“You know how it is, Oma,” I said. “Schools aren’t like they used to be.”
She poured herself another glass of schnapps. “What do you Americans like to say? ‘Say me about it’?”
I corrected her German-to-English translation. “‘Tell me about it.’ That’s how you say it.”
“Say. Tell.”
“I mean, would you want your kid in a third-tier school?” I said.
Oma went on, talking about tiers and classes. I tuned her out and listened to Petra’s television interview. She’d been joined by another woman who I recognized immediately as Malcolm’s boss at the Department of Education.
Madeleine Sinclair is hard to miss. Tall, with blond—so blond it’s nearly white—hair swept up into a classic French twist, she seems to wear nothing but electric blue suits, fitted to her curves in the way only custom-made clothing does. On her right lapel, there’s always that same pin, the yellow emblem of the Fitter Family Campaign. Today was no different, but her features seemed sharper, more hawkish than ever.
“It was going to happen sooner or later,” Petra said to the reporter. “We reached a point where the public school system couldn’t handle the disparity anymore, couldn’t supply an across-the-board education. When the Department of Ed started the voucher program, I guess I saw it as an opportunity. When they needed hard science to strengthen the Q algorithm, I knew the Genics Institute would be the first of its kind.”
Oma stopped talking and froze with the schnapps glass halfway to her lips.
The on-screen reporter nodded and spoke to the other woman. “Dr. Sinclair, there’s been some backlash about your policies. Can you tell us about that?”
Madeleine Sinclair turned her blue eyes toward the camera, as if she were addressing not the interviewer but someone on the other side. Perhaps she was speaking to me; perhaps to the old woman at my side. When she spoke, her voice was patient, an experienced teacher talking to a confused child, straightening things out. “There’s always going to be backlash,” she said. “It’s natural. Most of the criticism comes from”—she smiled, and in the smile there was a mix of sweetness and condescension—“certain factions. Certain factions who desperately want to believe we’re all the same.”
Oma drew in a shallow breath.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Nothing. Let me listen.”
“The thing of it is,” Madeleine continued, “the crux of the matter, and the point people need to understand, is that we are not all the same.” She paused, and when the reporter opened his mouth to interrupt, Madeleine put up a hand. “I’ll repeat that. We are not all the same.” Once again, she looked out from the screen. “Tell me, parents, do you want your child in a classroom with students who are two standard deviations out? With children who don’t have the capacity to understand the kinds of struggles and challenges your five-year-old faces? With teachers whose time is pulled in so many directions that everyone—everyone—ends up falling through the cracks?”
“I don’t think she is telling the truth,” Oma said. “What she is asking is if you want your baby Einstein in a room with twenty normal children. They might hold your little genius back, or they might interrupt his progress.” She stabbed at the remote control, missing the buttons, only increasing the volume as Petra and Madeleine nodded and provided each other with verbal reinforcements. “These women are evil, Liebchen. Ah, here is my taxi. At least I can still hear.”
A second blast of a horn announced Oma’s ride back to my parents’ house, and I went to the door with her. Our parting hug felt different—her hand on my back, ordinarily firm and warm, was light, and even in the hug there was empty space between us. A half-drunk glass sat on the coffee table, forgotten. I ignored its siren call and dumped the schnapps into the kitchen sink, then returned to the television.
Petra was talking again, telling us how she owed her success to the Fitter Family Campaign. “What started as a grassroots movement snowballed,” she said.
Avalanched was more like it. Somewhere in the middle of the country, in that expanse of former dust bowls