Amanda Bright @ Home (16 page)

Ben looked horrified by this latest injustice.

“I’m
hungry,
” he insisted. “I want
pizza.
”

“No,” Amanda repeated. She was aware of the eyes of the other mothers upon her; it was unusual for her to resist her children’s demands.

“Really, they just ate,” she explained.

“No we
didn’t.
We haven’t eaten for
hours.
I’m
starving.
”

Amanda made no motion to open her purse. The rest of the children bolted impatiently in the direction of the pizza counter. Ben and Sophie continued their standoff.

“Could I have a thoda?”

“Yeah, I’m thirsty, too.”

“Why not let them have something?” said Patricia with irritation; it was obvious she wanted the children just to go away.

“Okay,” Amanda said, rising and taking their hands. “I’ll go with you.”

She found the other children sitting at the counter, slurping from plates of microwaved pizza and gigantic tumblers of cola. Amanda asked the clerk for two glasses of water. The clerk deposited two bottles in front of her.

“That’ll be three dollars.”

“No, not
bottled
water. Tap water will be fine.”

“I don’t want water!”

“Shut up, Ben,” Amanda hissed.

“Mommy said shut up!” cried Sophie, shocked.

“We don’t give out tap water. You want tap water, you have to use the fountain by the bathrooms.” The clerk clucked with disgust and put the bottles back in the fridge.

Amanda pulled her children back toward the playground. “Look, we’re only going to be here for a few more minutes,” she pleaded. “Why don’t you enjoy yourselves and Mommy will make a nice treat for you when we get home?”

“I
can’t
enjoy myself without pizza,” Ben retorted.

“Then I guess you’re going to have a lousy time.”

Amanda strode off toward the mothers while Ben and Sophie wandered back to the counter to watch the other children eat pizza, like two park pigeons hoping some of the crumbs might fall to them.

“Everything’s fine,” Amanda remarked when she sat down again. The women nodded; by now they were engrossed in a conversation about schools.

“I’ve applied to Beauvoir for Meredith,” said Patricia, attempting to pronounce the tony school’s name with the proper French inflection but succeeding only in producing the noise of a Parisian welling up to spit:
Boh-vwach!
“I wanted her in a nurturing environment.”

“Beauvoir’s fabulous,” agreed Ellen. “I’d like Jonathan to attend the International School for a few years—they have a tremendous French immersion program. Of course eventually he’ll have to go to St. Alban’s. That’s where his father went.”

“Charlotte’s going to go to Beauvoir, too,” said Kim, and then corrected herself. “I should say we’ve
applied
, but I’d be surprised if she wasn’t accepted. I attended Beauvoir and Lord knows we’ve given them enough money over the years.”

Once more their faces turned expectantly to Amanda.

“I hadn’t really thought about it yet—I’ve just assumed he’s going to go to Oliver Wendell Holmes,” Amanda said, naming the public school three blocks from their house. “Bob and I believe in the public school system,” she added, without conviction. “And Holmes is a national merit school …”

Patricia offered her a consoling smile. “I think that sounds like the perfect environment for Ben.”

Amanda turned into the snarl of Connecticut Avenue. Most of the cars struggled north, like salmon beating upstream; Amanda headed south toward the city. Ben and Sophie sat glumly in the backseat. Their disappointment at PlayZone manifested itself in alternating moods of self-pity and quarrelsomeness. Amanda wondered wearily why she had bothered to take them at all.

Amanda slowed for a red light. They were passing through Chevy Chase. On either side gracious mansions obscured their faces behind tall hedges like demure ladies holding emerald fans. Heat and exhaust billowed in through Amanda’s open car windows. The air-conditioning system had mysteriously failed the day before. Who knew when she would be able to afford to get it fixed? She tried turning up the vents but that only blew the hot air more intensely into her face. The heat made Amanda feel sleepy, dreamy. She glanced sidelong at the car next to her, a gleaming black sedan whose occupant was tightly sealed inside a climate-controlled compartment. Beyond him was the stone fence demarking the Chevy Chase Country Club; from somewhere she heard the sharp thwack of a tennis serve.

The traffic picked up again and soon they had crossed the District line and entered the familiar reaches of Woodley Park. There was the transient woman shaking a cup for change outside the drugstore. Perspiring mothers in string T-shirts pushed strollers over sidewalks that glittered with broken glass. A waiter mopped down the plastic tables of an outdoor café.

To Amanda, the shabbiness of her neighborhood was its badge of urbanity; it felt hip and comfortable, like a worn pair of bell-bottoms. But now, as she paused behind a car blinking left, Amanda saw her life stretching out like the motley blocks ahead. Where would she end up if she persisted in going on like this? She watched as an elderly woman climbed the stoop of a depression-era apartment building, its dirty beige bricks streaked with rusty drips from gasping air conditioners. A sign advertised
garden units
with
kitchenettes
and all the modern conveniences of a bygone era. There were many of these buildings along this strip of Connecticut—buildings that had missed gentrification during the great boom, buildings in which the hallways reeked of someone else’s cauliflower.

Amanda’s car lurched forward and cut over a lane; they were nearing their street. She glimpsed, in the rearview mirror, the reflection of two sleeping heads: Sophie’s mouth was parted, her eyelids dappled with sweat; all the anger had drained from Ben’s face and with it, three or four years of age. He looked again as he had in his crib, during those soft hours of nap time, when she would brush her lips across his forehead and be amused that so forceful a creature could appear so benign when asleep. Soon he would be in kindergarten; next fall Sophie would be in school for a full day. Last summer, every single one of Amanda’s movements had been constrained by a diaper-clad free weight. She had been unprepared for the extraordinary sensation of lightness she experienced on Sophie’s first day of school, when her daughter toddled into Ms. Fishbein’s class and assured her anxious mother, with a wave of her tiny hand, that she would be fine and to please go home. As Amanda walked back down the hallway, with no tearful child clutching at her leg, she asked herself if she felt bereft or sentimental over her daughter’s sudden independence. No, came the immediate answer. Not one bit.

As she pulled into the driveway of their little house, Amanda admitted a thought she had long resisted—a thought she had blurted out to Bob the other night and then almost as quickly suppressed again.

Why not go back to work?

Why not?

Chapter Eleven

TAPA-TAPA-TAP-TAP. Tapa-tapa-tap-tap.

The show opened with a drumbeat, followed by heraldic blasts of trumpets and the obligatory shot of the Capitol dome. The panel appeared, seated around a wood-grain tabletop. The camera settled briefly upon Bob. He looked petrified.

“Why is Daddy orange?” Ben asked.

“I think it’s the TV makeup. Shh.”

“Daddy ith wearing makeup?” said Sophie.

“Shh!”

The image of the host, Fred Fallow, in his trademark red vest, filled the screen. His fat jowls, mesmerizing comb-over, and belligerent why-is-everyone-but-me-so-stupid attitude would have disqualified him from any other on-air job in the country, but Fallow thrived in the elite hothouse of Washington television like one of those rare snapping plants gardeners prize for their oddity and ugliness.

“Tonight on
Left/Right,
” Fallow shouted at the camera, “Megabyte faces the biggest corporate fine in history for flouting its deal with the Justice department. Meanwhile, the Senate will begin hearings next week on competition in the software industry. Megabyte: is it a Mega monster? Or is it—as billionaire founder Mike Frith insists—merely Mega Misunderstood?

“Joining us are Chris Kachinski, legal counsel for Megabyte, and Bob Clarke, head of the computers and technology division at the Justice department. My cohost, Jane Henshaw, is on vacation. Sitting in for the right is Cathy O’Toole of the
National Standard
magazine. Welcome back, Cathy.”

“Thanks, Fred.” The camera panned to a blond woman in a crisp red blazer, the woman Amanda had seen at Jack Chasen’s party. O’Toole greeted the lens with a wry, crooked smile that seemed to imply she knew more than she was letting on. Amanda grimaced and immediately felt sorry for Bob. Cathy O’Toole was like a bull terrier—once she had sunk her teeth into a guest’s pant leg, it was hard to dislodge her.

“Well, Fred, we’d all like to be on vacation in this weather,” O’Toole was saying with false bonhomie. “Washington is filled with hot air all year round but right now it’s as hot as it gets. Or maybe not. I suspect the Senate hearings are going to generate even more heat—especially for Mike Frith. Chris, how is your client preparing for his much-awaited appearance before the Judiciary committee?”

Chris Kachinski was bland, reassuring—like a family doctor.

“Cathy, he reminds me of a professional athlete before a big match,” Kachinski replied smoothly. “He’s pumped, he’s confident. He feels the government has no case against him, and that’s going to become very apparent during these hearings. Frankly, he’s looking forward to the chance to tell his side of the story.”

Fallow jumped in. “C’mon, Chris, everyone knows the public can’t stand Mike Frith. He’s arrogant and defiant. I understand the Justice department is rubbing its hands together in glee at the prospect of having Frith take the stand. Isn’t that right, Bob?”

“Uh, not exactly, Fred,” Bob said, clearing his throat.

“Daddy!” the children cheered in unison.

Bob paused—for a heart-stopping second, he appeared to have forgotten what he meant to say. As he shifted and leaned forward on his elbows, his fellow panelists stared at him like hungry crocodiles, waiting for the baby gazelle to stray near the edge of the water.

“The government’s position is this,” Bob began, his voice fluttering. “Megabyte, er, flagrantly violated the consent decree it had with the Justice department with the launch of its new software, MB-98. Basically, you see”—he shifted again—” Megabyte bundled its Internet navigator with MB-98 after promising us it wouldn’t, and that’s why the company got fined. Now we have reason to believe that Megabyte is, uh, threatening its competitors and distributors who won’t play the game their way. We’re currently investigating whether these actions violate the Sherman Anti-Trust Act—”

Amanda winced at Bob’s technical verbiage. She could almost feel the loyalties of the viewers shifting to Kachinski.

“What’s Daddy saying?”

“Quiet—I’ll tell you after.”

“Bob,” interjected O’Toole, her grin widening, “my understanding is that the antitrust laws were not designed to protect competitors from competition. They are supposed to protect consumers from dangerous monopolies. What evidence, if any, does the government have that the consumer is being hurt by Megabyte?”

“As I said, we’re collecting that evidence right now,” Bob said, his voice no steadier. “But in any case, Cathy, from our point of view, it’s more about the
potential
threat that Megabyte poses to consumers.”

“Well, folks, now you have it directly from the government’s mouth,” Kachinski retorted, shaking his head in mock astonishment. “The Justice department has no evidence that Megabyte has done anything wrong. Instead it’s on a fishing expedition at the behest of our competitors. It’s a dangerous legal precedent to accuse a company of wrongdoing based on a ‘potential’ threat. Either the threat is real or it’s not.”

“Is that man bad, Mommy?” Ben asked as the show went to a commercial.

“Uh no, not bad exactly.”

“Doesn’t he like Daddy?”

“He
disagrees
with Daddy.”

“Who is Mike Frith?”

“He’s the person that man is representing. He’s like—” Amanda sought an analogy a child might understand. “He’s like Mike Frith’s friend. He’s defending Mike Frith.”

“Is Mike Frith bad?” Ben persisted.

“Yes,” Amanda replied without hesitation. “Mike Frith is very bad. He wants to control all the computers in the world.”

“Like Lord Zordon?” Ben said, referring to the alien villain in his beloved Space Rangers.

“Yes—I guess so. Like Lord Zordon.”

“And Daddy’s fighting him?”

“Uh-huh. Daddy—and the United States government.”

Ben looked dazzled. “Cool!”

Not so Sophie. “Will Daddy win?” she asked worriedly.

“Oh, honey, yes, I’m sure he will,” Amanda said, regretting the nightmare she had inadvertently dropped into her daughter’s head. “He’s not fighting him with swords or weapons, sweetie. He’s fighting him with the law. He’s going to court—you know, with judges and people like that. No one is going to get hurt.”

Sophie did not seem reassured; she raised her thumb to her mouth and directed her attention back to the television. The show resumed, with no letup in the hammering of Bob.

“Why can’t you just admit, Bob,” O’Toole lit in, “that Megabyte produced a better product than its competitors, and now its competitors are acting like sore losers and using the Justice department to get back at Megabyte?”

“Exactly,” agreed Kachinski while Bob stammered, “Cathy, uh, Cathy, if you could just let me respond,” but failed to inject himself into the debate. “What’s more, you’ve got guys like Jim Hochmayer and other honchos lobbying the government. These guys contributed a lot to the president’s campaign and, by the way, a lot to Senator Benson’s election—and he’s going to be chairing the hearings!”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Fallow said in his loud, dismissive voice. “You make it sound like Megabyte is some poor little company, when in fact it’s been crushing to death any competitor that’s dared to get in its way!”