“That’s okay,” said Karen, raising her palm. “We should probably get going.”
“Well, the girls are still sequestered upstairs.” Susan walked over to a white-painted staircase with a glossy black banister and a navy-blue wool runner that appeared to be in need of vacuuming and called up it, “Charlotte! Ruby’s mom is here.” There was no immediate answer, but that didn’t prevent Susan Bordwell from turning back to Karen. “So, I understand Ruby is new to Mather,” she said.
“It’s true!” Karen told her in as airy a tone as she could manage. “Ruby just started a few weeks ago.”
“Did you just move to the neighborhood?” asked Susan, head cocked.
Karen could have guessed that the question was coming. Even so, its articulation made her wince. “Well, not really—it’s kind of a long story,” she answered with a flourish of her hand that she hoped would discourage the woman from asking her to elaborate. “We were at another school.”
“Really?” said Susan. “Which one?”
“Betts,” said Karen.
“Which one is that again?” asked Susan, squinting. “Truth be told, there are so many schools around here, I get confused.”
Considering that the school was only four blocks away, the question astonished Karen. Was Betts so down-market that it didn’t even register on the radar of Cortland Hill’s professional class? “It’s on Groveland, just off Magnolia?” she said.
“Oh, of course.”
“One of her classmates transferred to Mather as well,” offered Karen, hoping that a second example would make her long complicated story sound that much more legitimate—and even less interesting.
“Really?” said Susan.
“A girl named Maeve—also in third grade.”
“That name sounds familiar.”
There was a brief pause, during which time Karen prayed that Susan wasn’t going to ask her what street her family lived on. Instead, to Karen’s relief, she asked, “And do you—work outside the home?” For a certain subset of mothers, it was the preferred phrasing of what had become a delicate question. This way, went the thinking, even a woman who answered in the negative would have no need to get defensive, since her work in the home would already have been acknowledged.
“I do,” Karen was happy to tell her and to change topics. “I actually work in the nonprofit sector, for a hunger-relief charity. Doing fund-raising. Or development, as it’s known in the business.”
Susan’s eyes opened wider. “Really? How wonderful of you.”
“It’s just a job.” Flattered despite herself, Karen laughed and shrugged. “What about you?”
She shook her head. “Stay-at-home mom for the moment! I used to be a corporate lawyer. But after my son, Xander, was born, I gave up. The hours were impossible.”
“I’m sure,” said Karen.
“So I just volunteer now.”
“How great.”
“And my husband, Nate, works from home.” Karen’s heart skipped a beat. “So we’re basically the parents who are always around. I’m sure it drives our kids crazy!” She laughed lightly.
“Oh, I’m sure they secretly love it,” said Karen, who, despite her raging curiosity, didn’t feel it was polite to ask what Susan’s husband, Nate, did for a living.
“I’m not sure about that!” said Susan. “Anyway, you probably don’t know this, but I’m actually the president of the PTA this year.”
“Oh—wow!” Karen said unhappily, dread flooding her chest at the thought that Susan Bordwell potentially had access to the school’s administrative files.
“And on that note,” Susan continued, “I hate to ask you this, because I’m sure you’re as busy as the next working mother. But the school lost its longtime treasurer last June—her youngest child graduated from fifth grade. And she doubled as our fund-raising chair. So, of course, now I’m wondering if there’s any chance you’d be willing to lend your expertise to the school. Even if it’s just in the short term.”
“Oh—my goodness—I’m flattered,” said Karen, feeling trapped. She’d gone into charity work to help the disadvantaged, not the already thriving. Except at that moment, saying no seemed next to impossible. She already felt so indebted to the Bordwell family. And joining the Mather PTA seemed like the surest method of erasing any suggestion or suspicion of Karen’s being an interloper. “Well, it’s true I don’t have much time. But I’d be happy to do what I can,” she said. “I understand the school has been really successful at fund-raising in the past. Is that right?”
Susan smiled graciously. “Yes, well, we’ve been very fortunate in that way. In recent years, we’ve ranked in the top five public schools in the city in terms of fund-raising muscle. Of course, I’d like to see that rise to number one! But maybe that’s unrealistic. All the really big money is across the river.” She shrugged and smiled at the same time as if to say, What can anyone do? “But we do have one claim to fame—we’re the only elementary school in the city whose PTA has financed its own organic rooftop garden.”
“Wow, I didn’t know that,” said Karen, who hated gardening even more than she hated cooking.
Susan went on: “Unfortunately, some people in the neighborhood—even some people at the school—resent us for constantly hitting up the parents. But the way I see it, we really don’t have a choice. Not only does the statehouse continue to cut the education budget every year, but the very poor schools—by which I mean the ones where most of the children are receiving free lunch—get a ton of money from the federal government under the Title One statute. I have no problem with that—at least, not in theory—except it leaves middle-class kids out in the cold. If our PTA didn’t fund-raise, we’d be talking about a bare-bones operation with no arts education, no strings program, no fifth-grade overnight trip, no computers, no library even! We’d also have no assistants in our jam-packed kindergarten classrooms. And our rooftop garden would be a pipe dream.
“So, yes, we pay for a lot of extras. But if we want to provide our children with a well-rounded education, this is really the only way to do it. Besides, not all our families are wealthy. The maintenance and kitchen staffs send their kids here. That’s ten families right there. And we also have families in the community who spend way more than they can afford on rent so they can send their kids to Mather, but who literally have three dollars at the end of the month for groceries.”