Tom Perrotta - Nine Inches

SICK AS I was, my mouth still sour from last night’s vomit, I could still manage the test without too much trouble. Most of the questions were ridiculously easy, as if they’d been designed for idiots. For example, Question #1 in the Critical Reading section was a sentence — A man of _____, he never went back on his word — that we were supposed to complete with one of the following options:

(A) hypocrisy

(B) integrity

(C) flexibility

(D) inconsistency

(E) solidarity

The correct answer was obviously B, but Jake Harlowe, fool that he was, chose D. And he kept doing that, question after question, always picking the wrong answer, often the wrongest one possible. But it served him right, I thought, going to a party the night before a big test, getting drunk and hooking up with a girl he didn’t even deserve.

I knew Kyle would be furious, but I didn’t care about him. I was just sorry we’d ever met, sorry I’d accepted his job offer, sorry I’d let him turn me into the kind of person I’d become.

I wasn’t all that worried about Jake, either. He’d get another shot at the SATs in September, and I was sure he’d do better the next time around. Maybe not good enough to get into Amherst like his brother, but so what? There were a lot of schools out there. In the meantime, he was going to have to suffer through that humiliating moment when his scores arrived; they were going to be a big disappointment. I could imagine the sense of helpless failure that would overwhelm him, the knowledge that something terrible and unfair had happened that he couldn’t even complain about. I thought it might do him some good, just this once, to feel the way I’d felt the night before, the way I was feeling at that very moment, darkening those bubbles with my Number Two pencil, making one stupid mistake after another.

LIZ GOT SUCKERED INTO TAKING the graveyard shift at the All-Night Party the same way she’d gotten suckered into every other thankless task in her long parental career — organizing soccer banquets, soliciting donations for the Dahlkamper Elementary School Auction, canvassing against the perennial threat of budget cuts and teacher layoffs, feeding her friends’ cats and turtles and babysitting their kids while they went off on business trips to Vegas or second honeymoons to St. Bart’s. She could’ve just said no, of course — she was a working mother with way too much on her plate — but she could never escape the feeling that everything depended on her, that if she didn’t do it, it simply wouldn’t get done. There would be no money for championship jackets, class size would skyrocket, marriages would crumble, beloved pets would starve. And maybe somebody somewhere would think it was her fault and decide that she was a bad mother, a bad neighbor, a bad citizen. Liz didn’t know why that possibility bothered her so much, but it did.

The All-Night Party Committee knew exactly how to push her buttons. First, they’d softened her up with a never-ending barrage of e-mails, the tone friendly and inspirational in March ( Let’s Uphold a Great Tradition; Please Help Keep Our Seniors Safe on Graduation Night ), turning mildly reproachful in April ( Don’t Leave Us in the Lurch!; Junior Parents, It’s Time to Step Up and Do Your Part! ), before reaching a fever pitch of hectoring intensity as May edged into June ( ALL-NIGHT PARTY IN DESPERATE NEED OF VOLUNTEERS! NO MORE EXCUSES!! THIS MEANS YOU!!! ).

Liz had felt her resolve weakening throughout the spring, but she was determined not to give in. She was swamped at work, she was feeling down (the reality of the divorce finally beginning to sink in), and still nurturing resentment from the soccer season, during which she’d done more than her fair share of the heavy lifting, hosting two team dinners, supervising the sale and distribution of eight hundred boxes of frozen cookie dough for the Booster Club fund-raiser, even manning the ticket booth in a couple of emergencies. And now that Dana had been elected captain for next year, Liz’s responsibilities on that front would only increase. So just this once, couldn’t they leave her alone and throw the goddam party without her? Was that too much to ask?

She knew from experience that the Committee would escalate its recruiting efforts in the home stretch, cranking up the peer pressure, twisting the arms of reluctant volunteers. Liz opted for the time-honored strategy of cowardly avoidance — keep your head down, let the calls go to voice mail, and then, if pressed, claim you’d never gotten the messages. My machine’s been acting up; I really have to get a new one. No one would believe her, but so what? Summer vacation — that blissful season of amnesia and forgiveness — was just around the corner, everyone’s slate wiped clean until September.

Her plan might have worked if the call had come from Marilyn Tresca, the sanctimonious Volunteer Coordinator, or Ken Lorimer, the red-bearded blowhard who headed the Clean-Up Brigade. But the Committee was too smart to lob her a softball like that.

“Liz?” said the wryly apologetic voice issuing from the speaker of her answering machine. “Are you there? It’s me, Sally…”

Oh, shit, Liz thought. That’s not fair. Sally Cleaves was the one member of the Committee she actually liked. Their daughters had been playing soccer together for the past ten years, attending the same skills clinics and summer camps, carpooling to club practices and indoor matches. Liz and Sally weren’t friends, exactly, but they were better-than-average bleacher buddies, thrown together on countless autumn evenings, cheering for their girls, sharing umbrellas and blankets in nasty weather.

“I guess you’re not home,” Sally continued. “I’ll try you ag—”

Liz had no choice but to pick up the phone.

“I’m here,” she said, panting a little for effect. “I was just in the laundry room.”

“Laundry,” Sally commiserated. “It never ends, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t,” Liz agreed, though she was thinking that it actually would, that in a little over a year Dana would leave for college, and Liz would have no one’s clothes to wash but her own, no one to cook for, no one to talk to at the breakfast table. It would just be herself, brooding in the empty nest, bored out of her skull. “How are you, Sally?”

“Good, pretty good. How about you?”

“Okay, I guess. Better than I was a few months ago.”

“I’m glad. I know it’s been a tough year.” Sally let a few seconds go by, marking the transition between small talk and business. “Listen, Liz, I really hate to bother you about the All-Night Party. I know how busy you are.”

“Not half as busy as you,” Liz countered. Sally was a patent lawyer who somehow managed to work full-time, raise three kids, serve on the School Board and Friends of Gifford Soccer, and run at least two marathons a year. Of course, she had a husband who loved her, so that made things a little easier. Or maybe a lot easier. Liz had no way of knowing how much of a difference something like that might make.

“Oh, I doubt it,” Sally said, her voice full of the warmth Liz had been so grateful for during the soccer season, the first one she’d had to navigate as half of a divorced couple. It was horrible, suffering through game after game with Tony sitting just a few rows away, his shoulders rigid with anger, acting like he didn’t even know her, like the mother of his child didn’t merit the common courtesy of a hello.

God, Sally had remarked one night, totally out of the blue. He’s a cold-hearted bastard, isn’t he?