Just Another Kid (22 page)

“I
do
care! Good grief, Ladbrooke, lay
off
me.” Try as I had, I couldn’t keep from crying myself. “I do care. That’s the whole bloody problem. Are you so thick you can’t see that?”

My tears bewitched Ladbrooke. She froze, staring at me, studying my face intently, and I felt acutely embarrassed. It was like crying in front of one of the children. Reaching for a paper towel, I dampened it and wiped my face. Neither of us spoke.

I glanced in Ladbrooke’s direction. “I’m probably not going,” I said softly, “I’ll probably wait until the end of the school year. I’ve pretty much said that to Frank already. I was
trying
to say it to you, if you’d only given me half a chance.”

Snuffly silence.

I took another towel and did a final clean-up job. The cool water felt good. I kept the towel pressed against my eyes for a few moments, then I took it and the other one and threw them into the waste bin.

Turning, I looked over at Ladbrooke. She was still watching me, her own eyes still teary.

I smiled wearily. “God, would you look at us? We’re a couple of proper dames, aren’t we? Just look at us. I’ll bet when Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had a falling out, they never ended up bawling in the men’s room like this.”

A hint of a smile touched Ladbrooke’s lips. “They didn’t have men’s rooms in those days. They just peed in the bushes.”

I grinned. “Maybe that’s our problem. No bushes.”

A pause.

Looking at my reflection in the mirror, I ran my fingers through my hair, pulled out the clips, replaced them. I hitched up my jeans, smoothed out my blouse, grimaced at my reflection. Ladbrooke remained leaning against the wall. She too was watching my reflection.

“Look, I’m sorry I upset you,” I said. “None of this was intended to hurt you. I just got caught up in my own personal mess. I didn’t think.”

She shrugged. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, either.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m sorry. If you really do want to go back … I didn’t mean to sound selfish. I’m sorry you’re missing everyone. I do understand, sort of.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I turned from the mirror to leave.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Back to the room. I haven’t got anything prepared yet for tomorrow.”

“Are you angry?”

I smiled then. “No. Just tired. Come on, kiddo, you too. Let’s get back to the room. There’s a ton of work waiting there.”

T
he decision to stay was still difficult to make. In explaining to Ken why I was staying an additional four months, I could no longer shift the blame to the British consulate or the vagaries of Frank and the school district. It was my decision. Accustomed to drifting along pleasantly and meeting what came, I found this sudden need to steer a direct course a hard thing to do. However, I knew I had to stay. Ladbrooke’s outrage had some legitimacy. I
was
mucking about in other people’s lives. My method of intervention relied fairly heavily on personal charisma, and I knew full well it did. Successful as the method could be, this was one of the drawbacks. I was not justified in using it if I intended to walk out in the middle.

The decision not to go home left me depressed for some days afterward, and, like a bad cold, there didn’t seem much to be done about it, other than bear with it. I threw myself into work at school in an effort to distract my thoughts, and that was just as well, because we went into a skid. Everyone’s behavior deteriorated.

I had been trying for some time to arrange an alternate placement for Shamie. It had been apparent almost since his arrival that Shamie did not need a class like mine, yet he’d remained, mostly because I’d had my plate full with other problems. When we came back from Christmas break, I had endeavored to remedy the matter by arranging a part-time placement for him at a nearby junior high school. Shamie was to come into my class in the mornings and then go over at lunchtime to the other school, where he would have three regular classes.

Within a matter of days it became apparent that the whole thing was an unmitigated disaster. Shamie couldn’t cope with the junior high routine of changing classes and teachers. He was frightened by the normal rough-housing and teasing of the other children. The work in the classes was far from what he was used to with me. It wasn’t harder, but it was more formal and impersonal. Plus they used different books, different layouts and different methods of testing. Worst of all, he just didn’t fit in. Although a slow learner, he was a studiously inclined boy, and the relaxed, rather nonacademic attitudes of some of the other students in his classes affected him tremendously. He hated every moment of every afternoon. After two weeks, I gave up. Obviously, something was wrong with the whole plan. Shamie returned full time to my room.

Dirkie went from bad to worse. He’d always been on a considerable amount of very powerful medication to control his more outlandish schizophrenic behaviors, but this now seemed not to be sufficient. Adolescence and the accompanying metabolic changes suddenly upset the delicate balance, and he needed to have his medication adjusted to accommodate this. What seemed in conferences with his consulting psychiatrist and his foster parents a fairly simple procedure turned out to be nightmarish in the classroom. Dirkie became drastically uncontrolled, and we spent a very miserable month indeed.

Geraldine and Shemona didn’t change one way or the other. No matter what I tried, Geraldine kept up her steady stream of petty antisocial acts and her clinginess, while Shemona kept up her silence. I was blatantly aware of the fact that I had no control over either girl, that I had thus far made no impact on either’s behavior.

Leslie was slow going. She did start to talk in her own peculiar fashion. She developed a fetish for letters of the alphabet and would go around the classroom all day long, shouting
“M!” “C!” “Y!”
at the top of her lungs, until I wanted to throttle her. But she never said anything else. She never said anything that made sense. I was getting her to produce sounds during our sessions, but they were just attenuated grunts. After half an hour of pressing lips together with my fingers to force out the “
mmmmmm
” sound of “man,” I’d let go, her lips would fall apart, and she’d look at the picture of the man and happily say, “
uh
.”

Only Mariana seemed on an upward course. Bless her little heart, she plodded along steadily, learning with agonizing slowness to read the first-grade primer. I had wanted to mainstream her, too, into a regular classroom for part of the time, but I couldn’t imagine whose, as Mariana would need to avoid math, reading and spelling to have any chance at success. And that was before I went down to the girls’ rest room just off the lunchroom one day and found Mariana and one of Carolyn’s boys in a toilet stall together. Even I was embarrassed by what they were doing.

Then to cap it all off, we were struck in the latter part of February by a stomach bug. I dreaded stomach bugs in these kinds of classes, because I was always guaranteed a few really disgusting days. And we certainly had them. Shemona got it first and was sick everywhere one afternoon, with no warning whatsoever. Within the next two days, three different children had vomited on me, including Dirkie, who had been sick on me, gone home for a day, come back and been sick on me again.

On Thursday of that week, Ladbrooke came up just before morning recess.

“I’ve got to go home, Torey,” she said.

The moment I saw her, I knew she’d caught the bug too. Her face was the color of cold oatmeal.

“I’ll be back tomorrow. It seems to be just a twenty-four-hour thing.”

“Look, Lad, don’t worry about it. Stay home until you’re well. All right? Now go take care of yourself.” I gave her a pat on the shoulder, then turned and went back to the children.

Ladbrooke didn’t return on Friday. I wasn’t surprised. I hadn’t expected her to. The bug was so virulent and her stomach, even under normal circumstances, so touchy, that I’d assumed the combination would prove more than twenty-four hours could cure. However, when Monday came and Ladbrooke still wasn’t there, I was immediately concerned. It
was
a virulent virus. And she really should have been under the care of a doctor for the kind of gastric problems she had. She’d shown me once where areas of her teeth had been damaged because she’d vomited so frequently over the previous few years that the stomach acid had dissolved parts of her tooth enamel. It had all come about as a result of her alcohol abuse, and for that reason, I knew Ladbrooke was reluctant to get help for it. However …

The moment I thought about her alcoholism, all my other thoughts, all my concerns deadened. Ladbrooke wasn’t still sick. She was on another bender. After five days, it was unlikely that she was still home with a bug. No, she was gone again. Like the last time. Gone. Out. Drunk.

My instant reaction was anger. The clock was edging around toward class time. I stood below it, watching it, and I felt rage.
The stupid idiot
. This was the last thing in the world her poor, abused stomach needed. It was the last thing
she
needed. All the heart-tugging misery she was feeling in January, and she could just turn around and let it all happen again so soon? What the hell was the matter with her, anyway?

Uncharacteristically, my anger proved to be long lived. It didn’t pass off as the children arrived and the day started. I was still actively fuming at recess, when I stayed in the room and stapled up worksheets, a job Ladbrooke normally did. The whole time I was preoccupied with all the horrible things I was going to say to Ladbrooke when she finally did manage to limp back. I wasn’t going to have the same kind of patience I’d had in January. What kind of patsy did she take me for?

I was sound asleep Tuesday night when the telephone rang. The noise fit absurdly into my dream, and I didn’t waken immediately. When I did, I was momentarily disoriented. Groping for my alarm clock instead of getting out of bed to answer the phone, I tried to make out the numbers in the dark. I couldn’t, so I turned on the bedside lamp: 2:10.

When I finally picked up the receiver, Ladbrooke was on the other end.

“Do you know what time it is?” I said.

There was a pause. “Were you sleeping?”

“Good grief, Lad, of
course
I was sleeping.”

Another pause.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“Could you come get me?”

“Where are you? What’s going on?”

“I’m in a phone booth.”

“Where?”

“Poplar and Seventh Avenue.”

Consciousness was slowly returning, which didn’t make the conversation less bewildering. “What are you doing there? Are you safe?”

“Yeah, I think so.” A pause. “But I’m cold. And I need somebody to pick me up. I don’t have enough money for a taxi.”

“Okay. Hold on a sec. Let me get a pencil. Now tell me precisely where you’re at so I can find you straightaway. Are you sure you’re safe there? Can you wait till I come?”

I dressed and went down to bring my poor old car to life in the bitterly cold February darkness. There were four or five inches of old, graying snow underfoot, and it squeaked as I walked on it.

I wasn’t familiar with the part of town Ladbrooke was calling from; however. Lad’s directions were clear, and I found her with no trouble. She was standing inside a dimly lit booth, arms tight around herself. She had no coat on.

For the first time I became genuinely concerned about what was going on. Up to this point, I think I must have been still half-asleep, because I didn’t question it. I was too concerned with finding her. But now that I had, the peculiarity of the circumstances struck me. What the hell was she doing out at two o’clock in the morning, with no coat, no money and no one around? What was she doing in this part of town, bereft of night spots, bereft of everything except industrial complexes and office buildings? A truly horrible thought went through my mind. Was she engaging in prostitution?

I pushed the car door open. “Lad?”

Tentatively, she opened the door on the telephone booth.

“Lad, it’s me. Get in the car.”

“I’m
freezing
to death,” she said, as she got in on the passenger side. She slammed the door.

“I can very well imagine you are. It’s below zero out there. Where on earth is your coat?”

No answer. Her teeth were chattering. Pushing the heater up as far as it would go, I turned the car around and started off.

“Don’t take me home,” she said.

“Where do you want to go?”

Saying nothing, she clasped her arms tightly around herself to stop the shivering.

“Where do you want to go, Lad?”

“I don’t know.”

I eased my foot off the accelerator and coasted to a stop at the next corner.

Ladbrooke looked over in alarm. “Why are you stopping?”

“Because I don’t know where you want me to take you.”

She studied my face a long moment. “Can I come home with you?”

Not knowing quite what to say to that, I shrugged. “I guess so.”

I set the car in motion again. Ladbrooke was clearly so cold that that was absorbing most of her concentration. I could hear her teeth chattering.

“How long have you been out there? That could have been dangerous, you know. It’s not a night for standing about improperly dressed.”

She said nothing.

“What’s going on? What happened?”

Still no response.

She didn’t seem drunk. By that point, I think I would have preferred to have found her drunk, because it would have explained more.

“Lad, you’ve got to tell me what’s been going on.”

“Don’t keep at me, okay?” she said.

Back home, I pulled my car into the drive beside my landlord’s Ford. I hoped he wasn’t going to hear us, because I knew he’d ask me what I’d been doing. He was a good-natured sort and wouldn’t mind, but he was nosy.

Ladbrooke followed me inside and up the stairs to my small attic apartment. I put on all the lights as I came in. Lad fell heavily into the first available chair.

“Are you still cold?” I asked.

She had the same colorless look she’d had in January. If she hadn’t been drinking tonight, she’d been drinking heavily sometime over the past few days.

When she didn’t respond to my question, I went into the bedroom and got the patchwork quilt off the end of my bed. Ladbrooke wrapped it tightly around herself.

“Have you eaten recently?”

She shrugged.

“Look, I’ll make some toast. And a hot drink. I think I’ve got Ovaltine in there. Is that all right?”

She nodded.

When I came back, the exhaustion was undisguised. She kept the quilt up around herself and accepted the drink from me without a word. I set the toast down on the end table and dropped into the other chair.

“So what the hell’s going on?” I asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it. I’m too tired.”

“I don’t want your life story, Ladbrooke. Just a quick explanation. I’m feeling pretty uncomfortable with all of this right now. I think I’d feel better if I knew what was going on.”

She took a piece of toast and ate it slowly.

I continued to regard her.

Finally, she shook her head. “I’m too tired, Torey. Really, I am.” There was a plaintive note in her voice, and I could see she wasn’t going to cope with being hassled.

Disgruntled, I got up and went into the bedroom to get some bedding for the couch. I changed back into the T-shirt I’d been sleeping in. As I returned to the living room, I pitched a spare T-shirt in Ladbrooke’s direction. “I’m afraid this is all this hotel provides.”