13 Is the New 18

by Beth J. Harpaz

  “Do the right thing,” I said. “OK?”

  He nodded and walked off.

  I drove home and changed into my grungiest tank top and cutoff shorts. My younger son was playing with a neighbor's child, Elon was working late at the office, and I was going to give the house a good, thorough cleaning. I started loading the washer in the basement with bedspreads, curtains, and towels; I put Bruce Springsteen loud on the CD player and got out the vacuum cleaner. I scrubbed the tub and dusted. It was hot in the apartment, and with all this hard work, I was getting sweaty and grimy. No matter; I'd soon be done, take a shower, and then get to enjoy my nice clean house all weekend.

  I almost didn't hear the phone over the noise of the vacuum cleaner and the music. It had to ring two or three times before I picked the sound out. I flipped the vacuum off with my foot, dropped the hose, and caught the call on what was probably the fourth ring, right before the answering machine kicked in.

  “Hello,” I panted.

  “Is this Taz's mother?”

  My heart sank. Something had happened. I knew it!

  “Yes,” I said in a small voice.

  Inside my head, a taunt was building: “Terrible Mother, Terrible Mother, TERRIBLE MOTHER!”

  “This is the guidance counselor. You need to come right away and pick Taz up. We had to kick him and a few other kids out of the prom because they tried to bring in alcohol.”

  I sighed and very nearly let out a sob. I asked for the address and said I would be there as soon as I could. I went over to the neighbor's house where Sport was playing and told him he had to come right away. “Your brother's in a lot of trouble and we have to go get him,” I said.

  I parked around the corner from the catering hall. I slammed the car door, grabbed Sport's hand, and half dragged him as I marched down the block. Sorrow had given way to fury. Right then I felt like killing Taz with my bare hands in front of the world. I was also conscious of the fact that my face was streaked with dirt, my hair was a mess, my unshaven legs were on display beneath my dirty cutoff jeans and sweaty tank top. I looked like a crazy person, and I felt like one, too.

  The party hall was one of those faux elegant places with the front steps covered in red carpeting beneath a white canopy. A few moms from the PTA were standing outside smoking or making calls on their cells. They were all dressed up, their hair coiffed to perfection, jewelry, nails, shoes matching their pocketbooks, and all of that.

  I came pounding up the red carpet, my flip- flops slapping each step, my younger son almost in tears himself from the stress of it all, but too scared by my mood to utter a word. On top of everything else, I now had to imagine the chatter about myself: “And you should have seen the mother— what a mess! No wonder the kid's out of control.”

  Just before I flung open the gold- embossed glass door to pull Taz out, I spotted his date. She was standing outside, I guess waiting to be picked up by her mother. Funny thing was, she didn't look at all upset. She still looked beautiful, dewy, like Cinderella must have been around ten o'clock the night of the ball, with hours to go before her coach would arrive. She even gave me a sweet little smile.

  I was having none of it. At that moment, I hated her just as much as I hated Taz. I wanted to smack her, but restrained myself.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself,” I screamed, getting right up in her face before flip- flopping away. She recoiled in horror, as if the evil stepmother herself had broken the spell, and the other mothers looked up from their cigarettes and cell phones for a moment, trying to figure out what was going on.

  But I didn't stay in their view long enough. I stepped over the threshold and saw Taz sitting in the lobby with another mother. A wonderful, sweet, and smart mother whom I admired tremendously. Her son was one of the nicest, smartest boys in the school. The boy's father had died when he was young, and his mother was not only doing a great job raising her kids, but she also had a job and volunteered a tremendous amount of time to the school. And here she was, giving comfort to My Evil Son, like a Saint Among the Lepers.

  Taz saw me the instant my head poked through the door, abruptly rose, and walked toward me. At the same time, I spotted the guidance counselor who'd called me to come get him. I nodded at her, making sure that she saw I was picking him up. I didn't want to have to speak to her or anyone else there. I stormed back down the red carpet, past Taz's date, past the moms on their cell phones, still holding Sport by the hand, with Taz following. We got around the corner and a third of the way down the block to near where I'd parked the car when I stopped and let him have it, at the top of my lungs, right there on the street.

  “I knew something bad was going to happen! I knew it! I begged you to do the right thing, I told you to behave yourself, and you had to go break the rules! What is wrong with you? How could you do this? Do you know how embarrassing this is, not just for me but for your whole family? From the time you were born I've given you nothing but love, and this is the thanks I get— you get kicked out of your prom! There is no excuse for you, Taz! Other kids have a tough life and they turn out just fine, but you, you've had everything you ever wanted and all you can do is screw up! I am so ashamed of you, and I hope you have the decency to be ashamed of yourself!”

  Taz looked like he was about to cry. He hung his head beneath his baseball cap and shuffled along in his perfect white Jordans. I realized a half- dozen people up and down the block had stopped in their tracks to stare at us, trying to figure out what was going on. Suddenly, I had visions of someone calling 911 to report child abuse. Two guys in their late twenties standing directly across the street from us had paused their conversation to stare and watch the show.

  “What's the matter with you?” I screamed at them. “Weren't you ever a teenager? Didn't you ever make your mother so mad that she started yelling at you in the street? Mind your own business!”

  They looked at each other, somewhat terrified, and resumed walking without saying a word back. I realized at that moment that I had crossed over from being a Terrible Mother to being a Lunatic Mother. It was not a pleasant thought. I unlocked the car door in a hurry and got in.

  I can't remember exactly what I said on the ride home, or that night, or that weekend. All I know is that I basically repeated, sometimes screaming, sometimes crying, sometimes whispering, the rant I'd started as we left the hall. I dreaded the call I was going to have to make to Elon, who, upon hearing what had happened, reacted the way he often did— by saying nothing. He had an even dimmer view of Taz's shenanigans than I did, so that whereas I was always shocked, horrified, and disappointed to learn about Taz's latest escapades, Elon usually reacted with something closer to grim resignation, as if he'd known it was going to end this way all along. It was as if the crisis du jour was nothing more than an affirmation of his previously held opinions that we were heading to a very, very bad place.

  I tried to get the whole story of what had happened from Taz, from the guidance counselor, and from some of the other kids who'd been there. But I never did piece it together entirely. The best I could figure was that after I dropped Taz and his date off, instead of calling a taxi to go to the prom, the group went to a park to hang out for a while.

  At some point, someone purchased a flask of Bacardi with the intent of bringing it to the prom. They arrived late, after most of the other kids had gone in, and realized that bouncers were searching everyone heading into the hall. They turned tail and walked back outside, not realizing they were being followed by one of the bouncers, who then told a school official that he had seen Taz tossing the flask of Bacardi into the bushes outside the hall.

  The bouncer had retrieved the bottle as evidence, and all the kids in the group had been grabbed before they could go inside.

  Taz, of course, claimed some level of innocence. He said he had neither bought nor carried in nor dumped the bottle in the bushes, although he admitted being part of the offending group. I insisted that it didn't matter, that the incident had borne out exactly what I
had tried to tell him that day— that he would be judged by the company he kept.

  “ Grown- ups don't care whether you did the crime or were just hanging out with people who did the crime,” I explained calmly in one of my more rational moments. “You're guilty, either way.”

  For his part, Taz spent the weekend padding quietly around the house, keeping as low a profile as possible. In response to my periodic outbursts, he assumed the stance of a Japanese penitent, head bowed, nodding, eyes down, mumbling, “I'm sorry. I'll change. I promise. I'll make new friends. I've learned from my mistakes. I understand what I did was wrong. You were right. I was stupid. I'm sorry. I'll change. I promise …”

  The mother of a friend of Sport's called the next day to arrange a playdate, and when she asked how I was, I simply burst into tears and mumbled something like “Be glad your kid is only eight!” I finally retreated to my bed with a basket of mending that had been piling up for months. I don't like sewing, and I'm not very good at it, despite growing up with a mother who could cut her own patterns and sew anything from a bathing suit to a coat. So when something rips or needs to be altered or hemmed, I just throw it in a pile on an old sewing box filled with pins and needles, a dozen spools of thread in various colors and textures, and things that I almost never use, like pinking shears.

  That afternoon, I sat with a dozen items that had accumulated over a course of months and I sewed every last one of them. I hemmed, I mended, I altered. It was about the most calming thing I could have done— a repetitive, meticulous task that kept me focused and productive. It occurred to me that maybe the reason people have to take so much antianxiety medication and go to spas and take yoga classes to calm down is that they've given up sewing. By the time the last pair of pants was done, I felt almost normal.

  At one point during my sewing- mental health session, the phone rang. It was Taz's date's mom. She was calling to ask me if I had any information about what had happened. I told her what I knew, which wasn't much more than what she knew, and I told her I felt really, really bad about having walked up to her daughter outside the party hall and screamed at her. To my surprise, she said she was glad I'd done it. She told me that a couple of the kids— her daughter included— had taken off, just disappeared before their parents and guardians had arrived to take them home.

  “They were planning to party, and they weren't going to let anything get in their way, so they stayed out all night, and came home this morning,” she said. She sounded angry. I could only imagine how frantic I would have been had Taz gone that route. Thank God he was there when I got there! What if he'd taken off? I would have called the cops and reported him missing; I would have thought he was dead.

  That night, Saturday night, Taz had planned to have a few of his old friends over— his good friends, not the kids he'd gone to the prom with— for pizza and to watch a video. I considered making him cancel the party but in the end decided to let the kids come over. They were kids I wanted him to continue to be friends with, and I worried that turning them away on the last weekend of the school year might make it harder for them to stay in touch over the summer. None of the bad kids from the prom had been on the guest list for this little gathering; these were the four or five kids he'd been friends with since sixth grade, the ones he used to vie with for top grades and awards.

  As they sat around our living room that evening playing a video game, Taz's father decided to undertake an investigation of his own, Law & Order style. Taz's father is a criminal appeals lawyer; all of his clients are already in jail by the time he gets their cases, so he often deals with people who have already been convicted, but who are trying desperately to prove their innocence.

  To his credit, Taz's father had not been nearly as hysterical as I had been about this whole incident, but that was mainly due to the fact that his expectations were so low to begin with. Now he strode into the living room, approached the sofa where the boys were draped, holding controllers and watching the aliens of Halo destroy each other, and cleared his throat.

  The boys looked up. One of them let out a chuckle and, realizing what was about to unfold, mumbled something like “This is going to be good.”

  “So, Taz,” Elon began.

  Taz looked up and grinned, seeing in his father a worthy adversary for the game that was about to unfold. “Yes?” he responded cheekily.

  “So you say that you are basically innocent regarding what happened last night.”

  “Yes.”

  “I see.” He folded his arms and took three steps, then put up a finger before asking his next question. It was just like on TV, and it was kind of fun and thrilling to watch.

  I took a seat in the mushy armchair, called the dog over to pat while I watched, and made myself comfy for the show.

  “Let me ask you something,” Elon said. “What type of alcohol was it that the bouncer found in the bushes?”

  “It wasn't me!” Taz insisted.

  “I didn't say it was you. I just asked you what type of alcohol it was.”

  “Bacardi. You know that. They told Mom.”

  “What kind of Bacardi?”

  “I don't know! I think— probably apple.”

  “About how much does that go for?”

  He shrugged and eyed his friends. “I think about seven dollars.”

  “And how would you know that?”

  “Dad, I didn't buy it!”

  “I didn't say you bought it. I asked you how you would know how much it costs if you didn't buy it and you had nothing to do with it.”

  One of his friends gave Taz a look and said, “You might as well tell them what really happened. What they're thinking is worse than the truth, yo.”

  Elon paused for a minute and looked at me. Was that line from Taz's friend a setup— “What they're thinking is worse than the truth”— intended to throw us off the trail here? Or were we really thinking that Taz was more involved than he actually was in this whole incident?

  Elon and Taz continued sparring for a few more rounds, but no more information was revealed than what we already had. I still to this day occasionally ask Taz what happened, but he refuses to tell the whole story— whether out of loyalty to the other kids or to cover his own butt, I'll never know.

  That Monday there was no school, but the eighth graders were actually supposed to come back in for one more day, Tuesday, to pick up their report cards and say one last good- bye to their friends, teachers, and to middle school before taking off for high school. I was at work that Monday and Taz was at home when the phone rang at my desk. Incredibly, when I looked at the caller ID, I realized it was the school. Not again! What could they possibly want to tell me now?

  It was the guidance counselor, calling to tell me that the principal had decided that Taz couldn't come in to pick up his report card the next day because of what happened at the prom. I asked to speak to the principal, but the guidance counselor said she wasn't available.

  I felt heartbroken for Taz. True, he had been a very bad boy. He had broken a rule that no thirteen- year- old should ever break. His grades had plummeted. He'd gone from being a star student to being a problem. Was it just his age, or was he really on a downward spiral? I knew he would be very upset that he was being banned from saying good- bye to the place he had spent the last three years.

  I decided to dig in my heels for once and try to bail him out. I told the guidance counselor that I didn't think it was fair to keep him away the last day and I took a deep breath to make a little speech that had suddenly popped into my head.

  “He's already been punished,” I said. “You kicked him out of the prom before he even got in. We paid for him to go, and he never got to enjoy any part of it. I'm not saying he's innocent, but, on the other hand, none of us actually knows for sure what he did. All you have is a bouncer saying he thinks it was Taz who did something as part of a larger group. There's no evidence. It didn't happen during the school day. It was a PTA event, and I really don't see legally how you have the
right to bar him from school for something you can't even be certain he did, when it wasn't even on school property.”

  The guidance counselor didn't say anything for a moment. She was one of the people at school that had known Taz for a while and who liked Taz. I don't think she truly thought of him as a bad boy.

  Finally, she told me to write a letter and fax it in. She said she'd show it to her higher- ups, and see what they said.

  I hastily typed up a note, summing up what I'd said to her on the phone, and adding a little drama. “Is there no redemption in this world?” I wrote. “It does not seem right to deprive him of the chance to say good-bye to his teachers after three years.”

  A few minutes later, the phone rang. It was the last call I'd ever get from that school, and it was a reprieve. Taz could come in the next day, get his report card, and say good-bye.

  And so he did. His report card wasn't totally abysmal— he'd somehow managed to squeak out a B average. And he had a question for me when I got home.

  “Can we go get that laptop now?”

  The answer, needless to say, was no.

  e sent Taz away for a few weeks when the horror year known as eighth grade was finally over and summer began. And while he was gone, I decided to undertake a major archaeological excavation. In other words, cleaning his room, one layer at a time. I started with the piles on the floor, the way I imagine geologists peel back soil and stone in search of fossils.

  The top layer was easy. Dirty clothes. Under that, evidence that whatever lived in this room was sustained by a diet of Gatorade and Twizzlers. Next, school train passes that expired a year ago, an ancient Us magazine announcing Brangelina's pregnancy, and a couple of empty cans of Axe. A few layers down, when I found homework from third grade, I knew I had almost reached the molten Inner Core.

  Ah, but what was this under the bed, with the fuzzy balls of dog hair, the stray sock, the moldy towel, and the Orbit gum wrappers? I appeared to have found the secret treasure. A lockbox, where the inhabitant of this world had no doubt hidden his most prized possessions. Like any good archaeologist, or should I say like any mother, I was extremely curious to know what was in there.