City Kid

by Mary MacCracken

  Blessedly, the bell rang and I was up and out before it had stopped ringing.

  The last I ever heard from Figerito was in a note fastened to my exam that he sent back to me by mail. “Excellent paper. I’d like to discuss it further. Call me next week to arrange lunch.”

  I dropped both the exam and the note in the wastebasket. Enough of TSS. And wine at ten in the morning. But even so, I don’t think I’d take it back.

  Chapter 20

  I had completed a day and a half of fall classes when I decided I couldn’t wait any longer to see how Luke was doing. There was no official program at the school this year and my days were crammed with six different courses that I needed in order to graduate in June. But I had an hour’s break at one o’clock and on impulse I drove down to School 23.

  Mrs. Karras’s door was closed, but I stopped at the secretary’s desk to find out which room Luke was in.

  She checked the records. “Room one twelve.”

  “One twelve?” I repeated. “Are you sure?” None of the third grades was on the first floor.

  The secretary turned the printed sheet around so that I could see for myself. Her finger pointed to the line. “Brauer, Lucas. Room 112. Miss Eckhardt.”

  “Thank you.” I forced myself to walk out of the office, but I began running as soon as I hit the hall. Something was terribly wrong. I slowed when I got to Lisa’s room and stood to one side and studied the sign on her door. It was exactly the same as last year.

  Room 112

  Grade 2

  Miss Eckhardt

  How could that be? I edged up to the glass window and peeked in just for an instant, careful not to be noticed. The instant was as long as an hour.

  Luke was there. He was sitting in the same seat as last year.

  I took another look. I couldn’t see his face. His head was down on his arms and only the back of his head was visible, but his body was limp and dejected. I went back to the office.

  “How soon can I see Mrs. Karras?” I asked the secretary.

  “Well, a group of room mothers just left, planning the first PTA meeting, you know. She might be able to see you now, though she’s terribly busy. Want me to find out?”

  “Please.”

  I paced the tiny waiting room. No wonder I’d worried about Luke over the summer. But what had actually happened? Why wouldn’t someone have called me?

  “Mary! I’m so glad to see you. I’ve thought of you so often.”

  Mrs. Karras looked tanned and healthy and I was glad, but there was no time to talk about that now.

  “What happened to Luke?” I asked. “I just saw him in Lisa’s classroom. What’s going on?”

  “Come on in the office. There. Sit down. I tried to call you in June when it happened, but I never seemed able to reach you.”

  I nodded. That was the time of my mother’s stroke.

  “When what happened?” Impatience edged my voice.

  “Well, it was decided that Luke should be retained.”

  “Retained?” I couldn’t believe it. “You mean he’s still in second grade? What happened?” I repeated again.

  “Nothing specific happened,” Mrs. Karras said. “I mean he didn’t suddenly set the school on fire or anything. In fact, Lisa said he was reading out loud a little more every day. True, it wasn’t the regular class reading text, but he was reading and working more than he ever had before.”

  I shook my head. “Then I don’t understand –”

  “Well, Mary, to put it as simply as I can, the Child Study Team decided that Luke wasn’t ready for third grade work.”

  “The Child who?”

  “Study Team.”

  “Who are they? I never even heard of them before.”

  “Yes. Well, they weren’t connected with the Mental Health Clinic project – except, of course, the psychologist did give the IQ tests, but that has to be done for referral anyway.” Mrs. Karras sighed. “It’s too involved to go into in detail, but just between you and me, there was some resentment of the mental health project, some feeling of ‘outside interference.’ Now whether that had anything to do with Luke or not, I can’t say for sure.”

  I got up and walked around the room. “How could they retain him? None of them had even worked with Luke.” I shook my head. “He had come such a long way. He had. He was coming to school every day, even beginning to like it a little. He was doing his work, reading out loud, not in trouble with the police.”

  “I know. If it had been up to me …” Mrs. Karras stopped for a minute before she continued. “The worst part was nobody told him. We each thought someone else had. He didn’t know until he came back this fall.”

  “Can I see him?” I asked abruptly.

  “Of course. He’s in the same room. You remember?”

  I nodded and walked back down the halls to Lisa’s classroom once again.

  I stood to the left of the door and looked at Luke through the window.

  There he was, still in the same seat as before, head on his arms, looking out the window. What must it have been like for him the first day of school? Thinking he’d be in third grade along with Wendell and the others, and then being told to go to second. His brother must be in second grade this year, for God’s sake! How could this happen? And I wasn’t there. I was at the hospital with my mother and didn’t even know. Not that I could have made them change their minds, but at least I could have told Luke, warned him.

  I walked away, back down the halls, anger, sorrow, defeat tumbling through my head, I wasn’t ready to see Luke yet, after all. I wouldn’t be any help to him feeling like this.

  I left a note with the secretary in the office asking Lisa to meet me for lunch the next day.

  Lisa looked pretty and clean and young as she climbed out of the van and walked into the restaurant. She was just back from Mexico. She’d met a terrific guy in Arizona, she said, and he’d gone with her the rest of the way and back as far as Mississippi, but the relationship had ended there by mutual agreement.

  “What about Luke?” I asked, not able to wait any longer.

  “He’s terrible,” she said flatly. “Worse than the beginning of last year, if that’s possible. He won’t talk at all. Not even to Wendell. I even tried to get Wendell and Luke together at lunch one day, but it didn’t work.”

  “Why did they do it?” I felt like throwing my water glass across the room. Instead I set it down more softly than usual.

  “Because they don’t care,” Lisa said, leaning back in her chair, her long legs stretching out beyond her short skirt. “What the shit does it mean to them! They look at the scores, see he’s reading at one point eight or whatever, and is in a one point two reader. Check his absences, see he’s been absent thirty-eight days during the year …”

  “But not in May or June.”

  “You don’t get it, Mary. It’s the system. The system looks at the total – the absences, the fires, the grade scores. Add the numbers, count the slips. Luke loses.”

  “Well, so does the system,” I said. “Where does the system think Luke will be in ten years? How much money will it cost ‘the system’ then?”

  “Don’t shout at me. I couldn’t agree more. Besides, who’s worried about ten years? How about this year? How about me? To be honest, I don’t relish being stuck with Luke again. Much as I like him, he’s a difficult kid. And I gather that that project you were in last year is kaput. Fini. So that means no help at all.”

  “Lisa, listen. Don’t say that. You’re good with Luke. Look what you did in his reading group last year. He wouldn’t have a chance with Mrs. Tenton. You know that, she’s way too old. I don’t know anything about the other second-grade teacher, except every time I’ve seen her in the halls she’s fishing for her bra strap. Not a good sign. Besides, I’ll be down. When’s the best time for me to see Luke?”

  Lisa took another sip of coffee. “Anytime. What difference does it make? I’m telling you, Mary, he does not do one thing all day long. Not even d
raw. He doesn’t even show up until around ten.” She put her cup back on the saucer and looked at me. “Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but does it ever occur to you that maybe you, unlike the system, care too much? There are a lot of kids in this world who just aren’t going to make it no matter what you or anybody else does. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles. And you aren’t going to do anybody any good if you go around breaking your heart over each one you run into.”

  Lisa glanced at her watch and stood up, shaking out her skirt. “Me and my big mouth. Listen, thanks for lunch. I’ll see you over at school.”

  I sat at the table after she had left, thinking about what she’d said. In some ways it made sense. Survival of the fittest. Darwin had been around a long time.

  But what about the not so fit? Kids like Luke didn’t just die or disappear. Instead, they moved further and further outside society, traveling alone. No longer caring or even really knowing what was right or wrong. Surviving. Getting even. Finally convincing themselves that they were the ones who were right, everyone else wrong. The “I’m okay – you’re not okay” syndrome of the criminal that makes sociologists believe he’s the hardest to reach.

  Maybe it was because my first work had been with seriously emotionally disturbed kids. Psychotic children. Children labeled autistic and schizophrenic, children that not only shut out the world, but replaced it with another of their own making, so that you had to move through barriers and strange lands of other worlds to reach them. And yet, some of those kids made progress, some of them grew. A few even made it to public school. If they could do it, Luke could. He almost had. We’d just have to start over.

  Chapter 21

  Luke left the classroom grudgingly. He walked at least three feet behind me down the hall and if I slowed, trying to be closer to him, he slowed his own steps so that he kept the same distance between us.

  In the music room he did not sit down. Instead, he stood just inside the door, looking down at his feet.

  I shut the door and he glanced at me briefly. I thought he might bolt, but he stood silently, head down.

  I went over to the long table where he had always worked and slouched in one of the metal chairs. I wasn’t expecting anything to happen. I just wanted to get a feel of Luke, be in the same room with him so I could absorb his vibrations and begin to understand where he was.

  We stayed just like that for fifteen or twenty minutes. I had the feeling Luke could have stood there for hours. He had always had control, too much control. No tears, few words, at least in the beginning. Now no movement. Now his running away was even more complete.

  I looked at the clock. I wouldn’t keep him over thirty minutes. Not fair to make him stand so still so long. I got up and moved toward him, but his head snapped to one side almost as if I’d hit him and I couldn’t bear that. I walked away to the other side of the room and stood there next to the blackboard, looking at Luke. We’d known each other so well. He must feel let down by me, as well as by everybody else. How can I tell him? What can I do?

  He won’t listen to me, won’t let me near him. Maybe I can write to him. I picked up the chalk and printed large clear letters on the blackboard.

  LUKE,

  I AM SORRY. I WANT TO HELP.

  LOVE, MARY

  I turned around slowly, not wanting to startle him. His head was up! He was looking at the board. Was he reading it? Don’t ask. Don’t push too hard. It was enough that he had raised his head.

  I walked into Professor Foster’s office without knocking, not caring about the kids on the bench.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  He swirled in his chair, among the piles of books and papers.

  “I might have been in a conference, you know. Would you please the hell knock next time?”

  I sat on the pile of books by his desk.

  “What happened to your wonderful program? Where were you and Jerry and the Mental Health Clinic and the head of special services and this whole state college when they left Luke back?”

  “They left him back? What are you talking about? I didn’t know anything about it. How come?”

  “Not ready for third-grade work. At least that’s what they say,” I sighed, some of the anger gone. “And maybe he wasn’t. But he was moving. He was doing better. And if he’d just had some kind of extra help in reading this year he could have caught up by the end of the third grade. I’m sure of it. Now they’ve got him in second, the same grade, although at least not the same class, as his little brother.

  “Mrs. Karras says the Child Study somebody reviewed Luke’s records and saw he was a year behind. I realize that makes sense on paper, but he isn’t paper.”

  “I know the Falls City Child Study Team,” Foster said. “They do a pretty fair job on the whole. The trouble is numbers. They have thousands of kids in that system. There’s no way the team could see each child individually. When did this happen?”

  “The end of June.”

  “I see. I was in Maine. Probably why they didn’t contact me. How about yourself?”

  “I was away a lot, too.”

  “So the kid arrived at school thinking he’d passed, ready for third grade, and finds himself shuffled back into second?”

  I nodded.

  “What’s Luke say?” Foster asked.

  “He doesn’t say anything. Or do anything. I don’t know why he shows up at school at all.”

  Foster stood up and shook his head. “It’s a shame. It’s things like this that made us get the clinic program started. Well, I’m sorry, Mary. We did have high hopes for the program. Just didn’t work out. There was a lot of political stuff going on at the clinic. I think I mentioned it once. Reorganization. Personnel changes.”

  I stood without speaking. None of what he said helped Luke.

  Foster sat back down again. “I honestly don’t know what else to say. I will call Bernie and get Luke on the waiting list for the clinic.” He paused, studying the papers on his desk. Then he cleared his throat and continued. “While you’re here, Mary, I might as well give you the other bad news and get it over with. Trouble never travels alone, they say.” He shuffled the papers on his desk and finally found what he wanted. He handed me a white sheet of paper with a pink slip attached to the back.

  I recognized the white sheet. It was the waiver form I had filled out the year before at Foster’s suggestion.

  All students were required to student teach for six weeks in their senior year. My only quarrel with this was that it was too little and too late. In my view, students should be out in actual classrooms during some part of each of their four years.

  As my adviser, Foster had suggested that since I had taught full time for six years, I should apply for a waiver that would allow me to substitute other courses for student teaching. Athough he didn’t mention it, I was quite sure that my age and the growing scarcity of student teacher positions contributed to his feeing that more would be lost than gained by my student teaching. Besides, it would give me a chance to catch up on the required courses I’d missed while working in Falls City.

  I turned the sheet over and read the pink slip. “Waiver denied. Teaching was not supervised so unable to determine if it was good or bad.” The slip was signed by the head of the department.

  I turned the paper in my hand. “What does this mean?”

  Foster shrugged. “That you have to student teach this spring. I’ll try to find you a good spot.”

  I took the pink slip and walked out of the office, across the campus, to the parking lot. I climbed into my car and drove out the gates, not heading anywhere in particular, just needing to be in a familiar place so I could think.

  I knew I was angry, but I wasn’t quite sure why. Luke had been given a bad deal – that was a legitimate thing to be angry about. I knew I also felt some guilt about not being there to help him, but I’d have to forgive myself for that. It had been right to spend that time with my mother. I wished I’d reached him over the summer. Where had he
been? I still didn’t know. Would I ever? Was he ever going to talk to me again?

  As I drove I thought about this and also about the rejection of the waiver for student teaching. How could they say they had no way of knowing whether my teaching was “good or bad”? They could have asked the director, Doris Fleming. Whatever else had gone on between us, she would have said I was a good teacher.

  But that’s not how “the system” works. Not neat enough. You need a living, breathing supervisor to observe and write reports.

  Okay. It’s the system. I guess that’s why I’m angry. “The system screws everything up.” I’d heard the kids in my classes and teachers at the school use the phrase a hundred times and I’d always felt that it was a cop-out. Shifting the blame. Well, fair’s fair. Now you’re a victim of the system yourself, Mary. You and Luke both. Wait. A glimmer of an idea. Be still. Wait. Let it grow.

  I felt a surge of happiness and I tooted my horn at no one in particular. I had it! I knew what I was going to do! Student teach in School 23. I’d spend the required time, six weeks of it, student teaching in Luke’s school. I wasn’t sure how, but that’s what I was going to do. One way or another Luke and I were going to beat the system and get out from under.

  Chapter 22

  The lights on the bridge came on just as Lisa and Mrs. Karras arrived at our apartment for dinner. We stood together on the terrace for a minute, looking out across the river at the Manhattan skyline. The swag of lights I loved outlined the arch of the George Washington Bridge, forming a necklace across the dark hollow of the Hudson River.

  When we walked back inside, Lisa surveyed the room – the thick white carpet, my grandmother’s cherry chest, the old dining table with leaves almost touching the floor, contrasting with the low, nubby white furniture and slate coffee table that Cal had made.

  “Nice,” she declared, and flopped full length on the couch. “I love it.” Then she sat up and stared at me. “What the hell are you doing in a dump like School Twenty-three?”