“Fine,” said April. Chin raised, she stomped off.
Karen happily resumed her top secret Gap.com shopping. Although it was generally true that she was thankful for any and all Caucasian or Asian parents who sent their children to Betts, there were exceptions that proved the rule. First among them was April Fishbach.
Twenty minutes later, Karen collected her belongings, returned her mug to the counter, and walked out. A block from home, she bumped into a former mom-acquaintance from the Elm Tree Center for Early Childhood Development, the play-based private nursery school that Ruby had attended before matriculating at Betts. The woman was dressed in high-tech running gear and carrying a cardboard box filled with gnarled-looking fresh vegetables with scrotal-like hairs growing off them—no doubt her weekly community-supported agriculture allotment. Karen never knew what to do with root vegetables when she brought them home; they tended to sit in the produce drawer of her fridge until they began to leak green juice, at which point she threw them out. “Karen! Oh my God!” said Leslie. “How are you?”
“We’re good!” said Karen, trying to match Leslie’s excited tone. “How about you guys? How’s Clare? How are the kids?” Back when Karen seemed to spend half her life at playgrounds—she was working only part-time then, freelancing—she and Leslie would sometimes share a bench while their children climbed the play structures. They’d chat about nap schedules, breast-feeding schedules, the pros and cons of thumb-sucking versus pacifiers, and whether grapes were safe for toddlers to eat or if they presented a compelling choking risk unless sliced in half. Karen had found that the minutiae of early-year parenting was fascinating for the exact moment you were living it, after which it became, quite possibly, the most boring subject on earth.
“We’re hanging in there.” Leslie laughed and sighed. “You know, the usual impossible juggling act.”
Was the comment an oblique dig at Karen for having only one child and therefore having it easy while Leslie and her wife toiled away at raising two? Or was Karen projecting? “I know it well,” Karen replied in an arch voice.
“So, what’s going on with Ruby? Where is she in school again?” Leslie narrowed her eyes and cocked her head.
“She goes to Betts,” said Karen, defensive before she’d even gotten the words out.
“Really? Wow!” said Leslie, blinking and nodding in slow motion.
“Don’t act so surprised,” said Karen.
“I’m not at all! We almost sent Willa there. I mean, we’re actually zoned for the school. Have you guys been happy there?” Leslie blinked again.
Karen’s heart had begun to pound. Defending her daughter’s school to college-educated white liberals in the neighborhood who were zoned for Betts but who didn’t send their children there on account, Karen assumed, of the number of black and brown faces they saw in the schoolyard had become her second obsession, after online shopping. “So happy. Honestly, it’s an amazing place—the teachers are beyond dedicated, and the kids are literally from all over the world,” she said. “It’s like a Benetton ad from the eighties come to life.” Karen always exaggerated her fondness for the school in reaction to those who shunned it. She had two goals: to foster guilt and shame, and to instill doubt about whatever alternative had been secured.
“Wow, that sounds amazing,” said Leslie. “I’m so happy for you guys.”
“And where’s Willa?” Karen couldn’t help herself.
“She’s actually in a brilliant-and-exceptional program.” Leslie grinned sheepishly.
“Oh. How’s that going?” said Karen, feeling even more embattled as she recalled the 71 out of 100 that Ruby, then age four, had scored on the so-called B-and-E test. Karen later concluded that Ruby had been more interested in the fish tank in the testing lady’s office than in counting the number of triangles and circles. Or was that just an excuse to ease the pain of acknowledging that her daughter was merely average? Then again, it had been widely rumored at Elm Tree that Leslie and Clare had had their then-four-year-old daughter tutored for the test by a Harvard grad who charged two hundred and fifty dollars an hour.
“It’s okaayyyy,” Leslie answered in a singsongy voice. “I mean, the commute is a total pain in the ass.” Karen didn’t answer. Was she supposed to express sympathy? “But we just felt Willa was one of those kids who needed to be around other really motivated kids or she’d kind of drift off. And I guess we were also worried about sending her to Betts because it seemed a little—I don’t know—crazy over there. And, like, maybe the kids didn’t all seem that inspired.” She lifted her shoulders and pressed her teeth together as if she were stepping on hot coals.
Every fiber of Karen’s being wanted to answer, You mean, because so many of them are black? (The city’s B-and-E programs were made up almost entirely of white and Asian students.) But she didn’t. She was a member of polite society, and people in polite society didn’t mention skin color.
“Also, we just felt Willa would do better in a more nurturing environment,” Leslie went on. “She’s kind of a sensitive kid.”
“Oh, is the B-and-E class really small?” asked Karen.
“Well, not anymore—unfortunately,” Leslie said with a bitter laugh. “She’s got thirty-two kids in her class this year.”
“Wow, that’s big!”
“But her teacher is great. I mean, if anyone can handle that many little smarty-pants, it’s her. So that’s something.”
“Right—well, Ruby’s class has only twenty-five kids in it this year,” said Karen, simultaneously bristling and gloating.
“Wow! Lucky you—that’s really small!” said Leslie.
“But of course, the vast majority of them are incredibly stupid.” Where had that come from?
Leslie laughed nervously. “I’m sure they’re not stupid.”
“Oh, I’m sure they are! My daughter in particular,” Karen went on. “She got, like, a two on that B-and-E test. I doubt she’ll even get into community college. She’ll be lucky to get a job as a cashier at CVS. Maybe your daughter will take pity on her some day and hire her as the receptionist at her quant fund or something.” Had she really just said that?
“You’re so funny,” said Leslie, but she wasn’t laughing or even smiling. And it was suddenly clear that she couldn’t wait to get away from Karen. “Well, it was great running into you,” she said, readjusting her box of scrotal-haired vegetables in her arms and taking a step backward.
“Yeah, you too!” said Karen, half mortified, half elated by her outburst.
As she continued down the block, she entertained the perversely affirming notion that, far from being a racist, she might well be its diametric opposite, insofar as it tended to be white people who irked her the most.