Death of a PTA Goddess (2 page)

“Poor Stephanie. Couldn’t happen to a nicer woman.” Lauren’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

“True, but still.” I sighed. Karen waved and grinned as she drove past me, suddenly looking utterly at ease behind the wheel. “The thing is, had our positions been reversed just now, it never would have occurred to me to offer to help teach her child to drive. Does Patty have to be so much better a mother than I am? I mean, that’s the one that really rankles, you know?”

Lauren averted her eyes and looked thoughtful, then finally said, “Remember that famous poem that starts: ‘Go placidly . . . ,’ which someone put background music to, and it became a pop-hit when we were kids?”

“Yeah. I remember some of it . . . ‘Go placidly amongst the . . . turnips and collard greens . . .’ ”

“ ‘Noise and haste,’ ” Lauren corrected.

“Oh, right. That’s much better. But I was close.”

“It mentions the wisdom of not comparing yourself with others.”

“Right. I remember that part. Something about how there’s always going to be people who are ‘lesser and greater than you.’ I should go reread it. Now that you reminded me the poem wasn’t about strolling through a vegetable garden.”

“All I’m saying is, regardless of how . . . astonishing Patty might be, you’re a terrific mom.”

“Oh, hey thanks. Fortunately, my kids tell me that all the time, so my self-esteem never sags.”

Lauren chuckled a little. “Same here.”

“And they say parenting teenagers is
hard.
”

“But not for us.” She held up her palm, and I gave her a high five.

We sat back in our seats and stared through the windshield. My car, driven by Karen, had long since disappeared beyond this closest of school buildings on the large Carlton Central School campus. It hit me then just how many students this place held and how desperately I hoped that my two could come through without a single tragic event, and how unrealistic that hope was. In Lauren’s and my graduating class—roughly the same size as Rachel’s and Karen’s—three of our friends had died in two separate accidents during our senior year.

Swallowing a lump in my throat at the memory, I told Lauren, “I’m not going to make it another four-plus years, till Nathan graduates from Carlton. When one of our kids made a bad choice, it used to just be a learning experience. Now, suddenly, bad choices are life-threatening . . . there’s AIDS, riding around in cars with inexperienced drivers, alcohol and drugs. I want Karen and Nathan to socialize. I just wish they’d wait till they’re in college, so I can hold on to the inane notion that what I don’t know about can’t hurt me.”

“I know what you mean,” Lauren replied. “If only blissful ignorance were an option.”

“Here they come again. They’re slowing down.” Karen managed to bring the car to a smooth stop. Patty, all smiles, emerged from my car just as Lauren and I emerged from hers.

She said quietly, “Molly, I hope I wasn’t stepping on your toes just now. It’s just easier to teach driving to someone other than your own child, and you were looking pretty exasperated.”

Trust Perfect Patty to read my mind. Now I felt bad for having whined about my squashed toes. “Any help you or anyone else can give my daughter to teach her to be a good, safe driver is always appreciated.”

“Thanks. Tell you what, two years from now when both of our younger children are going through this, let’s trade services. You can teach Kelly how to drive, and I’ll teach Nathan.”

I intended to reply: It’s a deal, but was dumbstruck at the reminder that, two short years from now, I’d be going through this yet again with a second child.

Karen rolled down the window and called, “Hey, Mom? I’ve got stuff to do. So can we leave soon?”

“Okay. Just a minute.” I returned my attention to Patty. “Thanks again, Patty.”

“Anytime.” She called out to Karen and Rachel, “I agree with you both about Adam and Rick. You’re making wise decisions.”

I gave a quick glance at Lauren, who gave me a shrug and shook her head. The boys’ names meant nothing to her, either. “Adam and Rick?” I repeated.

“Never mind, Mom. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Actually,” Patty immediately interjected, “your mom is one of the most understanding people I’ve ever met. So is
your
mom, Rachel. And don’t hesitate to call me if you need any help with your trigonometry, Karen.” She returned her attention to me. “I minored in mathematics,” Patty explained, rolling her eyes teasingly.

We watched and waved as Patty got into her own car and drove over to the entrance of the high school. Making no move to get into our car yet, Lauren and I exchanged glances. After checking to make sure the girls had shut the windows again, I said quietly, “From the snippets of Karen’s phone conversations I’ve overheard, Adam and Rick might be the ones code-named ‘He Who Must Not Be Named’ and ‘Too Cute.’ ”

“Must be. I wonder which one is which.” Lauren put her hands on her hips and said under her breath, “Maybe we should ask Patty.”

“Knowing Patty and her strong sense of ethics, she might consider that a breach of confidence. Have you ever heard her say anything negative about her ex-husband or his new wife?”

“No. Have you?” Lauren asked.

“Nope. She moved here because she felt her kids needed to live near both parents. Even though
he
was transferred here after their divorce, and
she
had custody. And he’d dumped
her
for a twenty-year-old ski bunny. If Jim ever did something like that to me, there’s no way I’d be able to relocate to his new town and never bad-mouth him.”

“Me, neither. Not even close.”

We stood there in silence.

“Okay, Lauren, I’m just going to say this, and then, I swear, I’ll go placidly strolling through a vegetable garden and mull over how petty I am to be so envious. The woman’s too good to be true. Nobody can be
that
terrific. She’s everything I wish I could be. And the worst part is, she’s so darned likable, she’s impossible to hate.”

“My thoughts exactly, Molly. And you know what? I hate that about her. Sometimes I wish her ex-husband would get transferred again, and they’d move to a town far away.”

The girls rolled down the front and rear windows and cried in unison, “Mo-o-om!”

“Duty calls.”

I made Karen switch into the backseat so that Lauren could sit up front with me. Just as they fastened their seat belts, a BMW came zooming into the lot. I caught sight of the “Steffi” vanity plates and tried to hurry up and get into my seat, with the hopes of ducking out of view.

Too late. Stephanie had spotted me. She hit the brakes, then turned the wheel to race over to me, pulling her car to a screeching stop with her window just two feet from mine. She glared at me and gestured impatiently for me to roll down my window.

“Morning, Steph—”

“Have you seen Patty Birch, by any chance?”

“—anie.” Gesturing at the high school building behind me, I said, “Yes, she just went into the—”

“I’m going to kill that woman!” Stephanie snarled.

She drove off before I could reply.

Chapter 2

My Kingdom for a Porsche

During our drive home, Lauren and I discussed Stephanie’s outburst and concluded that she must be angry with Patty over the brewing PTA crisis that Susan Embrick had called me about last night. That subject matter had now taken on a whole new level of seriousness for me. It was too early on a Saturday morning for me to return Susan’s call, however.

Once home from dropping Lauren and Rachel off at their house, which was one cul-de-sac down from mine and next to my parents’ home, my thoughts eventually returned to Karen and her driving. I exorcised my worries in my usual fashion—by drawing cartoons. My cartooning was ostensibly for work, but it also relaxed me. So even if my one-person company went belly-up—and it had been doing the back float for quite some time now—I would continue cartooning for my own sake. My business, Friendly Faxes, required me to create humorous faxable greetings, plus I freelanced to major greeting card companies.

Sketches of mother-daughter tugs-of-war with car keys and steering wheels somehow led me to draw a king, looking baffled as he stares at a man in ragged clothes emerging from a sports car. The ragged man says to the king, “Oops. My mistake. Could have sworn you said ‘my kingdom for a
Porsche
.’ By the way, the salesman says the leather seats and undercoating cost extra, so he wants you to throw in France, as well.”

The phone rang. Just as Karen raced past Jim—who was still poring over the sports section at the kitchen table—I said, “Sounds like Stephanie’s ring. It’s got that hint of haughtiness.”

Karen stopped short. “I don’t want to answer if it’s going to be Stephanie.”

Neither did I. Especially because I knew that she would be calling to rake
me
over the coals regarding whatever Patty had done to anger her so badly. “We’ll let the machine get it.”

We waited, and after our pleasant, musical recording of Karen’s and Nathan’s voices, Stephanie said, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Molly, pick up. I know you’re home. I’m on my cell phone in the car, just a mile or two from your place. You can either talk to me now, or I’ll head over there now and camp out on your doorstep until you—”

I picked up the phone and immediately asked, “Why are you angry with Patty Birch?”

“That’s why I’m calling, my dear.”

I rolled my eyes. I was not Stephanie’s “dear,” nor was she mine.

“Thanks to Patty, our privacy has been egregiously violated,” she said.

“Huh? Whose privacy are you referring to?”

“That of the entire Carlton PTA.”

“But how can—”

“We’ve scheduled an emergency PTA board meeting at Patty’s house to discuss that very topic this evening.”

“A ‘board’ meeting? Is that spelled b-o-a-r-d, or are we talking about a meeting for particularly dull and disenchanted PTA’ers?”

No answer, save for a noise that sounded like Stephanie clicking her tongue at me. Maybe it was just static.

“Am I even on the board?”

“Oh, Molly, don’t be obtuse. The board consists of everyone who holds an important position or has headed a committee this year. You are the vice president. Draw your own conclusions.”

“Okay. That lets me off the hook, then. I don’t have an
important
position. You said when I became VP that that was just a figurehead who had no actual—”

“Just be there, Molly. Regardless of how important your post may or may not be,
this
is. It starts at seven.” She hung up.

“Trouble in PTA land?” Jim asked as I let out a growl that made our cocker spaniel rush over to look up at me expectantly, her stubby tail wagging.

“Yes.” I knelt and stroked the soft, red fur on Betty Cocker’s back. She immediately rolled over for a tummy rub. “Apparently there’s a dispute between Patty and Stephanie, involving some sort of privacy issue. Susan Embrick called me last night, saying there was a PTA crisis brewing, but we average one a month. She should have said that this was an
important
crisis. Meaning, one likely to cause us all to get harangued by Stephanie.”

“Is she in the PTA, too?” he asked, meaning Susan Embrick. Everyone within a hundred-mile radius of this town knew Stephanie was PTA Queen Bee. Jim had heard me mention Susan’s name dozens of times, but was still reading the paper, his attention divided.

“She’s our secretary-slash-treasurer. I’m calling her back now.”

I punched in her number and waited. It rang once, then a deep but young male voice intoned, “Yo, babe.”

Yo, babe?
I lowered the phone to stare at it for a moment, then asked, “Is this the Embrick residence?”

He chuckled. “Yeah. This is Adam. What’s up?”

Adam? Surely not of “Adam and Rick,” I thought. Then again, Susan did have a son who was a junior in high school. I glanced toward Karen and saw that she’d migrated back into the room to read the paper. She seemed to be playacting at being uninterested in my phone conversation. “Could I speak to your mother, please?” I asked.

“She doesn’t seem to be here. She must be out someplace.”

Quelling irritation at his bad phone manners, I asked evenly, “Could you take a message? Could you tell her that Molly Masters returned her call, and could she please call me back?”

There was a pause. “Uh, sure. Does, um, Karen happen to be around?”

That cemented things; Adam was not that common a name. There could not be two boys with that name at Carlton High School who both knew my daughter. Was this Nameless or Too Cute? And what was this “wise decision” that Karen had made toward him? Karen’s cheeks had reddened a little, and she was staring at a full-page advertisement for lawn mowers as if transfixed. “Just a minute. I’ll check.”

Karen met my eyes. I pressed down on the holes over the receiver so hard that the imprint might prove to be emblazoned on the heel of my hand for days. “This is Adam Embrick. He wants to talk to you.”

She held out her hand, and I passed her the cordless phone, but the action felt as though I’d very unwillingly handed her a mantle that symbolized her entrance into adult relationships. She’d gone to boy-girl group functions and outings, but we’d said she had to be sixteen before we’d let her go on actual dates. She’d had her sixteenth birthday last week. What the hell had we been thinking? She was way too young. Or maybe I was. Or too old. In any case,
I
wasn’t ready!

She said, “Hello?” listened, and then grinned. As she was leaving the room and trotting up the stairs to her room, I distinctly heard her say, “I’m sorry, too.”

Oh, crap! Was that apology undoing the “wise decision” that Patty had complimented her for?

Meantime, Jim was oblivious and still reading the sports section. “Jim! Get your nose out of the newspaper! Our little girl is passing before our eyes!”

“What?” he asked, deserting the paper and sitting bolt upright. “What happened?”

“I think Karen is being asked on a date with some upperclassman named Adam Embrick who says ‘yo, babe’ instead of ‘hello.’ ”

Jim looked baffled and blinked a couple of times before speaking. “How did that happen? You were on the phone with some PTA person. How did that wind up with Karen’s dating someone?”

“He’s the secretary-slash-treasurer’s son.”

“But she’s too young to . . .” Jim’s eyes widened as, no doubt, the significance of her last birthday dawned on him. He got up and started pacing, pulling on his mustache, a habit whenever he was upset. “Our daughter can’t go out with some guy who refers to people as babes. Did his family used to live in L.A. or something?”

“I don’t think so.”

Nathan, who has that special antenna that allows children to sense when a sibling is perhaps about to get yelled at, came bounding up the stairs from the basement. He’d been playing a computer game in my office. He took one look at our faces and asked, “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Jim replied harshly, but added under his breath, “just that my only daughter is about to go out with some dolt who thinks he’s Joe Cool.” He shifted his attention to me, his brow furrowed. “What do you know about this guy?”

“I think his mom said he’s president of the junior class. Either that or the glee club. He’s president of something, though. Or maybe that’s a sibling of his in junior high. It’s so hard to keep everyone’s kids straight when the PTA has to deal with all thirteen grade levels at Carlton Central.”

We spent the next few minutes in shared, speechless anxiety, unwilling to discuss things further in front of Nathan, who was, in turn, unwilling to leave us alone and miss out on anything. The beacon that had kept me going during occasional dips and dulls of my twenty-year relationship with Jim was the realization that marriage meant my never having to date again. Yet another miscalculation on my part. I’d neglected to factor into the equation the vicarious element of motherhood: the fact that worrying about my daughter felt even worse than actually experiencing her travails myself.

Karen came skipping down the stairs and hung up the phone. “Adam and I have a date tonight. Before you ask, he’s president of the junior class, and I’ve known him from pottery class last year and choir this year. He’d been going out with someone, but broke up with her a couple months ago because she wanted to spend every minute with him, and he’s in all these honors classes and has to study a lot. And, Mom, he . . .” She’d started laughing so hard that she had to stop and get her breath, but finally managed to say, “He said to tell you he was sorry for saying ‘yo, babe’ when he picked up the phone. He thought you were a guy friend of his, and he was goofing around.”

Jim’s and my eyes met. Apparently the boy had much more going for himself than I’d assumed, but in some ways that only posed a bigger threat. “So what was Patty Birch saying to you about him and Rick?”

“Rick’s this jerk who hits on everybody because he thinks of all girls as conquests. He’s been asking both Rachie and me out. Adam warned her about him because she was tempted to say yes. Anyways, I’m going over to Rachie’s now. Okay? Then we’re coming back here so she can help me figure out what to wear.”

“Fine,” I said, too stunned to think of another response.

“How about overalls and that . . . that one-piece, long-sleeved bodysuit you wear for dance class?” Jim suggested, but she was already closing the door behind her. He sighed and looked back at me. “Does she own any really ugly outfits with lots of buttons?”

The day passed of its own volition and far too quickly. I was in no hurry either for my meeting or to see Karen off on her first date. I’d told her I wasn’t going to fuss, but asked her to commit to memory my one piece of general advice about dating: If you ever feel you have to do something just because otherwise he might not like you, he
doesn’t
, so dump him and wait until someone else comes along who
does
. Then I’d made several phone calls on the pretext of discovering the source of the PTA turmoil, and then asked “by the way . . .” if they’d ever met Susan’s high-schooler son. I could get no information on either issue, and Susan herself never returned my call.

The doorbell rang at a quarter to seven. Jim and I both answered. There stood a painfully—to me, at any rate— handsome young man with curly blond hair and brown eyes, wearing baggy khakis and a leather bomber jacket. He was, indeed, Too Cute.
Much
too cute.

“Hi. I’m Adam Embrick, here for Karen.”

Jim said nothing.

“Come in. Karen will be right down.”

He stepped inside. Karen came down the stairs. Jim had taken a step back to allow Adam to enter, but was standing directly between him and Karen, and now stood glaring at the short hemline of her purple-and-black dress.

Adam said, “Nice to meet you, sir,” and held out his hand.

“Nice to meet you,” Jim said with no smile as he shook his hand. “Her curfew is midnight. Where exactly are you taking her?”

I glanced back at Karen, who rolled her eyes and got her coat out of the closet.

“I have dinner reservations at the Captain’s Table at seven, then we’ll go to a movie.” Jim continued to glare at him, and he added, “Something rated PG. By Disney.”

“Have a nice time,” I said as Karen squeezed past her father.

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Be home by midnight,” Jim said again. They disappeared around the corner to the garage, but he continued to watch out the door.

“Well, I’ve got to go. Although Stephanie’s having threatened to kill Patty this morning pales in comparison to knowing that Karen’s off on her first date.”

Jim shut the door and slumped into the nearest chair. “I’m staying right here till she’s back.”

“He seems like a nice kid. Don’t worry so much.”

He looked up at me. “Easy for you to say.
You
were never a teenage boy.”

Not wanting to explore that notion any further, I grabbed my coat and left for Patty’s.

Patty’s house was a ranch-style, three-bedroom house, the smallest home in her neighborhood. Tacked to her front door was a hand-painted paper marionette wearing a leprechaun outfit. That reminded me. It was time to throw out the jack-o’-lantern on our back porch. I studied the little paper dude as I rang the doorbell. In typical Perfect-Patty style, the leprechaun’s face had been hand-painted, and the paper had been molded so that he was somewhat three-dimensional. His clothes, from argyles to bow tie, were made from fabric. The red tresses poking out from below his little green hat appeared to be real. Patty’s daughter, Kelly, had red hair. Maybe she’d had a haircut recently.

To my surprise the door was swept open not by Patty, but by Chad Martinez, a divorced father who had taken to volunteering for all sorts of PTA fund-raising campaigns and committees, ever since Patty had become president. He was a dark, tall, muscular man with a square jaw and deep-set eyes, and a mustache squared off at the ends to look a little too Hitler-like for my tastes. He gave me a sheepish smile and said, “Chad Martinez. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”