opened. Worry did not take hold of Edward for long.
He stood to greet the entering interviewer. Reading his glance, Becca, too, shot up from her chair. Into the room strode a member of the Nez Perce tribe, clad in buckskin that flapped as she walked. Her bodily use of animal skins had caused some offense among the vegan learning facilitators, but her tribal ethnicity created kind of an understood exemption from their usual ban on animal products. Declining to shake hands, she bowed before a plant that had withered in the back of the room, then turned her steely gaze on Edward.
He raised his hand like a Boy Scout, remembering the episode when the Brady Bunch went to the Grand Canyon.
She ignored the salutation. “I am Green Field,” she boomed.
“I’m Becca, he’s Edward,” Becca introduced them both. She paused, wondering why the great chief continued to point her eagle eyes at Edward. She nodded her head to give a little ceremonial bow.
“Have a seat,” Becca announced, sitting. Edward stood next to his seat, his eyes locked on the interviewer, who regarded him with a curiously hostile glare.
Green Field also continued to stand. Her eyes blazed like a predator’s. She pointed an accusing finger at his face.
“Edward Kirkland,” Green Field spat out the name, her face disfigured by a ferocious scowl. “I expected you to look different.” Her eyes were from the grave.
“Younger than you thought?” Edward returned. He smiled, but the interviewer clenched her teeth. Only Becca gave a polite laugh. With a sigh, Edward slunk into his seat. He had the feeling he got sometimes in his father’s office, that it would be best just to sit and wait it out.
Closing her eyes, Green Field offered a silent sacrifice to the gods of rain and soil, of wind and earth. She stroked her necklace of antelope teeth in a self-soothing ritual.
“Your statistics were never promising,” said Green Field, brandishing a paper. “But then we thought of you as a courageous exception.”
“Well, I’ve never been called courageous or exceptional,” Edward admitted from his slump. “So there must be some mistake.” His voice was controlled.
“Don’t be so tough on yourself, Eddie,” whispered Becca.
She turned to the interviewer. “I think you have a piece of paper you’re not sharing, Miss Field.” She stuck her hand out for a copy. “How about a little ‘open choice’?”
Green Field ignored her. She was still locked like a snake on Edward.
“Oppressive colonialist background, elitist recreational habits, membership in a Christian organization not known for accepting alternative lifestyles. Welcome in the private men’s clubs, I’ll guess?”
“The Union Club. The Racquet Club,” he responded, casually. “Why? What difference does it make to Emily?”
“Patriarchal slime!” she shrieked, racing for his desk.
Becca stood between them. “Take it easy, there, chief,” she laughed, putting out her hand to stop the woman’s hostile advance. She turned quickly back to Edward with a whisper.
“Do you think she’ll communicate with me?” she asked him.
He shrugged. “It’s worth a try,” he said, but his tone was doubtful.
The Indian skidded to a stop, bowing to Becca. She took her hand solemnly.
“You, we respect,” she announced, raising Becca’s fingers to the sky in victory. “Religious Minority, Breaker of Gender Barriers, Shirker of Marriage Conventions, Cohabiting Legal Guardian of a Love-Child.” In a lowered voice, she added: “We had some trouble with your capitalist ethic, but we adapted our mission statement to allow that doing well can be channeled to useful ideological interests.”
Becca stared with the eyes of a fighter fish. “Is this a joke?”
The Great Spirit had calmed Green Field, but her eyes still burned with a slow fire when she turned again toward Edward.
“You lied to us,” she said, glaring at him. “You lied on your addendum to the application.”
His voice was calm, but Becca could hear his annoyance. “It was Emily’s application,” he corrected her. “And I was perfectly candid with you—there must be some mistake.”
Though any addition of an addendum was news to her, Becca instinctively rose to his defense. “Eddie would never do that,” she chimed in. “Straight as an arrow.”
Watching the moccasined native woman stroke her necklace of antelope teeth, Edward cringed at Becca’s choice of words, but appreciated her trust in him.
“Emily was intended to add to our diversity in a very particular way.” Green Field said sadly. Her eyes sought the solid wooden beams that supported the ceiling and she soaked in the strength of their sacrificed trees.
Becca turned a confused look on Edward. Diversity was supposed to be their selling point. Unmarried and Unorthodox. Too baffled to deliver their stump speech, they sat in silence.
Green Field approached Edward with a hostile glare.
He watched her without speaking. She reminded him more and more of his father.
“You identified your mother as African-American in our schematic, Edward,” she spat at him.
“In fact you claimed the reason you were sending the letter was to call attention to all of Emily’s ‘unique blending of sociological and ethnic strands.’” The chief had pulled a letter from a pouch that looked a little like the Hermès saddlebag.
“That’s true,” he replied simply.
“You are not black!” Green Field shouted, her clenched fists shaking.
“I’m not,” he agreed. He sat back in his seat and folded his arms.
“I did some research,” Green Field shot back. “With all my senses. My eyes tell me you are whiter than snow, and my reading told me that your father is Horace Kirkland, who produces more chemical pollutants than Three Mile Island, and your mother is Catherine Whitney, of the exclusive bourgeois art museum.”
Becca, surprised by all that she heard, turned from Green Field to Edward as if she were watching a tennis match.
“If you had dug deeper, Miss Field,” he responded with gentle certainty, “you would have learned that my mother is a DeBeers on her mother’s side. She was born in Johannesburg while her parents were consolidating the family’s holdings. That’s in South Africa, which, last I checked, makes my mother an African.”
The interviewer shook with fury. To control the spirit of anger, she began to dance, chanting Ki-oh-wa-ji-nay maniacally as her feet pounded in place.
Edward, stunned, was making a heroic effort not to laugh.
“Emily’s background has changed a great deal sine she became my—our—child. I thought that was important,” he defended himself.
The interviewer looked for a way to challenge him. Emily Stearns was not so unique. They had national and ethnic categories for Bengalis, Inuits, Kazakis, Acadians. They had cultural slots for children adopted by homosexuals or conceived by surrogate. Green Field was determined to prove that this new-formed family was not unique enough to qualify for an automatic acceptance under the “proves school’s stellar ethics” rule.
But Becca had already stood to leave. This place was absurd.
“I think we’ve said all we have to say, today, Green,” she announced.
Edward stood and pushed in his chair. He gave the interviewer a last confounded look, and Becca’s heart went out to him. She was moved to pity by his perplexed blue eyes. Poor Eddie, she thought, watching him. He didn’t do anything wrong.
“Miss Field, I was honest with you,” he said, stepping over to Becca’s abandoned chair and pushing it back into place. “Maybe you should just make it clear that WASPs should not apply here. That way you could have dropped me right into the rejection pile.” He heard Becca laughing next to him, and he smiled.
Green Field scowled. “We’ll have no stereotyping in this class!”
“That would be a miracle,” said Becca. She walked close to Edward, standing beside him. “It’s all I’ve heard so far.”
Smiling cordially at Green Field, then warmly at Becca, Edward turned to leave.
“Shall we?” he said, offering his arm to Becca. “It’s a family tradition.”
She linked her arm with his, and together they departed.
When they were alone in the hall, Becca became suddenly conscious that they were touching. She dropped her hand to her side hastily, then reached into her bag for her phone. She forgot that Emily had taken it. She rooted around in her bag a little, digging for something or other. She glanced at Edward, leaning against a wall displaying art of the four seasons. Two raindrops cut from recycled tinfoil on the picture behind him looked like earrings dangling from Edward’s ears. Becca noticed the fall leaves were colored in oil pastels. She tugged him away from the wall by the sleeve.
“You’ll get smudged,” she told him.
He nodded thanks. Becca waited, watching Edward. He stood in place for a minute, his hands finding his pockets, his eyes finding hers.
“I wonder where Emily is.”
“The open choice room, I think,” she said. “Or whatever they call it. Come on, Eddie. Let’s go get her.”
He stopped her with a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry, Becca,” he said. “I should have consulted you before I sent the letter.”
“Forget about it, Eddie.” She flashed him a bright smile and he felt the warmth of her acceptance.
His smile returned slightly. She was standing close to him. She rubbed his arm, and together they began to walk.
“I wasn’t so crazy about the group hugs, anyway,” he said with a grin.
“Listen, Ed,” Becca said. “Emily won’t go to a school where they scatter kids around like lamps to lend color to a room. She’ll be better off with us.”
They reached the classroom, and Edward held the door. At the sight of her fairy godmother, Emily Stearns dropped her maracas with a crash. Edward watched her make a running leap from Ethical’s open choice into Becca’s open arms.
He looked at Becca, feeling he should offer to carry her bag while she carried Emily. He reached over to tousle Emily’s curls. Poor kid. With bumbling guardians like them, she’d never get into school anywhere.
Becca stroked Emily’s hair and her hand met Edward’s. It seemed they couldn’t help bumping into each other and, if she were honest, she would admit to herself that she didn’t mind. She turned toward him, their eyes meeting over the gentle curls of Emily Stearns’ soft golden hair. Emily was singing a song, and when Becca told her that the school was not their favorite one, and they thought they’d all stick together and play and learn at home for a while longer, Emily shrugged indifferently, and asked if they could all go for ice cream—a double and with rainbow sprinkles too.
Edward was in awe of Becca’s confidence. He watched Becca’s lips curve into a smile as she lay her cheek against Emily’s soft head.
That was his answer. Becca’s eyes and lips spoke what he felt in his own soul. Emily was better off with them.
Edward took his handkerchief and wiped away the ice-cream stains on Emily’s face. That’s why he didn’t hear Becca’s whispered warning. When he stood, he was looking straight into Bunny’s pinched face. But he hadn’t been brought up in a “colonialist” home for nothing. So he immediately collected himself.
“Bunny! Great to see you. Have you met Becca Reinhart? Becca, this is Bunny Stirrup. Bunny, this is Becca, my coguardian.”
“Your what?”
But Becca held her hand out to shake and Edward kept talking, stealing time. “And this little sugarplum is Emily Stearns—you probably haven’t seen Amy and Arthur’s little girl since she was a baby. Emily, I want you to meet Miss Bunny Stirrup.”
Unfortunately, Emily had apparently forgotten what she’d learned in manners class.
“Bunny is a silly name,” she said, and ran behind Becca to hide.
“Emily!” Edward said. But he was certain the child had been rude because she sensed danger. In the last few weeks he’d learned much more about children than the loose-leaf notebook of information Becca’s staff had gathered. Observing Emily when she wasn’t aware of him proved to be a graduate school course called “Why God Made Kids.” Emily was like a canary when it came to assessing situations or judging people’s sincerity. She was a lightning rod in any tense situation and right now the sky over Bunny had begun to storm.
Bunny seemed to have regained her equanimity because she dug up a smile made for the stage and said, “I haven’t had a good talk with you in weeks, Edward. I heard about poor Arthur and Amy, of course—”
“Be careful what you say.” Edward gestured toward Emily.
“Oh yes, of course. Anyway, your dear mother told me you had been named the child’s ward—”
“Guardian,” Becca said. “Wards went out with the Austens.”
Bunny turned all of her considerable talent for putting other women in their place on Becca.
“You are Ms. Reinhart, of course.”
“Becca, Bunny.”
This caught Edward unaware and he laughed. Emily inched her way toward Becca’s knee. Reflexively, Edward put his hand on Emily’s head and she grabbed it and started kissing him, a continual string of pecks all over his hand.
Becca saw that Bunny couldn’t take her eyes off the display going on between Emily and Edward. In fact, she seemed to have forgotten what she was saying because she put her hand to her perfectly buffed and blushed cheek and said, “I must tell your mother we ran into each other. She’ll want to know all about—” She groped for a moment and then remembered, “Emily.”
“If she wanted to know all about Emily, she would have asked to meet her,” Becca said. She noted that Bunny was dressed in cashmere Juicy Couture sweats, pink, and on her feet were the Merrell shoes that reminded Becca of Mercury delivering a message.
Sensing that she had stumbled into messy territory, Bunny agilely turned the conversation to what only she and Edward could discuss. “Bitsy was disqualified in the first round of the trials for the garden.”
Bunny had managed to both change the conversation into another language and take a swipe at another woman—assuming Bitsy was a woman. She’s good, Becca thought—very clever. Becca, who still knew little about Edward’s personal life, found herself suddenly ravenous for information about this side of him.
Her attention to the unspoken communication between Edward and Bunny was a mystery to her. Thus far they had never again tiptoed near conversation about their personal lives. Edward left, wearing tuxedos most of the nights he was “off.” She knew that though he still kept his rooms at the Carlyle, he had moved the dogs to the Stearns’ Fifth Avenue apartment and had virtually not spent one night away from the apartment. If he had a woman in his life, relations between them had to be either relegated to daytime trysts, or chaste. So what claim did this woman have on him that made her desperate to catch Edward’s eye?
Emily was standing between Becca and Edward in what had become the threesome’s standard, with the child holding a hand of each, the majority of these times claiming much of their attention.
“You go away now, Bunny,” Emily said.
“Emily, apologize to Ms. Stirrup,” Edward said.
Becca studied Bunny’s reaction. For a moment she saw hatred flash through her pale blue eyes. Hatred toward Emily, Becca realized. That’s it—they were out of here!
But before she said a word, Edward began to move the three of them past Bunny toward home.
“I think we should get Emily home, Bunny. So if you’ll excuse us—it was nice running into you.”
“Yes.” She turned her body in their direction, trying to detain him for as long as possible. “I’ll tell your mother I ran into you and Ms. Reinhart,” she repeated again.
Becca was certain she heard a sneer in this. “Becca, Bunny,” she said again, knowing it would crack Emily up.
“Becca, Bunny,” Emily repeated. Not once, not twice, but like a mantra—if four-year-olds had mantras, Becca thought. As though by prior agreement, Becca and Edward avoided each other’s eyes—knowing if they glanced at each other there would be muscle-aching laughter.
“Seriously, Bunny, it was nice to meet you.” Becca put her hand out once more and Bunny once more gave her a wet-fish handshake.
“I’ll see you at the Glaucoma Evening?” Bunny asked Edward, who by now was past her so she was talking to Edward’s back. And what Becca saw was a tigress letting today’s prey get away because she wasn’t really hungry and she knew there would be a next time.