The Hazards of Good Breeding

by Jessica Shattuck

  Jim comes to the door promptly at Jack’s knock and takes the leash, pats Caesar on the shoulder. “He limping?” he asks, watching the dog nose along the baseboards of the room. Jack is impressed; the limp is almost gone. He himself can barely see it.

  “Stepped on a thorn,” he says. Jim pulls his mouth down at the edges. He is a man of few words, which Jack admires. He does not engage in the smarmy innuendos and elbows in the ribs that Jack has found such deals often inspire. Nor does he make small talk about the weather, the price of Science Diet, or the prevalence of hip dysplasia among retrievers. He never offers Jack an obligatory cup of coffee. This morning the whole exchange is complete in less than four minutes.

  From the Ridgeways’, Jack makes his way to Colby Kesson. Colby Kesson is a company with the kind of New Age, self-actualization bent that makes it exactly the sort of business Jack resents including in the Amerithon umbrella. It sells educational “kits” on-line to disgruntled pharmacy clerks looking to become telephone switchboard operators, overweight secretaries with a yen to practice aromatherapy, Burger King fry boys who’ve always wanted to be shoe salesmen, and any number of other individuals with lateral-movement career ambitions which the “kits” will take no nearer to fulfillment than they already are.

  There was a time when Jack dreamed that Amerithon would be the Tiffany’s of American history textbook publishers. That it would build on the dignified reputation of the fusty hundred-year-old textbook publisher he bought twenty years ago as the foundation for his business and become bigger, better, and more widely known. But the demand for top-notch, finely printed, traditional textbooks at the price such books come at was, he found, remarkably low—limited to a few expensive boys’ schools in the Northeast. So Amerithon expanded. Jack bought out its lower-priced, lower-quality competitors whose books featured chapters like “The Female Minuteman” and “The American Holocaust: Lost Tribes of the Eastern Seaboard,” which make Jack’s skin crawl. He bought out humdrum newsletter publishers and esoteric local-interest magazines and eventually altogether non-publishing-related companies like a chain of men’s formal wear rentals called The Tasteful Tux and a motorboat detailing business on Cape Cod, all teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. And he has turned the businesses around, made them profitable parts of the Amerithon umbrella. It would be downright un-American to turn his nose up at a business-building opportunity just because it didn’t fit his “concept”; he is running a company, not a showroom, after all. But still—still there are times he hates the fact that he has created a well-run, well-oiled conglomerate that produces nothing but garbage. This was not the dream he began with.

  Today is Colby Kesson’s monthly “Choices Celebration,” or simply “Choices,” as its organizers affectionately refer to it. “Choices” is a one-day “seminar/retreat” attended by any and all proud purchasers of Colby Kesson kits who wish to make a pilgrimage to Needham, Massachusetts, for some inspirational speaking and heartwarming sharing with their fellow consumers—it is one of the company’s many fraudulently life-affirming, profit-cramping extras. It will be the first thing Jack cuts when Amerithon takes the helm. Unless, of course, he spots some hidden upside or untapped revenue-building opportunity today. Which seems unlikely, based on the number of cars (less than forty) in the parking lot.

  Jack has timed his arrival so that he will be able to slip into the auditorium without having to identify himself and put up with the ridiculous, nervous kowtowing that accompanies his introduction under circumstances like these. He makes his way up to the balcony of the high school auditorium the event is held in and stands for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. Colby Kesson has made some attempt to introduce cheer to this suffocatingly inoffensive cavern: a few insubstantial bouquets of purple balloons teeter in the corners and a gold banner emblazoned with CHOOSE YOUR FUTURE hangs across the central aisle. But rather than fight off the relentless blandness of the space, they seem to feed it; like fresh drops of blood caught in the gaping, all-consuming gullet of mediocrity.

  Jack settles into one of the rear seats by the door and pulls out his notepad. Frank Berucci, the moist-eyed, frizzy-haired, ex-football-captain/reformed-cocaine-addict-type leading the event, has opened the mike to the poor, floundering “choosers,” as Frank reverentially refers to his constituents (they are “choosing happiness, choosing change,” he has explained to Jack on the phone). In droves they are getting up to make quavering comments about family and meaning and opportunity in the canned language of daytime talk shows. It drives Jack crazy—these people scraping up the rarest marrow of their lives and lofting it for approval or support or whatever it is they are looking for, as if such ephemeral slips of feeling can be hung out to weather the elements like flags. He hates the way Frank and his two assistants urge them on to these exhibitions; when did talking ever bring anyone anything but grief? He hates the Native American poetry the Colby Kessonites co-opt to lend their agenda spiritual clout. He hates the soothing tones they take care to speak in, the loose cottony garments they wear. And he hates the people who are dumb enough to sign on to this program, who haven’t the smarts or the mettle to take life by the horns. These, Jack thinks, are the new Americans—the ones who skew the national averages toward ignorance, selfishness, and obesity. Within five minutes of their fraudulent outpourings, Frank Berucci has actually worked up a good tablespoon of tears.

  Meanwhile, Jack has worked up Frank’s severance package: six months’ pay, a strong recommendation, a good-bye page on the company’s web site. Colby Kesson has remarkable potential once costly indulgences like “Choices” can be taken out. Jack has a hungry twenty-six-year-old Harvard Business School graduate who is set to turn the place around for ten percent of the equity and three weeks’ vacation time.

  At the podium, a man in a purple polo shirt is now describing how hard it was to learn bartending with a broken arm—“broke in two places.” Jack puts his notebook away. He has seen enough. By the time he has reached the door, a redhead with a pouchy face and battery-operated earrings has commandeered the mike to thank her husband for helping her discover her passion for dog grooming. Jack has to pause, one hand on the door handle, and scan the audience for the dickless wonder who has made his wife realize she wants to spend her days clipping poodle toenails and delousing golden retrievers. Maybe the dark-haired man in a short-sleeved oxford or the breasty baldy in the front row—but then Jack sees something that wipes the man, his wife, and any thought of poodles’ nails out of his mind completely.

  Sitting two rows behind the rest of the group, where until now she has been obscured from Jack’s line of sight by the second-tier balustrade, is Eliot’s old babysitter, Rosita. He does not doubt for a moment that it is her—the fiercely pulled-back knot of black hair, the way she is sitting, straight-backed, head tilted slightly to the left, one hand opening and closing over the end of the armrest. The sight of her is familiar and at the same time jarringly foreign, like the sound of his own voice on an answering machine. What is she doing here, among these sad-sack Americans and their vapid secular gurus?

  Jack takes a step to the side to see her more clearly. He can see her profile, her neck, her body now—and his own flesh freezes. She is pregnant. Unmistakably. Her belly is a perfectly round protrusion under the white blouse, hard and tight as a basketball. Shock sounds through Jack like the vibration of a tuning fork struck in his head.

  Below him, the redheaded woman continues with a litany of thank-you’s that Jack can no longer make out. There is just the sound of her voice, oddly clear and monotonous, like that of an acolyte reciting an ancient, incomprehensible prayer.

  Staring at Rosita’s small form below him, Jack waits for some fragment of information to reach his extremities and remind him how to press down the door handle, how to open the door, how to walk away.

  But for what seems like a long time, it doesn’t come.

  3

  CLIMBING THE STEPS to the porch of the Barton Country Day School b
ehind Eliot’s tunic-clad body, Caroline feels a swell of relief at having managed to shake Rock this morning.

  She has known Rock peripherally since grade school and intimately since her freshman year at Quilton. Rock’s father went to Harvard with Caroline’s father, worked with him on Wall Street, and lived down the road from him in Concord until he got divorced. Every time Caroline sees him, he gives her a hearty I’m-no-sexist clap on the shoulder and says Jack Dunlap is the ballsiest guy he knows. Jack Dunlap, on the other hand, rolls his eyes at the mention of Rock Coughlin, Sr. “That moron,” he says, if anything.

  Thanks to her older brothers’ pimping, Caroline was the stand-in for Rock’s high school senior prom date—an evening she remembers with an acute sense of both embarrassment and injury, but which Rock likes to refer to, even now, as “the first night of the rest of my life.” He is only half sarcastic. Caroline reminds him that they didn’t even kiss. And more importantly, that weeks later, when they did, it wasn’t anything to write home about. Encounters with Rock (sloppy kisses at John Hoop’s party, an uncomfortably sandy make-out session on the beach four Fourth of Julys ago, a drunken and aborted attempt at intercouse last summer) have been mixed, like so many drops of iodine, into the murky waters of Caroline’s teenage life.

  But Caroline is twenty-two now, and out of college—of Harvard? (When asked where, she answers as if the question mark belongs, as if, maybe, it might be unfamiliar, and now the question mark seems intrinsic to the place itself, as if, maybe, if her father hadn’t gone, and his father hadn’t gone, and his father’s father before that, she wouldn’t have gotten in.) She may have reneged on the internship at the Film Archive in Berkeley she had lined up, but she is still a full-fledged participant, however humble, in the real world now. And while Rock, who graduated three years ago, seems to have been left untouched by adulthood’s demand for renunciation, Caroline has embraced it whole hog. No more drunken nights on Sissy Mender’s roof or meaningless conversations with the whole Alex Pary posse. And no more Rock ups, as she refers, internally, to her hookups with Rock.

  Through the glass-paneled walls of the lobby, Caroline can see a host of nonsensically intense mothers, hassled teachers, and children revved up like a roomful of windup toys. It is always mothers at these school functions: mothers at school plays and science fairs and bake sales and open houses and then suddenly, Caroline realized last week, it becomes all fathers at graduation. Fathers securing seats and whistling their college fight songs, carrying lamps and futons and giant Tupperware boxes full of their daughters’ papers and shoes and tampons, taking pictures and being introduced and inspecting classrooms and ancient team photos and dining halls. Proud fathers and no mothers, or invisible mothers—quiet, signed-off mothers wringing their hands and looking helpless now that the hard work is done. But here at BCD elementary and middle school it is still mothers—and already Caroline recognizes a few of them, although her own is nowhere to be seen.

  At the front door of the school, Mrs. Corliss, Caroline’s old sixth-grade teacher, is handing out programs and barking orders at a group of eighth-grade “helpers” waiting for their charges.

  To the right of the porch Caroline can see Denise Meirhoffer, Rock Coughlin, Sr.’s fiancée and BCD board member. Actually, she can hear her before she can see her: “What you don’t understand,” Denise is saying in the shrilly emphatic voice she reserves for sharing her insights on anything from politics to garbage collection, “is that six years ago everyone complained about this.” Caroline is about to duck around to the side entrance in the interest of avoiding her when she catches sight of an unusually tall, lanky man with shoulder-length black hair loosely pulled back into a ponytail, standing beside Denise. He looks wholly out of place among the gaggle of middle-aged women in pressed slacks and pleated shorts. He appears actually to be uninvolved in their conversation, fiddling with the viewfinder on a fancy video camera. He has olive skin and a distinctly hawkish nose and is, actually, both startlingly handsome and oddly familiar-looking. With a flick of his wrist he snaps something shut on the camera and looks up, directly at her. Caroline feels the blood rush to her face—he has caught her staring at him. It only heightens her sense that she has seen him before.

  “This way,” she says to Eliot, more sharply than she intends to.

  Eliot looks back at her questioningly, but then shifts direction agreeably. Caroline feels a swell of appreciation for him. He is such an understanding little boy, has never been given to asking obnoxious questions or making scenes. The whole ride over here he sat beside her mouthing his lines with his small hands crossed like an old man’s on the front pocket of his backpack. He looked so serious and sincere it sent an almost panicky pang of love through her.

  Inside the lobby, there is no sign yet of their mother. Eliot begins to slink off toward the back stairway. “El!” Caroline says. Her voice comes out sounding shrill. “I think we should find Mom first.” The bright-blue-painted walls are giving Caroline a headache and the whole place has the sickly smell of Windex, pencil shavings, sweaty children. Eliot stops and looks back at her impassively.

  “I mean, she’ll be fine,” she adds. “I just think you should see her first.”

  Eliot frowns. “Fine with what?” he asks.

  “Oh, whatever—just being back here, all the people, you know. . . .” Caroline lets her voice trail off. She shouldn’t have said it. There is maybe no reason to think he expects otherwise. Except, of course, for the fact that he has seen his mother throw herself into the swimming pool in evening clothes and thrash around with great rips and tears of silk and nylon; that he has heard her converse freely and seriously, even respectfully, with her pillow; that he has come in to kiss her good night every night for a whole month in which she lay in bed, shades drawn and ocean sounds crooning at low volume from the tape player.

  “She’ll be so proud of you,” Caroline says, hoping her voice doesn’t sound insincere.

  And then there is her mother, emerging from the theater, swiveling her head, clutching her shiny white purse with both hands. Caroline waves at her and flashes a mincing smile at Eliot.

  “Oh, there—I was wondering—I thought maybe I—” her mother is already saying as she approaches, anxious tapping shoes and too much perfume. “Oh, Caroline, I’m so glad you’re not off driving across country!” She stops almost hesitantly before them.

  “Hi,” Caroline says clumsily, giving her a hug; her mother’s ribs and shoulders feel tense and fragile in her arms. “And Eliot!” Faith says, extricating herself from Caroline’s grasp, “You look just—! What a great costume!” He is not helping her out, standing absolutely still, the same flat look in his eyes. Faith extends her arm hesitantly, settling for a hand on his shoulder as if he is some rare and delicate bird, or a prom queen—as if she is unsure a real hug is allowed. “Oh, you look wonderful.” Of course, there are already tears springing to her eyes.

  “Was your trip up okay?” Caroline asks. In her mother’s presence she always feels dull and responsible, like an endlessly competent cruise director. She wishes she had sunglasses. Nice big ones, like the ones her mother—yes, like this woman beside her—used to wear. Square, rose-tinted, maximally concealing.

  “Oh, fine—fine. I got here early. I helped set up,” Faith says.

  “You did?” Caroline asks. Eliot looks alarmed.

  “Just the chairs and—nothing, really,” Faith’s eyes dart around the room nervously. “So are you ready, Eliot?” she asks, changing the topic. “Your drama teacher—what a nice lady.”

  Caroline glances at Eliot, who has pressed his lips together, turning the skin around his mouth a ghastly bluish white. It is possible he is about to faint. “You probably have to go get ready, right, El?” Caroline asks.

  Eliot nods.

  “Good luck,” she says, taking his hand and giving it a squeeze. “You’ll be great.”

  “Good luck!” Faith echoes as he walks carefully but speedily to the back stairs. For a m
oment Faith and Caroline are frozen in the middle of the lobby’s wholesome chaos (running children, fluttering construction paper cutouts, the buzz of parental instructions) watching Eliot’s blue tunic disappear. He is so small and quiet and focused, the crowd seems to part around him like floating debris around the prow of a sailboat.

  “Well,” Caroline says.

  “Well.” Faith shifts her purse to one hand and slaps the other one against her side as if she is about to propose something. But then what could she have to propose? She doesn’t even have the confidence to hug her own son. Caroline feels a dart of anger snap up from her gut. Not only has Faith Dunlap bowed out of Caroline’s own life as a mother, but she has left her little son to live with his father in a cold, unfriendly house with no more to offer than endless time to build creepy papier-mâché projects. Of course, technically this is not her fault: the various doctors and lawyers involved in the divorce would not grant Faith even partial custody until next year. But then, she didn’t have to fall apart so completely in the first place.

  Caroline can see Mamie Starks emerge from the ladies’ room—can see her catch sight of Faith, touch Gloria Edwards’s elbow, lean to the side, and whisper something in the shorter, rounder woman’s ear. For a moment, Caroline is tempted to feed her mother to these wolves, but as quickly as the possibility has occurred to her, an equally strong desire to protect her—to shield her nervous, broken ego and whatever poor sorry scraps of motherhood she is nurturing—rises in her.

  “We better get seats,” she says, placing her own hand on her mother’s elbow, pushing her toward the stairs. Out of the corner of her eye she sees the man with the camera leaning against the wall, one knee up, filming the crowd as it makes its way into the theater.