Standard Deviation: ‘The best feel-good novel around’ Daily Mail. Katherine Heiny
Graham was sure he would, too. Audra had talked nonstop during labor and even through the delivery. He remembered the doctor (apparently it was Dr. Luxe) saying to the nurse, “The epidural has really thrown her for a loop,” and the nurse saying, “No, that’s just her personality.”
“Do you think you could call him?” Graham asked. “And ask him a favor?”
“What sort of favor?”
“For Elspeth.”
“I don’t see why not,” Audra said. She sighed suddenly. “I think I’ve sewn this shirt to my jeans. God, I hate Cub Scouts. Get me another drink, will you?”
Matthew wanted to join an origami club that met on Sundays at nine in the morning on the Lower East Side that Bitsy had helped him find on the internet. Was it fair to blame Bitsy for this? Would it be fair to ask Bitsy to take Matthew to the club meeting every Sunday for the duration of her stay in their apartment, and possibly years beyond that? No, probably not. Graham sighed and called the number on the website.
Later Graham would tell himself that he knew just from the way Clayton answered the phone that there was something not really—not exactly—not quite—normal about him. But the truth was that he wasn’t really paying that much attention and he didn’t pick up on anything until they were at least four or five exchanges into the conversation.
“Hello,” Graham said. “Can I speak to Clayton Pierce, please?”
“This is Clayton speaking.”
“Well,” Graham said. “I’m calling about the Origami Club—”
“All right, all right, just hold up a second here,” Clayton said. “First, how old are you?”
“I’m calling for my son,” Graham said. “He’s the one who wants to join.”
“And you?” Clayton said. “Do you fold?”
“No,” Graham said, and there was a small frosty silence on the line, the same kind of silence that might follow someone at a swingers’ party asking if you swing.
“I see,” Clayton said. “How old is your son?”
“He’s ten.”
“Mmmm-hmmm,” Clayton said, obviously writing something down. “And his name?”
“Matthew Cavanaugh.”
“Is Matthew aware that we are an invitation-only club?” Clayton asked.
“Well, no,” Graham said, startled. “We didn’t know that.”
“Now, look here,” Clayton said. “This isn’t the YMCA, where any sort of riffraff can walk in and join. We have standards. We’re exclusive. Like White’s in London.”
“Or the Marines,” Graham said. The few. The proud.
“Oh, hey now, I don’t hold with any sort of military action,” Clayton said hotly. “I’m a pacifist and the club is strictly nonpolitical.”
“Yes, of course,” Graham murmured, wondering if it was even possible for an origami club to be political. What were they going to do—fold a fleet of paper airplanes and invade Libya?
“All right, before we can even consider Matthew as a member, I have a few questions,” Clayton said.
Graham, like all parents of special-needs children, had a range of stock phrases that he used when talking about Matthew to other people. The phrases ranged from polite euphemisms (“We prefer to think of him as reserved”) to gentle sidestepping (“He can be very independent in the right circumstances”) to outright lying (“Matthew loves new experiences!”). But the odd thing was that, in this conversation, Graham didn’t need to use any of those phrases, not a single one.
“I assume Matthew can do a general swivel fold,” Clayton said.
“Oh, yes.”
“An open sink?”
“Yes.”
“What about an open double sink?”
“That too.”
Clayton made a reluctant impressed sound. “And a closed sink?”
“I think so,” Graham said, frowning. “He spent weeks learning something called an unsink, or maybe a closed unsink. I can’t remember.”
“Well, there’s a tremendous difference,” Clayton said tartly. “We’re not talking about making omelets here, where you can by guess and by golly. A closed unsink is a very difficult fold.”
“I believe he was making something called a—a tarantula?” Graham said. “Lang’s Tarantula?”
Silence on the other end of the line, except for a slight noise that could have been a pencil tapping. “Is Matthew free this Sunday?” Clayton said at last. “We’d like to meet him.”
“Yes, he is,” Graham said.
Clayton gave him his address and told him to have Matthew there by nine.
Graham hung up feeling absolutely confident that Matthew would dazzle them. He would never admit it, not even to himself, but it was a wholly new sensation.
War is hell, yes; but so is Cub Scouts. Or at least being the parent of a Cub Scout is. A subtler kind of hell where the people have no sense of irony, and they make you go camping in cold weather, and you have to carve small race cars out of blocks of wood, and sing songs that have a lot of verses, and attend den meetings, and help your child obtain all sorts of useless (and nearly unobtainable) badges. And then, after years of encouraging your kid to like Cub Scouts, you have to quick discourage him from liking it around age twelve so it doesn’t adversely affect his social life. Plus, they ban alcohol.
And now Audra wanted to attend the Cub Scouts party!
“It’s not an official Cub Scouts party,” she said to Graham. “It’s just for adults.”
“Why would we want to go if Matthew isn’t even invited?” Graham asked. Matthew wasn’t invited much of anyplace. It was something that worried him.
“Think of it as networking,” Audra coaxed. “Almost everyone there will be the parent of a boy in Matthew’s class. This is a great way to get to know people and make him feel more a part of things. Besides, I already promised Matthew’s Akela we would go.”
This was another thing about Cub Scouts: you started out using all these scouting terms ironically—Akela, Webelo, woggle, camporee, Okpik—and you ended up using them sincerely. Before you knew it, these words had crept into your vernacular and you said them to prospective clients or sex partners.
So they went to “network,” leaving Matthew with Bitsy, and walking over to the Akela’s very nice eight-room apartment on 108th Street. (The Akela was married to an investment banker.)
The Akela herself answered the door. She was a tall, large-boned woman with sharp blue eyes and blunt-cut blond hair. Graham was used to seeing her in the ill-fitting and unbecoming khaki Scout uniform, but the long red velvet dress she wore now was no more flattering. And what’s more, she had the slightly sweaty, shaky look of someone hosting a party. Graham’s heart went out to her at once.
“Graham! Audra! Welcome!” she cried, and Graham realized he had no clue what the Akela’s name actually was.
“Maxine,” Audra said. “Thank you for having us.”
The Akela was carrying a wineglass—the sight of it lifted Graham’s spirits like a scrap of paper tied to a weather balloon; alcohol wasn’t banned at this party!—which she used to gesture vaguely down the hall. “Just help yourselves to a drink … we have, you know, whatever … and I’ll introduce you …” She trailed off as the buzzer sounded again and took a big swallow