Return to Little Hills

by Janice Macdonald

  WHILE PETER’S BRAIN officially dealt with Millie Adams and her son Robert, he found himself playing and replaying the exchange with Edie outside the science building. I didn’t want to leave you with the impression that I was cold and unfeeling.

  “…So Robert says he completed the course,” Millie Adams was saying. “But he says they’re not giving him credit for it. It doesn’t seem fair to me. Robert should be encouraged when he does good, not picked on.”

  “I’m quite sure no one is picking on him.” Peter turned to the computer on his desk and tapped in Robert’s name. Unlike most Luther High parents, Millie Adams was involved in her son’s education. Unfortunately, Millie hadn’t, so to speak, gotten religion until Robert’s sophomore year, when she married a man who insisted that no wife of his was going to work. Suddenly she had more free time on her hands than she knew what to do with, and Robert, who had been skipping school with impunity—which was how he had landed at Luther to begin with—became the focus of Millie’s attention. At least three times a week, Millie would call to complain, suggest or demand. And, as he listened, Peter would have to remind himself that at least she cared. “He missed two independent-learning sessions last week,” he said when he’d pulled up Robert’s records. “And one this week. Mr. Jenkins said he discussed the issue with you.”

  “He did. I thought he said Robert could make up his credits some other way. Robert was all excited because he had almost enough credits to graduate. Now he says you’ve got some new rule that makes it really tough to get the credits he needs and I don’t think it’s fair. Robert deserves an education—”

  “I completely agree, Mrs. Adams,” Peter said. “That is why we no longer allow students to earn credits merely for occupying a seat.”

  “Turning up for class, you mean? Mr. Jenkins didn’t have a problem with it.”

  “That may be the case,” Peter said. “But I do. Now, if you’d like to discuss some ways we can help Robert actually earn credits…”

  “No offense, Mr. Darling,” she said. “But Mr. Jenkins has been at Luther longer than you have. If he believes it’s a good thing to give kids credit for good attendance, then I don’t see why you need to go around changing things.”

  “DADDY, come here.” As Peter whispered good-night to his daughter, Kate reached up to pull his face down close to her own. “Auntie Sophia says we need a new mommy,” she said softly.

  “She’s going back to England,” Abbie said from the next bed.

  “I miss Mommy,” Kate said.

  “I know,” Peter said and felt himself struggling for words. He smoothed a lock of hair off her forehead. “Tell me a happy story about Mommy,” he said. It was a game they often played. The twins had been too young when their mother died to actually remember much, but he’d told them so many stories about Deborah that both girls could recite anecdotes—usually highly embellished—with so much vivid detail, that he’d have to remind himself that their accounts were secondhand.

  “Want to hear the one where she put the great big bag of dog food on her back?” Abbie asked.

  “And pretended it was light as a feather?” Kate added.

  “Does that one make you happy?” Peter asked.

  “It makes me happy,” Abbie said. “Mommy was strong.”

  “She was, wasn’t she?” Peter said. Physically and emotionally, it was one of the qualities he’d loved most about his Deborah. He wondered if it was a similar quality, a certain toughness that drew him to Edie. A stab of disloyalty made him push the thought away. “Tell me some other happy stories,” he said.

  “No, you tell us some stories, Daddy,” Kate said.

  “Kiss me Daddy,” Abbie sat up in bed. “I want a big kiss.”

  “No, I get the last kiss.” Kate sat up. “I want a story, too. Please.”

  Abbie began bouncing on the bed. “Tell. Me. A. Story.”

  Kate shot her twin a look and began bouncing in unison. “Tell me a story.”

  “I’ll tell you both a story,” he said. “After you’ve stopped jumping and you’re lying quietly.” All blond curls and flashing pajama-clad limbs, they both climbed back under the covers, pulled them to their chins and watched him with unblinking saucer-wide eyes.

  “Good,” he regarded them solemnly. “Would you prefer the one about the blackbird who camped outside Buckingham Palace so that he could see the queen hang out her laundry? Or the butterfly who landed in the queen’s rice pudding?”

  “Did the queen eat the rice pudding?” Abbie wanted to know.

  “No, silly,” Kate said. “She ate the butterfly. Right, Daddy?”

  “Well, I can’t tell you, can I?” Peter said. “That would ruin the ending.”

  “Tell us about the blackbird,” Abbie said.

  “Butterfly,” Kate said. “Butterfly, butterfly, butterfly.”

  “Blackbird, blackbird, blackbird,” Abbie pleaded

  Kate began to giggle. “Butterfly. Butterfly. Butterfly.”

  “Blackbird.” Abbie hurled herself out of bed and onto Peter’s back. “Blackbird,” she screeched.

  Later, after Natalie and Delphina were also in bed, Sophia eyed him as he collapsed into the armchair by the fireplace.

  “Hard day?”

  He considered. “Mixed. The assistant principal is not at all sure of me. He’s a firm believer in maintaining the status quo, and I think it rather disturbs him that I’m changing things around.”

  “He feels threatened,” Sophia warned. “Watch your back.”

  “Oh, he’ll come around,” Peter said with less confidence than he felt. He told her about the exchange with Millie Adams. “Unfortunately, many of the parents seem to feel the same way.”

  “Change will always produce resistance,” Sophia said. “Give it time.” She set aside a blouse she’d been sewing a button onto. “About the other matter…”

  Peter extracted himself from the chair, moved to the couch and reached for the day’s newspaper. Lately, he never found time to read it in the morning before he left for school. Flat on his back, feet propped over the end of the couch, he started to read, but he could feel Sophia’s eyes on him.

  “Don’t ignore me, Peter. I’m quite serious about this whole thing.”

  “Look,” he said. “You’ve made your point. However, I’m not about to embark upon a whirlwind courtship and marriage just to provide you with peace of mind.”

  “Six weeks, Peter. And then I’m gone.”

  He kept reading. “I’m aware of that.”

  “Natalie misses Deborah,” Sophia said. “Has she told you that?”

  “Actually, she hasn’t,” Peter said, stung. “But it’s hardly surprising.”

  “Peter, I worry,” Sophia said. “Natalie’s getting to the age where she’ll need a female figure in her life. You can’t be everything to her, no matter how hard you try. Girls need their mothers.”

  “I know.” Peter kept reading. “I think I’ve already explained my position.”

  “Is it Deborah? You feel that no one can ever replace her, so you don’t even try.”

  Peter surveyed her with exasperated affection. Sophia was nothing if not dogged. If he’d entertained any idea at all of a quiet evening with the newspaper, Sophia clearly had a different agenda, one she wasn’t about to give up.

  “I don’t want to replace Deborah,” he said carefully. “She’s the girls’ mother and nothing will ever change that fact. But it doesn’t mean another woman couldn’t love them… Look, Sophia, we went over all this the other night.”

  “What’s happening with the foreign correspondent?”

  “Her name is Edie and she’s coming to school tomorrow. I asked her to help me set up a journalism club.”

  “Have the girls met her?”

  “Briefly.”

  “She’s the one in the park?”

  He turned to look at her. “Yes.”

  “Abbie doesn’t like her.”

  “Abbie knows nothing about her. They didn’
t exchange a word.”

  Sophia shrugged. “Children are very intuitive. The others weren’t keen on her, either, although Delphina doesn’t mind her, or so she says. But with Delphina, one has no idea what’s really going on beneath the surface. Remember, though, that this is a woman who said children are a foreign—”

  “Language. I know. I saw her at school today. She said she didn’t really mean it.”

  Sophia smiled. “Well, I suppose that’s encouraging. Will I meet her? This Edie?”

  Peter considered. He couldn’t quite picture Edie in any scenarios that included more than just the two of them. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Why not?” Sophia asked. “Have her here for dinner. Perhaps I’ll like her. Does she have to be a foreign correspondent?”

  THURSDAY AFTERNOON, Edie sat in a molded plastic chair in Beth’s small glassed-in office at one end of the teen mother center. Through the window, she could see Maude down at one end of a long, brightly lit room that seemed filled with the high-pitched chatter of teenage girls and the insistent wailing of two red-faced babies in a playpen. A bulletin board was crammed with baby pictures pasted onto brown-paper teddy bears. On a red paper heart at the center of each bear, names and birth dates had been printed in elaborate calligraphy. Near where Maude sat, several girls were bent over a table covered with kraft paper and colored pens.

  Edie folded her arms across her chest, observing it all. Her instinct, as always, was to categorize the details, to frame a context as though this were something she was about to report on. She caught herself. This is not an assignment. You’re sitting here watching your mother play with babies. See how involved she is? It’s called living in the moment. Get up off the sidelines, for God’s sake. Un-detach.

  She got up and wandered in Maude’s direction. Beth was occupied and Maude was cooing at a plump, happy-looking baby in blue rompers. Her back against the wall, Edie stood quietly, the watchful observer still. It was a hard habit to break. After a while, she became aware of a girl nearby shooting glances at her. Struck by the girl’s clear olive skin and large dark eyes, Edie smiled.

  “That’s my little boy,” she said. “Roger.”

  “He’s cute,” Edie said. “How old is he?”

  “Six months.”

  “You go to school here?” Edie asked, realizing that she wasn’t quite sure how the teen mother program worked.

  “Yeah.” The girl shrugged. “For now, anyway.”

  “You’re ready to graduate?”

  “No, Bobby, my boyfriend, doesn’t want me going to school. He gets kind of mean about it.”

  Edie felt her eyes widen. “Your boyfriend doesn’t want you to go to school?”

  The girl grinned at Edie’s indignation. “Well, he’s got pretty strong ideas about how things should be.”

  “He’s got strong ideas? God…” Nearly spluttering in angry disbelief, Edie shook her head. “You’re what? Sixteen?”

  The girl nodded, still smiling, as though torn between embarrassment at being the focus of Edie’s anger and appreciation for a sympathetic audience. “See, we live with Bobby’s mom and she’s supporting all of us—”

  “How old is Bobby?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “He’s not in school, either?”

  The girl shook her head. “No, he says diplomas don’t do no good, he can make more in construction. Except that he got laid off and now he can’t find a job, so it’s kind of tough…”

  The girl’s voice trailed off and she gazed over at the baby. Ordinarily not given to metaphysical thoughts, Edie felt a sudden and intense conviction that fate had caused her to drop Maude off at the teen mother center and that she was there to help this girl. Even as she had the idea, she suspected that she’d later scoff at it, but right now it was a clear command.

  “Look—” she fished in her purse for a card “—my name is Edie Robinson and I have nothing to do with this center. That’s my mom over there—”

  “She is the sweetest little lady,” the girl said. “We all just love her.”

  “Thank you. We do, too.” Edie felt a tad hypocritical. “Anyway, I’m just here in Little Hills for a few weeks, but…I want to talk to you. I don’t want you to drop out of school.”

  “Okay,” the girl said.

  “No, don’t just say okay.” She scribbled her mother’s number on the card and held out it out. “What’s your name?”

  “Jessie.”

  “Jessie, listen to me. Your boyfriend’s an idiot. Do not let him talk you into dropping out of school. Will you promise me you’ll at least call me?”

  The girl nodded again.

  “Say, ‘I promise, Edie, I’ll call you.’”

  “I promise, Edie, I’ll call you.”

  “Personally, Jessie, I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes if you broke that promise.” Peter had suddenly materialized at Edie’s side. “I think Edie could be quite formidable.”

  Edie glared at Peter, disconcerted and angry. She’d been focused on Jessie, and Peter’s sudden appearance had thrown her off stride. Jessie, with a shy glance at Peter, had slipped off to take care of the baby and Edie feared that any tentative bond was now most likely severed.

  “She’s thinking about dropping out,” Edie told Peter. “Because her idiot boyfriend doesn’t want her in school.”

  Peter nodded, his smile fading. “Unfortunately, it’s not at all unusual. If she were in a larger school, she probably would just drift off. Because this is a small campus, we can pay closer attention to each student.”

  “So you know about Jessie?” she asked.

  “I’m aware that she has a difficult home situation,” he said.

  “But that’s a given, right? Don’t most of these kids have difficult home situations? I’m asking about Jessie.”

  Peter’s expression darkened. “Specifically?”

  “Specifically, that she’s sixteen.” She was still angry at Jessie’s situation. “She’s got a four-month-old baby and a boyfriend who wants her to drop out of school so that he can knock her up again…I’m sorry.” She shook her head at him. “It’s not my place to grill you. The whole thing just makes me so damn angry.”

  He nodded once more.

  “Does it make you angry?”

  “‘It’ being…societal conditions that lead to children having children?”

  “Yeah, that would be a start.” Across the room, a cluster of girls was sneaking covert looks at them, and beneath the anger she felt a stab of curiosity. How many of Luther’s female students nurtured secret crushes on Luther’s tall, dark and handsome principal? As if on cue, Beth came over to where they stood, summery in a pale green shirtwaist abloom with pink, orange and blue wild-flowers. An enameled butterfly was pinned to her left lapel.

  Beth’s smile embraced Edie then lingered a moment on Peter, who cleared his throat and glanced off across the room, his face faintly tinged with color.

  “Edie, I’m so glad you decided to stay for a while. Your mother is having such a wonderful time,” Beth said. “I think she’s completely fallen for Roger.”

  “Kind of looks that way.” Edie watched Maude, who was actually down on her knees, changing the baby’s diaper. “It’s nice to see her involved in something besides herself.” As soon the words were out, she wanted to take them back. Beth’s smile had congealed slightly; Peter was looking at her as though she’d revealed her true colors, which perhaps she had.

  “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” she said. “I just meant that when she has nothing else to do, she tends to obsess about herself—her blood pressure, that sort of thing.” Whether she’d redeemed herself in his eyes, she couldn’t really tell.

  “What your mother’s doing is mutually beneficial,” Peter said, after a moment. “She’s helping us tremendously.” He looked at Beth. “Before you arrived, Edie had just asked me whether I ever became angry—”

  “At the futility,” Edie interrupted, feeling the anger return as she r
elayed her exchange with Jessie. “I mean, this is one school, one student, but Jessie’s story must be played out over and over. How could you not feel angry? And kind of helpless, too?”

  “Angry,” Peter said. “But not entirely helpless. I’m not particularly qualified to discuss societal problems in general. I can tell you what I think, what I believe. I can even come up with opinions on what should be done. But, realistically, my area of influence is this school. If I can keep Jessie in school, prepare her to lead a productive life, know that I’ve made a difference in one life, I can feel reasonably at peace with myself.” He smiled at Edie and clasped her shoulder. “Anyway, I’ll see you in an hour.”

  “Right.” To her embarrassment, her face had turned scarlet; she could feel the blood pulsing under her skin. Her shoulder throbbed where his hand had touched it. “The journalism club.”

  PETER SAT at the back of the classroom, listening to Edie talk to the students. Watching, more than listening. She wore a slim pale green dress, and her hair was caught up in a loose knot at the back of her head. In her left hand, a pair of heavy tortoiseshell-framed glasses dangled. Every few minutes, she’d pull them on to glance at the notes on her lap, remove them a moment later, and then perch them back on her nose to peer over the top at the students. Her expression was animated, engaged. She knew the subject and clearly loved it. He looked for the same quality in his teachers, but too often didn’t find it.

  “…And the answers to the kinds of dilemmas and questions you face as a journalist,” she was saying now, “are usually not found in textbooks. Life is more practical. You have to look to yourself, to who you are as a person, what you care about, what you think is important and what you think is the right thing to do.”

  She went on to talk about other things and his mind drifted. Not far, though. Edie fascinated him. He could fall in love with her. He already felt that heightened awareness, the intensity of feeling that in the past he’d confused with love. Part of it, he knew, was the fascination with her lifestyle. A sort of Othello–Desdemona role reversal. It enthralled him to imagine her flying off to distant parts, facing danger, living from moment to moment, always on to the next story. He suspected that he was romanticizing her a bit, but it didn’t dim his imagination. He saw her in dark smoky bars where war-toughened journalists sat around drinking whiskey and telling tales. Last night in bed, as he lay awake thinking about her, that image had incited a stab of jealousy. One of the war-toughened journalists, ruggedly handsome in a battered safari suit, had had his arm draped around Edie’s shoulder. He wondered again about the boyfriend. A serious relationship?