This is all supposed to be good for the children. Good for the families. Good for society.
I lean over and wrap her in my arms. She’s wooden. I feel like I’m holding a doll.
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s go have some ice cream.”
This elicits a crack of a smile, and Freddie’s eyes shine. Good. Somewhere underneath that stiff exterior, there’s still my little girl.
“Chocolate?” she says.
“Sure. And vanilla and strawberry and cookie dough. Anything you want, honey.”
The thing I love best in the world happens next: Freddie’s crack of a smile turns into a grin.
Then all the phones start pinging.
THIRTEEN
I’m okay.
I’m okay I’m okay I’m okay I’m okay.
If I say it enough, it’ll be true, right?
Malcolm and Anne are in the den, eating ice cream. Well, Malcolm is eating nonfat organic frozen yogurt sweetened with Splenda while Anne devours celebratory spoonful after spoonful of rocky road mixed with strawberry. Neither of them knows what I know.
The problem, I think, is that I’ve got a husband who’s so intensely wrapped in his überintelligence bubble that imagining any world outside that cocoon is impossible. The idea of failure in our family doesn’t enter into Malcolm’s equations of reality, and Anne lives in the kind of blissful oblivion that only teenagers can live in.
This is about to change.
“Malcolm,” I say quietly.
He looks up, and I don’t need to say another word.
I want to, though. I want to say a million words, all beginning with F and ending with UCK.
“Impossible,” says Malcolm.
Possibilities are only measurable before an outcome, I think, but I don’t say anything, only hand him my phone with the message from the Department of Education and wait while he reads. It doesn’t take long—the department is ruthlessly parsimonious in its alerts. Child’s name, child’s ID number, child’s current tier, and a single, life-altering number: 7.9.
“It’s a mistake,” he says, getting up from the sofa. “I’ll sort it out.”
“You do that,” I say.
He’s on the phone in five seconds, talks for another half minute. Toward the end, the only words he says are monosyllables like “Oh,” “Right,” “Okay.”
My glance shifts from him, to the hallway leading toward Freddie’s room, and back to Malcolm. He’s the same as when I met him over twenty-five years ago. Same angular, often emotionless face; same square-set shoulders, as if he’s preparing for a wrecking ball to hit him and plans to hit back just as hard; same dark blond waves of hair framing his face, although there’s gray curling around his temples and at the nape of his neck. The glasses he wears have gone through a few more thicknesses over this past quarter century, but otherwise, Malcolm’s the same.
It must be me who’s changed, because when I see him now, I don’t see anything to love.
“We need to fix this,” I say. “Now.”
His call has ended, and I corner him in the kitchen. He’s turned his back to me and pretends to be fiddling with a grease spot on the counter. “Malcolm? Did you hear me? We need to fix this.”
I grew up in a family of quiet men and women, people who didn’t shout over one another at Sunday dinners, didn’t try to shut one another up to get their point heard. Mostly, tense situations called for calm voices and steady nerves.
Malcolm’s absolute silence, on the other hand, isn’t a calming force. It’s jarring and violent, this stone wall. There’s too much room for wonder and speculation.
When he finally answers me, he’s almost inaudible.
“We’re not fixing anything, Elena.”
My full first name is supposed to be a signal that the conversation is over. I don’t agree.
“What if it were the president’s kid? Or a senator’s? Are you telling me they’d sit back and watch their child board a yellow bus on two days’ notice?”
This gets to him, and his eyes narrow. “Sometimes the rules are bent.”