6. Quentin
Chapter six
Quentin
The Bee Gees were playing—again. I had no idea who picked the playlist for a nursing home, but whoever was responsible for the song choice was a huge fan of disco music.
The chocolate pudding in front of my mother was still untouched. I pushed the spoon toward her.
“At least try it,” I said gently. “It’s your favorite brand.”
“No, thank you, Randall. I’m not hungry,” she said with a smile.
Randall was my father's name. Some days, she still recognized me, while other days, she mistook me for my father. And on really bad days, she thought I was a stranger and demanded I leave the room.
My mother looked out the window onto the small but well-kept garden that belonged to the nursing home.
“Christmas is getting close, Randy. We should start thinking about Christmas presents.”
I took her hand. “Of course. Do you want to make a list?”
After years of dealing with her devastating diseases, I’d learned there was no point in arguing with her. I’d gotten used to just saying and doing whatever made her happy, even if that was Christmas shopping in May .
“Good idea, love. Hand me a pen, will you?”
“Sure.”
A dark-haired man, wearing the light-blue scrubs of the nursing home staff, entered the room. I hadn’t seen him before. The man only glanced at my disfigured face for a moment, then he smiled politely and stretched out his hand.
“Hello, I’m the new nurse, Raphael Ortegas. I started working here last Monday.”
That was something I liked about medical staff. They were so used to gruesome sights that my scars didn’t faze them much.
I shook the man’s hand. “Quentin Avery.”
Raphael turned his attention toward my mother. “It’s time for your medicine, Mrs. Avery.”
My mother took one look at him and crossed her arms.
“Randall, that’s the man I told you about,” she said in a harsh tone. “The man who stole my things.”
Raphael remained calm and friendly. “We’ve been through this, Mrs. Avery,” he said. “I only took your clothes so they could be washed. You will get them back tomorrow in prime condition, I promise.”
She scoffed. “We’ll see.”
“Will you take your medicine now?” Raphael asked as he handed her a small cup of water and an orange pill.
“What medicine? I’m not taking any medicine. Randall, tell him I don’t need medicine. Tell him I’m healthy.”
I decided to intervene because once my mother got upset, it could be difficult to calm her down. “Mom, this is the pill for your heart. Your weak heart. Remember?”
Still confused, my mother picked the pill up and held it close to her eyes for inspection. “My heart pills?”
“Yes, you need them. ”
“Oh, alright.” Without further resistance, she took the pill and the water cup from Raphael.
A knock on the door startled my mother so much that she nearly dropped her cup.
A woman with short brown hair peeked into the room. “Ah, Mr. Avery, you’re still here. That’s good.” It was Karen Thomas, the owner of the nursing home. “Would you come to my office for a moment? I need to talk to you.”
I felt a terrible sense of foreboding.
“Okay,” I said. “Mom, I’ll be right back. Don’t start a fight with your nurse.”
My mother squinted her eyes. “With who?”
“Never mind.” I gave her a kiss on her brittle gray hair before following Karen out of the room, across the hallway, and into her office.
Mrs. Thomas sat down behind her desk. “I’ll make it quick. We need to talk about the fees.”
I sat down, feeling a lump form in my throat. “The fees?”
“They are going to rise, come June. Sadly, it was unavoidable.”
“By how much?”
She pushed a piece of paper toward me, took out a red pen, and circled a number. “Eleven thousand seven hundred and forty dollars per month.”
“That’s almost two thousand dollars extra.”
“I assure you, the raise is necessary, Mr. Avery. We want to keep our high standards. I’m sure you understand that.”
I swallowed. Even with my mother’s social security payments and Medicare coverage, I was already paying more for this nursing home than I could comfortably afford. But taking her to a cheaper facility wasn’t an option. She was my mother, my last living relative, the one person who’d always been there for me. Now, I needed to show up for her. I would just have to find the money somehow.
I was brooding over that astronomical fee for the entire forty-minute drive from the nursing home in Lakeview back to Brightwater. The weight of the situation settled on me as I pondered how to come up with the money. I could cancel Netflix, as I wasn’t watching much TV these days anyway, but beyond that, cutting corners would be difficult. I already lived a pretty frugal life.
I didn’t have time to sit down and crunch numbers just yet, though. That evening was parent-teacher night, and I had only a few minutes to freshen up and gather my notes before I had to jump back into my car and drive over to Brightwater High School.
When I arrived at my classroom, about half a dozen people were already waiting in front of the door.
According to the list the school secretary had given me, Mia Farlane’s parents were first, so I called them in right away.
The Farlanes were pleasant people, and if all parent-teacher-night conversations were as easy as that one, I wouldn’t dread them so much. I already knew her parents from having taught their son Malcolm three years before, and just like Malcolm, Mia was a straight-A student, quiet but driven.
We went through her test scores together, but otherwise, there wasn’t much to discuss, so the conversation ended quickly, and I ushered them back out.
Mr. Farlane shook my hand. “Thank you, Mr. Avery. We wish you a good night. ”
Mrs. Farlane smiled at me. “Yes, thank you so much. You are doing wonderful work. You’re Mia’s favorite teacher.”
“Don’t tell him that, Melissa,” Mr. Farlane said. “You’re going to embarrass Mia.”
I smiled back. “It’s easy to teach if the students are as eager learners as your children are. Good night. Get home safe.”
Mia’s parents left, and I checked my list. The next name was Sebastian Martin. I sighed. That conversation was not going to be nearly as easy. Sebastian had been an above-average student in my class, but his grades had dropped significantly in the past two months, and his attitude had become terrible, seemingly overnight. I suspected something was going on in Sebastian’s life that had caused him to change from a friendly, eager student into a taciturn grump who handed in assignments half finished. As far as I remembered, his mother was a polite woman who cared a lot about her son and his schoolwork, so I was hopeful I would at least get some answers today, even if the conversation would be uncomfortable.
I got up, opened the door, and looked up and down the corridor. I couldn’t see Sebastian’s mother in the line of waiting parents. “Mrs. Martin?” I called out.
Instead of the woman I’d met during the last parent-teacher conference in October, a man got up from a chair. “Um, I’m here for Sebastian today. Hello.”
I was taken aback for a moment. As the dark-haired man stepped into my classroom, rubbing his hands nervously, I realized I’d met him before. It was the new nurse at my mother’s nursing home, Raphael Ortegas.
Mr. Ortegas recognized me too. “Oh, it’s you. Small world, huh? I had no idea you taught here.”
“And I had no idea you were Sebastian’s father. Father, right?” It was rare, but sometimes other family members or even foster parents attended these meetings .
“Yes, I’m his father.” He looked somewhat uncomfortable when he spoke the word, as if he wasn’t used to calling himself that.
I suspected I was about to find out what had caused Sebastian’s sudden shift in behavior. “Please, sit down.” I sat opposite Ortegas and cleared my throat. “Mr. Ortegas, I wish I could tell you something different, but Sebastian is not doing well at the moment.”
“Yeah, I thought you would say that. He doesn’t tell me much, but I saw his tests—at least the ones I could get a hold of. I think he’s hiding some of them from me. I found one crumpled up in the trash can a week ago.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “How bad is it?”
“If things don’t change very soon, he’s going to fail the class.”
“Shit,” Ortegas mumbled. “Sorry I said that.”
I showed him the printout of Sebastian’s test scores. “It’s not that he isn’t smart. He used to be a good student, but he seemed to stop trying two months ago.”
I waited a moment for Ortegas to pick up on the topic, but the man just nodded.
“Mr. Ortegas, may I ask you if there have been… changes recently? At home, maybe? I’ve noticed Sebastian’s mother isn’t here today.”
Ortegas took a deep breath. “His mother passed away. In March. It was a car accident, and…” He stopped himself and shook his head. “No, it wasn’t. I keep telling people this, but I probably shouldn’t lie to you since you need to know what’s going on with Sebby and all. It was suicide. His mother hanged herself, and Sebastian found her.”
I felt my stomach drop. That explained things. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Ortegas.”
“Thank you, but I’m okay. Stella and I had been separated since Sebastian was a baby. Until March, I was living in California and only talked to her on the phone a couple of times a year and only ever about Sebastian. ”
“I understand.”
“It wasn’t like we hated each other or anything. We just lived separate lives, except for Sebby, of course. We were very young when she got pregnant with him, and we just didn’t work as a couple, and… but you don’t need to know any of this.” He rubbed his palms on his thighs. “Anyway, she died. I thought taking him away from his friends and everything he knows would probably be a bad idea, so I moved from California to Brightwater.”
“You’re his primary guardian now?” I asked and made a note in his file when Ortegas nodded.
“Yes, we live together now. It’s quite an adjustment for both of us. Before all this, I only saw him twice a year.”
“Is Sebastian seeing anyone? Someone he can talk to about what happened?”
“You mean a therapist? Yes, he goes there once a week, but he won’t talk to her much either. He won’t talk to anyone, really, but especially not me.”
I nodded empathetically. “He’s going through a lot.”
“Yes, but if he keeps going like this, he will ruin his future. And that’s certainly not what his mother would have wanted for him. I want to help him, but I have no idea how to get through to him.”
I had no advice. I’d been where Sebastian was. I knew how it felt to lose someone you thought would always be there. And I knew that nothing anyone could say would make the pain go away.
“I was hoping maybe you could talk to him?”
I sighed. “I wish I could help, but I’m not a therapist. I’m not trained to handle situations like this.”
“Yes, I know, I know, but Sebastian really likes you. He told me that before… well, the last time he came to visit me in California.”
“That is wonderful, but—”
“He’s just so angry with me, you know? I think he thinks it’s my fault in some way.” Ortegas hung his shoulders in defeat. “Maybe you could at least give it a shot. I’m at my wits’ end with him.”
I looked at the man, who had treated my mother with so much care and kindness and who was now sitting before me, desperate. And I thought about Sebastian, who had learned more about loss than anyone at his age should know and had no one to talk to—no one who knew, truly knew, how he felt. I knew. I’d been through this hell, and I knew how isolating it was to deal with something like that when all your friends were occupied with dating girls and football tryouts.
I relented. “I can’t make any promises.”
Indeed, I couldn’t, but I would do my very best to make things a little easier for Sebastian.
“Good work today, everybody. See you on Monday. Class dismissed.”
The students rose from their seats with a lot of noise and chatter, pouring into the hallways, ready to embark on the weekend.
I spotted Sebastian in the group of freshmen, a dark-haired boy, small and skinny for his age. When he walked past my table, I asked, “Sebastian, do you mind staying a little longer?”
A few nearby kids who had heard me gave Sebastian curious looks. His shoulders dropped, but he shuffled back to his desk without protest and slumped into the seat, arms crossed and face guarded.
I waited until the last student had left the room before walking over and sitting down on a table next to him.
A heavy silence lay over us, the laughter and voices of hundreds of students behind the classroom door only a faint, muffled white noise.
“Aren’t you wondering why I held you back? ”
Sebastian shrugged, stubbornly avoiding looking at me. “I guess it’s about the essay.”
“The essay? You mean the empty sheet of paper you handed in?”
“Wasn’t empty,” Sebastian mumbled. “My name was on it.”
I hesitated for a moment. I’d dealt with difficult students before, and I’d comforted students in times of personal tragedy, but Sebastian had walls around himself a mile high, and I was just as unsure how to get through to the boy as his father was.
“You don’t really have the mind space for schoolwork right now, hmm?”
Sebastian’s eyes flickered up. “Did my father talk to you?”
I nodded. “He did.”
“What did he tell you? I told him not to say anything to anyone. I don’t want anyone to know.”
“I won’t tell anyone else if you don’t want me to,” I said. “Your dad is pretty worried about you.”
“Not my problem,” Sebastian spat out.
“You two aren’t getting along right now?”
“We’re not fighting or anything,” he said. “I just couldn’t care less about him or what he’s worried about.”
“But he cares about you.”
Sebastian looked up defiantly. “I. Don’t. Care.”
“Okay…” I nodded. “Why not?”
“Why should I?” Sebastian stretched out his legs, his sporty sneakers squeaking on the dark-gray linoleum floor. The lazy pose was supposed to convey disinterest, but I could tell by the way his mouth pinched into a thin line that he was full of inner turmoil.
“He never cared about me. Walked out on me and Mom when I was, like, six months old,” Sebastian said, tracing a half-finished heart that some lovesick student had carved into the tabletop with his finger. “He never wanted to see me. Two visits a year was all I got from him. And that one trip to Disneyland when I was nine, but only because he forgot my birthday that year and tried to make up for it. And now he shows up and wants to go all fatherly on me. He can go to hell.”
Sebastian sounded incredibly bitter. I tried not to judge his father too harshly. I was only hearing Sebastian’s side of the story, and Raphael Ortegas seemed to be a decent man, but it appeared that he had failed at being a father, at least until now.
“Okay, got it,” I said. “Let’s leave your dad out of it for a moment, then. But what about you? Don’t you care about your grades? That’s probably a stupid question to ask a boy your age, but I know you’re smart, Sebastian. You know what happens if you keep this up, right? What the consequences will be?”
“I guess so.”
“But you don’t care?”
Sebastian rubbed his eyes, his face looking strained. “I don’t care much about anything at the moment,” he said, choking back tears.
I felt helpless. I knew everything I could say would sound like an empty phrase to Sebastian, but I still had to try.
“Believe it or not, I know exactly how you feel right now.”
The boy shook his head. “Nobody knows how I feel right now. Can I go now? I’ll redo the essay if I have to.”
I sighed heavily. “Yes, please do that.”
Without another word or even a look back, Sebastian got up, flung his backpack over his shoulder, and rushed out of the room.
I stayed behind and watched the door fall shut behind my troubled student. Deep in thought, I got up and wiped the blackboard, pushed some chairs back, and tidied the stacks of papers, notes, and books on my desk .
Had I gone too far with Sebastian? Was I intruding on a matter that did not concern me? Raphael Ortegas had asked for my help, but I wasn’t sure if Sebastian was comfortable with the whole situation, and to an extent, I understood that. Grief was a very private matter, and even well-intended advice from other people could feel unbearably imposing.
Running out of things to tidy up in my classroom, I packed my bag, getting ready to head home. One thing was clear: a stern talking-to about consequences would not draw Sebastian out of his shell. I needed to come up with a different plan to get him back on course.