Between Now and Forever

by Margaret Duarte

  Chapter Eleven

  MY MOTHER WAS WAITING for me when I got back from the farm, the woman who had adopted me, raised me, and couldn’t stop telling me what to do. She’d entered my house using the keys I’d given her before my retreat to Carmel Valley nine and a half months ago. I’d forgotten to ask for them back, and now I regretted it. She took the overnight bag from my hand and shooed me to the kitchen. “Hurry and wash up. I made you some stamppot met boerenkool en rookworst.”

  I sniffed with appreciation. Mashed potatoes and kale with smoked sausage, a recipe straight from the Netherlands. Mom’s ancestors were Dutch, just like Morgan’s. I had hoped this would work in his favor. Fat chance.

  On entering the kitchen, I stopped and caught my breath. Mom had exchanged my Autumn Sunset tablecloth for one in deep scarlet, accompanied by rainbow-striped place mats and yellow napkins. She’d even swapped my classic white dinnerware with shamrock Fiestaware. In honor of Saint Patrick’s Day, I assumed, still two months away.

  “I figured you could use a little cheering up after your trip to the fa-arm,” she said.

  Something about the way she drew out the word “farm” rubbed me the wrong way, but I let it pass. How could a woman otherwise so rigid and subdued favor dinnerware with such in-your-face cheerfulness? There was no reconciling the two.

  No sooner had I washed my hands than she ushered me to my usual spot at the breakfast nook facing the front window. “You must be starving.” I sank onto my seat and tolerated her ministrations, though I would have preferred being alone. A soak in the tub would have been nice, followed by a cup of hot apple cider. But that was not to be. Apparently, my mother hadn’t learned a thing during my nine-and-a-half-month absence. But I had. I’d learned there was no harm in accepting her love and attempts at control, as long as I didn’t allow them to imprison me. My comfort zone and safety zone no longer occupied the same space. The riskiest thing I could do now was continue to allow her to copyedit my world.

  Mom brought the stamppot to the table, and my mouth watered. The part of me I couldn’t control, the part conditioned and trained by years of nurturing, was under her spell. Comfort food was on the way.

  She scooped a generous helping of mashed potatoes and kale onto my plate, followed by a topping of smoked sausage. “Well, I hope you got that nonsense off your chest.”

  Shamrock was all wrong. Sunflower yellow would have contrasted better with the kale.

  “Your visit to the farm,” she clarified when I didn’t respond.

  Mom made a point of voicing her disapproval of Morgan as husband material whenever she got the chance, but this was the first time she’d brought up the farm. “I’m sure you’ve given some thought to what it would be like living with the dust, dirt, and smell. And that you’d be in the middle of nowhere with cows and flies as neighbors.”

  Of course, I’d given it some thought, but coming from her, the suggestion made me mad.

  “And you’d have to give up that teaching position at the school, which wouldn’t be such a bad thing, since it’s a poor substitute for the job you already had.”

  I shrugged. Different subject, same outcome. Mom never gave in. It was her way or no way. “Dinner’s getting cold,” I said.

  She picked up her fork, then set it back down. “Go back to Cliff, hon. Go back to your old job. You have the opportunity for a secure future and nice things.”

  I forced a piece of kale into my mouth, closed my eyes, and waved my fork in the air. “Yummm.”

  “Please listen, Marjorie. I’m telling you this for your own good.”

  I repeated my performance with a slice of sausage this time, then pointed at her plate, nodding, smiling.

  She took the hint and started to eat. But barely had she swallowed her first bite when she said, “You’re going backwards, Marjorie, to the premodern.”

  I knew what she was referring to, though she was way off base. The farm was hardly premodern. “There’s a dark side to modernity,” I said, because to defend the farm in any other way wouldn’t compute with her. She hadn’t been to the country in years, so I understood that she pictured it as many city people did, backwards and behind the times. “Plus, being with the man I love counts for something.”

  “It won’t be enough.”

  I’d read somewhere that some people were nouns and some people verbs, and I knew which one my mother wanted me to be. But the small part of me she loved and wanted to protect was emerging into something larger, and the more she pressed, the more excited I became by the unlimited possibilities that lay ahead. I was finally breaking free of my cocoon, and with a little practice, my butterfly wings would serve me well.

  “Cliff says you won’t last a month as a teacher, and I agree.”

  When my mother didn’t get her way, she resorted to put downs, her take on tough love. It had worked so many times in the past to prevent me from taking a risk and exploring new possibilities that she wasn’t about to give up on me now. She’d talked to Cliff since our meeting at the book store, which meant they were still chums. Heck, Dr. Matt and his nephew Shawn were rooting for me on one side and my mother and ex-fiancé heckling me from the other, in what threatened to become a life-altering battle of minds.

  Okay, if I failed at teaching, I would still have Morgan. He would continue to love and support and spoil me to no end. In fact, he preferred that I become a stay-at-home wife and mother like his sister-in-law. But Linda had chosen her path; I’d seen it in her eyes. Being immersed in family and farm life brought her satisfaction and, as a result, made her a success. I, on the other hand, felt teaching was the right path for me. And I wanted to prove—to myself at least—that I could make it a go.

  The phone rang. “Let the machine get it,” Mom said.

  I got up and grabbed the receiver. “Hello.”

  “Marjorie? Dr. Matt Lee, here. Your classroom will be available first thing tomorrow morning.”

  I heard dishes being stacked in the kitchen. Running water. Long sighs. “That’s great.”

  “Go ahead and get a feel of the place. I’ll meet up with you as soon as I’m free.” A beat missed. A small rush of air. “I have great confidence in you.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “WHAT DO YOU THINK?” Dr. Matt asked after meeting me in my classroom on Monday.

  He smiled at my expression, which I assume was similar to when I’d stepped through the archway of the Sleeping Beauty Castle into Fantasyland as a child or the colossal portico doors of the St Joseph Cathedral in San Jose years later. The entire east wall of the classroom—from the waist-high counter running the length of the room to the lofty ceiling—consisted of windows. They were old, single-paned, and hardly crystal-clear, but sunlight streamed through just the same. “Oh, my God. They don’t make classrooms like this anymore.”

  We stood in silence and watched the bare elms wave their branches as if trying to lure us outdoors. Black birds swooped like kamikazes, coming so close to the windows they appeared to be looking inside.

  “Very distracting,” Dr. Matt said. “I suppose we could put in retractable blinds.”

  “Are you kidding? My lessons will just have to play second fiddle for a while.”

  “What if you want to use the overhead,” he said, failing to hold back a smile.

  I recalled the disastrous overhead incident during my short-lived stint as a sub and shuddered. “We’ll find other things to do.”

  Something flickered across Dr. Matt’s face and disappeared. He pulled at his ear, didn’t meet my eyes. “Let’s move on to the nature area, shall we?”

  We entered a small foyer intersected by three doors in the southeastern corner of the classroom. Dr. Matt pointed to the door on our right— “Restroom” —then the door up ahead— “Home Ec room. Outdated but functional” —before opening the door to our left. We stepped onto a sidewalk that ran the length of the building, separating a landscaping of succulents and trees from the school’
s east parking lot. We took a right and, after no more than forty feet, entered a refuge of indeterminate size and shape that had the feel of an ecological island.

  What I noticed first was the breeze, chilly but invigorating, and then the dank, musty smell. The fenced-in grounds looked like an overgrown thicket of weeds with long grasses growing along dirt paths. Most of the trees were bare, waving their boney branches against hazy gray skies, encouraged by the currents in the air.

  “The maintenance crew is itching to fix the place up,” Dr. Matt said.

  “You won’t let them, will you?” I pictured future class sessions here, the students running free, observing bugs and insects, even building a Medicine Wheel. Like the one Ben Gentle Bear Mendoza had introduced me to in the Los Padres National Forest; to impart knowledge of the vital energy and power inherent in nature—and in myself. “I doubt Maintenance understands the healing value of a natural setting. Please tell them that landscape money would be better spent elsewhere.”

  “Embrace the messy,” he said with an encompassing wave of his hand. “I’ll take that into consideration.”

  “I hope so,” I huffed, “since you’re asking me to take on a project without guidelines and with few restrictions.”

  A brief silence before he said, “Within limits.”

  I followed Dr. Matt back to the classroom. “Okay, I promise not to abuse the kids or burn down the school.” He knew I was kidding. Then again, the part about missing guidelines and few restrictions was true. Twenty-nine years of my life had revolved around rules and regulations. This would be a new experience for me and likely the students as well.

  Dr. Matt opened the door to the foyer, and we stepped inside. “It’s not about control but management,” he said. “On your first day here, you weren’t in control, but you managed quite well. Trying to constrain a group of Indigos is like trying to constrain the weather. A far wiser use of energy is to allow for what comes and have fun with it, direct your energies toward enjoying the show.”

  The euphoric sense of escape and freedom I’d experienced in the green space outdoors gave the classroom the sudden feel of confinement. “What about lesson plans and ways to measure the students’ progress?” I only had seven days left to pull it all together.

  “‘Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind,’” Dr. Matt said. “Plato shared that advice 347 BC, and it still holds true today.”

  I blinked, focused on his face.

  He took a seat on one of the tables scattered helter-skelter throughout the room. The only available chairs were stacked in untidy piles against the cabinets on the west wall. “Let me make a suggestion.”

  Suggestions were welcome, especially from my boss.

  “Have you ever done slip-casting with ceramic molds?”

  I thought back to my friend Anne’s ceramic studio in Monterey and how she’d introduced me to the basics of working with clay. “Few materials respond to a sculptor’s hands and tools as clay,” she’d said. “It’s plastic when moist and yields to the slightest pressure. But once it’s fired, it can never become fluid again.”

  “Sort of, I mean, yes, under the direction of an artist.”

  “After getting acquainted with your students,” he said, eyes bright as a wizard’s, “why not introduce them to the art room and have them select a plaster mold?”

  I sank onto the table next to him, noticing for the first time that all the furniture in the room could use a good scrubbing. “Art room?”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you.” Dr. Matt motioned toward the door in the north wall. Another entrance into the classroom which, including the doors leading to the main corridor, kitchen, and nature area amounted to four. How would I keep track of them all? “There’s an art room connected to this one that you’re welcome to use. It’s full of supplies from before we dropped vocational education from the curriculum. Selecting a mold will take time, since your students will do a lot of searching, rejecting, and choosing, but no rush. The lesson will be worth it. Next, you can ask them to visualize the molds they’ve chosen as the form of their thoughts.”

  “Thought equals form,” I said, so he’d know I was following him.

  “Exactly. While pouring ceramic slip into the molds, you can explain that like slip, the mind is plastic and receptive, and, just as the slip takes the form of the mold, the mind solidifies into the form of one’s thoughts.”

  I visualized my mind taking the form of my thoughts, and the result wasn’t pretty. Though I looked forward to helping the students find purpose in their lives—and the will to accomplish that purpose—my mind threatened to solidify into the form of failure. Who was I to present myself as an advocate for resolution and self-reliance when I hadn’t yet succeeded in speaking and living my own convictions? If I could ‘think’ my way into discovering and following my life’s purpose, I would have done so already. As far as I knew, finding one’s truth, one’s inner power, could only be achieved by taking action toward one’s dreams. Which would also apply to my students.

  “Think always and only about what you want and believe it will happen,” Dr. Matt said. “Then, like a magnet, you’ll attract the conditions you want.”

  “You sound like a philosopher.”

  “Principal, philosopher, same difference.”

  The art project he suggested would take at least five days to complete: one day to select and pour slip into the molds, another to disassemble the molds and witness the solidified clay inside, then time to cut away and even out the seams, adding a new lesson with each step. During the process of firing and glazing, we could focus on what we wanted to achieve in our lives.

  Dr. Matt rose and headed for the door to the outside corridor.

  I slid from the edge of the table and followed him, trying to block my thoughts from their downward spiral. What if I failed? “All this, you, me… It’s all so experimental, so—”

  “‘That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.’”

  I waited to hear the source of this wisdom.

  “Al Valery, French poet and philosopher.”

  I laughed. “Positive thoughts—”

  “—become the mold into which the mind can pour itself,” he finished.

  Energy surged through me as though someone had thrown a switch. I was a string of blinking Christmas lights. “There won’t be enough time in the day to do all we need to do.”

  “Your job is to groom, monitor, and inspire. The rest is up to the kids.”

  Non-interference, benign neglect, there had to be more.

  “You’ve got the rest of the week to set up,” Dr. Matt said. “Let me know what you need in the way of supplies and equipment, and I’ll do my best to provide them.”

  “How about lining up some parent volunteers?” I asked. “They’d make excellent chaperones for field trips.”

  “Field trips?” He dropped his gaze and tugged at his ear.

  Maybe this wasn’t a good time to approach him about the excursion to the James Lick Observatory I envisioned. “About those parent volunteers…”

  His face cleared. “I’m sure some of the parents will take on any reasonable project.”

  “You mean they’re desperate.”

  Dr. Matt’s shoulders squared. “More like ready for change. Their children are traumatized by education as soldiers are traumatized by war.”

  I thought that an exaggeration but said nothing.

  He opened the door and stepped into the corridor packed with students circulating between classes like traffic on a freeway. “Enjoy.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  IT WAS PAST ELEVEN by the time I’d finished cleaning and arranging the classroom to my satisfaction. I’d read that Indigos were uncomfortable with the sharp corners and angles of traditional row seating, so I’d positioned three rectangular tables horseshoe fashion, with seven chairs lining the perimeter and my de
sk facing the top. As far as decorating with construction paper and posters, I declined either. The outdoor view would provide all the décor we needed for now. I’d let the students decide if they wanted to display anything on the walls as time went on. I’d bring in some live plants, though, some spider, Boston, and maidenhair ferns and possibly Christmas cactus and mother-in-law’s tongue—plants that thrived on benign neglect. While debating whether to use an aromatic diffuser with essential oils to eliminate the room’s musty odor or pry open some windows, I heard a rap on the door jamb.

  Charles Lacoste. I gave him a welcoming smile, willing to start fresh, let bygones, be bygones. “Come on in.”

  He didn’t smile in return, just strode in like a guest speaker heading for the podium. He halted in front of the wall of windows and clasped his hands behind his back. “You’ve got quite a set up here.”

  I couldn’t tell by the tone of his voice if he approved of my ‘set up’ or was being sarcastic, so I waited for him to clue me in.

  He turned to face me. “Excuse me for saying so, but I was surprised to hear you were hired after last week’s fiasco, let alone be offered this.” He crossed his arms and peered at me over the rims of heavy, out-of-date glasses. His bow tie—a muddy forest green—appeared crooked and sad. “I understand you’ve never taught before.”

  “That’s right, except for a year of student teaching.”

  “Yet you’ve convinced Dr. Matt that you can take on seven impatient, resistant, tuned-out brats.”

  “Actually, hiring me was his idea. He believes I’m suited for the job.”

  Lacoste pivoted toward the windows, turning his back on me—again.

  Not about to let the burning in my chest escalate into anger, I followed his lead and faced the windows, smiling at the antics of the birds outside. They rode the wind like surfers riding the waves. “You don’t have a very high opinion of my teaching ability.”