Vinegar Girl (Hogarth Shakespeare) - Anne Tyler Page 0,12

but how much could she have done wrong between yesterday afternoon and noon today? She had made a point of keeping her interactions with parents to a minimum, and she didn’t think Mrs. Darling could have heard about her little tantrum this morning when she couldn’t get Antwan’s jacket unzipped. “Stupid goddamn-to-hell frigging modern life,” she had muttered. But it was life she was cursing, not Antwan, and surely he’d understood that. Besides, he didn’t seem like the kind of kid who’d go running off to tattle on people, even if he’d had the opportunity.

It had been one of those double-type zippers that could be opened from the bottom while the top stayed closed, and she’d ended up having to take the jacket off by yanking it over his head. She detested that kind of zipper. It was a presumptuous zipper; it wanted to figure out your every possible need without your say-so.

She tried to remember how Mrs. Darling had worded her threat from the day before. She hadn’t said anything about “Just one more offense and you’re out,” had she? No, it had been less specific than that. It had been something like the vague “or else” that grown-ups were always threatening children with, that children eventually realized was not as dire as it sounded.

The phrase “thin ice” had been involved, she seemed to recollect.

How would she fill her days if she had no job anymore? There was absolutely nothing else whatsoever in her life—no reason she could think of to get out of bed every morning.

Yesterday at Show and Tell, Chloe Smith had talked about a visit she’d paid to a petting farm over the weekend. She had seen some baby goats, she said, and Kate had said, “Lucky!” (She had a soft spot for goats.) She asked, “Were they doing that frolicking thing that goats do when they’re happy?”

“Yes, a few of them were just barely beginning to fly,” Chloe said, and it had been such a matter-of-fact description, so concrete and unsurprised, that Kate had experienced a jolt of pure pleasure.

Funny how you have to picture losing a thing before you think you might value it after all.

At 5:40, the very last mother collected the very last child—a Room 5 mother, Mrs. Amherst, late for her son’s whole career here—and Kate had given her very last fake smile, rigidly tight-lipped so that no unfortunate words could escape her. She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath and headed to Mrs. Darling’s office.

Mrs. Darling was watering her houseplants. She had probably used up all other ways of killing time. Kate hoped she hadn’t let boredom turn her irritable, as it would have Kate herself if she had been the one waiting, so she began by saying, “I am really, really sorry I’m late. It was Mrs. Amherst’s fault.”

Mrs. Darling seemed uninterested in Mrs. Amherst. “Have a seat,” she told Kate, smoothing her skirt beneath her as she settled behind her desk.

Kate sat.

“Emma Gray,” Mrs. Darling said. She was certainly wasting no words today.

Emma Gray? Kate’s brain went racing through possibilities. There were none at all, as far as she knew. Emma Gray had never been a problem.

“Emma asked who you thought Room Four’s best drawer was,” Mrs. Darling said. She was consulting the notepad she kept beside her telephone. “You said”—and she read off the words—“ ‘I think probably Jason.’ ”

“Right,” Kate said.

She waited for the punch line, but Mrs. Darling put down her notepad as if she thought she’d already delivered it. She laced her fingers together and surveyed Kate with a “So there!” expression on her face.

“That’s exactly right,” Kate expanded.

“Emma’s mother is very upset,” Mrs. Darling told her. “She says you made Emma feel inferior.”

“She is inferior,” Kate said. “Emma G. can’t draw worth a damn. She asked my honest opinion and I gave her an honest answer.”

“Kate,” Mrs. Darling said, “there is so much to argue with in that, I don’t even know where to begin.”

“What’s wrong with it? I don’t get it.”

“Well, one thing you might have said is, ‘Oh, now, Emma, I’ve never looked at art as a competition. I’m just so thrilled that all of you are creative!’ you’d say. ‘All of you doing your best at whatever you’re trying to do.’ ”

Kate tried to imagine herself speaking this way. She couldn’t. She said, “But Emma didn’t mind; I swear she didn’t. All she said was, ‘Oh, yeah, Jason,’ and then she went on about her business.”

“She minded enough to report it