A Sister's Promise (Promises)

by Lenfestey, Karen

  Joely took a step back and paused. Her voice softened. “It’s just that I love my sister and I know this would make her happy.”

  “You do not know that. You’re the one who wants children.”

  Mitch waited for Joely’s reply, but she just looked at him, her eyes glossy.

  “I’m sorry you can’t have any,” Mitch continued. “But that doesn’t give you the right to interfere in my marriage.” He scanned the apartment for some place to go. They had slept on the couch last night since Joely’s apartment didn’t have a spare room. “From now on, keep your opinions to yourself.” Seeing no other options, Mitch walked out the front door.

  In her stocking feet, Kate followed him outside. He paced on the sidewalk in front of the apartment.

  “Are you OK?” she asked, rubbing her arms to keep herself warm.

  Mitch kept pacing. “They’re letting people go at work. Brent just lost his job and he has three kids. There’s no way in hell I’m going to risk having a baby and not be able to afford to feed it.”

  Kate gripped his shoulder to hold him still, then reached up to give him a hug. “I didn’t realize. . . I’m sorry.” So that was why he was putting in extra hours at work, not because he wanted to, but because he had to. That was why he no longer hummed in the mornings and why he wouldn’t even consider having a baby. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

  “I didn’t want you to worry.” He looked into her eyes. “Don’t tell Joely. It’s none of her business.”

  Kate felt as if she were walking a tightrope, one end held by her sister and the other by her husband. She was starting to lose her balance somewhere in the middle.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Twenty-one percent of our students dropped out last year,” Rhonda said. “Twenty-one percent.”

  Kate nodded and reached for another tissue. She should have stayed home, in bed, snuggled underneath the quilt Mrs. Pilo gave her as a wedding present. If she didn’t have that tenure meeting with Mr. Mohr, she definitely would’ve called in sick.

  She knew she should say something to Rhonda to indicate she was equally concerned about the drop-out rate, but talking took so much effort. “That’s more than the previous year, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. We’re failing one out of every five of these kids.”

  Kate nodded again, thinking about Michelle. Unfortunately, Kate was starting to realize there was a limit to how much she could do for another person.

  “Here.” Rhonda handed her some forms. “The state wants to know the exact number of students who enrolled in college, tech schools or the military.”

  The state loved statistics. What really mattered to Kate, though, was cause and effect. Why did some students drop out and others pursue higher education? Why did some students commit crimes while others volunteered at the animal shelter? Why did some make their parents proud and others filled them with regret? “We should be spending our time talking to the kids, Rhonda, not filling out more paperwork.”

  Rhonda nodded her head in agreement. Kate blew her nose and reached into her pocket for a cough drop. She should’ve taken her own advice. She kept telling Joely to get more rest and eat some flaxseed. If she had taken better care of herself, maybe Kate wouldn’t think Rhonda’s voice sounded like she was talking through a wall when she said, “Mr. Mohr needs them by Friday.”

  After Rhonda left, Kate put her head down on her desk. No matter how run-down she felt, she would stay in her office and make a good impression on Mr. Mohr.

  When she heard a knock on her door, she looked up to see one of the Wannamaker twins. Last year the twins enjoyed local celebrity status as members of FHS’s golf team that won the state championship. Although they had always been close, the brothers seemed to be growing apart this year. A few weeks ago Thad was arrested for vandalizing a vacant house while his brother Todd had already been accepted into Purdue’s selective engineering program. Kate pondered the fact that two children raised in a loving, stable home were taking two extremely different paths.

  The golden-haired boy sat down. “Mrs. Hopper, I’m worried about my brother.”

  Kate bit into her cherry cough drop so it would dissolve quicker. “What’s wrong?” She hoped it was nothing too serious since she was a far cry from operating at 100%.

  “Thad is breaking curfew and cussing at my mom. He doesn’t care about anything any more.” After devoting ample time to Todd’s brotherly concerns, Kate sent him back to class. She wrote herself a reminder on next week’s calendar to talk to Todd about his own problem, which might cost him his scholarship: senioritis.

  Kate sent for Thad.

  “Yesth, Mrs. Hopper?” he asked as he walked into her office. The lisp was new and so was his tongue piercing. She worried that if she didn’t reach him, he would be another one of those statistics she and Rhonda were just talking about. Some future drop-outs she could spot early on, but every year Kate had a senior who was on-track to graduate, that she wasn’t even concerned about, and in the last few months he intentionally blew it. He skipped classes, bombed his finals, and in his own warped way, thought he was avoiding the unknown by not graduating.

  She swallowed the last of her cough drop. “Your brother, Todd, will be moving away in August. Will this be the first time you two have lived apart?”

  Thad nodded.

  “I imagine that’s kind of strange.”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “What will you do after graduation?”

  His knee started bouncing up and down. “I don’t know. Keep working at Connie’s Diner, I guess. The chicks really dig that.” He did not crack a smile.

  Her brain was mush. She searched her fuzzy memory for the name of his girlfriend. “You and Tanya still dating?”

  “No. She broke up with me. Said we should see other people. But what she really meant was she wants to see other guys. College guys.”

  “Tanya is going to Michigan State, isn’t she?”

  He shifted in his seat. “Yep.”

  They talked some more and Kate decided that he was simply heartbroken. She thought that if he did some job searches on the computer he might get more excited about his prospects post-graduation. After scheduling a time for them to do that, she sent him back to class. Then she started to question how her counseling skills were affected by her illness: What if she missed something subtle in his body language? What if she under-estimated the extent of his sadness? She couldn’t afford to be mistaken. Oftentimes what hid behind the words was what really mattered.

  Checking the clock, she realized she was supposed to meet with Mr. Mohr in five minutes. How could she look enthusiastic about her goals when all she wanted to do was take a nap? She wondered if the nurse had any cold medicine. As she tried to work up the energy to move, she sneezed again. When she pulled out a tissue, the last two came out of the box. Great.

  As she headed toward the nurse’s office, suddenly she felt a volcano in her stomach. She detoured to the bathroom, just barely making it in time. A few minutes later, she rinsed out her mouth then splashed cold water onto her face. She dried her skin with a brown paper towel that felt like cardboard. When she looked in the mirror, she saw a zombie.

  Wishing she had some mouthwash, she headed upstairs for the dreaded evaluation. When she arrived, Mr. Mohr’s secretary, whose stiff white hair always smelled like Aqua Net, said that Mr. Mohr was in the guidance office. “You must have just missed him.”

  Once back downstairs, Kate still didn’t find him. “Antonio, do you know where Mr. Mohr is?”

  He pointed to Rhonda’s office.

  After Kate blew her nose, she took several of Antonio’s tissues and stuffed them into her pocket for later.

  Antonio looked concerned. “You should go home.”

  Great idea.

  He typed some more on his keyboard. “The rest of us don’t want to get sick.”

  Kate gave him a pretend dirty look then rounded the corner. Rhonda’s door was shut. Thr
ough the rectangular window in the door, Kate saw Mr. Mohr sitting in the wicker chair where the students usually did. The conversation looked heated and the way they kept raising and lowering their voices reminded Kate of when Aunt Suzy and Uncle Burt would fight once they thought the kids were asleep.

  Kate listened, catching a phrase here and there until she figured out they spoke of Jennifer’s e-mail accusation.

  Mr. Mohr said, “The right thing to do is resign. For the sake of the school.”

  Rhonda asked, “Why did it take her so long to come forward? You can’t let one vengeful woman ruin an otherwise spotless career.”

  Kate backed up against the hallway. What was Rhonda saying? As a counselor, she should have been fighting to get rid of this pedophile just as much as the principal was. Why wasn’t she?

  “Let me assure you, you’re going to have quite a fight on your hands,” Rhonda said.

  Kate’s chest constricted. She rushed back to her office before they discovered that she was eavesdropping. She closed her door and sat down. Her head was dizzy and her stomach queasy. Was it possible that Rhonda was the one accused? Surely not. Kate took several deep breaths in and out. Breathe. Breathe. Kate coughed.

  In her Master’s program they warned the future counselors not to hug students or do anything that could be misinterpreted. Adolescents commonly felt transference and imagined a romantic relationship with their counselor. Could that have been what happened to Rhonda? Even so, a false accusation could destroy a person’s credibility.

  Their muffled voices grew louder, then fell silent. Kate heard Rhonda’s door swing open. Mr. Mohr marched into Kate’s office, his hands fisted. He sat down. “Let’s get through this quickly.”

  Kate’s head hurt as she nodded.

  This review was critical. Tenure would provide benefits—maternity leave and job security—but if she were denied tenure, she would be forced to find another employer. Her stomach began to percolate.

  Mr. Mohr opened up a file folder and started reading his notes. “Parents have been complaining that you’re not available when they need you. Sometimes you take several days before you return their phone calls.”

  Her body reacted as if she were running the last mile of a marathon. She felt hot, sweaty and exhausted. “I didn’t realize that it was a problem, sir.”

  “I expect a turn-around time of twenty-four hours once a parent contacts you with a question.”

  I’m trying, she thought. “OK.” Her nose started to run. Embarrassed, she pulled out one of Antonio’s tissues.

  Mr. Mohr turned to another page in the file. “The teachers are noticing it, too. You don’t respond to e-mails and you’re not always in your office before and after school. Counselors don’t work the traditional hours, you know. You need to be here so parents and teachers can get a hold of you.”

  “I understand.” This was the first year out of five that she hadn’t been there past sunset every night and even on weekends sometimes. It didn’t seem fair that he wasn’t giving her credit for that, but he wasn’t around to see it. Last year was his first year at FHS and he was probably too swamped to notice what was going on in the guidance department. But she didn’t have the energy to say any of this. She swallowed. “Which teachers are complaining?”

  “Brent Ewing and Linda Cochran.”

  She knew it was Mrs. B! Why didn’t he talk to Trish or Rhonda to see what they thought of her performance?

  “The point is I’m hearing it from several different sources—parents and teachers.” He paused. “Now, on to your goals. I told you earlier I want to see more out of you. What additional responsibilities are you willing to take on this year?”

  Oh, no. She hadn’t given this much thought. So far this year, she’d barely fulfilled her regular duties, so she couldn’t imagine taking on more. “May I just say something?”

  “Yes.”

  “My sister was just diagnosed with lupus.” Her stomach rolled.

  His face softened. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  She tasted vomit in the back of her throat. “Excuse me,” she blurted before bolting out of the room.

  When she returned from the bathroom, Antonio told her that Mr. Mohr wanted her to take the rest of the day off. She knew once she felt better, she would die of embarrassment, but right then she didn’t care.

  # # #

  If she weren’t so ill, she would’ve sung along when the car radio started playing “The Electric”. It transported her back to when she and Mitch had just started dating. She had agreed to go with him to a fraternity party even though she didn’t like beer and didn’t know how to dance. A sense of uneasiness had come over her when she could hear the party’s music three blocks away. Once inside the Greek house, Mitch left her to locate the keg. Feeling as though she didn’t belong, she took in the scene of pretty, drunk girls flirting with rich, popular guys. Mitch returned a moment later with a beer-filled plastic cup in one hand and a berry wine cooler in the other. He leaned close and his breath tickled her ear as he asked, “Is that OK? I remember you said you don’t like beer.” She smiled, raised the pink bottle and shouted over the music, “Definitely.”

  The two of them stood off to the side drinking and people-watching for about twenty minutes. Then the song that people did the “electric slide” to started playing. Mitch turned to her and said, “Come on” as he pulled her to the center of the room. People formed several lines that moved in synch from side to side. Kate felt a nervous boost of adrenaline, worried that she was going to make a fool of herself. Dances were not a popular activity for klutzes, after all.

  She watched intently, trying not to get stepped on while people shimmied their shoulders and sloshed beer onto the obviously mistreated hardwood floor. Mitch started to coach her, pointing and shouting, “right, left, back, turn” at key intervals. She shuffled from one side to the other desperately trying to figure out the moves, mumbling “sorry” whenever she bumped into someone. Fortunately the dance steps repeated themselves over and over until she finally picked them up.

  As the music faded away, she realized that she was actually having a great time. “When did you learn to do that?” she asked Mitch, impressed that an engineering major knew how to dance. “Just now,” he confessed. It took a moment to catch her breath. Even so, she smiled. She could learn more than just how to dance from this guy, she thought. She could learn how to let go.

  Now Kate pulled into her driveway. Once inside, she put on her pajamas, grabbed the well-loved patchwork quilt and curled up on the couch, just as she had envisioned. Monte curled up on top of her feet as she watched What Not to Wear.

  Afterward she discovered a show she had never seen before called A Baby Story. It had a sweet young couple tell how they met and then the pregnant wife went to a baby shower. During the last one-third of the show Kate listened to this previously blissful woman moan and scream out in pain. Kate wanted to change the channel, but didn’t. For a few minutes at the very end they showed the happy couple again, holding their now adorable, sleeping six-week old infant. This was to assure the audience that it was all worth it, she supposed.

  When she realized that for some reason they were having A Baby Story marathon, she felt obligated to watch. After several episodes she concluded that a planned C-section appeared to be the least painful option. She filed away this information in her brain, just in case.

  Eventually she felt hungry and she decided to try some chicken noodle soup. After fixing a cup in the microwave, she went back into the living room where she accidentally jostled some broth onto the floor.

  “Darn it.” She went to the kitchen to get a wet rag. She blotted as best she could. Then she looked down at the wool fibers, darkened from the spill.

  They couldn’t have a kid, she realized. They had white carpet.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “So. . . are you going to break your promise?” Joely asked.

  The question felt like a stab at Kate’s integrity. “No,�
� she replied too quickly. She held the phone with one hand as she put away the groceries with the other. “I told you it would take some time for me to figure everything out.”

  “In other words, Mitch is still mad at me.”

  “He’s not mad at you.” She placed the lima beans on the pantry shelf then continued silently singing M, N, O, P—for pickles. “It’s just that he’s stressed out from work.”

  “How so?”

  Whoops. That topic wasn’t up for discussion. “Oh, just the usual.” What she needed to talk about was her own stress. About poor Rhonda, accused of a crime, who acted like nothing was wrong when Kate asked if she needed to talk. Kate had to be subtle with her offer since she kept hearing Mr. Mohr’s orders in her head: Don’t mention this to anyone.

  If she told Joely about the whole mess, she might feel better. And she didn’t need to worry about it ever getting back to Mr. Mohr. She hesitated, trying to figure out where to begin.

  Then Joely hijacked the conversation. “I’m thinking about stopping my medication.”

  Kate closed the pantry doors and gave Joely her full attention. “Don’t be crazy. Why would you do that?”

  “Because I feel fine. I’m back to work, sleeping through the night, pain-free.”

  “The reason you feel fine is because of the medication.” Kate thought about those times when Joely sat in the dark, unwilling to wash her hair or open the mail. She took a deep breath and let it out. “You can’t go back to the way you were before. You were miserable, remember?”

  “I just don’t want lupus to define me.”

  “I understand, but—”

  “No. You don’t understand.” The line went quiet. “I made the mistake of telling the director of the Boys & Girls Club about the lupus. She said she couldn’t in good conscience allow me to be a Big Sister.”

  “That’s not fair!”

  “I know. But she said it wouldn’t be fair to the little girl assigned to me if I got sick again. These children have been let down so many times, they don’t need any more stress in their lives.”