Emma's Table (15 page)

She couldn't stand herself either, made up of selfishness and shame. She might not be to blame—not for the girl's fat tummy or face—but she knew that her innocence was long gone too.

 

BENJAMIN BEGAN TO GATHER UP HIS THINGS—AN
armful of manila folders and a fresh legal pad, a mechanical pencil and a pen, just in case. He'd been waiting in his boss's office for nearly ten minutes by then, in a creaky wooden chair whose wheels wouldn't roll an inch—not on top of all that gray industrial carpeting anyway.

Dick Spooner—the principal at PS 431—was chatting on the phone.

Benjamin shifted in the guest chair and bumped his knee against the back of the metal desk. It made a hollow sound like a drumbeat.

He'd made the appointment for nine o'clock, and he turned up at the stroke of the hour, all ready to go—but he found his boss on the telephone, with a coffee and bagel spread out in front of him, the
New York Times
, in sections, underneath. Spooner waved him in.

Benjamin took a seat and waited.

He let his eyes roam around the room.

Spooner had worked in the public school system for nearly twenty-five years. And this is where you get, Benjamin thought: to a smallish office, with a respectably sized window, and a removable nameplate outside your door. “Principal,” it read—a nameplate without a name—just a plaque on a door in an elementary school in Queens.

Maybe Cassy was right to turn up her nose?

Spooner didn't seem to notice him at all. He was much too busy quibbling over an apartment renovation he'd been planning for as long as Benjamin worked there.

“That is
not
what we agreed,” he barked into the receiver.

He was a middle-aged man who kept extra-fit.

Benjamin watched him flex his biceps and admire it as he spoke. He pretended to be engaged with his file folders, as if he couldn't hear a single word the older man was saying. He wanted to spare him the embarrassment.

“In the master bath?” Spooner yelled.

He didn't sound embarrassed at all.

Benjamin opened his folders, one by one, and began thumbing through the papers he'd organized so carefully, in reverse chronological order—punching three holes into the top of every page, pinning them down, safe and secure. He was only playacting though. He was entirely familiar with their contents already.

Benjamin didn't approve of personal calls at the office.

“I suppose you're right,” Spooner said, more softly then—fiddling with the ends of his navy blue tie, a pond's worth of kelly green frogs embroidered on it. “That's a big problem,” he said, his voice laced with something like sorrow.

The change in tone reeled Benjamin in.

He looked back at his boss with concern, in time to watch him turn away, placing his mouth on top of the receiver. “The dining room is
so
small,” he murmured—scarcely whispering his secret shame.

Benjamin felt like a fool.

He felt sorry for Spooner too. This was no racket for people who aspired to grandeur. He pictured the silvered mirrors in Emma's dining room.

Benjamin shifted forward in his seat, on the verge of standing up. Then he thought of the miserable dinner the night before. I suppose I can wait a little longer, he decided.

He couldn't afford to alienate both of his bosses.

Benjamin felt responsible for Cassy's rude behavior at dinner. He must have made her jealous. That's how it worked with his sister anyway—if he made any kind of claim on their mother's attention.

He waited a few minutes more, but Spooner's call seemed no more likely to end. That's it, he thought, standing up to leave.

His boss frowned back in annoyance and squinting confusion, as if he had no earthly idea why Benjamin would choose such an inopportune moment to stand. He shook his head briskly, and lifted his free hand, nearly touching thumb to forefinger: not much longer.

Benjamin sat down again.

 

He thought of Gracie—the reason he was there—of that cold afternoon, a month or so back, when he'd arranged to pick her up at her classroom.

He'd poked his head inside, interrupting a lesson in long division.

“Get your coat,” he whispered, when Gracie came to the door.

She seemed confused, but went along with him all the same, plucking a bright red parka from the cloakroom at the back. Her classmates looked blind with boredom as the teacher scribbled on the blackboard, little explosions of chalk dust all around her.

He hoped Gracie would like the reprieve.

“Remember to carry the two,” he heard, as Gracie joined him in the hall.

“Do you mind if we take a little walk?” he asked, starting down the long corridor. Gracie looked back at him, more warily than before.

“Do we have to?” she asked.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “We don't have to, but I'd like to get a little fresh air—if you wouldn't mind too much?”

Gracie supposed she didn't mind. “Not too much,” she told him.

He smiled at her.

They put their coats on, and Benjamin pushed down on the silver bar that opened the school's back door, a gust of wintry air rushing in to meet them. Gracie looked up at him again, hopeful that the frigid weather might cause him to reconsider, but Benjamin soldiered on, guiding her back to the dangerous playground—where a small gang of boys routinely bullied her, pushing her onto the pavement and making squealing animal noises. And for some strange reason, none that Benjamin could work out anyway, Gracie refused to admit that it happened.

He wondered what else she was denying.

Benjamin made sure they'd be alone on the playground when he brought her outside, all the other students tucked safely into their classrooms—no one to bother her, for a change. He thought it might be useful.

“Don't you have a hat?” he asked, looking down at her bare head.

It was a bitter afternoon.

She shook her head. “I left it in my desk,” she said.

Benjamin took the hat from his own head and handed it to the girl. “No cooties,” he said, smiling down at her. “Word of honor.”

She took the hat from his hands. “It's so soft,” she said, pulling it over the crown of her head—a navy cashmere watch cap, a Christmas gift from Emma.

“It looks nice on you,” he told her.

Gracie smiled up shyly.

They began walking around the playground.

The girl kept to its perimeter as if she might be safer there, beside the chain-link fence on two sides, and the school itself on the others. Benjamin let her choose the path and set the pace. She walked very slowly.

“Did you forget your mittens too?” he asked.

She nodded. “But I can use my pockets,” she said, as if to keep him from taking off his gloves.

“We won't stay out long,” he told her. “I just needed a little break.”

Gracie looked as if she didn't understand.

“A break from what?” she asked.

“Don't you ever want to get away from all the people inside?” he said, canting his head back to the redbrick building. “Or is that just me?” he asked.

Gracie smiled up at him again.

“Sometimes,” she said, softly.

They walked in silence for a few moments more. Benjamin heard their shoes touching down on the pavement, their leather soles clapping in perfect time.

“I like it out here,” he told her. “When it's quiet like this.”

Gracie mulled it over. “Me too,” she said, nodding her agreement. It looked like she meant it. They walked a few
steps more, and the girl continued, unprompted: “I don't like it at all during recess.”

Benjamin kept on walking.

“Why's that?” he asked eventually, without any sense of urgency.

Gracie didn't reply right away.

“It's too…,” she started, but then her voice trailed off, as if she didn't know how to finish.

Benjamin was careful to keep looking straight ahead. He suspected she was on the verge of a painful admission, an acknowledgment—for the first time—of the terrible bullying she suffered there.

“Too many kids,” she said finally.

Benjamin nodded his head. He supposed she was right.

When he looked down at her again, he saw she'd only put one hand in a coat pocket. Her other was exposed to the air, looking red and raw. Her left pocket was filled with something already. He saw it bulging.

“Want me to hold what's in your pocket?” he asked.

“No, thank you,” she said.

“So you can put your hand inside?” he offered.

She shook her head. Benjamin decided not to press it.

Once they'd made two complete laps around the playground, he ferried her back inside. That's enough for one day, he thought. He knew that working with Gracie was going to take time. They took their coats off when they walked into the building. He headed them back in the direction of her classroom.

“Can I go to the bathroom first?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said. “I'll wait for you right here.”

He took the coat from her hands. It was Benjamin's re
sponsibility to return the girl safely to her classroom. Gracie walked into the girls' room, and Benjamin opened her coat pocket as soon as she did. It was filled with golden coins—just a little bigger than quarters—the kind that had discs of cheap chocolate inside.

He knew that Gracie's mother worked for an outfit that made these candy coins. He'd seen it in the girl's file.

He remembered the box of gingersnaps, tucked away in Gracie's knapsack, and the girl's halfhearted denial that her mother had given them to her.

Benjamin shook his head. Strike two, he thought.

He remembered the unconvincing denials of his own childhood. Standing outside his grade school in the dead of winter, pretending—to anyone within earshot—that his mother had had car trouble, rather than admit the shameful truth, that she'd forgotten to pick him up again.

Why can't mothers just do their jobs? he wondered.

 

“Sorry about that,” Spooner said, hanging up the phone finally. “You know how it is,” he added, smiling across the desk.

But Benjamin didn't know how it was at all.

“We're finally closing in on demolition,” Spooner told him, “and we've got to nail everything down.”

They'd been closing in on demolition for years.

“So what can I do for you, Blackman?” Spooner asked—like a military man, or a sixth-former at some posh English school. He called the women by their first names.

“It's one of my students,” Benjamin said.

Spooner nodded briskly, but Benjamin saw the wattage of his eyes dimming slightly. “Okay,” his boss replied, landing hard on that second syllable.

Let's get this over with, he meant.

“It's Gracie Santiago,” Benjamin said.

Spooner looked back blankly.

“The third-grader in Alice Watson's section,” he added, but there was still no light of recognition in Spooner's eyes. “We met with the mother right after Christmas,” he said. “The fat girl who was being taunted on the playground.”

Spooner nodded vaguely, but Benjamin could see that he didn't remember her at all. There were a thousand students at the school, he supposed, and the principal couldn't be expected to remember every one of them.

Benjamin wondered if he tried even.

“I've been working with her for a month or so,” Benjamin reported. “It's a clear case of neglect,” he said. “And I suspect it may be worse.”

Spooner didn't look impressed.

Benjamin knew that Gracie's case wasn't near as dire as most of the ones that reached his desk. There were no emergency-room visits in her file, no suspicious bruising or signs of abuse. She was barely a case at all. In fact, if it hadn't been for the playground incident, Benjamin would never have heard of her.

“For starters,” he said, “she refuses to admit the bullying.”

“So?” Spooner asked.

Benjamin might have known. He was all too familiar with his boss's view that kids should toughen up. “I believe it points to more pervasive abuse,” he replied. “The girl's used to being victimized.”

Spooner rolled his eyes.

Benjamin knew he'd better get to the heart of the matter.

“I've checked Gracie's medical records,” he said. “She's
twenty pounds overweight, and there's no medical reason for it. There's nothing physically wrong with the girl.”

Spooner looked back at him, a little confused.

“So she eats too much,” he said. “That's not a crime.”

“It's more than that, Dick,” Benjamin replied. “The mother is allowing this to happen.” He told him about the box of gingersnaps in Gracie's backpack, her pockets brimming with chocolate coins. “The mother is causing the obesity,” he said.

Spooner looked at him skeptically. “You want to accuse the mother of giving the girl a bad diet?” he asked. Benjamin heard the contempt dripping off him. “Come on, Blackman,” he said. “Half our students are—”

“I believe she's doing it
on purpose
,” he announced, sitting up tall in the wobbly guest chair. Benjamin wondered if Spooner's indifference was causing him to dig his heels in deeper than he meant to.

“What are you talking about?” Spooner spat back, squinting across the desk as if he had trouble seeing, his eyes filled up with disgust.

It didn't matter to Benjamin though. He wasn't going to give up.

“I've met with the mother twice already,” Benjamin said. “And I've never seen such a guilty-acting woman in my life. She's responsible for this,” he said. “I know it.” Benjamin decided he was justified in digging in his heels as deeply as he needed to: in the very best light, Tina was ignoring her daughter's interests, allowing her to get so fat.

“That's ridiculous,” Spooner said. “Who wants a fat kid?”