Table For Five

“That’s a sweet one,” she said as Derek studied a crayon drawing of a koala, its baby clinging to its back. “She drew that after our field trip to the Portland Zoo. Charlie has a real eye for detail. When her curiosity is piqued, she doesn’t miss a thing.”

He nodded and looked at the next one. It showed a ladder running up the long side of the paper, a tiny plank with a figure perched on the edge, about to jump into an even tinier bucket of water. “And this?”

“Vocabulary work. The word of the day was dare, I believe.” The other children had written dare on their drawings, but not Charlie. She avoided writing or reading anything at all. “She’s very clever,” Lily said. “She has an inventive mind and uses some sophisticated thought patterns.”

He came to a picture of a house surrounded by spiky green grass and blooming flowers, blue sky and sunshine in the background. The house had four windows lined up in a row. All the windows were filled with black scribbles.

When Lily had asked Charlie why she’d scribbled the windows black, the little girl had shrugged. “So you can’t see what’s inside.” She always tried to give a minimal response.

Derek didn’t ask about the drawing but moved on to the next, a remarkably vivid study of a small brown-and-white dog with a black patch around one eye. “And this?”

“Vocabulary again. The word was wish.”

“She’s been bugging me for a dog,” he said. “Maybe this summer.”

Just don’t tell her maybe unless you mean yes, Lily thought. Charlie had enough uncertainty in her life.

Finally, Crystal arrived in a swirl of haste and apologies.

“My God, I am so sorry,” she said, talking rapidly as Lily took her coat, hat and umbrella. “The roads are a nightmare. I nearly got killed on Highway 6, trying to make it on time.”

When Lily emerged from the cloakroom, Crystal offered her trademark beauty-queen smile. Despite the weather, her makeup looked freshly applied. Knowing Crystal, Lily guessed that she’d taken time in the car to fix her hair and face.

“Hello, Derek.” Wafting the scent of Gucci Rush, Crystal sailed in front of her ex-husband and sat down, a silk Hermès scarf fluttering around her shoulders, her shapely legs crossed at the ankles and angled demurely despite the awkwardness of the low chair. Crystal had always known how to use the power of her beauty.

Together, she and Derek resembled a toothpaste commercial. But looking like the all-American success story hadn’t saved their marriage.

Lily put on her glasses. Even though they were Fiorelli, with handmade barrister-style frames, she knew they made her look like a dork. She ought to quit wasting her money on trendy glasses, because once she put them on, they tended to look like any discount brand. There was something about her earnest face that could transform designer frames into blue-light specials. She’d tried contact lenses, but had an allergic reaction every time she put them in.

Tamping the manila file folder on the table, she took a deep breath and looked from Crystal to Derek, who sat as uncomfortably as she did in the undersize chairs. Lily caught Crystal in an unguarded moment, and the expression on her face was startling. She was eyeing Derek with raw, undisguised yearning, her lovely face registering a wounded animal’s uncomprehending pain.

Lily ached for her friend, yet at the same time she felt a faint nudge of exasperation. Today was about Charlie, not about Crystal and Derek and what they’d let love do to them.

With controlled, precise movements, Lily handed them each a copy of the ORAT printout. “This chart shows the results of the Oregon Reading Abilities Test,” she explained. “It’s given to every third-grader in the state, every March.” With the eraser end of her pencil, she traced the gray line on the chart. “This is the average score for the whole state. This red line above it is the average for Laurelhurst students.” As a private, selective school, Laurelhurst always showed test results well above the norm.

Lily cleared her throat. “The blue line shows Charlie’s performance on the test.” The line crawled miserably amid the lowest percentile rankings, at intervals even flirting with zero. She watched the Holloways’ faces, seeing the expected surprise and disappointment. She’d been disappointed, too—but not surprised. As Charlie’s third-grade teacher, she had seen the child’s struggles from day one. She’d tried to prepare the Holloways in previous conferences, but the reality simply hadn’t sunk in. Maybe today, it would.

Crystal gazed at Lily, her eyes filled with bewilderment. She seemed fragile, as though everything hurt her these days. Derek merely looked angry, defensive perhaps. Both were classic reactions of loving parents. No one wanted to see that their child was having trouble, and once they did, the child’s failure not only hurt, but attacked the character of the parents themselves.

“As you know,” Lily said, “I’m not a fan of standardized testing. This was state-mandated. So this test doesn’t really tell us any more than we already know about Charlie.”

“She still can’t read.” Derek’s voice was almost accusatory. His large hands, tanned from a recent golf round in Scottsdale, pressed down on the surface of the table. “You know, I’m getting pretty damned sick and tired of hearing this. I pay that tutor what, a hundred dollars an hour? And we’re still not seeing results. What kind of teacher are you?”

“Derek.” Crystal reached out a hand as though to touch his sleeve, but then seemed to think better of it. She folded her hands tightly together, her flawless manicure gleaming.

“I don’t blame you for being frustrated,” Lily said. “I think we all are, Charlie included. Believe me, I know how hard everyone’s been working on this all year.” She was careful with her choice of words. It was true that, in addition to engaging the tutor, the Holloways had subjected Charlie to seemingly endless testing, from a pediatric checkup to psychological evaluations to a battery of tests by a reading specialist in Portland. The results were inconclusive. There was no scientific name for the sort of block Charlie seemed to be experiencing. Lily wished she could believe the homework she sent for Charlie to do with each parent was done with diligence. She knew better, though. Crystal and Derek loved their daughter, but given the state of their lives, they hadn’t made her schoolwork a priority.

“I know we all hoped to see more progress,” she added. “However, that’s not the case. Given that it’s nine weeks from the end of school, we need to talk about Charlie’s options for summer, and for the coming year.”

Crystal nodded and blinked away tears. “I think we should hold her back.”

“Oh, now we’re talking about flunking her. That’s just great,” said Derek.

Lily bit her tongue and kept her face immobile. Derek clearly had issues with failure. But this was about Charlie, not him. It was not even about Crystal, whose heart was breaking right before Lily’s eyes. Urging retention was often the panicked, knee-jerk reaction of a parent. Lacking a complete knowledge of all the options, some parents tended to favor repeating a grade, unaware of how the extreme solution could traumatize a child. “In this case, I don’t think retention is the answer.”

“So you’re just going to promote her like they’ve done since first grade?” Crystal’s tears evaporated on the heat of anger. “That’s been a huge help, let me tell you. A huge help.”

Lily swallowed hard, feeling her friend’s anguish. A parent-teacher conference was such a theater of the soul. Everyone involved was stripped bare, their emotions stark and honest. So much of a parent’s identity was wrapped up in the child: love, pride, self-worth, validation. It was an unfair burden on a small human being, but every child bore it, the lofty, seemingly unreachable expectations of her parents.

“I’ve mapped out several options for Charlie,” Lily told them, handing each a packet. “You can go over these at home. For now, let’s assume we see some progress this summer and she goes on to fourth grade here at Laurelhurst.”

“In other words,” Derek said stiffly, “you might not want her back here.”

Behind Lily’s left eye, a tiny headache flared to life like a struck match. Laurelhurst was a nationally recognized independent school; the waiting list for admissions was years long. A man like Derek—successful, accomplished, privileged—regarded any other school as subpar. “This is about what’s best for Charlie, not about what I want. What we should really focus on is the summer. I’m hoping that intensive training at the Chall Reading Institute in Portland will initiate some real progress for Charlie.” The program was a huge commitment of time and money for the whole family, but its success rate was unparalleled.

“This is ten weeks long,” Crystal said, studying the brochure. She regarded Lily with dismay and flipped open a well-worn leather Day-Timer. “We’re booked on a Disney cruise for ten days in June. In July, she’s got riding camp. And August—”

“The kids are with me in August,” Derek said. “We’ve got a rental booked on Molokai.”

Lily had trained herself to hold back and choose her words carefully during a conference. It was particularly hard in this case to assert the child’s needs. How easy it would be to simply say, “Sounds great! Have a wonderful summer.” And then next year, Charlie would be some other teacher’s problem.

However, Charlie was Lily’s main concern, no matter what she felt for Crystal. The outcome of today’s meeting could very well test their lifelong friendship. But a child’s future hung in the balance, and Lily was determined to save her at any cost.

“I’m hoping to stay focused on Charlie’s needs throughout the summer,” she said.

“Weren’t you listening? It’s a Disney Cruise,” Crystal said, an edge in her voice. “It’s all about kids and fun. I’ve been promising them all year. And camp, that’s totally about Charlie. You wouldn’t believe the strings I had to pull just to get her in. It’s at Sundance, for heaven’s sake. She probably had to edge out Demi Moore’s kids just to get a spot there this summer.”

“How much is this riding camp going to cost?” Derek asked.

“Probably less than your damned house on Molokai,” Crystal snapped.

“I’m still paying off your Christmas trip to Sun Valley.”

“I know where you rank in the PGA. Unfortunately for you, I can find that out on ESPN. You can afford Sun Valley.”

“Not the way you spend. You’ve given a whole new meaning to ‘spousal maintenance.’”

Lily sat impassively, biting her tongue until it hurt. When a couple argued about money, it was never about money. It was about power and self-worth and judgment; that much Lily had learned from her own parents as she lay awake at night in the dark like a shipwreck victim adrift in a storm at sea, with the tempest raging around her.

In the eight years she’d been a teacher, she’d held a number of conferences. She had weathered many spats, and she found that it was best to allow them to play out and lose their intensity. It was like allowing a pressure cooker to let off some steam, making room inside for something else—in this case, Lily’s input about Charlie.

Her headache deepened, the pain turning arrow-sharp and burrowing into a tender spot behind her eye. Neither Crystal nor Derek seemed to notice. Lily had sat too many times in the presence of a couple sniping at each other in the age-old tug-of-war over the most fragile prize of all—a child.

Sometimes it took all of Lily’s self-control to keep in the righteous anger, to stop herself from blurting, Will you listen to yourselves? How is this helping your child? And she hadn’t even told them everything about Charlie yet. A tiny devil of impulse tempted her to hold back, to keep Charlie’s secret for her, but Lily couldn’t do that. The little girl had issued a cry for help.

“Could we get back to Charlie?” she asked. “Please?” Taking advantage of a pause in the argument, she said, “There is something else to discuss.”

Crystal and Derek glared at each other, visibly shelving the argument. Derek clenched his jaw and folded his arms across his chest as he swiveled to face Lily. Crystal pursed her lips and closed her Day-Timer, also turning her attention to Lily. Whatever their differences, they still had their love for their children in common and were trying to put aside their own agendas for the sake of Charlie.