Chapter 11 #2
He didn’t answer.
“He won’t say anything about it,” Mrs. Ferber said, “but we have Miss Lehrer’s account.
She says that everything was fine, but then without warning they were wrestling on the floor.
” Mrs. Ferber sighed. “She was very nearly struck herself while trying to separate them, and that would have been very serious.”
“Charlie?” I asked him. Again, he wouldn’t respond.
“We have never had any issues at all with Charlie, and as I told you when we last met, he is very popular with the staff here.” She looked at Charlie.
“You are a bright, friendly, polite young man, and in general, you are a credit to Whitaker Elementary. I’m not sure what happened today, but I would like you to explain yourself. ”
Charlie stared at his hands, balled into fists in his lap.
“Mrs. Ferber, I’ve made you aware of the difficulties we’ve had in our family lately.” I glanced at Charlie.
“Yes, I received your email, and as I said, I’m very sorry.
” She took off her glasses. “Charlie, I’m going to ask your aunt to take you home for the day, just to let the situation cool down.
And I would like you to think about explaining to me what happened.
I’m your principal, and I’m here to help you if you need it. ”
He kept looking down, and I saw the tears streaking down his cheeks.
Mrs. Ferber clicked on her mouse and looked at her computer screen. “Emily, we were unable to reach Charlie’s father.”
“He’s out of town,” I said quickly. “I’m in charge of Charlie.”
“I’m glad,” she said. “But it might behoove you to make that a more permanent situation, legally speaking.”
I nodded at her. She was right.
Mrs. Ferber stood up. “Charlie, if you’d like to talk to me about this more, my door is always open. And just so you’re both aware, the other boy involved in this incident has been punished more severely. There’s a bit of history there,” she explained to me.
I realized that Charlie was crying again as we left the school. I put my arm around him, and gave him a tissue from my purse. As soon as he closed his car door, I swung around.
“Why did you fight with Rivers?”
No answer.
“Charlie, we won’t leave this parking lot until you tell me. I don’t care if we spend the night here.”
Nothing.
“Did it have something to do with me? Working at Roy’s?”
He nodded slowly. “And my mom.”
“What about your mom?”
“Rivers said his mom said my mom was a slut who got what she deserved. A slut is bad, right?”
Holy Mary. That’s what he had been hearing, crap about me and about his mom too? That his dead mom deserved cancer, suicide? “You know that’s all baloney, pal. That Rivers and his mom don’t know diddly squat. So why did you wrestle in the middle of science class?”
“He just kept saying it! He says it every day! Miss Lehrer was having us watch this dumb movie and she didn’t notice, and I told her but she wouldn’t listen, so I asked her if I could move seats and she wouldn’t let me. And…I just got real mad.”
I rubbed my eyes. “Ok. We’re going back to the NGS now. I have to get back to work.”
“Emmy, you said you might quit and not work at that place anymore, right?”
I’d had enough. “I’ll call Roy tonight and let him know that I’m quitting. I may have to keep coming in for a while, until he finds my replacement, but yes, I’ll stop working there.” Monetarily it would be hard, but it would be better for both of us.
We went back to the store, where Martha replaced the lukewarm icepack with a bag of frozen peas, and gave Charlie about ten cookies.
“I’m sure that other boy is just a bad seed,” she whispered to me.
“Don’t be too hard on Charlie.” Martha was a softie.
I called Tara to fill her in, and she felt the same way. But she had different advice.
“Let’s find out where they live and torch their cars.”
“You frighten me,” I told her.
“What’s his name? Rivers what?” she asked.
“Tara, I’m not telling you that. I don’t want you to get arrested for arson.”
“Emmy, please. I would never get caught.”
“Let’s see.” I looked at the online class list. “Rivers Mlynarczyk.”
“Oh, shit! What are the parents’ names?”
“Craig and Tammy. Why?”
“Emily! Craig Mlynarczyk was one of your sister’s, uh, special friends in high school!”
Oh, sweet Jesus. “So that’s why the mom hates us? Because my sister—” I glanced around the store and lowered my voice to a whisper— “screwed her husband?”
“Man, you are going to have a load of trouble on your hands if all the wives of the men that Cassie fucked come back to get revenge on you. I think that number is in the hundreds.”
I laughed, then felt guilty for talking about my dead sister like that. “We won’t be at swim this week. I’ll talk to you soon,” I told Tara.
Charlie read quietly in the breakroom, and in between customers I emailed Mrs. Ferber to fill her in a little, then started researching custody laws in Michigan.
I didn’t think Mike’s letter that I had found in Cassie’s bedside table, in which he disavowed paternity, and said he didn’t want to take care of Charlie, would be enough for CPS and the courts if it came down to it.
I needed official, permanent guardianship, or if I could, I would adopt him.
“Time to go,” I finally told Charlie, when my shift was over.
He rolled off the breakroom couch. “Time for swim?”
“No way, pal. You don’t get to swim for the rest of the week.”
His mouth dropped open. “What?”
“Yep, that’s your punishment. I understand that he made you angry, and he was very wrong to say those things to you. But that’s no excuse for fighting. So no swimming.”
Charlie cried all the way home.
Luke came over while I was working in the yard, viciously trimming back some shrubs that had been allowed to overgrow.
“What did that bush do to you?” he called, as I wrestled with another branch. The clippers weren’t sharp enough so I stomped into the shed for a saw and started hacking. “Bad day?”
“Charlie was fighting in school today,” I informed him, wiping my forehead with my sleeve.
“Freaking Rivers Mlynarczyk tormented him by saying that I worked in the whore bar, and that Cassie was a slut who got what she deserved.” I took the branch in both hands and pulled with all my weight, until it broke off and I fell directly on my ass.
“You all right?” Luke offered me a hand up. “Mlynarczyk. I knew a guy in high school with that name. What did you do?”
“I picked him up from school, and I punished him with no swim for the rest of the week.” I rubbed my butt. That hurt.
“It’s hard on Charlie to keep him out of swim when he was just standing up for himself,” Luke remarked.
I stared at him over the top of the brown bag I was filing with the results of my foliage wrath.
“I can’t let him get into fights. I can’t let him end up like Mike, king of the bar brawl and useless as a human!
Cassie trusted me with him. I already let her down so much.
” Luke picked up the bag, and I threw my clippers, saw, and gloves into the shed to deal with later.
“What does that mean?” he asked me. “How do you think you let her down?”
I walked into the moon garden, and sat on the bench. This is where Cassie had told me. “I knew what she was going to do.”
Luke looked shocked.
“I mean, she didn’t tell me she was going to kill herself, not in so many words, but I should have known.”
He sat down next to me. “How? Explain this to me.”
“She told me that she signed a DNR. And she wrote out a will. Those were huge, neon signs and I didn’t do anything. I was even the one who refilled the prescription for the pills she took.”
“Emmy, aren’t those documents pretty standard for someone with Stage Three cancer? And didn’t you take care of all her prescriptions, not just that one?”
“She was talking about me taking care of Charlie. Mike had just walked out on her again. I should have known. I have these dreams—” I broke off when my voice shook, and I covered my eyes.
“I have these dreams where she’s standing at the end of the hall and I’m trying to get to her.
But I can’t move fast, I’m in slow motion, and trying to scream to her but nothing is coming out of my mouth.
I failed her and I can’t fail Charlie too. ”
Luke reached out for me but I pulled away.
“I understand that you feel guilty. That’s normal, I’m sure.”
“There’s nothing normal about anything! My sister killed herself, leaving her only child. His dad abandoned him. And now he’s getting in fights in school. I have to acknowledge my role in all this.”
“I think you’re being too hard on yourself. Cassie made the decision, not you.”
I shook my head, and Luke sighed.
“All right, well, maybe you should put Charlie in a new school, to be with new kids. You were saying you hated that science teacher he has. What about the Red Pine School, where Macdara goes? He could visit for the day and see if he likes it.”
Before the words had finished coming out of his mouth I was shaking my head.
“No. No. I don’t want him to go visit Red Pine.
I’m sure he would love it, and then what would happen if they wouldn’t give him a scholarship?
Get his hopes up and then what? You don’t understand, Luke!
You have to see this from my perspective. It’s just the same as the mattress!”
He looked completely confused. “What mattress?”
“You promised to get him his own bed at your house. You talked to him about going camping on Isle Royale this summer. You can’t get his hopes up like that!” I told him.
“You think I won’t follow through? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m saying that you don’t know what the future holds! You shouldn’t make promises!”
Luke was obviously furious. “Is that really your opinion of me? That I’d mislead Charlie and let him suffer when I backed out on him? Or are we talking about you here? That you don’t trust me.”
“I do,” I protested.