A Table By the Window

by Lawana Blackwell

  “Good morning, Dr. Kincaid,” Carley said. “I’m afraid I have bad news.”

  Dr. Kincaid lay down her pen. “Uh-oh. Please have a seat.”

  Carley sat in the chair facing the desk and unlatched the briefcase in her lap. “I almost telephoned you last night. But it was so late.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Four of my second-hour students copied their assignments from the Internet.” She leaned forward to hand the papers over the desk.

  “This isn’t good,” Dr. Kincaid groaned, flipping through the stack.

  “Would you like to see the Web site?”

  “Yes, later. But it’s clearly plagiarism.” She set aside the first paper, looked at the name on the second, and blew out a longer stream of breath. “Ryan Ogden. His grandfather will be livid.”

  Retired four-star general Avery Ogden, author of severalscience-fiction novels, grandfather to three Emerson-Wake students, was the preparatory school’s most generous contributor.

  “But he has no cause to be angry at us,” Carley pointed out. “Not at the school.”

  Without replying, the headmistress scanned the papers again. At length her mocha-colored eyes met Carley’s. “I want you to take the day off.”

  Carley shook her head. “I’m not about to skip out and leave you to handle this alone.”

  “I insist.” She pressed a button on the speakerphone. “Faye, will you round up someone for gate duty? And I’ll need to see Melinda when she arrives.”

  “Yes, Dr. Kincaid,” came through.

  Graduate student Melinda Pearson was one of two “floating” aides and substitute teachers. She had taken Carley’s classes for two days back in November, when Carley had an especially fierce migraine. She was highly competent.

  But very unneeded this morning. At least in Carley’s opinion.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked.

  “It’s best if I handle this myself.” Dr. Kincaid picked up her pen and began rotating it with fingers tipped in the same pink as her lips. “Did you ever explain to your students what plagiarism is, Carley?”

  Desperation had entered her tone.

  And something else…faintly. Accusation.

  At me? Carley leaned forward again in an attempt to catch her eyes, but they were fastened hypnotically to the pen-turning process.

  “They’re high school sophomores,” Carley reminded her.

  “But did you—”

  “Explicitly. What English teacher doesn’t? And besides, it’s spelled out in the handbook they signed.” Disappointment surged through her. “You can’t be thinking of dropping this.”

  “Of course not. But a negative grade in this class would destroy any chance at a good college.” Finally her eyes met Carley’s again. The brittle voice softened. “I realize that second-hour class has been a difficult one for you, Carley. But if we allow vindictiveness to cloud our—”

  “You think I’m being vindictive?” Carley cut in, unable to believe her ears.

  A hand released one end of the pen long enough to rake the stack of papers. “Could you really live with knowing that Erin Baine missed out on Harvard because of one childish lapse in judgment?”

  It seemed as if Carley’s lungs could not pull in enough air. “And so you propose we look the other way while she cheats her way in? So she can become a doctor or lawyer? Or how about a senator?”

  Redness slashed Dr. Kincaid cheeks. “Of course not. I propose…I insist, we give them another chance. This once.”

  Clarity struck Carley like a swift, silent bolt of lightning. “This isn’t about Erin, is it?”

  “It’s about all four of them.”

  “You’re afraid of losing your job if General Ogden stops his support.”

  She flinched when the pen slammed against the desk.

  “I’m sorry,” Dr. Kincaid said right away, but in the next breath added, “Take the day off, Carley.”

  Chapter 2

  A foghorn sounded from the west, where white mists shrouded the Golden Gate Bridge’s lofty piers. Other sounds met Carley’s ears: seagulls’ incessant ky-eows. Laughter from uniformed elementary students at the antics of the barking sea lions. The chatter of Japanese tourists snapping photographs of each other with Alcatraz over their left shoulders. The rustle of waxed paper as she dug out the remaining chocolate morsels from a bag of Blue Chip cookies.

  No San Franciscan in her right mind would seek consolation from a damp bench at the end of Pier 39, but it was one of the few places from childhood Carley could recall being happy. At least for part of one summer day.

  Her mother’s boyfriend-of-the-month, a construction worker named Maxwell, had driven them from Sacramento. Even at nine, Carley had doubts about most of Maxwell’s claims—that no cousin of his had ever scaled the TransAmerica Pyramid in special suction shoes, nor was another cousin Clint Eastwood’s bodyguard—but his generosity more than made up for the lies. He trailed behind Carley’s mother through one shop after another, paid for Carley to ride the carousel four times in a row, and then treated them to dinner at Neptune’s Palace restaurant.

  “See Angel Island?” he had said, pointing a Dungeness crab claw toward the Bay on the other side of the glass. “My Uncle Jim dug up a chest full of gold coins when he was stationed there.”

  “What did he do with them?” Carley had asked for politeness’ sake.

  He had looked over his shoulder, in a furtive manner that made Carley halfway believe him, and then leaned closer. “He hid them in his basement and sells a handful now and then to a coin dealer. Always a different dealer, mind you.”

  Then Maxwell sat back in his chair and winked. “He’s got over a million dollars in the bank now.”

  Linda Walker was still pretty at the time, though chain-smoking and drinking were turning her voice as husky as a man’s. She rolled her green eyes and asked why Maxwell drove a ten-year-old Tempo with a broken radio and stuck passenger door, if he had a millionaire uncle. Carley knew that was the beginning of the end, even before Maxwell’s face clouded.

  By Christmas Linda was married to Huey Collins, an accountant at the California State Capitol. It was a promising move up—from a duplex on H Street to a three-bedroom brick rambler in Citrus Heights. In a rare show of maternal caring, Linda pressured Huey into adopting Carley, reasoning that she did not want her daughter playing second fiddle to his own two girls. Later, Carley overheard Linda confide to a girlfriend over the telephone that the adoption was so Huey would have to pay child support, should there be a divorce.

  Nonetheless, Carley reveled in the relative normalcy of the situation. She was enrolled in a school that did not post guards on the playground and hallways. Collection agencies ceased telephoning. The family attended church. Linda quit her job at Safeway and even developed an interest in cooking beyond frozen microwave meals. The stepsisters, ages eight and nine, were fun playmates on their third-weekend-per-month visits. Huey was a kindly father. For a while.

  And then Linda, bored with domesticity and having to ask for spending money, took a job as a counter clerk at Best Western. She worked Saturdays and Sundays, which suited her even more, for the stepdaughters got on her nerves when they visited. That left Carley and Huey alone at home for three weekends out of every four. He would take her to IHOP after church on Sundays, as if to make up for the torment he was beginning to inflict upon her at home. She began wetting the bed and making poor marks in school. Linda had no idea, for Carley had been doing the laundry since age seven or so, and when had Linda ever kept a parent-teacher conference appointment?

  Huey was arrested the following October, after his eldest daughter confided in a teacher. When the social worker and police officer visited the house in Citrus Heights, Carley knew instinctively how she was expected to reply to their questions. In spite of her fervent denials, they brought her to a clinic to be examined by a woman doctor. Huey was sent to prison for five years after his attorney made a deal with prosecutors who wished
to spare the girls from having to testify. The run-down duplex Carley and Linda moved to on 23rd Street seemed a refuge.

  Her mother did not bring any more men home to live with them until Carley was fourteen. That was when Linda became pregnant by Wayne Ross, part-time bartender and singer in country-western clubs. Wayne played funny songs on the guitar, pasted up new wallpaper, fixed the drip that had etched a brown inverted V beneath the bathtub faucet, spent eight hundred dollars to retrieve Linda’s car from the repossession lot, and spoon-fed her soup after she miscarried the baby. But he was insanely jealous, once even beating up a UPS driver for supposedly giving Linda the eye while delivering a package to the family who shared the duplex. He slept days, and his ears were as sharp as sonic radar. He woke at the faintest noise to rant and rave.

  In spite of the migraines that were beginning to plague her, Carley began staying outdoors after school and on weekends, and gravitated toward a half-dozen other adolescents who found the streets more welcoming or interesting than their homes.

  Her new friends taught her how to shoplift and smoke cigarettes—even pot whenever they could get it. She dyed her hair and fingernails black. One spring day, a boy she had a crush on stole his father’s Aerostar van, and the group set out for San Francisco. For three days they managed to evade authorities in Golden Gate Park. The police returned the other children to their parents with stern warnings but kept Carley in custody when Linda met them at the door with a black eye and bleeding lip. She refused to press charges against Wayne, and so Carley was sent to a foster home in Yuba City, fifty miles from Sacramento.

  The Woodleys had a fine house, but it took Carley only days to realize her position as housemaid and sitter for four undisciplined children under the age of seven. When she slipped away five months later with a credit card and twenty-three dollars plus change from Alice Woodley’s purse, two policemen met her at the Sacramento Greyhound station. She spent eight days in juvenile detention, then was sent to a group home in Redding, California.

  There, the snarls in her life began untangling. She was enrolled in Pioneer High School. Her grades improved. She made the basketball team and gave up cigarettes after the coach threatened to kick her off if he smelled tobacco again. The migraines eased from at least one a week to one every four or five months. One of the group home’s counselors, Janelle Reed, provided a sympathetic ear to her railings about Linda’s choosing a man over her and failing to protect her from Huey Collins. But more importantly, she gave Carley a glimpse of what her future could be.

  “Learn from your mother’s failings and you won’t end up like her,” Janelle had said, time and time again.

  Carley’s first official act upon turning eighteen was to legally shed the name Collins with money she had saved for just that purpose. It was bad enough to have memories of her stepfather stored in the back of her mind. Reed seemed the logical choice, even though by this time the counselor had moved to Alaska with her husband to train sled dogs. It cost not a cent more to get rid of Rainbow in favor of simply no middle name. After mulling over several possibilities, she decided to keep Carley. Her mother claimed to have named her after singer Carly Simon—though in typical Linda-fashion she had paid no attention to the correct spelling—but it was still a nice, normal name, and she could not imagine having to adjust to a new one.

  She unsuccessfully tried for a basketball scholarship at California State University and so put herself through school by waiting tables thirty-plus hours weekly. Linda died in Mercy General Hospital on March 3, 2002. And even to the end she maintained that she was a good mother who had simply made a few mistakes. Wasn’t the fact that her daughter was a college graduate proof enough?

  ****

  How easy it would be, Carley thought as she got up from the bench, to sit back and allow a handful of rich kids to bend the rules. After all, she had done her duty by reporting them to the headmistress.

  She shook her head. It was a nice try, but she could not make herself believe it. Somehow, over the course of institutionalized living and working her way through college, she recognized that certain people stood out from among the masses by virtue of their character. Like Janelle Reed. The DeLouches. Having had most of her childhood wrecked by people with no positive character traits, she did not take that virtue lightly. How slippery was the slope from winking at a handful of cheaters to breaking the law? Or ruining someone else’s life?

  Or becoming like her mother? Her worst fear.

  You can’t back down on this, she told herself.

  Back in her apartment, Carley averted her eyes from the answering machine’s blinking light. Just because she had decided to stand firm did not mean she was looking forward to the confrontation that would result. The telephone rang at half past seven as she was stretched out in pajamas and slippers in front of America’s Funniest Home Videos reruns, trying to lighten her mood. She rested the half-finished peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the plate upon her stomach and angled an arm to reach for the cordless receiver on the wicker sofa table.

  “I’ve been calling all day, Carley,” came Dr. Kincaid’s brittle voice before Carley could say hello.

  The concern in the headmistress’s tone was gratifying. That meant she regretted her course of action.

  “I had to get away and think,” Carley said. “It wasn’t right for you to send me home like that.”

  A sigh came through the receiver. “Do you think I enjoyed handling it this way? But you have to understand that the school can’t exist without donations.”

  “Are you saying you gave them another chance?”

  “With the condition that they turn in new compositions by Friday. With notes of apology to you for misunderstanding the ru—”

  “And those students who followed the rules?” Carley cut in, making a row of little pinches along the bread crust.

  “This doesn’t affect them. My hands are tied on this one, Carley. I’m ordering you to let this go.”

  Carley took a deep breath. “I can’t do that, Dr. Kincaid. We both know that’s not fair.”

  “What we both know, is that I went out on a limb to hire you, with only three years’ experience and no master’s degree.” Dr. Kincaid’s brittle voice sharpened. “You’re a good teacher, Carley, in spite of your inability to maintain discipline in some of your classes. But frankly, I’ll sacrifice you if you force my hand.”

  You can’t back down, Carley reminded herself.

  And then, misgivings. She did go out on a limb. You’ve never been fired. If you can just hang in there for five more months, you’ll have the summer—

  “Carley?”

  You’re a coward, Carley said to herself.

  And what she said to Dr. Kincaid was, “All right.”

  “I appreciate that,” the headmistress said before breaking the connection.

  Wiping her eyes with her paper napkin, Carley set aside her sandwich. Throbbing in her right temple warned of an impending migraine. She buried her face in a sofa pillow. Was she any better than the students who had cheated? So much for her seemingly high standards of integrity. Integrity was easy when there were no personal risks involved.

  On leaden feet she carried her dish into the kitchen. She had just swallowed two Excedrin tablets to ward off pain and half of a Dramamine tablet to ward off nausea, when the answering machine’s blinking light caught her attention again. She may as well clear the messages.

  “Carley, this is Dr. Kin—” She pressed the Erase button.

  “If you’re there, I need you to pick up.” Erase.

  “Miss Reed, this is Stanley Ma—” Erase.

  Too late her mind registered the baritone drawl. In all the emotional turmoil of the day, her mind had simply shelved the news of her grandmother’s death. She returned to the living room and took the two business cards from the coat folded across the back of the chair. The attorney’s card listed both office and home telephone numbers. Her finger was poised over the dial buttons when she considered the t
ime difference between California and Mississippi. Two hours, three? Whichever was correct, it was at least 9:45 P.M. on Mr. Malone’s end. She propped his card against the telephone. She would have to wait until tomorrow afternoon.

  Sleep was again elusive for hours, in spite of medication, and she was too exhausted to get up and reverse the bedding. She woke to the telephone’s ringing, five minutes before her clock radio was set to go off. Dr. Kincaid, she thought, trying to clear the fog from her mind as her feet felt for slippers. Thankfully, no headache. She reached the kitchen as the baritone drawl from the night before was speaking through the answering machine.

  “Miss Reed, this is Stanley Malone, in Tallulah, Mississippi. Would you please give me a ring when—”

  “Hello, Mr. Malone,” Carley said, snatching up the receiver. “I’m sorry I didn’t call yesterday.”

  “There’s no need to apologize, Miss Reed. I’m just glad Mr. Wingate found you. And I’m sorry about your grandmother. Miz Walker was a fine lady.”

  “Was she?” Carley asked, a little surprised by the wishfulness in her own voice.

  “She certainly was. And she left you her house and most of its furnishings. And some money, in the neighborhood of a hundred and sixty thousand dollars.”

  Carley pulled a chair from the table and sank into it. Surely her sluggish mind had misinterpreted. “Did you just say a hundred and sixty thousand?”

  “Before certain expenses, but those are comparatively minimal. I gather most of the estate comes from what remained from your grandfather’s life insurance.”

  “How did he die?”

  “Heart attack, same as Miz Walker.”

  Tears welled up in Carley’s eyes. “They didn’t even know me.”

  “That wasn’t your doing, Miss Reed,” he said with sympathetic tone.

  “I could have tried harder. All I did was send a note after my mother died. It probably didn’t even reach my grandmother.”

  “But it did. She had asked the people to whom she sold the house in Washington to forward any mail addressed to her, just in case your mother or you would wish to contact her. It was thoughtful of you to send it.”