“Anyway,” he says, “in this capitalistic machine that is America, that makes ever more”—he hammers one fist brutally on another—“workers workers workers workers! In U.S. public schools, when funding is tight, the first thing they cut is art. I would say if you have to cut anything, cut everything BUT art! And public schools, with what is it—one teacher for every forty children, fifty? This is inhuman! What are children? Cattle? At Wonder Canyon your child will NEVER be in a classroom…of more than six.”
Aimee’s head drops on my shoulder. A gutteral yet almost soundless moan escapes her, as though she were a deaf-mute who had just been stabbed, between the shoulder blades, with a shiv.
“In such a factory-belt atmosphere as the U.S. educational system, it is impossible for the truly gifted child to be seen, to be understood, to be heard. You know your children—they are on a different vibration!” His face relaxes now that he is turning back to his favorite topic. “Here at Wonder Canyon, we give our small curious souls—who may do strange things—” Here he twinkles, like the elf again, the once-choppy dark Atlantic waters turned back now to calm blue Pacific. “They may wear a skirt on the head or make a trumpet from stones—Living with your children, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about—”
We all laugh. I think of Hannah bathing her stuffed animals. P.S…. To Gershwin piano preludes!
“We give our small, curious souls a school—a home—of love. A love of learning, a love of wonder, a love of love…Lisalotte and I greet every child in the morning by first name.”
Lisalotte snaps back into consciousness.
“I vill heff ze names ze first day…Him? Zree!”
“But I will have them!” He laughs.
“But we want to go further, to illustrate our teaching method,” our gentle gnome continues. “We want to split you into dyads. We want you to describe to your partners the hopes each of you has for your child’s schooling. You may learn some things very interesting.”
Aimee sits across from a handsome man with a shock of gray through his dark wavy hair. He is still in surgical scrubs—he has clearly hurried over from Cedars-Sinai to make the tour at Wonder Canyon. He looks like George Clooney—a very tired George Clooney. With kind of a fat neck. Already he is pouring his heart out to her.
“I drove by our corner public elementary and the grass…made me sad. It was so bare. There was no shade. It looked like a death camp.”
I sit across from a painfully thin woman named Roan, with a mane of streaky blond hair, whose son is Ezekiel. She is very beautiful and fragile-looking, like a skinny Catherine Deneuve on crank.
“I am divorced. Horribly divorced. This divorce has shattered us. I am a corporate attorney who has seventy-hour work weeks. So Ezekiel needs a school that is like a second home. Because my money-manager ex is such a dick, Ezekiel needs father figures in his life, strong father figures, men, old-fashioned men, masculine men…”
Under “Ezekiel,” her tag reads “Little Willows.” How unfortunate that she was forced to send her in-need-of-a-strong-father-figure son with surely his already tiny penis to a place called Little Willows.
But that’s the paradox. On paper, Roan would look like a full-on top-three-percent-tax-bracket ball-buster. But as she tells me her story, Roan conveys such nervousness, such extraordinary fragility. Like she herself is a Little Willow. Like she and Ezekiel are absolutely helpless in this world, adrift and alone. Some children in this world survive without shoes; Ezekiel will not survive if he has to take second-grade French from a nonnative speaker.
My mind awash in pictograms, I suddenly imagine the planet’s top quintile sitting at the very tip of humanity’s rowboat, but instead of looking backward and seeing how much better off they are than 80 percent of the world’s population, they’re gazing transfixed over the edge:
“I am against testing,” Roan goes on. “Absolutely, it’s cruel, it’s inhuman, that’s why we would never consider a public school of any kind—Ezekiel needs constant stimulation, constant stimulation, he needs to be stimulated! That’s what I love about Wonder Canyon, it’s never boring. Apparently the children RUN to class in the morning, they RUN—And besides, have you seen LAUSD math and reading scores?” Roan says, suddenly running a shaking hand through her hair. “Through the toilet!”
Reva Thon arrives, her auburn mane brilliant against a scarf of peacock blue. She walks us to The Orchard. It is tucked away in another corner of the Wonder Canyon property, which all told unfolds across about twenty-five acres. The Orchard is another small gathering of old wooden bungalows built around 1900.
The Orchard is a hidden piece of Los Angeles history. For many years, The Orchard served as a secret informal Los Angeles gathering place for traveling and expatriate painters and writers. Hemingway came here, Gertrude Stein, Salvador Dali…Briefly it served as a haven for the Hollywood Blacklist.
“Jack London had dinner with members of the Socialist Party in this room…” Reva says. “And here it is…our Picasso.”
We gather around. It’s but a simple dashed-off sketch, but highly forceful, very charming, and definitely Picasso.
“Do you recognize it?” says Reva. “It’s this room! Pablo sketched here. He particularly loved the light in this west room. And oh—” She opens another door.
“Here is the room where Steinbeck is rumored to have written an early draft for the first chapter of The Grapes of Wrath.”
It is such a simple room, of washed-pine floors and walls, containing but a small rickety bed and a tiny wooden writing table, with a beat-up old black typewriter on it.
“Is that his typewriter?” I ask.
“He wrote longhand. That is Dalton Trumbo’s typewriter,” says Reva. “Steinbeck returned here several years later, after The Grapes of Wrath was published. Said he found such comfort, sitting right here on the porch. He said sitting in this rocking chair, for three days, he was healed.”
“Can—can I—?” I motion to the chair. There is no rope across it or anything.
“Please,” Reva says, motioning toward it.
I drop down into the giant wooden rocking chair. It’s large, and carved, and smooth, and throne-like. Solid. I look out onto a painterly, non-Southern-California-like meadow of long grasses, cattails, and old-growth elms.
“The Orchard has always been a haven for artists under fire,” Reva says.
“Why did Steinbeck need healing after Grapes of Wrath?” bignecked George Clooney asks.
“Well,” says Reva. “Can you imagine? He had created a masterpiece of literature and felt vilified for his progressive political views. Vilified! The man was forty-two.”
And it hits me.
I see it.
Like the artists of The Orchard, I, too, have at best been an awkward fit in this world.
And now I see, through the power of history, that my best creative work may well be AHEAD of me. This motherhood thing, that New York thing, this Los Angeles thing, that debris of my twenties and thirties, all the broken flotsam and jetsam of my career efforts…
These have been merely my Pre–Grapes of Wrath Years.
The second half of my life may well be the shining future I have always been moving toward. Like a large-hipped Phoenix with a few gray hairs and a forehead wrinkle, I may well rise again.
“Hopefully, that’s not the Plath oven,” I murmur, indicating the potbellied stove in the corner.
“The Plath oven!” Roan chuckles. “And I hope those aren’t the Virginia Woolf drowning stones!” she exclaims, pointing to a Zen pile of stones.
And suddenly I find the relief that comes of having your references finally understood!
My God! I’m so relieved not to have to explain my cultural references anymore.
I am home!
Just beyond in the garden, I can see Hannah animatedly telling a semicircle of other children a story. She waves her arms, jumps up and down, twirls. She is so in her element.
How could I ever have doubted her abilit
y to shine?
I can’t resist. I open up to Roan:
“I’m afraid to admit I took my daughter to a Lutheran school where they gave her the Gesell Kindergarten Readiness Test. I would never subject her to that again.”
“The Gesell?” Roan spits. “That’s to test how well a child can OBEY. How well he can sit STILL. That’s for future accountants!”
And I realize I love Roan.
Roan leans in. “We need Wonder Canyon. I’ve had Ezekiel tested, by Dr. Frederick Sterns? The child psychologist? And Ezekiel may have Asperger’s.”
I feel my usual stab of anxiety when other families possess an exotic item we don’t. Parents report this disease with such an evident…thrill of pride.
“My friend Aimee’s son has a diagnosis of Asperger’s—” I counter.
“At the very least, we’re pretty sure he’s ADD—”
“ADD?” I’m tempted to yell. “I’ll go you one better! My daughter is NINE-DD!”
The blonde waves as she leads Hannah’s small group the other way.
“Now we’re going to see the bunny!”
Hannah is rapturous. She skips by.
“The bunny!” she exclaims. “The bunny!”
I want to give her this.
Because I suddenly see Hannah twenty years from now…
Harvard law degree in hand, cum laude, being flown to an East Coast think tank to head up the drafting of a new plan for international human rights with…some Kennedys. The better Kennedys. I don’t know who the better Kennedys are now, but…you know the ones I mean. Not the chinless Hoosier frat-boy ones who get drunk at Spring Break and fall over a football. You know who I mean—the really, really good Kennedys.
And the beauty is, now I can give that to her! I can guarantee Hannah that! The key—the first step—to that glorious future is right here in our hands! There is no chance my darling will flop now, that she will be bored, fail out of school, or end up in mournful obscurity somewhere, like all those sad, empty young people you hear about who never find their inner spark. What a stab of luck, to be sitting here with the forty last families in Los Angeles, to be escaping from the flaming education-in-collapse Saigon apocalypse below…To be the last families airlifted up onto the helicopter!
But now comes a lady with blond button hair whose nametag reads “Clare Coughlin, Admissions Coordinator.”
“This concludes the tour,” Clare Coughlin says, distributing final white eight-by-ten folders, our door prizes. She is not rude, exactly, but her smile is guarded, businesslike. She lacks the magical dreamy quality of Racul, Lisalotte, Reva…who are…Where are they? They’ve disappeared.
“If you are interested in September kindergarten, please fill out an ‘Intent to Apply’ and leave it with me. Our office will follow up, if appropriate, with the full application. Your children are waiting for you beside Birch. Thank you so much! It was a pleasure having you. If you have questions…”
Big Neck George Clooney (BNGC) raises his hand.
“When will acceptance letters go out?”
“Acceptance letters go out next month on the fourteenth.”
I circle my fingers around Reva’s card. Thank goodness I hold this magic talisman and don’t have to sweat this part of the process.
Roan’s hand goes up.
“Can you tell us…The acceptance rate? How many kindergarten slots are open?”
“Due to a great number of siblings, unfortunately, very few this year. Just one out of every twenty new touring families will get a child in.”
The crowd stiffens.
My bowels turn a little icey.
I thought being ON the tour was enough. I thought going on the tour meant you were IN.
But I shouldn’t even worry! Reva did personally tell me Hannah was in. Didn’t she?
Clare Coughlan continues:
“You are all exceptional families, and your children are all children we would love to have. But for Little Bungalow…In accordance with Baz Ligiero’s guidelines, the children are served best if each classroom maintains the proper balance of genders, ages, personalities, learning styles…”
“What do you mean, ‘learning styles’?” asks BNGC.
“Group versus individual learning styles,” Clare Coughlan replies pertly. “In Ligiero, you have to maintain the proper balance.”
Roan shoots a dark look at me and mouths, “Group versus individual learning styles? What the fuck?”
Just beyond, I see Hannah hug Uma Thurman good-bye, then skip happily off with her frog. Still smiling, Uma Thurman joins another sylph…and, faces still pleasant, they both pull out small notebooks. They are talking and writing…notes? About our children, NOTES?
I feel like Mia Farrow in that last scene in Rosemary’s Baby. Oh no! That adorable Ruth Gordon, with her odd if refreshing milkshakes! You work for…the devil?
No. Besides, I know Uma Thurman loves my daughter and I love this school.
Even when I look down at the folder and see the annual tuition for The Little Bungalow.
$22,500.
Plus fees!
Grimly, I think, I’ll find a way.
Clare Coughlin sets the “Intent to Apply” forms down before us parents and…
As frenzied as eels in that horse’s head in Volker Schlöndorff’s The Tin Drum, we attack.
The Wonder Canyon administration is housed in one of those giant sculptural bird edifices. Aimee and I actually have to split from the group in the parking lot, dart through the trees, and hike secretively down. It’s not easy to find. Apparently, spontaneous dropping in at the administration building is not encouraged.
But Aimee seems to have a sixth sense about how the place is laid out.
Even though once inside the giant bird building…Well, it’s a maze of spiral staircases, ramps, and polished rosewood floors that rake away from one, that threaten to spill one out onto enigmatic balconies with great 270-degree views but no actual entrances.
“Aha!” Aimee exclaims, noticing a frosted-glass door upon which are but faintly legible the letters, chilly as an Ingmar Bergman winterscape: ADMISSIONS.
Clare Coughlan blocks our way.
“May I help you?” she asks.
I feel just the slightest hesitation.
Aimee jabs me sharply in the ribs, makes a “You go, girl!” fist, hissing: “Celebrity Mom! Celebrity Mom!”
“Um—I am Sandra Tsing Loh?” I say. “I was fired by KCRW…? Al Pacino’s people…Through my friend Celeste Walden, as in Bran Walden?” I gesture at the window, in the vague direction of one of the new giant birds going up. “As in the Walden Mandarin Center? They said just come see Reva? That there should be no problem?”
“Do you have an appointment?” says Clare.
“Oh!” I exclaim, holding up my cell phone. “Just watch me dial!”
Triumphantly holding up Reva Thon’s business card, I dial!
Damn.
No signal in Mulholland!
Fuck!
Aimee holds up her BlackBerry like an avenging angel, dials Reva’s cell.
A moment later, the frosted-glass door opens.
“Sandra!” Reva sings out, emerging from her atelier. “Come in, come in, come in! Did you love the tour? I hoped you would!”
She catches me in her arms like a lover, and suddenly things are right back to normal. She leads us into her office, a sky-lit glass hexagon.
“Can I give you this?” I hand her our “Intent to Apply.”
“Of course!” She tosses it to one side as if it’s not even necessary.
“This is Aimee Lindberg,” I say.
“Pleasure,” says Aimee.
“Welcome,” Reva says warmly, then turns to me. “Can we talk? I forgot to tell you the other day what a huge fan I am of This American Life!”
“You are!” I exclaim.
“Ira Glass,” Reva purrs. “I could listen all day to his voice. What’s he like?”
I jump into my Ira Glass material, whic
h, except for a few meetings here and there in L.A. and Chicago, is, frankly, not really that substantial.
But I stretch:
Blah blah blah…Ira Glass!
Blah blah blah…Ira Glass!
Soon I am MAKING UP Ira Glass stories.
“I remember when I was with Ira Glass in Paris. We were doing a story on French World War II widows who had many cats. We were recording the sounds of the cats.”
“Och,” Reva says. “You know, some of our biggest donors are Ira Glass fans. The younger ones. Filmmakers. And I think they could be bigger donors.”
I hear her, loud and clear. I proceed to butter myself, bend over and promise Reva—and Wonder Canyon—the most outrageous public radio favors. “I can get Ira Glass to fly out to L.A. for brunch! Sure I can! Feel free to auction off a footbath personally given by Ira Glass to raise funds for your new Second-grade Steven Spielberg Japanese Language Center!”
“Financial aid…?” I float.
Reva smiles. Gives a quick shake of the head. “Not this year, what with all the new building. This year is full freight.”
I telephone Mike with the stunning news that Hannah has been offered a slot for Wonder Canyon.
“That’s terrific!” he yells from his cell phone in Manhattan.
“Isn’t it?” I say. “Steinbeck wrote there!”
“That’s very cool!” he says. “It’s not too expensive, is it? The road manager here sends his two kids to private school and says the tuition’s through the roof.”
“It’s…a chunk,” I say.
“How much?”
“There’s quite a bit of construction going on,” I say. “The facilities are astounding.”
“How much?”
“The price is steep but I still think we have to consider it because Hannah is so unique, she is such a unique style of learner—” I hope he won’t ask me what style, because I frankly can’t remember.
“What’s the number?”
“Twenty-two five.”
“Twenty-two five what? Twenty-two fifty a week? A month? A day? An hour?”
Mother on Fire: A True Motherf%#$@ Story About Parenting! Page 18
