Mourning Becomes Cassandra

by Christina Dudley

  “That’s the spirit! Give me a call or shoot me a message if you try to contact her and can’t get a hold of her. She’s got a kind of fluid living situation at this point, but she’s making it to class. And remember, you don’t need to solve any of her problems, just love her. Call us if you feel something’s over your head.”

  “Okay,” I said weakly. He hung up, and I sagged against the kitchen counter. What did “fluid living situation” mean? Why exactly had I thought I was qualified to do this? I remembered Kyle complaining that all the other students were druggies. Were those the problems Mark had referred to? Oh, well, too late now. But at least I could procrastinate until I was finished with the Lean-To.

  On auto-pilot I put on fresh bedding and changed the towels and gave the shower stall a good scrubbing. In a hall closet I found a nicer vacuum than we had at the Palace, but after I finished the carpets, I couldn’t find a broom anywhere. Guess Daniel’s condo hadn’t had any hardwood floors, but what had he used in the kitchen and bathrooms? I borrowed the Palace broom but made a note of everything we would need to buy for the Lean-To to make this easier in the future.

  Finally there was nothing left to do, and I locked up and went back. I debated whether I should wait till after school to call Nadina, but I chickened out: voice mail would be easier to begin with. That way she could call me back when she felt like it.

  To my dismay, Nadina picked up her cell phone. Glancing at my watch I saw it must be lunch. “Hello?” came her voice, high-pitched and slightly skeptical.

  I cleared my throat. “Hello, Nadina. My name is Cass Ewan, and I’m calling because I signed up to be a mentor, and Mark Henneman paired us up. Have I caught you at a good time?”

  “What?”

  “Is this a good time to talk?” I clarified.

  “Yeah, I mean I’m eating lunch.”

  “Oh, great. Well, I’d love to meet you and get to know you. Would you have time to get coffee after school one day this week? I could meet you at school, and we could walk to Tully’s.”

  She must have covered her phone because I heard her voice, muffled, and some laughter. She came back on. “Yeah, okay. You wanna do today? I’m working tomorrow and Thursday, and Friday my boyfriend and I are busy.”

  Butterflies. “Sure, Nadina. Today would be great. What time do you get out?”

  “Two forty-five.”

  “Okay, I’ll meet you in front then, by the handicapped ramp.”

  “Okay, bye.” She hung up before I could respond.

  Crap! That was in two hours. Scrambling to my mirror, I made a hasty assessment: hair in a sloppy ponytail, smudges of dust on my face, World Vision t-shirt I’d thrown on for cleaning duty, frayed jeans. One of the consequences of being a young mom was that I hadn’t bought any new clothes since before I got pregnant with Min; the most I could hope for from my existing wardrobe was vintage-three-years-ago cute.

  It occurred to me that Phyl was roughly my size—a tad taller—and much better dressed, but I didn’t know how she would feel about me rifling through her closet to borrow something. With Joanie I would have raided and pillaged without hesitation, as I’m sure she would do in my situation, but we didn’t wear the same size. In the end I kept my faded jeans but managed to locate a more form-fitting top in a shade of brown, Troy had remarked, that exactly matched my eyes.

  • • •

  With five minutes till school got out, I was sitting on the bench by the entrance, clean and presentable. I’d stuffed a chapter of my novelization in my handbag, just in case I ran into Kyle. Presently students began spilling out, laughing and joking with each other in some cases, sullen and darting away in others. It wasn’t hard to spot Kyle because he emerged on his own, his lanky form hunched defensively as if he couldn’t wait to get away.

  “Kyle!” I hollered, surprised by the surge of delight I felt in seeing him.

  He glanced up, expressionless, but when he recognized me, he made his characteristic, “Huh,” and came over to me. “What are you doing here?”

  “I took the plunge and decided to become a mentor, so I’m meeting my student today. How are you?”

  A shrug. “You working on your book?”

  I nodded, scrambling to open my handbag. “Here, Kyle, you promised to check it out and tell me if it’s crap. It’s just a chapter, and I’m afraid I got intimidated and started with a not-too-technical one, but let me know what you think. I put my email address and phone on the last page.”

  He accepted the pages wordlessly and stuffed them in his backpack.

  “How was school today?” I asked.

  “Sucked, like always. I thought about cutting out again, but I think I want to go out for basketball, and the coach is a real hard-ass. You can’t play if you have too many absences.”

  “Oh! That would be great! I could come watch you play,” I tried to encourage him. “And so could your mentor, if you get one. I met a guy at the meeting who might be okay. He works for a video game company. They put me with a girl named Nadina Stern—do you know her?”

  Kyle’s mouth compressed, and he nodded. He looked around behind him at the students and gestured vaguely at a clutch of girls talking together. “She’s over there.” I peeked nervously around him. No one in that group seemed to be looking around for me.

  “Which one?” I whispered.

  “Blonde, with the loud, squeaky voice.” At just that moment, the blonde smacked the girl next to her and shrieked, “Shut up! Are you shitting me?!”

  I took a deep breath. “Okay, then, I guess I’d better introduce myself. What are your plans?”

  “Kill some time at the library, then do some yard work for the basketball coach. Might have time tonight to read your crappy chapter.” He almost smiled at me and then sloped off. Greetings and leavetakings were just not his thing.

  Time to bite the bullet. It only took about three seconds to walk over to the group of girls, but they must have been on the lookout after all because they were all silent and staring when I reached them. “Hi,” I said. “I’m Cass Ewan, and I’m supposed to meet Nadina.”

  “Were you talking to Kyle Bateman?” demanded a dark-haired girl. “He never talks.”

  “He doesn’t?” I asked. “I mean, I’ve only just met him, and he talks to me, a little.”

  “Nooooo…” said another girl. She had fake black hair and large silver hoop earrings. “He thinks he’s too good for this place or something because he’s not a pothead, but he totally got busted for armed robbery.”

  “We call him Bandit,” put in the third friend, while I tried to contain my astonishment. So that was the mysterious “other stuff” Kyle had dabbled in, to get kicked out of Bellevue? Armed robbery?!

  I was dying for more details but forced myself to change the subject. If Kyle wanted to tell me his story, he would. “Anyhow, where can I find Nadina?” The other three girls backed away, giggling, leaving Nadina and me to stare at each other.

  She was tall, taller than I was, and a little on the heavier side, though it was hard to get a clear idea of her figure because she was buried in an oversized barn jacket of brown corduroy. Pale blue eyes inspected me, framed by highlighted blonde hair, cropped short. “Henneman said your name was Cassandra.”

  “It is, but no one calls me that. Do you have a nickname, or is it always Nadina?”

  “Always Nadina. My mom was watching TV when she was in the hospital to deliver me, and there was a soap character with that name. Before that I was going to be Brittany. Lucky she changed, though. I know about infinity Brittanys my age.”

  “Yeah, and I know about infinity Jennifers and Amys my age,” I agreed. “You want to get a coffee or hot chocolate or something?”

  She nodded, and we started walking. Nervously, I said, “So Mark Henneman said you’re new to Camden School this year. How do you like it so far?”

  I could tell by her expression that this was exactly the kind of question grown-ups ask and kids have to endure. “It’s fine. Th
e teachers are nice. Some of the kids are cool. I dropped out of my old high school.”

  “Which high school was that?”

  “Winslow Homer.” Winslow Homer was about twenty minutes south of Bellevue. “I dropped out because I got pregnant. I was doing lots of drugs, and my boyfriend told me the baby would be retarded or deformed or something, so I got rid of it.”

  Nadina had lapsed into a matter-of-fact, flat voice that I later learned was a product of having told her story so many times. Camden School relied on donations, so most students who were at all presentable were used to giving their personal histories at the drop of a hat. Nadina didn’t seem embarrassed either. These were the facts.

  “Then I just lost interest in school. My boyfriend thinks I should work.” The knight in shining armor was still in the picture, then.

  “Then how did you get here?” I prompted.

  “My mom. She agreed not to hassle me about living with my boyfriend if I would go back to school. Not that I have to do what she says because she couldn’t stop me, but it makes things easier if she’s not pissed off at me.”

  That made sense to me at least, even if the choices didn’t. “Do you have brothers or sisters?”

  Nadina shook her head. “Nope. Just me and mom.”

  “She must miss you, then, if you moved out.”

  “I come by a lot, especially if I’m fighting with Mike.”

  By the time we got to Tully’s, I learned that Mike was her 20-year-old boyfriend who didn’t have a job at the moment and who spent a lot of his time with friends Nadina wasn’t too crazy about, but she claimed they had some good times together. She and Mike were living in Mike’s dad’s basement, not too far from the apartment Nadina used to share with her mom. Although Mike was unemployed, he didn’t seem to have any objection to Nadina working, and she had gotten a part-time job cleaning out cages and sweeping the grooming floor at a local Petco. Mike had bigger ambitions, though. “He wants to be like a music producer. He’s totally into music, and he spends a lot of time in Seattle researching bands and stuff.” I wondered how he supported this exploratory phase of his life but decided not to ask yet.

  “How did you meet?” I said instead, stirring my tea to melt the honey. Nadina had ordered a complex, postdoc-level coffee concoction, caffeine being the licit, Northwest drug of choice for all walks of life.

  “My girlfriend and I went to a party her brother was throwing. Mike and his buddies were doing some heavy shit that they shared with us. I totally threw up and passed out, and when I woke up, just Mike was there, listening to some music. I said I had this monster headache, and he made me this drink that made me feel better, and we got to talking. About a month later I got pregnant.”

  I thought of my own high school days; they seemed so Mayberryish that I was glad Nadina didn’t ask me about them. My friends and I had gravitated toward the nerdier activities: band, yearbook, drama, youth group, journalism, French Club. There were of course kids at Bellevue who drank every weekend or got stoned or even just smoked, but they had their clique and we had ours. And my relationship with Troy—so gradual, so solidly based in friendship and mutual enjoyment and respect. It was like Nadina and I didn’t come from the same universe.

  Maybe because, for a brief time, I had been a mother, I found myself wondering if Nadina’s mom had pictured this story for her daughter. “What does your mom do?”

  Nadina spun one of her many silver rings around and around her finger. “She works in some assisted-living place. It stinks in there, but the old people are kind of sweet. Nobody visits them much because after about ten minutes you want to get the hell out. My mom works the graveyard shift. I see her mostly weekends.”

  “Do you still hang around with your friends, now that you live with Mike?”

  “Not as much. Mike likes me around when he’s around. I like the girls at this school, though. Some of them. I think we’re going to see a movie this weekend.”

  “Do you like movies?” I asked. The Twenty Questions was getting a little old, but heck, that’s getting to know adolescents. “It’d be fun to hang out a little every week, and we could see a movie or get coffee again or walk the lake or whatever.”

  “That’d be cool,” said Nadina. She even smiled a little at me. “I like all those things.” For whatever reasons—maybe we never get over high school emotionally—approval from teenagers feels ten times more rewarding than approval from other age groups.

  I smiled back at her. “And they’ve got some kick-off activity planned for us and some of the other mentors and students next Saturday. Sailing, I think, and a barbecue.”

  “Fuck that!” Nadina exclaimed, quickly clapping her hand over her mouth. “Sorry, but I wanna hurl even when I go on the merry-go-round. No way am I going on a boat.”

  “I get seasick, too,” I assured her, “But Dramamine works really well.” I blushed, thinking she probably could tell me all about drugs, over-the-counter or otherwise. “I’ll bring some for you, but you have to come totally sober. No mixing drugs on my watch.”

  “Ay ay, Captain,” Nadina saluted me.

  In the meantime we agreed to go for a walk the following Tuesday, and I promised to try to borrow a dog, so she could lay some of her Petco knowledge on me. I couldn’t honestly say I was looking forward to it—would I have to think of another 150 questions to hold us through another hour? That meant if we spent an hour a week together, I would need to generate…let me see…over 5000 questions before school got out in June.

  My thoughts in a swirl, I headed home, wondering what on earth I had gotten myself into.

  Chapter Seven: Of Cheesecake and Stained Glass

  When I woke Wednesday morning, there was an email from Kyle with the poker face subject: “Your chapter.” It took me a while to work up the nerve to open it; I showered, ate breakfast, answered some other messages, including two from Raquel, even cracked open one of the many books on grief or widowhood or losing a child that everyone under the sun had given me. For open house that week I’d knuckled down and invited our old couple friends the Luckers, and I figured I needed to do emotional prep. It was slogging through the “Old Friends, New Beginnings” chapter that chased me back to the email.

  No salutation, of course.

  Reason everyone thinks about technology and special effects so much. Scenes without them suck big time. Chapter okay. Agen Kolar—dude with the horns who looks like he had a bad tanning session, not Confucian conehead.

  Check out links. Or give up and do kids’ version, so all the friggin diehards get off your back.

  Friggin’ diehards like Kyle. He listed at least ten websites which would take me days to read through. The kids’ version sounded like a good option. Hadn’t I chosen this project so that I wouldn’t have to waste time working out a plot? Instead it looked like I’d have to waste time doing enough research to make it plausible.

  Mentor guy called. One you were talking about? Said something about you too. Meeting Wed.

  Lawyers are moneysucking blowhard vampires!

  Later

  He must have had a discouraging development with his lawyer. My mind wandered back to Nadina’s friends’ comments—how much of it was true? It wasn’t like Kyle was secretive. I would just ask him.

  Kyle,

  Thank you for reading my chapter and for your corrections and suggestions. I’ll take a look, but I am beginning to think this is over my head, and maybe I should do a High School Musical novelization instead.

  I laughed out loud to think what Kyle’s reaction to that would be.

  Hope you like your mentor James. Nadina and I plan on going on the sailing event—see you there?

  I know a couple lawyers. If you don’t like yours, maybe they might have another they recommend. I think you said you’re trying to get felony vandalism charges knocked down? Anything else?

  Cass

  After a day spent reading Clone Wars back stories, it was a relief to escape to the kitchen. Dinner was a rehe
at-friendly, homemade spaghetti sauce with Troy’s favorite twist: spicy linguiça replacing half the Italian sausage, hot enough to make Phyl’s nose run.

  “This is not good,” she complained, blowing her nose. “Joanie and I have singles tonight, and now my nose will be red.”

  “The Predator might think you’re drunk and an easy target and try to hit on you,” Joanie said mercilessly. The Predator was the fifty-something man who attended Chaff religiously, preying on any new young women. “Remember, a quick knee to the groin and palm heel to the nose.”

  “Wouldn’t ‘no, thank you’ work as well?” I asked.

  “Phyl would find the self-defense moves easier than saying no to someone.”

  “That’s not true!” Phyl laughed. “I’m getting better at it, and I actually have managed to turn the Predator down before. It wasn’t even super hard because he reminds me of Jason—or what Jason will be like in twenty years.” Jason was Phyl’s ex-husband. “Only Jason will probably be hitting on women in bars instead of church singles groups, since he quit the church when he quit me.”

  Joanie and I never had nice things to say about Jason, so we usually bit our tongues. Joanie turned her attention to me. “What are your big plans tonight, girlie? Sure you don’t want to come with us?”

  “No way! I may be old, but if the Predator gets desperate enough he might go for me. Besides, I wanted to make that cheesecake for tomorrow. Do we have a head count?”

  “Don’t bother asking us,” said Joanie. “Better ask Daniel when he comes home.”

  • • •

  Cheesecake was something I hadn’t made in years, but I had a good recipe, the kind with sour cream topping that covered any surface cracks. I was pulling the baked graham-cracker crust out of the oven when Daniel came home. I hadn’t seen much of him this week; the couple times he came home at a normal hour he had Missy with him, and Missy made it clear that she didn’t want to socialize. It made me slightly uncomfortable to have him catch me in the kitchen with an apron on. Too Mrs. Cleaver or something. At least when Missy was with him, I felt more like Alice on The Brady Bunch.