There were two parts to the school auction: the live auction and the silent auction. In recent years they had migrated the silent auction to an app so that people could mingle and drink and simultaneously bid on their phones. Darley had looked over the catalog with her mother ahead of time, and they strategized about what they might bid on to be polite and what they might actually hope to win. They agreed that in the live auction Tilda would bid on the ten-course dinner with celebrity chef Tom Stork because Tom’s children were in Poppy’s class, and they sometimes saw him at drop-off. In the silent auction she would bid on the vacation home on Nashaun, the private island near Martha’s Vineyard, because they had friends in the Forbes family who also had a home there, and it would be fun to get together. （Nashaun had only thirty houses, and they all belonged to Forbes. Aside from marrying off one of her children to a Forbes, the auction was Tilda’s only chance for a house there.） Of course, to be polite they would bid on the artworks made by both Poppy’s and Hatcher’s classes—a quilt with the children’s faces silkscreened on the patches, and a canvas sling chair that the children had signed with their wobbly names. They hoped they wouldn’t win either of them, but it would hurt the feelings of their teachers if they didn’t sell for at least four figures.
Every year the auction opened with the sale of a small teddy bear wearing a Henry Street School shirt. Though it was worth about ten dollars, it was a show of good faith to bid it up and kick off the evening with a splash. The higher they could bid the bear the better the entire fundraiser might go. Chip and Tilda never jumped into that bidding war. The teddy bear was all about swagger, and they left that to the true heavy hitters at the school, the ones whose names were emblazoned on wings of the New York Public Library or athletic facilities at Harvard College.
* * *
—
The night of the auction Malcolm stayed home to watch the children, and Darley walked over to the school with her parents. Her mother looked gorgeous, her blond hair having been sprayed into a French twist and her makeup professionally applied. She was wearing a long green gown and carrying a purse so tiny Darley wondered if she’d even been able to squeeze her phone in there. Darley had bought an outfit for her cousin Archie’s wedding in a few weeks, high-waisted silk pants with a matching top, and since there would be no guest crossover, she had decided she could wear it twice. As long as nobody posted pictures from the night on social media, she could get away with it.
When they checked in at the school gate, a team of young party planners showed them how to download the app onto their phones, how to enter a bid, and how to set it so that you could automatically top any bid made. “That way if you really want something you don’t have to watch your phone all night to make sure nobody else gets it!” the woman explained.
“Should we do that for the house on Nashaun?” Tilda asked Darley.
“No, what if someone goes insane? We’ll just watch it closely for the last twenty minutes of the night,” Darley advised. It stressed her out to think of her parents spending all this money at an auction when there was a decent chance she’d be begging them to pay the kids’ tuition at the end of the semester.
“Let’s be reasonable about it.” Chip frowned. “If I see either of you slinging back the pinot grigio and poking away at your phones, I’m going to confiscate them.”
“Oh, Chip, don’t be ridiculous,” Tilda laughed. “You know I only drink chardonnay.”
A handful of other parents from Poppy’s and Hatcher’s classes were already there, and Darley, Chip, and Tilda joined them at the bar for a cocktail. So many families at the Henry Street School had also gone to either Grace Church or Plymouth for nursery, so they all already knew one another and had spent the past few years arranging playdates and potlucks and different school fundraisers.
As they waited for drinks and chatted with the crowd, Chip scrolled through the silent auction items on his phone and spotted something Darley had somehow missed. “Hey, Darley, did you see this?” He pointed to a listing: “High Flying Adventure—Join an experienced pilot in a Cirrus SR22 for an afternoon excursion. From Montauk to Hot Springs, the world is your oyster, four hours in the air with a decadent picnic for two.”
“I didn’t see that,” Darley said in surprise. “It must have been added today.”
“Who donated the item?” Tilda squinted at Chip’s phone.
“I don’t know, I can’t think of any lower-school parents with an SR22. I think most of the parents in Poppy’s class use corporate planes or just do NetJets.” Darley looked around the room curiously. “Okay if I go investigate?”
Chip nodded, and she headed off toward the cluster of women holding iPads near the stage. Sharon from the development office pointed her over to Cy Habib, a handsome man in an Hermès tie sitting at a high top with a group of upper school parents.
“Excuse me.” Darley approached and tapped his elbow. “I’m Darley Stockton and my kids are in the lower school. Did you donate the ride on the SR22?”
“I did, are you bidding?” He stood to shake her hand and grinned, revealing a beautiful white smile.
“I might bid! I had to meet the owner.”
“Guilty as charged. Insane I bought the thing. You know what they say: If it flies or floats, rent it.”
That was, in fact, not the expression. Darley had heard it a million times: “If it flies, floats, or fucks, rent it.” Paying for a plane, a boat, or a wife was a waste of money. She appreciated this stranger’s sense of decorum.
“It’s a beautiful plane. It’s so luxurious on the inside, like a sports car—all that leather,” Darley said.
“The first time I saw the gull wing doors I was a goner. And the avionics . . .” Cy shook his head.
“And the parachute. I love that the plane has its own parachute!”
“You know their slogan, ‘Chute Happens.’？” They both laughed.
“Do you work in the industry, or are you a weekend warrior?”
“I work in airlines. Then I leave the office and go fly. What can I say? I wish I were a more well-rounded person, but my golf game is terrible.” Cy smiled and Darley grinned back. “What about you? Are you in the industry?”
“Oh, no,” Darley demurred. “My husband is, but I’m just an avgeek.”
“Half the people in this room have worse and more expensive habits. I think we’re doing okay.”
They chatted for a few more minutes before Cy gave her his card and invited her and Malcolm to join him on the plane anytime. Darley made her way back to her parents, glowing happily.
“So, who owns the plane?” Tilda asked conspiratorially. A Cirrus SR22 was worth at least a million dollars, and Tilda made it her business to know who had that kind of cash lying around for their hobbies.
“His name is Cy Habib. They live over on Gardner Place.”
“What kind of name is Habib?” Chip frowned.
“It’s Middle Eastern,” Darley answered.
“Ah,” Chip said, nodding, as if this confirmed a particularly clever suspicion.
Darley snorted in annoyance. But it wasn’t surprising to her that one of the other parents who flew planes was a person of color. This was something she and Malcolm had reflected on, how diverse the world of American aviation was. Sometimes it started young, because children of immigrants just had more exposure to long international flights as kids, heading to India or Singapore or South Africa to visit their grandparents. While Darley had just walked three blocks to see Pip and Pop, Malcolm was flying to South Korea, poking his head into the cockpit to meet the pilots, affixing plastic wings to his carefully pressed shirt. There was also something glamorous about flying overseas, and once you got jet fuel in your veins it was impossible to shake. People who loved to fly were hooked for life.