When She Came Home (3 page)

Arcadia School had grown within her experience from a small private primary school to a complex of buildings and grounds spread over two blocks of prime San Diego real estate. She had a cloudy recollection of walking this hall for the first time when she was younger than Glory, excited and scared and proudly self-conscious in her new school uniform. The waxed floors still rippled with reflected light from fluorescent bars in the ceiling and the mural in the foyer next to the office depicting generations of Arcadia schoolgirls tossing up handfuls of posies with Native Americans, Father Serra, and Cabrillo’s ship in the background was as hokey as it had been that first day. She had gone on to be one of the stars in Arcadia’s constellation. Class valedictorian, a National Merit Scholar, president of the senior choir. She had played serious basketball and captained Arcadia’s soccer team at two national championships.

At the office door she inhaled, wiped her palms on the thighs of her pants, set her hand against the doorplate, and pushed.

The office was exactly as she remembered it: a long, crowded, and disorderly room. Across from where she stood, a wall of windows was covered by slatted blinds drawn up to irregular heights. She had to look away to keep from ordering someone to even them up.

Below the level of the counter, she pressed two fingers against her wrist. Her pulse hammered. What was she afraid of? This was a school and she had spent ten months in Iraq, for godsake.

Frankie had read the standard issue pamphlets on stress the Marine Corps provided. She knew that readjusting after deployment took time and was always a challenge, greater for some than others. Her deployment had been fairly typical, even uneventful. The General had been through much worse in Vietnam and adjusted to being home without making a fuss and so would she. Her wide goalkeeper’s hands made fists hard and tight enough to punch a hole in the counter as she waited for someone to notice her.

A gray-haired woman looked at Frankie in her cammies and then over her shoulder at the door as if she expected an invasion to follow. “You’re Captain Tennyson. Of course you are. I’m Dory Maddox, the head secretary. I’m sure you don’t remember me. I started here when you were in the senior school.”

Arcadia was divided into the lower school for girls in kindergarten to third grade and upper school for grades four through eight. Senior school was high school.

“I have an appointment, ma’am.”

The parentheses at the corners of Dory’s mouth tightened, hinting displeasure, and Frankie realized she should have tried to make a little polite conversation. She had been deployed less than a year, but in that time she had forgotten the rules of polite behavior; and not only were her expectations frequently unreasonable, she was often abrupt and unintentionally rude.

Her therapist’s calm voice came into her head. “It’s hard to readjust but little by little, you’ll feel more comfortable in your skin.” After months with all her senses pumped, no one expected her to switch them off like a light at bedtime. No one except Frankie.

At the far end of the Arcadia office, a door opened and Frankie recognized Trelawny Scott, still wearing her black hair pulled into a tight chignon, still peering at the world from behind round Jackie O glasses. Years ago, Scott had taught biology to Frankie’s ninth-grade class. Today she looked smaller and thinner than Frankie remembered her, but still formidable. Her palm was dry and cool when they shook hands.

“Look at you! A captain in the Marine Corps. I’m sure the general is very proud of you.”

Scott’s well-meant ebullience embarrassed Frankie though she knew it was meant to put her at ease.

“There’s a marvelous photo of you in one of the trophy cases. Have you seen it, Frankie? Making that famous save? I don’t care how much that coach argued, the ball never made it over the line. It’s perfectly clear in the picture.”

“Speaking for myself, ma’am, I never had any doubt about it.”

“Frankie, you were never one for doubts! I imagine Glory will be just like you.”

“You know my daughter?”

“Oh, my yes. I should have explained. I’m headmistress of the lower school now. I took over from Miss Winslow six months ago.” She opened her office door wider. “Come in and sit down. You already know Glory’s teacher, Ms. Peters, of course.”

Frankie stopped in the doorway.
Trapped.

She had learned in the Marine Corps to avoid dead-end spaces. Like right now: no matter how much the headmistress was trying to cover it up, Frankie smelled an ambush up the road.

M
s. Peters was short and slight, a schoolgirl with a drill sergeant grip.

“And this is Dr. Wilson, the school’s psychologist.”

Wilson had a beige and forgettable face, silver hair buzzed close against his skull.

Frankie forced a smile. Her teeth felt huge, like the ceramic plates that fitted into her flak vest.

You can walk out any time you want to.

She
could load and fire an M16 A4 rifle and a .45 pistol with sharpshooter accuracy. In Basic she was near the top in leadership and fitness points. But sit in a school office, exchange pleasantries, and then hear the truth about her daughter, truth that had to be bad because why else would she be called to a last-minute meeting? She would rather lie facedown in swamp water.

“We got to know Rick while you were away, Frankie,” Scott said. “In case you were ever worried about Glory—”

In case?

Of course she had worried about her daughter. In the morning when she brushed her teeth, she hoped Rick was reminding Glory to do the same and teaching her to floss. Looking at the piles of French fries and khaki-colored string beans in the mess, she worried that Glory wasn’t getting enough fresh vegetables. But like all the other mothers she had met in the service, Frankie had learned to put thoughts of her daughter off to the side of her mind so she could get on with the job, but she was never far away. Like the memory of rain in the midst of a sandstorm, some days Glory was all that kept Frankie upright.

“—your husband was a pleasure to deal with. Such a wonderful father.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Her voice broke and she cleared her throat.

Major Olvedo and her therapist had both urged her to see a throat specialist about her persistent hoarseness. She stalled, afraid of hearing that in Iraq she had inhaled chemicals that had permanently damaged her vocal folds. Once she had been a singer and a public speaker; now there were times when it hurt to speak.

“But we do prefer to conference with both parents,” Wilson said.

“He would have. Come.” Actually she hadn’t thought to call Rick. The summons from the school had been a surprise, and she had not been thinking clearly. “He had a meeting.”

Dr. Wilson said, “These things happen, of course.”

What kind of things? Are we still talking about Rick?

The more she needed to stay focused, the more ragged and drifty her thoughts became. At the same time—and this was crazy-making—she was hyper-vigilant and aware of the details of her environment as if her life depended on it. Since sitting down she had mentally measured the size of the office, roughly sixteen feet square, and noted a closed closet door. At least she thought it was a closet. It bothered her that she did not know for sure. It might be an exit. Or an entrance someone could barge through without warning. The wall of windows opening onto the empty green playing field made her nervous.

Scott picked up a file and opened it.

“I’ll get right to the point, Frankie. We’re worried about Glory and we thought it would be better to talk about this now instead of waiting until… well, we don’t want it to get any worse.”

Worse.
Frankie nodded.
Worse
meant it—whatever “it” was—was already bad. Did Rick know? Had he told her? Had she forgotten?

The smell of wet grass came through the office windows. Automated arcs of water caught the light and danced before Frankie’s eyes like rain. There should be a rainbow somewhere but she couldn’t see it.

Behind her oversize glasses Scott’s brows came together, and Frankie realized she was expected to say something. She managed another nod and a hugely inappropriate, bulletproof smile.

Scott said, “I’ll let Ms. Peters explain.”

“Glory’s a darling little girl, Captain Tennyson. Really smart and she seems to love school. She reads very well and just shines academically.” It was obvious that Glory’s teacher wanted to appear nonthreatening, the kind of woman to whom a parent would trust her eight-year-old daughter.

She blinked too much.

“Really, I wish all my girls were as smart as Glory.”

“I don’t think you invited me here for the good news. What exactly is the problem? As you see it?”

Ms. Peters recoiled a little, and Frankie realized that she had asked the question in her command voice that sounded peremptory and rude in the context of a parent-teacher conference.
Cut the crap and get to the point.

“Well.” The teacher looked at Scott who nodded for her to continue. “She’s having problems on the playground. With the other girls.”

“What kind of problems?”

“She’s very aggressive, Captain.” The psychologist had a beige voice to match his looks. “We have a video.”

Adrenaline shot through her. “You’ve been taking pictures of my daughter? You’ve been surveilling her?”

“It’s nothing to be alarmed about, Frankie. We’ve been doing it for years,” Scott said. “Playground observations are a wonderful diagnostic tool.”

“Did I give you permission to diagnose my daughter? Did I sign something?” Her throat stung. “Did my husband?”

“The school is perfectly within its rights,” Dr. Wilson said. “There’s been no invasion of privacy. A wide angle camera is mounted—”

“The point is,” Ms. Peters interrupted, “there have been complaints, and then I saw the video and—”

“What kind of complaints? Complaints from whom?”

“Glory has a terrible temper.” The teacher’s chin lifted. “As I’m sure you know.”

No, Frankie did not know that.

“Your daughter has a strong personality.” Wilson spoke with a determined pleasantness. “And a need to demonstrate her power.”

“She’s eight years old. What kind of power are we talking about?”

“She has threatened one of the girls in her class.”

Frankie remembered that she had a bottle of water in her tote, popped the top, and drank. The tepid water soothed her throat and bought a little time to steady her nerves.

Glory was a Marine Corps child, the granddaughter of a celebrated hero. At bedtime she whispered fairy tales to stuffed bunnies and bears and a plush chartreuse snake, but during the day she got real and why shouldn’t she?

Frankie said, “She’s strong and assertive. I think these are positive traits, Dr. Wilson.”

“Under most circumstances, I would agree with you.”

“But?”

He leaned in, resting his hands on his knees. She became aware of how close he was to her, right on the edge
of her personal space. That awareness was something she had brought home from Iraq, along with a self-protecting need to control the space around her. She wanted to pull back, but knew Wilson might interpret that as a sign of weakness. Or maybe civilians ignored such things. She didn’t know what was normal anymore.

He said, “At eight it’s common for little boys to act out aggressively. Girls, on the other hand—”

“Just tell me what she did.”

“She threatened to shoot another student,” Ms. Peters blurted, her eyes darting from Scott to Wilson and back to Scott. “She said she was going to bring a gun to school and shoot her.”

“Who? What’s her name?”

“Colette.”

“I’ve never heard of her.”

“It’s all on the video,” Scott said. “Colette and some of the girls were on the picnic table and Glory said something and then Colette and—”

“There’s no audio track?”

“But it is clear that Colette did nothing to deserve—”

“How do you know that? If you don’t have audio, you can’t tell much of anything.”

“Colette told us.”

“And you believe her?”

“I’m sorry, Frankie.” Scott removed her glasses and folded them neatly on the desk in front of her. “When we questioned Glory she admitted making the threat.”

“And she absolutely wouldn’t apologize. She felt no remorse at all.”

“She was provoked.”

“If she just flared up and knew it was wrong and said she was sorry but—”

“Colette must have started it. I know my daughter.”

“Captain, children change. You’ve been away for almost a year.”

Frankie glared at the psychologist. “If she were a boy you know this wouldn’t be a big deal.”

“Boys or girls, a school must always take any talk of guns very seriously.” Scott lowered her voice. “I’m sorry to have to ask this, Frankie, but you’ll understand how concerned we are.”

“Ask what?”

“Are there weapons in your home?”

Of course there were weapons in her home. Frankie was a Marine. And she’d been raised in a house with handguns and rifles. “With due respect, ma’am, I don’t think that’s any of your business. As I recall the Second Amendment hasn’t been repealed.”

“We need to know—”

“If we let our daughter play with guns?” She took another gulp of water.

“I wonder if you’ve considered this.” Dr. Wilson held his hands before him, fingers spread, tapping the pads together. “There is a condition known as SPTSD. Are you familiar with it?”

“What does the ‘S’ stand for?”

“Psychologists have observed that in military families when a loved one returns from Iraq or Afghanistan, sometimes a member of the family takes on his, or her, symptoms of PTSD. Hence secondary PTSD.”

“You’re saying I’m contagious.”

“What Dr. Wilson means is that having you gone and now back has been challenging for Glory. In the same way you may be having some trouble adjusting, so is she.”

“Dr. Scott, this conversation is not about me. But for the record, I don’t have PTSD. And this blanket assumption that everyone who comes back from the fight is mentally damaged is, frankly, an insult to the armed forces of this country.”