Love and Other Impossible Pursuits by Ayelet Waldman

Author:Ayelet Waldman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307279804
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-02-12T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Last night at parent-teacher conferences, William's teacher exploded all of my contemptuously low expectations. Now I have nothing but nice things to say about Sharlene. I am in love with Sharlene, the South African preschool teacher with the guts to stand up to Dr. Carolyn Soule.

Jack and Carolyn had rescheduled this conference twice, once because of a preterm delivery of twins and once because Jack was stuck in traffic in the Lincoln Tunnel coming home from a deposition. Calendaring this parent-teacher conference was more difficult than scheduling a capital murder trial, and involved a far greater number of tense and angry telephone calls. I suggested to Jack that he meet with the teacher on his own, but the school has a policy of joint conferences, except where the parental relationship is so degraded that it would be too uncomfortable for the teacher. Jack and Carolyn's bitter civility does not, apparently, qualify.

According to Jack, Carolyn and he were sitting on small chairs on either side of an octagonal table, listening to Sharlene discuss William's sophisticated manipulation of multicolored number pegs, when Carolyn glanced over the teacher's head and saw one of William's drawings hanging from a clothesline.

“What's that?” she said, pointing. I can see her finger stretched out, long and trembling. I imagine that Carolyn's nails are perfectly formed, oblong, and pale, clean from all the pre- and post-surgical scrubbing. I'm sure she does not wear polish.

“Aren't they lovely?” Sharlene said. “We've been doing a unit on family structures. The children all drew pictures of their families. Let me show you William's. It's really quite remarkable.”

She unpinned the picture from the line and brought it over. William had drawn himself in the middle of the page, wearing a red cap. Next to William, on one side, stood Carolyn. He had drawn her the same size as himself. He had colored in her straight brown hair and given her a very long carrot-shaped nose. Jack stood on the other side, also the same size as William. He wore a red cap, just like William's. On the other side of Jack was a smaller figure, round, with red hair. William had drawn me. Hovering in the air above me was a figure rendered in the pale orangey-pink color they used to call “flesh.” The figure was drawn so lightly that it was almost invisible. It was a baby, with wings.

“He drew his little sister as an angel,” Sharlene said. “It nearly broke my heart when I saw that.”

Carolyn took the drawing from Sharlene's hands and stared at it. Her able hands, sure and still when slicing through skin, fat, abdominal wall and uterus, shook so violently that the piece of construction paper flapped back and forth above her clenched fingers. The paper began to crinkle and crease under her grip and Sharlene reached out tentatively.

“Dr. Soule? Carolyn?” the teacher said.

Carolyn inhaled and then, with a sudden, smooth confidence, as if her hands had abruptly returned to their customary competence, she tore the drawing down the middle.

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