“Do you have a mentor?” I asked, as we huffed up the hill. His strides were so much longer than mine that I was trying not to compromise my dignity by breaking into a trot.
He shook his head.
“Do you want to get one?” I persisted.
“I don’t know. What would I do with some old person?”
I decided to overlook this. “Well, it could also be a young person. I—I was thinking of volunteering. I think you would hang out, I guess. I might ask about it today, and I could let you know.”
“I wouldn’t want a girl mentor.”
Really, he was impossible. “I’m not trying to be your mentor, Kyle! Guys get guy mentors, I’m pretty sure.”
Kyle mulled this over. “I guess it would be all right. As long as he wasn’t like my dad. That would suck big time.”
I figured it would be too nosy at this point to pursue that subject—not that Kyle seemed particularly hung up on the social niceties—so I stuck with Star Wars questions until we reached the school. He handed me back my books and, staring at the sidewalk, said abruptly, “If you want me to read your book and make sure it’s okay, I could do that.”
He was such an odd mixture of alien teenage boy and gallant knight that I couldn’t read him, but I felt touched nonetheless. “It’s a deal! I wouldn’t want it to be crap, after all.” He scribbled his email address on my library receipt and then darted inside without even looking at me or saying good-bye.
Hesitating with my hand on the door, I had another brief, one-sided argument with God. Okay, already, you got me here. And Kyle seemed like a good kid. If you insist, I’ll just go inside and ask about it, but no promises! What do I know about drugs or vandalism or connecting with teenagers? Taking a deep breath, I went inside.
I found myself in a small, neat reception area, reminiscent of a 1970s dentist’s office. “Hello!” a young woman greeted me from behind her desk. “Are you here for the mentors’ meeting?”
“What?” I gasped.
“The mentors’ meeting,” she repeated, taking in my amazed expression. “The meeting to learn about becoming a mentor. It starts in the Director’s office in about five minutes. Or maybe you have a child you want to enroll here..?” Given that I was only 32, that meant she either thought I looked like 42 or that teen pregnancy was nothing new in the population they targeted. I was going to go with that.
As for the mentors’ meeting, there it was, I suppose. My sign. I guess I was going to become a mentor. Maybe God found it easier to produce a deux ex machina than to tackle the heavier stuff. I managed to nod, and, after regarding me curiously another moment, the admin pointed to the hallway. “First door on the right.”
Feeling her eyes on my back and wishing I’d dressed up a little, I forced myself to walk down the hallway. All the doors on either side were closed, and behind them I could hear the hum of voices. In the Director’s office a few other people were already waiting, most of whom I’m sure Kyle would classify as old, though there was one man about my age. I wondered randomly if they also had been tricked by God into being there. When their heads turned to look at me, I pinned on a general smile and took an empty chair.
“Won’t this be exciting?” the lady next to me asked. A willing victim, then. She looked to be in her seventies, with neatly waved white hair and hazel eyes, and she sported a bright quilted jacket with appliqués that I didn’t think would go over so well with teenage girls. “I’ve never done anything like this, but I heard that student speak in church and thought I might give it a try.”
I felt rather embarrassed to think I’d been putting up such a fight when someone twice my age was being more adventurous. “I was on the fence,” I admitted, “but I ran into one of the students just now at the library, and he seemed like a good guy. We walked back up here together,” I added, leaving out the vandalism and cussing parts.
“At the library?” huffed one of the older men. “Well, I guess if you’re cutting class, that’s not such a bad place to be.”
I smiled benignly. “I ran into him in the science fiction section. He knew a lot about Star Wars but didn’t seem to know much about the mentor program.”
“He knew a lot about Star Wars?” The younger man spoke up, leaning forward. Looking directly at him for the first time I realized he was very attractive. He was of middling build—Joanie would certainly call him “short”—with a pleasant face, gray eyes and curling brown hair. His looks didn’t knock the wind out of you, like Daniel’s tended to if you weren’t prepared, but there was something about his overall demeanor: the way he held himself alert and attentive, the smile in his eyes, the way of looking at you as if you were either very important or very interesting or both. I imagine the word I was looking for was “charming.”
I was thankful for my wedding ring, which I twisted self-consciously. At least I could converse with him without him thinking I had anything in mind. Or not. Maybe only women looked for wedding rings. He didn’t have one, for example. “Yes,” I answered. “He’d read a lot of the books about the movies and had even met some of the authors, so he had very definite recommendations to give me. I didn’t dare check out any books besides the ones he approved. Do you like Star Wars too?”
“Sure. But more to the point, I work for a video gaming company, and we’re working with Lucas Arts to develop some games. What was his name? If I clear the mentor bar I’ll try to hook up with him. It would give us something natural to talk about.”
Before I could answer, the Director of Camden School swept in, bringing the conversation to a close. Mark Henneman was a big, energetic bear of a man. He shook each of our hands firmly and plopped down in his chair to deliver a practiced speech about the mission and vision of Camden School. He talked about a typical student’s background (Kyle was indeed an anomaly), teaching strategies, and goals of the mentor program.
“Did you know that teens with stable, loving adult influences in their lives are less likely to do drugs, drink, drop out, or engage in violence? But we’ve found our typical students have very few solid, grounded adult influences in their lives. Oftentimes they live in a single-parent family, or there are two parents who are not around much or not emotionally available for whatever reasons—maybe the parents are dealing with substance addiction themselves. The public school system isn’t meeting the needs of these kids because it doesn’t have the bandwidth to fill in the gaps in these students’ lives. We try to do that here at Camden with on-site addiction counseling, life counseling, access to rehab programs, more one-on-one instruction and attention. And now we’re adding this mentor piece. We envision matching up each of our students with a mentor, someone who will hang out with them or at least have some phone contact with them once a week, someone who will pray for that student, be a role model, do occasional special activities with other students and mentors. We’ll have monthly trainings to cover topics like building trust, understanding addiction, safety and boundaries, and so on. You don’t need to be an expert in anything. Can you love someone and invest in him or her? Can you try to build a relationship of trust? Can you applaud that student when he makes good choices and keep believing in him even when he makes bad ones?”
We were all inspired by now and sitting forward in our seats; even I felt like I might be able to manage, since I only had to be dedicated, rather than impressive.
Mark Henneman answered a few questions that arose and wound up by giving each of us an application to fill out and return. Once they’d checked references they would work on matching us up, schedule the monthly trainings, and invite us to the kick-off group activity.
We briefly went around the circle introducing ourselves—name, occupation, how we got interested in becoming a mentor. I stumbled some on the “occupation” part and said “freelance writer.” Hopefully the School would recognize you could hardly beat freelance writers for dedication, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to confess I was an unemployed widow doing housework for reduced rent. As for how I became in
terested in being a mentor, I could only say, “When the student Ellie gave her testimony in church, I felt very strongly that this was something I was supposed to do.” Never mind that I did my best to ignore that strong feeling until circumstances cornered me today.
The woman I had chatted with was named Louella Murphy, and she was altogether more honest and brave than I was. “I’m retired, of course, but I used to be a nurse. Recently I lost my husband Frank after fifty-one years of marriage, and I want to see what God has for this new stage of my life. Frank and I used to go on medical mission trips to Central America, but that gets harder with age. I figure I can still get around and talk and love and pray, so here I am.” What did I tell you? The woman made me look pathetic.
When we got around the circle, the young man introduced himself as “James Kittredge, project manager at a video game company,” and I only managed to keep my mouth from popping open in surprise. Could this be Chaff James? The cute new guy who had all the sharks circling, as Joanie would say? Wait till she heard this! James, too, seemed more excited than intimidated by the mentoring thing; he had volunteered with Young Life all through college.
As everyone gathered their things to go, I saw James hanging back. Like Kyle, he unceremoniously relieved me of my pile of books and checked out the titles. “I definitely need to meet this kid. He knows his stuff.”
“His name is Kyle,” I volunteered.
“Kyle,” he repeated. “I’ll remember that. So what exactly are you doing with a pile of expert Star Wars books? Some of your freelance writing?”
I suppressed a squirm. My project sounded dumber each time I had to explain it. “I’ve mostly done grant writing and wanted to try some fiction, so I’m trying a movie novelization. You know, those dumb books they sell with the actors’ photos on the cover. This way I thought I could compare my novelization to an existing one and see if I’m any good at it. Kind of like when you try to break into screenwriting, and they make you start with writing episodes for existing shows. Kyle actually promised to read it and tell me if it was crap.”
James grinned. “I like this kid! The world doesn’t need any more crap. If Kyle thinks it’s any good, you should let me take a look. We’re always looking for writers to do the game narrative and dialogue.”
My eyes widened. “Really truly?”
“Really truly—if it’s not crap. And on a related note, have you ever done any acting work?”
If I had heard Daniel ask someone that, I would think it was a creepy pick-up line. “Acting work? Not really, unless you count high school drama,” I confessed. “I was Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Rebecca Gibbs in Our Town.”
James laughed. “We most certainly count high school drama. I don’t know if you play many video games, but they don’t exactly call for Oscar-winning performances. I know it’s a weird question, but we need actors to record game dialogue, and you have a nice voice, kind of low and sweet.”
That absolutely floored me. After a moment I managed to joke, “So I wouldn’t be Chewbacca, then?”
We were outside by now, standing by a motorcycle. When James handed me my books back and unhooked the helmet, I realized this bike didn’t belong to any student. My husband Troy had been a bike fanatic for as long as I’d known him, only giving up riding after Min was born, and it took me only half a beat to recognize that James rode a pretty sweet Ducati. “Is that a Monster City?” I breathed.
It was his turn to stare. “You a Ducati fan too, or just doing some freelance writing about them?”
I shook my head. “No. My husband had an M750, a couple years ago, and I—I remember him reading about these.” I hoped I wasn’t blushing when I mentioned Troy. It was one of the awkwardnesses of widowhood. Should I be saying “my late husband”? It sounded too ominous and opened up a conversational can of worms for which I didn’t have the time or energy.
“Another guy I’m going to have to meet,” said James, swinging his leg over the bike. Oops, probably should have mentioned it, then. Well, presumably they’d meet in heaven, and it was too weird to clarify now. He held out a hand to me. “It was great meeting you, Cass. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you at that first group activity.”
We shook hands—his grip was more assertive than Kyle’s limp fish—and he was off, leaving me to walk home bemused. What did Phyl mean by calling him too tame? I would have thought working in video games and tooling around town on a Ducati Monster would have gained some traction with her. I picked up the pace, suddenly eager to run my day past Joanie.
• • •
“Chaff James? It was Chaff James?” Joanie’s voice rose with excitement. “And he liked your voice? He must think you are so cool, knowing about Star Wars and motorcycles! Didn’t I tell you he was cute? And taller than you, am I right?”
“For the last time, Joanie, I’m not thinking of meeting anyone right now. I still email my mother-in-law almost every day, for crying out loud!” She sighed exaggeratedly and went back to dusting the bookshelves. After a moment I couldn’t help adding, “Besides, he thinks I’m married.”
The duster paused. “Because of your ring, you mean? He probably didn’t even notice it.”
“Noooo…” Sheepishly I recounted my misleading comment about Troy. “And I’ll just have to leave it at that, not that it matters. If we get to know each other through this mentoring thing, it’ll just come up at some point.”
“Yeah, and he’ll feel like an idiot for saying he’d like to meet Troy and you not mentioning that, oh by the way, Troy is dead.”
“Oh, well,” I said helplessly. “It’s done already, so stop picking on me.” As it happened, Joanie would turn out to be right, but that was months in the future, and I don’t want to get ahead of myself.
Chapter Six: Meeting Nadina
The next week was my turn to clean the Lean-To. I’d never been inside Daniel’s place, and it was pretty spare. The kitchen was practically empty and untouched, since Daniel did all of his eating at the Palace—only a few wine glasses and coffee mugs in the sink which he hadn’t bothered to return. In the bathroom I found one meager hand towel and bar of soap, and in the laundry room there wasn’t even any detergent—I would have to bring it over from the Palace.
There was, however, a cozy living room with built-in bookshelves surrounding a fireplace. When Daniel was home, he spent his evenings in the Lean-To, even if Missy wasn’t over; I assumed he watched television or worked when he was alone, but there didn’t appear to be any television here, while his book collection was vast. People’s libraries are irresistible to me, so my dusting went pretty slowly. He seemed to be a fan of the classics, and I ran my finger fondly over leatherbound editions of my favorites, but there were other, more unusual offerings: The Complete Works of Francis Bacon, volumes of travel essays, polar exploration, history of science, presidential biographies, British editions of Harry Potter. Ancient and contemporary maps hung on the wall, but the only photograph I saw was one of him as an adolescent beside a little Joanie on a fishing boat, holding up an impressive salmon. They were more wiry but recognizable and already hinting at their future extraordinary good looks.
When I went upstairs to get the laundry, I was relieved to find that Daniel was as much of a neat-freak as Phyl. His closet, like hers, looked like it had just been organized by a professional, and all the laundry was in a hamper, rather than on any available surface, floor to ceiling, like Joanie’s. Even though we each did our own personal laundry, it was challenging even to dust Joanie’s room, as everything lay buried beneath a thick layer of clothing and clutter. I stripped the bed, trying very hard not to think about the hard usage the sheets had been put to, and had just started the load when my cell phone rang.
It was Mark Henneman. I had only turned in my mentor application the day before, so maybe my recent history set off auto-rejection flags.
“Is this Cassandra Ewan?” he boomed. “This is Mark Henneman of Camden School.”
“Hello, Mark. Yes.
Please, call me Cass.”
“Cass, it was great to meet you last week. Your application looks perfect, and your references checked out, and I would love to hook you up with one of our students.”
I felt a butterfly in my stomach. They must be more desperate for volunteers than I thought. “You already talked to my references? I mean, that’s great news.”
He hesitated. “I talked this morning to Margaret Russ, and that was good enough for me.”
Margaret Russ was the Congregational Care pastor at church who had led my Grief Recovery class last winter. I had listed her unwillingly—what could she say besides, “She was younger than most in the class but equally grief-stricken and angry at God”?—but in such a big church she was the pastor who knew me best. I guess if Camden School still wanted me after talking to Margaret, who was I to say no? I cleared my throat. “I can’t wait to meet her—my student, I mean.”
“You’re going to love her!” declared Mark. “Her name is Nadina Stern, and she’s a sophomore. She just joined the school this year. All the kids have heard now about the mentor program, but we haven’t told them more than that because we don’t know how many mentors we’ll have. But you can give her a call and explain who you are, and she’ll understand. Do you have a pen and paper?”
I scrambled through Daniel’s empty kitchen drawers until I found a stubby pencil and an old receipt. “Shoot.”
He rattled off her cell number and then told me the first optional group activity for mentors and their students would take place the Saturday after this one: a sailing trip on Lake Washington followed by a barbecue. “I’ll send you that information in an email, but we’re encouraging our mentors to hang out with their student before that.”
“Absolutely,” I said. “At least, I’ll call Nadina and try to set up some times to hang out and get to know each other.”
Mourning Becomes Cassandra Page 6