Lifesaving Lessons

by Linda Greenlaw

  I worked quickly, suspecting that Mariah would be on the phone giving Brianna a heads-up. Now an expert on shutting off her phone service, I did so. That would piss off Mariah. I knew that she had other ways to communicate, but texting was her lifeline to her world. I would make it difficult for her to cover her tracks. I searched my phone’s history of caller IDs, looking for any 812 area code that would lead me to Tennessee. Although I usually avoided speaking with Mariah’s mother, she did make an occasional attempt to communicate. I scrolled down through the list of numbers until I found one that started with the dreaded 812. Mariah’s mother answered. “I don’t know if you are aware of what is going on, but Mariah is in trouble at school,” I began.

  “Well, she called me this morning, but I was busy and couldn’t talk. I told her I would call back, but when I did it seemed her phone isn’t working. Again.” This woman’s tone of voice bothered me. It was downtrodden and complaint ridden. And I had grown to dislike her accent, which amplified the whining tone. Call me a Yankee, but there’s a fine line between a southern drawl and a whimper. And nearly everything she said was preceded or followed by a blessing of someone’s heart. I didn’t bother explaining what Mariah’s trouble was. I asked if the mother knew Brianna Wilson. “No, that name doesn’t mean anything to me.” I asked her to do some research and find a phone number for me. “Well, I’ll try.” I insisted that I needed the information and urged her to put forth some effort. She promised to call me if she was able to turn up anything. It felt sort of icky teaming up with this woman whom I had previously classified as a loser. But I had a purpose, and that was more important than any standards I might have. (I do have standards—they are low, but I have them.) I was compelled to learn the truth. We mothers have to be part sleuth, I realized.

  I waited for the phone to ring from 812 all night. It never did, leading me to believe that Brianna Wilson was a made-up name, and I suspected that the return address was bogus, too. The package had been postmarked from Memphis, but that was the only real evidence I had. I would need Mariah to squeal if I was to ever learn the truth. Yes, the booze had no doubt been sent from a friend who was also a minor. But somewhere along the sleazy chain an adult had to have purchased the whiskey. I wanted to know who. But, I surmised, some kid could have stolen the jug from parents unbeknownst to them. Exasperated, I squirmed in bed until daylight searching for comfort that seemed frustratingly just beyond my reach. In times like these, we mothers lose a lot of sleep, I realized.

  The few people with whom I shared the morning mail boat asked where I was off to. I fumbled around with an answer that would not divulge anything. I was embarrassed to think that Mariah was being expelled from school for such poor judgment. I never thought her actions would have any effect on me, but I was wrong. I was taking some ownership of her, for sure. But when I returned with Mariah—bags and all—our friends would have to be told. And soon the entire island would know and be equally disappointed in her. But it was her story to tell at this point, not mine. Again, I wasn’t sure what I was protecting, and whether what needed protecting was mine, hers, or ours. I am a true heart-on-sleever, so my face was surely less than poker. I stuck my head into the newspaper that was folded open to the daily crossword puzzle and attempted to finish what someone else had started. It’s never much fun to jump into a puzzle someone else has given up on. All of the easy clues are filled in, leaving the ones that are impossible. On the other hand, you do feel pretty smart when you get a word or two that the last guy couldn’t. The problem is, the last guy might have made some mistakes, totally throwing off your chances of satisfactory completion. And the puzzle solvers who use ink pens create a real mess for the next person, who might want to make corrections. When I realized that Mariah had a lot in common with the puzzle, I put it down and stared out the window until the boat kissed the dock.

  Three hours later, I was pulling into Norway, Maine. It was a stellar day. The sun shined brightly on the snow-capped White Mountains that appeared to hem Evergreen Academy’s western campus, cupping the lush, liquidlike grounds. Stark, masculine brick buildings supported by strong, white pillars were like islands emerging from giant green puddles. I parked in front of Eustis Hall, within which Mariah lived under a steeple and viewed the world outside through arched windows that must soften the sight of even the most wicked weather. A boy on a skateboard pumped past me, dipping one leg oarlike into pristine blacktop. The athletic field below the dormitory had a scattering of kids cradling lacrosse sticks and seemingly loving just being outside. Scholars with books under arms and packs on backs hustled purposefully between buildings. These young people are so lucky, I thought. This school had so much to offer. The enrichment courses beyond harsh academics were extraordinary. Mariah had learned silversmithing this year and was involved in a farm and forest program that was second to none; there was actually a working farm right on campus. She was enrolled in an academic skills program where she could get one-on-one tutoring in any subject. Her grades were lukewarm but improving. I have never thought that grades are a true indication of what value a student is gaining from education. As long as Mariah was putting forth her best effort and behaving, I had no complaints. How could Mariah have blown this opportunity? Mothering is frustrating.

  I gave one knock on Mariah’s dorm room door and entered. Mariah sat crossed-legged on the floor crying, surrounded by half-packed boxes and duffel bags. Her roommate was sitting on the edge of her bed, there for what I assumed was moral support. Mariah looked as though she had not slept. It didn’t appear that lying was treating her very well. “I am only going to ask this once. You’ll have to live with the answer for a long time,” I said. “Who sent the booze?”

  “My mother.” Honesty this brutal sucked the life out of the room and left a silence so pronounced that I thought I heard the tears as they streamed down Mariah’s agony-filled face. This was so far from what I had expected to hear that I was stunned and at a loss for what to say. My anger with Mariah quickly morphed into pity. There was no sense berating her mother, was there? It must now be quite clear without my rubbing her nose in it, I thought. “She begged me not to tell.” I’ll bet she did, I thought to myself. Sending a half gallon of whiskey to your daughter and asking her to take the full brunt of the consequences when the scheme went amok spoke volumes about Mom’s makeup. Not that I didn’t already have a pretty good read of her. “And now I’m going to be kicked out of school.” More tears and uncontrollable sobbing …

  “Get yourself together. We have a meeting with the assistant head of school in ten minutes,” I said sternly. “Do you want to go home with me or do you want to finish the school year here?” Mariah stated between gasps for breath that she wanted to remain at Evergreen but that she would no doubt be expelled for this most recent stunt because she was already on probation. “Get a grip. Let’s go. I am on your side at this meeting as long as you tell the truth.” Even though I felt like choking Mariah, we mothers have to be united with our daughters in fights like the one I anticipated.

  The walk across campus was long and quiet. Every student we passed gave Mariah a knowing look, and I sensed a shared grief for her troubles. Evergreen, like Isle au Haut, is a small, close community. Word had spread quickly.

  I held the door, forcing Mariah to enter the assistant dean’s office ahead of me. Eleanor Pratt was a nice woman who had been very supportive of my work to get Mariah back to Evergreen after her former guardian had pulled the plug. Now Eleanor was in the awkward position of enforcing a rule that would expel the one student who would perhaps benefit most from being at Evergreen. Mariah and I sat in wooden chairs across the desk from the assistant dean. After a warm greeting between Eleanor and me, Mariah spoke nervously. “I am sorry I lied to you both. Mrs. Pratt, my mother sent me the whiskey. It was stupid. And I am sorry.” After Eleanor Pratt got over the shock of what she had been told, she explained that a disciplinary hearing would tell the fate of Mariah, and that the meeting was scheduled for the next
day. She thanked Mariah for coming clean but reminded her that because she was already on probation, there was little hope that she would be allowed to finish the year. Mariah and I both acknowledged that we understood the situation.

  “Should you be in class?” I asked Mariah.

  “Math. But what’s the point?”

  “You haven’t been expelled yet. Get to class and I’ll talk to you later.” Mariah hurried out of the office relieved and, I assume, confused, leaving Eleanor and me alone to hash things over.

  “I have been at Evergreen for a very long time. I thought I had seen it all. Wow.” Eleanor is a genuinely caring person for all of her students, but had special warmth for Mariah, I thought. “I am sorry that there is no way around this.”

  “Technically, Mariah never had the booze in her possession,” I said suddenly. “My understanding is that the bottle was broken by the mail room clerk before Mariah picked it up.” I thought for a minute before continuing. “And I am not hanging around here until tomorrow for the disciplinary board to do the right thing, which I am confident it will.” Eleanor sat quietly, nodding her head in what I thought could have been agreement. “If the disciplinary board wants to press charges against Mariah’s mother, I’ll gladly come back to collect my kid, as it is clear to me that she solicited the booze shipment and then lied. But if her mother is not held accountable, Mariah should not be punished.” Eleanor promised to pass all of this along to the board and to call me with their decision. We mothers have to be part attorney, I decided.

  It felt strange leaving the campus and Mariah behind, knowing that it was quite likely that I would return the following day. But I knew some windshield time would do me more good than sitting in a hotel room in Norway, Maine, waiting for some faceless group to decide Mariah’s and my fate. And leaving showed that my words were more than words. Unless Evergreen pressed charges against Mariah’s mother, she would remain a student in good standing (on probation, of course). As I drove out of town, it struck me what a strange place this school actually was. The staunchly bricked and pillared and quaint New England Main Street lined with trendy, independent coffee shops boasting of organic and fair-trade wares and free Wi-Fi was juxtaposed with modest homes, a gas station with simple hot coffee, and a drab public school. As Ivy League preparatory disappeared in my rearview mirror and the school of hard knocks sprawled ahead, I believed that Mariah represented a poignant connection between the haves and have-nots. And I prayed that the disciplinary board would see the value in her presence as a bridge over that tremendous gap.

  The argument about nature versus nurture has remained unresolved for a very long time, so it was unlikely I would figure it out in a four-hour commute. Sadly, whichever side of the equation I favored, to my mind Mariah didn’t stand a chance. If her mother was indicative, nature did not bode well. And if nurture began at birth, the scenario was bleak for the same reason. So her mother plays the lead role in either nature or nurture. How discouraging. I wondered if I was being unfair or too severe regarding her biological mom. I wondered what her mother’s situation was and how her rearing had shaped her. I wondered about the perpetual cycles of abuse I had heard about. But that wonder only existed for a second because it all seemed so hopeless, so glass half empty.

  I thought it must be hard for Mariah to have one foot rooted in her own family’s traditions and the other tentatively toeing the ground of better opportunity. I wondered whether straddling was a conscious choice. She had nominated me as her guardian in a legal procedure. But other than that single signature on a single document at a moment when she was confused and traumatized, Mariah hadn’t been given much in the way of choices. Or perhaps she had been asked to make too many choices. Perhaps expecting her to choose was expecting too much. Mariah needed more than a guardian. She needed remedial nurturing and someone to be responsible for choices beyond food and clothing. She needed help making life choices. And it was at that moment that I vowed to choose for her. No matter how Evergreen’s disciplinary board ruled, for better or for worse, I would decide for Mariah until I felt she was capable of doing so herself. Isn’t that what my mother had done for me?

  CHAPTER 12

  Change Was Good

  I can’t say that I was surprised to hear that Evergreen’s disciplinary board had decided that another chance was in order for Mariah. Relieved is more like it. Eleanor Pratt made it clear that this was a highly unusual case and that they were making an extraordinary exception by allowing Mariah to remain in school—on probation, of course, for another year. I suspected, even with all that Eleanor had said about how special Mariah was and how the school wanted to do its part appropriately in her well-being and education, that the board had wisely chosen not to test the ultimatum I had left on its doorstep about my kid. I would like to think that Evergreen was sincere in wanting to do the right thing, but I realized that the right thing might well have been to give Mariah the boot as dictated by the school’s rules and the penalties for breaking them.

  I truly believed that Mariah’s mother should be held accountable. For the briefest moment I wondered what their decision and seeming unwillingness to prosecute the responsible adult was teaching my kid about following rules and suffering consequences. But I just as quickly justified Mariah’s remaining in school as the most valuable outcome regardless of any deep-seated morals that may be conflicted. This situation flew in the face of my deeply held convictions about personal responsibility and accountability. If it had been Mariah’s roommate whose head was on the chopping block, would I feel the same? And just to drive the point home about the tentative relationship between behavior and consequences, I turned Mariah’s phone back on (even though I had threatened never to do so) so that I could call and let her know what was what.

  Mariah had gotten off on a technicality. My mother might have been right when she told me that I should have become an attorney. More poignant was the fact that this was the first time I had stood up for Mariah in a motherly way. And that felt good.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi. It’s Linny. They decided to let you stay and finish the year.”

  “I’m flunking algebra … yet again.”

  “I’ll hire another tutor. You’ll have to take a summer course.”

  “Oh, that sounds like fun!” Her sarcasm bothered me.

  “Forget about fun. You are on probation for another year. You can’t afford even a minor offense.”

  “I’ll be good. I promise. Thanks, Linny.” And that was the first and only time that Mariah had ever promised me anything, and come to think of it, the first time she had thanked me out of something other than direct obligation. Although I was touched by her sincerity, I was still nervous that she might misbehave before I picked her up on the Saturday following final exams to go home for the summer. But she did not. I heard no more from the school, and she jumped right into two jobs when her feet hit the island, then landed a third job on Sundays manning the island’s only gift shop. I hired a beautiful, young island woman, Morgan, to tutor Mariah through an online algebra course that she desperately needed to pass to become a high school junior. Mariah connected with Morgan and I couldn’t have been happier about that. It was good for Mariah to have nearly daily contact with someone of Morgan’s quality. Not only did Morgan coach Mariah into a passing grade, but she was also a great influence and inspiring role model in many other ways. Imagine somebody cool and hip who loves math! Amazing, indeed.

  Logistics are more of a task than the task itself here on the island, and life had been complicated before I introduced a teenager’s schedule into the mix. I was already not caring much for carting Mariah everywhere she needed to be. Oh, she drove on the island without a license like everybody else, but every time she had an appointment, social engagement, or an urge to shop on the mainland, it gobbled up a full day of my life. But, as they say, where there is a will there is a way. It was time for Mariah to get her driver’s license, so I started researching where, when, and how. I found
a highly regarded program right in Stonington, which did mean I’d have to take her ashore for class and driving lessons two nights a week, but the payoff would be good. Even more incentive to get that license! When I learned that Mariah needed to show a birth certificate to enroll in the class, I knew I didn’t have a copy. Neither did she. Not to worry, though. I got on the Internet and found the number for vital statistics in Tennessee. I told the nice man what I needed. He asked for Mariah’s date and place of birth. I gave them to him, ordered two copies, and gave him my credit card info. So easy!

  Not so easy. The nice man phoned the next day to report that he had no record of Mariah’s birth on that date at that location. Did I have the correct date, he asked? Was I certain she was born in Memphis, Tennessee? Could she possibly have been born in another state? How would I know? I knew only what Mariah believed and what had been unquestioned until now. Did she have another name, he asked? There was no way I could ask Mariah if there was a chance that she had no idea who she was or where she was born or how old she was. She loved her birthday and had started a countdown months before, sending me daily reminders. I needed to confirm what she thought she knew, not let on that she might not have a clue as to her beginnings or identity. And I needed a birth certificate pronto!