Hope

First day at a new school in a new neighborhood. I knelt down and looked Josh in the eyes. “You’re going to like it here.” I smiled and pulled him in for a hug. “I love you.” He nodded and walked into his first grade classroom.

A dark cloud floated by, casting a grayness over the school. I resisted the temptation to see that as an omen, but rather an anomaly in the perfectly clear fall weather we’d been having. Josh’s tumultuous year of kindergarten was history, as was his old school, where his outbursts and tantrums had earned him the moniker TB, for Tantrum Boy. Kids could be exceptionally cruel. Here, he’d simply be Josh. We both deserved a fresh start.

I approached a group of parents, mostly moms and a couple of dads, clustered near the school entrance. I caught snippets of conversation about a new Ethiopian restaurant and somebody’s summer in Greece. I introduced myself, “Hello, I’m Merri. We’ve just moved here.” The moms just stared at me, as if I were a newly arrived alien who’d just disembarked my spaceship. A couple of them bothered to murmur “hello” and “hi”. A dad, wearing a shirt and cargo shorts, waved and said, “Welcome to the neighborhood.” A blonde mom eyed me conspicuously, her gaze weirdly centered on my waistband. I glanced down to ensure my buttons were buttoned and zipper zipped. They were. Why was it that some women had such difficulty being friendly to other women?

The parents at Josh’s former school had been too nosy, talked too much, or avoided me altogether. I’d called them the snoopers, the gabbers, and the shunners, respectively. With the chilly reception from this group, I was tagging them The Shunners.

“Well, nice meeting you,” I said cheerily. “Or not meeting you,” I muttered and walked away. Their conversation resumed.

There had to be a few decent, congenial parents around. Until I met them, hope was my trusty companion.

Josh ran out of his classroom, his face lit up with a wide smile that could only bode good news. “Alex asked me over to his house. He has a trampoline, I can go, can’t I? Please?” His words fused together in a flurry of excitement and deep breaths.

“Of course, where’s Alex’s mom? I’ll get the deets from her.” I scanned the crowd of kids, parents, and teachers, unsure of whom I was looking for.

Josh took my hand and pulled me away from the school and toward home. “He says to just go to his house at four. He’ll be there. He said so. He says his address is on the class list.”

“Okay, then.”

Josh led the way home with quick, purposeful strides. I donned my sunglasses and grinned. I didn’t know which of us was more excited. This play date could be the beginning of a great, and much needed, friendship for Josh.

At home, Josh took the class list from under the dinosaur magnet on the refrigerator. He said it was Alex K, not Alex M, who’d invited him. I scanned the class list for Alex K, whose parents were Hillary and Jack. I remembered them from Orientation Night. They owned a chain on upscale restaurants and had encouraged the parents in Ms. Belmond’s first grade class to pop in for a glass of wine, on the house. They were an attractive couple, fit and slim, the sort of couple that other couples wanted to be.

Thirty minutes later, we were driving to Alex K’s home. Josh tapped his fingers on his knees, a nervous habit, and stared out the window, counting the stoplights. Alex K’s home was modern and as large as a small office building. I checked the address against their address on the class list.

We got out of the car and walked up to the door. Josh pressed the doorbell, a gleaming silver disk as large a doorknob. No answer. He looked up at me. I nodded and he pressed the doorbell again. And again, no answer. I peered into the side window, Josh peering beside me. The home was unlit and immaculate, the furnishings sleek and carefully placed. The place was like a museum. My stomach tensed up, but I managed to feign a reassuring smile for Josh. I stepped back and dialed the number on the class list. The phone rang inside the home. The answering machine picked up. Hillary’s chirpy voice left a long message, and I disconnected the call. I dialed Hillary’s cell phone. Four rings and no answer. I called again, to no avail, and I automatically assumed the worst.

“Where is he?” Josh whined, his face scrunched up and red and sweaty under the sun.

“Maybe they’re out back,” I said. I squeezed his shoulder and led him around the house to a brick path to the rear of the property. I hoped Alex and his mother were out back waiting for us, but hope had a way of failing us at the worst times.

The backyard was empty but magnificent, with a crystal-clear lap pool, slate patio covered with teak furniture and colorful cushions, a tennis court off to the side, and the trampoline in the background.

Josh spun around, shoulders slumped, and trudged out of the yard, his sneakers creating ruts in the soft grass. I followed him and spotted a small camera nailed to the side of the home beneath the eave. I had the urge to pick up an orange, dropped from a nearby tree, and hurl it at the device. Instead, I stuck out my tongue, an act that was puerile but irresistible. Besides, doing so gave me some modicum of satisfaction while avoiding property damage.

Josh sobbed in the car. His small chest heaved, and tears stained his green T-shirt. I handed him a box of tissues from the glove compartments, but he chose to continue wiping away the tears and snot with the back of his hand. If I could’ve turned back time, I would’ve, but moms can’t perform those sorts of miracles. Or I can’t, at least.

I was furious and appalled, but I calmed myself by considering the alternative possibilities. Maybe they’d been detained at a medical appointment, or any appointment, or had had car trouble or some other emergency or mishap. Contrary to habit, I gave them the benefit of the doubt.

I pulled over to the side of the road and texted Hillary. “We showed up at your house for a play date. Sorry to have missed you. Hope everything’s alright.”

I drove to the ice cream shop. I figured a triple scoop of chocolate, vanilla, and bubble gum ice cream, the panacea for most of Josh’s woes, would mollify him, at least temporarily. He was angry, confused, and sullen. So was I.

I parked in the lot behind the shop and spotted Hillary, standing in a loose circle with a few other moms I recognized from school that morning. The Shunners. I told Josh to wait in the car for a moment. “Why?” he asked, naturally. “Because I said so. Just give me a minute please and then we’ll get the ice cream.”

I walked up to the small crowd and reminded myself that there may very well be a good, legitimate excuse for failing to keep the play date. Still, I was ready to give her a piece of my mind. “Hillary?” I called out. I made it a point to smile, even hunch my shoulders meekly. Kindness kills, after all. “Could I speak with you a moment?”

She stepped away from The Shunners. “You’re that new mom, aren’t you?”

I nodded. “We showed up at your house for a play date, and you weren’t there.”

“Oh that,” she said grudgingly. She wrinkled her nose, as if smelling something fetid, and proceeded to explain that she’d decided that Alex and Josh wouldn’t get along, an assessment she’d made based upon her observations while volunteering in the class that morning.  She was so nonchalant, it irked me. She then boldly added that she’d taken Alex and ‘his buddies’ out for ice cream instead.

I stood there, stunned. Who cancels a play date without telling the other parent?

“You could’ve called or texted me,” I said, my voice strained, precariously close to strangling this woman. “Or e-mailed or left a damn note taped to your front door.” The other moms snapped their heads toward me. No doubt, this spectacle had just become fodder for their latest gossip.

“I could’ve, but I didn’t have your number,” she said, shrugging.

“Yes, you do. You have the class list, and I called you before the play date to confirm, and you never called back.”

“Well, I got caught up. Some of us do have lives, you know. Don’t worry, this won’t happen again.” She walked off and returned to The Shunners.

I envisioned a scene where Hillary and I were women, huge women, wrestling in the mud like pigs. I’d pummel and pin her down until she uttered a genuine apology, but I knew I could never do that and a woman like Hillary would never offer me an apology, much less one that was genuine. I had the urge to up and move to another new neighborhood. I’ve always run away from my problems, although it hasn’t worked out too well for me so far.

The crowd broke, and Hillary got into her monstrous black SUV, backed out of her spot, and drove off. I wondered whether her life was really as ideal and shiny as all the outward signs portrayed – the big, modern home, the expensive car and clothes, the self-possession and charm, and her coterie of friends.

I returned to my car. Josh stared out the window with a hangdog look that no boy his age should possess. I opened his door. “Come on, let’s get some ice cream.”

Rich came home that night, angry. “What’d you do today?” he asked, dropping his keys into the bowl in the foyer. He walked into the kitchen and washed his hands, as he did every single day after returning from work.

I knew what he was referring to. “Why do you assume it was me who did anything wrong?”

“Because some dad, Jack, called me and said you trespassed onto his property and accosted his wife. He’s got video of you in his yard.”

“They stood us up for a play date without so much as a phone call or text. It was rude. I was pissed.”

“Oh please, Josh will get over it. He doesn’t have a choice, just like I didn’t.”

Rich had been bullied and teased as a boy. Oddly, he didn’t have much empathy for his own son. Rich had become a recluse as a result. With four older brothers, all his parents had really cared about was that none of them had gotten injured or arrested. Rich had resorted to studying bugs and plants as a diversion from the teasing and bullying. The diversion had grown into a hobby, then a passion, and ultimately a career in biochemistry. My husband was a brilliant man, but in many ways he was still the hurt, lonely boy who’d wanted to escape the world where no one understood him.

“Jack’s thinking of pressing charges against you,” Rich said, nearly shouting.

“For what exactly? Trespassing and asking his wife a few questions?”

“Yes,” he replied definitively. “For trespassing and assault.”

“Assault? I thought he said I accosted his wife. I didn’t threaten her with any bodily harm.” I took deep, long breaths to calm myself. I couldn’t believe that a play date, which hadn’t even taken place, had spun so out of control. Could I really be criminally charged for defending my son?

“Well he seems to think you did. He was angry, and I can’t have those sorts of phone calls disrupt me at work. Besides, I thought we moved here to get away from his old school,” Rich said.

“We moved here, because you got a teaching job at the university,” I quickly countered, frustrated. All I’d wanted was for him to understand how we’d been wronged and to sympathize, but Rich, by some twist of logic that ran contrary to his own logical nature, believed that defending the other side would more efficaciously eliminate the dilemma.

We argued for hours that night. Fierce, aggressive mumbling behind the closed doors of our bedroom, so Josh wouldn’t hear us. Or we hoped he wouldn’t. Rich was convinced that I’d embarrassed myself and our family. I found it hard to believe that my husband, devoted scientist who sometimes walked around all day with a ketchup stain on his shirt, was capable of much embarrassment.

Rich insisted that I call Hillary the next day and apologize. I insisted that we were owed an apology from her. “Yes, she owes you an apology,” he said, finally. “But sometimes we don’t get what we want.”

“Then why should she get what she wants?” I asked, petulant. I felt like a child trying to understand the wicked ways of the world.

“Look, it’s not a big deal,” he said. He’d calmed down. “If I’d placed a price on all the apologies I thought I was owed in my life, I’d be a rich man. I’m not a rich man. I just found a way to get past thinking I was owed this or that. If you apologize, we can move on. And Josh will be fine.”

I remained silent, skeptical, and resentful. “You should’ve stood up to those bullies who teased you when you were a kid,” I told him.

“And get beat up? No way.”

“You saw one of them when we were at the grocery store near your parents’ house, last month,” I reminded him. “You could’ve walked up to him and told him what you really thought of him as a kid. Instead, you just said ‘hello’ and waved to the guy.”

“As if he’d remember something from thirty years ago.”

“I don’t think people really forget those things. And do you want to see your son taking it the way you took it when you were that age?”

Rich said nothing, pensive. I knew I’d struck a nerve. “Let’s say Josh confronts the kid who’d stood him up for this play date. Let’s say that they get into a scuffle over it --”

“They wouldn’t,” I interrupted. “It’s about a play date.”

“Wanna make a bet? Kids fight over the stupidest things. They can’t articulate that well yet. Let’s say Josh gets pummeled in that scuffle, and all the other kids see this, and he goes to school being not only the loser who couldn’t score a play date but also the kid who got beat up over it.”

“I think you and your brothers watched too many violent movies when you were growing up, “ I said.

“We didn’t watch many at all, but I did have all those brothers. And a couple of them were the bullies at school. I know what boys are capable of. And I think it’s best for Josh not to get himself involved in all that. He’s a kid. He’ll get through it, just like I did.”

I learned something new about my husband that evening. His devotion to school, ever since he’d been bullied, had been his sole escape. All this time, I’d assumed that he’d forgotten about his old days of being teased, but he hadn’t. He’d simply found a way to cope. The larger his career, the smaller the past hurt. But I couldn’t encapsulate my anger into some tight little ball like Rich had. Nor could I assuage my frustrations with work like he had, because I didn’t have a career to speak of. I didn’t want to work. I wanted to care for my son.

We went to bed that night having resolved nothing. I knew that this day would fade, eventually, replaced by some other problem or conflict that would inevitably arise in the future. Still, hope was my trust companion, because right now I had nothing else.