That's Not a Feeling

by Dan Josefson

  Laurel looked out at the cars lining up at the school gates for Parents’ Sunday. She had already seen the cars of the new parents roll onto campus a couple of hours ago for the New Parent Orientation. The other parents’ cars were outside the gates along the shoulder of Route 294, waiting for ten o’clock when they would be allowed onto campus. Any parents spotted on campus before ten would be sent away immediately. Laurel’s watch was in the other room with her things, so she couldn’t tell how much longer they would have to wait. It was disorienting, never knowing what time it was.

  Laurel was restricted to her room whether or not her parents showed up, but she hadn’t been able to find out if they were planning to come. She didn’t even know if they had been told that she’d had been roomed for the past two weeks. Laurel had wanted to write to tell them, but by the time she thought of it Marcy had taken her things away.

  The cars outside the gates began honking, and Laurel knew it was almost ten. A few moments before they could drive onto campus each Parents’ Sunday, the excited parents all began to honk their horns. After half a minute of honking the cars began to pull forward through the gates. The line continued, rolling slowly on its way to the Mansion. Laurel looked carefully for her mother’s car as the parade moved along. But then, her mother was always late.

  Tidbit’s mother, on the other hand, was on time. She parked along the shoulder, outside the gates, and checked on a cat asleep on the backseat before getting out of her car. She walked past the gates, brushing aside wisps of long gray hair that the wind had blown across her face. She passed beat-up sedans and new SUVs, with parents getting out alone or in pairs, some with siblings of their Roaring Orchards students, some without.

  She walked up the stone steps and into the Mansion. Doris was greeting parents and offering refreshments, but Ms. Lasker headed straight through the Great Hall and up the stairs, familiar enough with the complicated path to New Girls’ dorm that she ignored the handwritten signs posted to direct parents through the building. She jogged up the stairs, watching her step, and when she got to the lounge she was surprised to find out that Tidbit had moved up to Alternative Girls.

  When she made her way there, Tidbit was waiting for her. She hugged her tightly.

  “What’d you bring me?” Tidbit asked, pointing to a small brown bag in her mother’s hand.

  “Oh,” she said, looking down at the bag, which was folded at the top. “This is for you. I didn’t know you got moved up. That’s great.” She handed the bag to Tidbit.

  “Candy!” she said, looking into it. “Really good candy. You went all the way by the mall.”

  Her mother mussed her hair. “Short,” she said.

  “My hair or me?”

  “Both.”

  Tidbit turned to her mother. “Did you bring Fatface?” she asked.

  “He’s in the car.”

  “Hold on.” Tidbit went and found June, who was covering Alternative Girls, to tell her she was going out. She put on her shoes. When Tidbit returned, her mom was speaking with the parents of one of the other Alternative Girls. Tidbit held out the bag of candy and asked, “Do you want anything from in here?”

  “Sour peach,” her mom said, taking the bag. She took a candy from inside and offered the bag to the couple.

  “Are there any of those candy corns?” the man asked. He had a loose face that was marbled red like a beefsteak.

  “No, I don’t think I got any candy corns.”

  “Aw, hell,” he said, leaning over and looking into the bag. “Give me one of those strawberries.”

  “Let’s go see my Fatface,” Tidbit said, kneeling down to tie her sneaker. Although neither Tidbit nor her mother would have admitted it, they both knew that the best part of their visit had just passed. Only their anticipation was perfect, and they understood each other well enough to see, with equal parts relief and disappointment, that nothing much had changed. Ms. Lasker put the bag of candy in her purse and fixed her purse on her shoulder. It pained her to see Tidbit trying so hard, to hear the dead spot in her voice while she was trying to sound chipper.

  Once they had exited the Mansion, Tidbit stopped suddenly. “Wait,” she said, “I just thought of something. I can’t go off campus because I’m on Reciprocity Detail. And pets aren’t allowed on campus.”

  Her mother looked down at her. “Can you play with him by the fence?”

  “Yeah, I guess that’ll work.” They walked down the lawn to where the car was parked. Tidbit stayed on the near side of the fence.

  “I’ll get him,” her mom said.

  “I can’t wait to see him,” Tidbit said.

  Her mother followed the fence to the gate and got the cat out of the car. She brought him to the fence opposite Tidbit and put him down. Fatface rubbed his cheek against his shoulder a few times, then lay down, stretched, and showed her his belly. Tidbit reached through the fence and petted him.

  They played like this for a while. Tidbit’s mother had brought one of Fatface’s toys, a plastic wand with a little stuffed pillow tied to the end of a string. Tidbit leaned over the fence and swung the pillow back and forth, and Fatface jumped to chase it. The pillow had a little bell hidden in it. Tidbit’s mother watched them play. A breeze lifted some fallen leaves and then dropped them where they had been.

  Laurel continued to watch through the window for her parents. She was hoping that they weren’t planning to come this Sunday, but of course as soon as she thought that, she saw their Mercedes wagon pull through the gates. She couldn’t see where it parked, so she just sat down on her bed and waited.

  A few minutes later, a tall woman with long chestnut hair, wearing black slacks and a gray sweater, entered the Mansion. She held her purse tightly to her front. “Excuse me,” she said to Doris. “Hello.” She smiled and paused for a moment, expecting to speak with her, but when Doris turned to welcome other parents, Mrs. Pfaff began following the signs up the stairs to New Girls. She entered the dorm by the kitchenette and walked into the lounge, looking around uncertainly. Families were sitting together on the couches or standing around and talking, and after circling through the lounge twice, she found Marcy and said, “Excuse me, I’m looking for Laurel?”

  “Oh, Mrs. Pfaff. Hi. I wasn’t sure whether you were coming or …” Marcy always tried to look as busy as she could on Parents’ Sundays so she wouldn’t have to make any small talk. Parents made her nervous. A pink coral pin Mrs. Pfaff was wearing caught her eye. This was the conversation she had most been dreading. “I tried to call, but I couldn’t get in touch with you.”

  “Oh? I must not have gotten the message. Did you leave a message?”

  “Well, what I meant was that I tried to get a chance to call, but I didn’t find the—”

  “Is something wrong with Laurel? Where is she?”

  “No, no, Laurel’s fine. But she’s roomed right now. Restricted, that is, to her room. That’s what I had wanted to call to tell you about. Of course, you’re welcome to have a short visit with her, but she’s really not supposed to be spending time with people right now. Of course, she sees her therapist, and I give her her meals and meds, but other than that. She’s restricted. To her room. So she has time to think.”

  “She’s in her room?” Mrs. Pfaff said, blinking. “What? You mean right now? Or all the time?” She tucked her hair behind her ear, exposing a tiny earring. “What did she do?”

  “Well, Aubrey had put her on a structure where she was supposed to write him letters and she said she didn’t remember—”

  “She’s roomed for not writing him letters?”

  “It wasn’t so much the not writing as not remembering what Aubrey had said. She said he had said something different.”

  “I don’t think I understand.” Mrs. Pfaff looked at her.

  For a moment, Marcy must have wished she were a little more like Mrs. Pfaff. It was as if all she had to do was imagine the world the way she assumed it must be and blink her bright eyes, and no one would tell her anything di
fferent.

  “The rooming,” Marcy said, “was Aubrey’s limit. Because when he reminded her that he had told her to write him once a week, I think it was, she said he had never said that. And then she said she didn’t remember him saying that. So Aubrey told her to stay in her room until she could remember their conversation.”

  “And how long ago was this?”

  “About two weeks.”

  Mrs. Pfaff felt a brief swell of vertigo, then settled again more firmly on her feet. “You can’t be serious. That’s unacceptable. If she doesn’t remember, how is leaving her in her room going to help her remember? I’m not paying tuition so that my daughter can be locked up staring at the walls. I could do that at home.”

  “Mrs. Pfaff, I—”

  “No, I’m going to need to speak with Aubrey about this. Where is he?”

  “Aubrey?” Marcy had to think for a second. “I think he’s still in the New Parent Orientation. Downstairs, in the Reception Room.”

  “I’d like to see Laurel first.” She was breathing deeply now, her chin tilted up a bit.

  “She’s right down the hall,” Marcy said, glad to have survived this part of her day. She led the way. They found Laurel sitting on her bed, staring at her bare feet. Her mother ran in and gave her a hug, kneeling beside her.

  “Sweetie, are you all right?” Mrs. Pfaff ran her thumb across Laurel’s face where a tear would have been if she had been crying. “I’m fine,” Laurel said, looking at Marcy and then back at her mother. “Where’s Dad?”

  “Julie’s soccer team had a game in Lakeville he had to take her to. Laurel, why are you letting them keep you in here? Why don’t you just remember what Aubrey told you?”

  “I’m trying to remember it, but I haven’t been able to yet. Sometimes I think I’m getting pretty close, but other times it feels like the memory’s getting fuzzier and farther away. It’s hard, but I’ll get it, Mom. Don’t cry.”

  Marcy left them there and headed back to the lounge to see about the rest of the girls and to sneak into her apartment for a while if she could. At the end of the hallway, she ran into Bridget and her parents. Bridget’s younger brother was with them Her father was a short, blurry man with red cheeks like Bridget’s and only a small bit of dark hair left on his head. Her mother was taller and thickset, with hair that might once have been the color of Bridget’s in a long braid down her back.

  “Hello, Marcy!” Bridget’s mother began. “Bridget says the girls have decided to let her off campus today. Is that right?”

  “It is,” Marcy said, happy to give someone good news. “She’s been taking good care of herself, and the rest of the dorm decided that she’s earned their trust to go off campus.” Marcy looked at Bridget’s father, who seemed skeptical.

  “So what’s the rules?” he asked.

  “We know the rules,” his wife told him. “Now, it’s okay for us to take Bridget to buy some clothes? She says she needs clothes, and I want to get her a haircut.” She grabbed a handful of Bridget’s hair and lifted it, as if to convince Marcy.

  “Shopping’s fine,” Marcy said, “but the girls get haircuts on campus. The point is for all of you to have a nice afternoon together. So you can go for lunch, do some shopping, go for a walk, whatever you like. One of you has just got to be within arms’ distance of Bridget at all times, and she’s not supposed to go back to your hotel room.”

  Bridget’s father nodded through all of this while her mother beamed at Bridget, one hand on her shoulder. Bridget’s brother watched Marcy as she talked. He looked terrified.

  After Bridget’s family left, Marcy had a few moments to herself. The girls whose parents hadn’t come were sitting quietly in the lounge. Marcy pretended to rearrange books in the bookcase and was about to head into her own room when Mrs. Pfaff returned.

  “You know, she’s really very upset,” she said, “and I can’t say I blame her. She doesn’t like to show it, but still. A person would go crazy sitting alone in a room like that.”

  “Laurel’s not going crazy,” Marcy said.

  “No, she’s not. I agree with you there, she’s certainly not. Now, I’m going to speak to Aubrey about this, even though Laurel asked me not to. She was afraid it would make things worse.”

  “No, I think talking to Aubrey would be a very good idea. I don’t see how things could get worse.” Mrs. Pfaff narrowed her eyes slightly. “What I mean is, I’m sure that Laurel wouldn’t be punished for your speaking with him about this.”

  “Yes, well, I should hope not.”

  In the Great Hall there were large flower vases full of orange and violet lilies. Refreshments were being set out by the parents who usually helped on Parents’ Sundays, some of them parents of former students who had graduated from Roaring Orchards, some the parents of children who had run away from the school and were still missing.

  I was sitting at a table in the Great Hall with the other students whose parents were in the orientation. We hadn’t seen our parents yet; the orientation had begun before we were sent down to the Great Hall. Tyler from Regular Kids was watching us. He sat sideways in an armchair, his legs dangling over one of the arms, and flipped through a glossy magazine. We just waited and wondered what Aubrey was telling our parents.

  Mrs. Pfaff came down the stairs and smiled at Tyler. He asked if he could help her with anything.

  “I’m just waiting to speak with Aubrey,” she said.

  “He’s still in the orientation. They should be almost done. You’re welcome to go in if you’d like.”

  Mrs. Pfaff decided that she would. Tyler’s eyes lingered over her as she turned away and pushed back one of the doors to the Reception Room. She squeezed into the room and took a seat toward the back as quietly as she could. With the door open, I could see a bit of the room and hear what was going on inside. Aubrey was speaking from a large armchair in a front corner of the room to about a dozen parents, who sat on couches and chairs arranged to face him. He leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs. He was wearing a light gray suit, a green sweater, and no socks.

  “The point I’m trying to make,” he said, “is that in most of your families, the child that you’ve sent to us was the most powerful member of the family. Which was a problem for you, but it was an even bigger problem for your child. Because what a child wants is to be a child, and what does it mean to be a child? To have limits. And too often in your families, your children were denied the opportunity to be children, because you didn’t set those limits.

  “And what we do here is as simple as that. We set limits, and we hold your children to them, we hold them responsible. Think about that phrase for a moment: ‘hold them responsible.’ ” Aubrey was up on his feet now, pacing back and forth across the front of the room from the armchair in one corner to a baby-grand piano in the other. With his arms he made a cradling gesture. “Why do you think that’s how we say it? Because that’s what your problem children have been craving, being held, being held responsible.

  “You know, when pupils here get violent, when they try to hurt themselves or someone else, we have a structure that we call a wiggle. I recently got into an argument with another faculty member who was confusing restraints with wiggles. A restraint is an emergency response that simply serves to keep a student from hurting herself or others. But rather than simply restrain a pupil, in a wiggle we use their energy as an opportunity. ‘Wiggle’ stands for a ‘wonderful invitation to grow and gain a limiting experience.’ Because that’s what children are asking for when they act out. They’re asking to be limited. There’s nothing scarier for a child than feeling all-powerful. So in a wiggle we hold them, and keep them safe, and talk to them about what they’re feeling.” Squares of light shone through the windows on the north side of the Reception Room and fell at Aubrey’s feet.

  “Now you should all notice, too—I expect that by now you all have noticed—that when the most powerful, dominant member of your family is sent away, this also creates a problem for you at home. Th
ere’s a void, and the impulse is to see that void as a problem and to fill it with worry. To worry about your child. But the void should also be an opportunity for you, to fill it with adult activities that can replace all the time you used to spend catering to childish demands. Here at Roaring Orchards, we end each Parents’ Sunday with a cocktail party in the Mansion for all the parents, and it’s a time for us to all enjoy being adults together. And a time to role-model adulthood for the pupils. Because it’s important that they’re aware that there are certain things that are appropriate for us that are not appropriate for them. And although you’ll never get them to admit it, knowing this makes them feel safer.”

  Aubrey leaned against the piano. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. “Some of you, when you took a tour of the grounds, asked me about a fountain we have in the back garden. You know the one I mean? The top of the fountain has a statue of a large infant playing with a turtle in his lap. And I always tell parents that I’ll explain it at the orientation. The statue is based on the myth of Zeus and Aliaphone.” He walked to the window and looked out. “You can just make it out from here,” he said, and turned back to the parents, whose eyes were trained on him intently.

  “Aliaphone was a gorgeous water nymph who used to splash around in her father’s pond. And Zeus, as often happens in these stories, noticed this nymph and began to pursue her. Aliaphone was young and innocent and did everything she could to evade Zeus’s advances. He appeared to her in all sorts of disguises, and Aliaphone wasn’t seduced by any of them. But there came a day when he had cornered her, and all she could do was call to her father for help. So her father turned her into a turtle, and whenever Zeus would try to molest her, she could now simply retreat into her shell.” A man in the back of the room laughed loudly at this. Mrs. Pfaff kept watching Aubrey.