"Surely you have ice cream in there somewhere," Elaine says, not letting go.
"Let's not minimize the situation," the principal says.
"The batteries on the bullhorn are dead," the school secretary informs the principal. "But I found this." She waves a cone, like the kind cheerleaders use. She turns to Elaine. "I spoke with your husband; he's on his way." The secretary holds a clipboard filled with class lists, charts, plans, pressed close to her chest.
Elaine overhears the librarian talking to the gym teacher. "Why doesn't someone just march in there and tell him to behave? Hell, I'll do it. He's not going to shoot me," the gym teacher says. "I'll put him over my knees and give him what for-the trouble he's causing."
"The word no means nothing today," the librarian says.
Two more police cars pull up.
"What's the story?" the top cop asks.
The principal defers to the teacher, who apologizes in advance. "I'm a little rattled," Mrs. Goldmark says. "I've never seen a gun before."
Elaine can't help but notice that she's got huge breasts-tits like torpedoes, high and hard, mounted on her chest. Elaine doesn't remember her having a chest like that before. She guesses it's new. You get what you pay for-more for the money.
"It was a perfectly normal day," Mrs. Goldmark says. "They'd just come back from lunch and were settling down-they're always a little wild after recess. I noticed Nate was wearing a longsleeved flannel shirt. 'Aren't you warm?' I asked him. 'No,' he said. 'I'm hot, like I'm on fire, like I'm going to explode.' And then he laughed. 'Well, take a layer off,' I said. Then I turned away and wrote something on the blackboard. Next thing I know, he pulls out a gun, points it at Sammy, and says, 'I'll show you what history is.'" The teacher continues, "Then he grabbed the little girl next to him and kissed her."
"She'd never been kissed before," the school secretary says. "She's with the health aide now."
Elaine is listening to what they are saying, fitting one line into the next like Legos, trying to get it to add up. She stares; Mrs. Goldmark and her torpedo tits look like something out of a James Bond movie-and her roots are coming through, black beneath the blond.
Mrs. Goldmark goes on, "He told us all to get out of the room, and then he led Sammy into the cloakroom. He's definitely got something under his shirt-I don't know what, but there's something there. I instructed the children to remain calm, to collect their things, and to file out into the hall. They ran like maniacs."
"Did he bring anything unusual to school? Was he carrying anything this morning?" the cop asks.
"They all have knapsacks and gym bags," Mrs. Goldmark says, shaking her head. "The ones who go back and forth between parents sometimes come with suitcases."
"What's the status of the school?"
"We're evacuating, I've called for an early dismissal, we've ordered buses and crossing guards, and we've activated the telephone tree to notify parents."
"Which window is the classroom?"
The principal points to one on the first floor. "Four-B, fourth grade, second section."
The cop rubs his head. "I'm not very good with kids. I always say the wrong thing. How old are they?"
"Nine," the principal says.
The cop gets on his radio. "We're going to need backup down here. Find Macmillan and tell him I'll him call from a landline in a couple of minutes. I'm going to need to use your phone," he tells the principal. "I'm gonna call the Bomb Squad, and if I go on the radio with this, every nut-ball in hell will be here in ten minutes." He turns to the younger cop. "Search it,
room to room. Start on top and keep it very quiet, no radios, no talking. Make sure all the kids are out. Check closets and bathrooms, too. And then we're gonna need a zone out here, block it off. There's tape in the car."
"Who are you?" the cop asks Elaine.
"I'm the mother."
"Which mother?"
"Sammy's," Elaine says. "I came to pick Sammy up."
"The good boy or the bad boy?" the cop asks.
"The good boy," the teacher says.
Etherized by anxiety, Elaine's breath is light, shallow, at the top of her lungs. She is dizzy; her hands tingle.
It is morning. They are sitting at the kitchen table, eating blueberry pancakes. "Pass the syrup," Paul says. They eat breakfast, as though they've always eaten breakfast at the table together, as though it's nothing out of the ordinary. Sunlight floods the kitchen. "It's so bright in here I almost need sunglasses," Daniel says.
"It's shiny," Sammy says.
"It was a perfectly normal day," the teacher says.
The school secretary pops her trunk and takes out a pair of binoculars. "I'm a birder," she says, slightly self-conscious. "I keep them in my car." She takes a quick peek and then hands the binoculars to Elaine.
"Which window?" Elaine asks, not sure she wants to see.
"That one."
Elaine sees nothing. She adjusts the focus and sees chairs knocked over, things spilled, upset, as if people left in a hurry. There is a border of alphabet, cursive letters running around the top of the room, like decorative trim. On the blackboard is a paragraph that goes nowhere, an unfinished sentence. There is a map of the world and a globe on a stand.
"I'd like for this not to turn into a circus," the principal says, leading the cop into the school.
A yellow cab pulls into the driveway. The horn beeps. And beeps again, demanding, self-important, wrong-headed.
It's Paul.
"Elaine," he calls. "Elaine. Do you have any cash? I didn't stop for money."
She hands over her wallet.
"I'll need a receipt," Paul tells the driver. "Eighty-six seventy," he says, getting out of the car. "The whole way out I was playing a game with myself-How much would it cost? I guessed it would be about seventy-five. I gave him a hundred and ten. Was that enough? Too much? What do you think?"
Elaine can't answer-the sight of Paul drives her further in. "Nate and Sammy are in the cloakroom," she tells him, her voice flattened by the facts. "Nate has a gun. He has bulges under his clothes."
"Bulges?"
"Mysterious lumps. They're calling the Bomb Squad."
The radio crackles, and Elaine thinks of Sammy and Daniel in the backyard, the grass, the garden, the roots of trees, dirt in the Dumpster. Sammy and Daniel playing with walkie-talkies-what are you wearing? Red socks.
The younger cop is busy wrapping yellow crime scene tape around everything. It is the same kind of tape the fire department used at the house. He ties tape to the trees, the bike rack, the flagpole. He asks the passersby to take a step back, to give them some space.
Paul and Elaine stand inside the tape as though they are the thing being contained, quarantined, sealed off. They stand in the middle as though they are "it."
As much as the tape is to keep others out, to draw a line, a border, Elaine feels it is there to hold her in, to keep her corralled.
"I thought they were going to arrest us," Paul says. "I decided the whole thing-calling me at work, telling me to hurry, saying they needed us both-was a sting operation. I thought Sammy told them about the fire."
"Everything is not about you," Elaine says, raising the binoculars to her eyes, looking again.
"Can you see anything?"
"Pencils and pens. Notebook paper on the floor."
"Where would Nate get a gun?" She passes the binoculars to Paul.
"Gerald has guns," Paul says. "He goes to war camp on weekends. He shoots people with paint pellets."
"How do you know?"
"I know," he says, looking in.
Far away, there is the sound of sirens.
The top cop comes out of the school. "Let's keep this area here a quiet zone. All I want the boys to see out that window is their parents and an empty parking lot. And no radios, kill all the radios."