Mother, Mother

by Koren Zailckas

  He carefully approached two blond boys with shoulder-length hair—brothers from the looks of it. They were eyeing each other, through their long bangs, over a game of Battleship.

  “Hi.” Then, remembering to lead with an open-ended question, Will asked, “Do you like home school?”

  “We’re not homeschooled, we’re no-schooled,” one boy said, sinking a submarine.

  “You mean, you don’t have to do any lessons? Is that even allowed?”

  The other boy sighed, blowing a lock of hair out of his eyes. “The term is unschooling. It was established in the late seventies by John Holt. The curriculum is child-led. If we wake up and feel like doing art, we do art. If we want to watch a shark documentary, we do. If we want to bake peanut butter granola and call it home ec, Mom preheats the oven.”

  “What about grades?” Will asked.

  “There are no grades.”

  “Tests?”

  “Nope.”

  “Books?”

  “No set books. No curriculum.” He groaned, “Hit.”

  “Yes!” his brother gloated, sticking a red pin in his board. “We go at our own pace. We learn through our natural life experiences.”

  “But how is that preparing you for the real world?”

  “Let me guess,” the boy said. “Your mom is your teacher, your gym teacher, your school nurse, your lunch lady, and your principal.”

  Will nodded, his embarrassment widening to include Josephine.

  “Then, I could ask you the same thing. How well are you prepared? Isn’t real life self-directed?”

  So apparently all homeschooled kids spoke like pretentious, liberal arts college students. Maybe Will should have been relieved knowing he wasn’t an original freak, but the criticism burned, and it hurt even more that these boys—they looked like long-haired Jesuses—seemed smarter than Will himself.

  Will knew God said to rejoice when other people did well, but these boys’ intelligence seemed to take something away from him. These boys and their parents, even the play group as a whole, somehow made Will and his mother less special. He’d always thought their curriculum was challenging, groundbreaking, the homeschool equivalent of Harvard. The truth was: they were conventional, even below average.

  Will found himself slowly circling the room’s perimeter, dragging one shoulder along the wall as he went. He was suddenly starving despite his heavy breakfast, but the thought of eating in front of strangers made him anxious. He could be out of public school a million years, and yet he’d never forget the horrors of the cafeteria, never break the emotional association between embarrassment and public consumption.

  He took the coward’s way out: through his bladder. He ducked out the door in search of the bathroom.

  Compared to the awkwardness taking place in the rec room, the bathroom was a beautiful space for self-imposed exile. The locking stall was cool, white, and soundless like the Fortress of Solitude. Will sat on the toilet lid with his Ugg boots tucked under him and imagined he was Superman, writing his memoirs in a giant steel diary with a touchpad that instantly recorded his thoughts.

  Will didn’t like to talk about the trouble at his old school. He much preferred it when his mother blamed his dropping out on his epilepsy. She’d tell strangers that Will was photosensitive to the fluorescent lights. Or she’d explain that the school didn’t have enough carpets or soft places to protect a seizure victim. The truth was: the trouble had started in English class, long before Will’s first seizure. His teacher at the time, Mr. Razz (short, somehow, for Randall) was one of the “cool” teachers. Razz was fresh out of teaching college, in novelty ties and limited-edition sneakers, and his classroom became ground zero for Will’s degradation.

  It started with vocabulary quizzes. Mr. Razz had a system whereby the students would pass their quizzes to the person at the desk in front of them, and on up the row until they landed in the ironically titled “To Do or Not to Do” box on his desk.

  Will’s last name planted him firmly in the very last seat of the second row. There were five kids in front of him, including golden boy Jake Greenberg and jerky Daniel Harrison, and at least once a week, Jake or Daniel would draw a massive penis on Will’s quiz as it made its way to the front of the room. Sometimes the organ was flaccid, sometimes fully erect, sometimes there’d be more than one, but every single time, Mr. Razz would dock Will five points off his overall score for his “immature” and “inappropriate” works of art.

  The first time Will contested this—privately, after the bell—Mr. Razz told him, “I can only go by what’s in front of me, and your name is printed at the top of the page.”

  The second time, Will made the mistake of saying something during class, which only made his classmates convulse with laughter. Will implicated Jake Greenberg, but Greenberg had diverted the blame with a quip about how penis drawings harked back to Neolithic times: “Carved penises were used like arrows to point men to prostitutes. My dad and me saw it on the History Channel.” Mr. Razz had agreed, not even bothering to correct Jake’s grammar and adding a story of his own about how he’d seen a raised cobblestone penis outside the site of an ancient brothel in Pompeii.

  The third time, again after class, Will had accused Jake and Daniel outright, demanding that Mr. Razz dock points from them. “Will,” Mr. Razz had said, “I’m gonna level with you. Jake and Daniel might be jerks, but they’re easy to like. They smile. They laugh. You, on the other hand … You’re a tattletale. You provoke boys like them because you’re phony. I’d love to help you out with that, but I get the feeling you don’t really want help. You want to be annoying, and then have me tell you that any time someone gets annoyed with you, it’s their fault.”

  It was the worst thing anyone had ever said to Will, and when he went home and told his mother about it (confiding also, for the first time, about the dick situation), she immediately typed an e-mail to Mr. Razz, the principal, and various school board members. Josephine referenced Will by the last four digits of his student number, cited school policy that said no teacher should be alone in a classroom with a student without the presence of a third-party witness, and demanded Mr. Razz’s resignation if he continued to enable classroom bullies.

  The following Monday, Mr. Razz begrudgingly unveiled his new policy for test collection, whereby anyone who finished raised their hand so he could personally collect their paper. “That’s right, gang,” Razz had said. “I now have a we-pick-you-up policy. Look at me, I’m Enterprise car rental.” He laughed weakly, but everyone glared at Will.

  But there was no going back once Will had confided in his mother. As the weeks went on, she filed more misconduct reports, which led to Mr. Razz directing more thinly veiled classroom sermons at Will. Still, Josephine must have felt she was losing the fight. Will remembered her many dinnertime rants about how “underwhelmed” she was by the principal’s response, how the so-called disciplinary action against Mr. Razz was a joke. “They have no idea who they’re dealing with,” she’d say, while she slammed mashed potatoes onto Will’s and Violet’s plates. “I’m not some clueless mother. I’m an educator. I know how the system is supposed to work.”

  It was around that time that Will became acquainted with child psychologists’ offices. His mother had read a best-seller about Asperger’s syndrome (or possibly just a review of it) and thought Will showed some of the symptoms: his social anxiety, his fear of loud noises, his almost physical need to look away when someone looked him deep in the eye. The first shrink thought Will was too empathetic to be Aspie; she said she could see that Will carefully filtered his words with regard to other people’s feelings. The second shrink didn’t agree with Josephine either; he thought Will was anxiety disordered. When Josephine brought Will to the third shrink, she took along the unusual-word journal she encouraged him to keep in an effort to expand his vocabulary. That kind of obsessive interest was what sealed it. Will got his autism diagnosis that day and burst into tears. “Oh, Will,” his mom had sighed. “S
top acting like it’s the end of the world. Everybody’s equally odd, some people are just more aware of it than others. Besides, you heard what the doctor said.… Asperger’s is on the lowest end of the autistic spectrum.”

  Once a doctor had confirmed Josephine’s Internet diagnosis, she yanked Will out of therapy and her master plan became clear. Diagnosis in hand, Will was not just any misfit, he was a (quickly the) disabled kid the school system had picked on. Josephine wrote an op-ed for the Blue Stone Press titled “The Biggest Bullies: Meet the Teachers and Administrators Who Pick on Autistic Students.”

  After Josephine threatened the school board with a discrimination lawsuit, they put Mr. Razz on administrative leave and Will’s peer problems worsened. The student body wore black armbands and printed T-shirts that said, Don’t Razz the Razz. People sneaked open ketchup packets onto Will’s chair when he got up to use the bathroom. They rubbed the metal edges of wooden rulers against their shoe soles and pressed them against Will’s neck once they were hot enough to burn his skin.

  Still, Will’s social rock bottom happened when sweet Chloe Cho, who Will later learned had been counting on Mr. Razz to write her a recommendation for boarding school, filled her palm with hand sanitizer and rubbed it in Will’s eyes. He went home that same day and begged his mother to homeschool him instead. Tears in his stinging eyes, he’d pleaded, “Why should I be there, when you’re a teacher? You’re a way better teacher than any of them!”

  Will had never once regretted making the switch to home school.

  But crouched in the stall of the Rosendale rec center, staring at the streamers of toilet paper on the floor and wishing he could vaporize—not kill himself, exactly, just suddenly cease to exist—it was hard for Will to imagine he had even one redeeming quality. He could barely talk to kids three grades younger than him without getting so anxious that his words rushed out all at once, tossed and choppy. He couldn’t imagine how, in four years’ time, he’d muster up the confidence to walk into one of the local farm stands and apply for a job the way Violet had. And forget about finding the swagger to one day interview for college or kiss a girl.

  Just as he was feeling a genuine urge to pee, the bathroom door opened and stopped Will midstream. The stall door juddered as someone tried the handle.

  “Just a second,” Will gasped as he shoved his wee william back in his husky-sized briefs.

  “Open the door, Will.”

  Without thinking, he did.

  “I thought you’d abandoned me,” Josephine said, as she zipped up Will’s fly and took extra care buttoning his pants. “Oh honey, I know this is hard for you. I saw the way the other kids left you out.”

  Will swallowed a lump of self-hatred.

  “But this group has been good for me,” Josephine continued. “I’ve been much too isolated lately. I’m so lonely.”

  “You’ve got me.”

  “I know, but there are days when I wonder whether leaving the art department was the right thing to do. I’ve given my life for you. I’ve sacrificed it all.”

  “It means a lot to me.”

  “I know. You love me, right? Tell me you think I’m a good mom and a good teacher. Tell me you don’t hate me as much as Rose and Violet do. It’s you and me against everyone, Will, and there can’t be any secrets between us.”

  VIOLET HURST

  ON THE FOURTH day, a nurse announced, “A pipe has burst in the Spacken Center, so those of you who have twelve-step meetings to attend tonight will be bused to an off-campus facility.”

  Edie gave Violet a gentle poke in the ribs. “Looks like you’re going on a field trip.”

  The meeting was already in progress when the Fallkill crew tumbled into the last row of folding chairs, coffee cups sloshing, hospital ID bracelets discreetly tucked into their sweatshirt sleeves. Violet had borrowed some leggings and a dress shirt from Edie, although both were a good half a foot too long and the former did a saggy elephant-wrinkle around her ankles and knees. She’d borrowed a peacoat and black beanie too; even through the double-glazed hospital windows, she could tell the weather had turned from cold to freezing.

  “Mmm-mmm,” Corinna whispered. “Some of the guys here have poh-tential. Three o’clock, in the leather jacket. I only wish I didn’t have this crap in my hair.”

  It was the first time Corinna mentioned the greasy, clumped quality to her head. Violet had noticed it, though. It had a familiar scent that she couldn’t quite place.

  “What is it?” It was the first time Violet felt comfortable asking.

  “Vaseline. The nurses put it in. It’s a trichster thing. So I can’t start pulling when I feel stressed.”

  “Trich-ster?”

  “Trichotillomania. God, I hate that word. Try saying it five times fast after four tequilas.”

  At the front of the room, a leprechaun-tiny woman was reading through the twelve steps and vouching for how well they work if “you work them.”

  It was hard to see herself sticking with meetings after her hospital stay was over, but even so, Violet didn’t mind the twelve-step scene. You didn’t know tedium till you sat through a high school chemistry lecture, and Violet would much rather giggle along through an addict’s Freudian slips (“We sought help through prayer and medication”) than slump in the back of some classroom, jotting notes about ionic compounds.

  There was also something weirdly refreshing about meetings. Violet had never witnessed such depths of empathy or confession. The people at meetings spoke a whole different language than the one Violet had grown up with.

  Violet barely heard the next speaker get introduced. In her right ear, Corinna was still prattling away about the guy in the leather jacket. “I’d let him thirteenth-step me. Do you think he’s an NCF?”

  Violet pressed one index finger to her lips. “I don’t know what that stands for,” she whispered. “National Cancer Foundation?”

  “A newcomer fucker.”

  Burnt coffee slid down the wrong pipe, and Violet fought off laughter with a small coughing fit. A few old-timers cast annoyed looks over their shoulders.

  As she composed herself, Violet became aware of the voice at the front of the room. It disoriented her. After a four-day hiatus, the voice snapped her back into survival mode. “I’m glad to be here today. I’m always glad to be here.”

  Time seemed to slow and Violet’s vision tunneled. In the rows ahead of her, heads parted, and there he was: Douglas, standing behind the scarred wooden lectern. He was a nervous public speaker—eyes downcast, hand jingling the loose change in his pocket. The words were coming out of him fast and monotone, and the whole room seemed to draw closer in silent support.

  “I didn’t get here by accident. I’m a real alcoholic. I’m a drunk—the kind the Book talks about. Allergy of the body, obsession of the mind.”

  Violet was stunned. So stunned that she wondered for at least the second time that week if she was losing her mind or having an acid flashback. It was impossible to reconcile her father’s voice with the recovery quotes she was coming to know too well.

  Part of her wanted to leave the room out of loyalty to him; he was about to violate at least two of the Hurst family commandments: thou shalt feign perfection and thou shalt not air the family laundry. But she was curious. She had never once, in sixteen years, heard her father open up about his feelings or his childhood. The few times she’d been brave enough to ask, he’d made a joke of it, smiling glibly and saying only, “Ah, you want to know about the man with no past.”

  “I think I was an alcoholic from birth. I was five or six when I sneaked my first sips of wine. But there was something wrong with me even before then. I didn’t like myself. Not one single thing. I hated wearing glasses. Hated that I was fat. Hated that I couldn’t play second base like Joe Morgan. I would’ve traded places with any other kid on the planet. Any kid in the world had to have it better than me. The only thing that made me feel better was building old crystal radios with razor blade tuners.”


  Violet remembered the dinner before she’d come to Fallkill. Her father had clearly been drinking that night, hadn’t he? Distress, plus head-mashing chemicals, still blearied her memory, but she was almost positive: her father had been drunk. He’d stuck to his seven p.m. vodka time. She cupped her hand around Corinna’s ear. “How long do you have to be sober before they let you give these speeches?”

  Corinna shrugged.

  “Do they let you talk if you’ve relapsed?”

  Another shrug. Corinna stuck her bottom lip out and shook her head. “Dunno.”

  As Douglas talked, his eyes slid away to the floor or the clock in the back of the room, anything to keep from holding the audience’s gaze. Violet was thankful for Edie’s hat. She ducked a little anytime her father’s gaze veered her way.

  “I grew up in dreary Erie, Pennsylvania. The Mistake on the Lake. My old man was an angry drunk. Of course, nobody talked about alcoholism then. Back then, you weren’t an alcoholic, you were a tough guy. My dad didn’t even qualify as that. He was only hitting me with a belt. Back in the day, my best friend’s father liked to hit him with a two-by-four. By comparison, I had it pretty good.”

  Violet had a flash of her late grandpa Earl, catching houseflies in his hands and releasing them outside. She’d always thought he was, literally, too gentle to hurt a fly. The fact that he was all fists and whiskey was sad—devastating, really—but Douglas laughed ruefully, so other people did too. Some of the men nodded their understanding.

  The tension seemed to ease out of Douglas’s neck. He took a deep, jagged breath.

  “Only two things ever worked for me, and helped me forget: alcohol and a woman. Given what I’ve told you, you probably won’t be surprised to hear that I wasn’t a social drinker. I know many of you had a lot of party years and good times. But me, I was never interested in feeling good. I was a thermos drinker. A few-slugs-in-the-bathroom-stall drinker. I wanted to be one of those tough guys like my father. I wanted know what it felt like to be the big man on campus, the guy who got the traffic-stopper … And then I met my wife.”