I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to do an extensive, detailed Internet search on Grace—whose nondistinct last name—Brown—appears on the top of her preprinted school notepaper. After all, I’d long extolled the virtues of “researching” the people in your life for Well/er (“Prepping for your parent-teacher conference: Why not know more about the people grading your child?” “Will you trust your doctor more if you know where he/she went to medical school?” “Ruling out the unknown: how having a mental dossier about others can lower generalized anxiety”). But for some reason, I’d ignored her strangeness and her half answers the first time we talked—the oversharing about her eating disorder and obsessive personality; her nonanswer about whether or not she has children; her odd insistence that Charlotte was a therapy dog. Even last week after Nick told me that she and his father, Mr. Noah, were involved in an obviously secret relationship, I didn’t immediately start my background check. But now it’s time. Who is this person helping to run the school, cutting weird deals and sending “contracts” in the mail?
Despite over an hour of my online research efforts, the best I come up with is a few old posts on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Old ones. From a few years ago. Which produce an incomplete composite of who she is: someone with a strong interest in vegetarian cooking (with an emphasis on beets and cauliflower), an affiliation with an oboe chamber music group and a feminist drum circle, and expressed “likes” for a local female-owned craft brewery and The Container Store.
That’s it? Is the person making my son’s life a daily hell really a social media nonparticipant, occupying a black hole of personal information so that no one can know who she really is? Or is the biggest clue the most obvious of all: Doesn’t the fact that she has almost no footprint online mean she has something to hide?
* * *
When I return from around the corner with Teddy’s burrito, he comes into the kitchen and sits at the counter on the one big stool to eat the way he always did when he was little. I’m glad to see that despite the stress he’s under, he still has an appetite, evidenced by how he’s ripped the foil away and already has rice on his chin and sour cream on his lips. I could not possibly love him more. I think of my parents, how much they used to love to watch him eat when he was a baby and toddler—chicken, pasta, soup, cereal—how he actually smacked his lips when he chewed, how he intensely enjoyed every meal, how he rarely made a mess. He must have changed back into his pajamas while I was out, like he’s taking a sick day, which in a way he is, so I rub his back gently, making slow circles on the plaid flannel, and kiss him lightly on the head. His hair is coarser than it used to be, not the corn silk I remember, but I run my fingers through it anyway, thrilled that he lets me. Then I lean against the counter with my arms under the dog in the sling and watch him eat.
He swivels toward me, wipes his chin. “Have you told Dad?”
I shrug, then sigh. “Not yet.” I usually try to keep stressful things away from Gary, always fearing that his reaction to them—or his overreaction to them—will make them worse. How many times over the years did I regret telling him about minor rifts that Teddy or I was having with friends or neighbors, which would then blow up in his mind to major feuds and, ultimately, to differences that for him were irreconcilable? His loyalty to us has always been absolute and he has always been our fiercest defender, though sometimes it felt like overkill.
“Are you going to tell Dad?”
“Going to tell Dad what?” Suddenly Gary is in the kitchen, in his WIT fleece vest and black work clothes. “Late arrival today,” he says, explaining his unexpected presence when we thought he was already at work. He looks from Teddy to me to figure out what secret we’re keeping, then sits on the counter next to the sink. Clearly he’s not going anywhere until we tell him.
So we do. I start and then Teddy talks over me and I talk over him, until we’ve told the whole story about the Secret Pooper—including the latest and the worst part, about how poor Teddy is living in fear of being wrongly accused. The more we talk, the more nervous I get that Gary is going to explode. This is exactly the kind of thing that normally makes him crazy with rage. Only for some reason, now he seems totally contained.
I stare at him. “What are you thinking?”
“Well, I’m furious of course. Aren’t you?”
I nod, then bury my hands inside the sling and fill my hands with the dog’s fur. “Beyond.” I’m also relieved that he knows, and clearly Teddy is, too. Something in Teddy’s face has already relaxed, gone back to normal. He picks up his burrito again and takes another huge bite. “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you,” I say to Gary, gently. “I didn’t mean to keep it from you. I just didn’t want you to get upset.”
“And make things worse,” he offers generously. “Who could blame you?”
“Thanks for understanding.”
He nods calmly, then watches as Teddy puts his plate in the sink and practically skips off to the living room to watch SpongeBob SquarePants. “So,” he says, jumping down off the counter and holding his hand out like an invitation. “Shall we go?”
* * *
Before I know it he has texted work to tell them he won’t be in until early afternoon, and we’re in the car, driving to Morningside Montessori. When I suggest we call ahead to make sure Grace and Mr. Noah can see us, he shakes his head no. He doesn’t want them to know we’re coming. He wants this to be a surprise attack.
When we arrive, we park in the temporary zone, punch in the security code at the front door—#thechild*—then head straight for the main office. We see Grace through the glass, dropping a swollen tea bag into a countertop composting container shaped like a miniature curbside city trash can. Before she can stir in her agave, we are through that door, too, and at the sign-in counter.
Gary waves in an exaggerated Broadway pantomime of a customer trying to get attention in a crowded department store. If there were an old-fashioned metal bell on the counter, he would slap it for service. Grace turns and blanches at the sight of us. Her eyes dart around the office, trying to gauge how she can possibly escape, given that no one is there to save her, but before she can come up with anything to say, Gary is pointing to her office. “We need a word. Now, please.”
She stammers, starts to say that she has class, that we should have made an appointment, that her day is very very busy, but Gary isn’t interested. “Tell that to the lawyer I’ll call if you don’t stop harassing my son.” He points at his phone, but he is holding it upside down and backward. It might as well be a toy.
She hisses, then turns toward Mr. Noah’s office. She unlocks the door with a key she wears on a lanyard around her neck and lets us both in first, and we take seats across from the antique oak desk piled high with books and potted plants.
Last time we were here—two years ago—it was because Ms. Marjory had complained not about Teddy but about Gary, who had gotten agitated during our parent-teacher conference when he realized that Teddy’s handwriting was so illegible it wasn’t clear that he actually knew how to write. The excuses she gave—that many boys have a delayed ability to properly grasp a pencil, that she and the other teachers were focusing on other more important skills Teddy needed to develop instead of on his handwriting—all true—only made Gary more incensed. “Seriously? What could possibly be more important than handwriting?” he’d said. “Who cares about the art and customs of Peru if he can barely write his name!”