by Pamela Morsi
It was a simple explanation and he smiled as he said it, but Red detected more to the story than was being said.
“Olivia, I want you to have the music room,” he said, stepping into the door on his left. “This is where I practice. I can move most of this out of here to give you space, and there’s a bed I can bring down from the attic. It has little fairies painted all over it. Kind of girlie, but it looks pretty cool.”
Red watched Olivia take in her surroundings. She ignored the uncomfortable-looking folding chairs, the music stands and the various guitars, violins and the electronic keyboard. Instead, the girl seemed drawn to the small computer desk near the window. She’d hardly spoken since they walked into the house, but she did now.
“Are you taking this with you?” she asked.
“The computer?” Cam shrugged. “I have a laptop. I can leave it here, if it won’t be in your way.”
“It won’t be in my way if I can use it,” she said.
Her comment bordered on rudeness and it was on the tip of Red’s tongue to scold her. But Cam seemed more amused than offended.
“If it’s sitting here, I wouldn’t want it to become just a giant paperweight,” he answered.
“Do you have Internet?”
“Sure.”
Olivia nodded. “Okay, leave it here,” she said.
Cam laughed and attempted a joke. “So you like the Internet?” he teased. “Should I start calling you Surfer Girl?”
Olivia didn’t appreciate the humor, but she didn’t comment on it, either.
“Okay,” she said, as if making an announcement. “Daniel and I can live here.”
Her presumption that such a decision was hers to make was defiantly meant to needle Red.
Cam turned with a stern expression and a teasing glint in his eye to the children’s grandmother. “Does that work for you, Abuela Mala?” he asked.
Red huffed in lieu of a reply.
To: [email protected]
September 3 7:12 p.m.
From: [email protected]
Subject: The New Place
Hi Mom! Thanks for the emails. It is great logging in and seeing all these from you. We moved into the boyfriends house. And guess what? I am righting to you on his desktop. This is what we got to get, Mom. We got to get are own internet at home so I can always right to you. I guess tho when your home I dont have to right you ha! ha!
My room is nice and I have all my bears and my clothes now. I got a bed that somebody painted with tiny fairies like the size of bugs all over. Its weird but I like it.
I like the house mostly. We have a backyard with trees and stuff. But some old lady in the yard behind us keeps snooping on us. She yelled at Daniel to get out of the yard, but I told her it was our yard and none of her business. I know that was rude Mom but she scared Daniel so she deserved it!
We drove by the school. It is brown. That is all I know about it. School starts next week so I guess I will find out. I won't miss my friends from last spring cause I hardly knew them. But I still remember my school before.
Our babysitter is named Kelly. She has a baby girl name Kendra. I guess Kendra misses her dad like I miss you. Dont worry about Daniel and me. I am taking care of us fine.
Livy
9
Red stood in front of the full-length mirror in Cam’s Alamo Heights bedroom and assessed her appearance. The ill-fitting gray suit she’d bought at the discount store disguised her appearance to the point of dumpiness and washed out the complexion that was already suffering from considerably less makeup application. She’d constrained her gorgeous red hair into a tight updo. It was not a good look for her, although she did appear slightly taller, even in very sensible low-heeled pumps. It gave her face a narrowness that somehow seemed unhappy, repressed.
That’s exactly what’s required, she reminded herself. Her intention was to blend in. In a scrubbed-clean little neighborhood like this one, she was pretty sure that joy should be carefully contained.
Wham! Wham! Wham!
“We’re going to be late!” Olivia insisted as she knocked loudly at the door.
“It’s only five minutes away. How late can we be?” Red answered.
“It’s the last afternoon of the last day of pre-enrollment,” Olivia shot back through the doorway. “So we’re almost already late.”
She took one last long look in the mirror. The reflection was unpleasant, but she did look sufficiently grandmotherly, she assured herself. She grabbed the file of papers atop the bureau and headed out with all the enthusiasm of facing a firing squad.
Red had put off this day as long as she could. Moving into the house, getting settled in and establishing a routine for her work and the children was her priority. Her interaction with her new surroundings had been minimal. But classes began on Monday and if she wanted Olivia and Daniel to start school on time, she had no choice but to make the effort to enroll them.
She was not alone in her reluctance. Every time the word school was mentioned, Daniel shrank into a protective ball. He didn’t want to go anywhere or see anyone.
Olivia, on the other hand, could hardly wait for the school bell to ring. She’d talked eagerly about it to her abuela on their last visit. The old woman still couldn’t speak, but Olivia didn’t appear to need any help with the conversation. Red had waited out in the rehab-facility corridor while the girl had giggled and gushed hopefully about the future. Only the silence in the car on the ride home suggested that perhaps not all of her optimism was genuine.
“Okay, I’m ready,” Red announced as she stepped into the living room.
Daniel looked very small, curled in one corner of the oversize reading chair. Olivia was pacing.
“Let’s go,” the girl responded. She couldn’t get the door open fast enough. She motioned for her little brother, who obediently followed her, albeit with much reluctance.
The school was only a few short blocks away and Red insisted on walking so that she could be sure Olivia and Daniel knew the way. That it took more time was only a side benefit.
The three walked together up the sidewalk to the corner doorway of Cambridge Elementary. Red couldn’t remember the last time she’d been inside a school building, but from the moment she stepped across the threshold, the familiar smells of blackboard chalk and library paste brought back memories that were young and happy and hopeful. Deliberately she cast those thoughts off. It was never good to start remembering. She had the real world to face.
“This looks like the office,” she said of a doorway on the left. She held the door open allowing the children to go first. Olivia walked through without a qualm, while Daniel clung to his sister’s hand.
“May I help you?” the woman at the desk inquired, without raising her eyes from the computer screen she was viewing.
A small wooden plaque on the woman’s desk identified her as Ms. Sorenson.
“I’m here to enroll my grandchildren in school,” Red answered. “I have an appointment with Ms. Kilheeny.”
She smiled as if to welcome them, but never even glanced in their direction. “Take a seat,” she told them. “I’ll let her know that you’re here.”
Red glanced around and spotted the row of chairs. All three took seats, though the children sat as far as possible from their grandmother.
Red heard Daniel whisper something in Spanish to Olivia. His sister replied a bit sharply.
“What did he say?” Red asked.
“He wanted to know if this is where you sit when you’re in trouble,” she answered. “I told him we weren’t ever going to find out.”
Red almost smiled, but found that she was still too edgy to manage it.
They waited only a few minutes before Ms. Kilheeny appeared. She ushered them into an office stacked with files. Fit, trim and all business, she looked over the paperwork that Red had gotten from the base, as well as the children’s past school records. She hardly looked in Red’s direction, who wondered why she’d taken such pain
s with her wardrobe.
Ms. Kilheeny directed several general questions to the children. Olivia answered politely and respectfully and earned an approving smile.
The questions for Daniel were also answered, but in whispered Spanish.
The woman looked directly at Red for the first time. “He doesn’t speak English?”
“Yes, yes, of course he does,” she answered and glanced over at her grandson. Once again he’d drawn his knees up to his chest and scrunched his shoulders down into a hiding position.
“Sit up straight!” Ms. Kilheeny said a little too sharply.
Red stiffened her own spine, as if the admonition was meant for her.
“He understands perfectly,” Red assured the woman. “He is just choosing to speak Spanish.”
The woman appeared skeptical.
“We can put him in an ESL class,” she said. “English as a second language.”
“English isn’t his second language,” Red insisted. “This isn’t about language, it’s about...”
Red’s explanation trailed off. She didn’t know what it was about. She didn’t know these kids or what their problems were.
“Look, it’s a summer thing,” she said, leaning forward to add sincerity to the he she was forming to tell. “I wanted him to improve his Spanish, so I bet him he couldn’t speak just Spanish all summer long. If he makes it until class starts on Monday, he wins.”
From the corner of her eye she detected both Olivia and Daniel staring at her in openmouthed disbelief. Ms. Kilheeny, however, was delighted.
“Oh, I love at-home educational motivation!” she gushed. “I’m sure these children are going to fit in here just perfectly.”
Red smiled back at the woman, pleased. As Ms. Kilheeny continued through the paperwork, Red relaxed back in the chair and caught the children looking at her. Daniel’s expression was confusion. But Olivia’s spoke volumes of silent disapproval.
Red gave a slight shrug. Maybe she should have tried to explain why a boy with a mother at war, a father far away and a grandmother who’d had a stroke could choose not to speak his first language. But Red lived a life where she tried not to owe people explanations. She had no desire to change that now.
“So all of this seems fine,” Ms. Kilheeny said, still shuffling through the papers. “I’ll put Olivia in class with Ms. Gomez. And Daniel...let’s see...Daniel, we’ll put you in Mrs. Reardon’s first grade. There’s a shortage of boys there, you can make up the numbers.”
“Great,” Red said.
“So that looks like everything... Oh, wait.” Ms. Kilheeny glanced up at Red. “I’ll need your proof of residence.”
“Oh sure,” Red answered, pulling open her purse and fishing through it for her driver’s license. She handed the card over and the administrator glanced at it.
“No, this has your old address on it,” she said. “I need something that proves you reside within the school district. Your mortgage papers or rental contract, even a water or electric bill will do.”
Red stared at the woman for a moment. “I don’t have a written contract,” she said. “And my...uh...my landlord pays the utilities. But we live right up the street here. We’re within walking distance.”
Ms. Kilheeny nodded and smiled. “Yes, of course, Mrs. Cullens, I just need something official to verify that.”
“I don’t have anything official.”
“Well, we have to have something or we can’t enroll the children.”
“We have to be enrolled!” Olivia insisted. “It’s no good starting late. If you’re not there the first day, then you’re a new kid and that’s twice as hard.”
Red didn’t know if Olivia’s desperate plea was meant for Ms. Kilheeny or herself, but the woman continued to simply look at her for an answer.
“Could I...uh...could I go outside and make a phone call?” she asked.
“Yes, you do that,” Ms. Kilheeny said, “and I’ll dot the i’s and cross the t’s on the rest of the paperwork.” Her smile was still pleasant, but Red knew that she’d messed up by not having some piece of paper from Cam. She was sure that other grandmothers would never fail to have everything that was required. “You kids wait right here, I’ll be right back,” she said.
Red hurried out of the office and through the front door. Her cell phone didn’t actually require outside use, but she was in dire need of fresh air.
The phone rang twice before he picked up. She quickly explained her problem to him.
“So, do you have any ideas? Can you write me up some kind of rental agreement or something?”
“Sure, I’ll run by there,” he said. “I’m on my way out of town, but I can swing by.”
“Out of town? Where are you going?”
“We’re playing Schroeder Hall tonight. I told you that.”
“Oh yeah, right. You did tell me that.”
He chuckled ruefully. “You know, Brian’s girlfriends always keep up with where he’s supposed to be and make sure he’s there,” Cam said. “I guess they’re checking up to see he’s not running around on them.”
Red knew he was teasing her, but she was in no mood for it. “We’re supposed to be seeing each other less,” she reminded him. “So you being able to see someone else would be pretty much standard. I don’t need fidelity, just a rental contract.”
There was a hesitation on the other end of the line.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said before hanging up. Red snapped her phone closed and walked back inside. In the outer office, once again Ms. Sorenson didn’t notice her and she walked directly into Ms. Kilheeny’s office.
“My...my landlord said he would be here in ten minutes.”
“Fine,” the school administrator said.
Olivia let out her breath as if she’d been holding it the whole time.
“While we’re waiting, why don’t I give you a little tour of the school. The children can see their classrooms. And you can learn your way around, as well.”
“Okay,” Red said.
The school was bigger than Red had imagined from looking at the outside. It was clean and neat and inviting. As they walked through the hallways, Ms. Kilheeny pointed out the amenities of the ninety-year-old building. Although her words were mostly directed to Red, it was Olivia who asked all the questions and made all the comments. They visited the library, the cafeteria and the gym as well as the classrooms for both Olivia and Daniel.
At Olivia’s room, Ms. Kilheeny explained at great length all the new equipment and all the technical savvy that was fostered and encouraged.
“This is our new ‘Elmo,’” the woman said with a girlish giggle, indicating a mechanical arm attached to the ceiling. “That’s short for elevated monitor. It lets our teachers share what’s on their computer with the whole class.”
She directed her conversation to Red, possibly because Olivia wasn’t paying attention to her anymore.
The girl walked around the room, silent, focused, intent. She surveyed everything critically, noting how the desks were arranged and what kind of markers were at the computer stations. She looked at all the bulletin-board presentations and the books on the shelves, the empty cage for the class pet and the stack of hall passes on the edge of the teacher’s desk.
Long after Ms. Kilheeny fell silent, Olivia was still looking the place over. Finally she headed for the door.
“Fine,” she declared, as if the adults were waiting upon her critique. “I can learn here.”
In Daniel’s classroom they discovered his teacher, Mrs. Reardon, on her hands and knees surrounded by plastic containers in primary colors.
“This is Daniel,” Ms. Kilheeny announced. “He’s going to be in your class on Monday.”
The woman’s attention immediately went to the little boy, and her smile was broad.
“Hi there, Daniel!” she said, louder and with more enthusiasm than was truly necessary. “I’m just putting together some task boxes. You want to help me?”
The child gave only one uncertain glance toward his sister before stepping forward and settling in on the floor next to his teacher.
“Mrs. Reardon has been teaching first grade here for fourteen years,” Ms. Kilheeny assured Red. “And twice she’s been our school’s choice for Teacher of the Year. You won’t have to worry about your grandson. Kids are crazy about her.” This last statement was added in a whisper.
They hung around the brightly decorated room for several minutes as Daniel helped his teacher. He did whatever she told him without comment. Red was grateful that the language issue didn’t come up.
Olivia got bored and was tapping her foot before they finally left, but Daniel seemed happier and more open. As they made their way down the hallway, both children appeared reassured and eager for Monday morning.
Red was eager, too. She figured that with their day schedule and her evening schedule, she would hardly see them at all. And that would be for the best for everyone.
She was just settling into the satisfaction of this thought when a familiar chuckle drifted around the corridor. When they turned the corner, Red could see Cam standing in the entrance hall with Ms. Sorenson. The two were obviously old friends.
“Do you remember that night we decided to float Dolph Carniby’s fishing dingy through Brackenridge Park?”
Cam laughed. “Do I remember? I have perfect recall. Running like hell from the park police. But, you were far too drunk to remember anything about that night. There’s got to be a rule for strawberry margaritas. You drink one. Only a true drinking novice would suck down ten.”
“It wasn’t ten, it was only eight.”
“Only eight? Oh, well then, that was fine.”
Ms. Sorenson laughed so hard she snorted in a very unprofessional manner.
Beside Red, Ms. Kilheeny, who had certainly heard every word as clearly as Red herself, cleared her throat loudly.
The two younger people glanced up in their direction. Ms. Sorenson looked caught. Cam, on the other hand, smiled, completely comfortable. Then his eyes lowered from Red’s own to the children with her.
