of actual trees, a mural of woodland scenes painted along the outside wall. And parking is never a problem, which is a plus, since that can be a real issue at drop-off and pick-up. At Wishing Well the parents take turns wearing reflective vests and walkie-talkies, just to manage the morning traffic inching through the school driveway! Or else there’s the grim Good-bye Door at the Jewish Montessori, beyond the threshold of which the dropping-off parent is forbidden to pass. For philosophical reasons, of course, but anyone who’s ever seen the line of cars double-parked outside the building on a weekday morning might suppose a more practical agenda. To think this was once the school Kate had set her heart on! She wouldn’t have survived that awful departure, the sound of her own weeping as she turned off her emergency blinkers and made her slow way down the street.
But she had been enchanted by the Jewish Montessori, helplessly enchanted, not even minding (truth be told) ghastly tales of the Door. Instantly she had loved the vaulted ceiling and skylights, the Frida Kahlo prints hanging on the walls, the dainty Shabbat candlesticks, and everywhere a feeling of coolness and order. On the day of her visit, she sat on a little canvas folding stool and watched in wonder as the children silently unfurled their small rugs around the room and then settled down into their private, absorbing, and intricate tasks. The classroom brimmed with beautiful, busy quiet. She felt her heart begin to slow, felt the relief of finally pressing the mute button on a chortling TV. How clearly she saw that she needn’t have been burdened for all these years with her own harried and inefficient self, that her thoughts could have been more elegant, her neural pathways less congested — if only her parents had chosen differently for her. If only they had given her this!
It came as a surprise, then, that the school did not make the least impression on Ondine. Every Saturday morning for ten weeks the two of them shuffled up the steps with more than twenty other potential applicants and underwent a lengthy, rigorous audition process disguised as a Mommy and Me class. Kate would break out into a soft sweat straightaway. Ondine would show only occasional interest in spooning lima beans from a small wooden bowl into a slightly larger one. “Remember, that’s his job,” Kate would whisper urgently as Ondine made a grab for some other kid’s eyedropper. The parents were supposed to preserve the integrity of each child’s work space, and all of these odd little projects — the beans, the soap shavings, the tongs, and the muffin tin — even the puzzles — were supposed to be referred to as jobs.
Ten weeks of curious labor, and then the rejection letter arrived on rainbow stationery. Kate was such an idiot, she sat right down and wrote a thank-you note to the school’s intimidating and faintly glamorous director in the hope of improving their chances for the following year. She had never been so crushed. “You’re not even Jewish,” said her mother, not a little uncharitably. Her friend Hilary, a Montessori Mommy and Me dropout, confessed to feeling kind of relieved on her behalf. “Didn’t it seem, you know, a little robotic? Or maybe Dickensian? Like children in a boot-blacking factory.” She reminded Kate about the director’s car, which they had seen parked one Saturday morning in its specially reserved spot. “Aren’t you glad you won’t be paying for the plum-colored Porsche?”
She wasn’t glad. And she did take it personally, despite everybody’s advice not to. Week after week, she and her child had submitted themselves to the director’s appraising, professional eye, and for all their earnest effort, they were still found wanting. What flawed or missing thing did she see in them that they couldn’t yet see in themselves? Even though she spoke about the experience in a jokey, self-mocking way, she could tell it made people uncomfortable to hear her ask this question, and she learned to do so silently, when she was driving around the city by herself or with Ondine asleep in the back of the car.
“Can I get the mommy giraffe for Christmas?” Ruthie asks at the end of what she estimates is five minutes. She stops at the bottom of the steps leading up to the big green house and waits for an answer. She wants an answer but she also wants to practice ballet dancing, so she takes many quick tiny steps back and forth, back and forth, like a Nutcracker snowflake in toe shoes.
“People are trying to come down the stairs,” says her mother. “Do you have to go potty? Let’s go find the potty.”
“I’m just dancing!” Ruthie says. “You’re hurting my feelings.”
“You have to go potty,” her mother says, “I can tell.” But Ruthie sees that she is not really concentrating, she is looking at the big map of the elves’ faire and finding something interesting, and Ruthie will hold the jiggly snowflake feeling inside her body for as long as she wants. This means she wins, because when she doesn’t go potty regular things like walking or standing are more exciting. She’s having an adventure.
“It says there’s a doll room. Does that sound fun? A special room filled with fairy dolls.” Her mother leans closer to the map and then looks around at the real place, trying to make them match. “I think it’s down there.” She points with the hand that is not holding Ruthie’s.
Ruthie wants to see what her mother is pointing at, but instead she sees a man. He is standing at the bottom of the lawn and looking up at her. He is not the acorn man, and he does not have a golden crown like the kind a king wears, or the pointy hat of a wizard. She has seen Father Christmas, by the raffle booth, and this is not him. This is not a father or a teacher or a neighbor. He does not smile like the brown man who sells Popsicles from a cart. This man is tall, thin, with a cape around his neck that is not black, not blue, but a color in between, a middle-of-the-night color, and he pushes back the hood on his head and looks at her like he knows her.
“Do you see where I’m pointing?” Kate asks, and suddenly squats down and peers into Ruthie’s face. Sometimes there’s a bit of a lag, she’s noticed, a disturbing and faraway look. It could be lack of sleep: the consistent early bedtime that Dr. Weissbluth strongly recommends just hasn’t happened for them yet. A simple enough thing when you read about it, but the reality! Every evening the clock is ticking — throughout dinner, dessert, bath, books, the last unwilling whiz of the day — and with all of the various diversions and spills and skirmishes, Kate wonders if it would be that much easier to disarm a bomb in the time allotted. And so Ruthie is often tired. Which could very well explain the slowness to respond; the intractability; the scary, humiliating fits. Maybe even the intensified thumb sucking? It’s equally possible that Kate is just fooling herself into thinking this, and something is actually wrong.
Tonight she’ll do a little research on the Internet.
Slowly Kate stands up and tugs at Ruthie’s hand. They are heading back down the hill in search of the doll room. They are having a special day, just the two of them. They both like the feeling of being attached by the hand but with their thoughts branching off in different directions. It is similar to the feeling of falling asleep side by side, which they do sometimes in defiance of Dr. Weissbluth’s guidelines, their bodies touching and their dreams going someplace separate but connected. They both like the feeling of not knowing who is leading, whether it’s the grown-up or the child.
But Ruthie knows that neither of them is the leader right now. The man wearing the cape is the leader, and he wants them to come to the bottom of the hill. She can tell by the way he’s looking at her — kind, but also like he could get a little angry. They have to come quickly. Spit spot! No getting distracted. These are the rules. They walk down the big lawn, past the face-painting table and some jugglers and the honeybees dancing behind glass, and Ruthie sees that her mother doesn’t really have to come at all. Just her.
She has a sneaky feeling that the man, under his cape, is holding a present. It’s supposed to be a surprise. A surprise that is small and very delicate like a music box but when you open it keeps going down like a rabbit hole, and inside there is everything, everything she’s wanted: stickers, jewels, books, dolls, high heels, pets, ribbons, purses, toe shoes, makeup. Part of the present is that you don’t have to sort it out. So many special and beautiful things, and she wants all of them, she will have all of them, and gone is the crazy feeling she gets when she’s in Target and needs the Barbie Island Princess Styling Head so badly she thinks she’s going to throw up. That’s the sort of surprise it is. The man is holding a present for her and when she opens it she will be the kindest, luckiest person in the world. Also the prettiest. Not for pretend, for real life. She’s serious. The man is a friend of her parents, and he has brought a present for her the way her parents’ friends from New York or Canada sometimes do. She wants him to be like that, she wants him to be someone who looks familiar. She asks, “Mommy, do we know that man or not?” and her mother says, “The man with the guitar on his back?” but she’s wrong, she’s ruined it: he doesn’t even have a guitar.
Ruthie doesn’t see who her mother is talking about, or why her voice has gotten very quiet. “Oh, wow,” her mother whispers. “That’s John C. Reilly. How funny. His kids must go here.” Then she sighs and says, “I bet they do.” She looks at Ruthie strangely. “You know who John C. Reilly is?”
“Who’s John C. Reilly?” Ruthie asks, but only a small part of her is talking with her mother, the rest of her is thinking about the surprise. The man has turned his head away, and she can see only the nighttime color of his cape. She is worried that he might not give it to her anymore. She is sure that her mother has ruined it.
“Just a person who’s in movies. Grown-up movies.” Kate’s favorite is the one where he plays the tall, sad
