Chapter 20 #2
“Guess I’ll learn not to be ill then,” replied Jaz with a level of contempt I didn’t think I’d heard her use even with Oliver.
“I seem to remember,” Esther prodded, “the fighting was also something you wanted to improve on.”
Jaz scowled. “I want people to stay out my face, yeah. You can write that down as one of your little targets if you like. ‘People should stay out of Jaz’s face.’”
“Okay.” Mr. Lorimer nodded encouragingly. “But maybe we could phrase that in a more helpful way.”
“‘Jasmine would like,’” said Jaz, her voice dripping with so much sarcasm that it probably constituted a slip hazard, “‘to build more productive relationships with her peers.’”
The three other adults in the room made three other sets of notes. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. “Unless I’m missing something, I don’t think she actually meant that.”
Jaz shot me a look that was almost conspiratorial. “It’s quicker this way.”
“I know this seems a bit tickboxy and corporate,” Esther said soothingly. “But having clear goals really does help.”
Set boundaries. Have high expectations. Oliver would have been so much better at this than I was.
I stayed mostly quiet while the rest of the room went through the frankly bewildering business of trying to set SMART targets for a child’s happiness.
Having done a lot of this kind of stuff in Barbara Clench’s mandatory team-building meetings, it felt wrong to me to see it applied to something that mattered, rather than to the number of staples we were using.
But I also kind of couldn’t look away. It was like a car crash, except a bunch of experts kept explaining very sincerely that if the crash went on long enough, the cars would actually come out of it better off.
After that there was the well-meaning conversation around what the school could do to support Jaz in achieving her specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-constrained goals that we were all, it seemed, now agreeing to accept.
And once again I tried incredibly hard not to feel useless because I didn’t even know what sorts of things we should’ve been asking the school for.
Someone brought up biweekly meetings with a pastoral support coordinator, and that sounded like a good thing?
But maybe it was a bad thing or a thing that wouldn’t help or a thing that had been tried already or a thing that would make Jaz feel judged and overwatched.
I glanced over at her, hoping for some kind of clue about her, y’know, needs, but she seemed as in the dark as I was.
Or perhaps she’d just given up on anything working.
When I did catch her eye, I mostly got can-you-believe-this-shit looks from her that I tried really hard not to mirror.
Tried really hard and, ultimately, failed.
Because, like, could you believe this shit?
When we were done and we’d all agreed that we knew what our roles were and what we were accountable for and that we’d been appropriately pupil-centric and receptive, we set a follow-up meeting for half term.
“It would probably be best,” said Miss Collins, “if Jaz started formally on Monday, rather than coming in halfway through a school day. If you’d like to stay a little while”—she was looking at Jaz now—“we could get somebody to show you around, so things are a bit less confusing next week.”
To my utter unsurprise, Jaz gave one of her patented barely-shrugs.
A few short minutes later, an earnest-looking sixth former was getting ready to give us the tour. But us turned into just Jaz when Esther touched me on the shoulder and said, “Luc, have you got a moment?”
Since Jaz was clearly going to be fine without me—and probably substantially happier—I had no excuse for telling our social worker I didn’t have a moment. “Sure,” I replied. And then, because it felt like the responsible thing to do, I added to Jaz, “You going to be okay?”
I didn’t expect an answer. I didn’t get one.
Meanwhile, Esther ducked into a free classroom and I ducked after her.
“So,” she said. It was pretty much a sentence by itself.
I winced. “Did I fuck that up horribly?”
“No.” From her tone it was a very literal no. The no of “You didn’t fuck up horribly,” not the no of “You didn’t fuck up at all.”
I was still wincing. “Yay?”
“You have the right instincts,” she told me. “You’re supposed to be on Jaz’s side, and more importantly she’s supposed to feel like you’re on her side. It’s just…”
“Just?” I was asking a lot of one-word questions today.
“Don’t forget your job is to look out for her best interests. Not to make her like you.”
I let out a burst of nervous laughter. “Oh, don’t worry, I’m pretty sure there’s no danger of her liking me.”
“You know”—Esther had folded her arms and was giving me a too-insightful-for-comfort look—“I don’t think you actually believe that.
I think you know you’re a likable person, and I think you know how to be charming when you have to be.
And those are good qualities. You’re still allowed to be a human being here, Luc. ”
“Oh good.” I sounded flatter than I’d meant to.
“Just remember to be a parent as well.”
The part of me that still felt like it was fifteen and in trouble was laughing unhelpfully at that. “I…I don’t suppose you’ve got any tips?”
Esther sat casually on a desk in a way I thought she probably would have done when she was at school too. “Mostly, keep doing what you’re doing.”
I felt like there was a but coming. Which is why I said, “I feel like there’s a but coming.”
“But”—Esther let it hang there a moment—“don’t undermine the other people who are part of this. We don’t know each other that well, but the impression I get is that you’re not the sort of guy who usually goes in for Personal Plans and Goal-Setting and Student-Centred Learning Approaches.”
There comes a point when you’re wincing so much that it’s the gaps between winces that actually feel like gestures. This wasn’t one of those gaps. “Was I eye-rolling really hard?”
Esther did the lil’ bit sign, the one where you hold your fingers like two millimetres apart and make an embarrassed face.
“I guess I just…I don’t feel like you can boil a human being down to a few action points and notes for improvement.”
“Oh right.” Sometimes Esther could really give Jaz a run for her money on the sarcasm front. “Now you’ve pointed that out, I’ll rethink my entire approach to my profession. We know that, Luc. Even Doug”—she caught my blank expression—“Doug Lorimer knows that. But it really does help to have—”
“High expectations and clear boundaries?” I echoed Oliver from half a city away.
“Basically, yeah. And look, if it’s any consolation, thinking your kid is so unique and special that the rules that work for everybody else, however imperfectly, aren’t good enough for her is a very parent mindset. Just…if you could shade it down like ten percent.”
I nodded. I was weirdly tempted to give her one of Jaz’s almost-shrugs. “I’ll try.”
“That’s all any of us can do.”
Oliver kind of kept saying that as well. But for some reason—maybe because Esther was an authority figure, not my boyfriend—it was more reassuring. And, fuck me, I needed the reassurance.