Gary waves in an exaggerated Broadway pantomime of a customer trying to get attention in a crowded department store. If there were an old-fashioned metal bell on the counter, he would slap it for service. Grace turns and blanches at the sight of us. Her eyes dart around the office, trying to gauge how she can possibly escape, given that no one is there to save her, but before she can come up with anything to say, Gary is pointing to her office. “We need a word. Now, please.”

She stammers, starts to say that she has class, that we should have made an appointment, that her day is very very busy, but Gary isn’t interested. “Tell that to the lawyer I’ll call if you don’t stop harassing my son.” He points at his phone, but he is holding it upside down and backward. It might as well be a toy.

She hisses, then turns toward Mr. Noah’s office. She unlocks the door with a key she wears on a lanyard around her neck and lets us both in first, and we take seats across from the antique oak desk piled high with books and potted plants.

Last time we were here—two years ago—it was because Ms. Marjory had complained not about Teddy but about Gary, who had gotten agitated during our parent-teacher conference when he realized that Teddy’s handwriting was so illegible it wasn’t clear that he actually knew how to write. The excuses she gave—that many boys have a delayed ability to properly grasp a pencil, that she and the other teachers were focusing on other more important skills Teddy needed to develop instead of on his handwriting—all true—only made Gary more incensed. “Seriously? What could possibly be more important than handwriting?” he’d said. “Who cares about the art and customs of Peru if he can barely write his name!”

I don’t remember if that’s when Ms. Marjory stood and asked us to leave and then started to cry, or if she started to cry first and then asked us to leave, but either way, we were asked to leave our parent-teacher conference, a first for me, and something completely inconceivable. Gary initially refused to go, ignored me gently tugging at his sleeve to try to contain things before they got worse. Escalation is always a possibility. Even though the teacher was in tears, there had been no swearing, no name-calling, no threats of legal action from our side of the table. It was still relatively civilized. But then she had to go and call the main office from a little ancient-looking intercom system on the wall, and tell them that she was having a problem with two parents in the upper school science room. The custodian, Ms. JoJo, almost as tall as Gary, was dispatched, and when she arrived she somewhat apologetically asked us if we would come downstairs with her. We followed without incident and were deposited in Mr. Noah’s office, where we were told, in no uncertain terms, that Morningside Montessori was a place of peace, and that if we couldn’t conduct ourselves calmly and with respect for staff, we would have to find another place for Teddy.