A Table By the Window (2 page)

Another pang, even though Carley had no memory whatsoever of her grandfather. Her mother only spoke of her parents while drinking, when Carley's main mission was to stay out of range as much as possible. All she knew was that Sterling Walker was a machinist for the Port of Tacoma, Cordelia Walker, a housewife.

“Sorry to have to break the news.” Mr. Wingate said.

She nodded as the elevator stopped and doors parted. Stepping back to make room were the dental hygienist with whom Carley sometimes chatted in the laundry room and the gray-haired man from the fourth floor who jogged every morning. Carley absently returned their good-mornings.

You have no more family,
she told herself. And the only contact she had initiated with her grandparents was after her mother's burial almost a year ago, when she sent a note to the address she found while cleaning out her mother's belongings. It had seemed the decent thing to do.

But she had signed it with a simple
From Carley
with no return address. Looking them up was filed in the “Perhaps One Day” category.
Family,
as defined by the examples in her childhood, made her skeptical.

Which was why, at twenty-five, she had never allowed herself to sustain a relationship beyond a few dates. Why join her life with someone who could turn out to be a frog instead of a prince? How many times did her mother bring home a new man who was going to change their lives for the better?

Once free of the elevator and other sets of ears, Carley motioned Mr. Wingate toward the alcove where thirty-two mailboxes were set in the wall. “When is the funeral?”

Discomfort washed across the clean-shaven face. “It was in October.”

“Three
months
ago?”

“I would have found you sooner, but the name I started out with was ‘Walker'. That was two names ago….”

Carley ignored the implied question. Mr. Wingate was a nice man, but that did not give him a right to her entire life history. She offered her hand instead of an explanation. “Thank you for telling me about my grandparents.”

“You'll contact Mr. Malone, then?” he said with a resigned expression.

“Yes. And I have to hurry, or I'll miss my bus.”

He nodded and turned toward the lobby door. “I can do better than that. Let me hail you a cab.”

“That's not necessary,” she said, following. “I still have time.”

He looked back at her. “Please, I insist. I'll add it to my expense account, so you'll ultimately be paying for it anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

The open glass door allowed in the traffic noise of Harrison Street. “Well, from your inheritance.”

****

The Yellow Cab was a welcome respite from thirty-eight minutes of commute involving two buses and walks totaling three blocks.
Inheritance,
Carley thought as the driver turned north onto Van Ness. Would there be enough—minus Mr. Wingate's fee—to pay off the $4,359 remaining of her student loan? The $1,700 she still owed Visa from her mother's burial?

Wouldn't it be wonderful to be debt free!

But the thought would have to wait, for the taxi was slowing to a stop at the corner of Vallejo and Webster Streets.

Emerson-Wake Preparatory School sat behind scrolled wrought-iron gates in Pacific Heights, San Francisco's most exclusive neighborhood. The 12,900-square-foot Queen Anne style house had been built in the early 1900s for Amiel Herschel, a Polish Jew who immigrated to San Francisco in 1890, started out in the clock repair business, and expanded into copper mining.

It was a given that parents willing to pay an annual tuition of twenty-four thousand dollars would be involved and supportive. Carley did not have to purchase her own supplies, nor did she worry about school shootings or being robbed in the restroom. With only a bachelor's degree and three years' experience teaching in inner-city Sacramento, she was fortunate to be employed in such a prestigious institution.

That was what she told herself every morning. She had even believed it for the first week or two.

She paid the driver with the ten-dollar bill Mr. Wingate had pressed into her hand, telling him to keep the change. The grounds were quiet, the brick walkway damp from misting rain. Students would not begin arriving for another forty-five minutes. In the attendance office, Faye Wyatt looked up from her keyboard and raised her eyebrows.

Carley's pet peeve. She had once walked out of a shoe store because the sales clerk did the same eyebrow-thing without bothering to speak. The DeLouches would have fired the woman on the spot for treating a patron so condescendingly.

“Is Dr. Kincaid in yet?”

Faye's eyebrows continued to levitate.

“This is important.”

The receptionist gave up and pressed a button upon her telephone. “Dr. Kincaid?”

“Yes, Faye?” came through in a metallic tone that was not entirely the machine's fault.

“Carley Reed asks to see you.”

“Send her in.”

Carley thanked Faye, who had resumed typing, and went on to the door beneath a brass plaque reading
Headmistress
.

“Good morning, Carley,” Dr. Georgia Kincaid said from her desk. She had olive skin with few lines and wore pale pink lipstick. Jet black hair flowed from a square face into a French twist, the same way it did almost four years ago when she was principal of Sacramento High School and Carley was a teacher fresh out of California State University.

Two years later, Dr. Kincaid had left for San Francisco. Carley did not cross paths with her former boss until last June, when she happened across Dr. Kincaid and her husband under the refreshment canopy at the California Shakespeare Festival outside Oakland. Dr. Kincaid mentioned looking for a replacement English literature teacher and encouraged her to apply. She remembered how hard Carley had worked in Sacramento and guaranteed she would love Emerson-Wake.

It sounded like a good move to Carley, eager to get out of Sacramento, where there was always the chance of bumping into certain ghosts from the past.

“Good morning, Dr. Kincaid,” Carley said. “I'm afraid I have bad news.”

Dr. Kincaid lay down her pen. “Uh-oh. Please have a seat.”

Carley sat in the chair facing the desk and unlatched the briefcase in her lap. “I almost telephoned you last night. But it was so late.”

“What's wrong?”

“Four of my second-hour students copied their assignments from the Internet.” She leaned forward to hand the papers over the desk.

“This isn't good,” Dr. Kincaid groaned, flipping through the stack.

“Would you like to see the Web site?”

“Yes, later. But it's clearly plagiarism.” She set aside the first paper, looked at the name on the second, and blew out a longer stream of breath. “Ryan Ogden. His grandfather will be livid.”

Retired four-star general Avery Ogden, author of severalscience-fiction novels, grandfather to three Emerson-Wake students, was the preparatory school's most generous contributor.

“But he has no cause to be angry at
us,
” Carley pointed out. “Not at the school.”

Without replying, the headmistress scanned the papers again. At length her mocha-colored eyes met Carley's. “I want you to take the day off.”

Carley shook her head. “I'm not about to skip out and leave you to handle this alone.”

“I insist.” She pressed a button on the speakerphone. “Faye, will you round up someone for gate duty? And I'll need to see Melinda when she arrives.”

“Yes, Dr. Kincaid,” came through.

Graduate student Melinda Pearson was one of two “floating” aides and substitute teachers. She had taken Carley's classes for two days back in November, when Carley had an especially fierce migraine. She was highly competent.

But very unneeded this morning. At least in Carley's opinion.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“It's best if I handle this myself.” Dr. Kincaid picked up her pen and began rotating it with fingers tipped in the same pink as her lips. “Did you ever explain to your students what plagiarism
is,
Carley?”

Desperation had entered her tone.

And something else…faintly. Accusation.

At me?
Carley leaned forward again in an attempt to catch her eyes, but they were fastened hypnotically to the pen-turning process.

“They're high school sophomores,” Carley reminded her.

“But did you—”

“
Explicitly
. What English teacher doesn't? And besides, it's spelled out in the handbook they signed.” Disappointment surged through her. “You can't be thinking of dropping this.”

“Of course not. But a negative grade in this class would destroy any chance at a good college.” Finally her eyes met Carley's again. The brittle voice softened. “I realize that second-hour class has been a difficult one for you, Carley. But if we allow vindictiveness to cloud our—”

“You think I'm being
vindictive
?” Carley cut in, unable to believe her ears.

A hand released one end of the pen long enough to rake the stack of papers. “Could you really live with knowing that Erin Baine missed out on Harvard because of one childish lapse in judgment?”

It seemed as if Carley's lungs could not pull in enough air. “And so you propose we look the other way while she
cheats
her way in? So she can become a doctor or lawyer? Or how about a senator?”

Redness slashed Dr. Kincaid cheeks. “Of course not. I propose…I
insist,
we give them another chance. This once.”

Clarity struck Carley like a swift, silent bolt of lightning. “This isn't about Erin, is it?”

“It's about all four of them.”

“You're afraid of losing your job if General Ogden stops his support.”

She flinched when the pen slammed against the desk.

“I'm sorry,” Dr. Kincaid said right away, but in the next breath added, “Take the day off, Carley.”

A foghorn sounded from the west, where white mists shrouded the Golden Gate Bridge's lofty piers. Other sounds met Carley's ears: seagulls' incessant
ky-eows
. Laughter from uniformed elementary students at the antics of the barking sea lions. The chatter of Japanese tourists snapping photographs of each other with Alcatraz over their left shoulders. The rustle of waxed paper as she dug out the remaining chocolate morsels from a bag of Blue Chip cookies.

No San Franciscan in her right mind would seek consolation from a damp bench at the end of Pier 39, but it was one of the few places from childhood Carley could recall being happy. At least for part of one summer day.

Her mother's boyfriend-of-the-month, a construction worker named Maxwell, had driven them from Sacramento. Even at nine, Carley had doubts about most of Maxwell's claims—that no cousin of his had ever scaled the TransAmerica Pyramid in special suction shoes, nor was another cousin Clint Eastwood's bodyguard—but his generosity more than made up for the lies. He trailed behind Carley's mother through one shop after another, paid for Carley to ride the carousel four times in a row, and then treated them to dinner at Neptune's Palace restaurant.

“See Angel Island?” he had said, pointing a Dungeness crab claw toward the Bay on the other side of the glass. “My Uncle Jim dug up a chest full of gold coins when he was stationed there.”

“What did he do with them?” Carley had asked for politeness' sake.

He had looked over his shoulder, in a furtive manner that made Carley halfway believe him, and then leaned closer. “He hid them in his basement and sells a handful now and then to a coin dealer. Always a different dealer, mind you.”

Then Maxwell sat back in his chair and winked. “He's got over a million dollars in the bank now.”

Linda Walker was still pretty at the time, though chain-smoking and drinking were turning her voice as husky as a man's. She rolled her green eyes and asked why Maxwell drove a ten-year-old Tempo with a broken radio and stuck passenger door, if he had a millionaire uncle. Carley knew that was the beginning of the end, even before Maxwell's face clouded.

By Christmas Linda was married to Huey Collins, an accountant at the California State Capitol. It was a promising move up—from a duplex on H Street to a three-bedroom brick rambler in Citrus Heights. In a rare show of maternal caring, Linda pressured Huey into adopting Carley, reasoning that she did not want her daughter playing second fiddle to his own two girls. Later, Carley overheard Linda confide to a girlfriend over the telephone that the adoption was so Huey would have to pay child support, should there be a divorce.

Nonetheless, Carley reveled in the relative normalcy of the situation. She was enrolled in a school that did not post guards on the playground and hallways. Collection agencies ceased telephoning. The family attended church. Linda quit her job at Safeway and even developed an interest in cooking beyond frozen microwave meals. The stepsisters, ages eight and nine, were fun playmates on their third-weekend-per-month visits. Huey was a kindly father. For a while.

And then Linda, bored with domesticity and having to ask for spending money, took a job as a counter clerk at Best Western. She worked Saturdays and Sundays, which suited her even more, for the stepdaughters got on her nerves when they visited. That left Carley and Huey alone at home for three weekends out of every four. He would take her to IHOP after church on Sundays, as if to make up for the torment he was beginning to inflict upon her at home. She began wetting the bed and making poor marks in school. Linda had no idea, for Carley had been doing the laundry since age seven or so, and when had Linda ever kept a parent-teacher conference appointment?

Huey was arrested the following October, after his eldest daughter confided in a teacher. When the social worker and police officer visited the house in Citrus Heights, Carley knew instinctively how she was expected to reply to their questions. In spite of her fervent denials, they brought her to a clinic to be examined by a woman doctor. Huey was sent to prison for five years after his attorney made a deal with prosecutors who wished to spare the girls from having to testify. The run-down duplex Carley and Linda moved to on 23
^rd
Street seemed a refuge.