Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes
Page 14
“I’m just browsing.” Julia scanned the store, her ponytail sliding over her shoulder as she turned her head to survey the displays. “You always have the cutest things.”
“Thanks,” the woman said. And then: “You look familiar. Have we met?” Julia looked back at her. They’d probably interacted here in the store before, she thought, and was about to tell her so when the clerk began blinking rapidly and took a step back. “No,” she said. “I know.” And suddenly she was giggling.
“Excuse me?” Julia half smiled, confused.
“I’m sorry.” The woman covered her mouth. “It’s just,” she whispered and leaned in, “I saw the video.”
“The video?” Julia turned her head again, this time toward the exit. How could this woman have recognized her from that grainy footage? Julia’s arm fell, the jeans dusting the floor.
“You’re the theater mom, right?” the saleswoman said. “In that video? The girl?” She laughed again. “Oh my goodness.” She covered her mouth as Julia stepped back.
“Could you take this?” Julia held the pants out. “I have to go.”
ISOBEL JOHNSON
Isobel had just slipped off one of her flats and stretched her toes under her desk when Wayne Wallace rapped on her door after school and blustered in. She scrambled to slide her foot back into its shoe even though her feet were concealed.
“Ms. Johnson,” Wayne said, crossing the room in large strides, “have you got a minute?” Isobel felt panic rising. She couldn’t remember the last time the principal had appeared in her classroom. Something bad must have happened. Had Mary talked to him about the queer theory lesson? Had he decided to circle back about the voice mail she hadn’t finished recounting?
“I’ve got a minute.” Isobel tried to smile, but faltered. She closed her laptop and folded her hands over it, the metal top cool against her skin. She wondered briefly if she should stand, but Wayne quickly maneuvered his large frame into a student desk near her. She stayed put.
“The other day,” Wayne began, looking over her head, “you mentioned something about a voice mail? I’m afraid we didn’t have time to finish that conversation. I’m sorry about that.”
Isobel silently cursed her decision to go to Wayne with the voice mail, especially now that Mary had criticized her curriculum. “That’s okay,” she said.
“You said something about the caller accusing you of—” He paused, frowning. Clearly he couldn’t remember exactly. Could she revise her comments? Soften things? “What did the caller accuse you of again?”
“Actually, as I reflected on it, it seemed like less of a big deal,” she tried.
“But what did the caller say?” Wayne pressed. “I was thinking of it again because I got a letter from Sheila Warner. Her daughter, Erin, is in your class?” Isobel nodded. Erin, as far as she could tell, tried as hard to avoid speaking aloud in American Lit as she did on anything Isobel assigned. “Sheila works for Senator McGuire,” Wayne said.
“Okay.” Isobel wasn’t sure how this fact connected to the voice mail. She glanced down at that morning’s coffee, an iridescent sheen on the top. She quickly considered whether to mention that the message had accused her of “anti-Americanism,” “Marxism,” or a “blatant liberal agenda.” Marxism, she decided, was the least sweeping. “The caller mentioned Marxism,” she said.
“Did you tell your American Lit class that Atticus Finch was a white supremacist?” Wayne blurted.
“What?”
“Sheila said something about Atticus Finch and white . . .” He stared at her. “Maybe it wasn’t supremacy. Did you talk about Atticus Finch being white?”
The helpless feeling she’d had when Mary delivered the news that she’d planned to observe her classroom rushed back to her chest. Isobel swallowed against it.
“I’ve always made it a point to notice the prevailing voices in the books I read with students,” Isobel said. She’d used the line many times at faculty meetings and in conversations with parents. “We ask, ‘Whose voices are we hearing? Whose voices are we missing?’ In To Kill a Mockingbird, we hear all the white voices—Scout, Atticus, Miss Maudie. And the black voices—”
Wayne shook his head. “Look,” he said, more urgently now, “this parent, Sheila Warner—she works for Senator McGuire, who sent his own children here when they were young. The senator’s office would prefer that American classics remain classic.”
Isobel wasn’t sure how to respond. Of course To Kill a Mockingbird was iconic. It wasn’t as if she could single-handedly remove texts from the canon. “It’s definitely a classic,” Isobel said.
“I’m not getting letters from parents in Lyle Greenwood’s class or Eleanor Woodsley’s class or even Jamie Preston’s class about Atticus Finch’s white supremacy.” Wayne looked tired and not a little peeved.
Isobel glanced at her desk calendar, where she’d written Pick Riley up at carpool in pencil on today’s date. “I don’t think I called Atticus a white supremacist,” she said. “We did talk about the white-savior complex.” She kept her voice above a whisper. “It’s the idea that white characters defend and protect—,” she started to explain, but Wayne cut her off.
“I know what you’re trying to do, Isobel, and it’s not that I don’t agree with you. But the community isn’t ready for conversations like that. Have you seen the Humans of LHHS feed today? The theme this week is marginalized voices, and today we’ve got the head of the Young Republicans claiming the school is discriminatory toward conservative-leaning students. You’ve got to tone it down.” Isobel could hear the echoes of Lyle’s warnings in his words. And Mary’s cautions, and Eleanor’s snide suggestions. Much to Isobel’s horror, tears threatened. She had the adolescent feeling of being utterly misunderstood, of trying to do her best and yet somehow not measuring up. Still, she was an adult, and crying in front of the boss was something she’d advised Jamie never to do. She repeated her own advice to herself now: Keep it together at all costs. Then cry in the car when the meeting is over.
She cleared her throat and tried to speak. “I always aim to give the students what they need to become critical thinkers.” Her voice was hoarse, but steady. Wayne hoisted himself from the desk.
“Just give them the books,” he said without looking at her again. “There’s buzz in the parent community, and you’ve got to shut it down.” He opened the door to the quiet hallway. “Give them punctuation and vocabulary. Sentence structure.” He waved a hand at her and didn’t look back. “Have a good evening.”
When he was gone, Isobel felt tempted to turn off the lights and put her head on her desk. She had a wild thought that she never should have left East High School in downtown Minneapolis, her first job. No parent there had ever written the principal about her teaching practices or decisions. But there was no time to wallow over her scolding or to regret the last eight years at Liston Heights. She had to leave now in order to be on time to pick up her son.
Isobel robotically packed her tote bag, including her plan book and a copy of The Crucible, the next classic for her American Lit students. She willed herself through the empty hallway, relieved not to see any member of her department as she headed out into the parking lot and shuffled toward her van. Once she was safely in the driver’s seat, her seat belt pressing on her chest, Isobel leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes.
What had just happened?
As soon as she’d asked herself the question, she knew the answer. She’d been officially censored. This went beyond a friendly warning from Lyle or a self-important “reminder” from Eleanor. It was even more serious than Mary’s furious note-taking as she observed Isobel’s classes. This was the big boss—the guy who would either renew her contract or dismiss her. And he was telling her to stop doing what she loved to do—getting to the moment when students realized something important, when they started seeing their world through a different lens.
Automatically, she drove toward Mills Park Elementary. She pulled into the carpool line just in time to be officially not late and stared blankly at the blue Accord in front of her. As she inched forward, she lowered the passenger-side sunshade, which held her pickup sign: JOHNSON RILEY (3RD GRADE). It was the first year Callie had been omitted. Isobel couldn’t believe her daughter was old enough for middle school.
As Isobel moved forward in line, her mind wandered back to her own middle school experience. It had been during eighth grade that her family—well, she, Caroline, and her mother—had moved from their five-thousand-square-foot home in a Rochester subdivision to that tiny two-bedroom rental ninety minutes away in a smaller town. She remembered the first night in the mildewed apartment when she’d left her own twin bed and crossed the small room to crawl in with her sister. Caroline had thrown an arm around her and breathed into her neck, mostly asleep. “Everything changes,” Isobel had said to her.
“Just for right now.” Caroline’s words slurred together as she squeezed Isobel’s middle. Isobel shook her head against the pillow, tangling her hair.
“It’s forever,” she’d said. “We’ll be paying for Dad’s mistakes forever.”
Isobel had been slightly embarrassed that she needed her sister when Caroline was younger by eighteen months. But she couldn’t help it. She’d been staring at the dingy popcorn ceiling above her stiff bed, picturing her friend Meera standing in front of the for-sale sign at her family’s nearly identical five-thousand-square-foot home across the cul-de-sac from theirs. Anxiety flooded her body, feet to chest, and she had to sit up in bed in order to breathe.
It was after Meera had stopped speaking to her on the school bus—had shoved her into their usual seat before walking toward the back—that she’d learned that her father hadn’t stolen money just from the Rochester Area Charitable Foundation, but also from other investors, investors including Meera’s parents. Isobel still, even as an adult, repeated to herself the lines from the indictment she’d read one evening after sneaking into her father’s study. She saw his name in bolded all-caps and skimmed down: “ROBERT JOHN MILLER did knowingly devise and participate in a scheme to defraud and obtain money by materially false and fraudulent pretenses.”
She shook her head, thinking of it again now. That indictment hadn’t just changed her father’s life. It had prescribed her own as well. Just as she’d donated all of her nicest clothes, including the new-that-Christmas Girbaud jeans, and replaced her wardrobe with secondhand and inexpensive pieces, she’d later eschewed plans for study abroad, finishing at the University of Wisconsin ahead of schedule and with an extremely practical teaching license.
In front of her in the carpool line, two kids climbed into the Accord, their backpacks weighing them down. Isobel watched their mom turn around and say something toward the backseat.
Her own mother’s voice veered into Isobel’s consciousness then. “You don’t personally have to atone for Dad’s mistakes,” she’d said over the Chinese takeout Isobel had lobbied against in favor of less expensive ramen doctored with rotisserie chicken. Anger surged into Isobel’s cheeks as she remembered.
“Mom,” she’d said then, and still believed now, “of course we do.” The Accord she’d followed to the front of the carpool line moved forward, and she inched along, as mindlessly as she had during the entire ten-minute wait. She drove around the circle and headed back down toward the street.
Eight years after she’d read that indictment, when Isobel had just been hired at East High School, her father had called. “I’m out. Can I see you?” No, she’d thought then.
Suddenly, the car behind her started honking. Isobel’s head jerked, and in her passenger-side mirror she caught sight of Riley, running toward the van. Mrs. Khatri, the art teacher, hurried along beside him, the pom-pom on her hat flopping. Riley’s mouth was moving. The teacher’s arm waved as she held the loop on the top of Riley’s backpack with one hand.
“Oh, my God,” Isobel said aloud, realizing that she’d moved through the whole line without stopping to pick up her son. She braked and slammed into PARK, just as Riley pulled the handle on the automatic sliding door. Isobel couldn’t form words as she looked back at Mrs. Khatri, who stared at her from the sidewalk.
“You forgot to stop!” Mrs. Khatri said.
“I’m so sorry,” Isobel managed. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Mom!” Riley scolded as he pulled the seat belt over. “You forgot me!”
Isobel pressed the close button for the back door and waved sheepishly at the incredulous teacher. “I need to get it together.”
“Geez, Mom,” said Riley, sitting back. “Having to chase you in the carpool circle? That feels like a new low.”
“Yeah,” Isobel agreed. She glanced at the playground on her right, icicles hanging from the monkey bars at one end. “I bet.”
JULIA ABBOTT
After avoiding it all for days, Julia finally clicked open Facebook to find 124 notifications in the upper-right-hand corner of her screen. One hundred twenty-four? She’d never had that many hits on anything, not even the adorable photo she’d posted of Tracy at her eighth-grade graduation with the braided hairstyle they’d accomplished by watching and rewatching YouTube tutorials.
Shaking, she clicked the bell icon. Her eyes popped as her fears materialized. Annabelle Young has shared the video you were tagged in, read one notification. Sheila Warner, Vivian Song, and six others reacted to the video you were tagged in. Marilyn Ogilvie has shared the video you were tagged in. The list went on and on.
Julia skimmed the rest. By a quick estimation, she figured the video posted on the Inside Liston page by “Lisa Lions” had been shared by at least twenty-seven people so far. She had direct messages from two acquaintances and one of her cousins. They’d written, Are you okay? as if she had been diagnosed with cancer rather than simply bumping into someone at the high school.
Although it occurred to her to respond to the messages, Julia’s fingers felt numb. She put her fists in her lap and stared at her screen. Two more notifications pinged as she sat there. Close the browser, she thought to herself, but she found she couldn’t move her arms.
“This, too, shall pass.” Julia tried whispering her frequent mantra to herself. Her mother had often repeated it when she obsessed over a low test score or panicked that she’d said the wrong thing at a get-together with friends.
“You’re much harder on yourself than you need to be,” her mother had whispered as Julia nearly hyperventilated.
After her college graduation—there’d been weekly calls during her university years when Julia perseverated on grades, the Greek system, and, of course, Henry Abbott—Julia’s mother had presented her with a blue Tiffany’s box. It had contained the silver bangle she now wore most days. “Check the inscription,” urged her mother. Before she looked, Julia knew it would be that old comforting phrase, the one her mom repeated while she ran her palm over Julia’s back. This, too, shall pass.
Though she now moved her fingers over the engraving, Julia felt her breath coming quickly, inhalations too close together. Her thoughts raced. How could she remove that video from Facebook? Could she e-mail the company? Mark Zuckerberg himself? Her vision began to blur around the edges as it did when she felt on the verge of losing control. “I can’t,” she whimpered, and it occurred to her that now that Robin was on the Booster Board, aligned with Annabelle and all the others, she actually didn’t have anyone she could call for reassurance. Could she rely on her mother once again? In order to do that, she’d have to explain the video, and there was no way her mother would understand the context.
Just then she heard the mudroo
m door open. “Hi, Mom!” Tracy called. “We got out of practice early, and I got a ride.” Julia swallowed hard and tried to speak. She couldn’t force the words past her sticky throat or slow her breathing. The kids didn’t know about her panic attacks, and the prospect of losing control in front of her daughter only compounded her anxiety.
When Tracy appeared several seconds later in her stocking feet, as usual, Julia forced a smile, but Tracy wasn’t fooled. Rather, she walked quickly toward her as though on a rescue mission. “What are you doing? What’s wrong?” Tracy asked. Facebook updated the number of notifications as Tracy looked over Julia’s shoulder. There were four new ones. “What’s going on?” Tracy pressed.
“The video.” Julia cleared her throat, hoping to erase the thickness she could hear in her voice. “It’s all over Facebook.”
Tracy turned the computer and hovered her fingers over the keyboard. “Have you untagged yourself?” she asked, businesslike. She has so much of her father in her, Julia thought, at once proud and slightly disappointed.
“No.” She hadn’t thought of untagging. She wasn’t sure she knew how.
In a few clicks, Tracy said, “Okay. I made it so no one can tag you in anything without your permission. So, no one can retag you in that video, for instance.” She glanced at Julia, whose breathing had slowed slightly.
“Thanks,” Julia muttered, unsure of how to feel about being the recipient of her daughter’s help.
Tracy clicked again, on notifications. “But probably we should ask the person who posted the video to delete it? That way there won’t be any more shares. Hey,” said Tracy, “it was first posted on a page called ‘Inside Liston.’ What is that?” She clicked the notification and opened it.