anxiety it causes in him, but Joan said the others were pointless without it.
Sandy bustles ahead in a hurry to deliver her cake while Gary pauses and leans close to one photo and then another, scrutinizing. Even though this is what Jacob wanted, he doesn’t like the man’s silence or his nose just inches from Joan’s leotard. “Come on into the kitchen,” he says. “We’ll open the bottle.”
The wine has turned. As soon as they clink a toast to Joan, Gary sips and then barks so loudly everyone jumps, “Spit it out! Just spit it out. It’s piss.”
Sandy and Jacob swallow—after all, the wine is only a little sour,not too terrible, not poison—but Joan is startled into letting hers splash out of her mouth and back into her glass.
“You try to give people a nice bottle,” Gary says, “and look what happens.”
“No big deal,” says Jacob. “We have wine here.”
“No, the fun’s gone out of it. I’ll just have beer.” Gary crosses to the sink and upends the bottle. The purple liquid glugs away down the drain.
When they sit down to dinner, Gary fixes Jacob with a hard stare meant to suggest he won’t be easily fooled and asks how anyone can really be sure which kids are gifted and which aren’t. “No offense to your profession,” he says, “but how can a test really prove anything? What if some kids are so gifted they resent tests? Some kids don’t like structure, you know, they get bored easily. It seems to me like those kids might be some of the ones you’re looking for.”
Harry and Chloe are under the table pretending to be dogs—they are going to be dogs for Halloween—and Jacob slips one of them a bit of chicken, uncertain if fingers or teeth take the scrap. “Well,” he says, “with five-year-olds, boredom and rebellion don’t tend to be big problems. If you have a five-year-old who’s too disillusioned to take a standardized test, that kid’s probably not a good match for the program anyway. You make a fair point though, Gary, because it’s true that people test differently on different days and over the course of their lives. And there are different forms of intelligence—Howard Gardner’s idea. People think IQ is the be-all and end-all, but it’s not.”
“But IQ’s what counts, isn’t it? For your program?”
“For the purpose of grouping children into special day classes, psychometrics are the best tool we have right now,” Jacob says.
Beside him, Joan sits watching the Wheelocks eat, her own plate untouched, tensely monitoring the trajectory of each forkful. She has already apologized for her cooking, which no number of compliments will ever convince her has gotten pretty good. No number of compliments will convince her of anything, and one of Jacob’sprojects in their marriage is to wean her off perfectionism. After Harry turned two, some private impulse had driven her, finally, to learn how to prepare something other than hard-boiled eggs and yogurt. He had played it cool, being careful not to overpraise her first mangled meals—Joan has no patience for flattery—but even now, two years and immense gains in skill later, even the simplest recipes tie her in knots, and she murmurs the instructions to herself as through incanting over a dangerous potion.
“Joan, you eat like a bird on a hunger strike,” Sandy says. Obediently, Joan takes a bite of salad.
“Don’t hassle her,” Gary scolds. He gives Joan a brisk, apologetic nod, and she looks back at him, stymied. Her knife and fork hover over her plate. Jacob has wondered if Gary has the hots for Joan, but that doesn’t seem quite right. More likely Gary just appreciates her as a physical template, a more refined model of wife than his own. Something about dancers’ bodies, the obviousness of their manufactured perfection, makes people brazen about looking and commenting.
Flustered, Sandy redirects her attention to Jacob. “What do you mean, people can be gifted in other ways?”
“The gist is
Sandy bustles ahead in a hurry to deliver her cake while Gary pauses and leans close to one photo and then another, scrutinizing. Even though this is what Jacob wanted, he doesn’t like the man’s silence or his nose just inches from Joan’s leotard. “Come on into the kitchen,” he says. “We’ll open the bottle.”
The wine has turned. As soon as they clink a toast to Joan, Gary sips and then barks so loudly everyone jumps, “Spit it out! Just spit it out. It’s piss.”
Sandy and Jacob swallow—after all, the wine is only a little sour,not too terrible, not poison—but Joan is startled into letting hers splash out of her mouth and back into her glass.
“You try to give people a nice bottle,” Gary says, “and look what happens.”
“No big deal,” says Jacob. “We have wine here.”
“No, the fun’s gone out of it. I’ll just have beer.” Gary crosses to the sink and upends the bottle. The purple liquid glugs away down the drain.
When they sit down to dinner, Gary fixes Jacob with a hard stare meant to suggest he won’t be easily fooled and asks how anyone can really be sure which kids are gifted and which aren’t. “No offense to your profession,” he says, “but how can a test really prove anything? What if some kids are so gifted they resent tests? Some kids don’t like structure, you know, they get bored easily. It seems to me like those kids might be some of the ones you’re looking for.”
Harry and Chloe are under the table pretending to be dogs—they are going to be dogs for Halloween—and Jacob slips one of them a bit of chicken, uncertain if fingers or teeth take the scrap. “Well,” he says, “with five-year-olds, boredom and rebellion don’t tend to be big problems. If you have a five-year-old who’s too disillusioned to take a standardized test, that kid’s probably not a good match for the program anyway. You make a fair point though, Gary, because it’s true that people test differently on different days and over the course of their lives. And there are different forms of intelligence—Howard Gardner’s idea. People think IQ is the be-all and end-all, but it’s not.”
“But IQ’s what counts, isn’t it? For your program?”
“For the purpose of grouping children into special day classes, psychometrics are the best tool we have right now,” Jacob says.
Beside him, Joan sits watching the Wheelocks eat, her own plate untouched, tensely monitoring the trajectory of each forkful. She has already apologized for her cooking, which no number of compliments will ever convince her has gotten pretty good. No number of compliments will convince her of anything, and one of Jacob’sprojects in their marriage is to wean her off perfectionism. After Harry turned two, some private impulse had driven her, finally, to learn how to prepare something other than hard-boiled eggs and yogurt. He had played it cool, being careful not to overpraise her first mangled meals—Joan has no patience for flattery—but even now, two years and immense gains in skill later, even the simplest recipes tie her in knots, and she murmurs the instructions to herself as through incanting over a dangerous potion.
“Joan, you eat like a bird on a hunger strike,” Sandy says. Obediently, Joan takes a bite of salad.
“Don’t hassle her,” Gary scolds. He gives Joan a brisk, apologetic nod, and she looks back at him, stymied. Her knife and fork hover over her plate. Jacob has wondered if Gary has the hots for Joan, but that doesn’t seem quite right. More likely Gary just appreciates her as a physical template, a more refined model of wife than his own. Something about dancers’ bodies, the obviousness of their manufactured perfection, makes people brazen about looking and commenting.
Flustered, Sandy redirects her attention to Jacob. “What do you mean, people can be gifted in other ways?”
“The gist is
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