The Whole Golden World

by Kristina Riggle

  17

  Few things in the world could stop Dinah’s heart like the school’s phone number on caller ID.

  Such a call could mean Morgan had a stomach virus, or the boys got into a fistfight, or that Connor was mouthing off again. The school never called to say, “Good job, Dinah. You’re a great mom and your kids are awesome. We just wanted you to know.”

  So on this wintry Monday, when the phone yanked Dinah from work on the Planning Commission documents in her upstairs office, her first thought was, Oh no, when we almost made it to winter break.

  She screwed her eyes shut and answered with a curt greeting.

  “Hello, Mrs. Monetti? How are you?” asked Jenny from the high school office.

  “That depends on what you’re about to tell me.”

  A sigh on the other end. “Well, Mr. Jackson would like you to come down to talk about Jared.”

  “Jared?”

  Before they left the Montessori school, it tended to be Connor who ended up in the office, usually defending his brother from some moron bully calling Jared a retard or pushing Jared in the hall hard enough to stumble. Even at their new school, Connor’s frustration over schoolwork could erupt in a disrespectful outburst against the teacher and a call home.

  “What happened to Jared?”

  “Nothing happened to him,” Jenny answered, emphasizing the “to.” She went on, lowering her voice. She imagined Jenny dipping her head behind the high receptionist desk. “He was caught in the parking lot smoking pot.”

  “No! No way.”

  Jenny hastened to add, “I was just asked to call you, I don’t know anything about it directly.”

  “I’ll be right there,” Dinah replied, already picking up her purse and rooting for her keys.

  Principal Jackson was seated behind his desk. Jared was slouched in one of the “lecture chairs” on the other side, and Dinah took the other. Joe was nowhere around, and would not be, for this. The other principals always dealt with “faculty brats” as a matter of policy and were not even allowed to discuss it with Joe. Dinah would have to be the one to tell him about the incident, unless someone whispered it to Joe unofficially. She couldn’t decide which would be worse.

  “What exactly happened?” Dinah began without preamble.

  “Your son was caught smoking marijuana in the parking lot this morning,” Mr. Jackson said, sighing.

  “Were you?” she asked Jared.

  “I wasn’t,” he grumbled. “Some kids with me were. But I wasn’t.”

  Mr. Jackson interjected, “He smells like Woodstock.”

  Dinah did notice that funny, woodsy smell. But . . . Jared? It didn’t make sense.

  “Mr. Jackson, could I have a minute to talk with Jared alone?”

  He nodded and sighed again as if he were Atlas himself carrying the world. His eyes looked sunken and his face puffy. His hair—what remained of it—was verging from gray right into white. No wonder he was retiring. He left his own office with the remark, “I’ll be back in ten minutes, and we’ll talk consequences.”

  Jared scowled at his own crossed ankles. “I didn’t do it. Scout’s honor.”

  “What were you doing out there, then?”

  “Hanging with my friends. It’s not my fault that the only cool people in this school smoke weed.”

  Dinah wanted to lie on the floor and cry. When the boys were toddlers and throwing tandem tantrums, she’d sometimes do it. She’d get right down on the floor and start to scream and cry with them. Once in a while they’d stop their own fit and give her a look like, What the hell . . . ?

  “If those are the kind of friends you’ve picked, we’ve got to take you out of this school. You’re not ready.”

  Jared bolted upright in his chair, his eyes suddenly wide open and wild, glasses slipping down his nose. “No! Mom, don’t, please! I’m sorry, I screwed up, but please don’t take me out of this school. I don’t wanna go to some special school again for retards.”

  “You will not use that word or so help me I’ll knock you to next week. The Montessori school was not for ‘retards’ or special needs kids or anything. It was based on an educational philosophy, and it was a good fit for—”

  “Whatever, Mom. It’s not like you yanked us out of private school because we were doing so awesome.”

  Those were the days she’d earned her particular reputation. Jared’s shuffling, awkward walk and his glasses made him a target, and his teacher kept minimizing, excusing. And those nasty little cretins were clever. They knew better than to do something obvious like stick his head in a toilet. No, they’d say vicious things under their breath when he walked by, “accidentally” bump into him in the halls so that he stumbled into the wall. Once, he fell through a doorway and cracked his head on the hard gym floor. Each time Dinah complained, and the sneaky brats made innocent faces. They were joking, or it was an accident. It would be Connor—who would throw a kid to the ground in two seconds if he saw someone pick on his twin—who got labeled a bully.

  The worst day, she screamed at the teacher who’d called the twins classic problem children while also claiming Jared needed to “grow up and be a man about a little teasing”: “You’re not protecting my son!”

  Okay, so maybe it hadn’t been her brightest idea to throw that classroom chair. But she didn’t throw it directly at Mrs. White. It was clearly thrown sideways, out of frustration only.

  Every other time, a firm voice and furious glare had gotten at least some minor appeasement from the school: stricter adherence to Jared’s disability accommodations, a reduced punishment for Connor once circumstances were explained. Her earliest, careful, polite requests from the school had gone ignored, so what did they expect?

  Jared piped up, remembering all this, too. “You almost got arrested for throwing a chair, and then we went to the dork school. Anyway, dork school only goes up to eighth grade.”

  “Three months into the regular public high school and you’re claiming that the stoners are the only cool people in school and cutting class to hang out with them while they get high. What am I supposed to do? Get excited about this? Congratulate you?”

  Jared was back to slouching. “They all wanted to go out to that dude’s car. What was I supposed to say, ‘My mommy will yell at me so I can’t?’ They’re the only friends I’ve ever had who don’t care that I was a preemie and I have thick glasses and I can’t walk normal. They’re just cool.”

  “So what’s next, then? They offer you some weed and you don’t want to look like a nerd so you take it? And then what else do you do so that you can stay cool? Pot when you’re a freshman and what, heroin by the time you’re a senior?”

  “I told you, I didn’t do it.”

  Dinah peered hard at Jared’s watery blue eyes behind his thick glasses. “Swear to me that you didn’t.”

  He looked right at her, his lip trembling just like it used to when he was little. “I swear I didn’t do it.” His changing voice cracked.

  She sat back in her chair and massaged her temples. Jared toyed with one of those Newton’s cradle toys on the principal’s desk, and they listened to the clack-clack-clack without speaking until Mr. Jackson came back.

  He settled himself behind the desk. “Dinah, the mandatory consequence for drug use on school property is a week’s suspension.”

  Dinah sat up straight and squared herself to face Mr. Jackson. “But he didn’t do it.”

  He cocked his head at her. “Dinah. C’mon.”

  Jared grumbled, “I knew he wouldn’t believe me.”

  “He swears he didn’t.”

  “I’m sure he does. You should have gotten a whiff of him when he first came in here. And his eyes were all red, and his eyelids were droopy.”

  “His eyes get irritated. He has allergies.”

  Pete Jackson shook his large head, staring down at his desk. “Allergies. Look, this is the consequence. We’re not going to sit here and have a trial, and I can’t take his word for it. If I took e
very kid’s word for their innocence, it would be anarchy in here.”

  Dinah flushed. “I could go to the superintendent.”

  “If you feel you must, you have that right. But I’m telling you that he is not going to start meddling in individual student disciplinary matters. He never has, and he certainly won’t now.”

  Dinah heard his unspoken phrase loud and clear. Especially not for one of your boys. Everyone knows what they’re like.

  She shoved back her chair. “So I may take him home now?”

  Pete Jackson nodded. “Yes. He can get his assignments online. Make sure to take all his books.”

  “Before we go, Pete, I have to say something. You think you’re being very tough and wise. You’ll probably go home and congratulate yourself on how firm you were. Well, let me give you some food for thought. As much as I respect rules and order and teach my children to do the same, I’m also not afraid to call bullshit when I see it.” The principal leaned back in his chair, eyebrows raised slightly, his craggy face so resigned he looked rather bored. “You have no reason to disbelieve Jared, who has never been in this type of trouble before, but you are condemning him for guilt by association and because you think you know what kind of kid he is. You are not going to define him by this.” Dinah thumped her index finger into the top of his desk. “He is going to excel despite the unfairness, and someday you’re going to look back and realize just how terribly wrong you were just now. Today this tirade of mine is all the confirmation you need that you’re right; I can see it in your face. Must be nice, that confidence. Too bad it comes from willful blindness for everything that doesn’t support your narrow, preconceived bias.”

  Jared sighed loudly. “Can we just go, Mom?”

  Dinah opened the office door by way of answer. At the last moment she turned back to Mr. Jackson, who still wore an expression of resigned exhaustion, and said, “Happy holidays.”

  Dinah and Joe were squared off in Joe’s home office like prizefighters.

  They had retreated there and closed the door after dinner. Joe had lectured Jared through the entire meal about his dangerous path and how he would have no privileges whatsoever for the entire winter break, until Dinah tried to speak up and Joe stormed off into his office for a “talk.” Only “talk” had given way immediately to “fight,” and it was only with the greatest of effort that Dinah kept her voice to a hissing whisper instead of a bellow when Joe had suggested some kind of camp for rebellious teens.

  “That’s ridiculous,” she blurted. “My God, what’s wrong with you? I told you, he didn’t even actually smoke it.”

  “Sure he didn’t smoke it. And I’m the pope in Rome. It wouldn’t kill him. Maybe what he needs is some damn discipline for once in his life.”

  “For once?”

  “Yeah, for once. Your whole life you’ve been treating those boys like they’re glass and making excuses for their every mistake.”

  “I’ve been protecting them because no one else seems to give a shit, but I never thought I’d have to protect them from you.”

  “Dinah, we can’t just write this off as a phase.”

  “And we are not sending him off to some teenage boot camp for people to scream in his face and call him names and make him run laps until he throws up.”

  “I’m not saying that kind of place; I’m just thinking out loud. At least I’m taking it seriously.”

  “And I’m not. That’s what you mean.”

  “I’m just saying this crap has got to be nipped in the bud. Do you know how many kids I’ve seen walk through this door of ‘just a little pot’ and end up in prison? Or flipping burgers because they can’t hold any other job? Wake up, Dinah.”

  “Oh, I’m awake. Believe me. I’m his mother, and you’re not sending him anywhere.”

  She turned to leave.

  “Dinah, so help me, don’t you go and undermine me. Don’t you overrule me and take back his grounding.”

  “Or what? You’ll send me to military school, too?”

  Dinah charged up the steps and into the boys’ room, hearing Joe muttering behind her. She had the vague sense that her marriage was crumbling in her wake, and that to save it she’d have to turn back and snatch up the pieces before it was too far gone.

  She knocked and pushed open the twins’ door.

  Without having to be asked to leave, Connor rose. “I’m gonna get a snack. I’m done with my homework anyway.”

  Jared was rubbing the lenses of his glasses in his shirt and wouldn’t look up.

  “Jared. Look at me.”

  He only shook his head. “Can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m embarrassed. I mean, Dad thinks I’m some druggie waste of space.”

  Dinah paused on a mental image of her throttling Joe for making their boy feel like this. “He doesn’t. He didn’t mean that; he’s frustrated and scared for you. You’ve got to remember how many kids he’s seen screw up their lives with drugs. Yes, I know you didn’t do it, but you’ve got to admit that as a principal he’s heard that one, too.”

  “He should be my dad in the house. Not an assistant principal.”

  Dinah sucked in a breath through her nose. He should be a dad indeed. Why wasn’t he up there with her? Why wasn’t he talking to Jared except to bellow at him?

  Jared drew himself together, his knees up to his chest and his arms folded tightly across. His pant legs rode up and Dinah got a glimpse of his ankles; he was so thin. So much thinner than his twin. Jared was the one born second, born thinner and weaker. He was the last one home. Dinah had felt torn asunder to have one twin at home in his crib where he belonged and the other still hooked up to machines.

  She spied a tear leaking out of his eye and she wanted to leap across the bed and fold him in her arms. But she knew from experience he would shrug her off if she did. She settled for patting the top of his foot.

  He croaked, “I’m sorry I made you guys fight.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “So you always say.”

  “Because it’s true.”

  After a moment’s stillness, Jared unfolded and slouched back against his headboard, stretching out on the bed.

  Dinah patted his shin. “But I’m worried about you, too. I don’t want to have to take you out of the high school, but I can’t turn a blind eye, either. If you can’t figure out how to have a social life without getting caught up in a bad crowd, we’ll have to think of something else.”

  “What? Homeschool?” Jared rolled his eyes. “Like you could do that.”

  “Hey, don’t underestimate your old mom.”

  “I mean, hello? You’ve got a business to run.”

  With a thud in her chest Dinah realized she could in fact homeschool the boys, if she sold the Den, which would get markedly more valuable with an entertainment license attached.

  “There are private schools around. We’d think of something. But we won’t have to, right? Because you can still steer this back on course, right, Jared?”

  He nodded, looking away, in his posture of wanting her to just leave now that the lecture was over.

  Knowing he wouldn’t like it, she dashed over to plant a kiss on his forehead.

  Dinah descended the stairs and was greeted in the kitchen by a look from her husband, who was warming up his cold dinner plate. “You make everything all better now?”

  Dinah turned away from him by way of answer and threw herself down on the living room couch, listening to the clicking and scraping of Joe’s utensils on his plate, not another word uttered between them.

  PART 2

  18

  JUNE 6, 2012

  Dinah watched as the prosecutor rose, straightened his tie, and prepared to lay out the case against TJ Hill.

  She tried to shut off, unplug, and drift away somewhere else so she wouldn’t have to hear it.

  She came to the court because it was the thing one did when one’s child was victimized. You go to court and you watch the
wheels of justice turn and you applaud when the bad guy is sent to the slammer.

  Only this time, her daughter’s name would be dragged through the gutter.

  She knew in a politically correct sense that her daughter was considered a victim, an innocent. And that the newspaper had not named her, or them, as a result of its policy to protect the identity of victims of sexual crimes.

  She also knew what she’d seen and heard around town about her daughter, what she’d read online and seen on Facebook, and she could only imagine what was said privately was worse yet. Not to mention what had happened at the Den.

  As far as Arbor Valley was concerned, the two of them could go straight to hell together, the debauched teacher and his teenaged adulterous lover.

  “Your Honor,” began Henry Davis, unfolding his lanky frame from his chair. Dinah fixed her eyes on him and tried to call up the feeling of calm and even optimism he’d inspired when they discussed the case. She’d seen him on television before—the election of the county’s first black prosecutor had been big news—but they’d never met. That first day in his office, she could have swooned from gratitude for his dignified air, considering how often she’d felt the sting of judgment and whispered titillation from the rest of the town.

  “How did we get here?” Henry asked rhetorically, sweeping his arm to indicate the courtroom, the situation, everything at once. “Was this an accident of fate? A simple error in judgment? Ill-fated, star-crossed love?” Those last words Henry anointed with a whiff of irritated sarcasm.

  “We are here for a specific, very clear reason that has everything to do with abuse of authority and violation of a girl under that authority. The people will show that Thomas John Hill on numerous occasions contacted the victim by cell phone and messages exchanged through her homework papers, setting up sexual liaisons in parking lots and music rehearsal rooms.”

  Dinah flinched, and she heard Joe suck in a breath. Henry began to pace in front of the jury, whose faces were frozen into suitably somber expressions. Dinah could not help but wonder how thrilled they really were, how they probably were giggling to their friends which trial they’d landed.