So Be It

LIKE ANY SEX EDUCATOR WORTH HER SALT, RUTH WAS A BIG FAN of latex condoms. They were cheap, effective, easy to use, and widely available. In terms of the misery they’d spared humanity over the years—the unwanted pregnancies, the horrible diseases, the disrupted young lives—she would have happily placed the humble rubber right up there beside antibiotics and childhood vaccines in the pantheon of Public Health Marvels of the Modern World. For the average high-school student, moreover, condoms were birth control—there was really no viable alternative. Ruth used to joke, in simpler times, that the entire ninth-grade Sex Ed curriculum could be reduced to three words: Condoms, Condoms, Condoms!

Which was why it was so galling to be “teaching” today’s prepackaged lesson, whose misleading and dangerous title she’d scribbled on the blackboard at the beginning of class with a shaky, self-loathing hand: “THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SAFE SEX.” Well, of course there wasn’t, not if you defined safety as the impossibility of anything bad ever happening to anyone. There was no such thing as risk-free automobile travel, either, but we didn’t teach our kids to stay out of cars. We taught them defensive driving skills and told them a million times to wear their seat belts, because driving was an important part of life, and everyone needed to learn how to do it as safely as possible.

“The lesson plan calls for another role-playing exercise,” Ruth announced. “Any volunteers?”

To no one’s surprise, Dan Hayes’s and Courtney Brenner’s hands shot into the air. The class had done four of these skits in the past week, and Dan and Courtney had played the young lovers in all of them.

“How about someone new? Someone who hasn’t had a chance yet?”

Ruth wasn’t optimistic about this request; she had learned long ago that role playing and Sex Education didn’t mix that well. Most teenagers were hesitant to get up in front of their peers and enact scenarios that were either painfully close to their real lives or even more painfully distant. The ones who enjoyed it tended to be experienced thespians like Dan or shameless exhibitionists like Courtney.

“Come on, guys. This is a class. We all need to participate.” Ruth let several seconds go by, but no one took the bait. “All right, I guess it’s time for another episode of the Dan and Courtney Show.”

The two stars rose from their seats and headed to the front of the room, happily acknowledging the applause of their classmates, which, for the most part, wasn’t meant sarcastically. Aside from being thankful to Dan and Courtney for letting the rest of them off the hook, the other kids seemed genuinely entertained by their performances, and Ruth could at least see why they felt this way, even if she didn’t completely share the sentiment. As annoying as they could be, Dan and Courtney did have an odd, counterintuitive chemistry, and they threw themselves into their roles with an enthusiasm and lack of self-consciousness that was highly unusual in high-school freshmen.

Dan was small for his age, barely pubescent, a skinny, big-headed kid with a strangely commanding personality. He’d been acting since elementary school, not only in local and regional theater, but also on TV commercials. Ruth had seen him in an ad for the Olive Garden, shoveling a gigantic forkful of spaghetti into his mouth while a jolly waiter looked on, clapping a hand to his cheek in astonishment, and in a spot for State Farm, in which he bounced on a trampoline in slow motion while his ersatz parents gazed at him with loving expressions, happy to know his future was secure.

Courtney was at least at head taller than her partner, and looked to be about a decade older, a young girl endowed with a woman’s body and an unnerving aura of sexual confidence. Her outfits just managed to obey the letter of the school dress code while violating its spirit at every turn; things she wore had a peculiar way of slipping down or creeping up or popping open. Ruth often saw her in the hall with older boys, junior and senior football players mostly, and it was the jocks who looked starstruck and grateful for the company, not Courtney.

“All right.” Ruth smiled wanly, trying to ignore the familiar heaviness in her chest. “Let me give you the setup. Courtney, you’re Gina, and Dan, you’re Ethan, and you two—”

“Wait,” said Courtney. “Could I be Heather instead?”

“There is no Heather,” Ruth told her. “The girl’s name is Gina.”

Courtney frowned. “Could I change it to Heather? I really don’t like the name Gina.”

“This is role playing,” Ruth reminded her. “It’s pretend.”

“I’m just not comfortable being Gina.”

“Fine, whatever. It doesn’t really matter.”

“It matters to me,” Courtney insisted. “I totally prefer Heather.”

“Could I be Skip?” Dan inquired. “I mean, if she gets to change her name—”

“Skip?” Courtney scoffed. “What kinda stupid name is that?”

“It’s cool,” Dan replied, but with less self-assurance than usual. “He’s like this laid-back preppy dude.”

“That’s pathetic,” Courtney informed him. “Nobody’s named Skip.”

As she said this, Courtney absentmindedly lifted the hem of her shirt above her navel, revealing a taut expanse of youthful midriff. The whole class seemed to freeze for a moment as she languorously rubbed her belly, like an old man who’d just eaten a big meal.

“Skip’s a good name,” she declared, pulling her shirt back into place. “For a dog!”

“Woof!” Blake Vizzoni called out from the back of the room. His lackeys responded with the usual chorus of servile chuckles.

“That’s enough,” Ruth told them. She turned back to Dan and Courtney. “Okay, so you’re Skip and Heather, two sixteen-year-olds who’ve been going steady for a year. It’s after school, and you’re alone in the rec room, with no adult supervision.”

“My house or hers?” asked Dan.

“Does it matter?”

“Kind of,” he said. “I like to be clear on the details.”

“Let’s just say it’s Skip’s house, okay? You guys are making out, and it’s getting hot and heavy. This is something that’s happened once or twice before, but you’ve managed to stop yourselves before things got out of hand. But today something’s different. Today, Skip’s got a condom in his wallet.”

Ruth was finished, but the actors just kept staring at her, as if awaiting further instruction. After a moment, she realized what she’d forgotten—it was something Dan insisted on—and halfheartedly clapped her hands.

“Action.”

The word was barely out of her mouth when the young lovers flung their arms around each other and began making out in a disturbingly realistic manner, with Dan all the way up on his tippytoes, his neck cranked back at an uncomfortable angle. Ruth didn’t think they were using their tongues, but it was hard to be sure—the way Courtney was stooping, her hair formed a kind of curtain around their faces. Meanwhile, Dan’s hands were roaming freely up and down the length of her back, making occasional forays into the northern precincts of the butt region, eliciting whoops of delight and cries of “Go for it!” from the peanut gallery, which couldn’t have been what JoAnn Marlow had in mind when she designed the exercise.

Happy as she was to see the new curriculum subverted in any and every way, Ruth also knew better than to assume that what happened in her classroom would stay in her classroom. She was particularly concerned about the loyalties of one student, a watchful girl named Robin LeFebvre, whose family supposedly belonged to the Tabernacle (Ruth had made inquiries). Robin took copious notes from one end of class to the other—she was scribbling away right now, her face pale and visibly shocked by the spectacle Dan and Courtney were making of themselves—and Ruth had a sneaking suspicion that she wasn’t doing it just to get a good grade on the end-of-unit test.

“All right,” she called out. “That’s enough. We get the point. Let’s move on.”

With what appeared to be genuine reluctance, Courtney unscrewed her face from Dan’s. She was blushing as she fixed her hair and tugged her clothes back into place; her voice was ragged, slightly breathless.

“Oh my God, Skip. You make me so hot. I just want to … you know …”

“What, Heather?” Dan spoke in a stage whisper that was clearly audible throughout the room. “I make you want to what?”

“To do it, Skip. To go all the way. Because I really, really love you.”

“I love you, too,” said Dan. “Now take off your pants.”

Courtney bit her lip in consternation, waiting for the laughter to die down.

“I want to take off my pants,” she said. “Oh God, Skip, you don’t know how badly I want to. But I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

“You know. We’ve talked about this before. I’m scared of getting pregnant, or catching a disease.”

“Well, have no fear.” With a magician’s flourish, Dan pulled an imaginary wallet out of his pocket and mimed the act of withdrawing a condom from the billfold. “I came prepared.”

“Oh my God.” Courtney’s eyes got big. “Is that what I think it is?”

“It’s foolproof,” he told her. “I guarantee you won’t get pregnant, and you won’t catch any diseases. Not that I have any diseases.”

Courtney took her chin in hand and thought this over for a moment. Then her face broke into a big smile.

“Awesome!” she said. “Let’s get busy!”

There was a moment of startled silence in the classroom, followed by a sudden uproar. Half of the audience shouted its approval, while the other half howled in protest. A normally well-behaved boy named Donald Swift fell out of his chair and began banging his fist repeatedly against the floor to express his otherwise inexpressible delight.

“People!” Ruth called out. “Come on, now. Pipe down! Donald, get back in your seat. This isn’t kindergarten.”

Donald sheepishly complied. Shaking her head in weary exasperation, Ruth turned to Courtney, preparing to admonish her for ruining the exercise. But she checked herself when she saw the look of innocent confusion on the girl’s face.

“I don’t get it,” Courtney said. “Why’s that so funny?”

“I think you misunderstood,” Ruth told her. “Heather’s not supposed to say yes. She’s supposed to forcefully rebut Skip’s claim that condoms provide foolproof protection against pregnancy and disease.”

“They don’t?” Courtney looked alarmed. “I thought they did.”

“Not foolproof,” Ruth informed her. “Didn’t you read the assignment?”

“I meant to. I was kinda busy last night.”

Ruth asked if anyone could help her out. Vik Ramachandran raised his hand.

“Heather could tell Skip that condoms don’t protect against certain STDs, like HPV, which can cause genital warts.”

Several people groaned, and a few others made the retching sound that was the customary response to any mention of this particular affliction.

“Fair enough,” Ruth said. “You’re absolutely right that condoms don’t prevent transmission of HPV, though they do a good job preventing a number of other STDs, including gonorrhea, chlamydia, and HIV. Anyone else? What else could Heather tell Skip about condoms?”

“She could talk about failure rates,” Marsha Gewirtz suggested. “Didn’t the handout say that they have a 36 percent failure rate? So that’s like a one-in-three chance that Heather could get pregnant, even if Skip uses a condom, right?”

Ruth winced. “I know that’s what the handout said, but that’s a pretty dubious number. First of all, I’ve never seen another study that even comes close to 25 percent, and I’ve seen a couple that put failure rates as low as 3 percent. The usual number is somewhere around 10 percent, but you have to understand that that’s an annual rate, meaning that over the course of one full year, 10 percent of the couples using only condoms for their birth control might expect to have an unwanted pregnancy. The failure rate for any individual act of intercourse would of course be much, much lower.”

“What about on the test?” asked Susan Chang. “Do we say 36 percent failure, or 10 percent?”

“For this curriculum, I guess we’re required to say thirty-six,” Ruth told her. “But I do want you to be aware that that’s not a universally accepted number. If you’re looking for a more credible source of information about birth control, I suggest you check out the website for Planned Parenthood.” Ruth turned back to the actors. “All right, guys. Are we ready for Take Two?”

“It’s too late,” a lunkhead named Mike Petoski called out. “Skip already creamed his pants.”

This witticism inspired great mirth in the back two rows of the classroom, and a good deal of eye-rolling closer to the front.

“Enough,” Ruth snapped. “If you can’t control yourself, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“That’s what she said,” Blake Vizzoni muttered.

Ruth decided to ignore him. She was just about to say Action when she noticed Robin LeFebvre’s hand in the air.

“Yes, Robin?”

“I didn’t hear you before.” Robin kept her eyes glued on her notebook as she spoke. “What was the name of the website you mentioned?”

“Plannedparenthood.org,” Ruth replied. “All one word, no punctuation. Planned Parenthood is a highly respected national organization with a long history of defending women’s reproductive freedom. They’re an excellent resource for anyone who needs information about contraception or sexual health in general.”

Robin’s pen raced across the page with impressive speed. It looked like she was taking dictation, trying to record every word Ruth said for posterity, or at least the next school board meeting.

“Am I talking too fast?” Ruth asked her. “Do you want me to repeat anything?”

Robin looked up. She was a pretty girl, if you could get past the dowdy clothes and the scraped-back ponytail. But there was no sign of friendliness in her face, not the slightest effort to disguise the loathing she felt for her teacher.

“That’s okay,” she said. “I think I got the important stuff.”

IT WAS a rainy afternoon, the low gray sky pressing down on the world like the lid of a box. A gusty wind scoured the treetops, stripping away the foliage with merciless efficiency. Fumbling for her car keys in the school parking lot at the end of the day, Ruth caught herself glancing anxiously over her shoulder as though it were late at night on a deserted street.

It’s the goddam Christians, she thought, ducking into her car and pulling the door shut behind her. They won’t leave me alone.

She knew she’d crossed a dangerous line in fourth-period Health, openly challenging the Wise Choices curriculum, encouraging the kids to seek out more reliable sources of information. There would be a price to pay down the road—probably sooner rather than later—she had no illusion about that. But what was the alternative? To just stand there like a good little zombie and let the half-truths and outright lies—36 percent failure rate!—pass by without a peep of protest?

I’m done doing their dirty work, Ruth thought, flicking her wipers to peel away the wet leaves plastered to her windshield like souvenirs in a child’s scrapbook. They’re gonna have to do it themselves from now on.

In a way, she was grateful to Maggie’s coach for making the situation so clear. Until she’d seen those girls, those beautiful young athletes, sitting on the grass in the sunshine, being coerced by adults they trusted into praying to the God of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and the Republican Party—the God of War and Abstinence and Shame and Willful Ignorance, the God Who Loved Everyone Except the Homosexuals, Who Sent Good People to Hell if They Didn’t Believe in Him, and Let Murderers and Child Rapists into Heaven if They Did, the God Who Made Women as an Afterthought, and Then Cursed Them with the Pain of Childbirth, the God Who Would Have Never Let Girls Play Soccer in the First Place if It Had Been up to Him—until then, she’d allowed herself to succumb to the comforting fiction that her quarrel with the Bible Thumpers was confined to the classroom, to a political dispute about what got taught or didn’t get taught to other people’s children. But now she understood that she’d been fooling herself. This wasn’t just professional; it was personal. They’d already messed with her job, and now they were coming for her kids.

THE FULL extent of the threat hadn’t become clear until Saturday evening, when Frank brought the girls home, and Ruth tried to engage them in a conversation about what had happened that morning on the soccer field. At the time, she’d been most concerned with explaining her position to Maggie, but she wasn’t unhappy to see Eliza follow her little sister into the kitchen and take a seat at the table. Eliza still hadn’t fully recovered from her mother’s fifteen minutes of infamy last spring, and it seemed like a good idea to prepare her for the possibility that things could get ugly again, which was something Ruth hoped to avoid, but couldn’t rule out.

“Who wants hot chocolate?” she asked brightly. “It got kinda chilly out.”

Both girls shook their heads.

“So.” Ruth smiled stiffly, settling into her chair. “You guys have a good day?”

“Okay,” Eliza muttered.

Maggie just shrugged, fixing Ruth with a frosty stare. On normal Saturdays she showered and changed at her father’s, but tonight she was still wearing her rumpled, grass-stained soccer uniform like a reproach, letting Ruth know that she hadn’t been forgiven.

“Look,” Ruth told her. “I know you think I overreacted this morning.”

This was an understatement. Maggie had been stunned by her mother’s intervention in the postgame prayer, and had only managed to stammer a couple of mild objections as Ruth forcibly separated her from her teammates and marched her off the field. It wasn’t until they reached the parking area that Maggie found her voice, but by that point she was a complete wreck, sobbing furiously and calling Ruth an asshole over and over again, a word that Ruth had never heard her use before. Maggie also repeated the phrases You’re insane and I hate you several times, in response to her mother’s increasingly flustered attempts to defend what she’d done. Though she believed she deserved an apology, Ruth had decided to let the matter slide; she didn’t think there was a whole lot to be gained from rehashing statements her child had made in anger and probably regretted.

“I admit that I may not have handled the situation as well as I could have,” she said. “Maybe it would have been smarter if I’d taken your coach aside and spoken to him in a less confrontational manner. But that doesn’t change the fact that he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to do, and that I intend to make sure he doesn’t do it again.”

Maggie pushed out her bottom lip and scowled, a look that, for all its attempted ferocity, just made Ruth want to hug her. It was the exact same face Maggie had made as a tiny baby, when she was working herself up to a good cry.

“Why are you doing this to me?” she demanded. “Coach Tim wasn’t doing anything wrong. He was just thanking God for all our blessings and saying how happy he was that no one got hurt. I don’t see what’s so bad about that.”

Ruth didn’t know where to start.

“Thanking God?” she spluttered. “He’s a soccer coach, not a minister.”

“So what? You don’t have to be a minister to believe in God.”

“First of all, honey, not everyone believes in the same God. There are Jewish girls on your team, and Nadima, is she—?”

“Muslim,” replied Maggie. “But not strict.”

“See, you’ve got Jewish girls, a Muslim girl—”

“Atheists,” Eliza piped in. Until that moment, Ruth hadn’t even known if she’d been paying attention to the conversation, she’d been so completely absorbed in the origami box she was constructing out of a sheet of notepaper.

“That’s right,” Ruth agreed. “Atheists and agnostics, too. Not everyone believes in the same God, and some people don’t believe in God at all. And other people aren’t sure what they believe. But you know what? Even if every girl on your team belonged to the same church, the coach still doesn’t have the right to say a prayer with them. The soccer team is a town organization. I’m sure they taught you about the separation of Church and State in Social Studies.”

Maggie looked puzzled. “You said it’s the town, not the state.”

“The State just means the government. Town, state, federal, it doesn’t matter. The government can’t promote a specific religion.”

“My soccer team’s part of the government?”

“It’s a town-sponsored league,” Ruth said, worried that the discussion was drifting into a swamp of technicalities. “Plus you were playing in a county park.”

Maggie seemed momentarily stymied by the legal argument, but she quickly regrouped.

“Well, I still don’t see why you had to yell at Coach Tim like that. You looked like such a weirdo. Your voice got all high and shaky.” Maggie flailed her hands around her head like she was being attacked by a swarm of bees, and screeched, “Stop that praying or I’ll call the police!”

Eliza snickered, and Ruth shot her a dirty look. It was not a pleasant thing to be mocked by your children, especially when you were trying to protect them.

“I was upset, honey. After what those nuts did to me last year, maybe you can understand why I’m not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. And I didn’t threaten to call the police, by the way.”

“Whatever,” Maggie conceded. “But just so you know, I’m not quitting the team. I don’t care what you say, and Dad agrees with me. He’s the one who signed my permission slip.”

Ruth had to make an effort not to say something nasty. It drove her crazy when Frank pulled the old Divide and Conquer. At the same time, she sincerely regretted suggesting to the coach that Maggie wouldn’t be allowed to play on the Stars anymore. She’d spoken out of anger, without thinking things through, and now she found herself in a no-win situation—either compromise herself publicly or turn her family life into a living hell.

“I didn’t say you had to quit,” she explained, refining her position on the fly. “All I want is a guarantee that your coach will behave appropriately in the future. And if he can’t do that, then I think he’s the one who should quit.”

“Coach Tim can’t quit,” Maggie said in a trembling voice. “He’s the best coach I ever had. All the girls would hate me.”

“I don’t think so,” Ruth replied. “Some of them might be happy about it. But if it’s a choice between doing the right thing and being popular, we’ve gotta do the right thing.”

“But we’re tied for first place. We need him.”

“Mr. Roper could take over, couldn’t he?”

“He’s part of the church, too.”

“Really?”

“That’s what Candace says.”

Ruth was startled by this, though she realized that she shouldn’t have been. John had been part of the prayer circle that morning, even if he hadn’t been speaking. She’d just assumed that he’d gotten sucked in like everyone else. Back when she’d known him, he’d been a hard-charging, hard-drinking guy with some sort of high-powered financial job, not her idea of a born-again. It was like living in a horror movie, she thought, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers or something. You never knew who they were going to get to next.

“I’m sure you’d find somebody,” Ruth said. “Your father would be happy to coach the last few games. He knows a lot about soccer.”

“Please,” Maggie said softly. “Just mind your own business.”

“This is my business,” Ruth said. “Your coach has no right to make you pray to a God you don’t believe in.”

Eliza snickered. “You mean a God you don’t believe in.”

“That’s right. I don’t believe in Coach Tim’s God, and I don’t think your sister does, either.” Ruth turned to Maggie, suddenly worried that Eliza knew something that she didn’t. “You don’t, do you?”

“I dunno,” Maggie said. “Nobody ever taught me about it.”

“Well, I do,” Eliza said. “I believe in Coach Tim’s God.”

“No, you don’t,” Ruth snapped.

“Do you think I’m an idiot?” Eliza shot back. There was a whitehead at the corner of her left nostril that Ruth had to restrain herself from popping.

“No,” Ruth assured her. “And I don’t think you’re a born-again, fundamentalist, evangelical, nutjob Christian, either. Because that’s what he is.”

“I believe in God.” Eliza spoke slowly and calmly, locking eyes with her mother. “And I believe that Jesus is His only son, and that He died on the cross for my sins.”

Maggie was staring at her sister, clearly startled by this news. Ruth’s immediate impulse was to try to convince herself that Eliza wasn’t serious, that she was just crying out for attention, but it didn’t work. There was something in her face and voice—the eerie serenity of the believer—that couldn’t be denied.

“Since when?” she asked.

“A few months,” Eliza said. “I’ve been talking to this girl in my class.”

“What girl? Do I know her?”

“Grace Park. She just moved here last year. I met her in Homework Club.”

“I’d like to meet her sometime.”

“Her family wants me to come to church with them.”

Ruth groaned. “Not the Tabernacle?”

Eliza shook her head. “It’s called Living Waters Fellowship. In Gifford.”

Ruth closed her eyes, trying to get her bearings, to react to this like a good parent, to not do anything that would open a bigger rift between herself and Eliza than there already was.

“Do you really want to go?”

Eliza nodded. “I was scared to tell you.”

Ruth reached across the table and took her daughter’s hand. It was dry and rough—just like her father’s—despite Ruth’s frequent reminders to use lotion.

“You shouldn’t be scared to tell me anything. I need to know what’s going on in your life.”

Eliza seemed suspicious, but she didn’t withdraw her hand.

“So I can go?”

“I guess. If you really want to.”

“You’re not mad?”

“I’m not mad,” Ruth told her. “I just don’t see what you need Jesus for.”

Eliza smiled sadly and shook her head, like she pitied anyone who had to ask.

“He loves me,” she said.

THE STONEWOOD Medical Group had its offices on the third floor of the Healing Arts Complex, a squat four-story building with dark mirrored windows that seemed to have been plunked down by mistake on a grim stretch of Hawkins Road otherwise dominated by auto body shops and small manufacturing facilities with mysterious names: Diamond Catalysis, Universal Recoil, Northeastern SaniSys, Zip Global Force. Ruth had only been inside the H.A.C. once before, when Maggie had gotten a plantar’s wart dug out by an insensitive podiatrist she still referred to as Dr. Ouchenberg.

The receptionist informed her that Dr. Kamal was running a little late. Ruth took a seat in the waiting area, picked up a People magazine, and pretended to be unperturbed by the elderly woman three seats away who appeared to be on the verge of coughing up a hairball. During a moment of inadvertent eye contact, the woman smiled gamely and assured Ruth that she wasn’t contagious. Ruth thanked her for the information and returned to her article detailing the collapse of Jessica Simpson’s storybook marriage. She found it hard to focus; her thoughts kept drifting to her mother, who had spent a lot of time alone in doctor’s waiting rooms during the last year of her life and was always happy to engage a total stranger in small talk. Ruth looked up from the magazine.

“Nasty out today, isn’t it?”

The woman held up her index finger while another fit of coughing ran its course. Grimacing an apology, she wiped at the corners of her mouth with a Kleenex and took a sip from a water bottle that she carried in a foam holster suspended from a strap around her neck.

“I don’t mind the rain,” she said. “It’s the snow I hate.”

“I hear you,” said Ruth. “It’s okay when it falls, but then it sticks around.”

The woman pressed her fist against her mouth and cleared her throat for a long time, as if she were about to begin an oration. When her voice finally emerged, however, it was small and raspy, barely audible.

“My daughter’s in California. I’m going there for Christmas.”

“That sounds nice.”

“I have two grandchildren. A girl who’s eight and a boy who’s three.”

“Three? I bet he’s a cutie.”

“A holy terror. But I love him to death.”

Ruth was about to ask the boy’s name when a violent bout of wheezing made the woman bend forward at the waist. She had just straightened up and taken a couple of deep ragged breaths when a nurse poked her head into the waiting area.

“Mrs. Ramsey? We’re ready for you.”

Ruth stood up, smiling regretfully at her companion.

“It was good talking to you.”

The woman squeezed out an uncomfortable smile as she massaged her collarbone.

“Tomorrow’s going to be sunny,” she said. “Much nicer than today.”

THE NURSE led Ruth into an examination room, told her the doctor would be right with her, then promptly departed. After a moment’s hesitation—there was a chair by the computer, but it seemed presumptuous to sit in it—Ruth hoisted herself up on the exam table, wondering if Dr. Kamal had somehow misunderstood the purpose of her visit.

Her first impulse was to be amused by this possibility, but it got less and less funny the longer she waited in that cramped, antiseptic space, with nothing to look at but a couple of badly illustrated pamphlets on managing diabetes and hypertension. Her own doctor at least kept a stack of ancient magazines lying around in case of emergency.

The worst part of it was that Ruth hadn’t even wanted to talk to Dr. Kamal on the phone, let alone visit him here. He was clearly a very busy man—Ruth had somehow managed never to meet or even lay eyes on him, despite the fact that their daughters had been friends since first grade—and she would have been much happier just to work everything out with his wife.

All she’d been doing on Sunday afternoon was calling the parents of Maggie’s teammates to discuss what had happened at the game and feel them out about the possibility of cosigning the letter of complaint she planned on drafting to Bill Derzarian, the Director of the Stonewood Heights Youth Soccer Association. Like the Zabels and the Friedmans, the Kamals seemed like natural allies in this particular fight.

As she expected, Nafisa Kamal answered the phone. Ruth didn’t consider her a friend, exactly, but they were on good terms. They’d shared dozens of perfectly pleasant front-door chats while picking up or dropping off their daughters at each other’s houses over the years, as well as the occasional cup of tea, and Ruth had always found her to be excellent company—warm and friendly, with a sweet accent and a quick laugh. But something happened when Ruth mentioned the prayer at the soccer game.

“I’m sorry.” Nafisa’s voice turned suddenly formal, a bit chilly. “On this matter, you must talk to my husband.”

Ruth was startled. Nafisa was a sophisticated, highly educated woman—she’d come to America as a graduate student in Biology—who drove a Mercedes and always dressed like she’d just returned from a shopping spree in Paris. She drank wine, wore lots of makeup, and told funny stories at her husband’s expense. She’d never said anything to suggest that she was in the habit of deferring to him in any traditional way.

“Uh, okay,” said Ruth. “Is he there?”

“I’m afraid Hussein is working this weekend.”

“Can you give me his number?”

Nafisa hesitated. “I’ll let him know you called.”

Ruth went for a run late in the day, and when she returned, there was a message on her machine from “Heidi at the Medical Associates,” telling her that Dr. Kamal would be happy to see her at his office at 4:30 on Monday afternoon.

“MRS. RAMSEY.” The doctor’s smile was cool and guarded as he stepped into the examination room at five minutes to five. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

He was lanky and unexpectedly boyish, not at all what Ruth had expected from Maggie’s descriptions of Nadima’s strict father, the humorless taskmaster who drilled his children on their math and spelling homework at the dinner table and timed their piano practice with a stopwatch.

“It’s nice to finally meet you.” Ruth slid off the table to shake his just washed and imperfectly dried hand. “I’m sorry to bother you at work.”

“No need to apologize.” Dr. Kamal’s accent was less pronounced than his wife’s, but he spoke rapidly, running the phrase together as if it were a single word. “It was at my suggestion. Now tell me what I can do for you.”

Ruth hesitated, uncertain how to proceed. She felt herself at a subtle disadvantage, and had to make a conscious effort not to assume the attitude of a supplicant, a patient, or a saleswoman who had only the most tenuous claim on the important man’s time. I’m a friend of the family, she reminded herself. I’m doing him a favor.

“I’m very fond of Nadima,” she told him. “She’s such a lovely girl. I’m sure you’re very proud of her.”

“We’re proud of both our daughters,” the doctor allowed.

“She’s such a good athlete, too. All the girls are. I hadn’t seen them play this season, but I was at the game on Saturday, and I was amazed at how good they’ve gotten.”

Dr. Kamal smiled uncomfortably. “So I’m told. Unfortunately, I have an unbreakable tennis date on Saturday mornings.” The doctor turned sideways—he had remarkably slender hips for a grown man—and performed a graceful forehand smash with an imaginary racquet in support of this assertion. “But I’m told that next year the girls will play in the afternoon, so I’ll finally get a chance to see if the hype is justified.”

“It’s no hype,” Ruth assured him. “I really envy them. When I was growing up, girls didn’t play sports the way they do now.”

Dr. Kamal pondered Ruth for a moment. He had the same bruised eyes and delicate features as Nadima, the same expression of gentle, slightly wary intelligence.

“Where I grew up, girls couldn’t wear short pants.”

Ruth nodded, doing her best to maintain a politely neutral expression. It wasn’t easy; very few things pissed her off more than the treatment of women in the Muslim world, the drapes and the veils, the pathological fear of their sexuality, the way they were considered property by their fathers, brothers, and husbands, who in certain places would prefer that they die rather than be examined and treated by a male doctor.

“Did you come here for college?” she asked.

“Twenty years ago,” he said. “The University of Pennsylvania. The coed bathrooms came as quite a shock. I still haven’t fully recovered.”

Ruth laughed, though she had a feeling the doctor wasn’t really joking. An awkward silence followed, and she knew that the time had come to make her plea. Before she could formulate an opening statement, though, Dr. Kamal fixed her with a reproachful look.

“I must tell you, Mrs. Ramsey, that you upset my wife a great deal with your phone call yesterday.”

“Upset her? What do you mean?”

“You have to understand. We come from a place where religion is taken very seriously. We made a choice to get away from that.”

“That’s why I thought you’d want to know what happened at the game,” Ruth explained. “Fanatics are fanatics. It doesn’t matter what religion they follow.”

Dr. Kamal shook his head. “If what I’m told is correct, all this man did was say a brief prayer. I don’t think it warrants a big hullabaloo.”

“He’s a soccer coach. He has no right to force the girls to say a Christian prayer.”

“Nadima assures me she wasn’t forced to say anything against her will.”

“Maybe not directly,” Ruth conceded. “But Coach Tim’s an adult they respect, and he’s taking advantage of his position to proselytize these impressionable kids. I don’t think it’s right.”

“I don’t like it, either,” Dr. Kamal told her. “But it seems like an isolated episode that didn’t do any harm.”

“The one thing it’s not,” Ruth assured him, “is isolated. The Christian Right is taking over this entire country. Pretty soon our kids are going to be praying in school and reading the book of Genesis in Biology class.”

Dr. Kamal didn’t argue with her. Instead, he turned and walked to the sink, where he washed his hands with a thoroughness that struck Ruth as excessive, and possibly even a bit ostentatious.

“Do you know what my name is?” he inquired, pulling a paper towel from the dispenser. “My first name?”

“It’s Hussein, isn’t it?”

The doctor smiled sadly. “If you don’t mind, Mrs. Ramsey, I think my family and I will sit this one out.”

THE SIGHT of the chicken breasts in the refrigerator made Ruth unexpectedly angry. Sometimes it seemed like that was all they ever ate anymore. Maggie hated fish and every vegetable except lettuce and frozen peas, Eliza objected to red meat on ethical grounds (Ruth wasn’t sure why her moral qualms didn’t extend to poultry, and she didn’t plan on asking), and both girls objected bitterly if their mother tried to make a main course out of soup or chili. So aside from the occasional lasagna or take-out pizza, that pretty much left chicken. And since the girls didn’t like dark meat or any inconvenient reminders that their dinner had once been a living thing, “chicken” actually meant skinless, boneless breasts, which Ruth served with rice or potatoes or pasta on the side, followed by a green salad with Paul Newman dressing. Even Paul Newman was starting to get on her nerves, the smug way he grinned at her from the bottle, as if he knew all too well that he was the only man at the dinner table.

Tonight was lemon-pepper marinade, a recipe she got from a book called 500 More Ways to Cook Chicken, which might more accurately have been entitled It Doesn’t Matter How You Dress It Up, It’s Still the Same Crap as Last Night, or Eat Chicken Till You Die. Because there were nights when that was what it felt like, like you were just some stupid animal, put on earth to eat a few hundred—a few thousand?—animals who were even stupider than you were, then disappear without a trace.

If nothing else, she did enjoy pounding the chicken with a wooden mallet, taking some of her frustration with Dr. Kamal out on the innocent cutlets. And it wasn’t just the doctor who’d let her down. None of the other parents whose support she’d been banking on had stepped up and offered to sign her letter of protest, not even Hannah Friedman’s father, Matt, an environmental lawyer who had a Darwin Fish and a “Don’t Blame Me—I Voted for Kerry” sticker on his Audi. By way of an excuse, he told Ruth that he didn’t want to make any trouble for Tim Mason, whom he described, to her surprise, as a recovering addict who’d done an amazing job getting his life back together in the past couple of years.

“I’m telling you, Ruth. You gotta give credit where credit’s due. These Christians turn a lot of lives around. From what I hear, Tim was a complete wreck before he found Jesus. His ex-wife wouldn’t even allow their daughter to get in the car with him.”

“How do you know all this?”

“A partner in my firm married the ex-wife. He told me the whole saga.”

“That’s great,” Ruth said. “I’m glad he’s cleaned up his act. But that doesn’t give him the right to do what he did.”

Matt sighed. “I know. And I’m gonna send him an e-mail about the praying business. But this whole official letter of complaint thing sounds pretty harsh. There’s only a couple of weeks left in the season. It might not be such a bad idea to just let it slide.”

“I’m not gonna let it slide, Matt. I’ve let too much slide already.”

“Come on, Ruth. They say ‘under God’ every day in the Pledge of Allegiance, and I don’t hear you screaming about that.”

“Maybe I should start,” she shot back. “Maybe you should, too.”

“Maybe,” Matt conceded. “But I still think you should give the guy a break.”

At least Matt Friedman had a decent humanitarian reason for turning Ruth down; Mel Zabel was just being a self-serving coward. Despite the fact that Arlene was a hundred percent on Ruth’s side, Mel had convinced his wife to keep their name off the letter out of fear that it would jeopardize their daughter’s position on the top team.

“He doesn’t want us to be involved,” Arlene reported sheepishly. “He says the bigwigs in the Soccer Association have long memories.

If we rock the boat this year, we shouldn’t be surprised if Louisa’s back on the B team next year.”

“Louisa’s too good,” Ruth said. “They wouldn’t drop her to the B team.”

“I know,” Arlene said, “but everything’s so competitive these days. I’m sure there are a lot of girls on the B team just as good as she is.”

Ruth tried to argue that there were more important things than a spot on the A team, and Arlene agreed in principle.

“I’m with you in spirit. But I promised Mel I wouldn’t sign the letter.”

“I guess I’m on my own then.”

“I’m sorry, Ruth. I wish I could help.”

Fine, Ruth thought, as her mallet thudded into the rubbery meat, which she’d wrapped in plastic to prevent any salmonella-laden flecks from splattering around her kitchen. If that’s how it’s gonna be, then so be it.

It didn’t help that Maggie was out in the yard in her Stars jersey, kicking the ball against the side of the garage. Ruth could see her out the window, a skinny girl standing out in the rain, her legs bare, her hair straggling down across her angry, determined face as she blasted one kick after another off the clapboards, trapping the ball on the rebound, then booting it again, alternating legs the way they’d taught her at All-Star Soccer Camp last summer. She usually kicked into a net, but today it seemed like she wanted to make as much noise as possible, to remind her mother of how much she loved the game and how hard she worked at it.

You’re gonna hate me, Ruth thought, listening to the ball thunk against the wall a split second after her mallet thudded into the chicken, the two sounds creating a strangely conversational rhythm, as if she and Maggie were talking to each other through the glass.

Thunk!

Thud!

Thunk!

Thud!

Thunk!

She must have gotten a little carried away, because there was a strange expression on Eliza’s face as she entered the kitchen, carrying the paperback Bible that Ruth hadn’t even known she owned until yesterday. She must have kept it hidden in a drawer or under a mattress, the way Ruth and Mandy had hidden books like The Godfather and The Happy Hooker.

“Mom,” she said. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Ruth told her. “Why?”

“I don’t know. You’re just kinda whalin’ on that meat.”

Ruth looked down, and what she saw wasn’t pretty. The plastic wrap had begun to shred under her repeated blows, and the chicken wasn’t so much flat as traumatized, mangled in places, and fraying unpleasantly at the edges. Ruth wiped her forearm across her sweaty brow and smiled at her daughter.

“Just tenderizing,” she said. “I do it all the time.”