Isabel McNally listened to the click of her heels along the long, empty corridor and tried to block out the music that played in her head.  The meeting previously scheduled for the high school had been rescheduled for the middle school and she had forgotten. As a consequence, she was arriving late. Such tardiness was unlike her and what it suggested about her current state weighed on her. She was depressed and only this morning did she realize that it was interfering with her ability to function normally. Burdened now with embarrassment as well as gloom, she pushed open one of the massive double doors. With relief, she spotted Claire Howard close by at a table with an extra chair.

Richard Leland, the high school principal, was finishing up at the lectern.

“Nice of you to join us, McNally,” he quipped just as she reached the empty chair. “We’re just breaking into groups. Why don’t you join mine?”

“Sorry,” she mumbled, not taking her eyes from Claire’s kind face.

“We’re next door,” Claire explained, rising, “Same ole stuff, different day….” She added under her breath. She put her hand between Isabel’s shoulder blades and gave her a reassuring pat.

Isabel’s innards sank. Her lateness would preclude her participation in any discussion. Leland would expect her to be chastened and therefore silent and there would be consequences if she was not. There was history between them and he was heavy-handed when she offended him. Since finding herself under his direction she had adopted a  strictly professional demeanor which he interpreted as slighting him. As a consequence, she’d been assigned daily cafeteria duty, a task as distasteful as it was impossible. Leland was waiting for her to appeal to him for reprieve. So far she could not bring herself to do it. She heaved an audible sigh; Claire turned to her.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, just not feeling up to this.”

Claire snorted softly in agreement.

Leland began with testing protocols. It was essential they give all students midterm exams so there was evidence of improvement. He wanted copies of the formal exams submitted to him for approval after Thanksgiving break. There was immediate resistance. Teachers who didn’t traditionally give exams balked at being compelled. Leland’s brow darkened. 

“We have to have evidence of measurable progress. Objectives made and attained. That is what tests show. So get over it. Just prepare them.” He paused for the response and then hiked up the rancor. “Just do it. Everyone. Across the board. We are living in the time of site based management and I am in charge.”

“That’s a real problem, Coach,” Hank Gauthier, who taught health and physical education,  began. Gauthier was a thirty-year veteran who did not respond well to change or accountability. He thought of himself as a gym teacher; he taught ball sports, the rest was all so much busywork. 

“We’d be better off working on our response tactics. Code Blue protocols. You’re ordering mid-terms when we should be working on how to handle ourselves if there’s a gunman.”

A tide of mumbling rolled through. Inexplicably, Hank caught Isabel’s eye and served up a smirk. What’s this?  she wondered shifting uncomfortably. 

“You got this little lady handling the cafeteria doors. You gonna arm her next? Let her take the lead in a Columbine replay?”

Though Gauthier had been teaching for a decade longer than she had, Isabel suspected he was still using the same sparse “lesson plans” he had inherited in his first year. When the state had introduced health into the physical education curriculum, his resentment had manifest itself as scorn. Who needed to learn about bodily functions? Her son Rafe had landed in  Gauthier’s Health Class this year. Raphael, who had arrived at the high school a   creative, enthusiastic student had thrown himself into writing a term paper on the functioning of the human eye complete with elaborate drawings to illustrate his points. The drawings and the paper itself had never left his possession. Gauthier’s idea of correcting these term papers was to sit for a few perfunctory moments while the student author explained to him the salient points. Rafe had been disheartened by what felt like dismissal (Why doesn’t he want to read it, Mom?). But it was hard to argue with the A+ Gauthier had given him after not reading the paper. Isabel was unsurprised and relieved. She’d heard stories that Gauthier’s earlier method of dealing with the term papers he had been compelled to assign included grading them before he collected them and then filing them in the nearest wastebasket after they were submitted. Occasionally a wry or unsuspecting custodian had returned the papers to Gauthier, or worse, to the principal.  Eventually,  he’d taken to hauling them home with him where the wastebaskets were less carefully monitored. Most of Gauthier’s students did not complain; his was an easy course; they claimed he was a nice guy.  Rafe had learned the lesson quickly. Silence had descended regarding the details of Health Class and Isabel had been able to avoid a conversation with Gauthier. It was odd to hear him reference her now. 

Other voices were raised in rancor. Getting these “little ladies” out of the forefront and arming men was proposed. Leland erupted. The temperature in the dank room seemed to be rising.

“Enough!” he finally ordered, using a tone commonly associated with restraining an imperfectly trained dog. An ominous silence descended on the group momentarily, then Leland pulled a pack of Marlboros out of his suit jacket. He offered one to Hank before he lit his own. This building,  like all the buildings in the school system, had been designated as smoke-free since the superintendent had accepted money from the state as part of the Tobacco Grant. The arrangement guaranteed that as long as the schools prohibited smoking, the funds would be available to be used at the discretion of principals. Leland’s version of site-based management allowed him to tinker with those restraints.

Leland’s notion of managing his site did not interfere with his own addictions. He assured anyone who asked that he had cut back. If one of his teachers was bold enough to point out that the Tobacco Grant money was only assured if no smoking was tolerated in the building, that teacher’s administrative duties would abruptly change. Claire Howard, the school nurse, had been given locker duty in the boys’ locker room when she expressed her objections.  Leland used such creative leadership skills to curb the complaints of a few of his still-smoking teachers, Hank Gauthier included. Today he easily manipulated Hank to silence.

“We’re gonna need an ashtray, Hank. Hey, the little lady was the last one in this morning and she’s doing a lousy job with cafeteria duty. Let’s give her the task, “ Leland spoke with hearty camaraderie. “Go find an ashtray, would you?”

“Sure,” Isabel stood, “But not because I approve….” she mumbled, pulling one of the windows open as she left. Gauthier and Leland smirked, ominously. 

What’s with him? She wondered as she walked. She knew there was an ashtray to be had in her own car in the parking lot and she couldn’t resist the opportunity of a momentary escape. Outside the day was more Thanksgiving than Halloween. She shivered and tried to distract herself: “Whenever I feel dank November in my soul…”  but abandoned the effort. There was not much chance of going to sea, not now, not in the near future. She was here with her colleagues, her students, and her depression. Thanksgiving offered itself just ahead. Then Christmas with a full week’s vacation. Isabel did not hate her job. In her classroom, day after day, she was a good teacher who enjoyed enormous job satisfaction. She believed in what she did there, believed with Christa McAuliffe that she touched the future. Yet plucking the pristine ashtray from its nest in her old Honda, she was overwhelmed with gloom, overwhelmed with the sadness of the season,  the parade of endless days,  shortening daylight, haunting regrets. Get over it. Loss is a part of life. Years ago now. Let it go.

Just then a nondescript car materialized from nowhere and bore down on her. Fear rising, her eyes flashed at the girl in the passenger’s seat, who was glassy-eyed and grinning. 

“Rue?” she asked, “What are you doing here?”

“I’m crusin’ with my boyfriend, Miz McNally.  See him? This’s my guy. He’s not in high school anymore…” she announced too loudly, too proudly.  “Eddie, she the one that sings!”

Isabel’s glance shifted to the driver who was balancing a small spoon in one hand as he drove with the other. Unfamiliar. Too old to be a ninth grader’s boyfriend. He bent his head toward the spoon and snorted. 

“Wanna snort, Teach?” he asked as she reeled backward, dropping the ashtray. The car engaged and tore off. Isabel bent to the ashtray, shaken, thinking: it’s not even noon.  

Back inside, the group sat silently as Leland pontificated. The ash on the end of his cigarette had reached a precarious inch in length. They all knew what this meant. She slipped the ashtray in front of him and lurched backward away from the sour smell of alcohol on his breath. Appalled, she sat back between Claire and the new math teacher, a young guy just out of state college who was occupying himself by correcting papers, half-listening as he bent over the clipboard in his lap. Isabel wished she had remembered to bring something. She looked out of the window into the parking lot. Claire handed her a notebook. 

Do you believe this? Was written across the page in the finest Palmer method. Claire, like Isabel, had graduated from Catholic girls’ schools long ago, years apart. Both had sallied forth with high ideals and excellent penmanship. 

Is he drunk? Isabel wrote beneath it and then shifted in her seat so Claire could read. The nurse snorted softly but Leland paid no attention to the women. His topic now was the shortcoming of ISS, the in-school suspension program, where misbehaving students were confined in a tiny, windowless room all day, supposedly working on the assignments they were missing in the classrooms they had been banished from for bad behavior.  Even more onerous than Isabel’s cafeteria duty was the supervision of ISS.

Herbert would say: “Hair of the dog,” Claire penned and Isabel nodded. Leland had been in detox six months before, notably during the Columbine massacre. He’d gone to one of those exclusive, expensive places that promised to bring the patient “lovingly out of addiction.” His hair had turned snow-white while he was confined but there was no other evidence that the program had curbed his habits. Neither had the DWI which had prompted him to go into detox in the first place. Currently, his addiction was in a holding pattern, as was the high school he ran. Isabel was told by those who knew that he still spent every evening at the bar where she had first met him years before. The Belmont Club no longer hired pretty young singers, but its clients still downed mid-price whiskeys, and some, like Leland,  began their mornings with Starbucks lattes spiked with the same. No one speculated as to what the principal drank for lunch. His door was always shut. 

Isabel turned back to the window. How would she get herself out of cafeteria duty? His door was shut. He wanted her to beg. From the corner of her eye, she saw Gauthier smirking at her. Could he know they had a history? So many years ago, she had been so young and so stupid. How could it he? The gloom resettled itself, a net descending that made even lifting her arms difficult. 

Rafe was home with his guitar, plucking those same songs she had sung at that club. Or maybe he was still sleeping. She did not have to worry about Rafe, he was a great kid, a healthy, responsible kid.

But there was Jared. Still, there was Jared. 

Her mind wandered back to her mother’s house that afternoon she’d found him sick, another November day. Her mother had been called from the daycare when they could not reach Isabel. And her mother in her inimitable way had decided Jared was fine and taken him to her house. There he lay on her couch, his small frame frail with the burden of his life. She’d felt his forehead – sweaty – but no fever. Had he had his Digoxin this morning, she’d asked herself. Yes, administered carefully from an eyedropper as he had had it every morning of his life. Had he had his Lasix? Yes, as he had had it every morning of his life. 

His face was pale blue, the color of skim milk, his eyes saucers of remoteness. His brother, two-year-old Raphael came crashing into his grandmother’s living room, laughing, joyous, raucous and Jared, sober and silent had watched him. 

Jared was a watcher. Life had conducted itself with all its rowdiness and painful joy all around him and he had watched, absorbed, yet apart from his brother’s spontaneity, apart from any spontaneity. Had he been in pain? Always?

“Baby, it was a bad day for you, wasn’t it? How are you now?” she’d whispered just to Jared while his brother plowed to and fro and careened into the coffee table as he enthused over his mother’s appearance. He crashed into her, clutching her forearm, grinning: “Mamer….” he squealed with such satisfaction at her proximity that she turned and kissed his tiny nose. 

“Hi, honey. Look at poor Jared. He’s sick today. But you, you’re as healthy as the day is long. Did you have a good day? What did you and Gram do today?”

She lifted Rafe to her lap and Jared watched from his pillow throne in the corner of the couch. She tickled Rafe, who laughed and still Jared watched. She planted a Bronx cheer in his sweet baby neck and he squealed with delight. And Jared silently observed.

Wordsworth entered:  A little child, who lightly draws his breath and feels his life in every limb what should he know of death…

Suddenly like the wind from a door left open somewhere in another room, she had felt the exposure. Why not before?

“Jared?”

He turned to watch her. She leaned forward and heard his labored breathing, felt like a bolt the urgency as it blasted through the deceptive familiarity of Jared’s illness. They were all so accustomed to this. But this time she felt her bones screaming; he needed help. The marrow spoke.

“Mom! Mom, come quick!” her mother arrived in an instant as Isabel was scooping Jared from the couch. “I think Jared has to go to the doctor. Please call James for me, tell him to call Boston and tell them that I am bringing him in. He’ll know who to call. Can I leave Rafe with you?”

“Izzy, calm down. You’re being ridiculous. It is just a common, garden variety grip. You are always too emotional. Jared is just sickly. He’s been lying here all afternoon on this very couch just watching everyone and everything around him….you coddle him too much. What about Raphael? He hasn’t seen his mother all day!” she scolded, automatically, as was her way. 

“Mom, humor me. I’m worried. Please.”

“Oh, all right but you are being foolish, isn’t she, Jared?”

Jared spoke not at all, but slumped comfortably into his space, head resting in the indentation of his mother’s shoulder. From there, he watched.

In the car her panic blossomed, enormous, exploding airbags slamming into her chest. Too emotional? Too emotional for what? To be a human being?

“Oh, Jared, baby boy. I am so sorry. I didn’t know you were this sick. I would never have waited this long, but don’t worry, we’ll get you to the hospital and they’ll have you on a respirator and you’ll feel much better the way you did the last time…”

She babbled on and on like that until she realized that he had spoken.

“What? What are you saying, honey? I can’t hear you.” she’d pulled to the side of the road, panting, the ache in her chest reaching up like pincers to press on her ears. His voice was so weak: she’d had to lean over to hear him. 

“Mama, just let me…”

“Let you what, honey, let you sleep?”

“Mama, just let me go….” his head against the car seat, he was already half asleep but she had shaken him, hard.

“No! No! You can’t! I can’t” she’d howled at him, then shifted back into gear and onto the highway, the little car zipping in and out of traffic. But the inevitable awaited; traffic backed up from the oil tanks to the Chinatown exit. So she had inched forward, nursing her panic, muttering to herself while her son slept his dangerously deep sleep beside her and all that kept him from death was her refusal to let him go. 

Just move forward,  she had muttered, one foot, one inch, just forward, forward. Why didn’t she know how to breathe? The music in her head, just words from songs of loss…

Startled by the cacophony of chairs scraping beside her, she realized the meeting was breaking up. She looked quickly to Claire, who rolled her eyes. They were heading back to separate schools for more meetings.

In the car, she heard him again, “Mama, just let me go…”

How could he know what he was asking? He was only four years old and she was all that had kept him alive. The arrogance of her, thinking she could keep a child alive, keep a family safe. Thinking one parent or even two is ever enough against all the cruelties and inequities of the world.

Jared, I’m so sorry. If I had only played by the rules, listened and obeyed, played by some damn rules…. Had he ever called for her, ever wanted her for a single second during that operation? Had he been awake enough to conceptualize even fleetingly, the desire for his mother? Mama, where are you? And she had not been there. Coward, huddled in a little closet, a family room with James waiting for the doctors to come and tell them. 

“You mean he’s going to die?”  James had asked that, had allowed the unspeakable to be spoken. James, who was his stepfather, his only father, had been able to form those words and then to speak them. 

“Sometime in the next ten minutes,” the surgeon had answered and that had made it so. 

What did she want all these years later? Did she want to go back in time, be young again and in love with James and have those babies so dependent on her? Others wanted that. To be happy. James had wanted that. Most simply that is why James had left. To be happy. To find some space where he could escape the awful ubiquity of loss. When she saw him now, infrequently, because of Rafe, he seemed stubbornly happy. He dated. There had been women. Maybe I should do that now, she thought. Begin dating in earnest, work toward a new life…but then she remembered that the only one who had asked her out was Richard Leland – and would again – and she laughed a humorless, bitter laugh that rattled like glass in the tiny car. 

She pulled up behind the high school, turned off the engine and pulled the emergency break with a savage resolve. Inside, in the gym, a few random kids had come to the empty building to shoot hoops.  Hank was there already, giving orders, the suddenly committed supervisor who would skip the meeting for this. She waved to them, half smiled, and turned away. Those boys, those tall healthy boys crowding into each other as they vied for the basketball, they were the age that Jared would be. 

And the Buffalo Springfield played in her head: I am a child, I last a while, you can’t conceive of the pleasure in my smile…

copyright ©Meredith Powers 2015-2025