Everything We Ever Wanted by Sarah S. Page B

one week after James had died, and Sylvie had felt too shell-shocked to come. Now, she wished she had.
    They sat down and Martha pressed play on the mini-recorder. It taped the meetings from start to finish, and afterward Martha’s husband, who was adept at all things technological, would plug the recorder into his computer, press a few buttons to launch the software that could translate the contents of the audio file into a Word document, and voila, they had minutes without any of them having to feverishly write or transcribe.
    Martha started talking about the numbers and research on the school-wide laptop program, which issued laptops to every student to use to take notes and do homework. “The thing is, they’re all using them to do non-school-related activities,” she said. “Apparently, the network goes down at least once a week because everyone’s on their laptops, using all those Facebook sites. And they’re not very careful with them. Seventeen machines have gone in for repairs just this month.”
    “Are they encouraging the kids to learn?” Dan asked.
“It’s hard to say,” Martha flipped a page. “The way kids learn isn’t the same anymore. But the teachers are also a problem. A lot of them aren’t nearly as technologically savvy. They’re still making their students write their papers in longhand.”
“Oh, God, especially that Agnes,” Geoff said, rolling his eyes. “How old is she now, eighty?”
Martha pressed pause on the tape recorder. “And still spry as a fox,” she whispered giddily. “There are rumors that she’s dating Harold.” Harold was one of the guidance counselors. He was quite a bit younger than Agnes, the doyenne of the English teachers.
“Speaking of Harold,” Dan said while raising a finger. “That daughter of his is back at home. I heard somewhere that she was kicked out of Brown.”
Martha’s eyes widened. “Another one?”
“She’s all out of Ivies,” Geoff said.
“Cheating again?” Jonathan asked, shaking his head.
“I thought she was kicked out of school because of prescription drugs.” Martha blew her bangs into the air. “Poor Harold.”
Sylvie stared at her fingernails. Nothing seemed amiss. None of them were looking at her pointedly, indicating they had heard about Scott. Maybe Michael Tayson had kept his word, not telling them about the rumors or Scott’s upcoming meeting.
Martha pressed play on the recorder again. “Anyway. Back to the laptops. Should we take them away?”
“Laptops do look good, though,” Dan said. “Parents are impressed by that kind of stuff.”
Geoff stroked his chin. “But it’s a big expense. I’ve heard some complaints from the art department. Their supplies are getting more and more expensive, and they can’t buy what they need with what they’ve been allotted. A few of the sports coaches have also come to me, talking about replacing old uniforms and equipment.”
“Which teams?” Martha straightened her papers.
Geoff shrugged. “It was the basketball coach who spoke to me. And Carla from gymnastics registered a request in the office.”
“We still have a gymnastics team?” Martha sniffed. The others snickered, and just like that, the suggestion was dropped. Basketball and gymnastics weren’t steeped in history and scholarship money the way, say, girls’ soccer was—the team was top in the state, and many girls were recruited by Division I schools—or the way the boys’ crew was. It was Swithin’s first official sport, and the school had sent several boys on to row for Yale and Penn, and from there on to the Olympics. Those were the teams that got the money.
Sylvie often wondered why her fellow board members invested so much of their time in Swithin. What made them come back, year after year, budget after budget, graduating class after graduating class? Did they feel they were part of something? Did it define them, as it did her, or did they simply do it because, as people of means, it was their