John Saul: Shadows

Brenda hesitated, her indignation blunted. “You mean there’s more?” she asked.

Hodgkins chewed uncomfortably at his lower lip. “Rita Schulze was here during lunch hour. It seems she had a little run-in with Josh just after the morning session ended.”

Brenda’s eyes moved back to her son. Josh squirmed in his chair. “She wouldn’t leave me alone,” he complained. “Every time she asked a question, she made me answer it, like I’m some kind of freak or something. All the rest of the kids were staring at me, and talking about me, and—”

He fell silent as he read the anger in his mother’s eyes.

“So you were rude to your teacher, and threw milk on Ethan? Is that it?”

“No!”

“Don’t lie to me, Josh. I want to know what happened.”

“I’m telling you, Mom! I didn’t do anything!” Josh’s eyes flicked around the room, as if he were searching for some avenue of escape, and Brenda reached out, taking his chin in her hand, forcing him to look at her.

“Is that the truth, Josh?”

Silently, Josh nodded. After a moment Brenda let her hand drop away and turned tiredly back to the principal.

“What are we going to do?” she asked. “It was the same thing last year. Bill Cooley was always holding Josh up to the rest of the class, like they should all be as smart as he is. It wasn’t fair to them, and it sure wasn’t fair to Josh.”

Arnold Hodgkins’s gesture of helplessness expanded. “It’s a difficult situation.” he admitted with obvious reluctance. “But—”

“But you shouldn’t have skipped him again.” Brenda cut in, her voice rising to an angry crescendo. “You should have left him with his class.”

Hodgkins shook his head doggedly. “That’s not the problem! Not the problem at all! The problem, when you get right down to it, is that we just don’t have any programs for kids like Josh. The school’s too small, and the resources too limited.”

Brenda MacCallum stared at the principal. “So what am I supposed to do? Take Josh out of school? It’s not my fault this place can’t deal with him.”

Now Hodgkins leaned forward, picking up a pamphlet from his desk. “I didn’t say it was your fault, Mrs. MacCallum, and if I implied it at all, I’m sorry. But the facts are the facts. There isn’t much we can do for Josh here. He needs special programs, with specially trained teachers, and he needs to be with other kids like himself.” His eyes fixed on the pamphlet, which had arrived on his desk only last week, along with a computer-generated “personalized” letter suggesting that perhaps Josh MacCallum might be a candidate for the school the pamphlet described. Initially he had dismissed both the letter and the pamphlet, certain that the solicitation had been stimulated by nothing more than the centrally scored IQ tests all the Eden children had taken last spring. But after the incident in the cafeteria, he had studied the brochure more closely.

Brenda, still dazed by thè principal’s last words, stared at him. “What are you saying? You think I should just pick up and move? You think I can just pide up and move? And even if I could, where am I supposed to go? How am I supposed to find the kind of school you’re talking about?” Before she could go on, Hodgkins handed her the pamphlet

It was from a place called the Barrington Academy. A sketch of a large mansion surrounded by a broad lawn studded with towering pine trees was printed on the heavy buff-colored paper. She stared at it quizzically, then looked up at Arnold Hodgkins. “What’s this? It doesn’t look like any school I’ve ever heard of.”

“It’s not,” Hodgkins replied. “It’s a private school designed for gifted children. It’s up north at—”

But Brenda MacCallum didn’t let him finish. She was already on her feet, her eyes blazing. “Private school?” she demanded. “Where am I going to get the money for private school? I’m a waitress. I get minimum wage, plus tips, and let me tell you, in Eden the tips aren’t much! Since Melinda was born, I’ve even had to go on food stamps!” She paused to fight back her tears, then, summoning what dignity she could gather, went on. “I’ll have a talk with Josh, and make sure that from now on he behaves himself. I would appreciate it if you made sure the rest of the kids around here — and the teachers, too — stop making him feel like some kind of freak! Come on, Josh.”

Arnold Hodgkins rose out of his chair and started around the desk. “Mrs. MacCallum, wait. There’s a lot more we need to talk about. If you’ll just calm down—”

But it was too late. Brenda, clutching Josh by the hand, was already halfway down the hall. For a moment Hodgkins considered going after her, but decided that in the woman’s present mood, there was nothing he could say.

The problem of Josh MacCallum could wait, but the president of the school board could not.

Brenda drove silently along the ragged edge of Eden toward the decaying building in which she lived, feeling Josh’s anger radiating toward her, but doing her best to ignore it. When Josh finally spoke, she knew she had to respond.

“You didn’t have to talk about me like I wasn’t even there,” he said.

For a moment Brenda thought she might cry. She reached out and squeezed her son’s knee. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess I just got so mad at Mr. Hodgkins that I forgot you were listening.”

“Well, I was. And I heard everything you said. And it’s not fair, Mom. I didn’t do anything at all.”

Brenda took a deep breath. “I’m not saying you did, sweetheart. But if all the other kids—”

“They’re all liars!” Josh shouted, his anger bursting forth. “How come no one ever believes me? It’s not fair!” He reached into the book bag, jerked out the book he’d been reading in the cafeteria, then began ripping its pages out, one by one. Rolling down the window, he flung the pages out into the desert breeze. Brenda could see them fluttering behind the car.

“Josh! What are you doing? Do you know how much that book cost? I had to order it special from Los Angeles!”

“I don’t care!” he shouted. “I hate the book, and I hate school, and I hate Mrs. Schulze and Mr. Hodgkins and everyone else! I hate it all!” With every furious sentence, he yanked another page from the book and flung it out the window, until he was pulling them out by the fistful, filling the area behind the car with a storm of white. “And I hate you, too,” he yelled. “I hate everybody and everything!”

Brenda reached over and snatched what was left of the book out of his hands, tossing it into the backseat. “Well, let me tell you, buddy-boy, right now I’m not too crazy about you, either.”

For a moment she thought she was going to slap her son. Then her gaze settled on the open window by his side.

For the first time in two years, it was wide open.

The little miracle had actually happened.

As Josh stared at her in amazement, Brenda threw her head back and began laughing out loud.

A moment later, though, her laughter choked off, then died. As the reality of her life, and the life of her son, closed back in on her, she began to cry.

The miracle of the open window, she decided, was just too little.

What she needed was a much larger miracle.

But where would it come from?

Brenda pulled the car under the sagging carport behind the apartment house and wondered for the hundredth time whether it would be better to call the landlord about peeling paint yet again, or simply organize yet another work party among the tenants to paint the building themselves. Bill Roeder might even be able to do something about the sagging beam under the carport — a post, or something.