by R. R. Banks
"You know that you should be more respectful of her," I said. "Regardless of what you think about her, she is your teacher."
"I know," he said. “I told you I tried to apologize."
"Did you actually try to apologize, or did you say you were sorry so that you could try to get out of the detention?"
He shrugged.
"Does it really matter? I said that I was sorry."
I nodded.
"Well, I would rather think that you actually did feel bad for being disrespectful to her."
"I do, Dad. But I kind of feel like she deserved it. She's been on me since my first day. It's not like I said that I just refused to go to a detention. I had a perfectly good reason."
"All right," I said. "I'll call the principal back in the morning and explain the situation to him. I'll tell him that I think that the teacher needs to have a little bit of flexibility and give you some wiggle room considering that you are new and trying to get involved in the school. I'll tell him that you and I had a talk and that I've handled the situation, but that I think that it's very important that you are given the opportunity to participate in the baseball team as much as possible and request that nothing be done that will compromise that participation. I'm sure he'll understand and defuse the situation with this Miss Martin."
Jason nodded.
"Thanks, Dad. I'm going to go to my bedroom and do some homework."
"Sure," I said.
He got up and walked out of the room. I started cleaning up the remnants of dinner. I remembered what he had said about the other guys on the baseball team saying that he was only going to get a spot because I was the fire chief. I knew that wasn't the case. Jason was talented and would be able to get a spot regardless of who he was. I knew, though, that if he thought that he was getting any kind of special treatment because of who I was, it would only backfire.
I put everything in the kitchen and then decided I would try to fit a couple of hours of straightening up the house into the evening. I was going through boxes and chastising myself for the truly nonsensical way that many of them had been packed and labeled when I realized that more than two hours had passed, and I hadn't heard from Jason again. I grabbed one of the fortune cookies that had come with our dinner and walked down the hall to his bedroom. I knocked on the door.
"Hey, buddy. I was just checking on you. Want to see what type of mystical amazement your future holds? I have an enchanted pastry that will tell you."
There's nothing but silence from the other side of the door. I turn the knob and opened it, immediately realizing that the room was empty. His window was standing open, the curtains fluttering slightly as if to underscore the predictability of the situation. I sighed and mumbled a few creative obscenities before heading to put my shoes on.
One good thing about living in a town as small as Silver Lake was that it didn't take long to find someone when they wandered off. Especially when that someone was a teenager who couldn't drive and didn't know but so many people. That meant it took less than an hour to find Jason behind an old abandoned grocery store, sitting on the cold pavement with his back against the bricks and a paper-wrapped bottle in his hand. It was a scene that looked all too familiar. It wasn't that particular store or that particular parking lot, but it was playing out just the same. It was the same early antics that I had gotten into. I pulled up in front of him and climbed out of the car.
"Jason, what the hell do you think you're doing?"
"It's okay Dad. It's in a bag."
His voice was distinctly slurred, and he hadn't bothered to stand up.
"It's not public decency laws that I'm concerned about right now. You're not allowed to drink when your sixteen no matter how much you cover up the label."
Of the three other guys who had been in the alley with Jason when I arrived, only one of them had stuck around and I looked over at him.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"Marvin," he said.
"Well, Marvin, were you aware that Jason here won't be allowed to legally drink for another five years?"
"No sir."
"And how many years will it be until you are allowed to legally drink, Marvin?"
He looked at me for a few seconds, his eyes widening as though doing the math was just too much strain for a brain that was currently floating around in cheap beer.
"A few," he said.
"I'll tell you what," I said. "Since you had the balls to wait here with Jason, I'm not going to say anything to your parents or anyone else. But keep in mind that as the new fire chief in town, I have connections. I don't want to find you back behind this store, or any other store for that matter, again. Do I make myself clear?"
He nodded.
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."
He looked at Jason who seemed to be trying to climb to his feet.
"Night, man," Jason said.
Marvin took off down the alley and I reached down to grab my son's arm and pull him to his feet.
"I seriously can't believe you," I said. "We have that whole conversation about how important your opportunities are and how you're going to show more respect and then you sneak out of the damn house to come out here and drink. "
I was fuming as I pushed Jason into the passenger seat and slammed the door. I didn't say anything else to him as I drove us back to the house. When we got back in, he turned and looked at me.
"I'm sorry, Dad."
"I don't want to hear it, Jason. What the hell is wrong with you? I uprooted our entire lives to come out here and try to give you a chance, and the thanks I get is that we are in town for less than a week and I'm already getting calls from your school and finding you drunk in an alley. You were getting into so much trouble in our old town that I just knew that by the time you were eighteen you would be in jail or worse."
"You mean worse like I could be a father?"
I wanted to be mad at him, but there wasn't any anger in his voice. Instead, he sounded sad. I took a breath, trying to let all the stress and tension out of me before I spoke again.
"Jason, you know that's not what I mean. I got into all of this same shit and even more when I was your age, and I've seen the type of damage that it could cause. You saved me. I'm alive because you came along. But I don't want that to be the same for you. I brought us out here so that we could try to start a new life away from all of that."
"I'll try, Dad."
"I know you will."
"Are you still going to call the principal for me tomorrow?"
He suddenly sounded like a little boy and I let out a sigh.
"Yes, I'm still going to call the principal for you tomorrow."
He smiled.
"Thanks."
"It's time for bed. And you better be there when I check on you."
"I will be."
Jason went down the hallway into his bedroom and I waited until I saw the light coming from under his door turn off before I went and took a shower. I lay in bed half an hour later, my fingers flipping my phone over and over on top of the blanket beside me. I wanted to call Gwendolyn. I couldn't get her off my mind and the unexpected message that I got from her earlier in the day had only made me want her more. There was something incredible about her and I couldn't seem to get enough of her. I couldn't wait to see her again, and yet there was something inside me that was hesitating. I knew that the way that I had handled every relationship in Jason's life had molded his distrust of women and the negative perceptions that he seemed to have of them. So, what did it mean that I didn't feel any of those things when I thought about Gwendolyn?
Chapter Eight
Gwendolyn
The next morning, I stopped by the coffee shop on the way to work to treat myself to a fancy drink that I could barely pronounce but that made me feel like an adult when I sipped it. I was taking one of those ultra-heated foamy sips as I walked toward my classroom when I heard Mr. Jefferson calling my name. I turned around to look at him and saw him gesture for me to follow him. He
looked uncharacteristically serious and I felt a sense of dread that even the fancy coffee couldn't fix. We walked in silence toward the office and he closed the door before gesturing for me to take my seat across from his desk.
Was this it? Was I about to get fired? What could I have done that would justify me not even getting through a whole year of teaching?
I sat down and settled my bags at my feet. I thought about putting my coffee down with them but figured that if I needed to make a dramatic and indignant exit it would be better if I didn't kick the cup over and send the coffee splashing across the carpet. Instead, I held it in my lap, cupping it between my suddenly cold palms as Mr. Jefferson walked around the desk and took his place in his chair. He folded his hands on the desk in front of him and let out a long breath. There was a strange silence and I briefly thought that he might have forgotten why he brought me into the office and now thought that I had come in for a visit. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be the first time that that had happened. I was starting to tell him that I needed to get to homeroom when he opened his mouth to speak.
"You came to me yesterday and told me about a problem that you are having with a student," he said.
"Yes, Jason Baxter."
"He didn't come for his detention yesterday afternoon."
Thank you for the recap.
"I had given him the detention because of a behavioral problem and because he failed to complete an assignment that I had given the rest of the class during the allotted time. He never showed up yesterday afternoon."
"I appreciate you bringing this to my attention and I wanted to let you know that I have been in contact with his father and we discussed the situation."
"Thank you," I said, feeling relieved. "I really appreciate…"
"We've agreed to let the situation go and move forward."
I blinked. I couldn't possibly have heard what I thought I just did.
"Excuse me?" I asked.
"I discussed the situation with him and he told me that there were apparently extenuating circumstances that were at play."
"If you want to describe a non-mandatory work out for the baseball team as extenuating circumstances," I said.
"Apparently that practice is very important, and I agreed that we need to give our new students encouragement and space to grow and participating in school programs such as sports teams is a good way to make them feel involved and welcomed."
It sounded as though he were reciting something that was written in a brochure about the school. I stared at him for a few more seconds, trying to process what he was telling me.
"So, what you're saying is that even though I am his teacher and I decided that it was appropriate for him to have a detention after school, nothing is going to be done. He is going to get away with the way that he talks to me and not doing the work that was expected of him."
"I must say, Gwendolyn, I am disappointed by your reaction."
"Disappointed?"
"Yes. When you first came to work here I was looking forward to having a fresh, young, new teacher who would be able to engage with our students and connect with them on a more personal level than some of our more experienced instructors. I would hope that that would extend to new students who may be having difficulty settling in and who only want to expand their horizons and broaden the opportunities that they have for their future."
More from the Silver Lake High brochure.
"With all due respect, Mr. Jefferson, I believe that the most important part of being a teacher is holding students accountable and helping them to understand the importance of living up to the responsibilities that they have. I can appreciate that he wants to be on the baseball team and that attending the workout would look good to the coach, but what about his dedication to his actual classes?"
"I understand that this is upsetting you, Gwendolyn, but the matter is settled. I hope that you can see that this is in the best interest of everybody involved. Now you can have a fresh start. I'm sure that Jason will come back to class with greater enthusiasm and more commitment to being a good student."
I walked out of the office still furious. I couldn't believe that the principal would override my decision like that and release Jason from his punishment without at least consulting me. Nothing that the principal had said had made any sense to me. I didn't care that Jason was new. There were two other new students in another grade who had started within a day or two of Jason, and I didn't see them getting any special treatment. I knew that there wasn't really anything that I could do about it, though. I wanted to help Jason. I wanted to figure out what it was that was making him act out the way that he was and be the influence that guided him through it. But I was at the mercy of Mr. Jefferson. He was the head of the school and if he decided that the situation didn't warrant intervention, I couldn't go against him. I would just have to hope that he was right about Jason having a change of heart and that I would be able to reach out to him in a different way.
I thought about Garrett as I wove my way through the crowd of students filling the hallways as they made their way to their first class after homeroom. The stress and tension that I was feeling made me want to visit him even more. I had learned that he was very good at distracting me and easing any stress that I was feeling. I wondered if I could sneak out and visit him again, but I knew that it wouldn't be as soon as I wanted to. I already had plans for that evening. It was my bi-weekly standing date with several of the other teachers from the school. Some of them I knew from before I started teaching and others I had met in my first days at the high school. We started meeting every other week to go to a local bar for drinks and gossip in my first week of teaching and had kept up with it since. It was an opportunity for us to say all the things about other teachers, students, and parents that we would never dare say in the hallowed halls of the high school, but that we could later blame on whatever cocktail we had been drinking. It was the promise of that gathering that got me through the rest of the day, but I was still brooding about the situation when I arrived at the bar that evening.
"What's with the face?" Sarah asked as I approached the table and slid into the booth beside her.
"Hello to you too," I said.
"Wow," Elise, another teacher from the school, said. "Someone is in a truly delightful mood this evening."
I sighed.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I just had kind of a rough day. I have this new student and he's driving me up a wall."
"And why is that?" Sarah asked.
I gave them the rundown of everything that had happened since Jason's first day in class, occasionally backtracking to fill in the other teachers as they arrived. I kept his name out of my rant. Somehow, I wanted to protect him. Even after everything, I still felt a strong sense of compassion and responsibility toward him, and I didn't want the teachers forming any type of opinions about him based only on me. When I was finished I looked into the faces of each of my colleagues, waiting for their responses.
"It sounds to me like he's just having a really hard time getting used to being in a new place," Elise said.
"Do you know how far he moved?" Laura asked.
I shook my head.
"I really don't know much about him. I haven't had the chance to actually talk to him."
"Well, maybe you should. I have a new student in my class, too. He started a few weeks before Christmas break, but he had a rough start, too. He didn't want anything to do with the town, the school, or me. He was outright nasty to me and raised holy hell with some of the other students."
"What did you do about it?" I asked.
"I kept him after school for a couple of detentions and then I started doing lunch detention with him. During those is when we really started talking. That's when I found out that he was going through some pretty tough things at home. He was being raised by his grandparents along with six siblings and was having to work before and after school just to help support all of them. He's been much better since we talked."
Hearing
that made me feel terrible about the way I had been thinking about Jason.
"When you gave him detention, did Mr. Jefferson ever step in and cancel the detention? Or tell you what you were supposed to do to handle the situation?"
Laura shook her head.
"No," she said. “He never got involved.”
I sighed.
And somehow now I felt even worse. I also felt jipped. I had come out tonight for the promise of being able to throw some shade and hear about the juicy, sometimes dirty details of the lives of my much more interesting colleagues. Instead, I felt like it had turned into a group therapy session and I just wasn't up for that. Elise apparently saw the expression on my face and she straightened her back, lifting her cocktail into the air and looking into each of our faces.
"I proclaim that all discussions about students and the somewhat depressing effect that they can have on our lives over and done with for this evening. Tomorrow we can all go back to being the caring mentors and role models we all hope to be, but for tonight all conversation will be interesting and preferably inappropriate in nature."
We laughed and lifted our drinks toward hers.
"Here, here!" A couple of the teachers said enthusiastically.
"So, what did everybody do for New Year's?" Laura asked.
"Well, we all know that Gwendolyn had a hot date with Mr. Chili Beans," Elise said.
I gasped in mock horror.
"His name is The Reverend Holy Frijole," I corrected. "Show some respect."
"I'm sorry. So, are you saying that you didn't share a magical evening with your cat and you actually rang in the New Year with a real-live human?"
I hesitated, and the other women laughed. I didn't find the whole thing quite as rip-roaringly hilarious as they seemed to, but finally, they stopped laughing and Sarah wrapped her arm encouragingly around my shoulders, giving me a squeeze.
