Mourning Becomes Cassandra
Page 27
“Oh, no,” I said, “Nadina didn’t go back there over the weekend, did she?”
Mark Henneman wadded up some paper from his desktop and shot a basket with it. “She says she didn’t. According to Nadina, she didn’t show for school on Friday because she was flipping out after she heard what happened. And today she wasn’t in school because of the arraignment.” Hmm…I didn’t know if I believed that, and apparently Mark had the same doubts.
“Then what happened at the arraignment today?” I prodded.
“First-time offense,” Mark sounded tired now. “He pled no contest, and for that amount of marijuana it’s only a misdemeanor charge. The judge gave him a week in jail, fined him a few hundred dollars. He’s required to attend a nonresident drug treatment program, and for two years he’ll be on probation and submit to random drug tests.”
“What if he fails the drug test?”
“If he fails a test or doesn’t attend the treatment program, he could be up for more prison time, since they went relatively easy on him.”
I growled. “That Mike!—‘First-time offense’ my eye! First time he got caught, that is, and they didn’t even catch him with the good stuff on him. At least we don’t have to worry about him around Nadina for a whole week.” Smiling ruefully, I added, “I don’t really wish they’d lock him up and throw away the key—it’d be great if he got better—but she’s fifteen! If he would just disappear she’d have a chance.”
“Yeah, well, with a kid like Nadina, there’s always more going on,” Mark answered. “Mike could disappear, but that wouldn’t change the underlying situation, why a girl like her would take up with someone like him. We’ve got to keep building her up, supporting her. You’re part of that, Cass, and so is her mom, the teachers and staff here, even this Aunt Sylvia of hers. The more support she gets, the less she’s going to look to Mike.”
His comments stirred a memory: sitting on the Palace porch with Daniel a couple months ago. I had asked him how difficult it might be for Nadina to break out of the drug scene, and he had said that it might be more a matter of those in the scene not letting her go.
Troubled, I said, “Mark, even if we get Nadina to trust us, and she begins to want good things for her life, what will prevent Mike from doing everything he can to undermine us and her?”
There was a thoughtful silence, while Mark shot a couple more baskets into the trash. “Some things are always going to be out of our control. Barry, our Substance Abuse Counselor, has told Mike’s father that he would be willing to meet with Mike, and we’ve told Nadina that, too. But if you think Nadina has trouble trusting us, imagine Mike.”
It wasn’t hard to imagine, given Mike’s months of groundless antipathy toward me. To my surprise, I heard my own voice after a minute. “I’m going to commit to pray for Mike.” Pray for Mike? That slouchy little thieving creep?
Mark thrust his hand at me across his desk. “Let’s shake on that, Cass. We’re going to have to call in the big guns on this one. ‘Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord’!” he boomed.
“And while God is working on Mike, I have an idea in the meantime,” I ventured.
He leaned forward. “Lay it on me, Cass. I’m all ears.”
• • •
My commitment to pray for Mike received its first challenge the next day when I finally saw Nadina, looking unnaturally perky for someone whose boyfriend was serving time. We agreed to go to the mall, a place we usually avoided, to get gingerbread lattés and enjoy the Christmas hubbub. The café tables looked out on the long, winding line of harassed parents and dressed-up darlings waiting to see Santa, and I thought, not for the first time, that I never would have imagined myself in this parallel universe. Instead of standing in that line with my own young child, I was getting coffee with a troubled teenager whose life read like a storyline from Cops. A storyline she was taking pains not to talk about.
After hearing her recitation of what she got Sonya and Ellie for Christmas and what they got her and what she bought her mom and then returned when she got ticked at her, I finally cut her off with, “Are you not going to talk about what happened this past weekend?”
Nadina’s mouth popped open, and then her eyebrows rushed together. “Have you been talking to Mark Henneman?”
I rolled my eyes. “I saw Mike’s stinking picture in the paper Saturday morning, Nadina, when he was getting arrested! And I gave you plenty of chances to tell me about it yourself. Can I help it if I had a mentor training last night, and Henneman wanted to fill me in?”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t call you back because I knew you’d make big deal out of it, just like I knew the school would,” Nadina went on the offensive. “Chrissake, it was just some pot. Mike wasn’t one of those friggin’ crackheads going off on each other and smashing chairs on each other’s heads. He was just asleep there, and next thing he knows, he wakes up and the cops are there busting everyone.”
Keeping my hands under the table so she wouldn’t see me balling my fists, I counted to twenty. “It was just pot this time, Nadina, which still happens to be illegal, no matter what you think, but you know and I know that Mike has had other drugs in his possession at different times which would have gotten him in way worse trouble. Not to mention the whole robbing-the-skating-rink-and-getting-you-fired incident.” She began protesting, but I interrupted. “I’m just saying that it isn’t the School and me blowing things out of proportion—things are out of proportion! Mike is in jail, Nadina.”
Furious, she glared at the kids waiting to see Santa, and I waited. One of the dolled-up little girls in line dropped her hot chocolate, splashing her pristine red-velvet dress, and the girl’s mother burst into frustrated tears, turning on grandma: “I told you to wait until after the picture to buy her that!”
In one of her whiplash-inducing, teenage mood swings, Nadina’s sense of humor overpowered her resentment, and she grinned at me. “Ha! Cass, that could be you. Instead you’ve got me.”
Relieved, I grinned back at her. “No joke. That probably would have been a big deal to me—chocolate stains on the Christmas dress. At least you do keep things in perspective.”
She leaned back in her chair, stuffing her hands in the pocket of her sweatshirt. “I know what you and Henneman want, even though neither one of you comes out and says it. You all hate Mike and want me to break up with him and move back in with my mom and start being a good little girl, don’t you?”
“We want to see you with people who love you and build you up,” I said. “People who help you make good choices. You have so much going for you.”
Nadina stifled a groan and rocked onto the back legs of her chair. “You want to go window shop?” Done with the serious conversation for the day, apparently.
I made a last-ditch effort. “One more thing, then,” I said, ignoring her dramatic sigh. “I was going to get you a gift card to the movie theater for Christmas, so that you and Sonya could go watch something together, but then I thought maybe you’d like to go to Ohio again and visit your Aunt Sylvia for Christmas—this time without your mother.”
All four legs of her chair slammed back onto the floor. “You bought me a plane ticket?”
“No, but my husband had some airline miles left over when he died, and I got you a ticket with some of them.”
“But I have to work at Petco on the 27th.”
“Give Blaise a call. I’m betting you can get out of it. If not, tell her I’ll come in and cover for you.”
“How do you know my Aunt Sylvia even wants me to come out there again?” she demanded suspiciously.
I knew because, when I made the suggestion to Mark Henneman, he called Aunt Sylvia then and there, but Nadina didn’t need to know this. He and I agreed that it would be ideal for her to be a couple thousand miles away when Mike got out of jail; let them get more in the habit of being apart.
I dodged her question. “Give her a call. I booked the ticket departing Thursday, when school gets out, and returning
the day before school starts.” Fishing in my purse, I dug out the electronic receipt and slapped it on the table. “Merry Christmas. Hope this turkey comes out better than the Thanksgiving one did.”
Nadina read the receipt incredulously, and I could see the desire to go warring with the desire to thwart annoying grown-ups’ machinations. At least she wanted to go; when I proposed it to Mark Henneman I couldn’t promise that she would take me up on it.
“Fine,” she said, after some minutes. “I’ll go to Ohio…thank you, Cass. But you and Henneman need to know that I’m not breaking up with Mike. I saw him this weekend after his dad bailed him out, and Mike swore up and down that he’s gonna clean up and go straight and do whatever the judge tells him to do. He’s gonna become one of those people who helps me make good choices and crap.”
I didn’t know whether to find this news encouraging or depressing. “But—but you’re still going to stay at your mom’s for now?”
“Nope. I told him that when he got out of jail I’d move back in to his dad’s basement.” Depressing, then. “You’ll see—Mike’s a good guy. He’s just been crazy this last month, but he knows it too. Look! For Christmas he gave me this ring.”
She held out her pinky and wiggled a silver band at me. I made a feeble attempt to admire it, all the while thinking he’d probably ripped it off someone else’s hand when they weren’t looking.
But I would discover later that I was wrong—Mike was a real giver. And that Christmas, unbeknownst to us, he had given Nadina far more than a pinky ring and some tall promises.
Chapter 27: A Mostly Merry Christmas
Christmas Eve was my favorite service of the year, and the later the service, the better. Even when I had Min we would go once as a family before dinner to the 5:00 Christmas Zoo, and then I would steal out again at 11:00 for the last service. Something about the candlelight and choir and carols—you didn’t want to go from that moving “Silent Night” back to kids screaming and card tables with the in-laws. But if you got out at midnight, and it was just you in the solemn stillness, it seemed almost possible these thousands of years later to hear the angels sing.
Not that I was going to hear any of that tonight, I thought, as I looked doubtfully down the pew. Past Dad and Mom and Perry sat Joanie—no big surprise there—and then next to her, Mrs. Martin, and next to Angela, Daniel himself. I was glad to be clear down at the end, where I wouldn’t have to spend the service trying to gauge their reactions.
It was Daniel’s suggestion to go, amazingly. Everyone had been gathered in the Palace kitchen, grazing and talking, while some of us worked on the food for tomorrow’s Christmas dinner, when he had turned to my father and asked quietly, “Which service were you all planning on attending?”
My mother choked on her cranberry spritzer, shooting me a look that needed no words to say, Didn’t you tell me he was an atheist?
My father, who unlike me and Mom could keep his head about him, merely replied, “Cass prefers the 11:00 service. Probably more in keeping with Perry’s night-owl tendencies anyhow.”
“Oh yeah,” seconded Perry. “Just getting started then.”
“Suits me fine, too, Mr. McKean,” said Joanie, “so I was going to tag along.”
Mrs. Martin came to lean against Daniel. “I guess it’ll just be you and me tonight, darling.”
“Actually, Mom, I think we should spend the evening with Joanie,” Daniel said lightly. “I’d like to see the service—I know her department has put a lot of work into it.” Had Daniel announced his decision to get a sex-change operation and go on Oprah, I don’t think he could have surprised us more, and no one could immediately think of anything to say.
“Oh!” Angela murmured, blinking her vivid blue eyes. “Certainly, dear. Whatever you like. I haven’t set foot in a church in decades. I hope I’m not struck by lightning!”
So here we were. No stray lightning bolt took out Mrs. Martin when we entered the candle-lit sanctuary, but a metaphorical one hit Joanie and me when one of the ushers came striding up to Daniel, arm outstretched, calling, “Hey, Dan! Merry Christmas. Good to see you here. Can I show you and your friends a seat?” An unidentifiable expression flickered on Daniel’s face, while Joanie and I glanced at each other, but before anyone could say more, the friendly usher was directing us into our row. A business acquaintance, perhaps?
I shut my eyes, putting the Martins out of my mind. It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old. The senior youth choir had the clearest, most ethereal voices, and it felt natural that hearing them should make me want to pray. Prayers of thankfulness for family and friends and home and work and meaning. And James.
• • •
He had stopped by yesterday before heading over Snoqualmie Pass to visit his family in the Tri-Cities. The air had a bite of cold in it, and James said it had already begun to snow on the Pass. We hadn’t managed to see each other more than a few times since the skating rink—the game James’ team intended to ship in mid-November had indeed slipped until the third week of December, almost disastrous for Christmas sales but maybe not. As Riley pointed out, most guys didn’t even start to think about buying Christmas presents until four o’clock Christmas Eve. Disastrous or not, the game finally shipped, but the team had been working around the clock. A couple times I brought by treats and once take-out for everyone, but the Free Universe office wasn’t exactly conducive to private conversation, much less anything approaching a make-out session. Moreover, however much James might like displaying his affection in front of others (and I was always pushing back on this with him), in the workplace he was absolutely hands-off. Maybe you never get over your buddies’ judgments of you.
“Can you come in for a minute?” I asked shyly, after I opened the door and he swooped me up for a hug and a resounding kiss. “I have a gift for you.”
“A minute—the snow is supposed to get heavier as the day goes on, and they’re not requiring chains at this point,” he agreed, “but I also have a little something for you.”
“When did you have time?” I marveled. “I figured you’d have to steal something off Riley’s desk and wrap it up for me.”
“The wonders of online shopping,” he explained. Dropping onto the couch, he pulled me onto his lap, and I promptly crawled off, knowing all my housemates would probably cut out early from work and might appear at any moment. Seeing his reproachful frown, I scrunched up next to him and reached for the wrapped box he held out.
“Let me guess—some t-shirts to match Riley’s,” I joked. James only smiled, looking more and more smug as I peeled off the paper to find a GPS navigator for my car. “‘A little something’!” I screeched. “This is not ‘a little something’! You can’t give me this—it’s too expensive. You’ll be sorry when we break up.”
“You think I’m the vindictive type?” he asked, winding a lock of my hair around his finger. “That when you dump me, I’ll suddenly be glad you spend so much of your time getting lost?” He tugged gently on my hair to pull me closer and kiss me.
Sometime later I rummaged under the tree until I came up with his present. “It’s pathetic, compared to yours, but I thought it matched your eyes.” I’d gotten him a merino wool sweater in stone gray, and James instantly ripped off the navy one he’d been wearing and donned mine.
“A perfect fit. I love it. Thank you, Cass.” He couldn’t stay long after that. I pressed some cookies for his family on him, and then he was gone.
• • •
O ye, beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low, who toil along the climbing way, with painful steps and slow. I thought of Nadina and Mike and prayed for them. How much harder they were making their lives, and how everyone who cared about them wished for them to be whole and well and free. I had sent her a card, and she had texted me once to say she’d reached Aunt Sylvia’s fine, but that was all I knew. Nothing about Mike’s jail time or how they were doing or what he thought of her being in Ohio when he got out.
It was such a beautiful winter night, clear and cold, that we had walked to the service, but I would have wanted to walk even if it had been raining. Selfishly, I was sorry to have Daniel and Mrs. Martin there, because if they hadn’t been I would have suggested singing as we walked home.
Mrs. Martin was even chattering away about the damage burning wax candles did to the interiors of buildings, but to my relief, Joanie read my mind, and out of the blue I heard her warm, bell-like voice lift: all four verses of the Sussex Carol, atheist family walking right beside her or no. It was hard not to love Joanie.
“All out of darkness, we have light, which made the angels sing this night: ‘Glory to God and peace to men, now and forevermore, Amen!’”
“Honestly,” sniffed Mrs. Martin when her daughter’s voice finally died away and we only heard our footsteps once more, “think of your Jewish neighbors, Joanie.”
• • •
Christmas morning the thermometer was right at freezing. Bundling myself in my flannel robe and pulling my hair into a quick ponytail, I zipped downstairs to start the cinnamon rolls on their last rise, Christmas cinnamon rolls with eggs and bacon and grapefruit being a McKean family tradition.
After our late night last night, everyone had agreed to push back breakfast to ten o’clock—one of the luxuries of having no little children around—so I stopped short when I came upon Daniel in the kitchen getting the coffee going. These new early-bird tendencies of his still threw me. I guess if you don’t spend half the night messing around with someone, there’s no longer a need to sleep in. Briefly I considered turning tail and hitting the shower first, but I needed to get the rolls in the oven and, heck, he’d seen me looking worse.