The young schoolchildren herald a future demand for a product: a competitive private high school education in an outer borough. These children live in brownstones that are being renovated. At the end of the school day, nannies, babysitters, and au pairs wait in the courtyard to walk the children home. The administrators of the school look at the rich children, sense opportunity, and begin to raise the cost of tuition at a slow but steady rate. Some of the bright, quick, and poor are still accepted, but not as many. Manhattan’s fuck-ups are quietly expelled. A new building is built. A new playground. Laptops appear. There is a bustle of hope for a new branch of hierarchy. There is an endowment.
A science teacher finds a puddle of mercury on the floor of the chemistry lab. The chapel fills with the new kind of students to discuss the incident, because mercury is not a game. The science teacher tearfully asks the responsible student to step forward and explain why there is a puddle of mercury on her floor. In this elite culture, the student should admit wrongdoing. The student should be eager to confess. Yet no student rises to the challenge. No student explains. The science teacher casts a final look of disappointment and gives up.
The mystery is solved when a new and larger puddle of mercury is found the next day. It’s revealed to be seeping out of the pipes. The young girls in bloomers, when not doing calisthenics, learned rudimentary chemistry and poured mercury down the drains. A hundred years later, the mercury has eaten through the pipes and is depositing itself back into the classroom. The science wing is draped in plastic sheets by genderless people in hazmat suits. The science teacher must undergo testing for possible mercury poisoning. A new fund-raising initiative begins, and the hazardous church will be transformed into a state-of-the-art science wing, a gleaming facility with pristine pipes. A letter from the principal is sent to parents and distinguished alumni to introduce Marion Palm, the development officer at the helm of this auspicious project: the Wing Initiative. Be in touch with Marion Palm. Or, Marion Palm will be in touch with you. The students sit in the stairwell by the old science wing and watch the shadows of the suited people behind the plastic. The students are smug in their innocence.
Tacos
The house without Marion is louder. Radiators clang and bang, the refrigerator hums, and the next-door neighbors’ dog barks more often. Nathan sits at his desk on the third floor with his hands folded in his lap. He looks into a notebook. A car alarm goes off.
He rises and pads around the empty house for an hour or so. He listens to the sounds he makes but also tries to think of something to do. His ideas are to clean, to cook, to read, and after that to go back to writing, and these are all good ideas, but he cannot begin any of them. He picks up a dishtowel and puts it back down again. He goes into his younger daughter’s room, the most chaotic room of the house, but he feels calm here. Nathan manages to make her bed for her, although Marion would say she should be making it herself. He picks up the dolls from the floor and poses them appealingly on the shelf above his daughter’s bed. He is able to do this. Once more fatherhood offers a kind of way out of inertia.
Nathan appreciates the tidy room and feels like a good dad. He walks down the hallway to his older daughter’s room and does the same. There are no toys or Barbies, but her clothes are everywhere. He does not want to investigate his daughter’s clothes too closely, so he throws them all into a hamper. A new sound is added to the house, the circular sloshing of the washing machine, and Nathan feels productive again. He will plan dinner for his daughters and go shopping for the necessary groceries.
Nathan Palm finds himself weeping in the kitchen. He is not the kind of man to weep. How can he buy groceries weeping? He will frighten the butcher. Marion stands in the doorway in her nightgown, and he tells her once more, I’ve got a thing in Dumbo. Then: I mean, not like that. I mean. Did the girls get off for school okay? He leaves his coffee unfinished to escape the kitchen, and as he passes Marion, he smells her morning breath, a hot, foul wave around his neck. He believes she’s breathed on his neck for this purpose. He puts together later in the day what this hostile action means: Marion knows.
He opens cupboards. He wants to make the girls hamburgers because he thinks that would be fun, but in the kitchen he finds an old taco set. There are four chicken cutlets in the freezer, and the set contains packages of spices and a sauce for the meat. There is a fresh tomato in the crisper, and some lettuce that’s limp but viable, as well as half a block of cheddar cheese. He is relieved that a meal is here, one that he can concoct from his wife’s pantry without leaving the house.
Nathan takes the chicken out of the freezer and sets the package in a glass bowl. He runs cold water over the chicken, and the bowl gradually fills, allowing the chicken to buoy itself to the surface. Nathan watches. He no longer weeps.
The Missing Boy
The boy likes trains, the mother tells the detectives. He knows every station of every line. He’s nonverbal, but it’s clear he’s memorized the subway map. When a stop is skipped or a train goes from local to express, he throws tantrums. He’s agitated when the trains run behind schedule. The trains are scheduled? the police ask, making a slight joke of it. The boy’s mother nods. Delays are a torment to her son, and therefore a torment to her too.
The boy’s picture causes the detectives to pause in their questioning. His eyes look beyond the camera, his jaw hangs a little open, his shirt is neat, pressed, and red. The boy’s mother had it taken a year ago, and it was difficult, but she managed. He’s sixteen and tall, but very thin. The detectives promise to do everything they can, but don’t say We’ll find him. A boy who likes trains, he could be anywhere.
In the kitchen, the boy’s teacher from the school asks, on a loop, to please let her know if there’s anything she can do. So far she’s only been allowed to pour coffee for the detectives and the boy’s mother. Cream? Sugar? She tells the detectives it’s true about the trains. Whenever the class goes on a field trip, the boy gravitates toward the subway stations. He wants to be underground. She vibrates a little, as if she tasted something bitter; she didn’t mean that, she didn’t mean to leave the latch open, she should have noticed. She pours a coffee for herself, and when she brings it to her lips, it splashes a little over the side and stains her shirt. Shit. Goddamnit.