She reads from the beginning and her voice gets louder. All that official-sounding language. “Re: Daniel Solstice Landon’s failure to report for tenth grade.” With a list of dates. “In violation of” with another string of numbers. Laws, regulations, whatever.
“Did they summon me?” I ask.
“No.” The look of horror on Mom’s face is classic. She analyzes me for the longest time, like she’s not sure who I am.
Dad takes the letter from her and sits down, smoothing the page against the table with that intent look he uses on his editing work.
The solution seems simple to me. “I’ll go with you guys.”
Mom stops pacing long enough to shoot a look of daggers at Dad. Her voice twists in disgust. “The almighty school board suggests it would be preferable if we came without the named student ‘to allow for open discussion.’”
Like I have attention deficit disorder and am incapable of sitting still for a meeting longer than five minutes.
“They can’t force him to go to school if it makes him sicker,” she continues, her words directed at Dad. Is he even paying attention? She’s apparently already decided they should ignore the letter and skip the meeting. “That has to be…unconstitutional.”
“Sylvie. Listen to yourself. What does the Constitution have to do with voluntary medical treatment? You’re making too big a deal out of this. It’s a routine matter. They just figured out some kid on the rolls is missing. They’re only following protocol. Forty, fifty families get this same letter. The school board probably doesn’t even know about Daniel’s leukemia.”
“They’re sticking their noses in our business. Everyone thinks they know what to do and none of them actually have to deal with the reality of it. Nowadays everyone’s a damn expert.”
Earlier that day Dad admitted to Mom that his trips to Chicago, two in three weeks, were conferences with pediatric specialists in AML. This is more of that same argument. She’s apoplectic he went behind her back to consult doctors. She doesn’t trust anyone in the medical establishment since the second the tests came back and proved leukemia was poisoning her offspring. Although it’s hard to fathom how a pediatrician could help. How precise can medicine be if the experts lump a six-foot-tall teenager in with little kids?
Still, I’m glad Dad has finally stopped trying to hide the discussions from me. Although it’s not the same as inviting me to be part of their decisions about my future, it’s easier to take than the whispered conferences and closed doors. I’m not sure why he’s had this sudden change of heart or if it’s simply a temporary lapse because he’s on the defensive about the secret consultations.
Doctors, not The Disease, are the enemy, according to Mom. She religiously meets with Misty once a week to collect the herbal concoctions Undertaker recommends for my “condition.” If Miss T. Undertaker treats all this like it’s temporary, it’s okay by me. In my mind, temporary means “not fatal.” It’s a weird and comforting kind of logic.
For weeks I’ve been primed and ready for this debate about school. Since Meredith’s suggestion, I’ve been lining up my arguments like soda cans on a fence. I worked out all the ins and outs so I’d be ready to shoot holes in both of their theories. After Mom sits down across from Dad, I sit too. When I start to talk, they both look up in shock as if they’d forgotten I was there. So much for the out-in-the-open-time-to-share-everything theory, but it doesn’t stop me.
“School attendance is mandatory, right? The government can make kids go to school.” Despite the splint bracing my ankle, I’m still careful not to knock it against the table leg. Expressing pain at this point would be fatal to my credibility. “So…maybe the opposite is true too. I have a right to go. That might be constitutional.”
“Daniel, your father and I are talking about adult issues.”
“That affect me.”
Dad puts his hand on top of hers, a signal I recognize. He thinks she’s getting into dangerous ground. I take the opportunity and run with it.
“Don’t you have to sign a religious waiver or something to homeschool?” This is all part of my game plan.
Because the idea of Essex County telling Mom what’s right for her kids doesn’t sit well, there’s a glimmer of connection in the way she doesn’t leap to argue. Dad gives me a look of Thanksgiving gratitude. I’m making sense, making his job easier. If there’s a regular procedure to bypass the argument on principle, it would be the easiest way to settle this without making a federal case out of it. Dad’s nightmare is Mom on a rampage.
He nods agreement. Relief floods his face and he actually smiles at me, the one who has brought all this trouble down on the Landons. “We could sign a homeschooling commitment, Sylvie.”
“It’s not right. He’s doing all the same schoolwork the other students are doing. He just doesn’t physically go to the building and sit through the lectures. I want them to give him the same tests as all the other students.”
“Let’s just go to the meeting and see what they have to say.” Dad holds up his hand for me to be silent. “Listen and keep an open mind. And we can start by not assuming they’re the enemy.”
After the board meeting, but before the superintendent makes his official pronouncement, the Essex County Department of Social Services mails out a second letter, same gold seal, telling us they’re sending an inspector, but no date, which seems to defeat the purpose either way. Mom doesn’t wait until Dad gets home to go ballistic. But when Dad finally reads the letter he dismisses it as standard operating procedure.
See? Another one of those military phrases. It shuts her up temporarily.
Mack and I are in the middle of a chess game when a dinged-up black sedan parks under the field cedar by the dock.
“Whose car?” Mack points.
He’s beating me. Badly. Mack, at least, shows no consideration for my condition. It’s piddling rain, firing off little pings on the fiberglass roof of the houseboat and fatter pongs on the river. With the binoculars I can see the same county seal on the driver’s door and that pale blue license plate for a public service vehicle.
“County gestapo,” I say.
The lady honks, then yells something through a two-inch crack where she’s rolled down her window. Mack takes the binocs and lifts his glasses to his forehead to focus. He talks through the strap.
“Maybe she melts when she gets wet,” he says.
I add, “Like the Wicked Witch of the West.”
She yells again. “Is your mother there?”
Mack hands me the binoculars. “She could be an alien.”
“Nothing so exciting. Some nosy government person. No name, just a camera hidden in her nose. They’re stalking us.”
She must think we’re deaf because she yells even louder. “I said, is your mother there?”
Mack shrugs, but he’s smiling. I yell back, “No, ma’am.”
“Are you boys alone?”
“No, ma’am,” we yell together and can’t help laughing at the obvious.
Stepford-Hanes trained us to be precise. We’ve answered the question exactly, yet the wicked witch from Social Services is not happy. Still, my insides tighten at the insult, her inference that we’re too young to be alone in the first place.
At the yelling my father comes out from the back cabin, with his finger in the book manuscript he’s editing. He holds it to his chest, moves along the side of the cabin to stay inside the dripping roof, and shimmies up the ladder to the top deck. Hunched over the manuscript to protect it from the rain, he edges in where Mack and I are sitting under the bimini trying to stay cool in the humid drizzle that drips all around us. Dad shades his eyes to see across the water.
“Whose car is that?” he asks me.
I motion to Mack to give Dad the binoculars. “Some lady from Essex County, maybe Social Services.”
“What’s she yelling about?”
Mack moves his chair back to give Dad some dry space, while I explain the extent of our analysis. “She sa
ys she needs to talk to Mom.”
Dad moves to the edge of the bimini and yells through the wall of rain that sheets across the creek. “What do you want Mrs. Landon for?”
With her mouth lifted to the top of the open window, the woman shrieks. “Excuse me, sir, we’re not allowed to talk with anyone who’s not part of the family. Are you related to Daniel Solstice Landon?”
“Only his father.”
After a minute for her pea brain to digest that, she yells back in her official voice. “I’m here to do a home investigation. I’ll follow you to your house.”
She stays in the car, though. Clearly she’s confused, but she’s not taking any chances with these crazy people. My first thought is they should issue binoculars to Social Services personnel so they don’t come off sounding so idiotic. And umbrellas so they can brave the elements to have a civilized conversation. But actually it’s probably better she can’t see the details. Dad’s T-shirt is one of his favorite (and oldest) Beatles shirts, WHY DON’T WE DO IT IN THE ROAD. The wicked witch might swoon like the women in those Jane Austen books. She definitely wouldn’t give the Landons a good report.
Dad hands me the manuscript and leans out over the edge of the roof. Maybe so she can see he really is old enough to be the father. The rain sprays polka dots on his shirt at the shoulders. He starts to speak, cocks his head to the rising wind like a question, then clears his throat. This time he yells louder.
“This is our house.”
And just like Holden at the ridiculousness of the situation, my face burns, one hundred fifty degrees, and as red as Babe the Blue Ox is blue. Regular people don’t actually live on houseboats. Regular people talk on telephones or on doorsteps.
I aim my mouth up at the sky and let the wind carry my words in her direction. “Mrs. Landon’s not here and I’m not talking. To anyone. Go away.”
Dad doesn’t even wait to see if she stays or goes. With an exaggerated frown, he takes his editing back to the cabin.
The next day she’s back with a county deputy. Not Brewer, who’s the only policeman I know by name, except Sheriff Jessup. It wouldn’t be Brewer anyway, he’s a town cop. It’s closer to dinnertime this trip. Dad is off at Nick’s soccer game and the storm has long passed. I wake up from my daily nap about the time Mom is refusing to let the witch come on board.
“Do they really need a warrant?” I ask after the cruiser’s gone.
She shrugs and turns back to slicing tofu for the salad. “Your father’s right, I’m not a lawyer. But this is personal. The state shouldn’t get involved in family decisions.”
“Meredith says at Albemarle High they charged the parents of a boy who got hurt in a soccer game with a crime.”
“Surely not for keeping him home with a sprained ankle?”
“For not letting the rescue squad treat his concussion.”
“What was the charge?”
But I can tell by the way she only stops for a minute, then keeps on sorting through things in the refrigerator that she has already made up her mind that the answer doesn’t matter. She has enough problems of her own. And once my mother decides something, her mind is made up. One good thing about my parents, they’re independent thinkers. In case you hadn’t caught that so far.
“Maybe you and Dad should talk to a lawyer.”
“That’s the last thing we need right now. Lawyers are expensive.”
She doesn’t have to say, “Because of the medical bills.” I know that. The stack on the shelf over the radio has been growing all summer. Dad finally stuck all the bills in an old boot box in the cubby under their bunk. I found them there when we were searching for the cell phone. I guess Dad was as sick of looking at them as I was. I can’t imagine how much higher the stack would be if I were getting the chemotherapy and radiation like the doctors suggested.
When Mom takes me to the high school for the first set of tenth-grade tests—Bio and Algebra II midterms—the ankle splint is off, and a skin-colored stretchy brace thing is on. Not cool, but at least I’m back in sandals. Three more weeks and the whole ankle thing’ll be history. Not that I’m particularly anxious to forget how it happened.
When we walk through the side door by the gymnasium—Mom called ahead for special permission to avoid the front office check-in and all those free-floating germs in the main hallway—the first person I see is Leonard “The Man” Yowell. He’s leaning against the Nabs machine and yakking away to the twins. He’s spiffed up his wardrobe since last year’s Mötley Crüe T-shirts and sandals. To impress the teachers, I guess, since he’s probably already angling for college recommendations. You know that his father the senator who lives in the public eye has to be way more into that “appearances are important” mode than my dad.
I’m impressed, though, with Leonard’s costume. Not that I’d be caught wearing that fancy prep stuff. The pale blue button-down shirt makes him look older. Good decision, Master Yowell. And it distracts from his complexion, which looks rubbed out in places like he dug at it with a bad eraser, a long-standing problem for the poor guy.
The twins seem to have fallen for it. Big-time, I hate to admit. They’re rapt as he holds forth. I can feel my fists clenching, the ends of my fingers pressing into my palms, nails stinging the soft flesh. How has Mack let this happen?
The minute Leonard sees Mom he rushes over to hold the door. “Mrs. Landon, Dan. Great to have you back.” A politician in training, a miniature Senator Yowell. Why didn’t I ever see that before?
“Thank you, Leonard.” Mom has always liked him, despite the Yowell family’s political leanings. Maybe what she likes is their activism, even if they are on the wrong side. You’re starting to see where Joe gets his enthusiasm from, aren’t you? She leans closer to hug Leonard, but stiffens when she remembers the whole purpose of coming in the side door instead of signing in at the office is to keep the germ exposure to a minimum. She must be remembering her own rants. How all teenagers have bad hygiene and I’ll die from something I catch. It’s absurd really when The Disease is already inside and working away at its Grim Reaper role. As Mom steps away from the threesome, she glances down the hallway in both directions, the good Mama Bear checking for danger.
“Hey,” I say to Leonard. The slap of my hand against his, a small gesture of rebellion against the whole damn twist my life has taken. “What’s happening?”
The twins have followed him across the gymnasium. Meredith slips by Leonard and her sister. When she pecks me on the cheek, I flush red all over and Mom just stares like she can’t believe it. Although she’s talked to Meredith on the phone, Mom hasn’t seen her face-to-face before this minute. Leonard’s eyes pop too, but for a whole different reason.
When Meredith steps back, a rush of white noise surrounds me. I’m locked in place, nowhere to look but right at her. Her eyes are green. I can’t believe it’s taken me all this time to notice how different, how deep, how green. It’s not until I look away from her eyes and see her smile that I realize I must be grinning wide enough for a 747 to land.
Juliann copies her sister with a kiss on my cheek, another surprise. Leonard relaxes. Now he’s convinced himself we’re cousins or something. Revived, he steps up to the plate.
“I was just telling the girls what a hole there is in class discussions without you.”
“I bet,” I mutter.
Mom perks up. She must be suddenly feeling peachy keen at the compliment to her boy. About now I’m not feeling as pissed at Leonard because the con is helping Mom relax. You can see how her eyes are drinking in all of his six-foot-two, his khakis, the button-down shirt so new it still has the crease lines in it, and his oh-so-pleasant smile. He’s the poster child for orthodontics. Before I can move past him or think of something brilliant to say to the twins, Mom has to ask.
“How’s your brother liking Harvard, Leonard?” She doesn’t mean anything by it, but she just doesn’t get the girl thing.
Juliann’s looking at Leonard like he’s an interesting speci
men all of a sudden. Meredith tugs her sister’s backpack strap.
“We gotta go. Mom’ll be out front, waiting.” She doesn’t move, though. She turns and looks right at me. “Good luck on your tests, Daniel.”
From Leonard’s clutch, I guess he’s wondering how she knew without my saying anything. You can see his brain rethinking the cousin conclusion. He has to assume we’ve had conversations elsewhere. Recent conversations. Sweet.
While I’m waiting between tests for Mr. Lassiter to corral a proctor so he can leave for some meeting, I start to worry again about Meredith and Juliann and the whole social thing at school. Every boy in the school probably has his eye on them. New meat. And each and every one of those guys has a better opportunity than I do. They can sit with the twins in the caf. Wait by their lockers. Invite them to in-school scrimmages or the computer lab. Sit behind them in class. Not being here is torture.
Parents should never discount the social pull of being physically present at school. No matter how much you might hate class, it’s the best place to see your friends. Most kids won’t even fake the flu if there’s a girl or guy they like in their classes. In a single day playing hooky you can lose too much ground when you’re sixteen or seventeen.
Outside the classroom window the football team is doing laps. The sounds, even from across the teacher’s parking lot, are disgusting. Grunts and groans. Some of those guys are so heavy they can barely lift their feet off the ground. The pebbles skid from under their cleats across the pavement. Three or four of them fall farther and farther behind their teammates. When the coaches yell at them to pick it up, pick it up, it must be so discouraging. To have to eat more than you want to maintain that kind of weight, that must be painful too. I’d never make the team. I can hardly finish half a sandwich these days. But feeling sorry for football players is a first for me.
Joe says the guys he knows at college who play defensive line take a nap every day. They can’t go out on weekends because they have to eat a special extra-protein meal at nine p.m. on the Friday before game day. Plus a carb feast for breakfast. Girls can’t get too excited about snuggling up to those jelly bellies.
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