10A. The Parents #3
Fran finds it very strange that Joey is going out to dinner with one of Charley’s classmates’ family but what can she say? Charley doesn’t want him around.
Fran and Charley score a last-minute reservation at a place called Hobgoblin, which is an Asian fusion restaurant randomly plunked inside a haunted-looking Victorian two towns away.
As they’re being seated, they pass boisterous tables of ten or twelve, clearly other Tiffin families who are eating together, but Charley doesn’t wave or even acknowledge any of the other students and Fran is relieved when they’re seated at a two-top in a remote alcove, though she suspects they’ll be overlooked by their server.
Fran doesn’t have to wonder how to start the conversation because Charley plunges right in.
“I don’t understand why you married him,” she says. “He’s half a generation younger than you; he’d be in jail if it weren’t for Dad, he’s… beneath you, Mom. You deserve better.”
Right, Fran thinks. After Thad died, she should have dated men north of fifty-five who had established careers and grown children.
But she had been so, so lost. Thad had gone into one of the country’s top hospitals for routine shoulder surgery.
Fran had stayed at the hospital only until Thad was admitted, then she’d driven to a client meeting out in Glen Burnie, a meeting that was interrupted by a phone call from the doctor, informing her that there were unforeseen complications with the anesthesia. Thad hadn’t survived.
Fran didn’t grant herself the luxury of falling apart; she had Charley to think of.
She made funeral arrangements, she dealt with the paperwork of death, and, eventually, she went back to work.
Work proved to be a refuge; the acts of planting, watering, weeding, and installing soothed her.
At the time of Thad’s death, Joey had been working for Fran for about a year and they’d developed something of an unlikely friendship.
Fran knew Joey loved the Dropkick Murphys and disliked girls his own age who, he said, were all in love—first and foremost—with their phones.
At the annual end-of-season party for her staff held at Bertha’s Mussels in Fells Point, Fran got drunk, and long after everyone else went home, Joey remained.
Fran and Joey stumbled down the street to the Horse to listen to some live music, and the next thing Fran knew, they were making out in an alleyway.
Fran registered the absurdity of it: She was kissing wayward Joey, whom she’d hired only as a favor to Thad.
But now Thad was dead, so what did it matter? What did anything matter?
Fran woke up the next morning with a skull that felt like cracked concrete and a burning sense of shame. She had kissed Joey, her employee.
She prayed Joey would laugh it off (and not, for example, sue her for sexual harassment).
What she never could have predicted was the way Joey love-bombed her, claiming he’d had a crush on her since the night Thad brought him to the house for dinner.
He dreamed about Fran, he said. Fantasized about her.
The reason Joey had been the last to leave the staff party was because he wanted to be in Fran’s presence any moment he could.
Fran was embarrassed to tell Charley now how vulnerable she was.
That she was attractive to someone so much younger was too seductive to ignore.
Fran and Joey started sleeping together and it quickly became an addiction.
She knew she was too old for him, too “good” for him, yes she got it, she was a successful business owner, a professional, and the mother of a talented, intelligent daughter who needed her to set a good example.
But Fran’s body wanted Joey. Her heart… well, even to this day, her heart belongs only to her late husband.
She likes Joey, enjoys his company, and tells him she “loves” him, though what she means is that she loves how much he loves her.
He’s crazy about Fran, besotted with her. He’s her puppy.
Still, Charley has a point: Fran didn’t have to marry Joey.
Joey proposed with an earnest attempt at a ring—bigger than he could afford; Fran knew that much and figured Joey had worked out a payment plan—and Fran was touched and overwhelmed and visited again by the idea that nothing mattered since Thad had died, so what did it matter if she married Joey?
There was also an element of self-preservation in her decision.
Joey would stay with Fran after Charley left for college; he would take care of Fran when she was old and sick. She wouldn’t have to die alone.
Fran gives Charley a level look. Charley is wearing a monogrammed cable-knit sweater that used to belong to her grandmother Catherine Eaton Hicks (they have the same initials) over a turtleneck.
Her hair is in two braids; the low lighting makes it impossible to see her eyes behind the lenses of her glasses.
Fran noted all the other girls at school with their long flowing hair, their impeccably applied makeup, their flirtatious outfits, and she is glad (she thinks) that Charley isn’t like them.
Her daughter was born a middle-aged woman; Fran and Thad used to laugh about it, but her exacting judgment puts Fran on the defensive.
She can’t get any shoddy behavior past Charley; she can’t lie or be disingenuous. Charley will call her out.
“He makes me happy,” Fran says. “Doesn’t my happiness matter to you?”
“I hate him,” Charley says. “He hit on my best friend…”
“He did not, ” Fran says. “I appreciate your loyalty to Beatrix but even you have to admit, the girl has always been an unreliable narrator.”
“Joey is the reason I’m at boarding school.” Charley leans across the table. “Doesn’t my happiness mean anything to you ?”
Fran sighs. Some parenting experts might side with Charley and say that Fran should put the happiness of her child first. They might believe that since Charley hates Joey, there must be something wrong with him.
(Fran would argue Charley hates that Joey isn’t Thad.) There’s another school of thought that Fran should make herself happy so that she can be a better parent.
What do they tell you on an airplane? Secure your own oxygen mask first, then tend to your child.
Charley hates Joey now, but down the road, she’ll be relieved that she isn’t saddled with a lonely, unhappy mother she feels responsible for.
“Your happiness matters a great deal,” Fran says. She reaches across the table for Charley’s hand but Charley pulls back. “That’s why I agreed to Tiffin. I wanted you to have the best education.”
Charley cackles. “You agreed because now you get to be at home alone with Joey, which is disgusting, but at least I don’t have to bear witness to it. That you would bring him here when you know how I feel about him only proves that you’re the worst mother in the world.”
The worst mother in the world. Fran realizes it’s almost a rite of passage to be called this by your teenage daughter, but it guts her nonetheless.
She casts around for their server. As she predicted, they’ve been summarily ignored. They don’t even have menus. “Let’s just enjoy our dinner,” she says.
Fran makes it back to the hotel room long before Joey. She wakes up briefly when he staggers in reeking of alcohol and falls like a tree onto the other side of the bed. He had a far more festive night than she did, good for him.
A buzzing punctuates Fran’s dreams and when she gets up to use the bathroom, she sees the buzzing is coming from Joey’s phone. Who is texting him in the middle of the night?
She almost checks, but she isn’t that kind of wife.
As she sits on the toilet, she remembers that Dispatch is playing at the Power Plant back in Baltimore tonight.
His buddies are probably texting to let him know what a great time he is missing.
He could have stayed home like Fran suggested—but instead he’s here in the wilds of northwest Massachusetts in a Hampton Inn, sleeping next to the worst mother in the world.
Jesse Eastman, Father of Andrew
When Jesse’s plane lands in New York from Tokyo, he wakes up and reads Audre’s email to the parents—standard stuff—then her personal email to just him. They raised 246,000 dollars in donations over the weekend and a lovely time was had by all.
Nothing but good vibes, Audre wrote.
Jesse responds: Happy to hear it. Thank you, Audre.
Now, 246 grand is nothing to sneeze at, though Audre is no doubt aware this isn’t enough to run a school on. Tiffin would probably shut down were it not for Jesse’s deep, deep pockets.
Jesse texts his son: How was Family Weekend?
There’s no response. Jesse noticed a large withdrawal from East’s trust—thirty grand—but East was given full control over his accounts when he turned eighteen, so Jesse can’t interfere, and he’s not going to ask because, honestly, he doesn’t want to know.
Nothing but good vibes, Jesse thinks. Which must mean that East is behaving himself.
Dear Tiffin Families:
Thank you for participating in the most successful Family Weekend in our academy’s long history
Audre stares at the blinking cursor. What makes a Family Weekend successful?
They did hit an all-time fundraising high, but it feels mercenary to equate success with the money flowing into Tiffin’s coffers.
Was it a success because both the field hockey and football teams won?
(Losing to the Colbert School was essentially impossible.) Was it a success because the mental health symposium led by Chaplain Laura Rae had only three parents in attendance (meaning, Audre assumed, that the other parents felt confident about their child’s overall happiness)?
Was it a success because everyone raved about the steak dinner?
( Really, Audre thought, Chef deserves a bonus.
) Was it a success because Rhode Rivera and Simone Bergeron hosted an open classroom on Saturday morning, explaining how they were (finally) updating the curriculum?
Was it a success because, thanks to Jesse Eastman’s absence, Audre was allowed to shine and take credit for all the positive things happening on campus?
Talk about egotistical! Audre laughs at her own hubris just as Cordelia Spooner walks by her open office door.
“Cordelia!” Audre calls out. Cordelia pokes her head in.
She was an enormous help this weekend, essentially serving as Assistant Head.
Cordelia also deserves a bonus and Audre considers buying her a gift certificate to the spa in Haydensboro.
“Do you think it’s hyperbole to say it was the best Family Weekend in the school’s history? ”
Cordelia had a fabulous weekend as second-in-command; she tried to keep the power from going to her head, then thought, Why bother?
She had been at the school a long time, she knew where the bodies were buried, it was time she got her flowers.
Honey, on the other hand, had barely survived; the Tuckermans were like gum on her shoe.
“It went very smoothly,” Cordelia says.
“Should we send out a survey?” Audre says. “Ask the parents what they enjoyed, what could be skipped or enhanced?”
Cordelia raises an eyebrow. “Do we really want to know what the parents think?”
Audre sighs. “We do not,” she says.