“You’re also required to protect our children’s privacy,” Bill insists. He’s always walking fast around the school with the hard soles of his dress shoes clacking too loudly, all Look at me! Here I am! Mary Beth can’t decide whether Bill’s a nice person, but right now she doesn’t care because he happens to be right. Privacy is all the rage in parenting these days, a hex on parents who post pictures of their toddlers in the bathtub, and, well, doesn’t this seem like the most extreme violation thereof?
Mary Beth thinks yes. She thinks she is not overreacting, that no one can suggest she is. She’s simply reacting. That’s an important distinction to remember. It’s the job of adults to protect kids. It’s more than that. It’s her moral obligation.
“I was thinking that a teacher is dead and that I am a teacher,” replies Mrs. Tokem. “They’re just finishing up collecting the sample from the classroom and then they’ll be on their way.” Mrs. Tokem swishes her palms together, done and dusted.
“Think about it. Why would the police want DNA samples from our children?” She can’t help if she’s talking too loudly; Mary Beth is naturally sort of a loud person.
“We can’t interfere with the investigation.” Maggie’s mother, Roxy, leans over, obviously having been listening the entire time. Of course. How very helpful, Roxy. Not only is she unconcerned, if Mary Beth isn’t mistaken, she might be giving off signals in the opposite direction: Get your little monsters under control.
“There are consent forms for saliva samples via a mouth swab. You can sign them or not, completely voluntary.” The teacher hands them out to each parent, moving on from Bill and Mary Beth. Dismissed! Easy as that.
“Why the kids, though?” Mary Beth’s mind is spinning.
“Isn’t it obvious?” asks Tamar’s mom. “The footprints. The creepy little footprints.”
Bill trots after the teacher while Mary Beth watches helplessly. “There are only ten kids in the class. The police can use process of elimination,” he tells her.
Word of his son’s overzealous feeding on his wife had spread well beyond their classroom by now; Mary Beth understands his concern.
As a parent, Mary Beth sometimes finds that there are things her children want to do that she instinctively says no to. You cannot play with the Scotch tape. Don’t sit on the countertop. Quit playing with the faucet. Because …
Because …
She’s been a mother long enough to know when things are a bad idea, and right now her mom sirens are blaring. They can’t allow this to happen because … because … because …
Just then the male officer and female detective who were snooping—unchaperoned—through their children’s classroom emerge. They look overheated and unhurried, the man in his slim-fitting navy pants and bulky belt, the woman in her wool suit, the top buttons of her starched pastel-pink shirt unfastened at the neck. Each year the school invites police officers and firefighters to the school for a career day and every time she welcomes them with a box full of doughnuts, not caring if the gesture is too on the nose. Well, she might not be so quick to offer next year.
She’s trying to think of what to say or do. Something. Something. She is supposed to be doing something.
“Stop!” she yells at the police officers, who are making their way back to the patrol car.
To her surprise, they do stop and turn.
It’s best if she doesn’t conjure too vividly an image of what they must see walking toward them, but if she had to, it would be a woman with a messy mom bun, frizzed where the tail of her hair sticks out of its rubber band, a pudge of fat and skin hiding not very well beneath the waistband of her black yoga pants, the control-top band of which she can never decide whether to wear over the lump, under it, or strangling it down, and sporting flip-flops. A mom of the first order.
“Can we help you, ma’am?” Detective Wanda Bright nudges her Oakley sunglasses over the bridge of her nose.
“Would you mind showing me your search warrant, please?” says Mary Beth.
Bright’s partner, Princep, mashes gum between his teeth. “It’s a crime scene. We don’t need a search warrant.”
There’s a small brown bag in Bright’s hand that Mary Beth can’t keep her eyes off of. “No crime occurred in that classroom,” she says hastily. “The kids have moved classes after … after what happened.”
Is she really doing this? Is she really going to stand in the way of two uniformed officers and their job?
She sees no other choice. So the question, really, is can she? Can she stop them? It might sound crazy to believe that she can, but then again, Mary Beth once talked her way into the Bahamas even after forgetting her passport.
“The school is a crime scene, ma’am,” Bright repeats.
“That doesn’t mean you can just take things.” Even though, for all she knows, it means that precisely. All she has to do is sound right enough that they question things first. Buy time. As much of it as she can afford. She thinks of Bodhi and Zeke and Bex and the others, and, of course, even Noelle, and she musters her nerve.
“A teacher gave us permission.” Bright pushes up her iridescently mirrored glasses with the hand not holding a bag of poop.
Mary Beth is going to have a few more choice words for Mrs. Tokem, but for now—“She doesn’t own the school. It’s a 501（c）（3） organization. It’s not for profit. It’s for us. We own the school. We pay her. That’s right. Hand it over.” She twitches her fingers at them.
“Ma’am.” Bright doesn’t move.
None of the other parents have come to join her, not even Asher’s father, Bill.
“The school can’t disclose medical information without parental consent.” She tries another angle. There’s got to be one that will do. “I xeroxed the forms. Hundreds of them. I should know.”
“Please step aside.” Princep holds out his hand like he works as an armed guard protecting the queen’s crown jewels instead of, well, what it is. “This is an active investigation. We’re working within our authority,” he rattles off.
Bright frowns and tries to pass her. Instinctively, Mary Beth reaches for the stool sample bag. “I’m acting within my authority to protect the students.” She makes no mention of the fact that she was not elected to her position, but instead was the sole volunteer on an empty sign-up sheet.
“Did you just reach for my gun?” Bright lurches back. “Did she just reach for my gun? Did you see that?”
Princep’s hand goes to his holster. “Ma’am. Ma’am. Back. Way. Up.”
“I didn’t—” Mary Beth looks around a little wildly for support.
“I can have you arrested for obstructing an open investigation and assaulting a police officer.” Princep has not taken his hand off of the gun. His thumb rests lightly on the hammer.
“This is fucking ridiculous,” Mary Beth says. She slaps her hand over her mouth. She almost never curses.
“You need to keep a respectful tone, miss,” Bright warns. “I felt her reach for the gun.”