“Uh…Mom…” It was Mark’s voice, and something about his tone made her forget the dog slipping away at the back of the clinic, or the hysterical woman out front.
“Mark? What is it?”
“Uh…the principal…sort of…needs to talk to you.”
“The principal?” Before she had a chance to question Mark further, a man’s voice came on the line.
“Dr. Flaherty?”
“Yes?”
“This is Principal Ernest Little. I’m afraid we’ve had a problem this afternoon.”
“A problem?”
“Yes. I’m afraid we caught your son taking drugs in the bathroom.”
“Drugs?” she shouted out, and Annie came running up the hall, as if she couldn’t take the chance of missing this. “There must be some mistake!”
“No mistake,” the principal said. “I caught him red-handed. He and the two friends who were with him have been put on three-day suspension, and unfortunately, while we were talking in the office, he missed his bus.”
The blood rushed from her face, and she felt like that woman in her waiting room. Had she been in the principal’s office, she would have climbed across the desk and grabbed him by the throat, and demanded to know what he meant by drugs.
“What kind of drugs?” She prayed that it would be something benign. Tums, perhaps.
“Marijuana,” he told her.
“No way!” Cathy cried. “My son was not smoking marijuana!”
“I’m afraid he and his friends were caught red-handed.”
“What friends?” she asked. “Who were they?”
“Andy Whitehill and Tad Norris.”
She slapped her forehead and backed up. “I can’t believe this. I told him he was not allowed to hang around with those kids. They’re bad news. Mr. Little, you have to understand that Mark was probably just following the crowd. He’s not the leader type.”
“I’m not suggesting that he is, Dr. Flaherty. But that doesn’t change the fact that he was in the bathroom smoking that stuff. I could actually call the police and have him arrested for possession, but I thought it was better this first time just to call you instead.”
She closed her eyes. “Mr. Little, I appreciate your call. You can be certain that I’ll take care of this from my end. You will never catch my son smoking pot again.” She turned and saw Annie staring at her with her mouth wide open. “Right now, can I send my daughter to get him? I’m kind of in the middle of an emergency. A dog has been hit by a car and I need to do surgery immediately.”
She knew what he was thinking already. He was probably wondering if she considered a dog’s life more important than her son’s. She looked through the glass at the woman still crying in the waiting room. That vein on her neck was getting bigger.
“Certainly. That’ll be fine,” Mr. Little said in a disapproving voice.
“All right, thank you.”
She hung up and thought of throwing her receptionist’s paperweight through the glass, but decided that would be too entertaining to Annie. She was going to throttle Mark. And then she was going to scream and yell at him, and then she was going to spend a few hours making him memorize Scripture. She wondered if there was anything in the Bible about smoking marijuana. She’d have to ask Brenda…or Steve. She was still too new at all this.
Then she realized that she couldn’t tell Steve, the man she had been seeing for five months. She couldn’t let him know that her child was a reprobate who took drugs and got suspended from school.
Who was she kidding? He knew her children weren’t little angels. Already, they’d embarrassed her so many times that she didn’t know why he was still hanging around.
“Mom, what is it?” Annie asked.
She shoved her hair back and looked at her daughter in the doorway. “Annie, I need you to go get your brother.”
“My brother?” she asked. “I just heard the word marijuana hollered up the hall, and now you’re telling me that phone call was about Rick?”
“Not Rick. Mark.”
“Mark? So what happened?”
“He’s in the principal’s office. Just go right in there and tell the principal who you are—”
Annie’s eyes were round and slightly amused. “Mom, you have to tell me. This is my little brother we’re talking about.”
“Oh, right. Suddenly you’re very concerned about your little brother. It’s moving, Annie.”
“So did he get suspended or what?”
“For three days,” Cathy bit out.
“No way!”
“Annie, go get your brother. I have a poodle to keep alive.”
It was six before Cathy got home to deal with Mark. She had hesitated to leave the poodle, who had casts on three legs, wire stitches in her stomach, a feeding tube down her throat, and a ventilator tube in her lungs. The best she could tell the owner was that the dog would be sustained through the night, but she couldn’t even promise that. The woman didn’t threaten to attack, but went home wailing.
She pulled into the driveway and said a quiet prayer for strength before she went inside. At the back door, she stepped over the three backpacks that had been carelessly tossed down, and saw Annie, Mark, and Rick sitting together before the television in an unusual show of solidarity. Normally, they would be scattered across the house, studiously avoiding each other’s company, except to fight over the telephone or the computer.
Their intense interest in the Brady Bunch reruns was hard to swallow. She dropped her purse on the table. The fact that they didn’t turn around told her they were bracing themselves.
“Hi, Mom,” Annie said, glancing back at her. “How’s the poodle?”
“Alive.” Cathy crossed her arms. “What have you got to say for yourself, Mark?”
He looked much younger than thirteen as he turned to face her. “Mom, I didn’t do anything.”
She laughed sarcastically. “I might have expected that, Mark. Of course you did something, and you got caught red-handed.” She walked into the den and stood over him. “I want to know where you got the drugs.”
“Mom, you can get them anywhere.”
“Where did you get them?”
“Tad had it.”
“Mark, you know better than that. You know better than to smoke cigarettes in the boy’s rest room, let alone dope!”
“It wasn’t dope, Mom. It’s not like I was freebasing crack or something. It was just a little grass.”
The fact that her baby knew the term freebasing brought tears to her eyes. “Mark, what has gotten into you? I knew what would happen if you hung around with those kids. I knew they would drag you down the wrong path. Do you feel better now, Mark, being thrown out of school for three days? Making zeroes on everything that happens while you’re gone? Missing tests?”
“Well, it’s not like I was an A student.”
“Right,” she said. “So now your C’s and D’s will drop to F’s.”
“You don’t have to be so negative.”
“Negative! Mark, you must be kidding me!”
Annie tried not to laugh, but the humor overcame her. “That was not the thing to say, Mark.”
“Listen to her!” Cathy shouted. “She knows!”
Rick got up, unfolding to his full six feet. “Mom, don’t be so hard on him. He’s been punished enough.”
“Punished enough?” she shouted back. “Rick, I don’t need advice from you on parenting. If he’d been punished enough, then this wouldn’t have happened!”
“Where’s all that Christian love and forgiveness stuff you’ve been trying to teach us?” Mark asked.
“It doesn’t give my child license to hang around in the bathrooms with kids who take drugs. Mark, Mr. Little could have called the police. You could be in jail tonight.”
“Mom, they don’t send thirteen-year-olds to jail.”
“They send them to the detention center, Mr. Smart-mouth. Would you like me to take you there to show you?”
Mark
rolled his eyes, which almost sent her over the edge of control. “You know, now that I think about it, that might be an excellent thing to do. Brenda’s always taking her kids on field trips. Maybe we need to go on one. Tomorrow, while you’re on vacation, I’m going to take you to the juvenile detention hall downtown, and I’m going to show you just how cool it is. And then maybe you’ll think before you decide to take drugs again.”
“I just wanted to see what it was like!” he shouted.
“Now you’ve seen, and you’re going to see a little more. It’s like getting suspended from school, it’s like being grounded from associating with your friends for the rest of the school year. It’s like going to the juvenile detention center, only not as a visitor. Not as a tourist with your mom.”
“Boy, you’ve done it now,” Annie told Mark.
Mark looked distraught. “Mom, I’d rather go to algebra.”
“Well, you’re not going to algebra, because you’re suspended. You’re coming with me.” She stormed into the kitchen, racking her brain for what to cook for dinner. When she reached the counter, she saw the note that Rick had jotted. Steve had called. She hoped to heaven that they hadn’t told him what Mark had done.
She turned back around and saw all three kids still sitting in front of the television. “Go clean up your rooms,” she said. “All of you. And don’t come out until all your homework is done.”
“I don’t have homework,” Mark said. “I’m suspended.”
“Do it anyway.”
“Do what?”
“Whatever homework you would have been doing if you hadn’t been suspended.”
“I don’t know what that would be because nobody ever gave it to me.”
Annie shoved her brother. “Mark, shut up. You’re making it worse!”
“Yeah,” Rick said. “Go count the dirty socks in your room, before you make her turn on us, too!”
“Turn on you?” Cathy repeated. Then she stopped herself and realized this was going nowhere. “Annie? Do you have homework?”
“None. I did it all at school.”
“How about you, Rick?”
Rick shrugged. “I had three tests today, so we’re starting on new material.”
“Good.” She grabbed the Bible and flipped it open to Philippians 2. “Memorize this, then. Philippians 2 verses 14 through 16. Go upstairs and clean up your rooms, and when you get finished, since you don’t have anything to study, don’t come out of your rooms until you’ve memorized these verses.”
“Mom, that’s impossible!” Annie said. “That’s too long!”
“I can’t remember all that!” Mark moaned.
Rick took the Bible and rolled his eyes at the verses. “Oh, come on, Mom. Is this some kind of joke?”
“Read it out loud, Rick,” she said. “I want to hear you read it.”
He let out a laborious sigh, and began reading. “Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life—in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing.” He looked up at her.
She smiled. “Good. Run along now. And if you don’t memorize it, you’ll be in your room all night.”
“Mom, we’re not gonna go into the ministry just because you forced us to memorize Scripture,” Rick said.
“Maybe not. But it’ll make me feel like I’m doing one positive thing in your upbringing.”
“Yeah, nice positive verse to start with,” Annie said. “Our crooked and depraved generation.”
“Go! Now!”
Huffing and puffing, they all three headed up the stairs. She could hear voices in the hallway up there, and knew they were raking her over the coals, but she didn’t care. The phone rang, and she snatched it up. “Hello?”
“Cathy? Steve. You sound like you’re expecting someone else.”
She tried to breathe out her anxiety. “No, not at all. I was just kind of in the middle of something with the kids.”
“Really? What?”
“Uh…” She glanced toward the stairs. “Bible study.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. We were going over Philippians 2.”
“That’s great,” he said. “Did the kids understand it? Were they receptive to it?”
“They’re trying to memorize it before supper,” she evaded.
“No kidding.” He chuckled. “I’m very impressed.”
She fought the urge to burst into tears and tell him everything that had happened that day, from the pictures on the television about the aftermath of the hurricane in Nicaragua, to the poodle that she had on life support, to the marijuana in the bathroom.
“So did you have a good day today?”
She felt the anger seeping out of her, like air out of slashed tires. “I’ve had better.”
“Want to talk about it?”
She shook her head. “Oh, Steve, I’d really like to, but I can’t. Not right now.”
“I was hoping you were up to a pizza. Tracy and I were thinking we might bring a couple over and eat with you and the kids.”
Though it seemed tempting, she knew that one of the kids would give the disaster away. “It’s just not a good idea tonight,” she said. “Maybe tomorrow night. I’m really beat and I don’t think I’d be very good company. Plus I have to run back to the clinic in a little while to check on a poodle who got hit by a car.”
“Well, I understand.” She could hear the disappointment in his voice. “I’ll just call you tomorrow, and if you feel like talking anytime tonight and you get a free minute, give me a call and I’ll be here.”
“Thanks,” she said. She hung up as a tender smile softened her lips. He always did make her feel better. She was just sorry she had misled him into thinking she was having a sweet little family Bible study with her kids. Breathing out a deep sigh, she reached for the phone book, looked up the nearest pizza restaurant, and began to dial.
CHAPTER Eighteen
Outside, Joseph Dodd rode his bicycle around the little cul-de-sac as Brenda swept the driveway, fighting the urge to order him off his bike. The idea of her child taking any kind of risk, after the suffering he’d endured just weeks ago, was almost more than she could bear.
But there was something miraculous about seeing him on a bike again, though he didn’t yet ride fast or far, and she didn’t want to spoil it for him. He wouldn’t last long, pedaling around the circle. He was still working on rebuilding his stamina, but he was getting stronger each day. The doctor assured them that by next summer, he might be able to play baseball again. Though he took dozens of pills each day to keep from rejecting the heart, and would for the rest of his life, his recovery had been remarkable.
Leah and Rachel, her eleven-year-old twins, sat at the picnic table doing their homework. Daniel had gone inside to look something up on their computer.
“Mom, this is so boring,” Leah said. “You did this with us two years ago. I told Mrs. Higgins I already knew it, but she said just to do it again.”
“Well, I guess we can’t blame them for going slow,” Brenda said. “When I was homeschooling it was just us. We could go as fast as we wanted.”
“Now we go as slow as the slowest person in the class,” Rachel said. “And in science we’re studying atoms, and I told them we did a science project on that last year and won third place in the state, but the teacher acted like it didn’t count because it was homeschool.”
“Well, she just doesn’t understand. Be patient with her. How could she know?”
“Mom, can’t we start homeschooling again? Joseph’s doing fine, and he wants us back home. We don’t spend enough time with you when you work nights.”
Brenda had given it a lot of thought. She missed her children and wanted to teach them, but she just didn’t think she had the energy to do a good job as long as she was working nights. “I miss
being here, too,” she said. “But we’re all doing okay.” She stopped sweeping and smiled as she looked at Joseph. “Just look at him. If I have to work to keep him healthy, then none of us should complain.”
“But Mom,” Leah said. “I’m just stagnating in that school.”
“Stagnating?” Brenda asked, amused. “Is that one of your vocabulary words this week?”
Leah shrugged. “Maybe. But I am.”
“Well, that was a perfect use of it. See? You are learning.”
“But not like we learned at home. Mom, if you let us homeschool again, I promise I’ll never complain again about having to read all that historical stuff.”
“Historical stuff? You don’t mean the Federalist Papers, do you? You complained for weeks about that.”
“Mom, they don’t read that in public school until the eleventh grade honors classes, and then they only read pieces of it. You made us read all of them in fifth grade.”
“And you understood them. That was the amazing thing.”
Rachel piped in. “I’ll read it all again if you’ll let us come home. Mom, reading things in bits and pieces, learning theories without doing experiments…How can you remember any of it?”
“So what you’re saying is…” Brenda leaned down and rubbed noses with Rachel. “…that there’s method in my madness? Making you read entire original documents isn’t equivalent to child abuse?”
“We promise, Mom. We’ll never complain again.”
She smiled. “I’m thinking about it,” she said. “And so is your dad. But there are problems with homeschooling now. On the days when I have to take Joseph for his biopsies, you’d all be at home wasting time. And it’s very possible that they might occasionally have to put him back into the hospital. I wouldn’t be able to teach you then. Besides, I think going to school might be good for you. You need to see what it’s like, make some new friends, find out how it is to be taught by somebody besides your mom.”
“I like being taught by my mom,” Leah said. “In class, I sit through a whole hour doing math, and I never get called on. We move so slowly. At home, when I’m working with you, I get to answer all of them. And I like having time to really dig into things like you make us do. Not just get the homework done and see what the grade is.”
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