Occasionally she would look over at the head of the table, where Jeremy was sitting, Eli and Callie on either side of him. Callie was not eating, only taking infrequent sips of water, and she kept her hands in her lap. Izzy caught Jeremy reaching under the table at one point, to take her hand, which Callie allowed, though she closed her eyes. He stared at her until she opened them and they both smiled.
As dinner was winding down, dessert mere minutes from being served, Ellen returned to the dining hall, her arms rigidly held at her sides, her eyes puffy and red.
“Ellen?” Dr. Grind said, rising from his seat.
“I love you,” Ellen said, staring at the head of the table. Izzy looked to Jeremy, who shook his head and stared down at his empty plate. Callie kept her eyes closed, hands still in her lap.
Harris finally stood up, said, “Okay, Ellen, that’s it,” but Ellen moved closer to the table and said, “I love you, and I don’t understand why you don’t love me anymore.” Jeremy still wouldn’t look up, though he now reached again for Callie’s hand and held it tightly.
“Ellen, please,” Harris said, now standing next to her; Dr. Grind was now standing as well. “Ellen,” Dr. Grind said, “let’s do this away from the children.”
“I have to leave the family,” Ellen declared. “I can’t be around all this if I don’t have him.”
“No one has to leave,” Dr. Grind said. “I don’t know exactly what’s happened, but we can work it out.”
“Mom?” Marnie said. “Why are you crying?”
“I took a lot of pills, those pills I got after my dental surgery. I took all of them,” Ellen said, her face temporarily brightening with the certainty of her action.
Dr. Grind took hold of Ellen, held both of her arms at the wrist, gripping her tightly, as Jill and several of the parents ushered the children out of the room; the children were now shouting that they didn’t want to go, that they wanted to stay.
“Harris,” Dr. Grind said, “help me take Ellen to the hospital. Everyone else stay here, watch over the kids. No one else leave. We have to sort this out.”
“What’s to sort out?” Ellen said, her voice far away and dreamy. “We were supposed to run away, take the kids and start over, but he got scared or something. He couldn’t leave Callie; he couldn’t leave Dr. Kwon, who he fucked, did you know that? He couldn’t leave his little garden. He chose all of you over me.”
“That’s not true,” Jeremy said, his voice loud and indignant. “She’s lying. I never slept with Kalina.”
“Jeremy, please,” Dr. Grind said.
Dr. Grind looked genuinely mystified, as if the members of the family were all much more complicated and yet much dumber than he had ever thought possible. Harris and Dr. Grind were now awkwardly walking Ellen out of the dining hall, and Izzy ran toward them.
“Can I come with you?” Izzy asked.
Dr. Grind declined her offer. “I think you better stay with the children. With something like this, the more people available at the complex, the better.”
Izzy wanted to tell him what she knew, the details of Ellen’s situation, but she imagined his disappointment, the chance that Izzy had caused all of this to happen with her silence, and she instead simply nodded and stood rooted to the floor.
“What the fuck?” Asean said to Jeremy, who shook his head, constantly denying something that no one else fully understood, and took hold of Callie as they walked out of the dining hall.
Izzy saw a group of people standing in the children’s classroom; the kids were now arranged around Marnie, who was sobbing, both of her parents now gone, as she sat in a beanbag chair in the middle of the room. Without speaking, the children maintained a protective barrier around Marnie and held hands, sometimes resting their heads on each other, their bodies calm and quiet. Jill was sitting on the sofa with Jeffrey, watching the proceedings, while the parents gathered in groups to talk. Jeremy and Callie were nowhere to be seen.
“Ellen and Jeremy?” whispered Kenny, looking around at the other parents for reassurance that this was bizarre. Kenny turned to Paul, Harris’s best friend in the project, and said, “Did you know?” Paul held up his hands in surrender. “No way,” he said. “I mean, Harris talked a lot about trouble with his marriage, that things weren’t getting better, but he never said anything about an affair.”
“Did anybody else know?” Kenny asked, but no one said anything. “How do you miss something like this?” he asked, dumbfounded. Finally Carmen rubbed his shoulders and said, “Maybe we can talk about this later.”
Jeremy and Callie showed up, each of them holding a duffel bag. Jeremy held back at the end of the hallway while Callie walked over to the other parents.
“Callie,” Carmen said, “are you okay?”
Callie didn’t respond to the question, only said, “We’re leaving for tonight. We need to be alone. We’ve got a little yurt that Jeremy built at the farm; we’ll stay there. I’m just going to get Eli. We just can’t be around this right now.”
“Maybe Eli should stay here,” Kenny said, but Callie was already past him, walking into the classroom. The other parents followed her into the room.