Maggie had a different idea, and it had a lot to do with one of her strongest ideals. It always came down to loyalty with her.
“Israel is our friend, and you and Dad always told me it’s right to stand up for our friends. Dad wouldn’t vote for Theodore Baer if he was here.”
That was a low blow. “Well, he’s not,” Veronica responded tersely.
Jamie decided to chime in, “If I was in a war I’d shoot everybody!” He then performed a machine-gun sound as he sprayed bullets around the backseat from his imaginary gun.
God help us all, Veronica thought with a shake of her head.
“If you have any thoughts of riding in Uncle Eddie’s police car, then you’ll be quiet. I’ll call him right now,” Veronica threatened. She picked up her phone and pretended to dial.
Jamie quieted, but Maggie moved on to her next point of angst. “I can’t believe you’re blowing off my presentation. Oma and I worked really hard on it.”
“Do you really think I’d rather meet Jamie’s principal than see your presentation?”
“If it was the other way around, I’m sure you’d reschedule it.”
“I had no choice. Your brother can’t participate in Career Day until I meet to discuss his punishment. So you can thank your brother and Mrs. Sweetney.”
“Whatever.”
Veronica knew appeasing Maggie’s surly attitude would set a bad precedent, but despite their many quarrels, she had a soft spot for her first-born. The fact that she brought up Carsten after not uttering his name in months, meant she was feeling very wounded. And Veronica wanted to reward her for the job she did on this project. Maggie would take the train to Chappaqua after school, a couple times a week to meet up with Ellen. They’d work until Veronica would pick her up after her night class at Pace, and she’d often have to drag Maggie home.
So she turned on the election news. The big story was centered on controversial comments made by Theodore Baer yesterday. With only one day to go, Baer was dropping like a rock in the polls. Seemed like Maggie might get her wish.
They pulled up to Underhill School, which was separated into two campuses—K-4 and the 5-8 middle school. The first drop-off was Maggie.
“I’ll try to make it back in time for your presentation, sweetie.”
“Whatever.”
Door slammed.
Maggie burst out of the car like it was on fire. She went straight for her one friend, fellow outcast TJ Chester.
As Veronica watched Maggie, a knock on her window startled her. It was TJ’s father, Zach. She rolled down the window and he handed her a Styrofoam cup of coffee.
“If you were up half the night finishing the Heritage Paper like us, then you’ll need this,” he said and flashed his perfect smile. His eyes matched his dark suit.
“Maggie wouldn’t let me near her project, which might have been a good thing,” she responded. “And thanks again for all the assistance TJ gave her with the video.”
He laughed. “Yeah, he spent more time on Maggie’s than his own—I think he has a crush on her. That’s why we were up half the night cutting and pasting the Chester family low-lights.”
Veronica glanced at Maggie in the distance, who sent back a disapproving look. She wasn’t sure if it was connected to her conspiring with her friend’s father, or because she might miss her presentation, or perhaps it was that she was twelve and her mother was her natural enemy. Probably a combination of the three.
“I’m sure TJ did a great job, he’s a smart boy.”
“We just left out the part about his mother being in jail. Sometimes I think family secrets are best left a secret for a reason.”
Veronica had heard the small town gossip about the good-looking journalist who moved to town without his imprisoned wife. But she never asked him about it. What was she supposed to say—I’ll pick up TJ and Maggie, and by the way, why is your wife in the joint? She knew the etiquette when it came to divorce or death … but jail?
“Are you coming?” Zach asked between sips of coffee.
“No, first I have to meet the principal over at the K-4.”
“The ex-lax thing?”
“Was it broadcast on the news?”
“Small town—everybody knows what color underwear everyone is wearing. I better go before they start gossiping about us,” he said with a smile and moved toward the school.
She watched as he headed off into a sea of pre-teens. “Thanks for the coffee,” she shouted, but he didn’t hear her.
One down, one to go. Veronica drove around the building to the K-4 area. She waved at Teri Burkhardt and her perfect daughter Haley, who didn’t poison other students. Jamie tried to make a run for it, to join Haley and the rest of his friends.
Veronica clicked the locks shut. “Don’t even think about it. You’re coming with me to meet with Mrs. Sweetney.”
“I don’t know why you’re calling her that, since she’s not more sweet than you, Mom.”
Yeah right.
Chapter 6
Veronica walked into the principal’s office like she was the one in trouble. The perpetrator stood beside her, still looking adorable in his police uniform.
Helen, Principal Sweetney’s longtime secretary, ushered them into her office. Veronica hadn’t seen the stone-faced woman smile in years, yet Jamie was able to bring one to her face.
“She’ll be with you in a few minutes,” Helen informed them.
A “few minutes” turned into fifteen, and then twenty. Veronica kept looking at her watch, knowing every minute that went by meant she was closer to missing Maggie’s presentation, and heading for a week of dirty looks and “whatevers.”
Ten more minutes crawled by before a boxy blonde woman strutted in, wearing a purple blouse and gray slacks. As usual, she overdid the perfume, attempting to cover up the smell of cigarettes. She looked like Veronica, except lately she’d begun to look like two of her. This scared Veronica, since people had always commented on how much they resembled each other. It brought her back to the whole nature (slow metabolism) or nurture (binge eating since the divorce) debate.
“Sorry I’m late, I’ve been trying to clean up your mess. I guess the more things change the more things stay the same,” she greeted them without so much as a hello.
Veronica wanted to “go-Maggie” on her with a heavy sigh and a roll of the eyes, but instead she just said, “Hello to you too, Mom.”
“Aren’t you going to say hello to me, Grammy?” Jamie perked up.
“First of all, in this room I am Principal Sweetney. And secondly, I have a lot to say to you, young man, but none of it is in the form of a pleasant salutation.”
Jamie tried his killer smile. The one he saved for times when he’d dug himself an especially deep hole. “I love how you know all the big words, Principal Sweetney.”
“That won’t work on me.”
He looked confused, rarely having to go to a backup plan.
Veronica took the comment as: like it works with your mother, who by the way, can’t match up to me.
“I just spent the last hour with the parents of the child you assaulted,” she went on, holding a stern gaze on Jamie.
“Don’t you think ‘assaulted’ is a little strong,” Veronica responded like an over-matched public defender, and was quickly dismissed. She felt like she was sixteen again. But on second thought, the sixteen-year-old Veronica wouldn’t have cowered like the Veronica of today.
Her mother lit a cigarette—prohibited on school grounds—moved to the cracked window and exhaled the smoke outside.
“The good news is that I was able to convince the injured parties not to sue the school. But the not-so-good-news for you, Jamie, is I promised that the school—and by school, I mean me—would take swift steps to punish the defendant. This will serve as the first step in ensuring that no further diabolical acts occur on school grounds.”
“Diabolical? It was a prank for goodness sake,” Veronica fought back. The fights during her teenage yea
rs were legendary, usually about choices in men, music and college majors. Art history is slang for no money, her mother would always say. It was impossible to win an argument with her—Veronica’s father finally gave up trying about five years ago. They got divorced, and he now lived with his girlfriend in Charleston.
“Let me define diabolical,” her mother responded calmly. “A premeditated act in which a student smuggled in a substance that he used to poison and embarrass another student. An act for which he still has shown no remorse.”
As much as Veronica hated to give an inch in these battles, she knew her mother was right. If Jamie continued to charm his way out of these incidents, what might they lead to?
Still facing the window, Principal Sweetney asked between drags, “So what do you have to say for yourself, young man?”
Veronica could tell that Jamie was not ready to surrender. “I think smoking is bad for you, Grammy, but you do it even though you know it’s wrong. Sometimes people do stuff they know is wrong because they just can’t help it.”
That was about as close as Jamie would get to throwing himself at the mercy of the court. He glimmered a smile.
Helen’s voice came over the intercom, sounding flustered—phone calls and messages were starting to pile up. Having Heritage and Career Day on the same morning made no sense, but Veronica kept quiet—even sixteen-year-old-Veronica would’ve realized she didn’t have much leverage at this point.
The judge informed Helen that she needed a minute, and then rendered her decision, “You will be suspended until after Thanksgiving break. We will meet again at that point to determine if you have realized your mistakes, and have acquired the proper remorse. Any time missed from school will be made up during the summer.”
Jamie looked sheepishly happy. Visions of jumping into leaf piles and Xbox marathons likely dancing in his head. Not to mention all the gadgets Veronica bought him out of guilt after Carsten died.
But the judge wiped the smile off his face. “I’ve arranged for you to spend your suspension with your Uncle Phil and Aunt Valerie. They have a lot of chores lined up for you.”
Jamie looked perplexed. “But they’re no fun.”
She pointed at him. “Exactly.”
Jamie turned accepting—he was retreating. But Veronica knew his mind was already plotting a way out.
“Now get to Career Day before I change my mind and add another week to your punishment,” Principal Sweetney belted out like a drill sergeant.
Jamie began to stroll toward the door, his shoulders slumped like somebody just stole his lunch box.
“And one other thing,” she barked, just as he reached the door.
He turned, looking hopeful.
“The police are supposed to help people. Not hurt them … or poison them.”
He played with the toy badge pinned to his chest as he digested the words, and then exited through the door, head down.
Veronica grabbed her purse and stood.
Her mother pointed her back down, “You and I aren’t done yet.”
“Can’t we do this later? I’m late for Maggie’s presentation.”
“Sometimes our children are better without us mothers hovering over them. And besides, we’ve put this off too long. I’m worried about them.”
“They’re kids—and they’ve had a tough year. Losing their father … a new house … a new school. I think they’re just blowing off some frustration.”
“It’s more than that.”
“I guess you know my kids better than me.”
“I know you think I didn’t like Carsten.”
“Carsten?” Veronica was caught off guard. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Where are you going with this?”
“It does matter. And you were right—I didn’t like him. I should have been thrilled that my daughter found this seemingly perfect guy who was so smart and charming. And anybody with half a brain could see he was totally in love with you.”
“But you never acted that way.”
“When I met him I was unaware of his family situation, so that had nothing to do with my apprehension.”
“Let’s stop beating around the bush—his mother killed his abusive father. That’s a little more than a situation. What does this have to do with anything?”
“There was something in his eyes that I could never shake. Behind his charismatic smile was this look that said he was capable of doing very bad things.”
Veronica shut her eyes. She visualized the look in those eyes that night in the kitchen when everything changed for them.
“Honey, I’ve seen that same look in Jamie’s eyes, and I think it’s important to stop it right now before it’s too late.”
Chapter 7
Zach Chester was still smiling from his brief encounter with Veronica Peterson. They had gotten to know each other through their kids—TJ and Maggie had no other friends, so their parenting paths had crossed on numerous occasions—and she never failed to make him smile. The part he couldn’t understand was why he felt guilty about it. Sara was the one who did the cheating. And sadly, that was the least of their problems.
It all started when Zach got his dream job at Newsbreaker Magazine and they moved to New York. All was right with the world; at least until Sara began acting erratically and forgetting to pick up TJ at school. There were times when she seemed like a completely different person, but he wrote it off as the stress of trying to adjust to a new life in a new city. But she sure didn’t appear to be stressed-out on the surveillance tapes—the ones taken by the cameras they’d installed in their brownstone for security purposes, including their bedroom, where she seemed to be doing a good job of making new friends. The thing that struck him was how brazen she was. She knew the cameras were there—it was like she didn’t care.
Zach moved out, so he wasn’t present weeks later when Sara was arrested for running a crystal-meth ring out of their basement. And she was so hooked on the stuff she no longer recognized their son. The news helped explain her dramatic behavioral shift, but it sure wasn’t easy to explain to TJ. And being a supposed award-winning journalist, he couldn’t believe that he never picked up on the signs. It still haunted him.
He remained married, but no longer had a wife. And for all intents and purposes, he was now a single parent. He’d moved to Pleasantville so TJ could be close to the Bedford Hills Women’s Prison where his mother now resided. He was forced to leave his job at Newsbreaker, and now wrote for the Hudson Valley Times, a small local paper.
The students and assorted relatives were led into a classroom. Desks were set up in a semi-circle, facing a podium where the Heritage Paper presentations would be made.
Many of the children had brought a grandparent to accompany them with their presentation, so the room had the feel of Bingo Night at the local senior center. Zach was fairly new to town, so he didn’t recognize many, but two of them he did, and was surprised by their presence.
He knew the elderly men from a story he did for Newsbreaker on the sixty-year anniversary of the end of the Holocaust. Aligor Sterling, head of the Sterling Center, was the most recognizable because of his political activism, including being presidential candidate Jim Kingston’s biggest contributor.
Ben Youkelstein wasn’t a household name like Sterling, but he was well known in the underground world of Nazi hunting. The two of them had relentlessly tracked Nazi war criminals across the globe the last half-century, attempting to bring justice to an unjustifiable event. Zach wasn’t sure why they were here, but his best guess was that they had grandchildren in Pleasantville. He figured that some kid was going to have an interesting presentation.
After welcoming everyone, their teacher Mrs. Foss explained why they were packed like sardines into a sixth grade classroom. The mission of the Heritage Paper was to trace one branch of the family tree, using a living relative as the chief source, to see it through their eyes, and then present it together. Mrs. Foss had the kids pick an order out of a hat. TJ would be second to last,
which meant Zach would have to stick around for the whole thing.
The first two presentations went by fairly quickly, as the nervous students talked a mile a minute. They were bland and generic, which made him feel better about TJ’s presentation, which would be purposely vague.
Maggie Peterson was now up. Zach checked for Veronica, but it didn’t look like she would make it. Instead of a relative, Maggie brought a television on a cart. Mrs. Foss announced that Maggie’s great-grandmother, Ellen Peterson, was too frail to attend, so they had made a video. Zach remembered TJ helping out with the recording, or something along those lines.
Maggie read off index cards, explaining that her great-grandmother had come to America following World War II and lived in New York until she moved to Sunshine Village in Chappaqua, a couple of years back. And without further ado, Ellen Peterson appeared on the screen. She eerily reminded Zach of the old lady in the Titanic movie.
“My name is Ellen Peterson, but my maiden name was Ellen Sarowitz. I was born in Munich, Germany in 1918. Before I get into the events of my life, I have a confession to make. This project is about family and heritage, and I have not been truthful about my past with my own family.”
This got Zach’s attention. A little scandal might not be a bad thing, he thought, perhaps livening up the tedious school project. He looked at TJ, searching for a hint of inside information. TJ just shrugged. Zach wasn’t sure what it meant, mainly because TJ responded to most things these days with a shrug.
Ellen continued, “I came to America as part of the underground railroad that helped deliver persecuted European Jews to the safety of the West. But I came under the false pretenses of being a survivor of the Terezin concentration camp.”
Zach noticed a tear on Ellen’s overly blushed cheek. He glanced again at Youkelstein and Sterling; now wondering if their presence might be connected to this confession.
“My mother, Etta, had been a prostitute, so my formative years were surrounded by drug abuse and my mother’s loose morals. Strange men would gravitate to our apartment and would often beat and rape my mother. They would also try the same on me, so I had to learn how to defend myself at a young age.”
The Heritage Paper Page 3
