Barbara, my receptionist, raises her eyebrows at me as I come into my small office on the second floor of a Brownstone across from Bryant Park. I’m not usually this late, and my nine o’clock is already waiting, flipping through one of the magazines in the waiting room.
“Everything okay?” Barbara asks in a murmur after I’ve greeted the patient and go back to take off my coat.
I nod. “I just wanted to take to Josh to school. He’s having a bit of a tough time.”
Barbara clucks sympathetically. She has no children, has never married, and I’ve only given her sparing details about Josh because I know she won’t understand. I don’t know if anyone will understand; so many people want to either label or fix Josh, or just leave him alone. I want none of those and all of them at the same time.
I’ve just finished my third appointment, a straightforward filling, when my cell rings. I check the screen and my heart seems to hang suspended in my chest when I see it is Burgdorf calling.
“Mrs. Taylor-Davies?” a woman asks and I clear my throat.
“Yes?”
“This is Mrs. James from The Burgdorf Institute for Committed Learning.” Mrs. James, I’ve noticed, always refers to the school by its full and rather ridiculous name.
“Yes?”
“I was hoping you and your husband might come into the school today, to talk about Joshua.”
My hand, now slippery, tightens on the phone. “Josh? Why? Is something wrong?”
A tense pause. “I don’t like to discuss these things on the telephone. Could you and Mr. Taylor-Davies come in at one-thirty?”
I glance at my watch; that’s in less than an hour. It will be difficult, but it’s obviously important and I don’t really feel like I have a choice.
“Okay,” I say, and then, my stomach knotting, I call Lewis.
“Why the hell does she want us to come in so quickly?” he demands.
“She wouldn’t say on the phone—”
“Of course she wouldn’t,” Lewis says in disgust. Lewis has never been a fan of Burgdorf and its alternative approach to education. When I first showed him the brochure, he did an Internet search on the educator whose philosophies Burgdorf is founded on, Johann Pestalozzi.
“You realize this guy was a total loser, right?” Lewis asked me as he looked up from his laptop. “He reduced his family to poverty, he tried to farm and it failed. He started a school and it failed.”
I scrabbled for the brochure, searching for the brief paragraph on Pestalozzi. “He started another school at Burgdorf Castle that was innovative for its time,” I read a bit desperately. Lewis just shook his head.
Lewis might not have liked Burgdorf but he accepted its necessity; he recognized that the intense atmosphere of Manhattan’s competitive private schools would be unbearable for Josh, and the brutal social dynamics of public school would swallow our son whole and spit him back out in seconds.
“This meeting is obviously important, Lewis,” I say quietly. “Maybe she’ll tell us what’s bothering Josh.”
“You really think she knows?” Lewis asks, but he relents. “I’ll meet you at Burgdorf.”
At one-twenty I am standing outside Burgdorf’s bright blue doors, waiting for Lewis. Tension coils tighter and tighter inside me as I scan the busy streets for his familiar figure, that easy, loping walk. I have no idea what awaits us inside the school, what Mrs. James wants to discuss with us, and why she wouldn’t mention it on the phone. Josh may be quiet, but he’s generally a good kid. He obeys his teachers, he does his homework, he doesn’t tease or bully or fight. Yet Mrs. James sounded as if he were in trouble, and considering how withdrawn Josh has been for the last two days, that doesn’t seem like an impossibility. But I hate the thought of it.
Lewis finally shows up at one thirty-five. “Subway stalled,” he mutters, and I can tell from the way his mouth compresses and his nose looks pinched that he is worried about this meeting too.
We head into the school together; although Burgdorf is in an office building, they have done a good job of making it child-friendly; the walls are covered with children’s art work and there are chalkboards and whiteboards for children to add their own spontaneous creations.
Mrs. James’s assistant Tanya ushers us into her office, that inner sanctum, immediately, which makes my stomach lurch. This is feeling more urgent and awful with every moment.
Mrs. James rises from behind her desk and holds out a hand which Lewis and I shake in turn. I would have expected the headmistress of an alternative school like Burgdorf to be relaxed, easygoing, even a bit hippyish, but Ruth James is none of those things. In her mid-fifties with a steel-gray bob and pale blue eyes, she is elegant and dignified and more than a bit remote. Sometimes I wonder how much of Burgdorf’s philosophy she actually believes in. Maybe this was the only headship she could get.
She waits for us to sit before sitting down herself and then folding her hands on the desk in front of her.
“Obviously you know about Ben Reese’s accident yesterday,” she begins, and Lewis and I both gape.
“I’m sorry, we weren’t aware that Ben had an accident,” I say after a few seconds’ silence. “Is he all right?”
Mrs. James’s eyes narrow and her lips purse. “No, he is not. He is in the hospital with a serious brain injury.”
“Oh, no.” Shock ices through me. How will Josh cope without Ben, his best and only friend? And then I feel ashamed because I am thinking of Josh, rather than Ben, who sounds like he is seriously injured. “I’m so sorry,” I say.
“Josh didn’t tell you?” Mrs. James says after another expectant pause, and I feel my face heat even as my hands go clammy. Josh’s sorrowful silence last night makes sense now, but why wouldn’t he tell us his friend was hurt? Why wouldn’t he share something like that?
“No, he didn’t,” I say, because how can I say anything else? I glance at Lewis; he is silent and stony-faced, but I see how his face is pale with shock. We endure another few seconds’ silence.
“Don’t you think,” Mrs. James finally says, her gaze swiveling from me to Lewis, “that’s rather odd?”
I glance again at Lewis; he has folded his arms and is staring straight ahead.
“Yes,” I finally say. I meet Mrs. James’s gaze, squaring my shoulders. “Yes, I do think it is rather odd. But there must be an explanation.”
“There is,” Mrs. James answers, and now her voice sounds decidedly cool. She draws herself up, her steely gaze moving between the two of us. “The truth is, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor-Davies,” she says, “I have reason to believe that Josh pushed Ben.”
I am just coming back to the hospital at around nine in the morning when Mrs. James from Burgdorf calls me.
“Maddie,” she says, and her voice is as smooth and assured as ever. “I just wanted to check how Ben is doing.”
I grit my teeth; I don’t know why her concern irritates me, but it does. I imagine her at her desk, scratching off the first item on her to-do list. Call Maddie Reese. “He’s still in a coma, Ruth,” I say before I can help myself. Our headmistress has never invited anyone to address her by her first name. “So I’m afraid I can’t really answer that question.”
There is a slightly chilly pause. “I’m sorry to hear that. Of course, if there is anything we at