“Also,” Audra interrupted, “you have this, I wouldn’t call it an obsession, but certainly a rigidity about reading the newspaper in the morning.”
“Hey,” Graham protested. “I’m sure ninety-nine percent of all men read the paper in the morning. Ninety-nine percent of all people, probably.”
Audra herself never read the paper, never even watched the news. North Korea could bomb the entire Eastern Seaboard and she wouldn’t know about it until someone mentioned it on Facebook.
“But do they read it every single day?” she asked. “Even on their wedding day? Even on the day their child is born? Even while their wife is in labor and needing to go to the hospital?”
“I was checking the stock market!” Graham said. “You said the contractions were still fifteen minutes apart.”
“Don’t get so defensive,” Audra said mildly. “I don’t think you have Asperger’s. I just think you have it more than me.”
And then she picked up the water bottles and went off to put them in the hall storage cupboard, the pom-poms on the backs of her socks bobbing up and down like twin sailboats on a choppy sea.
—
Graham didn’t admit this to anyone, even Audra, but part of him was secretly pleased that Matthew had been caught looking at porn on a school computer. Wasn’t that—wasn’t that something normal kids did?
Graham remembered how he felt the first day Matthew went to school without crying (which hadn’t happened until he reached the second grade), and the first time Matthew had made it through a movie without throwing a tantrum, and the first time he’d eaten a grilled cheese sandwich made with whole-wheat bread instead of white, and the first time he’d consented to go over to some other kid’s house. Graham had felt relief and happiness and pride, but most of all, acceptance. He’d finally been granted entry into the world that other parents lived in, the one where children behaved sort of like you had expected back when you were young and foolish and thought child-raising was effortless.
And wasn’t this porn thing another version of that? Another developmental milestone that Matthew had achieved? And getting around the school’s content controls—didn’t that show initiative? Problem solving? Maybe this whole episode was something to be proud of.
He felt that way right up until Mr. Sears called and said they had to come into school for the conference.
—
The first thing Graham thought at the conference was that Audra had been right to take the Rottweilers out to dinner. Jerry and Brenda were already in the little waiting room outside the school conference room when Graham and Audra got there, and Brenda jumped right up and linked her arm through Audra’s. So not only did they present a united front, but they handily outnumbered the two school officials with whom they were meeting.
Mr. Sears, the principal, and Mrs. Costello, the guidance counselor, were already seated at a long conference table. Graham did not care for the conference table. He wanted this meeting to take place in some nice cozy office with pictures and a rug—the kind of place where they only told you good news.
As always, when Graham met Mr. Sears, his mind flashed back to a long car journey during which he and Audra had played Kill, Shag, or Marry and she’d chosen to shag Mr. Sears. “I feel obligated because he’s helped Matthew so much,” she’d said. “Remember when Matthew first started school and was so afraid? Plus I’m so grateful to Mr. Sears for overturning the school cafeteria’s ban on caffeinated drinks. He’s very petite and gentle—I don’t think it would be such a bad experience. I think he’d just be kind of grateful.”
(Audra had chosen to marry the art teacher, Mr. Menendez, because she felt they could do some interesting art collaboration, some sort of stained-glass mosaic. She’d ended up killing Eugene, the school custodian, a very nice man who’d never done anything to anyone.)
Mr. Sears was petite and gentle—a little man with a soft white pointy beard and silver-rimmed spectacles. He looked like the elderly cobbler in “The Elves and the Shoemaker.” He smiled at them now from his place at the table.
Mrs. Costello was a slender woman in her fifties, with pronounced circles under her eyes, the skin there looking bruised and crepey. She always looked like that, Graham knew from previous meetings, which he thought wasn’t a great advertisement for the school: was being the counselor there so incredibly stressful? Today she was wearing a terry-cloth dress, which along with the circled eyes, made her look like someone who’d been dragged out of bed with a terrible hangover.
“Thank you so much for taking time to meet with us!” Audra said, as though she and Graham had requested this meeting instead of the other way around. She shook hands with both of them in an eager, confident way. She reminded Graham of a politician.
When she got to Mrs. Costello, she said, “Now, Lois, you won’t believe this but I think we have the same hairdresser!”
Mrs. Costello looked startled. “Who, Bruno?”
“Yes.” Audra nodded. “I’ve been getting my hair cut by him for years. I always get the last appointment of the day and then he and I have a glass of wine together first.” Suddenly, she looked thoughtful. “I mean, I assume he only does that before the last appointment, but maybe he does it before every appointment. Maybe he’s hammered every time he cuts my hair. When do you get your hair cut?”
“Oh, well, Saturday mornings, usually,” Mrs. Costello answered. She had the look of someone unsuccessfully searching for the off button.
“Of course, of course,” Audra said soothingly. “You’re so busy at school, it would have to be on the weekends. Does Bruno offer you a glass of wine ever?”
“No—” Mrs. Costello said.
“Although for a while Bruno was coming over to our place on Mondays,” Audra said in a reflective tone, “and I never saw him drink during the day. The reason he came to our apartment on Mondays was that his mother-in-law had begun spending that day at his house. Bruno said that when he and his wife got married, the wife said, ‘If you’re going to go out with your friends on Thursday nights, then my mother is going to come for dinner every Sunday.’ So Bruno said fine and they got married—this was all ten years ago, I gather—and then abruptly the mother-in-law began coming over on Mondays, too, which, you know, for a hairdresser is part of the weekend. So Bruno said to his wife, ‘I agreed to Sunday but I never agreed to Monday—you never so much as mentioned Monday,’ and his wife said, ‘What am I supposed to tell my mother? That she’s not welcome here?’ and Bruno said, ‘Tell her whatever you like. Tell her I’m taking a class in ombre processing on Staten Island!’ and his wife said, ‘What? For six months?’ and Bruno said…”