by Tish Cohen
“Why don’t we just forget this,” Len told Virginia as he peered out the icy window.
Virginia, ever the adventurer, didn’t look up from the tote she was filling with gloves, scarves, goggles, and granola bars. Nasty weather wasn’t going to faze her. “It’s winter in the Northeast, hon,” Virginia said. “What do you expect?”
They drove six hours to HoliMont Ski Area with the plan to arrange for Olivia’s ski rentals and private lessons for the next day—maybe even ease some of the child’s trepidation by introducing her to her instructor—then settle into Virginia’s parents’ chalet in the woods for a late lunch. After bundling Olivia in down jacket, scarf, gloves, and hood, they steered her to where Tristan, her instructor, was said to be waiting. Tristan was bent over, adjusting his boot, as they approached. He stood up—his face covered by a neck warmer—and reached forward to shake Olivia’s hand.
No one could have anticipated the scream that followed. Nor the echo. The silencing effect of fresh snow and the muffling effect of Olivia’s scarf were no match for the seven-hundred-foot amplifier that was the mountain behind them.
They could only assume she had been somehow injured. Tristan called for ski patrol, who strapped her onto the toboggan and pulled her back to the chalet by snowmobile. He stayed by Olivia’s side, right through the hysteria.
As unexpectedly as Olivia began wailing, she stopped. By that time, Virginia and Len were convinced she’d cracked, ruptured, or torn something serious. At the hospital, they found no evidence of injury, not so much as a bruise or a scratch or a hair out of place. The young surgeon on staff, clearly distraught that he hadn’t been able to explain Olivia’s distress, turned away from the X-rays and pulled out a small flashlight to look into her eyes. “I wouldn’t mind going over her one more time, just to be sure.”
Virginia slid off the bed, where she’d been soothing her daughter by stroking her forehead, peered down the hall to make sure Tristan had left, and said, “You know, this might sound a little strange, but it might have had something to do with the ski instructor. Olivia started screaming the moment she met him and didn’t stop until we were in the ambulance.”
The doctor looked at Virginia. “What happened in the ambulance?”
“Nothing,” said Virginia. “I sat up front because Tristan had medical training. One minute Olivia was screaming, the next minute, she’d stopped.”
“Was the instructor doing anything, saying anything that might have calmed her?” asked the doctor.
Virginia glanced at Len and crinkled her nose. “I don’t think so. He’d just taken off his gloves. His hat. His neck warmer.”
The surgeon frowned and scribbled something on a notepad. “I’m referring you to a doctor close to your area, in Pomona. Dr. Kate Leopold specializes in children’s anxiety.”
Len squinted. “Anxiety? Olivia’s five years old.”
They’d had questions about their daughter’s behavior in the past. But both the pediatrician and the school had said the same thing: “She’ll grow out of it.”
Not so with Dr. Kate.
Len and Virginia didn’t despise the child psychologist herself—rather, they despised the idea of her, anyone, spending a few minutes with their daughter and knowing more about her than they did. Engaging Olivia in conversation and watching her play, sensing exactly what questions to ask her parents. Is the child picked on at school? Does she verbally fixate on certain things, unconcerned whether the people around her have heard enough? Does she have trouble following directions? Doing two things at once? Dressing herself? Does she take things too literally, even for a five-year-old?
Their answers, combined with eventual IQ testing, confirmed what Dr. Kate knew in three minutes. Olivia didn’t have an anxiety disorder. She had a nonverbal learning disorder or NLD, a neurological disorder caused by a malfunction of the brain’s white matter. Turned out the quirky way Olivia carried her left arm—like she was serving a tray of mimosas—had very little to do with any future career in catering and everything to do with her right brain and left brain refusing to share, like unsupervised toddlers.
Often confused with Asperger’s Syndrome, NLD would forever complicate Olivia’s life. Growing out of it would not be an option; the child would only learn, with repeated instruction, therapy, and role-play, to compensate. Not only that, but as she matured, she’d become more and more aware of the trap she was in. No matter how badly she wanted to escape, there was no real way out.
One of the toughest things in these cases, according to Dr. Kate, was that not everybody would understand. They would hear the term “learning disorder” and assume it was a trivial snag related to school tests and homework. After all, Olivia looked like everyone else, why shouldn’t she behave like them?
Still, Virginia and Len weren’t prepared for what she said next.
“What school does Olivia attend?” she asked.
“The Wilton School,” Virginia answered.
“Private?”
“Yes. Why?” said Virginia.
“They’ll need a note from my office to arrange things in her classroom.”
“What kind of things?” asked Len.
“We’ll want her on an individual learning program. And she might need an aide in the classroom.”
“A teacher’s aide…just for Olivia?” Virginia glanced at Len before asking, “Are you serious?”
The doctor closed Olivia’s file, already bulging with test results, and set it on a stack of slender files—files of children whose parents walked out of Dr. Kate’s office with their worlds still intact. “She’ll still be in the classroom with the other kids. But she’ll need her own program, her own teacher. It’s standard in cases like this. A child like Olivia requires an enormous amount of attention.”
Len and Virginia looked at each other as the severity of their situation sunk in. Their daughter wasn’t normal. So very not normal the psychiatric community recommended a full-time educational handler. Len leaned forward in his chair. “Let me ask you something—is this teacher’s aide brought in for Olivia’s sake…or the other children’s?”
“Honestly?” The doctor blinked softly and paused to soften the blow: “Both.”
CHAPTER 6
$50 Bills
One of the biggest gifts you’ll ever give your child is independence. Given your love and encouragement, your confidence and faith in his abilities—your child will spread tiny wings and soar.
—RACHEL BERMAN, Perfect Parent magazine
Watching her staff members file out of the boardroom, Rachel gathered up the list of questions they’d agreed upon. As much as she tried to concentrate on planning this evening’s focus group, to listen, to breathe normally, she couldn’t.
“You look like no one showed up to your party.”
Rachel’s assistant, Mindy Cook, was leaning against the door frame. Her petite body completely hidden behind the wall, Mindy was all spiky burgundy hair, geometric glasses, and dark lipstick.
Rachel smiled and gestured toward the pane of two-way glass stretching nearly the entire length of the boardroom, which hadn’t been painted since her father, Michael Dearborn, died seven years ago. “I was just thinking. We should mount a frame around this mirror, so people aren’t aware they’re being watched in these groups.”
Mindy tapped her chin against the clipboard she held against her chest. “Hm. And maybe a fifteen-foot fireplace under it with a really long dog lying across the hearth.”
“Hilarious,” Rachel said, following Mindy out of the boardroom. “So? Any news for me?”
“Well, Stan called to say our coffee shipment will be delayed again and Johnson’s called. They’re slicing their ad budget—” Mindy stopped. “Ooh,” she said, clenching her teeth. “Did I mention your mother is here?”
Groaning, Rachel forced a smile onto her face and breezed into her late father’s former office, an oak-paneled refuge lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases overflowing with issues dating back sixty years
. Her mother, Piper, stood behind the overstuffed armchair by the fireplace, rearranging the cashmere throw. In her cropped jeans, with an overgrown Rod Stewart shag, Piper more resembled a prissy rock star than the widow of a publishing magnate.
That she looked more like Rachel’s older sister than her mother didn’t always please Piper. To Piper—born Peggy Bates—becoming an accidental parent at nineteen and a grandmother in her late thirties forever smudged her with the mark of the lower class. At a time when her old high school friends were packed tightly into college dorm rooms, Peggy was juggling her third waitressing job, Rachel’s incessant infant colic, and two parents on welfare. Without so much as one spare night a week for night school, Peggy Bates’s life was headed in much the same direction as her parents’.
A rainy afternoon changed her life. One minute she was walking toward the restaurant, La Vieille Auberge, the next she was racing through a summer shower so heavy her sweater, her T-shirt, even her bra became soaked. She ran toward the double doors of the restaurant and tumbled inside, colliding with an equally sodden boy. Tousled hair clung to his cheeks and his lashes clotted together in soggy clumps. He was beautiful.
He was nothing like the boys Peggy grew up with. Not like her baby’s father, a no-hoper Peggy met at a party, who headed West once he heard she was pregnant. This boy had the look of old money that Peggy only saw in her very wealthy customers. The strong bone structure, perfectly symmetrical features. The straight teeth. His brown hair—even drenched—appeared bleached out by long afternoons on a tennis court, maybe even a yacht.
He grinned, introduced himself as Michael Dearborn, and asked if she was meeting someone. Peggy froze. She had two options. Say, “I’m Peggy and I’ll be your server today,” don her apron, be extra attentive to the male customers, and scurry home before her parents got too sauced to listen for Rachel’s cries, then do the same thing all over again the next day.
Or…she could become someone else.
When the dripping boy with the perfect teeth suggested they ditch their dates and warm up over takeout coffee at the bookstore down the block, she hung up her apron for good. She became Piper Bates. Soon to be Mrs. Michael Dearborn III. She would have a proper name, and, more important, her daughter would have a proper father. A proper future.
Piper’s father, Bert, suffered a fatal stroke a year after she married. Her mother, Irene, lived long enough to see young Rachel win the thirteen-and-under golf tournament at the Dearborns’ club. Michael’s parents took Piper, Michael, and Rachel out for a celebratory dinner at La Vieille Auberge—still Piper’s favorite restaurant—and returned to the bluffs to find Irene in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs.
No one but Piper, and eventually Rachel, would learn that Irene’s blood alcohol level had been .40. With her parents gone, all that remained from Piper’s past was her daughter and the promise she made to herself: that Rachel’s life would never be touched by poverty or despair, or otherwise tainted in any way. Rachel’s life would not only look perfect, as Piper’s might have come to appear to outsiders; Rachel’s life would be perfect.
Even now, twenty-one years later, her late husband’s office reflected Piper’s penchant for old money and the perfect existence that appeared to come with it. Piper looked up as Rachel walked toward her. “It looks like someone’s been using your father’s armchair,” she said in her smoker’s voice—the only ghost from her past she could not exorcise. “I told you, this fabric’s not for sitting.”
“Nice to see you, too, Mom.” Rachel crossed the room and dropped into her tan leather chair, perfectly broken in by her father, and his father before that, still smelling faintly of cigars. She skimmed through a stack of phone messages before kicking off her heels. “So, have you heard from Arthur?” Arthur Gold was a real estate broker Piper had met on a cruise earlier in the spring. Sixty years old with a full head of silver hair and no vices that Piper had been able to detect aboard the ship, Arthur appeared to be a great catch for Piper.
Piper stared at her daughter. “He finally called last night. Asked me to go to the theater with him.”
“Perfect.”
“The tickets were for tonight. Which is why I’m here. I can’t find my key to your house. If I’m going to be home for Janie and Dustin after school to sit with them tonight, I’ll need to borrow yours.”
“So you said no?”
“I’m not going to abandon my grandchildren just so I can canoodle with a man I barely know.”
“But—”
“But what? You asked me, I accepted. They shouldn’t be alone on a school night.”
“Maybe their father can take them. Let me check…”
“Forget it. Arthur will call again. And if he doesn’t, well, I won’t be the first widow to spend her final years alone.” She tilted her chin upward and put on a brave smile. “At least I’ll have the three of you.”
Her head heavy with guilt, Rachel dug through her purse, twisted a brass key off her keychain, and laid it on her paper-strewn desk pad. “Thanks.” Then she threw in: “Just remember if you give the kids grapes, slice them down the middle.”
“Rachel. They’re eleven and thirteen.”
“Fourteen and twelve. And remember, they’re not allowed to climb down the bluffs and go down to the beach.”
“You used to climb up and down that slope twenty times a day as a child!”
“It’s eroding now. Very slippery.”
“So my grandchildren are living on that magnificent river with no access to it?”
“They have access to it. They just need to walk further down the road to the public area and use the stairs. Then walk back along the shore.”
Piper looked astonished. “But it’s about a mile there and back!”
Rachel shrugged. “You can drive them as far as the stairs.”
With a badly disguised roll of her eyes, Piper adjusted the lamp on Rachel’s desk, swung her purse onto her shoulder, and waggled her fingers good-bye. “Well, try to stay calm, dear. I promise to keep everyone whole tonight.”
As soon as her mother disappeared, Rachel yanked the lamp back into place.
* * *
“Janie, the answer is no.” Rachel checked her watch. Nearly seven. The boardroom would be filling up with focus group attendees by now.
“The Frisbee is only, like, ten feet down the cliff,” Janie whined. “I’ll hold on to a tree branch.”
“No one goes near the edge of the property, do you hear me?”
“But we were playing a game with it. How about if I hold Grandma’s hand? She won’t let go of me.”
“No. End of discussion. We’ll get a new Frisbee.”
Janie growled and hung up.
Ignoring her daughter’s rudeness, Rachel reached for notepad and pen and hustled toward the sounds of voices gathering in the boardroom. She poked her head inside. Fifteen or twenty people, young and old, milled around the boardroom table.
From the corner of the room, Theodora Price, national sales manager, looked at Rachel and nodded toward the mirror, tapping her watch. Rachel turned around, stepping right into the path of a blond latecomer in a beautifully cut suit. His tie was flipped over his shoulder and he was eating from a carton of fries.
The distressed father from the side of the road. Len Bean.
“Oh,” she managed, her cheeks burning hot. “Hi!”
He coughed, covering his mouth then rushing to swallow. “Rachel?”
“Hi.” Then she rolled her eyes. “Right. I guess I just said that. Stupid…”
“No,” he laughed. “Hi was perfect. Even better the second time.”
“What are you doing—” She stopped herself. Obviously he was attending her focus group. “Stupid question. You’re here for the group?”
“Yes. You too?”
“No fifty bucks for me, I’m afraid. This is my…” In all the years since her father died, she’d never grown quite used to saying it. “This was my dad’s magazine. It’s mine
now.” Inside the boardroom, Theodora clapped her hands and announced it was time to begin. “I’d better…”
When Rachel motioned toward the mirror, he threw his head back and chuckled. He popped a fry into his mouth. “Ahh, we’re being studied. Like lab rats.”
“Please. We rat researchers prefer the term rattus rattus.”
She looked at his eyes, clear blue with dark, tired smears underneath. Blond lashes. He looked nothing like a lawyer. More like someone who spent sun-drenched days at the water’s edge, replacing worn planks on docks, or buffing old boats to a loving sheen.
“Rachel!” Mindy was holding open the door to the secret room, waving her inside.
Rachel shrugged. “Better go. Sorry.”
“Again with the apologies,” he grinned, fishing around for something in his breast pocket. He seemed disappointed, like he didn’t find what he was looking for.
“Right. Sorry.” She turned away, then stopped, looking back. “Some rat researcher, huh?”
How does he know where I’m sitting? Rachel wondered. Len’s eyes remained glued to the exact spot where she sat, fiddling with her yellow legal pad. Could he see through the glass? And why would a guy like Len give up his Thursday night? Feeling his eyes on her body, she shifted to the left. His eyes followed.
In the stuffy room with Rachel, the accountant Linda Haas sat in the back, beside Paula Collins and Jamie Holden-Brinks from sales—their metal chairs pushed close together, confirming what Rachel had long suspected.
In the boardroom, an egg-shaped man was explaining, in a very roundabout sort of way, why he no longer subscribed. “I lost my Perfect Parent subscription in the divorce.” He shook his head like his was the oldest story in the world. “She took all my CDs, the dogs, and the house. Of course she got full custody of the kids, so she got the magazine subscription.” He rolled his eyes and huffed. The young woman beside him looked unsure of her responsibilities as his seatmate, then gingerly patted him on the back.
