The Class Menagerie

horrible for them. He was literally the light of their lives. An only child, born to them when they were in their late forties, I believe. Judge Francisco had a complete breakdown. By the time he recovered, his wife had closed the house and they moved away. I didn't realize they'd left Ted's room just like it was. I guess they couldn't stand to get rid of his things and just walked away and left it.'

'Do you think this is why the house was vacant for so long?' Edgar asked. 'We bought it from their estate.'

'My guess is that they couldn't make themselves come back to the house, but couldn't bear to sell it either,' Shelley said. 'So they're both dead. Not surprising. They were a much older couple than the rest of our parents. They had Ted very late in life.'

'It's a shame the house was left to stand vacant so long. It's a lovely place,' Jane said.

'It wasn't so lovely when we got it,' Edgar said. 'In fact, I wouldn't have gone along with buying it if Gordon hadn't been so confident that something could be made of it. There had been transients living here off and on and the police told us — after we bought it, of course — that a drug ring had been operating out of here. Why, some of the riffraff have even turned up since we moved in. One night, we heard scrabbling noises and came down to find a young couple in what you might call 'a delicate situation' right in the middle of the living room. Thrashing around in a pile of sawdust. That's why we're awfully fussy about keeping the doors locked at night. We're going to ask guests to be in by ten-thirty or they'll have to wake us to get in.'

'There must be a lot of details to work out when

you're opening a place like this,' Jane said.

'Probably a lot more that we haven't even thought of yet. But your group will be a nice trial run, Shelley. I'm sure it's going to go wonderfully well,' Edgar said with determined brightness.

Jane was surprised that Shelley didn't answer, but continued to stare out the window at the rain. She was frowning. It was always a bad sign when Shelley frowned. 'I hope I haven't made a big mistake,' she said, more to herself than to them.

Wednesday morning was wildly hectic. Jane's car pool schedule — as elaborate as a schedule of Mafia debts, her Uncle Jim claimed — fell to pieces. The mother who was supposed to drive Jane's high school son Mike's car pool called sounding like she was in the final stages of pneumonia and tried to get Jane to take her place.

'I'm sorry, but I've got the grade school this week and the whole junior high group has come down with something and I've got to drive my daughter, too. I'm really sorry, but you'll just have to press your husband into service,' Jane said firmly. She probably would have caved in and helped if it had been humanly possible. It would have put the other driver under a terrific obligation. Being owed a car pool favor wasn't to be taken lightly.

'Oh, Jane, you know what an idiot Stan is about car pools.'

'Stan runs a whole bank! He's just convinced you he's too stupid to figure out how to drive the kids so you won't ask him to help,' Jane said. 'It's selective idiocy. Steve used to do the same thing.'

There was some more sniffling and whining at the other end. Jane sympathized. Her own late husband Steve, who had died in a car accident a year and a half earlier, had been just as discriminately parental.

Jane hung up on the other mother and screamed up the stairs, 'Katie! Hurry up!'

'I'm doing my hair!' came back the indignant reply.

'You better get a move on. I've got to take you early so I can get Todd's gang picked up.'

As Jane rounded up kids, helped hunt for lost math homework, and emptied her purse for lunch money, she reflected on how shortsighted she'd been to allow her children to be spaced out in such a way that they attended three different schools. Why couldn't she have just had triplets and been done with it? Everybody would have done everything at the same time— started school, lost baby teeth, gotten hormones. There would have been brief periods of absolute hell] but they'd have never been repeated with the next kid.

It was a bright sunny day out when she headed toward school with Katie, and the early morning light was catching the tops of trees just starting to show hints of vivid fall coloration. 'Oh, look at that one!' Jane said, pointing toward an especially gorgeous scarlet ivy climbing a chimney. ' ''

'Don't turn this way!' Katie shrieked.

'Why not? It's the way to school,' Jane asked.

'Mom, Jenny lives on this street!'

'Of course she does.' Jenny was Katie's best friend.

Katie was scrunching down in the seat, squealing protests. 'She'll see me! Why couldn't you go some other way?'

'Katie, Jenny's whole family has the flu; I doubt very much that Jenny's been up since dawn peering out the window to see if we go by and what difference would it make if she had? Have you and Jenny had a tiff?'

'Mom, don't use words like that. They're so lame.'

'Tiff is a perfectly good word. So have you had a spat, quarrel, rumble, confrontation, take your choice.' The silence that met this inquiry answered it. 'What was it about, honey?'

'You wouldn't understand,' Katie grumbled. She'd crawled back up to a vertical position and was craned around, looking back at Jenny's house.

'Try me,' Jane said.

Katie just sniffed pitifully, begging to be begged.

Jane dutifully begged.

Finally, just as they turned the last corner and the school loomed up in front of them, Katie relented. 'Mom, she told Jason I liked him.'

Jane tried to cast her mind back and appreciate the gravity of this treason. 'Why would she do that?'

'She's mad at me. There's this new girl at school she likes better than me and I said she was fat. Well, Mom, she is!'

Jane sorted through the pronouns, assigning them, and came to the conclusion that the new girl was the fat one. Jenny herself was a bit plump, but Jane didn't think Katie even noticed that anymore. There were a thousand true, sensible and 'motherly' things to say to her daughter, but Jane knew Katie didn't want to hear them and it would slam the door on further confidences. 'I think the best thing is to act like you don't care,' she ventured. 'Jenny will remember pretty soon that you're her best friend and she'll be sorry she told Jason.'

All her careful selection of words went for nothing. Katie wasn't paying any attention. As Jane stopped the car in the circle drive in front of the school, Katie put the back of her hand to her forehead. 'I think I'm getting sick. You better take me back home.'

'No way, kiddo.' But just the same, she felt Katie's

forehead. 'They'd all think you were afraid to come to school if you stayed out today. Besides, I'm going to be gone all day.'

It was the wrong thing to say… again. 'Mom! Why do you have to treat me like such a baby. I could stay home by myself.'

Jane remembered Staying Home By Myself from her own school days. 'No deal. Hop out.'

The phone was ringing when Jane came back in the door to her kitchen after delivering the grade schoolers. It was Detective Mel VanDyne, the man she was dating in an extremely sporadic fashion. 'Jane? I'm glad I caught you. Listen, about Saturday night…'

'You're canceling.'

'Sorry, but I've got to. It's a follow-up to that drugs in the schools seminar I taught last week. It seems that…'

'It's all right,' Jane said, even though it wasn't. She'd bought a new outfit.

'How about Sunday night instead?'

'Sorry. I'm busy.'

There was a silence Jane hoped wasn't patently disbelieving. Well, she was busy on Sunday night. All Sunday nights, in fact. There was always at least one child who had to have help on a report that had been assigned a week earlier, another who couldn't find a precious article of clothing he/she had to wear the next day, and one who decided to practice some musical instrument next to the phone that a sibling was speaking on. It was that way every school night, but for some mysterious reason Sundays were always the worst. Not that she had any intention of letting a sophisticated bachelor know what sort of things she was busy with. She'd been dating Mel off and on

(more off than on, to her regret) for two months and he was still wary of her extraordinarily maternal life-