1 Berry
Berry
I’m hustling down the hallway of Stillwell Elementary Academy with four different social studies textbooks stacked in my arms
when Opal Carter steps out from her office and we nearly collide.
“Berry!” she says with delight as we both take steps back from each other. “You’re just the person I was on my way to see.”
The wrinkles beneath her eyes deepen as she smiles at me.
As usual, Opal is dressed to the nines. She’s in a powder-blue pantsuit that contrasts fabulously with her dark skin. Her
salt-and-pepper hair is pinned up in an elaborate braided bun. She’s a master at creating just the kind of elegant appearance
the parent community at a school this prestigious expects from their longtime principal. I always feel like a mess next to
her, with my pin-straight brown hair just hanging down from its middle part. On the days I remember to line my blue eyes with
pencil, my pizzazz factor rises a little, but I’m usually too frazzled in the mornings. Today was no exception.
“Why don’t you come on in and sit down?” Opal says. The New Orleans accent she hasn’t lost despite all her time up north comes
through with each syrupy word.
“Sure thing. Just let me dump this load of bricks on my desk.” I tilt my chin toward the texts I’m carrying.
I’ve been trying to convince the third-grade teachers to choose the same textbook for all social studies lessons across the grade, but each teacher insists the edition they use is best. As vice principal, I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands, but I want to make an informed choice.
Opal follows behind me. “I’ll just come to yours then, if you don’t mind.”
We pass through an anteroom where support staff sit in neat cubicles, focused on their computers, and then we reach my office
at the back.
“You sure do keep a spotless desk, don’t you?” Opal remarks rhetorically, as she does almost every time she pops in here.
The desk is empty except for one family photo from my son Harrison’s bar mitzvah ten years earlier. It’s the last picture
we took of the kids with all four of their grandparents before both my parents passed within months of each other. My eyes
catch on Phil’s mom, Arlene, who stands with her arm around six-year-old Leo. It’s been almost a year since we lost her too.
Breast cancer, just like my own mom. Phil’s still muddling through the grief, keeping too many of his feelings to himself.
With an unceremonious “oof,” I release the books onto the credenza behind my desk. Opal lowers herself onto an upholstered
chair, and I plunk down into my swivel chair opposite.
“No sense sugarcoating things,” she says. “I’m here to tell you I’ll be retiring this spring.”
Despite Opal’s age, which she scrupulously refuses to reveal, I’m surprised.
While she’s certainly north of sixty-five, she’s still energetic and vibrant, and an excellent school principal.
It’s no secret I’ve been dreaming of stepping into her role after she leaves, but I assumed that would be several years in the future.
Before I can even protest, she adds, “I promised Bill. Years ago, I told him that come his seventieth birthday, I’d force
myself to quit so he and I could travel before we grew too old to enjoy it.” She swallows audibly, as though she’s still coming
to terms with the decision. “I’ve always wanted to see the Taj Mahal,” she adds, the regret in her voice making clear she’s
not quite ready to leave the school. My thoughts veer toward the question of her replacement, and as much as I feel like a
vulture circling, I’m dying to know what she’s planning.
“We’ll certainly miss you around here,” I say. “No one’ll be as good as you.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” she says, her tone turning mischievous.
“They already found someone to take over?” I straighten in my chair, worried I’ve already lost my shot.
“No.” She waves a hand in the air dismissively. “You know how it goes with the board. They’ll have an official search—a long,
slow process with a replacement committee and all that. But I’ve already recommended that they slot you in, right there at
the top of their list of candidates.”
“Me?” My heart jumps. Six years ago I was promoted to assistant principal from my position as a fifth-grade teacher.
Moving to the new role was a wake-up call.
All that time, I’d been coasting in my job as a classroom teacher, but as vice principal, I discovered that my place in the school could be fluid, that I could continue to change and grow outside my role as a mother.
I saw myself making a whole new kind of difference at work, and I was hooked on the thought.
Succeeding Opal has long been my not-so-secret dream.
But my excitement lasts only a flash before I have the same stinking thought that always comes next.
Leo.
“Your son’s getting older now,” Opal says, apparently reading my mind. “He’ll have to learn how to care for himself as an
adult soon enough. You were meant for this position, Berry. I’d hate to see you turn it down just because it arrived a few
years too soon.”
She’s right, and I would be agreeing wholeheartedly if only Leo’s best friend hadn’t just announced that his family is moving
to Brazil as soon as the school year ends. Sebastian is the only other kid in the tenth grade on the spectrum, and Leo’s going
to be lost without him. We have to figure out how to get Leo situated and comfortable for his two remaining years of high
school, and I don’t know how I’ll win over the board of directors while I’m so focused on my son.
“I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” I say to her as much as to myself. “We don’t even know if the board will go for
it.”
“Well, you just watch out for that Neil Rumson.” She lifts her lip into a comical, exaggerated snarl. She’s never been a fan
of the school’s curriculum coordinator, a highly educated but generally unpleasant board appointee. He hasn’t recommended
much during his three years at the school, and if the four textbooks I just lugged down the hallway are any indication, I’m
kind of doing his job for him anyway.
“You think he’d want it?” I ask, surprised because I’ve seen Neil as little more than a showpiece for the school’s promotional
materials. Yes, he has two impressive graduate degrees, but no, he doesn’t seem to know how to use them. Mostly he’s the board’s
go-to guest at lunch meetings when wealthy donors want to meet a faculty representative of our illustrious private school.
“Anything with new prestige and added pay will appeal to him,” Opal says as she stands. “Just watch your back.”
I appreciate her advice but don’t pay it much mind. If the board doesn’t find an outside candidate, I’m confident there won’t
be much of a contest between Neil and me.
After Opal leaves, I dial Phil, excited to share that I’m a contender. The phone rings three times, then a fourth, and I disconnect.
He’s been getting harder to reach during the day, and I’m trying not to feel offended by it. It used to be that no matter
when I called, he’d stop what he was doing—step out of a meeting or ask a colleague to wait a moment. But for the past few
months, I’ve been getting his voicemail more often than I’m making contact. I dial my sister, Yvonne, instead.
“Good morning, Berry, darling,” she answers brightly. Even though it’s been this way for years, it still startles me when
I hear her words come out in a nearly British lilt. She’s worked hard to shed her Long Island accent, inflections that always
led people to ask us, “Are you guys Italian or Jewish?”
No more dropped r’s turning LaGuardia into “LaGuadia” or inserted w’s changing coffee to “cawfee.” Even the tempo of her words is slower than it used to be, most certainly slower than mine.
With her lightened hair, understated aesthetic, and dare I say pretentious ways, she’s virtually unrecognizable from the kid
sister who used to kick my legs beneath the Shabbat table on Friday nights.
“Hey, Sis. Guess what?” I say as I jiggle the wireless mouse on my desk to wake my computer screen.
“I don’t have time to guess,” she tells me in a matter-of-fact tone. “I’m meeting new clients out in Sag today.”
Yvonne has a thriving business as an elite event planner.
She charges fees so high that they’re laughable, but people pay and Yvonne loves what she does.
She never wanted to become Suzy Homemaker, as she put it.
Never married, she’s long preferred casual dalliances to anything that would require more focus.
Though she’ll turn fifty this summer, I believe her when she says she’s got no regrets.
Her lifestyle suits her, and it also allows her to be a wonderful auntie to Harrison and Leo.
“Another wedding?” I ask. Last summer, she did ten weddings in East Hampton alone.
“Fortieth birthday party. Two hundred guests.”
It boggles the mind sometimes, the things people will spend money on, how much disposable income they’ll toss away on a party.
Phil and I have been comfortable over the years, but we’ve always had to be responsible, especially with all the extra expenses
for Leo’s therapies. Another perk of my possible promotion is the raise that would come with it.
“There’s about to be an opening for principal at Stillwell, and my boss already tossed my hat in the ring.”
“Your boss, as in the departing principal?” Yvonne asks but doesn’t wait for an answer. “I’d hazard a guess that makes you
the front-runner.”
“I’m just worried it won’t be as flexible as my current position if—”
“Don’t you do that, Berry.”
“Yvonne.” I don’t want to hear what’s coming next.
“No.” Her voice is firm. “You have been coddling Leo for far too long. He’s nearly sixteen years old. You have one job as
a parent, and that’s to make your children not need you. You’ve done a smashing job with Harrison, but it’s time to give that
same gift to Leo.”
“But he does need me.”
As close as she is to our boys, Yvonne can’t possibly understand what it’s like to be Leo’s mother. He’s come a very long
way since he was a toddler, but he still has moments of crisis. Beyond the life skills he’s lacking, his neurodiversity can
send him spinning into anxiety—or down into crushing depression.
“Darling,” Yvonne continues, “I don’t have time to argue with you this morning, but it seems to me that you stand to inherit
an incredible position that we both know you want, not to mention deserve. If you have to set up additional support systems
to make it work, then start figuring out how to do that. There are plenty of parents raising children like Leo who work long
hours. Even single parents. They make it work. You can too. And you know you can always count on me when I’m local.”
My phone beeps with another call. Pulling the phone away from my ear, I see it’s Leo calling, as if on cue.
“Thanks, Sis. Gotta run,” I say and then switch over.
Before I even say anything, Leo is spitting words at me. “Can you come get me? From school? Right now, can you come get me
from school? Right now, right now. Mom?” The hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention. There is so much distress in
his voice.
“Yes,” I tell him, pushing out of my chair and opening the bottom drawer of my desk where I keep my purse. “Where should I
meet you?”
“I’m at the nurse. Meet me at the nurse. At school. Right now, right now, at school.”
“The nurse? Are you sick? Did you get hurt?”
“It’s CPR day in PE. Right now. I’m at the nurse.”
Oh.
“Leo,” I say, putting my purse back on my desk. “They only use mannequins in these demo classes. Nobody’s going to touch you, babe.”
“You don’t know that,” he says. “Please come pick me up. From school. Right now. From the nurse. It’s CPR day.”
I can picture exactly what he must look like in this moment, sitting on one of those plastic-covered cots in the nurse’s office,
rocking back and forth, his head in his hand with his phone shoved against his ear. Laurie D’Agostino, the nurse, is always
very kind to Leo, but she doesn’t have training in how to handle his meltdowns. She gives him a wide berth, letting him call
me in these moments instead of trying to comfort him herself.
I want to explain to Leo that schools have rules about touching, that no one will put their hands on him, but it’s too late.
He’s worked himself into a state now, and I know how it goes from here.
“I’m on my way,” I tell him, heading into the anteroom outside my office. I catch the eye of my assistant, Stella, and point
at my phone, mouthing, “Leo.”
“So you’re coming, you’re coming right now? To school? I’m at the nurse.”
“Yes, Leo,” I tell him. “I’m getting in my car. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
As I pull out of my parking space and make my way toward the main road, I hear Yvonne in my head again. My job is to make
Leo not need me. I am clearly very far from any kind of success.