“Are you all right?” he asked with concern once they had been seated at his regular table.
She stared into the luxurious, placid pool and whispered, “Yes . . . no,” as tears welled up in her eyes. He instinctively reached across the table and touched her cheek. She had promised herself she wasn’t going to cry in front of him, and he had sworn to himself that he wouldn’t initiate physical contact with her. So much for good intentions.
“This isn’t about us, is it?” he asked. “Because if so, I’m sure I’m to blame. I should never have insisted that we see each other. I’m so sorry. Shall I just give you the earrings and you can leave?” he suggested, gallant as always.
“No, no. It’s not about you. I mean, I’m very sad about what happened between us, but that’s not why I’m crying,” she said, struggling to contain her emotions. “It’s the rest of my life that’s got me down. I just had a frustrating meeting over at the foundation about my exhibition. Ruth Noble seemed totally disinterested.”
“There are plenty of other sources for funding. I might be able to give you a few suggestions, if that would be helpful,” he offered.
“Thank you, that’s very generous,” she replied appreciatively. “But I’ll get the museum staff working on it. I had just thought Ruth would come through since she’s funded other projects of mine in the past.”
“I’m sure it will work out. From what you’ve told me, it’s a great show. A real crowd-pleaser.”
“I’m sure it will, too. But that’s not my biggest worry right now. I’m much more concerned about the school situation for Zoe,” she confessed.
He looked surprised. “Why? You’ve applied to plenty of schools. She’ll get into at least one,” he said guilelessly.
“Phillip, you have no idea, do you? You may have nothing to worry about. You’re virtually New York royalty. You’re connected up the wazoo. But the rest of us plebes are up against a wall,” she said harshly.
He was embarrassed. “Really? I’m so sorry. That hadn’t occurred to me. I’m so self-immersed and insensitive. But you’re absolutely right. Margot was on the board of The Very Brainy Girls’ School, and we made a substantial five-year pledge to their capital campaign. I guess they have to accept Catherine, don’t they?”
Duh, as Zoe would say, she thought, but said, “They’d be idiots not to.”
“Did you ever submit an application there?”
“You mean, did they finally permit us to?” she said with rancor. “Yes. Right before Christmas. We were just there a week or so ago for Zoe’s interview.”
“Hmmm,” he murmured as he looked past her, preoccupied.
“Let me get the earrings from you and be on my way,” she said, suddenly uncomfortable with the thought of prolonging their goodbye. She had also just noticed Sir Basil sauntering in and had no patience for the “didn’t we meet at the so-and-sos’?” that was sure to take place between the two men.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small silk pouch and placed it on the table. As she reached for it, he took her hand in his and held it for a few moments before saying wistfully, “I wish I had met you at an earlier time in our lives.”
“But then there would be no Zoe or Catherine,” she answered sharply. “I’m sure neither of us would ever wish for that.”
“I didn’t mean to suggest that,” he apologized.
“I’m sorry. It was mean of me to suggest that you did.”
“Oh, Helen . . . I can’t bear for us to end with bad feelings,” he choked, sounding as though he, too, was fighting back tears.
Oh, shit. This is about Margot, not me. It’s classic transference. He’s traumatized about saying goodbye to me, but this is really about him working through his guilt about never having had a chance to properly say goodbye to his wife. Icchh, I can’t handle this, she thought, and then quickly stood up, squeezed his shoulder, and said, “Phillip, I have only good feelings for you. I always will. There is nothing to be sorry for. Goodbye—take good care of yourself and Catherine.”
Once outside, she wrapped her large black shawl around her head to shield her against the sleet, conceal her bleary eyes, and prevent herself from succumbing to the persistent ardor of Phillip Cashin.
She was gratified to discover that there was some practical use for a chador.
With clipboard in hand, furiously scribbling notes, Denise presided over the final meeting of the Auction Committee before the big event. As she fired questions at each of her crew members, her attitude was that of a ship captain preparing for an assault on an unsuspecting enemy. But this enemy’s only defense was a checkbook.
“How much do you think we’ll get for the canoe?” she asked Neal Moore, chairman of the classroom creations committee.
“I’m not sure . . . There are a limited number of people who are going to be interested in a six-foot-long, hollowed-out hunk of wood. I know we don’t intend to bid on it . . . I’m not sure how stable it is, either . . .” He whined until Helen interrupted.
“We’ll have to hope that someone is tipsy enough to buy a tippy canoe.”
“Not to mention the other fifty items in the sale,” Denise added, flipping the pages on her clipboard. “Let’s see. The schedule. Has everything been cleared with the crew? Sail at seven, return at eleven?”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Barbara, the bosomy bosun, saluted.
Denise spent the next two and a half hours drilling everyone in the room about every detail of the auction: decorations, menu, music, catalogues, even an emergency escape plan in the event of a maritime mishap.
“Do we have an exact head count? Three fifty? Has someone confirmed the number of life vests on board?”
About halfway through the meeting, Sara stuck her head in the room and asked Helen to come see her when she was finished. Finally, at one o’clock, Denise dismissed her crew, and Helen went up to Sara’s office.
“I’m perplexed by a phone call I got this morning from Eva Hopkins,” Sara reported.
“Really? You told me she was pretty negative about us the last time you spoke with her.”
“She was. Absolutely noncommittal and pretty low-key. But this morning she had a totally different attitude.”
“That’s odd. What did she say?”
“She began by asking if you and Michael liked The Very Brainy Girls’ School. I told her that you had been disappointed in your tour guide but that you were impressed with the school itself. Was that fair?” Sara asked.
“That was very politic of you.”
“Then she apologized profusely for anything you may have found offensive and asked what she could possibly do to put your mind at ease because, as she said, ‘we very much want Zoe to be here.’ I swear, those were her exact words. And then she positively gushed about all of you and said that you’re exactly the kind of family they’re looking for and you fit their parent profile so well. I listened and said ‘uh-huh’ about six times, wondering what could possibly have caused her about-face. I can’t, for the life of me, figure it out.”
Helen could. But she decided not to breathe a word of it to anyone, even Sara. Dear Phillip. He couldn’t bear the thought of her being upset. And for the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars he had pledged to The Very Brainy Girls’ School, he was entitled to throw his weight around with them. She never thought she would be one to condone such behavior, but if he was willing to be the miracle worker, she was more than willing to play Helen Keller.
“It would be nice to get an acceptance letter from The Very Brainy Girls’ School, but I don’t think there’s even a remote chance Zoe would attend. It would mean dragging her there kicking and screaming, and I’m not about to do that, and I know Michael feels the same.”
“That’s what I thought. But of course I didn’t tell her that. At the end of our conversation she asked if I thought Zoe would attend. I was intentionally vague and said that I didn’t know where you were leaning at this point.”
“Well put. Oh, e
verything just feels so up in the air right now,” Helen groaned.
“I also wanted to tell you what I’ve learned about The High School for the Musically Gifted. I was there yesterday and met with the new principal. She’s a very bright and dynamic African-American woman who has some very innovative ideas about public education. I was really impressed with what she had to say. We talked for about an hour, and then she gave me a tour and let me sit in on a few classes.”
“What did you think?” Helen asked anxiously.
Sara chose her words carefully. “The music program is, without question, excellent. The facilities and equipment might not be as glitzy as what you’ve seen at the private schools, but the quality of the music curriculum is as good, if not better. They have an incredibly diverse and, I have to say, appealing student body. I think that the fact that they’re all there for the music program breeds a certain sense of camaraderie. Overall I thought the teachers seemed fresh, enthusiastic, and committed to good education. The classes are bigger than I would ideally like, but not impossibly large.”
“It sounds like you came away with a pretty good feeling about it,” Helen responded flatly.
“I did. And the best part is, she’s been accepted. Elizabeth Marcus had spoken to the principal about Zoe’s musical abilities and got her preapproved. She doesn’t even have to audition.”
“Well, that’s a nice change,” Helen said.
“Helen, I hear the disappointment in your voice. I hope you don’t sound like that when you talk to Zoe about it.”
“It’s never going to be my first choice, but if you’re telling me that it’s a decent and safe place, then I will make sure to let her know I’ll support whatever decision she makes.”
“Look, is it as good a school as The Bucolic Campus School? No, it doesn’t come close. Is it as good as The Safety School? Probably.”
“Would Zoe be happy there?” Helen asked.
“I think the chances of that are as good as anywhere.”
“Will she get a decent education?”
“If she works hard to connect with the right teachers, asserts herself in the classrooms, and falls in with a good group of kids, I think she probably can,” Sara said realistically.
Helen was both relieved and disappointed. Part of her had hoped that Sara’s report would be so negative that they would agree to drop the idea. On the other hand, she was relieved to have another viable option and, most important, one that Zoe had chosen herself.
“Will you do me a favor and share your observations with Zoe?”
“I’ve already asked her to come talk to me after school today.”
“Thanks. You’re the best.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t think all of the eighth-grade parents would agree with your assessment right now, but thanks.”
FEBRUARY
In the wake of the past few months, Sara expected February to be relatively smooth sailing. She had a good feeling about the direction things were heading, particularly tonight’s annual auction. If A Night to Remember was the success she predicted, thanks to the competency of Helen and Denise and their tireless committees, The School’s financial woes would be alleviated and school spirit would be renewed.
Knowing that she would be busy with last-minute preparations until the final hour, she brought her new evening dress to the office that day. At five o’clock, when she was certain that everything on her to-do list was done, she changed her clothes, applied a trace of makeup, and ran a comb through her hair while scanning the catalogue and a printout of the guest list that Brandi had left on her desk. She was surprised to see that the Winters had bought three tickets for tonight’s event, and while wondering who they could possibly have invited, she heard a cab pull up in front of The School and dashed out.
Also dressed in the prescribed “nautical festive attire,” which meant navy blue and white for Michael, and Denisian red for Helen, they escorted Sara into the taxi and each snatched a copy of the catalogue. Ardelle Flax, a third-grade class parent and associate editor at Nouveau Biche (a magazine for bichon frise owners), had designed this year’s catalogue in partnership with the witty advertising copywriter and mother of second-grade twins, Michelle Ferrone.
“Here’s a perfect one for you, Michael,” Helen read, “‘Hey, Good Lookin’! What’s Cookin’? Unleash a new you with a haircut at the Cut Above Salon on Madison Avenue. Then show off your new do at a power lunch for four, complete with wine pairings at Chanterelle.’”
Michael groaned. “That’s one I WON’T be bidding on! I made myself a sacred promise never to mix business and school ever again!”
Fifteen minutes down the West Side Highway later, the threesome arrived at the World Yacht Marina. What appeared to be a fairly well oiled crowd was sipping into something comfortable at the dockside bar near the foot of Pier 81. Helen spotted the Moores, the Newmans, the Reynoldses, and a bevy of lower-school parents she recognized but didn’t know by name. She felt a momentary pang of sadness as she recalled auctions past and realized this would likely be the last time they would be socializing with this circle.
Helen and Michael maneuvered their way up the gangplank of the Spirit of New York and embarked on the mid deck, where two enormous striped papier-mâché smokestacks, made by the Arts and Crafts Club (and available for purchase in the silent auction) sat squarely. A tricolored flag, hand embroidered by Mrs. Frailey’s fourth-graders, with “A Night to Remember” in cross-stitch (and also available to the highest bidder) fluttered at full mast. The muscle-bound captain, an uncanny dead ringer for Popeye (available for birthday party entertainment), welcomed the passengers aboard and then directed them towards the white-jacketed waiters, who, under the supervision of Dana Winter, were pouring generous flutes of champagne.
“Ahoy, there, maties.” Already two sheets to the wind in a custom-made-for-the-occasion white pleather sailor suit, Dana greeted the Dragers.
“Shiver me timbers,” Helen said under her breath to Michael. “Requesting permission to come aboard, Captain Winter,” she saluted.
In a corner of the deck, and likewise feeling no pain, Peter Newman was boring Patrick Winter with his favorite joke: the one he told at every school function about Jefferson Davis, the cocktail weenie, and the Confederate soldier’s widow.
Gia Hancock, a sexually frustrated single mother of two, sauntered up to Newman and encouraged him to repeat the joke, and while she was whinnying with loud peals of laughter, Patrick snuck off in search of another drink.
An exuberant group of Kindergarten parents, school auction virgins, sailed their auction paddles like Frisbees and threw confetti streamers from the poop deck.
“It’s better than throwing poop from the confetti deck,” one of the tipsier fathers slobbered to anyone who would listen.
Finding Brandi manning the registration desk, Helen exchanged her credit card information for a paddle number, turned down a “Hello, My Name Is . . .” name tag, and, with a glass of champagne and Michael in tow, circumnavigated the ship.
“I’ll hold the paddle tonight, Michael,” she said, reminding him of the year he got stuck for thirty-six hundred dollars trying to bid up a Cooking Network-sponsored wine-tasting trip to Napa Valley.
“Hey, it beat the rainy weekend at the Moores’ moldy beach house we went in on with the Fontaines. Twelve hundred dollars for head lice.”
Braving gusty winds from the deck, Sara sized up the crowd at the registration desk and hypothesized that there was a direct correlation between people’s outerwear and the way they generally bid. The goose-down-encased Michelin men were well insulated from the inclement weather but generally didn’t spend much. The wool wearers would spend but always came with an established limit they would exceed only if sufficiently inebriated. The Cashmere-clad could go either way, while fur, though decidedly un-PC, meant “Clear the decks ’n’ raise those paddles high!”
For most parents, flaunting their good fortune at the benefit auction was significantly more
gratifying than writing a large check to the Capital Campaign. It was here that one could receive a hearty applause for spending an obscene sum on something as mundane as a mosaic-framed bathroom mirror or a decoupage Clorox bottle turned piggy bank. All it took were two alpha dads with my-wallet’s-bigger-than-yours complexes to send the price soaring. And the winner got to go home and tell little Daphne that Daddy loved her sooooo much he was willing to spend five grand on the wooden bat house she assembled and painted in art class.
While Michael was chuckling with a group of fathers, Helen wandered into the grand ballroom, where the Grateful Dads, a four-piece pop combo fronted by seventh-grade parent Nicholas Argento, was wrapping up an instrumental version of Three Dog Night’s big hit “Mama Told Me Not to Come.” The band featured a fourth-grade father on bass, a Kindergarten dad on drums, the geometry teacher jamming on rhythm guitar, and Nick on lead. Over the years, the Grateful Dads had become a staple at all The School’s events: Guacamole Night, Parent-Teacher Trivial Pursuit Night, Head of School for the Day Night.
For this Night to Remember, the band featured a special guest artist, Adrienne Badeaux, second-grade mom and mezzo-soprano with the Opera Company. A spotlight followed her to center stage, where she launched into an operatic rendition of “My Heart Will Go On,” the love theme from Titanic.
Having had enough of Adrienne’s heart-wrenching performance, Helen went to look for Michael. She followed a small convoy of waiters bearing silver platters of pâté, smoked salmon, and miniature quiches into a stateroom on the lower deck, knowing that where there were hors d’oeuvres, there would be her husband. Michael had always loved finger food.
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