His mouth dropped.
“These kids don’t need teachers with psychic abilities to help them re-imagine themselves,” I said. “They need teachers with love and compassion. And, believe me, Granny Max has both in spades. As far as Charles Lacoste is concerned…” I inhaled and took the plunge. “In his tough-love way and relentless attack on me, he revealed his concern for these kids. As for understanding their unique abilities, I believe he received a demonstration he’ll never forget.”
While Dr. Matt absorbed my suggestion—which going by the attack on his ear lobe, promised to take a while—I approached a subject I’d wanted to address for some time. “I have a question about Shawn…”
Dr. Matt blinked and dropped his hand. Apparently, this wasn’t what he’d wanted—or expected—from me. Which suited me just fine. I planned on undertaking a lot in the future that challenged the expectations of others. Like marrying Morgan.
I had found my true north, using love as my honing device.
“What’s with his parents?” I asked. “They haven’t made a single appearance at school or shown the slightest interest in their son.”
“They’re afraid of him,” Dr. Matt said, his voice a bell tolling.
We were still standing in the hallway. Backpacked and jean-clad students jostled in front of the attendance desk all talking at once, waving notes from their parents and late slips from myriad sources for myriad reasons. The school secretary looked harried as if this were something new instead of a common occurrence. An announcement came over the intercom about permission slips for the end-of-year dance.
“Come to my office and I’ll explain,” Dr. Matt said.
He signaled for me to take the chair in front of his desk and then, right on cue, walked to the window and looked out. This brought up another question: What was so darn interesting about the front parking lot? But that would have to wait; Shawn first.
Dr. Matt turned and looked at me, yet through me, making me feel like a window with a view to the past. “Even as a baby, Shawn would stop what he was doing and stare with the eyes of a wise old soul. You’d sense him probing your mind, which was not only eerie, but downright uncomfortable.”
“I get what you mean,” I said, then wished I hadn’t. He focused on me with liquid eyes that seemed to ask, Do you? Do you really? To which my answer would be, No, probably not. But I come close, closer than most.
Dr. Matt perched on the edge of his desk rather than taking the chair next to mine as he had on my first visit to his office. This implied calm, though his downcast eyes and tight-lipped frown suggested otherwise. “When Shawn started to talk, he’d repeat people’s most private thoughts. And as time went on, he stumbled onto family secrets without lifting a finger or opening a door. Nothing was private. Imagine how this affected his parents.”
I’d experienced what Dr. Matt was referring to, not only with Shawn but also my birth mother, sister Maya, and future son, Joshua. All four had the ability to communicate between minds. Fortunately, I’d learned to accept this as a blessing rather than a curse. I was no longer afraid.
“I can’t blame Shawn’s parents for distancing themselves,” Dr. Matt continued, “but they went too far. They unintentionally punished him for exposing things they wanted no one, including themselves, to see. Shawn didn’t understand what he’d done wrong or why his parents treated him as though he had a contagious disease, hardly able to touch him, let alone show him their love. Over time, Shawn believed he didn’t exist.”
Imagining the pain Shawn must have suffered closed my throat. Swallowing became an effort instead of an unconscious act. Knowing what I did now, his progress in our class seemed extraordinary.
Dr. Matt rubbed his hands together, fingers outstretched and laced. “Later, after Shawn had aired so many closets that it brought healing instead of pain, it was too late to go back. The die had been cast, the wounds set. His parents had shamed him so many times, he’d learned to live without and in spite of them. One reason he turned to me.”
As Dr. Matt paused to clear his throat, his words hung in the air, canceling out the voices on the other side of the door, the blare of the intercom, the ringing of phones.
He turned to me.
“I helped him the best I could, and, in all honesty, it was easier for me than for his parents. Like a grandparent, I was able to indulge Shawn to my heart’s content, then send him home when things got tough. But it wasn’t enough. Shawn struggled.”
“Thus, the plan for an after-school class for Indigos.”
My comment propelled Dr. Matt to his feet, his arms opening as if about to wrap me in a hug. “And then you came along. Just in time.”
“The perfect solution until Charles Lacoste filled your head with nonsense about my instability. And rather than learn a lesson from what Shawn’s parents did to him, you did the same to me. Penalize me for exposing things you wanted no one, including yourself, to see.”
“I thought I’d put Shawn into—”
“The clutches of an incompetent teacher,” I finished for him.
“No, Marjorie.” Dr. Matt sat back on his desk and rubbed his eyes. “Shawn was already accustomed to incompetence. What I feared was putting Shawn into the hands of a beautiful, well intentioned, and misguided young woman, just the person to win his heart and destroy his soul. Something I’d never have forgiven myself for.”
“So, any good news about the class’s progress only confirmed what you feared.”
“I’m afraid so.”
I stared at his suit, wondering why he wore such ridiculously expensive clothes to school, then chastised myself. What business was it of mine, anyway?
He ran his hands down the sharp creases of his slacks. “Like my suit?”
I nodded, bit my lip.
He drummed his fingers on his knees; then, finally, a smile. “A hand-me-down from my brother. As are most of the clothes I wear. Shawn insists I have them, says it’s the least his dad can do in exchange for taking over his duty as a father. I’m not sure how I’ll survive when Rick retires and stops replacing his dozen suits every year. I’m spoiled. Armani is out of my league.”
“Which probably explains the Mont Blanc, too,” I said.
“A gift from Shawn.”
I reminded myself that this is what happens when people judge without knowing all the facts. I’d done him a disservice. “One more thing…” Might as well go for the gold. “Why are you always looking out the window?”
He turned a fierce shade of red, then laughed. “Sure. Why not? Come take a look.”
I joined him at the window and saw the usual: a parking lot jammed with vehicles picking up students after school.
“It’s a wolf spider,” he said.
I nearly disjointed my neck in my rush to face him. “A what?”
“A member of the Lycosidae family, wolf spiders live a solitary life and hunt alone.”
I glanced at the disturbing paperweight on his desk. “You’re talking about a spider?”
“What did you think I was talking about?”
“A sports car.” I shifted my search to the windowsill for a cobweb instead of the parking lot for a convertible with the word “spider” tacked to its name.
He chuckled. “If it’s a web you’re looking for, you’re out of luck. Wolf spiders are wanderers and burrow into the ground or under rocks. They’re great at camouflage, so they’re hard to detect.”
“Don’t see a spider,” I said.
“There’s one down there all right. I’ve been tracking it for some time.”
At least he hadn’t brought it inside like the one preserved in his paperweight.
“Do they remind you of something?” he asked.
I checked the flowerbed below the windowsill for a rock or burrow hole. “Not really.”
“Think, Marjorie. Solitary. Great at camouflage.”
“Give me a hint,” I said, though I was beginning to get the pictur
e.
“Shawn.”
“That’s an answer, not a hint.” Actually, he had described all the Indigos as they’d been when I first met them: solitary, hiding behind protective walls, blocking the information stream.
“Yes,” he said, “that’s the answer.”
Actually, that was the answer. My students didn’t resemble wolf spiders anymore. They’d taken the personal responsibility to accept freedom. And I hoped they’d step up as leaders as well, to upset the consensus and change the world. As far as spinning webs was concerned, they’d done a topnotch job of weaving the finest of silken lines around my heart.
Chapter Fifty-three
I’LL NEVER FORGET OUR last day together. The students sat at their tables still arranged in horseshoe fashion—Shawn and Ethan to the east, the place for self-renewal; Angelina, Tessa, and Codi to the west, the look-within place; Luke and Jason to the south, where you find your true self.
And I stood at the top of the U, in the position of the north, where you put an end to the conditioning that prevents you from relating to the world.
Although the wall of windows faced east, the room absorbed enough afternoon heat to give it a stuffy feel. The air conditioner, probably installed back in the eighties, made a lot of rattling sounds, but did little to cool the air. As I observed the group of seven, now as familiar as family, I didn’t know what to say, where to begin. An unnerving expectancy filled the room as though our fragile sense of strength and accomplishment would retreat into confusion if we dared talk or breathe.
“Let’s crack open some windows,” Codi said, and I teared up with gratitude. Without makeup, she looked like she’d just stepped out of a cool primordial rain forest, dark brown eyes, Doris Day freckles.
“Sure, why not?” I said. “This place could use some airing.”
We all watched Codi struggle with the ancient windows, using the rod with a bronze hook designed for that purpose. You’d think we were watching a juggler with five plates in the air, the way we concentrated on her efforts—a respite from the conversation to come, the questions in the air. What now? What’s to become of us?
“Hey, Ethan,” Angelina said, digging in her backpack. “Tell Ms. Veil about the mouse totem you brought me.”
Ethan rounded his shoulders as though trying to compress into his former hard shell.
When Angelina held up the mouse totem, my first urge was to snatch it out of her hands, but I forced myself to remain still and wait this out.
“When I was sick, Ethan came to visit me,” she said. “He borrowed your mouse totem to help him get over a few problems he was having, but figured I needed it more.” She paused at the look on my face, then turned to Ethan. “You did get Ms. Veil’s permission, didn’t you?”
He shook his head.
“Oops.”
“I figured the little mouse would find its way home,” I said, though, in truth, I’d had my doubts. “It always does.”
“This class is about forgiveness, right?” Jason said. “So—”
“All’s well that ends well,” Luke finished for him.
Jason slapped his palm against his forehead.
“The mouse totem helped me, “Angelina said before placing it on the table and sliding it in my direction. “Which counts for something.”
I picked up the totem and put it in the pouch containing my marker stones. “Did my totem help you too, Ethan?”
He looked me straight in the eye for what seemed the first time. “Yes.”
“Are you going to tell us your story now, Ms. Veil?” Tessa asked. “You promised.”
My vote was to forget the past, not rehash it, but Tessa was right, I’d promised to share. Maybe experiencing the events of the previous year through the eyes and ears of my students would force me to look beyond the narrative, to the story behind the story. A story I could embrace.
“Forgive your past,” I said, surprising myself. “We can’t go back and start over, but we can start today and create a new ending.”
“You mean give up our old stories?” Jason asked.
“Our smaller stories, so we can wake up to larger ones.”
“She means release the dead hand of the past,” Codi said.
We all turned to look at her, and right on cue, she rolled her eyes. “Dad’s an attorney, okay?” At our silent stare, she shrugged. “I’ve heard him use that phrase like a zillion times to describe a negative capability.”
A negative capability. Maybe by telling them my story, I could do just that. Release the dead hand of the past, and break its hold on my future. I pulled the chair from the front of my desk and sat; decision made. “Let me tell you about change…”
The trees beyond the window, heavy with leaves, seemed to heave a massive sigh. Class was almost over for the day, then four more days until summer break and the end of my tenure here. “Let me tell you about being different. Let me tell you about my walk through the between.”
“Cool,” Ethan said, prepared to like my story. But it wasn’t that kind of story. Its sole purpose wasn’t to entertain.
I continued, my voice matching the soft rhythm of music playing in the background, “Memory,” from Cats this time. “In his book, Megatrends, John Naisbitt says, ‘We are living in the time of parenthesis, the time between eras…clinging to the known past, in fear of the unknown future.’ He called this transition period, ‘a great and yeasty time, a time filled with opportunity.’ Unfortunately, during the story I’m about to tell you, I wasn’t aware of Naisbitt’s hopeful portrayal of what appeared to me as a big black hole. And I probably wouldn’t have cared if I had. You see, I thought I was losing my mind.”
No one said a word. Were they hoping that somewhere in my story, they’d find a clue to their own stories, or did they, in their wisdom, realize that the telling would be curative for me; their gift, rather than the other way around?
“You’re now gazing into the between, except you have an advantage. You’re not alone, and you know you’re not losing your mind. So, listen carefully. Take notes if you like. Because after my story, I hope you’ll discover a way through the dark wood and step forward with confidence into your own life stories.”
The kids sat, silent, their eyes fixed on mine as I began. “Sometimes, quite suddenly, we are caught unaware, and a door opens, offering a new insight, a new path, and we hesitate at the threshold, reluctant to go through, because we know if we do, life will never be the same…”
Acknowledgments
MY DEEPEST THANKS TO: my husband, John, who has been patient with me over all the years I've been writing and promising, “I'm almost done, just one more revision, this is it”; my first reader, Kathy Simoes, whose praise and encouragement gave me the confidence and courage to continue writing to the end; my readers, Jo Chandler, Natalia Orfanos, Christine van Steyn, Brock Kaiser, and Theresa Adrian; my long time writing buddies Dorothy Skarles and Lee Lopez, and members of Amherst Writers and Artists’ Group directed by Gini Grossenbacher; my line and content editors: Judith Reveal, Melanie Rigney, and Moira Warmerdam, for their helpful input and encouragement; Coby Vink for giving me a tour of San Jose and the surrounding area for the setting of my story; all my students at Joseph Kerr Middle School for showing me that teaching can be fun and inspiring and can bring a great deal of meaning into one’s life; my cover artist, Clarissa Yeo of Yocla Designs and Jonnee Bardo of Gluskin’s Photo Lab and Studio for my author photo; Eleni Paponou for guiding me through the final steps to publication; my sons, Todd and Jon, and daughter-in-law, Martina, for not complaining about the countless hours I've spent at my computer writing, writing, writing; and my granddaughters, Angelina and Tessa, for demonstrating how smart and visionary today's youth can be.
Many books were helpful in researching this novel, particularly The Indigo Children, by Lee Carroll and Jan Tober; Beyond the Indigo Children, by P.M.H. Atwater; The Children of Now, by Meg Blackburn Losey; The A.W.E. Project, Reinventing Edu
cation, by Matthew Fox, The Last Dropout, Stop the Epidemic!, by Bill Milliken; Earth Medicine and The Medicine Way, by Kenneth Meadows.
About the Author
Margaret Duarte, the daughter of Dutch immigrants and a former middle school teacher, lives on a family-owned-and-operated California dairy farm. She earned her creative writing certificate through UC Davis Extension and has since published four novels in her “Enter the Between” visionary fiction series: Between Will and Surrender, Between Darkness and Dawn, Between Yesterday and Tomorrow, and Between Now and Forever. Her poem and story credits include SPC Tule Review; The California Writers Club Literary Review; short story finalist in the 2017 SLO Nightwriters Golden Quill Writing Contest; finalist for fiction in the International Book Awards; first place for fiction in the 2016, second place for fiction in the 2018, and honorable mention for fiction in the 2019 Northern California Publishers and Authors Book Awards Competition. A twenty-year fascination with the remarkable parallels between science and spirituality led to her four-book “Enter the Between” visionary fiction series. For links to Margaret and her work, visit her website at: www.margaretduarte.com.
Book one: “Enter the Between” series
Silicon Valley resident Marjorie Veil has been conditioned to ignore her own truth, to give away her power, to subjugate in relationships with others, and to settle for the path of least resistance. But she has many surprises in store, for there are synchronistic forces at work in her life that, if she listens, will lead her to her authentic heart and happiness. The seemingly impossible happens in the wild of the Los Padres National Forest where Marjorie goes on retreat to make sense of her life when she thinks she has gone insane. The innocence of the Native American orphan Marjorie befriends, as well as more mystery and adventure than she bargained for, show her how love can heal in what turns out to be a transformative spiritual quest.
Book two: “Enter the Between” series
Between Now and Forever Page 31