“What makes you say that? He was offering to help you.”
“That he was offering to help me, that’s exactly what makes me say that.” Mary switched lanes, her crankiness returning. “He just assumes that he can step in and do what I’m doing, and doesn’t it just figure?”
“What?”
“Like, men always figure they can just do things. They just start doing things. But women like me, we never do that. I would never jump into anything unprepared.”
“You might be right, but that’s not his fault. That’s to his credit, and are you turning into a man-hater? Because if you are, it doesn’t bode well for your marriage.”
“It’s not that he’s a man, it’s that he is an arrogant man. And what about that snarky comment about special education law? What a jerk!”
“He was trying to make a joke.”
“I don’t joke about that. You don’t either. You didn’t think it was funny, did you?” Mary switched lanes to go faster, sensing that her heavy foot on the gas had something to do with the conversation.
“No, but I know him and he didn’t mean anything by it. He just felt ill at ease.”
“Gimme a break. If it were a racist or a sexist joke, we wouldn’t laugh at it. It’s no different. If he knew what I was dealing with, if he could see how this little boy I’m representing, Patrick, gets made fun of…” Mary couldn’t even finish the sentence, she was so bothered. “That kind of joking is bullying. It ruins kids’ lives. We have to stop thinking of it as a joke.”
“Okay, but I don’t think he meant it that way. You came down pretty hard on him.” Judy chuckled. “You got class-warfare on his heinie.”
“I don’t like how snotty he is.” Mary smiled at the reference, reflecting that no matter how cranky she was, Judy could cheer her up.
“He’s not snotty. You never worked with him. I don’t think that’s what’s bothering you anyway. I think it’s the wedding, after what happened with your dress. Don’t be bridezilla.”
“I’m not bridezilla. I’m lawyerzilla.”
Judy chuckled. “Look, don’t get too wrapped up in this special ed case. Be careful. Don’t get crazy.”
“I won’t,” Mary said, but she already was. “Okay, let me go, I’m driving.”
“You gonna apologize to John?”
“Hell, no.”
Judy snorted. “Drive safe. See you.”
“Bye.” Mary hung up, set the phone aside, and checked her rearview mirror, where William Penn was disappearing into the haze.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Mary reached Grayson Elementary and parked on the street across from the school, cutting the ignition. She scanned the scene reflexively for the brown sedan or a red Passat, but saw neither. The rowhouses in this neighborhood were more run-down than those in Edward’s neighborhood, and paint peeled off the front doors. Broken windows remained unrepaired, and some of the houses stood vacant, boarded shut by graffitied plywood. The cars parked along the curb were older, and she realized that hers was the nicest car on the street, which made her feel both guilty and nervous. She grabbed her purse and got out of the car.
She crossed the street to the school, which was situated behind a forbidding fence of pointed black bars and surrounded by asphalt, with no trees or bushes in sight. The playground was an asphalt side yard that had a basketball backboard, but no hoop or net, and nobody could’ve played basketball anyway, because cars were parked randomly on the court. Worst of all, the school building itself looked run-down and ancient, a fact confirmed by a glance at its keystone, which read, almost unbelievably, 1927.
Mary had known that the Philadelphia city schools were in a sorry state, but she hadn’t thought it was this bad. The building’s design was vintage, an institutional block of dark brown brick, four stories tall. Its windows were narrow and in a state of disrepair; cracks in some of them had been covered with duct tape, and one window was even boarded up with plywood. She couldn’t imagine going to school every day in such a decrepit and grim place, but she realized that most inner-city kids did, every day.
Mary made a beeline for the entrance, marked by a marble plaque engraved with GRAYSON ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. It would have been charming but for the fact that it was mounted over two windowless metal doors painted battleship gray, rusting where they’d been dented. An industrial-sized intercom had been retrofitted into the brick wall beside the door, and Mary assumed it connected to the office.
She pressed the buzzer, but nothing happened. She had arrived ahead of Kevin, intentionally early because she wanted to learn and record as much as she could about the layout of the school, to support Patrick’s story. She pressed the buzzer again, and finally it crackled to life. Nobody said anything, so she said, “I’m Mary DiNunzio, a lawyer representing Patrick O’Brien, and I have a meeting with Kevin Reynolds, the lawyer from the school district.”
There was silence, and Mary waited, then pressed the button and repeated what she’d said, but still no one spoke and the door didn’t click open. She wondered if it was broken and, in the next moment, the door was opened by a heavyset janitor in a hoodie and jeans, coming out of the door dragging a filthy plastic tub of trash, so she held the door open for him and ducked inside, saying, “Thanks so much.”
Mary found herself on a dimly lit stairway landing, with grimy gray stairs that had metal crosshatching and walls with real rose-marble wainscoting. The staircases ran downstairs, to some sort of basement, and upstairs. Offices were usually upstairs, so she climbed the steps. The air smelled dirty and felt stifling; she realized that the age of the building prohibited central air-conditioning and there were no windows in the common areas in which to install a window unit. She didn’t know how the teachers stood it, much less the children.
She reached the top of the stairwell, where a poster put up by the school district read in bold letters: WEAPONS ARE PROHIBITED, and underneath, PENNSYLVANIA LAW REQUIRES THAT ANY STUDENTS, REGARDLESS OF AGE OR GRADE LEVEL, FOUND TO POSSESS A WEAPON ON SCHOOL PREMISES OR AT EVENTS, OR WHILE TRAVELING TO AND FROM A SCHOOL OR SCHOOL PROGRAM OR EVENT (INCLUDING SCHOOL BUSES AND PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION) BE ARRESTED AND EXPELLED FROM THE SCHOOL DISTRICT FOR AT LEAST ONE YEAR. THE LAW DEFINES A WEAPON AS “ANY KNIFE, CUTTING INSTRUMENT, CUTTING TOOL, FIREARM, SHOTGUN…”
Mary knew this was the school rule that Patrick was supposed to have broken by supposedly attacking Robertson with the scissors. She knew that city schools had no tolerance for weapons of any kind, and she’d been in schools much worse than Grayson, where she’d had to go through a metal detector to enter. She kept going, through an old-fashioned set of French doors with varnish peeling off the dark wood, and found herself in a short hallway with a floor of polished concrete.
At the beginning of the hallway was an old wooden desk, staffed by an older woman with a sign-in log in front of her, a spiral-bound notebook, and she looked up at Mary pleasantly, from behind thick glasses. “May I help you?”
“Yes, I have a meeting with a lawyer from the school district.”
“If you’ll show me your identification and sign in here, the office is down the hall to the right.”
“Thank you.” Mary extracted her wallet from her purse, showed her ID, then signed in. “Is there a ladies’ room on this floor?”
“Yes, near the office.”
Mary had figured as much. “By the way, does this school have an auditorium?”
“Yes, it’s after the office. If you take a right out of the office, you’ll see it at the end of the hall. Have a good day.”
“Thanks.” Mary walked down the hall, sliding her phone from her pocket to take photos. She walked down the hallway, taking photos of the classrooms on both sides. She could see kids through the windows in the old wooden doors, and she assumed that Patrick’s classroom wasn’t on this floor because kids looked younger, like first- and second-graders. Still she took a few pictures, noticing there were no surveillance cameras, then she passed another poster put up by the sch
ool district: BULLYING POLICY, it read at the top and underneath: WHAT IS BULLYING? BULLYING IS CHARACTERIZED BY THE FOLLOWING THREE (3) CRITERIA: IT IS AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR OR INTENTIONAL HARM-DOING, IT IS CARRIED OUT REPEATEDLY OVER TIME, AND IT OCCURS WITHIN AN INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WHERE THERE IS AN IMBALANCE OF POWER…”
She resumed going down the hallway, cheered by a bulletin board decorated with multicolored happy faces drawn by the students, under a poster-painted banner CELEBRATE UNIQUENESS, NO PLACE FOR HATE. The board was filled with yellow construction paper on which each student had inked his thumbprint; it looked as if every classroom in the school was included, and penciled beside each thumbprint was the student’s name.
Mary scanned the classroom names—Ms. Sandoval 201, Ms. Swanson 405, Ms. Chickowski 106—then spotted Patrick’s classroom teacher, Ms. Krantz 504. Mary counted thirty-one thumbprints on the construction paper, so the class was very large, and she found Patrick’s thumbprint easily, because his lettering was poor. She felt a pang and found herself putting her thumb over his thumbprint. She hoped he was okay at home, but Edward still hadn’t called her back. She’d follow up later.
She turned right down another hallway and noticed instantly that the classrooms had disappeared, replaced by a row of old wooden doors that no longer had any windows, though they were all closed and their purpose wasn’t clear. It was apparently a series of administrative offices and closets because in the middle on the right was the school office, denoted by an Art Deco sign above another set of French doors, which sat propped open.
Mary walked forward, taking pictures surreptitiously in case there were any surveillance cameras she hadn’t detected. She reached the office, but didn’t go in. Instead, she glanced in on the fly, finding that it looked much as she had expected, but even older; it actually had wooden floorboards and a paneled counter that had been retrofitted to accommodate a printer and computer, and behind the counter, a young woman looked up curiously.
“Going to the bathroom, be right back,” Mary said to her, making the I-Have-to-Pee face that every woman had made at one time or another. She kept going, snapping photos of the wooden doors on either side of the hallway. On her right was a wooden door that read Ladies’ Room in old-fashioned gold script, and beyond that at the end of the hallway were double doors with another Art Deco sign, AUDITORIUM.
Mary wanted to find the room in which Patrick was assaulted and she sensed she was getting closer. She hurried past the auditorium and encountered another right turn, which she took, finding herself on another hallway lined with classrooms. She picked up the pace, snapping a few pictures on the run, and noticed that the children in the classrooms seemed older, and she passed classroom 501, so she knew she had reached the fifth-grade classrooms.
She walked past 502, and 503, on alternating sides of the hallway, and finally reached Patrick’s classroom, which was on her left. She stole a glance inside to see a young, blonde teacher, but then kept going, trying to find the room. The classrooms ended, and on the far left, near another stairwell, she spotted a wooden door similar to the administrative doors, unmarked and without any window. It was wider than a conventional door, and Mary remembered that Patrick had said something about floor machines being in the room. It could be that the door was wide enough to permit floor polishers and the like to be stored there.
Mary crossed to the door, turned its brass knob, and opened it. At first she couldn’t see anything because it was windowless and dark inside, but she closed the door behind her, used her phone as a flashlight, located the light switch, and turned it on. Ancient fluorescent lighting flickered overhead, illuminating a long, rectangular utility room lined with a few old stainless-steel floor polishers with oversized orbital brushes, then a bunch of mops in scuffed yellow rolling buckets, and at the farthest side, away from the door, was a wide washbasin.
Mary took pictures of the room, snapping as many as she could to examine them later. Her chest felt tight the entire time, and she was afraid of being discovered, so she finished quickly, turned off the light, then slipped out of the room. She headed back toward the office, mentally retracing Patrick steps, now that she understood the school layout. She could imagine exactly how what Patrick had described had taken place. If Patrick was heading toward the auditorium and straggling at the end of the line, which was likely considering he didn’t have any friends in class, it would have been easy for Robertson to pick him off from the crowd. Then all Robertson would have to do would be to steer Patrick in the opposite direction, head back toward the utility room, and close them both inside. The utility room was off the beaten path near the stairwell, and since all of the students and staff were at the assembly, nobody would’ve heard or seen anything amiss.
Mary had gotten part of what she had come for, now it was time to get the rest. She went back down the corridor that ended in the auditorium, then took a left and headed for the office, surprised to see that coming toward her in the opposite direction was the lawyer for the school district, Kevin Reynolds, striding toward the office in a suit and tie, and cool aviator sunglasses. A former power forward at Villanova, Kevin was hard to miss because he was so tall, plus he liked to wear his hair in a bushy Afro that added two inches to his height. He was biracial, with light skin, gorgeous features, and a confident smile. None of the female lawyers minded when he appeared for the district.
“Hey, Kevin!” Mary called out to him, putting on her game face. “You’re here early.”
“You’re here earlier.” Kevin grinned, hooking his sunglasses with a finger and looking over them, his hazel eyes knowing. “What have you been up to?”
“Uh, I had to go to the bathroom.” Mary gestured vaguely behind her, but Kevin only chuckled.
“Please. You think I’m stupid just ’cause I’m pretty?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Mary spent the next hour presenting Patrick’s case to Kevin and Julie Latimer, the Special Education Director, who greeted them with a nervous smile. Julie was in her early thirties, with light brown eyes, a long nose, and a heart-shaped face framed by short brown hair that was cut in a wedge, with one side higher than the other. She had on a light blue tank top with white Capri pants and matching sandals, and even so, looked uncomfortable in the stifling air of her tiny office, which lacked not only a window, but oxygen.
The three of them huddled around Julie’s clunky wooden desk, which was cluttered with newsletters, workbooks, an old Mac laptop, and a Week-At-A-Glance spiral calendar, as well as a pink Play-Doh cup, a multicolored array of old Silly Bandz around a Phillies mug, photos of a chubby ginger cat and kittens, and a stack of confiscated cell phones. Mismatched file cabinets lined the walls, covering the rose-marble wainscoting, and above that were an array of motivational posters, a green sign that read COLLEGE BOUND HIGHWAY, and PRACTICE RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS in rainbow letters.
Mary showed Kevin and Julie that Patrick was identified in first grade as having a reading disability, but since then Grayson had not programmed him for reading support in any meaningful way. She presented Patrick’s case, that he was still at first-grade reading level, hadn’t been reevaluated within three years, and needed intensive remediation for his dyslexia. She moved on to his anxiety issues, arguing that they went hand-in-hand with his untreated dyslexia. The connection between stress, anxiety, and dyslexia was well-known, in that dyslexic children experience an inordinate amount of stress arising from the fact that no matter how hard they try in school, they fail. Combined with the bullying from classmates, it resulted in them shutting down and destroyed a child’s self-esteem, which was happening with Patrick.
“Okay, we hear you,” Kevin said when she was finished. He leaned away from the table, glancing at Julie. “What has Grayson done to program for Patrick? Would you like to explain your side of the story?”
“Yes.” Julie flashed her nervous smile. “Well, Mary, we know what we’re doing. We do guided reading.”
Mary knew that wasn’t enough. That just m
eant that the teacher stood at the front of the classroom, reading aloud while thirty students watched. That would be like showing someone a set of weights and expecting them to get in shape without lifting them.
“Our teachers work hard, and they know what they’re doing. That’s balanced literacy.”
“But that is not a research-based reading intervention program. Patrick needs intensive interventions. He is only going to get further and further behind. The longer you wait, the harder it is to catch up, so the gap between him and his peers widens. That’s why you start to see the behaviors, the shutting down and the vomiting. We’re losing this kid.”
“Look, I get it, I wish we could do more, but we don’t have a special ed teacher to pull him out into a small group. I requested for this building to have an additional teacher and to have teachers trained in a research-based program, but I got turned down. The budget isn’t there for it. I don’t have the staff or the teachers to give him what he needs.”
Mary turned to Kevin. “So that’s an utter failure to program for him—”
“You made your point, Mary.” Kevin raised his hand gently, so Mary moved to the next issue.
“What are you doing about his anxiety? He’s school-phobic, he gets bullied by the other kids because he can’t read and now he’s throwing up. Has anybody made the connection between his anxiety and his dyslexia? Doesn’t anybody care?”
Julie leaned over. “Mary, you have to understand our position. It’s not like we don’t care about Patrick. We do. We care about all of the children here.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to criticize you. I’m trying to get his needs met.”
“I know.” Julie nodded, meeting Mary’s eye directly. “And I wish I had a counselor here. We do the best we can with the resources we have.”
Mary appreciated her frankness. “I get it, you’re doing the best you can with the support you have.”
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