3. Chapter 3
Chapter three
Kate
I lay back in the faux leather front passenger seat of my brother’s company car. It is compact and fuel efficient, with a seat heater that feels good after the cold, damp winds at the cemetery.
It is a six-hour trip from the Agri-Oil high-rise in the City. I might as well make progress on my term paper for child psychology. It isn’t easy researching and taking notes on my phone, but it was better than wasting all that time. I plug my phone into the dash power supply and get to work.
“Are you on the Internet again?” James asks. “Our phone bill is going to be over the moon if you keep using data like that.”
“I’ve got a paper due at the end of March,” I reply. “Classes have gone online, they’ve not closed down. I still need to do the work.”
“I don’t see why you need college classes to take care of little kids,” James gripes. “You’ve been babysitting since you were twelve.”
“For which I took classes,” I point out with exaggerated patience. “I was licensed to look after kids. Babysitting isn’t like mowing lawns.”
It was a low jibe, and I knew it. When he was mowing lawns, he was taking classes from the local Master Gardeners Club. James had studied landscaping and architecture, and had earned a PhD. before he was hired to do inspections and purchasing for Agri-Oil.
It wasn’t his fault that the economy had taken a nose-dive about the time he graduated. But sometimes he just makes me want to scream.
“Can’t you just drop your classes for now and sign up again later?” he whines at me. When James is on a roll, he is nothing if not persistent.
“At nearly $500 a credit hour? I’ve already paid for this semester, Jamie, and it’s too late to drop without penalty. Do you have a spare $6000 to pay for me to sign back up?”
Silence meets my inquiry, and I go back to reading about Montessori and taking notes.
More than an hour later, James asks, “Hey, Kate?”
I pull myself out of the various permutations of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. “Yes? What is it?”
“Would you be interested in a job?”
“Depends. What is it?”
“Charles Emory just sent me a text asking if I knew anyone who was young, well-educated, and a good example for a child. He needs someone to look after his kid.”
Hell would freeze over first. I love Cece, but that isn’t enough to make me want to be around Charles Emory. “No, and quit reading texts while you’re driving,” I say. And go back to reading.
“Why not?” he persists. “You already know the little girl. It will be live-in. I got no place to put you up, really, except for the sharecropper’s cottage since we turned your room into an office. And that’s already promised. The Graysons will be here in a couple of weeks. ”
The Graysons were a family of six that somehow managed to cram themselves into a neck-over camper pulled by a beat-up F-150. They came every summer to work in the fields and to help out with the kitchen garden.
They were paid a share of the garden produce as well as a small salary, and the opportunity to live rent-free in a real house. With James and I both working full-time, and me going to school, it was the only way we could make the old Bailey farm pay for itself.
I couldn’t put them out of their expected home. But I wouldn’t be a live-in nanny for Charles Emory. No way.
“I’ll find something or pitch a tent,” I say. “Unless the college refunds my dorm fees, I won’t have any money for rent. And I for damned sure won’t have money to commute six hours one way. Maybe I should take up share-cropping.”
“So why can’t you work for Mr. Emory?” James wheedles. His voice is set to the placating edge that always made me want to tell on him. Only we are both adults now, and I absolutely would not bother Mom and Dad with my troubles.
Dad was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, and Mom had her hands full with him. That’s why they’d moved into the assisted living senior village. Mom had put her foot down after Dad wandered off, leaving the tractor running with the disk attached.
“Jamie,” I said, exasperation driving me to using the childhood name he hated, “Did you miss out on how he was making her stand in a rain puddle until I picked her up? Or how he called her his little soldier? Or the way he spoke to her when she cried for her mother? That asshole has not improved one bit since he made the snide remarks about Greg. I’m not going to sign up for regimented home childcare. No.”
James sighs. A sound that conveyed all sorts of brotherly exasperation. “Katie . . .”
“James, if you want any other reasons, I am THAT close,” I hold my thumb and forefinger less than an inch apart, “to having my Bachelor’s in Early Childhood Psychology. I know what 24/7 childcare would do to my study time.”
“So what do you plan to live on?” James asks, as he pulls in the drive at the farm. “Student loans? Last time I checked, you have to be employed with decent credit references or you need a co-signer. I’m not co-signing for a loan.”
That was just mean. I’d helped pay his tuition when he was doing his doctoral work. He owes me. I growl at him and try to fling open the passenger door. It doesn’t fling. It opens gently and steadily.
James obligingly pops the trunk, and I start unloading my stuff. I’m so mad at him I don’t bother hauling it down to the cottage or up to my room. I take everything in and dump it in the living room.
James follows me. “What the fuck, Kate. Are you trying to make a mess out of my house?”
“It used to be my house, too!” I snarl at him. “I had a room upstairs. And if Mom could hear you using that kind of language to me, it just might be mine again.”
“Katie! You agreed . . .”
I don’t even bother to answer. I pull my satchel with my books out of the mess, pick up my laptop off the couch, and hike toward the door.
“Where are you going?” James yells at me.
“To the tool shed. There’s a plugin and a wi-fi booster. I’ve got homework to do.”
The toolshed used to double as the farm office until I had moved into the dorm. There is still a bed and dresser in the room James was turning into an office, but I knew I wouldn’t get any work done with him breathing down my neck.
I log onto the farm Internet service, then into my student portal.
I had just started the weekly quiz for small business management when my phone chirps. I glance at it. It’s Grace .
Grace: Did you get home alright?
Me: Yeah. I dumped my stuff at home, and I’m using the old tool shed office.
Grace: You could come over here.
Me: That’s an extra 45 minutes. I have Small Business Management now.
Grace: Tell me again, why are you taking that?
Me: Because someday I might want to own a daycare instead of just working at one.
My phone pings with another message. This one is from Gabrielle, one of our classmates in kiddy psyche.
Gabrielle: Do you understand question six in the chapter discussion?
Gabrielle is an au pair from France, living in New York, and taking classes online at KU. She spoke and read English well, but sometimes the teacher’s sentence construction made it hard for her to understand. On top of that, Gabrielle is my role model for the life-style I didn’t want. As an au pair, her time is almost never her own.
Me: It’s a comparison between Piaget, Montessori and Fraud. Just make a Venn diagram and fill in the blanks.
Gabrielle: How can I do that? No. NVM. I see it.
Grace: Are you still there?
Me: I’m here.
Grace: Is James being an ass?
Me: Kind of. But this whole dorm closing thing was unexpected.
Grace: Tell me about it! My sisters are home, too.
Me: Oh, wow. Hey, I gotta get some work done. Catch you later?
Grace: Ok. Laters.
I focus on the questions. I had forgotten how slow the farm’s vintage satellite connection could be. With the miserable, wet weather and the cloud cover overhead, the ancient dish takes nearly five minutes between page downloads.
I suppose I could count myself lucky that dial up wasn’t an option. The farm is on one of the last existing party-line telephone services. It cuts getting DSL right out.
As I wait between downloads, I amuse myself by doing a jigsaw puzzle on my reading tablet. It is an old-style, buy-it-once game that worked off-line. Unfortunately, it isn’t much of a challenge and does very little to engage my thoughts.
Why had Cece tried to stand on one leg when her father had called her his “steadfast little soldier”? And why had Charles Emory insisted the child stand on the damp ground, wearing a dress and a pair of dress slippers?
Charles is a handsome man. Tall and lean, with finely chiseled features. He was immaculately dressed. Although, come to think of it, he had also worn dress shoes rather than boots or overshoes.
Had he simply not given any thought to the blustery outdoor conditions? Or was he practicing some kind of Spartan training for himself and his daughter?
I contrasted Charles with my high school crush, Gregory Jones. Greg has three younger sisters he walked to school each day until he got his driver’s license, and then he had provided rides for them in his rattle trap old Chevelle. Sometimes, I got to ride with them. Greg would never have left any of his sisters standing in a rain puddle, no matter what the cause.
I shake my head to loosen my thoughts and head back into my next batch of questions. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to finish this semester. By then, surely this crazy pandemic thing would be over, I would sign up for my practicum, then get a job.
There isn’t any point in daydreaming about Greg. He’s married now, and his wife is pregnant with their first.
So much for foolish dreams. I would focus on my goal of having my own business. I’d been praised for my work at Bit o’ Heaven Preschool and Daycare where I’d earned my certification and had held an almost full-time job until it had closed.
The Internet access indicator at the bottom of my laptop screen blips and changes from the wi-fi symbol to the round off-line symbol.
Thunder booms outside. I quickly unplug my laptop and power it completely off. With the heavy cloud cover, there would be no satellite signal, so there was no point in risking ruining my laptop with a power surge.
Rain drums on the tool shed’s metal roof. Dashing out in that, I would be soaked in minutes, and my laptop would be ruined.
I turn the ancient desk chair so I can see out, pull over a nail keg to use as a footstool, and settle down to wait out the storm. The yard light illuminates the driving rain. Yeah, that’s right, Mother Nature, rain on my world, just like everything else.
This is going to be a long semester.