Natalie laughed. “What could it hurt to just talk to him? You might have a lot in common.”
“I doubt that,” Vicki said as they headed out the back door together. “But, it’s great to see you smiling again.”
Natalie started the car and began the drive home. She didn’t relish the task that awaited her—cleaning out JD’s closet. There were clothes she had mostly picked for him and boxed bric-a-brac that had been annoying when he put it there but now made her fight to avoid crying. But at least she’d have something to occupy her thoughts as she packed his things. She had to come up with a plan to get Phil and Vicki talking, and if she set things up just right, they might even become more than friends.
Chapter Five
Natalie had called JD to tell him the rest of his belongings were packed in old boxes and new luggage and that he could come and pick them up. A real estate agent’s sign was up in front of the house they had built together. He had looked at the listing online, with pictures of the dining room where they had once ate and the living room where they had once relaxed and cuddled on the sofa and the bedroom where they had held each other and felt each other’s breathing. He looked at these pictures and squeezed his fists and felt his chest constricting. His phone was well-stocked with pictures of the two of them. He had a whole series of pictures of Natalie in a sun hat, sitting in a beach chair in their backyard, holding up a smoothie and resting her hand on her growing belly. Actually, those pictures had been taken after a quarrel, but you couldn’t tell to look at her. She was glowing. Later that night, they named the growing baby John Allen.
His son would not call him Daddy or learn to walk or look at pictures of JD growing up or learn that JD stood for John Dewey, the great founder of American education. John Allen would not go to a local high school and have the girl next door for a sweetheart or look through his father’s color of dark Latino eyes at a world full of promise. He would never inherit JD’s journals full of Cornell Notes on education topics and would not be a professor at Vanderbilt or even a teacher at Elbridge Jones.
And he and Natalie would never be able to have another chance at a child the way things were going. If she went ahead and divorced him, neither of them would learn what good things they could do together. It wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair.
He sat at night in Dale’s characterless apartment, doing mindless data entry and looking at pictures from his marriage. His phone rang constantly, but it was never Natalie.
There was his father: “You holding up well, son? I’m rebuilding the old Snapper—you should come over and give me a hand. Work will take your mind off things.”
“I’ll come later. I’ve got to finish things here.”
And then his mother: “You must eat better, mi hijo. I’ll make you some enchiladas. And elotes. And churros.”
“Don’t cook so much, Mama. I’m not that hungry.”
And there was Gwen breathily lilting about her day and other empty-headed nonsense: “Some jerk dented my car in the parking lot with a shopping cart. I hate it when people don’t put them away. Traffic is so terrible around there. Do you know anywhere better to shop?”
“Not really, no, sorry.” He didn’t even remember giving her his number and didn't want to deal with the way her chirping about nothing in particular reminded him of their fragmented sexual history. He put Gwen out of his mind, continued data entry and flipped through pictures from his fairy tale marriage.
In the morning he stood inside by the entrance to Elbridge Jones and watched the kids stream in, a mass of hoodies and torn jeans and brightly colored shoes and smart phones with cracked screens, and tried to match names to the faces. He told himself he was wrong when he thought of these children as masses of stacked statistics, test results and grade and family histories. A child from a broken home might have more difficulty in school, but now JD’s own home was broken. Who was he to criticize?
Gwen came in and stood by him.
He nodded to her and muttered, “Hello.”
She touched his elbow. “You look tired. Can I do anything to help? Anything at all?”
He saw an undeniable offer in her eyes. “No, you’re doing enough already.” At that moment there was a crash behind them. Gwen gave a little jump and gasp and clip-clopped to the door of the main office. JD saw a child on the floor — it was the thin boy, Mike Byrne. His books were scattered.
“Hey, look out,” said the tall brown-haired boy standing over him. A senior basketball player, Jerry Rook. “You bumped into me.”
“Yeah, bullshit,” Mike answered. He grabbed his books.
“You’re clumsy, kid,” Jerry told him.
JD moved into the vicinity but pretended to be unaware of what was going on. He figured this would end the bullying without making Mike look as if he needed adults to fight his battles for him.
“’Sup Mr. West,” Jerry intoned, leaning down into JD’s face. “If I score twenty points tonight, can you let me skip my biology test?”
“Go to tutoring,” JD told him. He named a science teacher. “See Ms. Jinks 6th period.”
“I need a pass out of history.”
“I’ll give you a pass later. Go to class now and go to tutoring 6th.”
By the time JD had gotten rid of Jerry, Mike had made his escape good.
JD returned to the main office. Gwen had waited by the door. Now she opened it for him, leaning slightly forward so he could see a little bit of her swelling breasts, then followed him in.
“Call Ms. Taylor and ask her to stop by my office,” JD told the secretary.
“Sure, JD,” Gwen said. She went to her desk. Her walk was really noisy. How high were those heels?
He sat looking at a page of attendance statistics till a light rap at the door announced the arrival of his appointment.
Tonya Taylor was a mid-career guidance counselor who had moved up from New Orleans after Katrina had wrecked that city’s school system. She was savvy but not vigorous, a better advisor than a leader. She was very fat and wore pastel colors. She settled in a chair across from him, which squeaked, and crossed her hands on a clipboard in her lap.
“Mike Byrne,” JD said. “Whatever you’ve got.”
“It’s not good,” said Tonya. “His mother’s dead. He lives with his grandmother who has two jobs and walks with two canes. You probably saw her at the last PTA meeting, right? Gray hair, two canes?”
“And the gray blouse with the spaghetti sauce stain on it? That poor woman.”
“It wasn’t a new stain either. I’d say she’s slipping. Not a good choice for a young boy who needs the protection at home to let him be a little rambunctious. You feel me?”
“I feel you,” said JD. “But you didn’t mention his father.”
“His dad is called Charlie the Spoon. You remember when he was arrested for trying to rob a squeegee man?”
“Over the summer.” JD nodded. “That cell phone video of them wrestling and rolling around in an intersection that all the kids were looking at. Jesus Christ. No wonder Mike is getting bullied.” He reached for a coffee cup that didn’t exist. He buzzed Gwen. “Any coffee?”
“Half and half and half a sugar, right?” Gwen said over the intercom. JD had a quick thought about her spilling cream down her cleavage and shook his head to clear it out of his mind.
“Whatever’s fine.”
“Sure, JD.” Intercom off.
Tonya grimaced. “That girl is too perky to go anywhere near coffee. Seriously.”
“Charlie the Spoon,” JD reminded. “The spoon as in…”
“Heroin.”
“He’s on the street?”
“I overhead Grandma Stain saying he’s in Apple Blossom Manor.”
JD tapped his head as if it would make his brains work better. “The halfway house on Dandridge Avenue?”
“No, it’s on Castle.”
“Right.”
The door snapped open, admitting Gwen with coffee and a paper plate holding two pink frosted
donuts.
“Just the coffee, Gwen,” said JD.
“I got them for you,” she argued. “I never eat sweets. It spoils my figure.”
“Me too, honey,” Tonya interjected. She offered a sour smile.
“Excuse us.” JD nodded toward the door.
Gwen left the plate on top of a pile of paperwork. As soon as she was gone, JD and Tonya each took a donut and wolfed them down.
“That girl is a maneater,” said Tonya.
He ignored her quip and picked up the important conversation. “So the grandmother is barely competent, and the father is only a few steps from moving under the bridge. Is that about the shape of it?”
Tonya shrugged.
“So how do we help the boy?”
“Me personally,” said the counselor, “I’m not going within a mile of Charlie the Spoon. No one ever confused me with a squeegee man.”
“You think he’s dangerous?”
“No doubt.”
“And Mike?”
“A kid like that will lash out people who try to help him. If you try to ride in on a white horse and be the dad the Spoon could never be, you’ll wind up in handcuffs accused of sexual harassment.”
JD couldn’t help chuckling at that. “Come on, Tonya. Since we’re talking horses, this isn’t my first rodeo.”
“Well, leave me out of it,” said Tonya. “I’ll program his classes and call child services if there’s an emergency, but that’s it. I want to retire from here. I’ll help the ones I can help, and all I can do is pray for the rest.”
“We should do what’s right. Remember what Marcus Aurelius said?”
“Is that the kid who moved to Ashland when Coach kicked him off the football team?” Tonya grinned. She knew who Marcus Aurelius was.
“Yeah, that’s him.” JD gave her back a perfunctory smile. “Marcus Aurelius said, ‘Stop arguing about what it is to be a good man, and just be one.’ I mean, it makes sense to me. We can’t just play the percentages.”
Tonya sat waiting for his next move.
“Okay, thanks.”
JD was left alone in the office with hot coffee and traces of a plan to intervene.
Chapter Six
“Are you sure you don’t want to let me handle this?” Vicki asked for the hundredth time.
Natalie couldn’t help the hitch in her voice. “I’m sure. I have to face it eventually. Besides, I cried into a bucket of Ben & Jerry’s after packing up JD’s things last night. Might as well finish off the Edy’s tonight.”
“Why don’t you wait until your mom comes back to the States?”
“She’s not coming back until Christmas, and the house is already on the market. It’ll probably be sold well before then.”
“All right, then let’s get this show on the road.”
Natalie took a deep breath and put her hand on the knob of the nursery door. Closing her eyes briefly, she swung the door open and stepped inside. Everything was like they’d left it. The crib complete with soft blue sheets and a puffy bumper that was supposed to protect John Allen from getting little arms and legs stuck between the rails. The rocking chair and matching glider. A small bookcase filled with her and JD’s favorite childhood stories—Goodnight Moon, The Little Engine that Could, Uncle Remus and other treasures. There were also new board books that rattled and jingled. They had rounded corners safe for teething babies. Toy box, dresser, changing table, curtains—it was all there, waiting for a baby who would never see it.
“Oh, God,” Natalie whispered. She turned straight into Vicki’s comforting hug and shed more of her inexhaustible supply of tears. After she’d caught her breath and wiped her eyes, she pulled away.
“You ok, honey?”
Natalie nodded. “Hand me a box.”
Vicki handed over one of an assortment of boxes they’d gathered for the task. The two of them worked in silence for a while, neatly packing onesies, diapers, and anything else they could fit into the containers. When one box was filled, she or Vicki carried it to Natalie’s waiting open trunk.
They took a break, sitting on the barstools in the kitchen over iced lemonade. “You never told me where this stuff is going,” Vicki said.
“The crisis pregnancy center downtown.”
“What about the furniture?”
“I don’t know yet. Craigslist, maybe. Or I could borrow a truck…”
“Why don’t you ask JD? He’s still got that old rust-bucket of a pickup, doesn’t he?”
Natalie poured herself more lemonade. “I think it’s parked behind his dad’s house, but no, I can’t.”
“Honey, you can’t keep taking this all on yourself. JD can help. I’m sure he wants to.”
“I can handle it. I just…don’t think I can bear to see him again right now.”
“Ok. You don’t have to rush any of this.” Vicki turned up her glass and crunched a piece of ice. “I remember back when we first opened the daycare. You hadn’t been married that long, and the way JD looked at you—I was jealous.”
The memory stung Natalie’s eyes a little, but still brought on a smile. “Really? I remember him playing Tyrannosaurus with the kids.”
“Oh yes, that was hilarious!”
“Remember how he’d pull his arms back into his sleeves, get in that wide Tyrannosaurus rex stance and roar? Then he’d chase the kids around. They cracked up every time.”
Vicki chuckled while she went to the sink to deposit her empty glass.
Natalie followed and stood with her back against the counter. “I knew then he’d be a great father. But, that was before he was promoted. Before…everything.”
“Well, I think he’d still be a great father someday. I keep praying you’ll work things out.”
Sniffing back another round of tears, Natalie decided to change the subject. “I saw Phil yesterday in Costco.”
“Ok, so…”
“He asked about you.”
“Did he?”
With a wry smile on her face, Natalie nodded. “He did. And guess what he had in his cart?”
Vicki, who had been acting as nonchalant as a log, perked up a little. “What?”
“A book on astrology and some organic frozen dinners.” Natalie knew she’d caught Vicki’s attention. Her best friend and coworker was in love with all things related to the Chinese zodiac and read Suzanne White during every coffee break.
“Astrology? What kind of astrology?”
“I really couldn’t tell. You should ask him about it.”
“Yeah, I could…wait a minute, young lady.” Vicki pursed her lips and glowered at Natalie over her glasses. “I know what you’re doing, and it’s not going to work.”
Natalie shrugged. “We’ll see.”
“I tell you what—the day you and JD patch things up is the day I’ll talk to Phillip Connelly.” Vicki was defiant, but she had a twinkle in her eye as she turned away.
“You’re impossible, you know that?” Natalie sighed and dragged her unwilling spirit back into the nursery.
While she packed books one by one into the next plastic box, a dinosaur book caught her eye. She smiled down at the cartoonish T-rex on the cover and thought about JD. Was it possible Vicki’s prayers might be answered? She heard his voice in her memory, something he’d said in those rose-colored days when they’d first fallen in love: “You’re stuck with me now. Nothing’s going to take me away from you.”
She stuck the dinosaur book in with the rest. Oh, how she wished that were true.
Chapter Seven
Mike Byrne sat across the desk from Principal West. His hoodie was barely free of his face and hung around his ears. His notebook was clutched in his lap. Someone had drawn a crude penis and testicles on it with a permanent marker. He swallowed. His knuckles were red and raw; one had a red scab.
“What happened to your hand, son?” JD asked. “Were you fighting?”
Mike lowered his head, mumbled a negative sound.
“Did you punch someone?”
JD switched to his classroom voice. “Look at me when I’m talking to you. Why do you think you’re in here?”
“You think I did something wrong?” The boy shifted gears, became aggressive so quickly JD was surprised. “Maybe somebody told you I pissed on the flowers or something. I didn’t do anything.”
“I know you didn’t do anything wrong.” JD shifted gears also, to a calmer voice, to defuse the aggression. “I think it’s just the opposite. You are being bullied.” He knew Mike’s next line: he would say the other boys were just messing around, and they were all friends.
He was wrong. “Yeah, so?” Mike’s eyes narrowed. “There ain’t shit you can do about it. You ain’t there all the time. You caught Jerry the other day and all you did was send him to class. Cause he’s on the team, so he’s like a fucking god around this place.”
“You’re in the principal’s office,” said JD. “Stop swearing. It’s okay to be mad, but I don’t want to hear that kind of language.”
Mike swallowed, squeezed his notebook. “Yeah, sorry. Whatever.”
“I want to help you,” JD told him. The boy was pale, sick-looking and shaking. “The question is how. I could make Jerry’s life really unpleasant. I could take Jerry off the team, because Coach Peterman doesn’t like bullies any more than I do. But you’re smart enough to know that really won’t help you.”
“Why the f…” Mike stopped himself. “Why not?”
“It won’t help you because it will teach you that you need other people to protect you. So after I fix Jerry, then it’s someone else, and someone else, and pretty soon, you’ll be thinking of yourself as someone who gets bullied all the time. I don’t think I’d be doing you any favors.” He paused, looked into the child’s wet blue-green eyes. Mike kept fidgeting. “Am I making any sense?”
“Whatever.” That was a teenager’s answer, surely enough.
JD decided it was time to take the next step and asked a question that he hoped would draw Mike out. “Did you tell your dad?”
Chances Are Page 4
