Read Online Play Dates by Leslie Carroll - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Leslie Carroll
Tags: Fiction, General, Humorous, Humorous fiction, New York (N.Y.), Contemporary Women, Mothers and daughters, Divorced women
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I anxiously stride in to the school’s administrative offices, all clustered at the end of one corridor on the first floor of the building. The parent-teacher conference room is a small, uninspiring rectangle, adjacent to the principal’s office. It looks the same as it did years ago. The same maple wood doors, the same musty smell, the same inset frosted glass windows lending the false appearance of accessibility, that look like they haven’t been cleaned since Eleanor Roosevelt went here for one semester.
Just as I am about to rap on the glass—I know from experience if a small hand knocks on the wood, you won’t be heard—
the door bursts open, nearly knocking me across the corridor.
Nina Osborne, her tanned skin flushed, her eyes aglow like some mythological beast we might have studied in Miss Imber-man’s fifth-grade class, bears down on me for the second time in as many months.
A teacher passes us, prompting Nina to alter her demeanor
54
Leslie Carroll
and lower the volume on whatever it is she plans to say to me.
“You’re a heathen!” she spits through gritted teeth. “I’ve heard that about the Marsh girls. You’re legends in this school. And obviously, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree!”
Oh, God, does she have to resort to clichés? My father would be appalled. He used to forbid us to use them, saying that well-educated people can choose their own words; they don’t need to stoop to shopworn phrases.
“You should be ashamed of your daughter’s vocabulary,” Nina continues.
I wonder what happened that caused this . . . this tempest in a teapot . I try to suppress a smile. Where’s the fire? The big emergency? Did Zoë finally slip and call her teacher Mrs.
Heinie-face? But how would Xander Osborne be involved?
Maybe she encouraged him to do it, too.
“You think this is funny?” Nina challenges.
Frankly, I’m relieved. If this whole hullabaloo is about words, then I can breathe easier. It means Zoë’s okay. I can stop thinking the worst.
“Oh, good, Ms. Marsh, you’re here.” Mrs. Hennepin pokes her head out from behind the door. Nina stalks down the hall without another word. “Ms. Marsh, do you have a minute?”
How passive-aggressive can a person get? “I have as many minutes as it takes,” I say, trying to sound calm; and as soon as I step inside the room, my anxiety returns tenfold. Suddenly I’m Zoë’s age, and in trouble for one thing or another.
The faces of my teachers with their myriad little vendettas over the years waft through my mind, an army of invading specters from my childhood. Okay, I was not the best behaved student in the history of Thackeray, but that’s sort of relative. I didn’t destroy property or draw blood. Suddenly I realize one reason why I never considered graduate school.
The academic atmosphere. Instructors as punishers instead of nurturers. The narrow behavioral expectations. The tsk-PLAY DATES
55
tsking whenever a child asserts her independent nature and colors outside the lines.
I’m shaking. And I don’t know whether it’s from anger or from fear.
The parent-teacher conference room is arranged to appear informal. There’s a mahogany credenza but no desk. Two chairs and a sofa are arranged “conversationally” around a low coffee table decorated with a simple vase of cut flowers and a few magazines, ranging from Highlights to Psychology Today . I scrunch into a corner of the sofa, where I feel safest. Across from me, the two armchairs look as though they’ve hosted a lot of butts over the decades. I’ll bet my parents wore their own dents into the cushions.
“Ms. Marsh,” Mrs. Hennepin says, simultaneously addressing me and appraising my body language. “Do you still chew your hair?” I’m too stunned and humiliated to offer an answer. Apparently, the hag has a memory like an elephant.
“So,” she continues, her thin lips pressed together
I anxiously stride in to the school’s administrative offices, all clustered at the end of one corridor on the first floor of the building. The parent-teacher conference room is a small, uninspiring rectangle, adjacent to the principal’s office. It looks the same as it did years ago. The same maple wood doors, the same musty smell, the same inset frosted glass windows lending the false appearance of accessibility, that look like they haven’t been cleaned since Eleanor Roosevelt went here for one semester.
Just as I am about to rap on the glass—I know from experience if a small hand knocks on the wood, you won’t be heard—
the door bursts open, nearly knocking me across the corridor.
Nina Osborne, her tanned skin flushed, her eyes aglow like some mythological beast we might have studied in Miss Imber-man’s fifth-grade class, bears down on me for the second time in as many months.
A teacher passes us, prompting Nina to alter her demeanor
54
Leslie Carroll
and lower the volume on whatever it is she plans to say to me.
“You’re a heathen!” she spits through gritted teeth. “I’ve heard that about the Marsh girls. You’re legends in this school. And obviously, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree!”
Oh, God, does she have to resort to clichés? My father would be appalled. He used to forbid us to use them, saying that well-educated people can choose their own words; they don’t need to stoop to shopworn phrases.
“You should be ashamed of your daughter’s vocabulary,” Nina continues.
I wonder what happened that caused this . . . this tempest in a teapot . I try to suppress a smile. Where’s the fire? The big emergency? Did Zoë finally slip and call her teacher Mrs.
Heinie-face? But how would Xander Osborne be involved?
Maybe she encouraged him to do it, too.
“You think this is funny?” Nina challenges.
Frankly, I’m relieved. If this whole hullabaloo is about words, then I can breathe easier. It means Zoë’s okay. I can stop thinking the worst.
“Oh, good, Ms. Marsh, you’re here.” Mrs. Hennepin pokes her head out from behind the door. Nina stalks down the hall without another word. “Ms. Marsh, do you have a minute?”
How passive-aggressive can a person get? “I have as many minutes as it takes,” I say, trying to sound calm; and as soon as I step inside the room, my anxiety returns tenfold. Suddenly I’m Zoë’s age, and in trouble for one thing or another.
The faces of my teachers with their myriad little vendettas over the years waft through my mind, an army of invading specters from my childhood. Okay, I was not the best behaved student in the history of Thackeray, but that’s sort of relative. I didn’t destroy property or draw blood. Suddenly I realize one reason why I never considered graduate school.
The academic atmosphere. Instructors as punishers instead of nurturers. The narrow behavioral expectations. The tsk-PLAY DATES
55
tsking whenever a child asserts her independent nature and colors outside the lines.
I’m shaking. And I don’t know whether it’s from anger or from fear.
The parent-teacher conference room is arranged to appear informal. There’s a mahogany credenza but no desk. Two chairs and a sofa are arranged “conversationally” around a low coffee table decorated with a simple vase of cut flowers and a few magazines, ranging from Highlights to Psychology Today . I scrunch into a corner of the sofa, where I feel safest. Across from me, the two armchairs look as though they’ve hosted a lot of butts over the decades. I’ll bet my parents wore their own dents into the cushions.
“Ms. Marsh,” Mrs. Hennepin says, simultaneously addressing me and appraising my body language. “Do you still chew your hair?” I’m too stunned and humiliated to offer an answer. Apparently, the hag has a memory like an elephant.
“So,” she continues, her thin lips pressed together
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