“I told you to do your assignment.” Her voice was rising. “Why couldn’t you just follow orders?”
“Why can’t you just calm down?” he asked. “You sound like my mom.”
She felt her scalp tingling as the fury built up inside her. “Mark, you deliberately disobeyed me…again.”
The firemen were busy dousing the grass in case any live sparks remained. David came up behind her and put his arm around Brenda’s shoulders. “No harm done,” he said. “This time. I can rebuild the picnic table.”
“See?” Mark told Daniel. “No harm done.”
“No thanks to you,” David said. “How about a little more remorse and a little less attitude?”
“Attitude? The experiment was her idea. She showed us how to do it.”
David shot Brenda a look that said no amount of money was worth this.
“Mark, you’re really testing my patience.” Brenda’s hands trembled.
“What?” he asked. “Now everybody’s mad at me. I was just trying to do my work.”
“You were not trying to do your work!” Brenda bellowed. “You were doing exactly what I told you not to do, and it could have hurt or killed somebody.”
“But since it didn’t, can we just move on? The picnic table was old, anyway. You needed a new one.”
Brenda grabbed Mark’s arm and glared into his face. “I’ve tried to work with you, Mark. I’ve tried to help you. But I can’t stand this anymore. I don’t know what to do for you.”
He jerked away from her. “Then just let me go home.”
“No, I’m not going to let you go home, because your mother’s not there, and you might burn her house down.”
“So what do I have to do?”
“You have to go into the living room and sit there by yourself until your mother gets home.”
“The living room? There’s nothing in there, not even a TV.”
“You don’t need anything to do. You just need to sit there and think.”
“Think about what?”
“About what you did wrong today. What you need to apologize for.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” he insisted.
“Just go into the living room,” she demanded. “Now!”
Finally, Mark obeyed and started into the house.
Brenda turned back to Daniel. “Go get your brother and sisters from Miss Tory’s,” she said. “I want everybody back to the school books, now.”
Daniel wiped his face and looked up at her. “I’m sorry, Mama. I should have stopped him.”
“Next time, tell me or your father before he blows something up.” She saw the deep contrition on her son’s face, and pulled him into a hug. “Oh, honey, I’m so glad you’re all right. And I’m sorry you had to see me lose my cool. I thought I was above that.”
She tried to hold back her tears, but failed. Daniel hugged her back, then headed to Tory’s house to get his siblings. She wanted to go with him, to tell Tory how sorry she was that their talk had been interrupted. Tory needed her, but she couldn’t leave Mark in there alone. There was no telling what he might do.
“You okay?” David asked.
“No,” she said, “I’m not okay.”
He turned her around to face him. “Mark’s getting to you, isn’t he?”
Her face was getting hot with emotion. “He’s driving me crazy, David. I don’t know if I can take this.”
“Maybe you just need to have another talk with Cathy.”
“David, if I don’t keep teaching him, what are we going to do? We need this money.”
“Maybe I can get a job at night. We’ll work something out.”
“No. I can do this. I know I can. I’ve just got to figure out how to get through to him. I thought I was making progress. He seemed so interested today, and he did really well on his test this morning. But this…”
“You know, you don’t have to finish school today,” he said. “You could just take the rest of the day off.”
“No,” she said. “It’s like getting back on a horse after falling off. I’ve got to keep going or I’ll give it all up entirely.”
That afternoon, when Mark went home from school, he told his mother that Brenda made him sit in the living room alone all afternoon with nothing to do.
“All right, Mark,” Cathy said. “Give it to me straight, because you know I’ll find out from Brenda. What did you do?”
“I had an accident doing a science experiment. It caught fire and almost killed me. The fire department came and everything.”
Cathy’s mouth fell open, and she looked out the front window and saw the charred picnic table and the black spot on the Dodds’ lawn. “A fire?” she asked, turning back to him. “Mark, were you hurt?”
“Of course I was hurt,” he said. “It knocked me off my bench. But she was over at Tory’s house, so there was nobody but Daniel there to help me.”
“Wait.” The story wasn’t adding up. Brenda had left Mark alone while he did a potentially dangerous science experiment? “Just…I’m going to talk to Brenda, okay? I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”
“Fine,” he said. “You’ll see. I’m supposed to psychically know chemistry and get the experiment right.”
“So she really left you alone to do it? Just you and Daniel?”
“That’s right. While she hung out with Tory.”
This time when Cathy stormed over to demand an explanation, she found Brenda more agitated than she was.
“Hold it!” Brenda said at the door. “If you came to lambaste me about keeping him in the living room all afternoon, you’d better get the real story first.”
Cathy had never seen Brenda angry. She responded with maternal defensiveness. “He said you were at Tory’s while he was doing a dangerous experiment. He said he almost got blown up!”
“Of course he said that!” Brenda almost shouted. “Cathy, either you trust me or you don’t.”
“Well, were you at Tory’s?”
“Yes! Because I saw her screech home and run in crying, and then Barry screeched home, and left with a suitcase. They’ve separated, and I was trying to comfort her.”
“Separated?” Cathy asked. “Oh, my gosh.”
“And since Mark is thirteen years old I thought he could be trusted without adult supervision for fifteen minutes!”
“Well, yeah, but not with dangerous chemical compounds.”
“He didn’t have dangerous compounds, Cathy. They were on a shelf in David’s workshop. But Mark can’t be trusted on the same block with dangerous compounds!”
“Now, wait a minute,” Cathy said. “He’s never blown up anything before. It was an accident!”
Brenda closed her front door behind her and came out onto her porch. She dropped onto her swing. She looked as if she was close to bursting into tears. “They call me Homier-than-thou, you know.”
Cathy crossed her arms, still fuming. “Who does?”
“The other homeschooling moms. They call me that behind my back, because I’m usually so organized and structured. ‘Don’t compare yourself to Brenda Dodd because nobody can have that tight a schedule.’ They’re all more flexible and relaxed, which works for them. But they don’t understand that I have to be structured to keep five kids progressing. But look at me today! I want to pull my hair out.”
Cathy suddenly felt sorry for her. The anger drained out of her. She sighed and sank into a rocker. “Mark did this to you, didn’t he? He ruined your disposition and your way of life.”
Brenda breathed a laugh. “Let’s not go that far. I’m just having a bad day. But he almost burned my house down, Cathy,” Brenda said. “He destroyed the picnic table. Did he tell you the fire department was here?”
“Yes. But if it wasn’t a science experiment…”
“He had an unauthorized run-in with a Bunsen burner, after we had done the experiment and put everything away. Thankfully, no one was hurt. My blood pressure may never be the same…” She rubbed her e
yes. “I had put the compounds in David’s workshop. Mark went in there and got them while David was in the house. He knew better.”
Cathy buried her face in her hands. “I don’t get it. By now, I thought he would have settled in. That he’d be learning…”
“He’s learning,” Brenda admitted, calming down. “Really, this morning, he did so well on his test that I thought I’d be praising him all day. I was feeling really good about his progress, until…”
“Until he tried to nuke your house.”
Neither of them saw humor in that.
“Is he going to give you a nervous breakdown?” Cathy asked.
“No,” Brenda said. “I won’t let him.”
“So does that mean you’re not going to teach him anymore?”
Brenda smiled. “Cathy, I committed to do it, and I will.”
“But if you’re going to start hating and avoiding me, and he’s going to refuse to learn another thing for the rest of his life…I’ll let you off the hook, Brenda.”
Brenda seemed to be thinking it over. Suddenly, she got up. “Wait here a minute.” She went in to her desk, got Mark’s test paper, and brought it back to Cathy. “Here. See? He is learning.”
Cathy looked down at it and saw that he had correctly answered questions about Noah’s family, about the Tower of Babel, about the seven days of Creation. She wiped her eyes. There was hope. “You’re a miracle worker,” she said. “This is amazing.”
“Cathy, this is not a big deal. You’ve been going over the same material. Maybe he learned it from you. But he’s doing really well in math, too.”
“Math? You’re kidding me.”
“No. He even picks it up faster than Daniel. See? There’s hope.”
Cathy’s expression softened. “Brenda, I promise I’ll buy you a new picnic table.”
“I don’t want another picnic table,” she said. “That’s not it. I just want him to listen to me, to show remorse when he does something wrong. I want his attitude to improve.”
“Well, since those things seem about as likely as peace in the Middle East, you’d better think this quitting thing over again,” Cathy said. “I’ll make other arrangements if I need to.”
“Not yet.” Brenda sighed. “I’ll give it a little more time. But I can’t promise anything. I can’t stand this kind of turmoil in my life. It’s not good for my own kids. Even if it does make me less homier-than-thou.”
“I’ll do what I can to straighten him out,” Cathy said.
When Cathy had gone home, Brenda went back into the bedroom and dropped down on the bed, her hand over her forehead to dull the throbbing.
Joseph came into the room and leaned on the side of her bed. “Mama, are you okay?”
“Yeah, honey,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”
“Can I lay down with you?”
“Lie,” she said. “Can you lie down with me.”
Joseph grinned. “That, too.”
She scooted over and he climbed up next to her. For several moments, they lay side by side, staring quietly at the ceiling.
“Mama, I feel kind of sorry for Mark.” He turned over on his side and looked at her.
She looked into her little boy’s eyes. “Why, Joseph?”
“The way he’s always horsing around trying to get us to laugh, instead of doing his work. I think it’s kind of a cover-up.”
“A cover-up for what?”
“I think he thinks he’s stupid and he thinks he doesn’t want to learn, but he seems really proud when he does.”
“That’s the thing about trying to do the right thing for somebody,” she said, stroking the cowlick in Joseph’s red hair. “You know it will make them happy in the long run. But when they put up such a fight, it’s almost not worth it.”
“We’re supposed to love the ones who make it hard, too. Right, Mama?”
She smiled at her son, and touched a cheek that was rounded from the use of steroids. “Thank you, Joseph. I needed to be reminded of that today.”
“You’re the one who taught me,” he said. He slipped off the bed, twisting his shirt, and she caught a glimpse of the scar that cut through his little chest. He was recovering so well, and the pink in his skin was more than she had ever hoped to see again. Yet, here he was, able to lie with her on the bed and impart wisdom about their neighbors. She gave him a tight hug.
“Don’t crush me,” he said with a giggle, and she let him go.
As he left the room, Brenda wilted back onto the bed and began to pray that God would help her to do the right thing.
That night, Brenda went back over to Cathy’s house and renewed her commitment to teach Mark. She told her not to worry about her giving up, that Joseph had shown her that God had ordained this.
Relieved beyond words, Cathy marched Mark down the stairs and made him apologize to Brenda for burning up her picnic table and for disregarding her rules. He seemed genuinely sorry as he got the words out.
When Mark had returned to his room, she and Brenda sat on the couch. “Bad day,” Cathy said.
“Yeah. Sounds like it was for everybody. Have you talked to Tory?”
“A little while ago,” she said. “She’s pretty upset.” She thought that over for a moment. “You know what I’d really like to do?”
“What?” Brenda asked.
“I’d like to call Sylvia.”
A slow smile crept across Brenda’s face. “That’s a great idea. Let’s get Tory, and we can all talk to her. That’ll cheer all of us up.”
CHAPTER Fifty-Six
The grief in Sylvia’s heart clung more tightly than Harry’s arms. It seemed bigger than the blessings he whispered in her ear, more mighty than the joys she had come to León to proclaim. It was slanderous, self-pitying, systematic grief that disassembled her, piece by piece. She didn’t know how she would ever overcome it.
Harry didn’t let her go until the telephone rang, and reluctantly, he got up to answer it. She blew her nose as he muttered in the other room. He probably had an emergency, she thought. Someone who needed him more than she did. He would have to go to the clinic and leave her alone.
It was probably just as well. There was little he could do for her here.
But when he came back into the room, he didn’t have that look of apology she’d expected on his face. Instead, he was smiling. “Sylvia, it’s long distance from Tennessee. Brenda, Tory, and Cathy.”
She sat up straighter. “All of them?”
“All three,” he said.
“But how did they know?”
“God knew,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her to her feet. “Come talk to them.”
She went to the telephone in the other room. A smile tickled across her face as she answered. “Hello?”
“Sylvia.” All three of them spoke at once. The sound was like Mozart after fingernails on a chalkboard.
“Oh, boy, are you three a godsend!” She started to cry again. She sucked in a breath, and tried to control her voice. “Whose house are you calling from? I just want to picture where you are.”
“We’re at Tory’s,” Cathy said, “all on different extensions.”
“What’s wrong?” Brenda asked Sylvia. “You sound stopped up. Are you sick?”
Sylvia drew a deep breath, and thought of lying to keep from bringing them down. But she didn’t have the energy to keep it to herself. “We found the baby’s mother,” she said. There was silence on the other end for a long moment. It was clear that her neighbors didn’t know whether to rejoice for the child or grieve for Sylvia. “I ought to be happy,” she admitted. “I mean, she needs her mom, doesn’t she, instead of some silly old woman who wants to be a mother again?”
“You’re only fifty years old,” Cathy said. “For heaven’s sake, that’s not old.”
“It feels old.” She swallowed hard and dabbed at her eyes again. “I thought God was letting me have another crack at motherhood, but instead, he was just letting me baby-sit.”
“Oh, Sylvia…”
She pursed her lips and waved a hand in the air, as if they could see it. “Never mind that. Carly’s fine. That’s the important thing. Now, what’s going on with all of you?”
They were all hesitant to blurt it out. Finally, Cathy spoke up. “Looks like it’s a banner day for all of us. Tory, you go first.”
“What is it, honey?” Sylvia asked.
Tory’s voice was hoarse. Sylvia knew she had been crying, too. “Barry moved out today,” she said. “We had a terrible fight after I caught him confiding in another woman about our marriage.”
“Oh, no. Where is he?”
“He’s at the Holiday Inn.”
Sylvia suddenly forgot her own grief. “Oh, Tory, you’ve got to get him back.”
“Sylvia, this woman works with him. Every night, he works late. He was telling her about our sleeping arrangements!”
“Did you see them together? Were they touching?”
“No, not right there in the office, but—”
“Okay,” Sylvia said, still hopeful. “It wasn’t right for him to confide in her, but that’s not enough to end a marriage over.”
“Sylvia, he’s listening to her about aborting our child.”
Sylvia closed her eyes. She wished she could have five minutes alone with Barry and straighten him out. “Okay, that’s it. I’m going to stop feeling sorry for myself right this minute. I wish I could do something for you.”
“Thank you, Sylvia,” Tory said. “There’s really nothing.”
“Don’t give up on him, Tory. He’s still a good man.”
“It’s hard.” Her brevity spoke volumes. Tory usually waxed eloquent about her problems. Now she could hardly speak at all.
“I know, honey. But I still believe he’s going to come around. So Cathy and Brenda, are you two helping Tory?”
“We’re trying,” Cathy said, “but like I said, it’s been a banner day for all of us.”
“There’s more?” Sylvia asked. “What is it?”
“Mark again,” Cathy said. “Brenda just about lost it today when he caught her picnic table on fire. Mark’s very gifted, I guess. If he can send Brenda over the edge, he can send anybody.”
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