ELEVEN Back To School
A fter a day spent making a job list for the cottages, and a day spent making appointments with contractors to figure out what to do about 12, Wyatt and I took a break from demoralizing home improvement projects and headed toward town to register him for tenth grade.
Bendixen High School is named after Hans Bendixen, some historical guy who did something I can’t remember but was important enough to have a school named after him. Maybe something about ships? Or lumber? I don’t know. Anyway, the high school is, I suppose, a typical semi-rural high school. It’s average size, with a student body of about four hundred or so. The main part of the school is the original building, a big brick thing with a clock tower at the center that hasn’t actually kept time since the Seventies. A couple of modular ‘satellite’ buildings were put up in the Eighties, I think, but for the most part, Bendixen is a traditional hulking brick behemoth.
A big building like that, with classrooms on multiple floors, is actually pretty uncommon in California, I think. Most of California is sunny and hot most of the year and has any rain at all for about three months, so they build schools that spread out in a single story, with classrooms that open to the outdoors. But this part of California is really the Pacific Northwest and in both climate and culture has more in common with coastal Oregon and Washington than with Los Angeles or even San Francisco.
We pulled into the visitor lot around ten in the morning. An August sun had mostly burned off the fog, and the day promised to be hot for this area—in the mid-80s or so. I was antsy to get back to the Sea-Mist and start cleaning up cottages so I could feel like we were making progress on the place, but I didn’t want to rush Wyatt on this errand. High school’s a big deal for everybody, you know? But for Wyatt, this was seismic. In the past year or so, he’d lost his father, lost the house he’d lived in since he was born, moved away from all his friends, whom he’d gone to school with from kindergarten. Then he’d had one year in a new high school before moving all the way across the country to start all over again here.
No, I was not about to rush his first experience with the high school he would, I hoped, graduate from.
So when he made no move to get out of the car, when he simply sat and stared at the building through the windshield, I sat and stared with him.
I guess my public-school experience was pretty normal. I was in no way a standout. I had my share of encounters with mean girls and other bullies, I had friends and some frenemies. I had teachers I hated and those I adored, got strong grades overall but had my struggles. Though I was generally careful and responsible, I played some hooky and broke some rules. I had a couple of boyfriends and went to dances and proms and pep rallies. I had to do the social stuff in secret, with Jessie and Erin helping me build elaborate ruses so my mother wouldn’t find out I had a boyfriend or was going to the homecoming dance, but like I’ve said, it took me a long time to understand how fucked up that was—and, more to the point, how unusual it was, so those efforts didn’t get in the way of my fun. In fact, if we’re being straight here, getting away with shit, not to mention the risk of not getting away with it, sometimes made it more exciting.
Jessie and Erin and I had a lot of fun together. They were great friends, and I did them dirty disappearing as much from their lives as from my mother’s.
As we sat in the Golf and waited for Wyatt to be ready, I thought about school and let myself remember happy things I’d forgotten in my time away. I’d shoved my whole past into the dark, the good stuff with the bad.
We had the windows open, and the sluggish, discordant tones of the marching band practicing a new piece floated up from the football field behind the school. Probably the football team was practicing somewhere as well.
Wyatt wasn’t a team-sports kid. He was more apt to try out for a school play than a school team. He’d enjoyed outdoor activities with his dad, but the manner of Micah’s death had destroyed his interest in climbing and even camping.
“Okay,” he said after a while.
“Okay,” I answered. I put up the windows and turned off the car.
As we traveled up the long sidewalk to the main entrance, he looked around, even walking backward a few steps while he took in the view behind us.
“What do you think?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Looks like a school.”
“And that’s exactly what it is.”
THE OFFICE WAS THE first door, at the top of a flight of steps from the entrance. I didn’t recognize the two women working at desks behind the long counter (they both seemed young enough that I wouldn’t have known them except possibly as little kids), but I sure recognized the room itself. I’d been a student office aide, and I swear the room hadn’t changed at all. Okay—there were slim laptops on the desks rather than hefty black CRT monitors, but everything else looked exactly the same. Even the posters on the walls were still those silly ‘inspirational’ things with some photo of a guy standing at the edge of a cliff, or feet on a surfboard going through a tube, and a big, supposedly important word like MOTIVATION or INSPIRATION printed in huge letters across it. Ugh.
But the secretaries were nice, and I’d checked the website and come prepared with all the documentation they needed. The one primarily helping us (she wore a lanyard identifying her as Bethany Carmichael) seemed to recognize the address I’d written on the form—her eyes came up and pinned me for a second—but she didn’t mention it.
When the paperwork was finished, she handed Wyatt a maroon folder with the school logo in gold, the school colors. Jessie and Erin and I had thought we were hilarious calling Bendixen High the Hellmouth, because maroon and gold are the colors of Sunnydale High in Buffy, the Vampire Slayer . Oh, how we’d loved that show. I still love that show.
“We need to get you a class schedule,” Bethany said, “but Mr. Levering, the guidance counselor, does that, and he’s not on campus until next week. Are you available next week?”
“We can be available whenever,” I answered, checking in with Wyatt to make sure he didn’t have a problem with that answer. He didn’t.
Bethany struck a few keys and squinted at her screen. “Monday at ten a.m., then?”
“Monday at ten is perfect,” I answered, and she struck some more keys.
“Now, you’ll be in PE for sure—PE is required for ninth and tenth grade. The coaches are all here today, so if you want to go on down to the athletic center, you can get your uniform and other stuff like that.”
“Athletic center?” I asked, surprised. Maybe some things had changed around here after all. In my day, there was a gym, a track, and a field that was used for football, soccer, and baseball. Nothing impressive enough to be called an ‘athletic center.’
Bethany smiled. “Oh sure. It’s nice. Just out the back and to the right.”
“Got it.” I was curious, for sure.
“Can we look around the whole school while we’re here?” Wyatt asked.
Bethany’s expression indicated an intention to deny that request, but then she twisted her lips thoughtfully and said, “You know what? Go ahead. It’s quiet today, except outside. So be careful and respectful where the teams are practicing, but otherwise, look around. I’ll call maintenance and let them know they might see you.”
“Thank you, Ms. Carmichael,” Wyatt said.
She smiled with real kindness. “Of course, honey. Welcome to Bendixen High.”
“DOES IT LOOK LIKE YOU remember it?” Wyatt asked as we stood in the doorway of the fourth or fifth classroom we’d explored. They were all unlocked and all stripped of any sign of human presence. It’s quite common for schools to require teachers to move completely out of their classrooms at the end of every school year—take down their posters, empty their shelves, cabinets, desks, all of it—so the school can rearrange room assignments if enrollment needs require it. Every June, most teachers take their classroom completely apart and haul it home with them (unless they’re lucky enough to work at a school that provides storage), and every August, they have to haul it all back and set it all up, even if they have the same room.
As a teacher myself, I find a classroom in summer to be a uniquely lonely space.
“Pretty much,” I answered my son. “The teacher desk, file cabinets, bookcases, student desks—all the furniture, actually, is exactly the same. But when I was here, we had chalkboards and a cart with a TV and a VCR on it. The whiteboards I expected, everybody’s got those these days. The smartboards, though, I’m surprised about that. I wouldn’t think Bendixen could afford that—and it looks like they’re in all the classrooms.”
I was now extra curious to see if the ‘athletic center’ deserved that name. Bendixen must have gotten a juicy grant or two if they were putting current technology in their classrooms and building new athletic facilities.
“What do you think so far?” I asked.
“So far, it’s just a school. Is there an auditorium or a theater or something?”
Like I said, my kid was more likely to try out for a play than a team.
“There is. If it’s like I remember, I think you’ll like it. Come on.”
“THIS IS AWESOME!” WYATT crowed, and then jogged down the center aisle of the auditorium-slash-theater. A benefit of an old building like this one is the classic style of that precise space: a slanted floor, old-fashioned upholstered theater seats, where the seat part folds up if there isn’t a butt in it, and a raised proscenium stage with dramatic gold velvet curtains. It all looked like I remembered, but I was pretty sure the fabrics had been replaced. The seats were the same color—maroon—but in better condition.
Wyatt went up the side steps onto the stage itself. “Mom! There are stage lights in the floor! Like old fashioned ones!”
“I know!” I called back, laughing.
Then I saw the backstage curtain flutter a bit, and I started forward, ready to protect my kid from whoever was back here. Yeah, I knew the Phantom of the Opera wasn’t likely to be back there, but ... well, it had been a rough year. I was primed for trouble.
But it was a girl, with a long, sandy ponytail. It took me a second from my position halfway down the aisle, but I recognized her as the server we’d seen at Catherine’s our first morning.
I hadn’t been back very long, and I hadn’t spoken to many people—that was apparently on the agenda of the town meeting coming up—but I’d been around long enough and talked to enough people, specifically Catherine and Jessie, to know that the girl on the stage behind Wyatt was Bailey Allman. Catherine’s ‘granddaughter.’
Scare quotes are necessary because Catherine had never married or had a child. What she had done, while I was away, was, briefly, become a foster parent. Bailey, at age five or so, had been her first placement, and she’d adopted her after about a year. They’d decided that the vast difference in their ages (Catherine’s in her seventies) made ‘Mom’ a strange designation, so Bailey calls her ‘Grams’ instead.
I’d had to cobble those facts together like a quilt from things Catherine had told me and things Jessie had told me, because Catherine had only said Bailey was her granddaughter, and I’d been too recently returned to feel like I could ask yet how that could be, and Jessie, who’d ultimately filled in most of the blanks, didn’t like to tell other people’s stories.
Anyway, I don’t think I’d told Wyatt about any of that.
“Can I help you?” Bailey asked as she came through the curtain. She had an aspect of someone who owned the place, but she wasn’t rude.
Wyatt whipped around, surprised, and stammered, “Oh ... uh, hi ... uh ... hi.”
“Do you need something?” Bailey asked again. “Tryouts for the fall play won’t start until after classes start.”
“Uh ...”
I grinned. He was acting like he liked her, or at least thought she was cute—and she was objectively cute—but Wyatt hadn’t yet expressed much romantic interest in anyone of any gender. Not to me, at least.
“Hi, Bailey,” I called, striding forward to provide my son some assistance. “I’m a friend of your grandma’s.”
She squinted at Wyatt and then, as I came up the side stairs, me. “Oh, yeah! From the Sea-Mist. Hi, Mrs. ...”
I never had Micah’s last name. That might seem strange, considering my feelings for my mother, but Braddock is the name I was born with, I knew myself as Braddock, so I kept it. Leo was how I separated myself from the woman who’d named me.
“ Ms. Braddock—but I’d rather you just call me Leo.”
“Okay. Hi, Leo.” Looking at Wyatt, she added, “I’m sorry, I don’t remember ...”
“Wyatt,” he said—and his voice cracked . He cleared his throat. “Wyatt. Hi.”
“Hi. Are you thinking about trying out for the play? We’re doing Death of a Salesman this fall.”
“Oh, cool! Yeah, I’ll probably try out. I just registered, so I’m checking things out, you know.”
He was trying so hard to be cool now. I thought I was going to die of either utter shock or cuteness overload.
“Sure!” Bailey said with a sunny grin. “You want to come backstage and check that out?”
He remembered I existed and dashed a look at me.
“Sure, go ahead,” I told him. “You want me to go over and get your PE stuff?”
“Oh, I have to get a new set, too,” Bailey said. “The backstage door leads out that way, so we can do that next, if you want.”
This girl was either extremely helpful or thought Wyatt was cute as well. I’m biased, of course, but if she thought he was cute, she was right.
I got another of those hopeful, questioning looks from my cute son. “Go ahead,” I told him. “I’ll meet you at the car when you’re done, okay?”
His grin was my reward.
So I let my son ditch me for somebody cuter and went back to sit in our car and wait.
“THERE’S DRESSING ROOMS with those mirrors with the bulbs, like in movies? And there’s a huge prop room crammed full of cool and weird stuff. Bailey says it’s like fifty years of costumes and props back there.”
Wyatt had come back to the car on his own, with a cheap school gym bag containing two PE uniforms and several informational pages about sports teams, tryout schedules, the school athletics code of conduct, and a brochure of fundraising events and other ‘booster opportunities.’ He’d tossed all that into the back seat and not given it another thought.
When I asked what he thought of the athletic center, he described it as “Cool, I guess. Big.” Then he’d launched into a detailed and enthusiastic description of the backstage area of the theater that had, thus far, taken us almost all the way home, and he wasn’t done yet.
“Bailey says she’s been in all the plays and musicals since she got to the high school. She’s in tenth grade like me. She says there’s a school play in the fall and a Christmas revue right before winter break, and then in the there’s a winter play in February and a big musical in May. She says Mr. DeValle—he’s the theater director, and he teaches eleventh grade English, too—hasn’t decided on the winter and spring stuff, but it’s Death of a Salesman in the fall and the Christmas revue is gonna be inspired by that old movie we watch during the holidays. She didn’t know the name, and I don’t remember it, either, but it’s that one you like.”
There were a lot of old Christmas movies I liked. Jessie and I used to go to Erin’s house on December 23 rd every year and have a day-long old-movie marathon. Daddy Ned would make us hot cider and eggnog (both the virgin kind) and we’d make cinnamon kettle corn and peppermint bark and gorge ourselves all day on crap while we watched impossibly beautiful people sing and dance and fall in love and be full of Christmas spirit.
That was the best day of my holiday, and I’d kept the tradition alive with Micah and Wyatt.
There are maybe ten Christmas movies from, say, 1940-1960 that I absolutely adore. We watch at least five of them every December 23 rd , and find another day for the others (as well as all the classic cartoons, and a few newer titles that deserved the honor of tradition—like Klaus , everybody should see Klaus at least annually) sometime between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.
Wyatt’s description didn’t narrow it down much. I finally had a chance to get a word in, so I jumped on that and asked, “ It’s a Wonderful Life ?”
He turned and rolled his eyes at me. “Mom. I said I don’t remember the title. I remember the title of the best Christmas movie ever made.”
I drew my brows together in an exaggerated frown. “This sass thing. I’m not sure I like it.”
He grinned. “ I’m sure.”
“Watch yourself, bucko, or I’ll put an ad on Craigslist—'One son, slightly used. Thinks he’s funnier than he is. Free to any home.’”
Now he gave me his ‘I’m an angel” look. I returned a well-deserved eye roll.
“It’s the one with the ski lodge and there’s no snow. And all the soldiers.”
“Oh! White Christmas . Also a title you shouldn’t forget. Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera-Ellen. 1954. People think the song came from this movie, but actually the song first appeared in a different movie— Holiday Inn , in 1942, which we don’t watch because there is an awful blackface scene in that one.”
“That’s a lot of facts to memorize about seventy-year-old movies. But you go right ahead and hoist that geek flag, Mom.”
“Upstart pup,” I muttered with a smile. To tease him back a little, I said, “So Bailey’s pretty cute.”
For the first time since he’d opened the car door, there was quiet. I looked over; he was turned partly toward his window, but I could see the spotty blush on his cheek.
“Don’t you think she’s cute?” I asked, poking a little harder. I wouldn’t push any further, but I was both honestly curious and feeling puckish. It’s nice to turn the tables on the adolescent snark once in a while.
“She’s cute,” he said without turning from the window. “Really cute. But I just want a friend, Mom. Just one friend.”
There was so much loneliness in those few words. He’d been lively and enthusiastic all morning, practically giddy on this very ride home, and I’d dumped ice water over his head.
We proceeded in quiet for a mile or two while I had my guilt trip and finally arrived at the understanding that I hadn’t really doused his good mood. The loneliness and the giddiness were two sides of the same thing: he’d been lonely since Micah’s death and everything that followed. He’d lost almost everything, including, for the most part, his lifelong friends, who now would exist for him only online. He’d been giddy because high school meant hope—new friends, new activities, the real restart of his own life. Replacing the things he’d lost.
“I’m sorry, buddy,” I said softly. “I shouldn’t have teased you about that.”
Finally, he turned from the window and looked at me. “It’s okay. Bailey is pretty. But the way you asked ... I don’t know how I feel about all that stuff yet. I don’t want to think about it yet.”
“And that is absolutely, one-hundred percent, perfectly fine. Think about it when you’re ready, figure that stuff out when you’re ready. Decide what will make you happy. And I will shut up about it until you want to talk. Deal?”
“Deal. Thanks.”
Yeah, there was a rough patch in the middle there, but overall I think that was a parenting win.