by Sean Boling
Chapter Six: Candice
The Word of the Day was “responsibility”, or the Tuesday Trait, or the Weekly Waltz, or whatever Dale called it. Candice was weary of all the catch phrases that Copeland threw around. Everything he said and did came across as a living rough draft of a book he was writing on running a charter school. She didn’t even like to call him by his first name anymore. She did when she spoke to him, because he insisted. Whenever she addressed him as Mr. Copeland, he would interrupt her with a “Call me Dale”, which was of course intended as homespun charm, but really just interfered with her memorization of how she wanted to recite her thoughts. And articulation was important to her, because she had concerns that she wanted to air in measured fashion, which wasn’t easy given her distress. She always complied with his request, because she didn’t want to get sidetracked by an argument about formalities, but in her mind she just thought of him as “Copeland” at this point, without the “Mr.” in front, much less the “Dale”.
Copeland had Artie Pluma up there with him on the catwalk to talk about “responsibility” to the students gathered below, which presented a great opportunity for some winking comedy directed at the teachers and parent volunteers standing around the perimeter of the gathering, but he was utterly sincere in using Artie as an example. Even Artie seemed aware of the irony. When Copeland put a hand on Artie’s shoulder and asked him who was responsible for maintaining the quality of his online video series, Artie answered “My Mom”, which inspired a burst of laughter from all corners of the showroom.
Even Candice chuckled a bit, at least until Artie started to admire his little feat a little too much. She was well-acquainted with that self-congratulatory grin, and it induced brief nausea whenever she saw it. Artie never owned up to anything he did, and with every denial came that grin. He thought that acting innocent was cute.
The other disturbing children took responsibility for their actions. In fact, they seemed to take pride in what they did. Their disruptions and disrespect functioned as misguided kill marks on the sides of their doomed fighter planes. They compared notes, shared their exploits, tried to outdo one another in being the biggest nuisance. But Artie was an island of irritation. He went his own way, pretending he was somehow different from the rest of the lineup.
Copeland’s approach to discipline only augmented Artie’s perception. While his fellow troublemakers spent hours in the office or days on suspension, Artie never served any time beyond being benched at recess or being assigned clean-up duty that left everything dirtier afterwards. The first several times Candice approached Copeland about the Artie Rules, he would look serious but then pass her a mindless hiccup about boys being boys or Artie being starved for attention from a very busy father. And when Copeland seemed to sense that his stiff arming was growing limp, he told Candice that maybe it was time to take a different approach with Artie, to make him feel included rather than shunned.
So Copeland started to invite Artie up to his perch at least one morning per week, put his hands on his shoulders, and make sure the grinning little meal ticket felt wanted. Candice had grown fed up enough to feel bold about calling out Copeland on his protectionism, but she never bothered because she already knew how he would respond. He would drop a version of the school motto at her feet, improvise a mishmash of “every child is different.”
She looked around the room at some of the other faculty and parent volunteers as Copeland once more thrust Artie into the spotlight. None of the faculty revealed any disgust, as their jobs depended on pretending not to notice the swelling double standard, but a trace of the parents were clearly rubbed in the same wrong way as she was. But not enough, or at least enough who were willing to show it.
She wished she had greater numbers to back her up, and had felt that way from the second day of school.
The first day was as inspiring as the months leading up to the grand opening. Every parent must have been there. The campus was a festival. Unfortunately, they were only there to take pictures and videos of their kids. By day two, they were down to Candice and a handful of others who mainly seemed to show up for lack of anything better to do. The rickety crew asked Copeland to remind the Live Oak families of their volunteering obligations, and he complied with their request practically every week, but still the hours lagged.
The younger grades represented well, at least when it came to clerical work and assisting in the classrooms, because the classes were full and the school had some leverage over them by claiming they could be replaced with someone on the wait list. But the older grades had space available, and were half-filled with kids whose families had always been unconscious when it came to threats or cajoling, with no sign of adapting to a new environment. Meanwhile, the same financial constraints that prevented the board from hiring any full-time yard duties also make them reluctant to take any action when it came to the more challenging students. They needed the bodies. If enrollment dipped below a certain point, a magic number that the board kept to themselves, the contract with the district would be voided.
So in addition to the kids who celebrated their offenses, Candice had to keep an eye on the likes of Xavier, who neither rejoiced nor wailed over what he did, who instead remained expressionless during his deeds and the ensuing reprimand.
“Can you even hear me?” Candice finally asked Xavier as she stood between him and a large girl named Viv, who was still sniffling and snorting from the fight between them that Candice had just broken up in the meadow with help from some nearby students.
She had started to break it up herself. They may have been the two biggest kids in fifth grade, but they were still kids, and Candice stood a head taller than either of them. Grabbing someone else’s children gave her a jolt of the willies, though, and reflexive thoughts of accusations and lawsuits, so she played meek and asked for help, which plenty of kids were eager to provide.
Xavier avoided eye contact with Candice and everyone else, finding an unoccupied spot just above the circle of curious faces that surrounded them.
“Hello?” she followed up. “Do you hear me, Xavier?”
The encircled students joined her. A chorus of ‘Hello?’ and ‘Xavier?’ and ‘Are you in there?’ gained volume, along with some giggling and improvised scary movie themes. She waved them off and asked Viv if she was okay. Viv nodded and looked hard at Xavier, wanting to glare at him and show him she was bent on revenge. But he held his gaze outward, without the slightest sense that anything was happening inward.
“Who made the first move?” Candice asked Viv.
A smattering of students chimed in with “He did” before Viv confirmed their accusations.
“Come with me, please, Xavier,” Candice gestured, not wanting to touch him.
He complied, as usual. It was never clear what would set him off, but his response after the chaos had settled was always reliable.
They broke through the circle and walked over to the gaping entries of the garage, then up the stairs to Copeland’s office.
The office administrator, Wendy, greeted them with a sigh.
Candice liked Wendy. She got the impression that Wendy was as disappointed as she was with how LOCA was turning out, perhaps even more so, since she had given up a fully vested position in the district based on friendship and trust in Dale.
“Hello, Xavier,” she said as though speaking to someone who is hard of hearing.
He nodded at her, which was more than Candice had managed to wring out of him.
“What happened this time?” Wendy asked.
Xavier decided against communicating anything beyond the previous nod.
“He got into a fight with a girl,” Candice chimed in.
“A girl?” Wendy was incredulous.
Xavier glared at Candice.
“Well…” Candice saw his point. “It was Viv.”
“Ah…” Wendy understood.
Xavier walked over to the chair next to the door with the ‘Mr. Copeland’ nameplate.
“Thank you, sweetie,” Wendy said to him. “You know the drill.”
“Should I get Viv?” Candice asked.
“Let’s let Xavier tell his side of the story first. Then maybe we’ll fetch her later.”
The notion that Xavier would tell a story prompted a quizzical look from Candice.
“Dale has his ways,” Wendy answered her expression.
“So he’s here?” Candice asked.
“For now. He has some investor meetings lined up for later on.”
“Of course he does.”
“Just trying to get the local blowhards to put their money where their mouth is.”
Candice admired the way Wendy could deflect a gripe and commiserate with the griper at the same time.
Copeland sprung from his office.
“Candice!” he greeted her.
“Dale,” she remembered to use his first name.
He looked over at Xavier sitting in the chair by his door.
“I see our Most Valuable Yard Duty is continuing to run away with the title,” he said as he tried to catch Xavier’s eye.
Candice wasn’t sure how much of a compliment that was. She looked at Wendy for a hint, who smiled back at her noncommittally.
Dale squatted down in front of Xavier. “Good morning, sir. Can you tell me what happened?”
Xavier looked everywhere but at him.
“Can you tell me on paper or into a microphone?”
The boy nodded.
“Paper?” Dale followed up.
The boy shook his head.
“Microphone?”
The boy nodded again.
“Okay, then,” Dale stood up. “Come on in.”
They went into his office and left the door open. Candice watched as Xavier sat in the chair in front of Copeland’s desk. Dale took his cell phone from his back pocket and put it on the desk in front of Xavier. He tapped the screen a couple of times.
“I’ll leave you alone and you tell me all about it, okay?”
The boy nodded.
Dale tapped the screen one more time and a single high note popped from the speaker.
“You’re on, kid.”
He walked out of the office and closed the door behind him. Within seconds a muffled voice could be heard slowly expounding on recent events. Candice expected a triumphant strut from Copeland. He had earned it, she had to admit, and frankly that’s what she would have done. Instead he stayed by the door for a brief while, listening not only to Xavier, it seemed, but to something more.
Dale came out of his trance and walked over to them.
“Thank you for all you do,” he said to Candice.
She stammered humbly before saying, “I wish I could do more. I wish I could do stuff like that, what you just did.”
“That’s not something you should have to worry about,” he said. “We’ll hire some specialists once we raise the funds. And on that note…”
Wendy took her cue. “Knock ‘em dead.”
“And then take their wallets?” Dale teased.
“Maybe you should just wow them instead,” Wendy said.
“Will do,” he waved as he made his way toward the door. “Thank you again, Candice. We need about twenty more parents like you around here.”
She nodded and started to wave back, but he stopped and turned his attention to Wendy.
“Let Xavier stay in there when he’s done, then let him go to lunch. When I get back we’ll listen to his version and decide if we need to bring in Viv.”
“Got it,” Wendy replied as Dale darted out onto the catwalk and down the stairs.
Candice stood by Wendy’s desk for a moment. She was about to say “Who was that masked man?”, but wasn’t sure if Wendy would get the reference. Besides, she wasn’t necessarily ready to make superhero allusions just yet. She was conflicted more than reassured when it came to Copeland’s priorities. There was no way his sheen could be reapplied in her eyes, but maybe she could come to understand what was truly underneath it now that it had been scraped off.
She thanked Wendy for her assistance, and climbed back down into the showroom. The whistle had blown, and the kids were back in class. She drifted into the garage and sat on an enormous tractor tire that always needed a small team of kiddos to move it. An older kid could move it on their own, but older kids rarely played in the garage area despite all the equipment available. Clear distinctions had arisen. Indoors for the smaller ones, outdoors for the bigger ones. If it ever rained, Candice thought, maybe the boundaries could be breeched as naturally as they developed. But it never did, and no matter where they were, the bigger kids liked to act as though they were above it all, anyway. They were beyond playing. Their games had grown to be mental.
From her vantage on the tire, Candice looked through one of the open garage doors at two mothers at the edge of the meadow. They each wore shapeless jeans and hooded sweatshirts branded with the name a local youth sports league and probably would have been smoking if it wasn’t against the rules. She couldn’t hear them, but they were clearly complaining about something. She was tempted to join them. It was fun to complain about things. That’s why she did it so often. Even if all of her concerns were addressed, she would find new ones.
She resisted and stayed put on her tire. Instead of thinking of all that bothered her, she decided to wonder. She wondered what the goal was for a kid like Xavier, and those like him. The kids who needed a team of adults just to teach them how to use the silent ‘e’ or multiply a single digit number by two, and who had a hard time functioning not only in school, but in the world. Even if they got the help they needed as a child, what would become of them as adults? Where would they go when they had outgrown school but still needed guidance?
During the lunch recess, she found herself grumbling a little less about the kids who drove her crazy as she imagined their future. She imagined them looking back and talking about the crabby lady who worked yard duty. Some would laugh as they told her story, others would be bitter. None would be flattering.
Patience came easier as she wondered. She considered the source of the insulting behavior, and tried to think of ways to explain why it was a bad idea, rather than just bark at them. Her explanations would take time to formulate, so until they were ready, she decided in the meantime to just sigh and try to make the little culprits feel guilty.
The exception was Artie. The sight of him and his impish antics still made her want to scream in his face until she ran out of breath. For while the other problem kids were sabotaging what could be their best path to a better life, Artie had no such risk. He could act with impunity, and would be just fine when he grew up. The fact that he never confessed to anything nor was forced to follow through on any consequences symbolized his future all the more, as he would eventually join the rest of the plutocrats and continue to live above the law.
With regard to Artie, she thought the best course of action was to coerce the other volunteers to deal with him, as the more empathy she felt for some of the troubled kids, the more resentment she felt toward him. She was afraid of what she might do the next time she caught him making mischief. More to the point, she was afraid of what she might do when he denied his actions.
First she had to get the parents out of the garage and into the yard. They were so wedded to standing around watching the little kids play with the flotsam and jetsam littering the “adventure playground” that the thought of hazarding a trip out into the wilds of the upper cluster never occurred to them. And now that she was bringing it up, they agreed to help, but with panic in their eyes.
Their progress was slow. At first the mothers dawdled near the garage doors and looked past the outdoor cliques of children to the fields and hills beyond. When even slightest whine or shout came from inside the adventure playground, they sprung toward the noise and spent plenty of time making sure everything was okay before reluctantly stepping back outside. After days’ worth of trying to untether them from the building, Ca
ndice asked for Copeland’s help to lure them further out, and he indulged her with an effective strategy.
He would give parents tips on how to deal with condescending adolescents while walking them out to a point past their comfort zone, somewhere near the meadow or the picnic benches by the modular classrooms. Each would be so compelled by his advice that they wouldn’t notice how far they had come until he stopped talking and turned around to survey the landscape. He would stay with them for another minute, switching to small talk as the parents would waver upon seeing where they were, as though the pilot of a small airplane had just surrendered the controls to them while airborne.
Candice found it easier to call him Dale as they started to gain outdoor coverage. There was more monitoring and less punishment. Best of all, Artie barely made a move under the new system. Plausible deniability was important to him, and the extra eyes made that harder to accomplish. He still darted from group to group vying for attention, but kept his punishable offenses in the classroom, for there were still marches from Mr. Benton’s room to Dale’s office occurring almost daily.
Sometimes as she was setting up for lunch or taking a break in the showroom, she would see him through the window being banished, and she would walk outside to signal Mr. Benton that she would make sure Artie reached his destination. Mr. Benton would respond with a wave and a “thank you” hollered through cupped hands.
Occasionally she had to leave early to address some rental unit crises that couldn’t wait until after lunch, and sometimes her rounds allowed her to drive past the school on her way from one appointment to another, and she would notice that the parents usually abandoned their posts when she wasn’t around to keep after them. The frustration she felt was cushioned by her pride in discovering she commanded that much impact.
One such day she was tempted to surprise her yard duty charges by returning after a series of minor calls and false alarms left her with more free time than she was accustomed to having. The first was a dispute that the tenants had resolved by the time she arrived, the next was a complaint that she was able to handle herself with a quick trip to the hardware aisle, and finally she pulled up to an empty house that the people had decided to abandon the night before rather than wait to see if she could negotiate a deal with them for back rent.
Mia and Zoey were each being picked up for a playdate after school, so the surprise inspection would be the only reason for her to head back to campus. She wasn’t sure if she could bring up the backsliding of her fellow volunteers without revealing a certain level of snobbery, so she decided to forego the risk and treat herself to lunch, and then some frothy caffeine at the local Starbucks wannabe.
She didn’t like the coffee they served, in any of its forms, but it offered a trendy oasis for people who liked to think the valley couldn’t hold them. At any given time there would be various tableaus of youth angst posing with laptops that were slapped full of stickers, grey-haired couples sharing a copy of some major newspaper that they had to subscribe to in order to affect their image, younger pairs sporting wardrobes ordered from online catalogues for whom the slender paper cups were a fashion accessory, and a tattooed staff of baristas who appeared to have been flown in from a big-city cafe scrunched into a dicey neighborhood that was in the process of gentrification.
Candice preferred to think that she was people watching, rather than one of the people being watched. She fiddled with her phone, but really just used it as a prop to keep her from staring too long and for cover in case she started laughing. She didn’t even know what time it was in spite of all her glancing at the screen, for when Isaiah Benton walked in, she wondered for a moment why he wasn’t still in class. A more purposeful look at the screen revealed that school had been out for half an hour.
They went through their usual paces, waving from a distance. When he received his order and approached her table, they each laughed for a moment at the unfamiliar nearness.
“Maybe I should sit over in that far corner and holler through my hands,” Isaiah acknowledged the dynamic. He acted like he was hollering but without the volume: “Hello! What brings you here!”
“Sorry,” Candice didn’t play along. “Without Artie walking between us, it’s just not the same.”
They shared another laugh and he asked if the empty seat at her table was taken. She gestured that it wasn’t, and he settled in.
“So you like this place?” he asked.
“I do,” she said in a very qualifying tone.
“Not for the usual reasons, I take it?”
“Considering I’m not a big coffee fan, no.”
“The people,” he surmised.
“Where do they come from?” she validated his answer. “Do coffee houses order them and have them delivered with the furniture and the equipment?”
“It reminds me of home,” he said. “Well, a few of my homes.”
“You moved a lot?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Military family?”
He smiled.
“Yes…ma’am”
“Ah, I think I get it now,” Candice had a revelation. “You spent some time at the base here when you were a kid, had a good year for whatever reason, and came back to teach out of nostalgia."
Isaiah put his coffee down and applauded her powers of deduction. She took a seated bow.
“One thing escapes me, though,” she said.
“How I could be nostalgic about this place?”
She nodded emphatically.
“It’s a nice little town,” he tried to remind her. “I do get the impression maybe I caught it at a better time back then. But I had been in a lot of cities, some of them in parts of the world where I didn’t speak the language. This place was just so authentic to me. It was America. And there was this girl…”
“Now it makes much more sense.”
“Nah,” he waved off the point. “There really wasn’t much to it. In fact, there was nothing to it. She didn’t give me the time of day.”
“It wasn’t me,” Candice held up her hands. “I didn’t grow up here.”
“So then what brought you here?”
“My ex-husband. And referring to him as a ‘what’ rather than a ‘who’ is very fitting, by the way.”
“And your kids are comfortable.”
“And it’s affordable.”
“Speaking of your kids,” Isaiah said. “Mia’s great. A real pleasure.”
“Thank you,” Candice nodded. “Not that I had much to do with it. But it’s good to hear. Does she contribute much?”
“Besides really good work, well, yes, she’s a little quiet. But that’s okay. When she does have something to add, it means something.”
“She sure goes on and on about you.”
“It’s a fun group. Easy to work with.”
“Even with Artie?
“Artie’s all right. A little restless, but harmless.”
“Harmless. Unlike…well, I should probably stop.”
Isaiah agreed with a slow nod. They laughed again and worked on their coffee in comfortable silence.
“You should see for yourself,” he picked up the conversation. “Come work with us in the classroom. Get out of the yard for a while. Change things up.”
Candice was pleasantly surprised by the offer, but had finally reached a point of pride in her yard duties.
“I’m not asking you to lead a discussion or anything,” he assured her. “Honestly, it would be a lot of busy work. Helping me grade quizzes and stuff that piles up if I don’t stay on it. I’ll give you an answer key and everything. Meanwhile, you can sit in and check things out while you’re plowing through them.”
“I suppose I can do that before the first recess. Or between recess and lunch.”
“Or both,” he grinned. “And as you start to get accustomed to the room, who knows? Maybe you will want to participate a little more. Lead some group work, do some tutoring.”
She laughed a bit too loudly.
“It’s sixth grade,” he maintained. “It ain’t graduate school.”
“All the more reason to get embarrassed if I don’t know something.”
“You’ll know,” he looked like he wanted to reach out and take her hand, but he didn’t. “You’ll know.”
Candice hedged. The silence had grown less comfortable.
“It’ll be a nice way for you to see the good side of the students,” Isaiah persisted. “Instead of always seeing them in their packs out on the playground, looking for ways to bust them.”
She laughed softly and felt more at ease again.
“And you can show them your good side, too,” he played into her laughter. “Show them you can do more than glare and scowl.”
She acted indignant and took a swipe at the air in front of him.
“That’s not all I do.”
“No?”
“No,” she said. “I smile sometimes. When I bust someone.”
“Well, that can be fun…”
“And I yell really well. You’ve heard that.”
“Oh, I’ve heard that.”
She took a melodramatic deep breath.
“Okay,” she said. “Come to think of it, I probably should help out in the classroom.”
“Thank you,” he replied with complete sincerity. “Hopefully you’ll be a role model for the other parents. The younger grades are crawling with volunteers. Those of us in the upper cluster need help, too.”
“Sounds like the yard duty dilemma.”
“See?” Isaiah raised his paper cup. “I came to the right person.”
She tapped her cup against his, but of course no sound came from the impact.
“Too many things are disposable these days,” he said, holding the container at eye level and observing it from different angles.
Candice considered looking at her screen to see what time it was, but decided she didn’t want to know just yet.
