March 2007

 

 

“Children’s table and chair set hand-painted in organic pigments by Miss Caspar’s four-year-olds class. Estimated value, $5,000 …

“One-year membership at the Bloom Club and Spa, including four pedicures, three blow-outs, two Frequent Flyer body scrubs featuring specially harvested salts from each of the seven seas, and one consultation with a life coach. Estimated value, $7,500 …

“Walk-on role in Sex and the City: The Movie. Involves a non-speaking part in a bar scene. Estimated value, $15,000 …

“Winter week for two at Iguana Cay, a private island compound in the Turks & Caicos. Includes private jet transport, personal chef and butler, spa, tennis, and parasailing, plus four beach ensembles supplied courtesy of Calypso …” 

Sunny, the cheerful school director, rolled her tongue around the complementary Calypso ensembles as if they were a mouthful of Gummi bears. 

“Estimated value … $30,000!”

She shook her copper-colored hair in wonder and spread a hearty laugh around the room. The four of us chuckled obediently.

“Eve and Jeffrey were so generous to donate the use of their private vacation home to the school auction,” Bronwyn said breathlessly, a wide smile breaking across her high-cheekboned face, softening her pale, almost glacial beauty. Tiny crow’s feet formed at the corners of her honey-colored eyes. She shook her hair, which hung in silky sheets to the middle of her back, with the confidence of the classic American blond, and brushed some imaginary lint off her white cashmere turtleneck. Bronwyn was the chairwoman of the annual fundraising auction committee and the unofficial queen bee of the Metropolitan Preschool parent body – rich, thin, beautiful, and endlessly dedicated.

“The Caribbean is so crowded these days,” Dominique said less enthusiastically in her light French accent. “In Barbados, everyone used to know everyone. Now, there is a Banana Republic on the Rue Maritime.”

If Bronwyn was the perfect American blond, then Dominique was the epitome of the sulky yet sensual Frenchwoman. Unlikely to be in regular contact in any other context, Metropolitan preschool had made them strange bedfellows. Dominique’s moody gray eyes sparkled behind heavy lashings of mascara and dark liner flicked at the corners. She had bronzed skin that spoke of a Gallic disregard for UVF warnings. Dirty blond locks escaped from an unruly chignon. As always, she had styled herself like a gypsy on a platinum-card budget. She wore a hand-tooled leather belt over an embroidered tunic and a tangle of bulky turquoise and hammered gold necklaces.

“Have we checked the pricing on this?” interjected Kim in clipped tones. “30K sounds low to me.” She had a strangely deliberate way of pronouncing her vowels. I couldn’t tell if it was the remnant of an accent or just a personal quirk. Her solid frame and chin-length dark hair remained fixed in place, aiming straight at Sunny. Her features were austere and angular, though not without a certain elegance. She was on the auction committee, but with her reserved, no-nonsense attitude, somehow she was not of it. I guessed that she was of Korean descent.

With nothing immediate to contribute, I tried picturing Richard and me on holiday at Jeffrey and Eve’s Iguana Cay estate, but then I realized that the week of pleasure would leave us in credit card hell for the rest of our lives. Besides, I thought, looking around my imaginary Caribbean island, where would we hide Anna? “It sounds like a great offer,” I said, thinking aloud. “But why is it an offer for two? Shouldn’t we include the whole family?”

Dominique rolled her eyes to the heavens. Kim snorted audibly. Bronwyn shot me a concerned look, as if to say, “After all the lessons I’ve given you?”

Kim opened her mouth into a snarl and looked like she was about to say something, but Bronwyn swiftly cut her off. “It’ll be great with the tropics theme, Laura, won’t it?”

“Oh yes,” I chirped, happy to change the subject. “Maybe we could do something with the island idea …”

Somehow, by something close to sheer random chance, I had become Metropolitan’s tropical authority. This was, in fact, the only reason I was on the school’s auction committee at all. In New York City, the world capital of communications, if you don’t have money, you can always earn your place at the table with information. As it happened, the advertising agency I worked for as a freelance consultant had recently taken on a number of clients in the Caribbean tourist industry, and I had become the de facto set designer for some of their shoots. I knew where to buy fake palm trees and coconuts, I had the number for a great steel drum trio, and I could mix the perfect mojito. At one point in the previous year I’d even created an artificial island, which pleased the client so much I’d been given a bonus. When I mentioned my work to Sunny, she put me directly in touch with Bronwyn, who enthusiastically adopted me as her protégé on the auction committee, despite the disparity in our tax brackets.

“The island idea, yes, but how …?” Bronwyn said. “Maybe bring in an aquarium with tropical fish?”

“I know,” I said, “we could create a little island! With sand!”

“Yes!” Bronwyn nodded vigorously. “We could truck in some sand and put in a pool!”

“Mais, c’est fantastique!” Dominique responded, her sensual languor turning to animation. “We could have little waves in the pool! We could put in real fish! We could have those charming fishing boats, and get some of those gorgeous young Jamaican men to row them. Without their shirts, of course …”

“You could organize that, Laura, couldn’t you?”

I laughed in acknowledgment. We might want to ditch some of Dominique’s wilder ideas, but I knew I could recreate an island environment.

“We haven’t got time for this!” Kim interjected in her businesslike staccato. “I need to get back to the office by five. Let’s focus on the bottom line! I think we can ask 35K for the Iguana Cay place.”

“Well, I –” Bronwyn began to say, somewhat defensively. She had done almost all the work in compiling the auction catalogue.

“Wonderful!” Sunny said, clearly accustomed to putting out the brushfires of parental politics. She jotted down the new number. “Let’s talk about the decorations at our next meeting, shall we?” Then she glanced at Bronwyn and raised a knowing eyebrow. When it came to sending subliminal emotional cues, Sunny had skills that cult leaders might envy, and her glance managed to convey the message: relax, you’ve done good work – and, yes, Kim is pretty tense. Bronwyn’s cheeks dimpled and she flashed Sunny an acknowledgment. Kim remained as guarded as always. Dominique blew on a stray lock, doing nothing to disguise her boredom now that our Caribbean theme park had been momentarily put on hold.

Once upon a time, the Metropolitan Preschool had been a utopian collective stranded among the derelict warehouses of lower Manhattan, and Sunny had been a pony-tailed crusader for “progressive education.” An old Polaroid photograph hanging near the entrance showed Sunny in a smock and sandals, her face beaming with idealistic zeal from behind an armful of tots in tie-dyed T-shirts. I could still see something of that bright-eyed young woman in the cheerful headmistress in front of me. Her hippie garb had ceded to a modest rust-colored suit, and her casual locks had been bobbed to the chin. But she still wore a wide, welcoming smile. Her slightly crooked posture, the legacy of a childhood battle with polio, endeared her to anyone who heard the story and gave her the noble air of a survivor. An enormous opal pendant, on a thick gold chain, glinted with kaleidoscopic optimism on her generous bosom.

In the past 30 years, as Tribeca evolved into “Triburbia,” a desirable place for the princes of Wall Street to park their pampered families, Sunny had transformed the school along with it. The old, cast-iron façade now had storefront windows on the classrooms overlooking the street. From the opposite sidewalk, it could easily be confused with one of the neighborhood’s high-end boutiques, or perhaps an art gallery with an unusual exhibit. But in the anxious eyes of New York parents, a spot in one of those classrooms glistened as brightly and desirably as the Nobel Prize. Movie stars and television newscasters duked it out with the merely rich to secure admission for their offspring. Society matrons who bowed to no one shuffled and scraped, manipulating every variable within their manicured reach. One young mother reportedly moved across town to improve her tot’s chances. “There were too many applicants in our old building,” she said. Others gleefully confided the boldface names from whom they had managed to secure letters of recommendation: Rudy Giuliani, Martha Stewart, Christo. Through it all, Sunny, the ex-flower child, had blossomed into the grand dame of the city’s educational aristocracy. “Forget Anna Wintour,” Bronwyn had confided to me. “The most powerful woman in New York City is Sunny. Period.”

Sunny clasped her hands and smiled at us again. “Ladies, I am truly impressed by all your hard work! Thanks to your efforts the scholarship program will prosper.”

Sunny and the other women were polite enough not to look in my direction, but they all knew that in a sense they were talking about me. My daughter Anna had been awarded Metropolitan’s first “Forsythe Scholarship,” named in honor of the munificent Eve and Jeffrey Forsythe, of Iguana Cay auction fame.

I hadn’t counted on Anna winning the scholarship. In fact, we hadn’t even applied. When Anna was younger, I had vaguely envisioned sending her to some kind of local playgroup. I owed her presence at Metropolitan to my well-connected friend from pre-natal yoga, Susan Fielding. Through a series of events too complicated to recount, I had helped Susan discover and then cope with the truth about her husband, Harcourt, whose misdeeds ranged from philandering to embezzling to tampering with the ladies on the board of Metropolitan. The scholarship was my reward.