Ruby came home from school scratching. And when Karen lifted up Ruby’s hair, she found a row of tiny red bumps on the back of her neck. By then, Karen was madly clawing at herself as well and in a state of barely controlled panic at the thought of bloodsucking insects running rampant on her scalp. It seemed particularly ironic that she had picked them up at a school that looked as clean cut as Mather did. But then, bloodsucking parasites apparently didn’t select for socioeconomic status. In any case, Karen knew she had to act. After dinner that night, she sat Ruby down on the toilet seat with a Highlights magazine to distract her, while, comb in hand, Karen began dividing Ruby’s hair into sections the way she’d seen someone do it on a YouTube video. Ruby was reading her a knock-knock joke that had been sent in by a reader—“‘Knock, knock. Who’s there? Isolate. Isolate who? I-so-late to the party’”—when a tiny black insect resembling a mosquito only without the wings appeared in her part line. “Oh my God!” Karen cried before she dropped the comb on the floor and ran into her bedroom. She’d always considered herself competent, but this task was possibly beyond her.
“Mooommm!” Ruby called to her in a whine.
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Karen called back. She counted to three on the inhale, then three on the exhale. Then she did it again. Feeling calmer, she walked back into the bathroom and announced, “Mommy can’t handle this. We’re going to see a specialist.”
That was how, an hour later, she and Ruby ended up in the vinyl-sided home of an Orthodox Jewish nitpicker and mother of ten. When Karen and Ruby arrived, at least seven of the ten were visible under the dining-room table, playing with plastic toys. Bathsheba sat Ruby down in a chair facing a wall of gold-framed photographs of white-bearded rabbis who appeared to be as old as Methuselah and went to work with a metal comb. Then it was Karen’s turn. “You have a bad case, even worse than your daughter,” said Bathsheba.
“And you’ve got quite a brood!” declared Karen, keen to change the subject. “Are you going to have any more?”
“It’s not up to me,” said Bathsheba, shrugging. “It’s God’s will.”
“Right,” said Karen, nodding.
“Please stop moving.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“So, why do you have only one?”
“One what?” asked Karen.
“Child,” said Bathsheba, wiping her comb on a Kleenex.
“Oh, right,” said Karen, surprised by a question that few dared ask but many likely wondered about. “Well, I got married on the late side and didn’t have my first kid till I was thirty-seven. And then, sadly, time got away from me.” It was true and not true. In fact, Matt had been iffy on the idea of a second, fearing they’d be unable to travel, even though neither of them ever went anywhere. And Karen had bowed to his wish, even though it was a source of secret hurt. She’d always wanted a big family—or at least, she’d once thought she did. “And now I’m too old, so it’s too late to have another,” she added.
“How old are you?” asked Bathsheba.
“Forty-five, almost forty-six.”
“Nonsense, it’s not too late. My mother had her thirteenth at forty-seven.”
“Oh—wow!” said Karen, horrified at the very idea.
Afterward, it pained Karen to have to write the woman a check for three hundred dollars for forty-five minutes’ work. Then again, Karen would have paid nearly any amount for the ability to think about something other than lice. And Bathsheba apparently supported the family. “He studies the Torah,” had been her answer to Karen’s question about what Bathsheba’s husband did for a living…
“Where have you guys been?” asked Matt when Karen and Ruby walked in the door at ten of eight.
“The lice lady,” Karen told him.
“Oh—shit,” he said.
“You should probably get checked too. Though according to Bathsheba the nitpicker, they usually stay away from men.”
“Unlike some people I know,” Matt muttered cryptically before he walked away.
“Excuse me?” Karen said, flinching. For a panicked moment, she wondered if he knew more than he was letting on. But he didn’t answer or explain.
That night, she began the first of seven loads of laundry.
At work the next morning, despite misgivings, she began a formal letter to Clay on foundation letterhead that made no mention of their personal relationship. Considering that the document would become part of the charity’s archives, it seemed imperative that she play it straight. Dear Mr. Phipps, she wrote. On behalf of Hungry Kids, I would like to officially invite you to join our board of directors. We feel that your experience and involvement would be an asset to our organization, and we hope that you will consider accepting our offer…She signed it Gratefully yours, Karen Kipple. When she finished, she printed it out and sent it via overnight mail.
Clay sent a one-line e-mail the next afternoon. When Karen saw his name in her in-box, her heart thumped. The subject line read Your Letter. The body read:
I’m honored. Now will you do me the honor of seeing me one more time? Pretty please?
It took every ounce of Karen’s mental strength not to write back Yes.
Two days later, Karen met up with the interim treasurer, Liz, in the Mather PTA office, which turned out to be a hole in the wall next to the music room. Liz, by now so pregnant that she could barely lean over far enough to open the desk and show Karen where the PTA checkbook and ledger were kept, nonetheless managed to teach Karen how and where to manually record deposits and withdrawals. No less essentially, she showed Karen how to electronically access the PTA account that was kept at Citibank. Owing to a sluggish Wi-Fi connection, the page took forever to load. Finally, the numbers became visible. But Karen had trouble believing her eyes. To her astonishment, the account currently contained $955,000.86, not a penny of which appeared to be spoken for. “Jesus, that’s a lot of money,” Karen muttered.
“Yeah, well, I guess compared to the other public schools around here we’re a bunch of rich motherfuckers,” said Liz. “Though it’s really not that much when you compare it to the endowment of, like, Eastbrook Lab. Then we look like paupers.” She shrugged. “I guess it’s all relative.”
“True enough,” said Karen, noting that Liz must have regarded private schools the way Betts parents like Karen had once regarded Mather—as winning lottery tickets being dangled in their faces. “Well, thanks for showing me the ropes,” Karen continued. “I think I can take over from here.”
“Great,” said Liz, “because either my water just broke or I just peed in my pants. In any case, I think I need some of Denise’s recycled toilet paper.”
“Oh no!” Karen laughed, feeling an unexpected kinship with the Mather PTA’s secretary and former interim treasurer—or, at least, enough intimacy to say, “Hey, can I ask you a weird question before you take off?”