Just Another Kid (37 page)

“What’s wrong with her, that she does things like that?” he asked.

“I think that there’ve been a lot of things in Geraldine’s life that have been hard for her to accept,” I said.

“But why can’t she? Shemona’s accepted them. I’ve accepted them. Why can’t Geraldine?”

“All things aren’t the same for all people, Shamie. Geraldine misses Belfast. She misses her home and her family and the way things were before. We need to have a lot of compassion in something like this, because Geraldine has had so much to adjust to. That’s why your aunt and uncle and the people at the hospital have decided that maybe Geraldine needs a little more help getting things straightened out. That’s why she’s going to be seeing Dr. Morris.”

We were in the chalkboard arm of the room at the small student desk. Shamie sat, sprawled over his chair in a glum, almost recalcitrant pose, as if he were there to be reprimanded. “She’s ruining everything,” he said, his voice disgruntled.

“How so?”

“I just want it to be peaceful. But she’s ruining everything. She goes around yelling and screaming all the time. She says how nothing’s ever as good here as it was in Belfast. Nothing makes her happy.”

I didn’t respond immediately, not knowing how to. I lowered my head and studied my hands while considering what to answer. When I next looked over, I saw tears in Shamie’s eyes.

“She’s just like my brother Colin,” he said, his voice low.

“In what way?”

“Oh, she just is. The way she thinks.” He brought up a hand to wipe his eyes. “She wants things to be the way they aren’t. You know. Not real. She thinks everything’s going to be perfect, just if.
If
we were back in Belfast.
If
she was back at Greener Terrace. If. It doesn’t matter how you do it or what you do or who gets hurt, just so you can have what you want. That’s the way she thinks. And that it’ll all be perfect, when whatever it is happens. That’s all that counts.”

“And your brother thinks that way too?”

More tears came to his eyes. They clung to his long lashes. He nodded.

“Is Colin in the IRA?”

Again Shamie nodded. There was a pause. “Well, he’s in prison now. Him and Brendan both.” Shamie sniffed softly. “My daddy was always shouting at him. There was always shouting in our house. My daddy works with the dad of the fellow who got killed. He knew him. My daddy kept saying to Colin that he was just another man’s son.”

Shamie straightened up in the chair and leaned forward. “But it never made any difference to Colin. All he cares about is the republic. That’s all he talks about. If Ireland was united tomorrow, I don’t know what Colin would do. Everything he’s ever done has been based on hating the Brits.”

“And now you feel that Geraldine is the same as Colin?” I asked.

Shamie nodded. “She is. There’s still yelling. There’s still fighting. I might as well be home. At least my mam was there.”

“Do you want to go back?”

This brought the first sign of serious tears. He lowered his head and his mouth dragged down into a grimace, but he still did not weep openly. I rose and came to kneel next to him. I put my arm around his shoulders, and he willingly accepted comfort. I held him close for several moments, until the tears abated, then, rather than returning to my chair, I simply sat down on the floor beside him. This put me physically lower than Shamie, and he had a hard time avoiding my eyes.

“
Do
you want to go back?”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

He didn’t answer.

“Are you still worried about the Troubles? About something happening to your family?”

He shook his head. A small silence slipped in, and Shamie regarded his hands in his lap.

He glanced at me, then back to his hands. He shook his head a second time. “I always thought Colin talked rubbish. I always, always did. It just can’t be right, people killing each other like that. But then … then the Brits arrested Uncle Paddy. And well, then what happened, happened …”

A long pause followed. And then he said, “What if Colin’s right?”

I looked at him.

“If we all took up arms and defied them, and made them reunite us, maybe it would all stop. Maybe Colin’s right. What if he is? What do I do then?”

F
ive weeks left. In the classroom, final arrangements were getting underway. Mrs. Samuelson was formally hired, and she came over for three days during the first week of May to see the classroom and the things we were doing. And, of course, she met Dirkie, Leslie and Geraldine, all of whom would be staying on with her. She was a pleasant woman in her mid-forties, who fortunately was unencumbered by long hair or cats.

I pushed Shamie out of the nest. He had been attending his nonacademic classes three times a week for some time, but I finally got him to go to the junior high half days. This time, with lots of encouragement, we were successful. Our classroom, however, felt empty with both him and Shemona gone in the mornings.

Mariana was confirmed for third grade in a school not too far from her home. Although I did not personally know her classroom teacher, she had come on good recommendation from the resource teacher in that school, whom I knew and respected. So the placement seemed as good as we could hope for. Mariana went over for two half days to acquaint herself with the setup, and I spent an afternoon after school with her new teacher, passing all the pertinent information on to her.

Shemona was slated for first grade in the Catholic school that her cousins attended. Although there was no chance for her to visit the class while it was in session, Ladbrooke and I took her over in the afternoon after school was out, and we all met several of the sisters who would be involved with Shemona and her new teacher. Shemona was pleased that two of her three cousins who were in the school had had this same teacher, so we felt considerable confidence in the placement.

On the whole, I felt happy with everyone’s proposed future. Most years things didn’t work out so neatly. I was always stuck with one or two who didn’t seem to fit in anywhere, but with this group, it all looked promising, which made the upcoming end easier to face.

The square peg in the round hole, of course, was Ladbrooke.

I had devoted a fair amount of my spare time to thinking about Ladbrooke and what to do with her. Tim’s suggestion of introducing a new therapist had remained the most sensible alternative, but sensibility still did not govern a lot of what Ladbrooke did. I suspected that she would be more likely to accept the idea of therapy and a new therapist now than she would have been earlier in the year, but I knew it was still an issue needing very diplomatic handling. As it turned out, it was Carolyn who brought the matter to a head. She stopped by the room one afternoon after school with a whole armload of brochures, which she promptly dropped onto the table in front of Ladbrooke and me.

“I thought you could use these,” she said to Ladbrooke. They were course prospectuses from the nearby university.

“I’ve got to get six credits in this summer if I want to have my master’s done by January. I was thinking of taking an overview course on emotional disturbance.” Carolyn looked over at me. “Even if I never teach E.D. kids, I’m thinking that after that incident with Geraldine, it might be helpful to know more.”

I nodded.

“Anyway, I thought I’d drop these by. You might as well have them, Ladbrooke.”

Lad’s expression was questioning.

Carolyn smiled in a friendly fashion. “I mean, I assume you’re going to want to get some certification.” Then she turned to me. “She is staying on, isn’t she? We’re not losing you both, are we?”

“I haven’t quite decided,” Lad replied.

“You could get quite a bit of course work done over the summer, if you wanted. That’s how Joyce is doing it. And I’ll be there. We could have our own contingent,” Carolyn said cheerfully. “And we could have a car pool. It’s sixty-four miles round trip. But if we were all going, we could split the driving.”

Ladbrooke nodded.

“Anyway, I’ve got to run. See you two around.”

I looked over at Lad after Carolyn had left. “Does she know something I don’t?”

“Don’t feel bad. She seems to know something I don’t.” And Lad burst into giggles.

A small silence followed while Ladbrooke pulled over a prospectus and opened it. I remained sitting but didn’t go back to what I’d been doing. It occurred to me once again with poignancy how blinkered my relationship with Ladbrooke still was. Busily plotting her future with the same detached concern I had for the children’s well-being, I had never asked her about her intentions regarding the actual work we’d been sharing. How did we spend all this time together, I wondered, and never talk about things like that?

“You
are
good at this,” I said.

Ladbrooke didn’t look up from the brochure.

“It’d make sense, your going for certification now.” I snagged one of the course listings and pulled it over in front of me.

“I never said anything to give Carolyn this idea.”

“I suppose Carolyn was just assuming that you liked it, considering the time you’ve spent in here. And she could see for herself that you have an aptitude for it, because you do.”

“No,” she said, her voice quiet. “I wouldn’t want to do it without you. I stayed for you, Torey. If it had just been the work, I probably would have walked out the moment Dirkie told me I had big tits. I’d have walked out and never come back. I was terrible at all of this.”

“You weren’t.”

“I
was
. Don’t try to flatter me. Maybe I’m okay now, but I was terrible then. And I knew it.”

I didn’t reply.

“I just stayed to be near you and the children. The chemistry in this place was phenomenal. You could feel it coming in the door. I just wanted to be part of it.” A slight, self-conscious smile touched her lips. “And after a while, I just stayed to prove I could, to prove I was worth all this trouble, but I’ve never really belonged.”

“Of course you’ve belonged, Ladbrooke. What a thing to say.”

“No, you don’t understand what I’m saying. You
let
me belong. I’ve loved it; I’ve felt really good. But it isn’t mine. You and the kids made it alive. It would never live for me on its own.”

“So what are your plans?”

“I want to go back to my own work.”

I looked over.

She smiled in a faintly apologetic way. “Have I disappointed you?”

I shook my head. “No. To be perfectly honest, I haven’t even managed to think that far ahead. I haven’t got much future sense.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do exactly, but I’ve definitely decided I want to go back. This here, like you’re always saying, is real. This is the real world in here. God knows, my stuff’s all in the ivory tower, but it’s what I’m good at.” She smiled gently. “And it would be so wonderful to be back with something I feel competent at.”

A long silence followed. Ladbrooke gathered the brochures and prospectuses up into a pile and set them to one side. Then she returned to what she’d been doing before Carolyn had come in. I picked up my pen but did not resume work. Instead, I just sat, staring at my plan book.

“Lad?”

“Hmmm?”

“I’ve been thinking?”

“What about?”

“Do you remember James McCann? He was the psychiatrist who came down from that project on the reservation. He observed in the classroom for those few days in January.”

“Yes, I remember him.”

“He’s a super therapist. I’ve seen his work. I’ve seen videos of him in therapy. And he’s a personal friend of mine …”

She knew what I was leading up to. She lowered her head a moment and touched her eyes, as if she had a headache. Then looking over at me, she shook her head.

“I haven’t even said anything yet,” I protested.

“No.”

“He’s
good
. You’d like him. You got on well enough with him when he was here. He’s no different in private.”

She shook her head.

I frowned.

“Look, Torey, I’ve thought about it quite a lot and I’ve decided I’m not going to see anyone.”

“Laa-ad,” I moaned.

“I think I can manage. I mean, I know things were rough. I know I was a mess, but they’re a lot better now. And I think I can cope with them on my own.”

“He’s really
very
good. You’d like him. You’d like his style.”

“But it’s not going to be the same, is it? Some therapist. Sitting around talking in some dinky office for an hour a week. It’s not going to be like in here, is it?”

“It doesn’t need to be,” I replied. “It just needs to help. You’ve done so well. I don’t want us to have come all this way just to lose everything we’ve gained.”

She studied my face. “You are a funny person. You’ve got so much patience, but you’ve got no faith at all.”

“I’ve got faith.”

“No, you don’t. You’ve got no faith in me whatsoever. You don’t think I can do it. Just like you didn’t think I could make it through the Easter weekend. Just like in February, when I said I’d stop drinking. You had no faith in that either.”

“I’ve got no expectations. That’s different from no faith.”

She shrugged. “Whatever you want to call it.”

I fell silent.

“Now you’re upset.”

“I’m not upset,” I replied. “I’m just trying to figure out what next.”

“Listen, here’s how I’m planning it. I’m going to get hold of my old advisor back at Princeton. I want to get back into the spectroscopy work; that’s what I’m interested in. I suspect our old project’s kaput by this time. It nearly was when I left it, so I don’t expect to get back on that. But I thought I’d talk to John and see what’s around.” She paused. “It means having to ask him for references …”

She smiled then, dipping her head to catch my eye. “See how far I’ve come? I never thought I was ever going to be able to face those people again in my life. Now I think maybe I can. I know I can. Or at least I’m willing to try.”

I smiled back.

“So aren’t you proud of me?”

Still smiling, I nodded.

“And if something’s going on, if John can put me onto something, then I’ll go back to work.”

I nodded again.

“And if I can get back to work, I’ll be okay. I’ll have something to do and I’ll keep myself together. I wouldn’t be here to see a therapist anyway.”

I didn’t know what to say. Here we were, taking opposite sides of the same discussion we’d had in early April. Then, it had been Lad protesting and me reassuring. Now the roles were reversed. Had things changed that much in four weeks? Or was this simply a new example of Ladbrooke’s old tactic of making a good offense the best defense?

“What about Tom?” I asked. “What about Leslie and everything at home?”

Lad took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Well, I was just coming to that,” she said softly, her voice flat. “I’m thinking maybe I’ll go back East and work a while. If not Princeton, then probably M.I.T. I’m thinking I’ll get my work sorted out first, and then I’ll take a look at this thing with Tom.”

“By ‘this thing,’ do you mean your marriage?”

She nodded.

A pause came, and she looked over, searched my face for a moment or two and then looked down at her work. She raised her shoulders as if to shrug but then slowed the gesture down, keeping her shoulders up several seconds before finally dropping them.

“I don’t know, Torey. I guess the only way to say it is that I’ve pretty much concluded that Tom and I can’t stay together. At least not for the moment. I won’t stay sane if we do. I still love him. And I know he still loves me. But I’m not sure we’re meant to live together. I’m not sure we’re good for each other.”

As I listened, I had an absurd recollection of her conversation about Bobby, of her telling me how stunned she’d been to think she knew him so well and yet had missed all the internal activity that had led up to his suicide. I was having the very same kinds of startled feelings. All these plans for major change turning over in Ladbrooke’s head, and I hadn’t had a clue she was thinking them. Being with her so continually and having become so much at home with her still largely laconic nature, I’d grown over-familiar with her silences. It had become too easy to assume that there was never anything going on behind them.

“I don’t think Tom likes the new me,” Ladbrooke said, her voice resigned. “It’s been sort of a hard conclusion for me to come to, but I think that’s what it boils down to.”

“When are you planning to implement all this?” I asked.

She shrugged. “June, I suppose. I’ve been drafting letters, but I haven’t sent any.” She glanced over, a sheepish expression on her face. “I was hoping you might help me, that you might look at the letters and tell me if they’re okay. You’re a lot better writer than I am.”

I smiled.

She smiled back. “I’ve got to confess, it’s still hard to do. I’m afraid I couldn’t find the guts to phone John, not right out of the blue. But I am up to writing a letter, if I can make it sound, well, professional.”

Still a little overcome by this deluge of information, I didn’t know quite what to say.

“You told me back at Easter that nine weeks was going to be enough. Remember that? I didn’t believe you then, but you know, maybe it is going to be enough.”

“Good; I’m glad,” I said.