Accelerated (6 page)

Today Sean caught the express train and was a full seven minutes early as he rounded the corner toward The Bradley School.

He had never understood the whole walking on air thing, but today he knew exactly what it was all about. He reached for the front door handle. Maybe he’d get his own show, invite Bradley parents, even Cheryl. Sure, he’d still have to work at
Buzz—
for a while—but now it really could be
on the side
. If he had his own show.

The chatter emanating from the mothers and nannies as soon as he got inside didn’t even faze him today. The room was already human gridlock, filled with the deafening white noise of women gossiping, bragging, laughing. He liked pickup. He liked watching Toby’s face light up when he found Sean in the crowd. Soon Toby would be a teenager and that unselfconscious smile would be buried under acne and angst.

“Sean!” a voice chirped at him. Isaac’s mother.

What the hell was her name? Missy? Mousy? She’d been Class Mother for the last three years running and took the job way too seriously. He disliked her more than he thought was normal, but it was what it was.

“You’re on my list,” she said. Everything about her was precise—her ski jump nose, her lipstick, the demure blond ponytail fastened with a tortoise shell clip. Her teeth were inhumanly white. “I haven’t received your thirty dollars for the holiday gifts.”

Because he’d been dodging her for weeks. “I totally forgot.” He opened his wallet and thumbed through its contents. He handed her a ten, two fives, and four ones. “I owe you six,” he said. She accepted it as if it were pocket change and not his lunch money for the rest of the week. Come to think of it, he probably needed it more than the teachers.

He knew she was friendly with Cheryl. Could she have heard about the bathroom sex? He tried to read her but couldn’t see much behind the Stepford stare.

She touched his arm with a manicured hand that sparkled with a monster diamond. “No word from Ellie?”

Hearing her say Ellie’s name out loud gave him an odd muscle spasm in his intestine. Kind of like gas. He shrugged. The last thing he was going to do was supply her with content for the class website.

“I’m so upset about what she’s done to you and Toby.” She shook her head disapprovingly. “She was such a hands-on mom. I don’t understand it.”

“It’s pretty simple,” he said. “She lost her shit.” She could print it if she wanted. Who cared anymore?

But she didn’t blink. “It’s extremely difficult for successful women to give up lucrative careers to be stay-at-home moms. When their kids get to this age, they feel downsized.” Her expression turned optimistic. “I suggested the Parents’ Association hire a guest speaker to do a breakfast chat on the topic.”

If it were legal to carry a handgun, he would brandish his now and happily pull the trigger. But then he’d get life without parole, and then where would Toby be? Laws were good.

Billy Horn’s very blond, very well-proportioned second wife, Deanna, sidled over to him. “Haayyyyy!” she squealed, and punched Sean’s shoulder playfully. She was wearing one of her trademark low-cut sweaters that highlighted her best attributes. “How
are
you? Fun party the other night, huh?”

What did she mean by that? Did she know something? “It was pretty good, yeah.”

Isaac’s mother saw another victim across the room and pounced, leaving him alone with the hottest—and most mind-numbingly boring—woman in the room. Making conversation with Deanna proved difficult on a good day, but he had no choice. “So,” he tried. “How’s it going?”

“Really super,” she said. “I just came from my Zumba class. Have you ever tried it?”

“Uh, no.” At the chorus concert earlier in the year, he’d lost an hour of his life listening to her drone on about the bran muffin she ate for breakfast, the new flip tops on toothpaste that “made a big mess on the sink,” and the pros and cons of DVR.

“I’ve already lost five pounds.” She patted her hips. Her boobs jiggled in an intriguing way. “Those Latin rhythms really get you going.” He scanned the crowd for a way out, but various mom gangs surrounded him, blocking every escape. To the right, the Power Brigade gesticulated madly. They were the Ivy Leaguers who’d quit their law and finance jobs to do the mommy thing but still led their lives with the aggressiveness they’d cultivated over decades of training. They scared the shit out of him. So did the Grannies, the clique-ish post-career mommies whose adopted Chinese, Vietnamese, and Romanian children made up a good percentage of the school’s
diversity
. The Caribbean nannies clumped together looking disdainful and bored. He’d tried to speak to them a few times, but they always shut up when he got too close. And, near the bust of some hairbrush heiress who founded The Bradley School, were the Chanel-wearing stay-at-home moms in full makeup, who used lunch as a verb and devoted their waking hours to the gods of high-end retail, comparing thousand-dollar handbags while they waited.

Then he spotted Cheryl. She was eyeing him as if he were a piece of beef jerky. He’d always wanted the power of invisibility when he was a kid. How could he have known it would prove even more useful as an adult? His stomach clenched. He forced an awkward smile. Maybe if he waved it would make the whole situation less horrible. He waved.

Cheryl flashed him a half smile. She was pretending to decide whether or not to rescue him from Deanna’s grasp. Maybe Deanna wasn’t so bad after all. For one thing, he’d never had drunken bathroom sex with her at a parent social. He turned back to Deanna. He’d try really hard to make conversation. His mind went blank. “Cold out there, huh?” It was lame, but it was something.

“Oh yeah,” Deanna said. “Brrr.” She crossed her arms, which squeezed her breasts together. “My dad moved to North Carolina. I like that weather. You know, coat weather, but not gloves and hat weather. Hats just do not work on me. No one from Florida can wear hats. We’re just not designed for them.” She took a breath. “The other night at the party, my hair was just a smooshed mess because of that darn hat. I felt like I spent the whole night trying to poof it up.”

He was glazing over when he realized Cheryl had made her way through the crowd and was heading toward them like a heat-seeking missile. A moment later, she thrust her body against his, pretending to bump him accidentally. “God, what a klutz I am!” she said. Her hand brushed his ass and lingered.

His reaction had to be just right. It would set the tone. “Not a problem,” he said, as casually as he could. He put some distance between his ass and her hand. He gestured to Deanna. “You two know each other, right?”

“We sure do!” Deanna said perkily. “We did checkout at the book fair together. All that math!”

“Nice to see you,” Cheryl said. Her voice was different when she spoke to women. Less throaty.

“We were just talking about the party,” he said, hoping this was the way to go.

“It was super.” Deanna nodded vigorously.

“I had a
very
nice time,” Cheryl said. She locked eyes with Sean. “It was such an intimate gathering.” Cheryl cocked her head, coquettishly. “And I’m sure the next party will be even better.”

The next party. If she was talking about a
next
time, then he must’ve done all right. He stood a little straighter.

Deanna waved vigorously to someone behind him. A moment later, Walt Renard was standing next to her. “And how is everyone on this bitterly cold day?” Walt was rubbing his hands to warm them.

“Fantastic,” Deanna said with a wink. “As always.”

“What an excellent answer.”

“I try.” She flashed him a flirtatious smile.

“You’ll all be at the auction, right?” Walt looked expectantly at Sean.

“The auction,” Sean repeated. He’d gone to the auction once. Ellie had won a family portrait session with Annie Leibovitz for eight hundred dollars, which they’d never used. A weekend on a private island in Greece had gone for ninety grand. “Depends on whether I can get a sitter.”

“I’m the emcee this year,” Walt said. “Don’t know if that makes it more or less appealing.”

“Oh I’ll be there.” Cheryl made it sound like a dare, somehow. “I’m on the committee. I have no choice.”

Walt checked his watch, which looked expensive. “Oh boy,” he said. “Late again. Gotta go!” He gave a bow and took off into the crowd.

“I just love him,” Deanna said. “What a nice guy.”

“And loaded,” Cheryl added. “He’s given more money to the school in the last five years than any other donor. And that’s a lot of money.”

“Didn’t his son graduate last year?” Deanna asked.

Cheryl nodded. “I’m pretty sure he’s going to an Ivy League.”

“But …” Sean couldn’t get his mind around this new bit of information. “If his son’s graduated, why’s he always around?”

Deanna made an expression that indicated she was thinking. He hadn’t seen it before. “He’s Chairman of the Board, right?”

“I don’t think he’s the Chairman,” Cheryl said. “But I might be wrong. He also does some pro bono work for the school. I know he’s got his own environmental law practice.”

Sean watched the kids shaking hands with their teachers. “Shall we?” Cheryl said, leading the way.

He retrieved Toby and was almost out the door when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Sean,” Bev Shineman said. Her down coat was unzipped, revealing a green cardigan that strained at the buttons. “Do you have a minute?”

“Is there news? About Calvin?”

“Can we talk in my office?” She smiled. “I’m sure Toby won’t mind waiting in the library.”

Shineman’s office was tiny and cluttered. There wasn’t a clear surface anywhere. “So how’s Calvin? What’s going on?”

“He’s hanging in there.”

He waited, expecting more. “Is he conscious?” Pulling teeth would have been easier than getting information from her.

Shineman took a deep breath and let it out ominously. “I should respect the privacy of the family.”

He wanted to shake her. “Come on, I was there. Tell me what’s going on.”

She considered this a moment. “It’s touch and go right now. He went into cardiac arrest last night, but they got him going again.”

Touch and go
. For the first time since it happened, he realized Calvin could die. Really die. “What happened? Why? How?”

She hesitated, as if she wasn’t sure whether to confide in him. “It turns out Calvin had developed a severe nut allergy.”

“Calvin didn’t have any allergies,” Sean said.

“He’d never had a reaction until … well, until the other day.” She shook her head again. “Kids grow out of allergies all the time. And sometimes they grow into them. Someone must have brought in a snack made with peanut oil that set it off. It’s just unfathomable that this could have happened.”

“If the paramedics had known …” His head was spinning. “About the allergies …”

“It might have made a difference in the way they treated him,” she said. “I know … It makes you feel so helpless.”

Calvin might die because he developed an allergy no one knew about. Talk about life not being fair. This was criminal. How could Calvin die? And how was he going to tell Toby if that happened?

Shineman sighed loudly in an attempt to leave the awful topic behind. “But that’s not why I wanted to talk to you.” There was a shift in her tone. “I wanted to talk to you about an incident in the classroom today.”

“With Toby?”
Incident
could mean anything from a playground tussle to projectile vomiting. Once in preschool it had meant that another child bit Toby on the nose and had drawn blood. “Is he okay? What happened?”

“He’s fine. But another student was sent to Nurse Astrid with quite a scratch.”

“Toby scratched someone?” Toby liked to play around, but he was not a scratcher. Never had been.

“He didn’t scratch the child. He pulled a chair out from under her during social studies.”

“Who was it?”

“She scraped her back on the corner of the chair when she fell,” Shineman said. They never identified the victim. “I wouldn’t ordinarily talk to a parent over one isolated event, but it seems that Toby’s behavior is becoming an issue.”

“His
behavior
?”

“He’s got to stop horsing around.” She paused. “What do you think would drive him to do a thing like that?”

“Come on,” he said. “Seriously? Why would an eight-year-old boy pull a chair out from under an eight-year-old girl? You don’t need a degree to figure it out.”

Shineman didn’t see the irony and expressed that with an unamused stare.

“You’ve got a child unconscious in the hospital—a child who might die.” He hadn’t meant to yell. He tried to reel it in. “And you’re giving me grief about a scratch? A stupid prank?”

“Could you please keep your voice down?” Shineman scolded in a strict whisper. “I know Toby didn’t
mean
to hurt anybody.”

She didn’t know anything about his son.

“But this kind of behavior problem is a distraction to the rest of the class.”

“Toby does not have a
behavior problem.”
He didn’t care if everyone in the building heard.

Shineman sat quietly with her hands folded in her lap. Was she waiting for him to calm down? Because that was only infuriating him more. “You’re not helping him, you know.”

“Everything I do is to help him.”

“I’ve seen a lot of kids, Sean. Toby is easily distracted. It’s going to be hard for him to keep up with the other children academically. Which is going to prove to be a major issue for him if we don’t do something to help him now.”

He pushed himself up from the chair. “I’ve got to get Toby to tutoring,” he said, before she could launch into her medication rant again. She’d hit him with it three weeks ago and then again via Ellie, and he had no desire to go for a third round. “Wouldn’t want to be late for that.”

G
ETTING DOWNTOWN FOR TUTORING WASN
’
T SO BAD
. E
VEN THOUGH
the East Village was a different world, the trip only consisted of a handful of stops on the Lexington line. Getting back to the Upper West Side during rush hour was less fun. More than once, he’d considered finding a more geographically desirable tutor, but the uptown tutors charged double Noah’s fees. A hundred bucks an hour was pricey enough, plus Toby had liked Noah instantly, and Sean couldn’t put a price on that.