Well, Dicky, it isn’t going to work.
Step did as Dicky asked—came in and sat down while the interview continued. But he knew Dicky had no intention of actually letting Step take part in the conversation. This was a humiliation game, so Dicky was going to make Step sit there in virtual silence while he conducted an interview in which Step was obviously not needed for anything.
So Step opened his attaché case, took out a yellow notepad, and wrote a brief note to Dicky.
Dear Dicky,
I’m putting this on a note so I don’t embarrass you in front of your interview. I’m going to meet with my son’s teacher, as I told you I would. And I can’t wait to be there at the meeting when you tell Ray Keene that you are now including me in the hiring process for programmers. With such a broadening of my responsibilities, I’m sure I’ll get a raise!
Affectionately yours,
Step
He stood up, wordlessly put the note on Dicky’s desk, and left, closing the door behind him.
On the way to the school, Step tried to calm himself down. His anger at Dicky would do no good if it made him approach Mrs. Jones carelessly. He had to handle this exactly right with her, or he would do more harm than good. Being angry wouldn’t help.
DeAnne had let him take the car today. He had been trying to catch more rides with other employees more often lately, because he knew how trapped she felt, being home all day without a car. Somehow he knew they had to come up with a second car—especially after the baby was born this summer. No way could he leave her home with a newborn without transportation. And yet it really didn’t work out well for him to ride with others. He always ended up keeping them late. Or coming home with Gallowglass, and he hated bringing Gallowglass to his home. He didn’t even want Glass knowing where he lived, though of course it was far too late for that. And Glass still asked him, every time, when Step was going to call on him to babysit. No, Step needed a car and DeAnne needed a car and there was no way they could scrape together the money right now even to buy a junker, let alone something dependable.
He pulled up in front of the school as the last buses were pulling out. Too late he remembered that DeAnne had told him that he had to take Fargo Road so he could park in that hidden lot up on the hill. Oh, well, thought Step. What are they going to do, shoot me? So he pulled in behind the last bus and followed it around the turnaround and pulled into a visitor parking place.
Dr. Mariner was at the door as he approached the school. “I’ll bet you didn’t know that parents aren’t supposed to use the turnaround after school,” she said.
“Actually, I did,” said Step, “but I forgot until I was here and then I saw the last bus was leaving so I figured it wouldn’t do any harm.”
“Why, in fact, I think you’re right. No harm done at all. Can I help you with something?”
“I hope so, ma’am. I’m Step Fletcher, and I’m here to—”
“Stevie Fletcher’s father?”
“Yes,” said Step, “I am.”
“Oh, what a remarkable young man you have! And your wife is such a sweetie. And I think you have a little boy who’s going to be in our kindergarten next year.”
“Yes, that’s Robbie.”
“Well, I can hardly wait, though of course I’ll be sad to see Stevie leave us. He’s the sweetest boy, and so smart. Why, Mrs. Jones is always telling me how well he does in class, and of course you already know how he did with his second-grade project.”
“I did hear something about it,” said Step. He wanted her to tell him, in part because he didn’t know which story was going to be true.
“Hear something about it indeed,” said Dr. Mariner. “First-place winner, and you ‘heard something about it.’ We don’t get many students of his caliber. You must know that.”
“Oh, yes,” said Step. “But I’m glad to know you know it.”
“Well, of course,” said Dr. Mariner. “But I mustn’t keep you—I’m sure you came to have a consultation with Mrs. Jones, and we don’t want her to be kept waiting.”
“Actually, she doesn’t know I’m coming.”
“Oh, well, all the more reason to hurry—you want to get there before she goes home. My, I hope she hasn’t already left! Do you know where her classroom is?”
“Actually, no,” said Step.
“Then let me take you.”
“No, just tell me, I don’t want to inconvenience . . .”
But she was already five steps ahead of him down the corridor.
Mrs. Jones was still there, though she was already shrugging on her coat and if Step had waited to get directions instead of having a guide, he probably would have missed her. So he thanked Dr. Mariner profusely, even as he wondered whether this interview was even necessary. Clearly the librarian’s version of reality had been the true one.
“Why Mr. Fletcher,” said Mrs. Jones, after Dr. Mariner had left. “We don’t have many fathers come to school. If only you had made an appointment, I could have stayed longer.”
“Perhaps this won’t take long,” said Step. “I mostly came to talk to you about Stevie’s project.”
“His project?” she asked.
“His second-grade project. The—environment thing. He did an underwater scene. Out of clay.”
“Oh, of course, yes. That was so creative.”
His heart sank. He should be relieved, of course, to know that Mrs. Jones had not given him a C. But it meant Stevie had lied.
No, he told himself. Don’t give up on Stevie so easily.
He reached into his pocket and switched on the microcassette recorder. He had already tested it in the pit at work. It picked up very well through the denim of his jeans.
“I wondered if you could tell me, Mrs. Jones. What grade did you give Stevie for that project?”
“Oh, I can hardly remember, that was so long ago.”
“A week ago,” said Step.
“Oh, here it is.” She had her thumb down on the gradebook, but Step noticed that she glanced toward the door. Why? To see if Dr. Mariner was still there? “My,” she said. “I see here that he got a C.”
“Ah,” said Step. He felt himself to be on fire inside. Stevie had told the truth. And so had the librarian. The project won first place, and yet somehow, somehow it got a C.
“Yes, that’s it,” said Mrs. Jones. “Definitely a C.”
“Well, now,” said Step. “That’s hard to understand.”
“Not really,” said Mrs. Jones. “There’s nothing wrong with a C. It means average.”
Step had already scanned down all the other grades in the column of her gradebook where Stevie’s C was marked. “It’s hardly average,” said Step, “when everybody else got A’s and B’s.”
“Now, Mr. Fletcher. We don’t let parents look at other children’s grades, and you clearly were peeking at the wrong column of my gradebook.”
But Step was looking around the classroom, not at her. “I was hoping,” he said, “to see what an A project looked like, if Stevie’s was only worth a C. It would help us as his parents, you see, to know what the standard is that he must meet, so we could help him do better on future projects.”
There was the thing he was looking for. A blue ribbon, pinned to a bulletin board. Nothing written on it or by it. Just a blue ribbon.
“Oh, the projects have all been returned,” said Mrs. Jones. “Stevie chose to throw his away, I’m afraid, but it was just a mass of clay by then. It was a shame what those ill-mannered children did to his project, but then, we really didn’t have any practice at dealing with sculpture. If Stevie had brought a poster like everyone else, it wouldn’t have happened.”
Step reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the folded-up assignment sheet DeAnne had armed him with. “I’ve looked and looked on this assignment sheet you sent home, and it says nothing about a poster. It just says, ‘A depiction.’ ”
“Well, you see,” said Mrs. Jones, “that means a poster.”
Step looked ba
ck at the blue ribbon. “Ah,” he said. “And how was I supposed to know that? I mean, the Mona Lisa is a depiction, isn’t it? And yet it isn’t a poster. And wouldn’t you call Michelangelo’s David a depiction?”
“All the other parents managed to figure out that a poster was what was intended,” said Mrs. Jones. Her tone was getting quite frosty now.
“I see,” said Step. “Perhaps they knew the local custom. But we’re new here, and we did not.”
“Obviously,” said Mrs. Jones.
“But surely you’re not telling me that Stevie’s project was given a C because it wasn’t a poster, are you?” asked Step.
“Not at all. As I said—it was creative.”
“Then I still need your help to figure out what Stevie did wrong.”
“And I keep telling you, Mr. Fletcher. You don’t have to do something wrong to get a C. That signifies average. It was an average project.”
Short of calling her a liar right now, there wasn’t much Step could say to that, not directly. It must be time to talk about the ribbon. “Well, Mrs. Jones, it makes me wonder why Dr. Mariner would give the first-place ribbon to an average project.”
“Dr. Mariner has her judgment, and I have mine,” said Mrs. Jones.
Yes, thought Step. She is definitely sounding quite cold. “Oh, of course,” said Step. “But you see, you didn’t give your grades until after Dr. Mariner had made her decision, did you?”
“My judgment was completely independent.”
“But wouldn’t you say, Mrs. Jones, that for you to give the lowest grade in the class to the very project that won first place, you must surely have found something wrong with it?”
He faced her. Her expression was hard, but she was holding her hands together in front of her very tightly. Oh, yes, she’s afraid. She’s very much afraid. Because everything that Stevie told me was true.
“Very well, Mr. Fletcher,” she said, ending the silence at last. “I will tell you what was wrong with Stevie’s project. It was the written portion of the project, the report. The other children turned in reports of five or six pages. Stevie’s report was only two pages.”
With great difficulty, Step controlled his rage. “Stevie’s paper was typed. Was anyone else’s paper typed?”
“That hardly matters,” she said.
“They were all written in big letters, weren’t they—like these papers on the board. Right?”
“Of course. This is the second grade, Mr. Fletcher.”
“My rough count here gives me . . . let’s see . . . about fifty or sixty words per page, handwritten. Is that right?”
“Oh, I suppose.”
“But Stevie’s paper was single-spaced, and that means he got between four and five hundred words to a page. So each of his pages was about the same amount of content as—”
“A page is a page!” said Mrs. Jones.
“And the assignment sheet,” said Step, “said nothing about a minimum number of pages.”
“Everyone else managed to figure out that four or five pages were required! And they didn’t have their mothers type it for them—they used their own handwriting.”
“The assignment sheet didn’t say anything about penmanship being part of the assignment,” said Step. “So naturally Stevie thought he should do the same thing I did with my dissertation. He went to my computer, turned it on, brought up WordStar, and typed every letter of every word himself. Then he printed it out and stapled it—himself.”
“That was another problem,” said Mrs. Jones. “The other children’s reports all had very nice plastic covers, and your son’s report was nothing but two sheets of paper with a staple. It showed a lack of respect.”
“The assignment sheet didn’t mention a cover,” said Step. “If it had, there would have been a cover. But in graduate school, you see, I turned in my papers with a staple in the corner. So of course Stevie thought that that was the grown-up way to do it. And in fact, Mrs. Jones, it is, isn’t it? Surely you’re not telling me that the difference between an A and a C is a twenty-nine-cent cover?”
“Of course not,” said Mrs. Jones. “It’s just part of the difference.”
“Don’t you think that computer literacy and college-level presentation should count for him rather than against him?”
“Other children don’t live in wealthy homes with computers in them, Mr. Fletcher. Other children don’t have fathers who went to college. I’m hardly going to give one child an advantage over others because of money.”
“I’m not rich, Mrs. Jones. I work with computers for a living. I have a computer at home the way car salesmen sometimes bring new cars home.” Watch it, Step. You’re letting her sidetrack you. “What matters is that Stevie’s paper was probably ten times as long as any of the other children’s papers. He did all the work himself, and he did not violate the assignment sheet in any way. Now, why did the first-place project get a C in your class?”
“I don’t have to justify my grades to you or anyone else!” said Mrs. Jones.
“Yes,” said Step mildly. “In fact you do. You can justify it to me, today, or you can justify it before the school board.”
“Are you threatening me?” asked Mrs. Jones.
Step almost brought out the tape recorder then, to confront her with it. But he knew that the moment she saw it, she would say nothing more—and there was more that he needed her to say.
“No, Mrs. Jones. I wouldn’t dream of it. If my son earned a C, then he earned a C. I’m not trying to get you to change the grade. I just want you to help me understand it.”
“This discussion has gone on long enough. It isn’t right for you to be here alone in this room with me anyway, Mr. Fletcher.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” said Step. “Let’s go get Dr. Mariner to join in this conversation with us. I haven’t mentioned Stevie’s C to her yet, but I’m sure she’ll want to know the reason for that grade as much as I do.”
Mrs. Jones glared at him, then sat down at her desk and began rummaging through a file drawer. She came out with Stevie’s paper. Sure enough, there was a big red C at the top.
And not another mark.
“I guess all the flaws in the paper are on the second page,” said Step.
“What?” she said.
“There aren’t any marks on the first page, so the errors must all be on the second page. I’d like to see them.”
She handed him the paper.
He opened it. There was only one red mark on the second page. Mrs. Jones had circled the word octopuses and in the margin had written octopi.
“Oh, but you must be making a little joke here,” said Step.
“A joke?”
“Look,” he said, showing her the paper. “You must be kidding, right?”
“I’m not kidding when I correct errors on my students’ papers.”
“But Mrs. Jones, surely you know that the plural of octopus is either octopus, with nothing added, or octopuses.”
“I think not,” said Mrs. Jones.
“Think again, Mrs. Jones.”
She must have realized that she was not on firm ground here. “Perhaps octopuses is an alternate plural, but I’m sure that octopi is the preferred.”
“No, Mrs. Jones. If you had looked it up, you would have discovered that octopi is not the preferred spelling. It is not a spelling at all. The word does not exist, except in the mouths of those who are pretending to be educated but in fact are not. This is because the us ending of octopus is not a Latin nominative singular ending, which would form its plural by changing to the letter i. Instead, the syllable pus in octopus is the Greek word for ‘foot.’ And it forms its plural the Greek way. Therefore octopoda, not octopi. Never octopi.”
“Well, then, octopoda. Your son’s paper said octopuses.”
“I know,” said Step. “When he asked me the correct plural, I told him octopoda. But then he was still uncertain, because my son doesn’t think he knows something until he knows it, and so he looked it
up. And to my surprise, octopoda is only used when referring to more than one species of octopus, rather than when referring to more than one actual octopus. What Stevie put in his paper is in fact the preferred dictionary usage. Which you would have known, too, if you had looked it up.”
“So I’m human, Mr. Fletcher. I made a mistake.”
“As did I, Mrs. Jones, as did I. But the fact remains that the only red mark on this C paper is in a place where you have taken a correct plural and replaced it with an incorrect one. Isn’t that right?”
“If you say so,” said Mrs. Jones.
“So I’m still baffled,” said Step. “How can I possibly help Stevie do better next time? You haven’t really pointed out a single thing wrong with his paper—oh, except that he didn’t put a plastic cover on it.”
“There won’t be a next time,” said Mrs. Jones. “Your son will never have to do another second grade project as long as he lives. So it doesn’t matter, and therefore you’re wasting my time as well as your own. Good afternoon, Mr. Fletcher!”
“One more question, Mrs. Jones.”
“No,” she said. “I have to go home, right now.”
“It’s just one more question,” said Step, mildly. If she didn’t stop, however, the tape recorder would definitely come out. She would not be going home anytime soon.
“Very well, what?”
“Who is going to take that ribbon home?”
Mrs. Jones looked at the ribbon that Step was pointing to.
“That is the first place ribbon for Stevie’s project, isn’t it?”
“It might be,” said Mrs. Jones.
“Then who will take it home?”
“If it’s the particular ribbon you’re referring to, then of course Stevie will take it home at the end of the school year.”
“Ah,” said Step. “Then what in the world are you going to tell J.J?”
She blanched.
Stevie’s story was completely vindicated now.
“What do you mean?” she said.
“Why, I mean that Stevie’s whole class is under the impression that J.J. received that award.”
“That’s impossible,” said Mrs. Jones.
Lost Boys: A Novel Page 19
