Spy Mom (65 page)

“You can go like that,” Will says. “You look good in your underwear.”

“I'm not sure the folks at San Francisco Country Day would agree.”

“You're probably right. It's pretty much guaranteed that no one there will have a sense of humor.”

So why are we even considering this for our only child? I mean, I'm well aware of my own irrational reasons but what are Will's? Are solar panels really that compelling?

I settle on a pair of black pants. They have a bleached-out streak on the left leg that I fill in with a Sharpie permanent marker. The color is slightly more brown than black but if I cross my legs in just the right way when I sit down, I might get away with it. As I struggle to button the pants, I feel another wave of the nausea that's been plaguing me lately. Could it be the malaria, contracted during an unfortunate visit to Guatemala, that seems to flare up whenever I have something really important to do? Right after this interview I promise myself I will see the doctor, go and take back Yoder, escape Simon Still, rescue my father, and rid the world of yet another complete lunatic. No big deal if I were actually five people instead of one. And it would be helpful if the other four were Navy SEALs without previous commitments.

To enter San Francisco Country Day, one must pass through a set of concrete pillars etched with various Latin phrases: “
BE BOLD IN YOUR INTELLECT
.” “
DO NOT BACK DOWN IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY
.” “
STUDY HARD
.” “
PAY YOUR TUITION ON TIME
.” “
GIVE GENEROUSLY TO THE ANNUAL FUND
.” Things like that. I smile at the security guard standing beside one of the pillars. He ignores me as if he were a guard outside of Buckingham Palace protecting the Queen of England. He thinks I'm perfectly innocent.

Beyond the gates is a world that's the complete opposite of urban. Green lawns resembling Augusta National, interrupted only by majestic trees or bursting flowerbeds, roll right up to the sturdy brick buildings that practically ooze knowledge. I may have added ten points to my IQ just by proximity alone.

“Where are the toys?” Theo asks, holding tightly to Will's hand, looking skeptical.

“Probably inside,” I say. But he has a point. The school is shrouded in an unnatural stillness. It's the kind of stillness that, in my experience, always predicates complete chaos. A trickle of cold sweat runs down my back. Something about this place is slightly creepy. Even the ivy climbing up the outside walls seems sinister.

Our footsteps echo along the main hall as we make our way toward the admissions office. I'm curious how they're going to go about interviewing a five-year-old when all he wants to talk about is Darth Vader and the wholesale slaughter of clone troopers.

“Welcome, Hamilton family!” trills Frances Claiborne, the admissions director, who wears a proper navy suit with matching pumps. A dainty string of pearls hangs around her thin neck and her gray hair is pulled back so tightly it looks like a poorly executed face-lift. She offers a dead-fish handshake, which makes me immediately suspicious. I don't trust people who can't properly shake a hand because how hard is it really? These are the sorts of people who, when they encounter something truly difficult in life, immediately begin looking for a way to blame it on you.

“We're so thrilled you're interested in our little school,” Ms. Claiborne says without much emotion.

“It's nice to meet you, Frances,” Will says.

“Oh, everyone calls me Mrs. Claiborne,” she corrects.

“Of course, Mrs. Claiborne,” he says. He doesn't punch her in the face. Interesting.

“The way we work this is we send Theo off with one of our evaluators, giving us adults a chance to talk.”

She has yet to look at or acknowledge Theo, who hides behind my legs and pulls at the sleeve of his cotton sweater. The trickle of cold sweat running down my back expands into a river. Will is smiling, nodding, as if this process is right as rain.

“Where exactly will he be going?” I ask, trying to keep the mounting hysteria out of my voice.

“Oh, to one of the lower school rooms, with the evaluator” is what she says. What I hear is “to the underground prison cell, with the interrogator.”

“And this is necessary why exactly?” I ask.

Mrs. Claiborne pulls herself up straighter as if someone just stuck an iron rod up her ass.

“It's the way we do things here, Mrs. Hamilton,” she sniffs.

Will lays a hand on my arm. “It's fine, Lucy.” But it doesn't feel fine to me. It feels all wrong.

“Gretchen, can you take Theo down to room 4C for his evaluation?” The assistant behind the great mahogany desk nods her head. She's a little afraid of Frances Claiborne. I'm guessing everyone is.

Theo gives her a big smile, takes her hand, and heads off to find room 4C, where some man in a Jimmy Carter mask will probably torture him until he confesses I once let him watch an episode of
SpongeBob SquarePants
.

Stop it, Lucy, I tell myself. You're being ridiculous. Sadly, it's not the first time I've had this conversation with myself.

Mrs. Claiborne's office is covered in dark, serious paneling and populated with red upholstered furniture. On the walls, there are paintings of horsemen heading out from their English estates with dogs in tow for a day of jolly fox hunting. Which is great fun, unless of course you're the fox.

She scans our application, making little
tsk tsk
noises to herself. And then she turns to me, her sharp eyes flashing above the half moons of her reading glasses.

“Tell me, Mrs. Hamilton,” she says, “what exactly did you do before Theo was born?”

This is a story I've told a number of times. I try not to vary it for fear it'll come back to haunt me at some inopportune time if I do.

“I was an analyst for the United States Agency for Weapons of Mass Destruction,” I say.

She practically sneers at me. “You worked for the government?” Everyone knows that only people seriously lacking in ambition work
for
the government.

“Yes. I did.” I hate the way Mrs. Frances Claiborne's pearl drop earrings bob up and down as she talks. But if I get right down to it and really examine my emotions, it might be I just hate Mrs. Frances Claiborne.

“She left that job when she moved out here,” Will adds. He's trying to please her and that strikes me as strange.

“And your family?” she continues. “Do they remain in the East? The information about you on the application is rather … thin.”

That's because I don't want to go to school here. I already went to kindergarten and I'm pretty sure it didn't cost $27,000.

“I have no family other than the one that you see,” I say.

“Well, now, how can that be? We all have families.”

“I don't come from money,” I say flatly, “if that's what you want to know.”

My statement ruffles her feathers. Will shoots me a look, telling me in no uncertain terms to keep my mouth shut. Rich people don't talk about money. The assumption is everyone has it and it'll always be there. So while Mrs. Claiborne pretends to be interested in me, what she really wants to know is what she can expect me to cough up during fund-raising. Am I going to build a new wing on the library or am I more the twenty-five-dollar check kind of a gal?

“Well,” she sniffs. “We consider ourselves a big family here, so we like to know as much as we can about applicants before making any decisions. Are you going to fit into the family or not?”

If I leap across the desk and stab her in the heart with one of her faux fountain pens, my husband will probably get upset. And telling her the truth about my family is out of the question because the only way I could really discuss that in any detail would be after I saved my father and he confessed all, and I haven't gotten around to any of that just yet. So I go for plan C.

“Actually, if you want the truth, I came from a test tube,” I say. “Anonymous donors. It's not the sort of thing I like to talk about.”

“Lucy!” Will is horrified. Mrs. Claiborne is horrified. I feel a little more relaxed. Will and Mrs. Claiborne collectively decide to pretend I'm no longer in the room, which is fine with me. It's too hot in here anyway. My husband is talking about his firm. He's telling Mrs. Claiborne exactly what she wants to hear. But the damage is already done. I'm becoming just the kind of loose cannon that used to terrify me, a person who doesn't know when to shut up.

After the interview, we drop Will at his office and head for the playground. Our visit to San Francisco Country Day has made me long for fresh air and the reasonable voices of my mom posse.

In the backseat, Theo flips through a
Star Wars
“EZ Reader” book. He's been strangely silent since our visit to San Francisco Country Day. I know how he feels.

“What did you think of that school?” I ask him. Moments before, when Will asked him the same question, Theo plastered on a fake smile and said it was good. But I didn't believe it for a minute. I can tell when someone is lying.

“The lady didn't want me to get paint on my pants,” he says. “And I wanted to do the painting on the floor to make a bigger rocket but she said no. I like Teacher Wendy.”

I like Teacher Wendy too and kind of wish we could stay in preschool forever. But at some point, making art out of toilet paper rolls would no longer be the developmental challenge it once was. Kindergarten is going to happen to us no matter what.

As we drive, I remember what Avery once told me about the San Francisco public schools lottery system. She swore those families who listed a foreign language as the primary language spoken in their home often got their first choice of schools in the lottery although she had no explanation for why that would be.

“So maybe we should practice Spanish at home now?” I mutter in Spanish to myself. “Maybe then we'll get a decent lottery number. Or maybe I can figure out a way to bribe the people who run the lottery? Free solar panels?”

The Spanish sounds as it always did, fast off the tongue, no rust. I'm suddenly depressed by all our schooling options. And home schooling is out because the only subject I'm any good at is foreign affairs and my approach might not be appropriate for a kindergartener.

“I don't know, Mom,” Theo says. “Then Daddy won't understand us and that would probably drive him crazy.” I spin in my seat, practically crashing us into a parked car. My son just answered me in perfect Spanish.

“Theo, are you doing Spanish in school?” I ask. Please let the answer be yes.

“No,” he says, still in Spanish. “I listen down in the Mission and to the ladies at the playground sometimes. I like the way it sounds.”

Oh, my.

As we pull into the parking lot of the playground, I pepper Theo with questions in Spanish. What color is the sky? How old are you? What's your name? He answers each in a grammatically perfect complete sentence. It feels as if someone has sucked all the air out of the car. Will is a normal guy, maybe a little evangelical when it comes to the environment but still, overall, nicely American. I was counting on his normalness to counteract my weirdness in our child. Apparently, that theory is full of holes.

Dancing along beside me, Theo sings his ABCs, counts to fifty, and starts reciting
Green Eggs and Ham
, all in Spanish. I tell him to be quiet but he's clearly enjoying my discomfort at this unexpected turn of events. Assembled on the benches is the mommy posse that helped me survive the first two years of Theo's life more or less intact. I'm overcome with relief at seeing them here, same as always.

Sam and Avery occupy one bench, sipping coffee and talking, of course, about kindergarten. Next to them sits Belinda, holding four-month-old Cooper, and Claire.

They stop mid-conversation and stare at me. I wonder if I have snot in my hair or food on my face.

“Well?” says Avery.

“Well what?” I ask.

“The interview,” she demands. “How was it? Did you like it? Did they like you? Did Theo do okay?”

“Fine,” I say. “And no, definitely not, and yes to the other questions.”

“It was awful,” Avery rightly concludes.

“Worse than that,” I say. There is a collective sigh from the group as they see another option slip away from them. Now, if they decide to send their sons and daughters and grandsons to San Francisco Country Day, they will inevitably be plagued by my negative assessment of the school. They'll forever wonder if I saw something they missed.

“Will liked it,” I offer.

“I'm telling you,” Avery says, “I'm rethinking the whole thing. I need to send Sophie to public school. I don't know why I was even considering the privates. That environment is all wrong.”

“You need a vacation, that's what you need,” says Sam. “Or a good case of amnesia.”

Claire laughs. “Or you need to be poor like us,” she says. “That makes the decision easy.”

I look at Claire with shock. Her definition of poor is an annual income of marginally less than seven figures. Claire shrugs. “It's all relative,” she says in her own defense.

“That's it,” Avery says. “I can't take it anymore. We're moving out of the city.”

A dramatic hush descends upon us. Avery just spoke the words that shall not be spoken: “move to the suburbs.”

Mothers have their own language and this group is no different. It took me a little while to figure it out but once I did, I was in. All you need to do is ask how old another person's child is and how potty training went and bingo, you've got yourself at least a full hour of conversation while you tirelessly push your kid on the swings. When I explained this to Will, he accused me of pimping out our child to make friends. I wanted to argue but the idea was basically true, even if I took issue with his choice of words.