Accelerated (7 page)

Noah had several advanced degrees in education and was probably just a few years younger than Sean, but he exuded that just-out-of-college slack—threadbare jeans that hung off his hips, limp hair smoothed behind his ears. He threw “dude” around for good measure. Unlike the school, Noah had not been
concerned
when Toby was stumbling over his reading last year. “Kids learn this stuff at different speeds,” he’d told Sean. “We can crank it up for Bradley’s sake, but don’t let them get to you. It’s all good.” As a rule, Sean hated the phrase
it’s all good
, but he focused on the fact that it meant Toby was fine.

Now, sitting with Toby on the downtown 6 train, Sean knew he was supposed to bring up the
incident
. Part of him wanted to just let it go. But Shineman had Toby in the crosshairs.

“So I heard about what happened in Social Studies,” he said.

Toby took a heavy breath.

“Spill it.”

“It was just a joke,” Toby said. “Kayla pushed a bouncy ball out from under me at roof-play and everyone laughed. So I did it back to her in the classroom.”

Tit for tat. Reasonable. “You can’t do that kind of stuff, Tobe.”

“I didn’t mean for her to get cut,” he said. You could tell he felt bad about it. “I took her down to the nurse. I think she’s going to be okay.”

Sean smiled even though he knew he should use the Serious Dad face he’d practiced for moments like this. He tried frowning a little, hoping that would do the trick.

“We’ve had this talk, Tobe. You can’t be silly in school.”

“It’s not fair,” Toby was whining now. “Kayla never gets in trouble. She pushes in line and the teacher yells at
me
. She makes funny faces in music and I get in trouble for laughing.”

Maybe it was time for the Life’s Not Fair speech? “Do me a favor,” he said. “For the next few weeks—until Christmas vacation—try extra hard to be good. That means no pranks, no giggling, no matter who’s making funny faces, and doing whatever the teacher tells you to do.”

“But dad—”

“Okay?”

An extra-wide Hasid with perfect ringlets that grazed his shoulders sat in the two seats next to Toby. When Toby had been three, he’d seen a man wearing the same black orthodox-issue hat. “Look dad,” he’d exclaimed, happily—and loudly, “a real live cowboy.” The memory made Sean smile, in spite of his efforts to keep his Serious Dad face intact.

“Okay.” Toby sighed, now sullen and tween-like. He avoided Sean’s gaze and started shading in a drawing of a superhero he’d started earlier. It was good. The muscles rippled under the suit and he was fighting some creepy-looking wolf-dogs.

“I hate going to Noah.”

“No you don’t. You like it,” Sean responded, in a brilliant moment of parenting.

“I can read already. Can’t we skip it? Just today?”

He shook his head. “Negativo.” He couldn’t believe now that he was a father he said things like
negativo
.

“Only stupid kids go to tutoring.”

“Who said that?”

Toby shrugged. Not telling. But he was sure it was Isaac. Isaac had actually started out okay. He and Toby were buddies that first year, but by the time he was seven, Isaac was rolling his eyes and calling kids morons when they gave the wrong answer in class. Interesting, Sean thought, that if a sweet, intelligent Bradley third grader was at third-grade reading level it was a major disaster. But if a malicious, condescending Bradley third grader happened to have a genius IQ the school wrote off the bratty behavior as a personality quirk. In any other school in any other city, this kid would be pummeled on a daily basis. At Bradley,
he’s
the bully.

“Hey. You’re incredibly smart,” he said. “You have a creative mind and you can think for yourself.” As soon as he said it, it sounded like a consolation prize. “Besides, everyone can use help with something. I’d like to see Isaac try to draw a superhero like that.”

Toby shrugged. Wouldn’t look up. “When’s Calvin coming back?”

“I don’t know, Tobe,” he said. “Soon, I hope.” Later in life, on the couch, Sean was pretty sure some therapist would refer to this period as The Year Everyone Disappeared. There was nothing he could do about it. Except stick around.

He rested a hand on Toby’s shoulder as they emerged from the subway into the East Village. After the buttoned-up, low-density Upper East Side, it was like landing on another planet. It was also the reason Sean didn’t mind the schlepp down here: to show Toby that they weren’t the only ones who lived in New York without a chauffeur-driven SUV and a fully-staffed townhouse. Down here, New York lifers and art students with pink hair and pierced tongues went about their business as if nothing—or at least nothing important—existed above Fourteenth Street. A six-foot transvestite in full makeup, mini dress, and what looked like size-thirteen heels, strutted back and forth in front of Lucky Chang’s. Toby’s eyes widened as they passed. He hadn’t asked yet, but it was only a matter of time. Sean really should have a good explanation ready to go.

Noah greeted them in front of the door of his fourth-floor walk-up with a basketball under his arm. “Toby, dude, what up?”

Toby gave him a half smile and a high five as he entered what Noah called the “Arena.”

“Catch,” Noah said, and sent him a low bounce pass. Toby caught it, dribbled on the scuffed wood floor, and took a shot on the regulation-size hoop. Sometimes he and Noah shot baskets between reading drills. Three bar stools at the dinette counter constituted the entirety of Noah’s home furnishings. Sometimes Noah would make Toby spell vocabulary words as he took free throws. Sometimes he’d have Toby read a story, then ask him comprehension questions while he dribbled.

“I’ve got some good stuff planned for today,” Noah told Toby. “You’re gonna like it.”

This was Sean’s cue to give a quick wave and disappear for an hour while Noah worked his magic. “Do you have a minute?” he asked instead.

They stepped into the fluorescent light of the stairwell and he could hear Toby dribbling inside. The downstairs neighbors had to be deaf not to hear, too.

“You said Toby’s doing well, right?” He tried to sound nonchalant. Or at least not like the insane parents Noah was probably used to dealing with.

“He’s doing great.”

Sean untensed his shoulders. Toby was doing great.

“His reading comprehension is way up,” Noah said. “It’s all coming together for him. I’m stoked.”

If Noah was stoked, how bad could it be? “The school is on him again. They say he’s falling behind.”

“Those fuckers,” Noah said. He was biting the inside of his lip, staring at a smashed cockroach on the wall. “Toby is a smart kid. He’s a
very
smart kid. I know he’s not into reading on his own yet. That’s the key. But you can’t force that. He’s got to want it. Keep reading to him. Make it fun. The more of a chore it becomes the longer it will take.” He ran his fingers through his hair.

It all sounded so reasonable when Noah said it. “Those Bradley kids are reading Proust,” Sean said. “Toby can’t sit still for Cam Jansen.”

“Those perfect Bradley boys—and yeah, I know there are a lot of them—are the exception, not the rule. Back in caveman times they wouldn’t have survived five minutes. They’d have been Sabertooth tiger dinner. No joke.”

He liked the image of Isaac scratching away at the sand with his spear, discovering calculus or the cure for cancer, not noticing a puma as it leapt on him and ripped out his little jugular.

“Boys need to move around. We’re hunters, man. It’s genetic. We’re wired with quick reflexes for hunting, strength for hauling. Testosterone—we all know what that’s for. None of those things make what these schools call a
good student.”

“Tell that to Bev Shineman.”

“She knows. They all do. Boys and girls learn differently,” Noah said. “It’s a scientific fact. But the schools don’t want to deal with that. They’re treating boys like defective girls. It sucks. It truly sucks.”

The whole thing sounded hopeless. “Maybe I should just cut my losses and take him out of Bradley.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Noah frowned, disapprovingly. “He’s at the best school in the city.”

S
EAN KICKED AROUND THE NEIGHBORHOOD
. R
EGULARS WERE
already nursing beers in a dim bar with sawdust on the floor. A hole-in-the-wall boutique was selling underwear made out of recycled rubber, and a pricey new comfort food restaurant advertised mac and cheese for eighteen bucks a plate.

Why was Sean making both their lives miserable? Staying at Bradley meant asking for more abuse from Bev Shineman and subjecting Toby to intellectual bullies like Isaac. But Noah had a point. What were his options, really? Was he really going to move to the suburbs? Every day he woke up and thanked God he didn’t have to live in the suburbs.

Not that he could afford to move, even if he wanted to. At nine hundred dollars a month, his apartment was the best deal in the city, and for a pre-war doorman building, it was obscene. A two-bedroom that
wasn’t
rent-stabilized went for two or three thousand dollars. And even if he decided to sell his soul and move to the suburbs, there was no way he could afford a down payment. He was staying put.

He walked a few more blocks and found himself in front of P.S. 15. Someone had scrawled
suk my dick
on the building’s puke-colored cinderblocks. Mesh wire encased every window. He tried to decide whether it was to keep out the residents of the sketchy neighborhood or to lock the kids in. So it was ugly. Institutional. Kids all over the country went to crappy schools just like this.

And public schools in New York weren’t
all
crappy. There were magnet schools and gifted and talented programs. Lots of lower schools were fine. Better than fine. His niece, Kat, seemed to be doing great at P.S. 163. The problem was that there were something like five decent
middle
schools in the entire borough and a zillion kids trying to get into them. Not all private school parents were rich. He knew plenty who were borrowing from their own parents and taking out second mortgages on their apartments. They knew the hundred and eighty thousand dollars it cost for K through five was worth every penny if it meant their kid would be guaranteed a place in private middle school when it came time.

It was the reason he’d finally agreed to let his in-laws pay for Bradley. Ellie had made the lethal argument: “Don’t you want Toby to have the best education money can buy?” What could he say to that? Of course he did, even if it meant he would be endlessly humiliated every time he opened a tuition bill that he couldn’t pay.

Now Toby had the best education at the best school in the city, maybe even the country, and apparently they didn’t know how to teach boys. It was hard to imagine how that could really be true.

What killed Sean was that he knew it was just a matter of time before school clicked for Toby. It had been the same way for him. None of it had made sense in second or third-grade. If he pulled Toby out now, it was like giving up on him before it all fell into place. But if he kept Toby at Bradley and there was no magic moment where it all came together, there was a decent chance Toby would fall even further behind—or worse, fail out. And that could shatter his confidence forever. Basically, he was screwed if he did and screwed if he didn’t.

S
EAN HADN
’
T FULLY OPENED THE DOOR TO HIS APARTMENT WHEN
his sister’s voice barreled down the hallway. “Where’ve you two been?” Nicole’s tone was always a little scary. At least he was used to it.

He gave Toby a pat on the back. “Homework. Go.” Toby trudged to his room.

Nicole’s pumps lay where she’d kicked them off. She was reclining on the couch reading
The New York Law Journal
.

“You, too,” he said to his sister. “Go, you’ll be late.” Thursdays were insane. As soon as he got Toby home from tutoring, Nicole went back to work and left Kat with them.

“I’m off tonight,” she said. “They had to wait until the last minute to tell me, those assholes.”

Over the years, Nicole’s thighs had thickened and gray strands had crowded out the brown in her short haircut. She’d always been a tomboy, and now, as an adult, she’d embraced a butch look that worked for her. Her official orientation was heterosexual, but non-sexual seemed more fitting.

“And my class is canceled next week,” he said. “Don’t forget.” The gig at the Art Students League paid him just enough to cover one-sixth of a shared painting studio downtown. Without Ellie around to stay with Toby, he hardly used it anymore. But he refused to give it up.

“Mommy!” Kat was sobbing as she ran out of Toby’s bedroom. Her bony little legs looked like they might crumple from the exertion. Kat embodied everything her mother lacked in girliness. She played with dolls, wore pink daily, and wanted to be a ballerina when she grew up. Nicole would shrug her shoulders. “She must get it from her father.”

Nicole got knocked up during a one-night stand around the same time Ellie got pregnant. He and Ellie used to call it the immaculate conception because neither of them could imagine Nicole having sex or anything approaching a relationship. She was far more comfortable in a prosecutorial role.

“Kiddo, what is it?” Nicole reached out and pulled in her daughter. “Calm down. What’s wrong?” Kat tried to catch her breath. Her face was a streaky mess. “He called me … he called me a COOL.”

“Well that doesn’t sound so bad.” Nicole smoothed back a strand of her hair.

“Not cool,” Kat said. “
A
COOL.”

Nicole and Sean eyed each other. What were they missing?

Toby skulked guiltily out of his room.

“Toby says a C-C-COOL,” Kat stuttered, “is a Constipated, Overweight, Out-of-style Loser.” She burst into tears.

He had to admit the insults had gotten more creative since he’d been in school. “Toby,” he said. “Over here. Now.”

Toby let out a defeated sigh. “What?”

Sean raised his eyebrows. No need for more.

“Sorry Kat,” Toby said. “You’re not a COOL.”